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“And they’re working,” he said aloud. “Killing the alien bastards in droves. And the damned government just had to throw that away by refusing to cooperate with the Germans.”

“Sir?” queried Merle’s aide.

“We could have had a couple of Boche armored corps here with us,” answered Merle. “We could have had a few score infantry divisions too, to help us hold this line. But, no. Impossible. We would only let them help us if they were willing to let us dictate policy. Tell me, Francois, if you were the Germans, if you were anyone, would you let the government of France, any government of France, dictate policy to you?”

Certainement pas,”[39] answered the captain, with a wry — and very cynically and typically French — grin. “Who could be so foolish?”

“No one, and so no more would I. And so, though we are murdering those alien assholes by the bushel, they are still going to get through. They are going to take these forts, peel us like hard-boiled eggs, and then feast on the contents. And then they’re going to go past us…”

The command post suddenly shook more violently than the automatic cannons alone could account for. Merle was tossed from his seat by the shock.

Merde, what was that?” he asked, rising to his feet.

“I don’t know, mon colonel.”

The phone rang. After all these decades the telephone system still worked. The aide, Francois, answered. Merle saw his face turn white.

As Francois replaced the ancient telephone on its hook he said, “Battery B. It’s… gone. The aliens somehow penetrated all the way down to the ammunition storage area. Hardly anyone escaped. The area’s been sealed off to prevent fire from spreading.”

Now Merle’s face paled. “My God, there are twenty thousand civilians down there below the ammunition for that battery.”

“Lost, sir.”

“Do we still have communication with the Germans behind us?” Merle asked.

“I believe so, sir. Why?”

“Get me Generalleutnant Von der Heydte on the line. I am going to place this fortress under his command and ask him for any aid he can spare to save our people. While I am doing that I want you to begin calling the other sector commanders and giving them my suggestion they do the same. Fuck the government. We haven’t had a decent one since Napoleon the First, anyway.”

* * *

Saarlouis, Germany, 18 December 2007

Von der Heydte was stunned. “The bloody frogs are asking us to do what?

“They want us to take over, sir. At least General Merle does, and some others. I understand we are getting calls all along the front. They can’t hold. Their army, at least, knows it. And they have decided to ignore their government.”

“Okay… I can buy that. And they would be a useful addition to our effort if they will just cooperate.”

“General Merle sounded eager to cooperate, sir. His exact words were, ‘Tell General Von der Heydte I am submitting myself and my entire command to his authority.’ But there’s a catch.”

“Aha! I knew it. What catch?”

“Sir, they want us to open up our lines to permit the evacuation of several million civilians. Several hundred thousand in General Merle’s sector alone.”

“Can we?”

“Risky, sir. We could conceivably open a lane or perhaps two. I don’t think we have the engineer assets to re-close more than two, anyway. But even they will be narrow passages. I doubt we can get everyone through. And, sir?”

“Yes?”

“Sir, they’re a very proud people. You know Merle and the other frogs wouldn’t be asking if they thought they had a prayer of holding on their own.”

“I see,” and Von der Heydte did see. “We’re going to have to put some of our own people out there and at risk to cover the evacuation.”

Von der Heydte thought some more, then walked over to observe his situation map. Noting the location of one division in particular, he dredged through his memory for an answer. Finding that answer he ordered, “Call Mühlenkampf. Yes, ‘SS’ Mühlenkampf. Ask if I can borrow his Charlemagne Division. Tell him he’ll likely have a mutiny if he doesn’t give them to me, because I am not above asking them to come directly. And tell him he is unlikely to get many of them back.”

* * *

Fortress Hackenberg, Thierville, Maginot Line, France, 19 December 2007

The men in the dank and malodorous depths of the fortress still noticed her, even under the pale, flickering light. Though well past the bloom of youth, and despite the deprivations and terrors of the last nine months, Isabelle De Gaullejac was still quite a fine-looking woman beneath her grimy, unwashed face. Cleaned up, and when she could clean herself Isabelle was fastidious, those men would have called her “pretty” — if not beautiful.

Still, there was beauty and then there was beauty. Standing, Isabelle had a bearing and obvious dignity that was proud, even almost regal. Whatever she lacked in classic line of features her girlish shape and posture up made for, and more.

The pride was personal. The regality was perhaps the result of genetics, for she came from a family ennobled for over five hundred years.

She had grown up in a real castle, not one of those palaces that went by the name. Her girlhood home had been a hunting castle used by King Henry, Henry the Fowler, in the Middle Ages. Thus, the cold, damp, dirty and detestably uncomfortable hell that was the bowels of Fort Hackenberg was no great shock to her. She had hated King Henry’s castle as a girl. She hated Hackenberg now. But she could deal with the one as she had dealt with the other, through sheer will to endure.

But it was with relief that she greeted the news the fort was to be evacuated. Gathering up her two sons, one teenaged and the other a mere stripling, she dressed them as warmly as the meager stocks of clothing they had been able to carry permitted. Expecting a long march to safety, she packed a bag of necessities. These included food, some medicine for the younger boy, who had picked up a cough in the fort, a change of clothing each, and a bottle of first rate Armagnac. Two of the wretched army blankets the family had been issued were also stuffed into the bag. She was not a small or weak woman and so, while the pack was heavy, she thought she could bear it, if her teenager, Thomas, could help a bit.

One particle among a smelly sea of humanity, she stood at a rear entrance — when Germany had been the threat it had served as a sally port to the front — and held her boys under close rein while awaiting the word to move.

Others gathered to her, many others. That air of royalty, of command, which she radiated drew the confused, the lost, the helpless and hopeless to her as if she were a magnet. She took it, as she took nearly everything, with calm.

She was not calm inside, however. She had long since lost touch with her husband. Isabelle feared the worst.

There was a murmur of sound from behind her. Isabelle turned to see a tall man, tall especially by French standards, easing his way through the crowded corridor. When he passed close by, she saw even in the dim light, that his uniform was midnight black. On his collar she saw insignia that made her want to spit at the soldier.

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39

Certainly not.