That thought perturbed Asbach and he turned around towards where a group of his men were starting towards the wreckage, looking for salvage. “Halt, right there. Nobody move until the area has been checked. Engineers, start looking for booby traps.”
It didn’t take long to find the first one. A pipe bomb buried beside a pathway that lead to what appeared to be a bunker. The bunker was just a shallow hole dug deep enough to give the impression of a tunnel in the snow. An explosive ordnance disposal man from the engineers quickly defused the pipe bomb and made it safe. Then the engineers started to check the site in detail. Asbach stopped them. There was nothing here worth keeping; all that was necessary was to clear a path through the site. That meant clearing out the main track, that was all.
It was there that they found the real surprise. A thin wire, buried under the snow, leading to a standard push-pull detonator. Only there wasn’t just one charge; there were half a dozen, spaced down each side of the main road through the site. If they had been tripped off, the whole column would have been immersed in explosions. It took the bomb disposal expert nearly an hour to defuse the intricate web of charges and detonators. Eventually he did so and stood up, stretching his back.
Fire one shot, they know you are there. Fire two and they know where you are. The sniper, be he a partisan or a member of a ski patrol knew his — or her — job well. Lang heard only a single shot and saw the explosives disposal expert crumple with a terrible finality. He looked at the trees surrounding them and saw nothing. He finally understood what Asbach had been trying to tell him. They were being watched. All the time.
CHAPTER EIGHT: THE ENDLESS SNOW
“Well, now we have a problem.”
The sight before them would, under other circumstances, have been rather beautiful. A landscape covered with a pristine snowfall, unmarred by tracks or stains. Out of it poked small collections of pine trees, spotting the landscape as it dipped down into a shallow valley As the ground rose the other side, the patches of trees grew larger once more. Under these circumstances, the same vista was a depressing sight.
Captain John Marosy and Sergeant William Bressler had been moving through the trees for hours after Hammer Blow had been shot down. That made good sense. The snowfall had been too heavy to allow easy going anywhere except where the pine forests provided protection from the worst of the blizzard. Not that staying under the trees was actually easy; it was just less back-breakingly exhausting. Their current problem was a simple one; there were no more trees. It wasn’t even a question of backtracking and finding a new way around. The forest in this area was in the shape of a giant hand. They’d been moving down a steadily-narrowing finger of forest for some hours. Going back would virtually take them all the way to the wreck of Hammer Blow. Even then, they’d only be able to select a new finger and hope that it ended in a more favorable position.
“We could try and make our way down and across.” Bressler didn’t sound too happy about that. Marosy didn’t blame him.
“No way Bill. We’ll be floundering for hours down there. Stuck out in the open like a pair of plaster geese. The snow will have drifted in the valley. It’s not too bad up here, but it’ll be feet deep down there. And even if we do manage to make any distance, we’ll be leaving tracks a blind man could follow.”
“So what do we do, Boss? Wait here until somebody finds us, and hope it’s the partisans, not the Krauts?”
Marosy thought carefully. “In the short term, yes. We made good time under the trees. We’re well clear of the wreck. We’ll hole up here until dusk. Try and keep warm and rest. We’ve got two things running for us. One is that the boys know we’re down and they’ll be looking. If they find us, they’ll send a ski-equipped Dragon Rapide out to get us. The other is that we’re in the snap-back after the storm. Temperature is higher than normal for a few hours but it’ll drop like a stone tonight. By midnight, the snow will be freezing and crusting and we should be able to make better time if we do have to cross that valley.”
“Wouldn’t put too much faith in the boys looking for us Boss. We’ve lost what, twenty, thirty aircraft in the A-4 bombardment? And there’s a big Kraut push on. The rest of our boys will be working round the clock. They won’t have time to look for us. At best, they’ll keep their eyes open going out and coming back.”
He was right, of course and Marosy knew it. It was obvious that the German offensive had obviously been carefully planned. They had to have had this stashed away for months, waiting for the conditions to be right.
“There’s always the partisans. They’ll know a bird went down and they’ll be looking for us as well. When they find us, they’ll get a message out.”
“Provided the Krauts don’t get us first. What do we do then?”
Marosy was beginning to find Bressler’s pessimism a touch irritating. “We pick a nice strong tree to get hanged from; what do you think?”
Bressler nodded and started looking at the pine trees around them. “That one looks about right. Got a nice view across the valley as well. Especially of the German troops gathering to watch down there.”
“Not a funny joke, Sergeant.”
“Not a joke at all, Boss. Take a look.”
Marosy scanned the tracks at the foot of the valley. Sure enough, in the last few minutes, a group of trucks had pulled up and were disgorging white-clad infantry. He took out his binoculars and had a closer look. They were Germans all right; the banana-shaped magazines on their rifles were all too apparent. Even as he watched them milling round by their trucks, he saw some pointing up at the hills around them.
“Sorry Bill, you’re right. Krauts. We’d better get out of here. Back the way we came, we don’t have very much choice.”
They started edging back through the trees. Marosy paused for one last look. It seemed like most of the Germans were coming his way. Had they seen a flash of light from his binoculars? Perhaps they were making a shrewd guess based on the crash site and time elapsed. One good thing, the men were floundering in the snow, it would take them some time to get up to the easier going under the trees. That gave him and Bressler a chance to get clear.
“What’s happening out there?” General John M Rockingham wanted information and wanted it now. He was in de-facto command of the 3rd Infantry since General George Rodgers had caught a blast of grenade fragments and gone down. Which raised another point. “And what’s happened to the RCAMC post? Have we got it back yet? What are we doing about our wounded?”
The Lieutenant spoke very carefully, his voice clipped to avoid it shaking. “We’ve recaptured the field hospital Sir. They’re all dead in there. They shot the patients in their beds, made the doctors and the nurses lie on the floor and then one of them walked down the line, putting a bullet in each of their heads. Boys are hopping mad about it, Sir. They’re in a killing mood now; there’s no disguising it. We won’t be seeing prisoners any time soon. We’ve set up an emergency facility using some first aid post people who happened to be here and some of the not-so-badly wounded who learned first aid in the Boy Scouts.”