Grant Blackwood
Echo of War
For my father.
Flying his Mustang, Tatsee his wingman.
Prologue
The man who was about to take the fate of the world into his hands stopped suddenly and dropped into a crouch beside a fallen tree. He raised his fist, signaling a halt. Behind him, his three squad leaders simultaneously dropped to their bellies in the snow, using hand signals to disperse the rest of the men into the underbrush alongside the trail.
Simon Root closed his eyes and listened. In the distance an owl hooted, then went quiet. Then, faintly, he heard voices muttering in German. Ahead, the trail sloped upward and disappeared into the trees. Root glanced back and gave a second signaclass="underline" Enemy ahead.
Though dusk was still an hour away, the alpine forest was dim and hushed, the freshly fallen snow absorbing even the chirping of the birds. Root could feel the cold seeping through his woolen pants, chilling him. Wisps of ice swirled around him and frost blended with the snow to create ghostly shapes that floated among the trees.
He pulled his scarf closer over his mouth and forced himself to breathe evenly. Wouldn’t do to let your own breath give you away, he thought. With only fourteen men on his team, any enemy they encountered would likely outnumber them. Surprise was the key; if they got that, Root knew his boys could handle anything.
As the term “commando” had not yet been coined, Root and his team had been dubbed “irregular troops” by the Allied higher-ups — specifically General Blackjack Pershing.
Under orders from Pershing, Root had arrived in France in mid-February 1917, a full two weeks before the U.S. declared war on Germany and four months before the American Expeditionary Force was to come ashore in Saint Nazaire and join the war in earnest. His orders, though dicey in execution, were straightforward: Assemble a multinational squad of soldiers to slip behind enemy lines, conduct reconnaissance, and as Pershing put it, “wreak hell and havoc with the Huns and their ilk.”
For the past ten months Root and his “Havocs” had done just that, fighting at Messines, Passchendaele, Cambrai, and a dozen other equally bloody skirmishes about which history books would never know. The day after Christmas they’d been ordered into the Dinaric Alps on a two-fold mission: One, scout the way for a possible Allied landing in Albania; and two, hunt down Bulgarian irregulars rumored to be lurking in the area, destroying depots and rail heads.
We’ll give them something to think about, Root thought.
His squad leaders were superb: Ville-john, the Frenchman; Pappas, a Greek; and Frenec, a Hungarian anti-Hapsburg Monarchy freedom-fighter and Root’s second-in-command. The most skilled fighter of the lot, Frenec claimed his family was not only the most renowned breeders of Komondor dogs in Hungary, but that his grandfather had fought alongside Lajos Kossuth’s Magyar rebels during the Revolution of 1848.
For all his ferocity, however, Frenec was also the most lighthearted of them all, a trait which Root found both endearing and unnerving. At Passchendaele, Frenec had picked up the severed head of a German soldier, proclaimed it was in dire need of a haircut, then punted it out of the trench and laughed like a jackal. “… Need a haircut … get it? Ha!”
We might be needing some levity soon, Root thought. He had a bad feeling about this job. These Dinarics, with their towering limestone peaks, thick pine forests, and dizzying gorges, were a devilish place. With only a handful of men under his command, if they got into trouble here, this is where they would die.
Root turned and signaled for their scout. A few seconds later the boy appeared. Anton was all of fourteen, lanky and tough, and grave beyond his years. Above all, he was fiercely loyal to Root. They’d been together since the beginning and the boy adored Root as though they were blood. “Yes, sir?”
“Enemy ahead, Anton,” Root whispered.
“Yes, sir, I heard them.”
“What, didn’t smell them this time?”
“Too much snow, sir.”
“Think you can find them?”
Anton grinned. “I know so.”
“Good boy. Be quick and quiet. Off you go.”
Anton stripped off all his gear, gave a choppy salute, then crawled off the trail and disappeared, burrowing through the underbrush like a hare. Good lad, Root thought. He often worried he’d no business bringing the boy into this; though Anton claimed to be eighteen, Root knew better. Anton hadn’t even seen his first whiskers. Old enough to kill and be killed, though.
Root turned and signaled Frenec and the others: Scout out; relax at the ready; full quiet.
Thirty minutes later Anthony returned, emerging like a ghost from the trees alongside the trail. He crawled up beside Root and took a gulp from the proffered canteen. He wiped his sleeve across his forehead. “Bunker, sir.”
“Bunker or cave?” Of the many surprises the Dinarics had shown them, the most troublesome had been the hundreds of caves and sinkholes that pocked the landscape. You never knew if your next step would send you to the center of the earth.
“Bunker,” Anton replied. “Half a kilometer up the trail, built into the side of the hill at the mouth of a ravine. Good camouflage, too. I didn’t spot it until I was almost on top of it.”
“Signs of life?”
“Eight soldiers guarding the entrance and both ends of the ravine.”
“What kind?”
“German regular army, standard uniforms. Very good — quiet, no smoking.”
Disciplined fellows. What were Germans doing here? Root wondered. The Balkans were lost to them. The closest thing Bosnia had seen to a Hun in six months was some scattered Austro-Hungarian troops. What were they doing guarding a bunker here, this late in the war? “Very mysterious, eh?”
Anton smiled. “Maybe they’ve got treasure.”
Root smiled back. “If so, it’s all yours.” Root turned and signaled Frenec forward.
“Huns, Simon?” the Hungarian whispered in guttural English.
“Indeed.” Root recounted what Anton had found then said, “Here’s the plan: Have Pappas and Villejohn each take a Lewis team — put one on the slope overlooking the ravine, the other at the outlet.” The Lewis Gun was a tripod-mounted .303-caliber machine gun. Manned by a trigger man and a feeder, the Lewis’s rate of fire would provide cover if things went sour. The rest of the team was armed with bolt-action Enfields and German Mausers. “No shooting unless absolutely necessary,” Root finished.
Frenec grinned. “Knives and wires?”
“Right. If any of them makes a peep, who knows how many Huns’ll come running out of that bunker. We go slow and quiet. With any luck, we can get inside and surprise them.”
As was his habit when going face-to-face with the enemy, Root ordered Anton to stay behind. All the boy could do was watch helplessly as Simon and the others disappeared into trees, their trench knives and garrotes held at the ready. Twilight was falling now. Full darkness was only minutes away.
I could help them,Anton thought. I know I could.Of course, that didn’t matter. What mattered was that his commanding officer had given him an order. Anton loved Root with all his heart. Having lost his mother, father, and sisters two years earlier, he’d come to see Simon, Frenec, and the team as his family.
Anton closed his eyes and listened, waiting for the birdcalls that would mean Root and the others were in place and ready. The fifth call would be the go signal. Anton coiled his legs beneath him, waiting. Orders or not, if even one shot rang out, he’d be at Simon’s side.