Steiner had meant the quantity of equipment, not its quality, which he didn’t think too much of. No matter. “Ja, perhaps, but the barrel overheads—”
Grillo’s expression soured. “You want to trade or not? I don’t have all day.”
Schulte called out, “How’s the diplomacy going, Otto?”
Steiner turned to share the exchange with his comrades. “The Amis are souvenir shopping. Anybody want to trade his Luger?”
Some of the Fallschirm looked around and, seeing no officers, broke into devious smiles. They stepped forward with eagerness.
“Remember, comrades,” Steiner told them, “if you want me to translate for you, you’ll have to give me two Ami cigarettes.”
The Americans quieted to watch the tense negotiation unfold. Animal walked away with an armful of chocolate, cigarettes, and dirty magazines.
“If the lieutenant finds out, you’ll be in big trouble,” Steiner told him.
Animal gave him a menacing smile. “Then we’d better not tell him.”
“You know me, comrade. I don’t mess with guys who stand behind me in battle with a flamethrower.”
The big paratrooper laughed and marched to his bunk with his booty.
Steiner called after him, “You still owe me two smokes, though, Schneider!”
“Nice doing business with you, Jerry,” Grillo said.
“Otto.”
“What?”
“My name is Otto.”
The kid nodded. “Otto it is.” Then he held his Luger high for his friends. “Look what I got!”
His sergeant shook his head. “You just got taken, Grillo.”
The Americans shot glances at each other. Then a third of them jumped up and crowded around Steiner, shouting offers while the Red Devils looked on in silent contempt.
CHAPTER SIX
THE DRAUGR
In the mess hall, Oberfeldwebel Wolff devoured a simple meat and vegetable hash and strong coffee. After months of meager rations, it was an exquisite feast. And the coffee was real coffee, with whole milk and sugar.
Having eaten their fill, his squad rested their elbows on the table and lit their Ami cigarettes with a sigh. Wearing a drowsy smile, Wolff stuffed his pipe with his own tobacco and lit it. Damn, the Americans had the best of everything.
Still no word about Battle Axe Company. The sergeant feared the SS had killed or captured them. Another unsolved mystery in this strange day. He’d survived this long by doing his part and keeping his mouth shut. Honest answers would come in due time, and if they didn’t, welcome to Nazi Germany.
The paratroopers lunged to attention as the doors burst open, revealing Oberst Heilman and other German, American, and British officers. The officers marched in a train to the front of the room and spread out.
RAF men followed and set up a projector and screen.
Wolff doubted it was for their entertainment. Finally, he’d be getting some answers. The sight of massive herds of human beings lurching into concentrated shellfire still haunted him.
Then he spotted the SS man among the officers. Wolff’s eyes narrowed.
“Fallschirmjäger,” Heilman said with his customary fierce scowl. “I have news that will come as a shock, but I trust in your composure as soldiers of the Reich.”
Yeah, thought Wolff. Here it comes.
“We are not fighting Ivan,” the colonel went on. “The situation has changed. The circumstances are unprecedented. Our regiment will be joining our former enemies in a drop on Berlin.”
Treason!
Wolff snarled, seething with rage. The Fallschirm erupted in jeers and shouts.
“Silence!” the oberst roared.
Obedience drilled into them for years, the men quieted.
Heilman’s intense gaze roamed among the men. “Operation Autumn Mist was a complete success. And also a complete failure. Aus der traum.”
Whereas the colonel’s roar had quieted them, that last phrase struck the room completely silent. The dream is over.
The rank and file often said it with fatalistic humor. The line had broken, and high command wanted the regiment to jump into the meat grinder? Aus der traum. The company wasn’t getting artillery support? Aus der traum. Withdraw and dig in all over again fifty meters down the road? Aus der traum!
Spoken by a senior officer, however, it was a very serious statement.
Heilman turned to the tall SS officer. “Obergruppenführer Wolfensohn?”
With his platinum hair neatly combed to the side, bright blue eyes, and square jaw, the SS officer looked every bit the Aryan man the Nazi leadership idealized.
Whoever he is, Wolff thought, he’s a fanatic. Not just SS but a senior group leader, an officer with far-ranging responsibility in the paramilitary organization.
It was bastards like him who’d attacked the Battle Axe.
“Good evening, comrades,” Wolfensohn said. “Sieg heil.” Hail victory.
“Sieg heil,” the Fallschirmjäger grumbled.
“To win the war, the Party began work on a wonder drug to make our soldiers invincible. The Overman project. The Führer sent me personally to a research station in Poland to investigate its potential. It was remarkable. I saw a man turn into a savage fighter. Even after he died, he kept on fighting.”
The paratroopers laughed. The SS officer pursed his lips and waited before continuing, “I was not joking. The problem was he lost his humanity and could not be controlled. I assessed the Overman drug unfit to give to our half-million soldiers preparing for Autumn Mist. But too much was riding on the operation’s success. At the Führer’s command, it was widely deployed along the front.”
Wolff gasped with disgust. He believed Wolfensohn. In desperation, the Nazis had used the Wehrmacht as guinea pigs.
“At first, Overman achieved remarkable success. Then our super soldiers began fighting uninfected comrades. They spread in all directions, attacking all who stood in their way. Their hate was so complete they… fed on the corpses. And then those corpses got up and started fighting too. Because the wonder drug is not a drug at all but a carefully engineered organism bred for violence. A pathogenic bacterium that animates its hosts and drives them to kill and feed. That is Overman. A disease that turns men into draugr. Nachzehrer. Gjenganger.”
The officer paused to let that sink in, though Wolff doubted it could. Nobody laughed this time. There was only a stunned silence. The draugr were men who returned from the dead with superhuman strength to feast on flesh and blood. Undead things out of Viking mythology. Legend had it only a hero could kill them. They had to be beheaded and burned until ash.
The nachzehrer was a creature of German folklore that fed on corpses like a ghoul or the souls of the living like a wraith. Only beheading or a stake through the heart killed it. Similarly, the gjenganger, creatures of Scandinavian lore, were reanimated bodies that returned to murder and spread disease.
The Nazi scientists had found a way to combine all three creatures into a single fact. They hadn’t created soldier soldiers, they’d made monsters. Monsters out of stories mothers told their children to force them to properly behave, brought to life to attack the living.
That’s what Wolff had seen lurching out of the River Meuse.
To wage war, men had built incredible machines capable of slaughter, chemicals that made a man’s lungs foam out his mouth, incredible firebombs that burned cities to the ground. In the draugr, they’d taken the next step by turning man himself into a terrifying weapon. But this weapon couldn’t be controlled.