Frank looked around desperately, trying to work the problem and find a solution rather than give in to panic. He was in the ruins of a townhouse. The furniture in what he guessed was the front parlor was half-crushed with rubble and covered in dust, and there was a gaping hole in the ceiling where a nice chandelier had probably once hung. It looked like someone had punched a hole in a Better Homes and Gardens magazine. There was movement in other buildings, glimpses of light and shadow he could catch from the ruins of the doorway. But friend or foe? He couldn’t say.
Moments passed. Frank was about to edge toward the doorway, prepared to shout for retreat, to have his men stay moving within the gutted ruins for as long as possible, then regroup where they’d left Abruzzo’s body.
But before he could take another step forward, he felt cold metal press against the nape of his neck.
“Guten Abend, Herr Leutnant,” the voice behind him said.
At the same time, an older man in civilian clothes emerged from the shadows in front of Frank — training a rifle at his chest.
His heart sinking, Frank dropped his pistol and slowly raised his hands. “Evening, boys,” he said, tired and defiant all at once.
The man behind him threw a sack over Frank’s head, and Frank wondered if he’d ever see light again.
He might not have had his vision, but Frank still had the rest of his senses, and there were a few crucial things he knew. One: his hands were tied behind his back. Two: he was pretty sure he’d been led underground. And three: wherever they were, it was a long goddamn way back to the bridge, let alone base. Then the sack was ripped off his head.
He found himself in a surprisingly large, windowless room the size of a gymnasium, but with a dirt floor instead of planks. There were Nazi banners hanging on the walls, which looked like smooth stone or concrete. There were torches — actual, for-real burning torches — in sconces on the walls, and the smoke rose toward a small shaft in the ceiling. It was a long way up.
In the center of the room was a large antique table surrounded by six Nazis in uniforms of one stripe or another. There were another dozen people scattered throughout the room, mostly wearing civvies but all armed. One of them shoved Frank to his knees… right next to one of his men.
The young man looked right at Frank with desperation in his eyes. It was Petersen; Frank couldn’t, for the life of him, remember his first name. He was shaking like a leaf, and his pale, freckled face was streaked with dirt and tears. Blood had dried at the corner of his mouth; the Germans had taken a few swings at the kid on the way down there. The Nazis had a reputation through the war for beating the crap out of enlisted men, though they treated enemy officers better. But Hitler was dead, and this wasn’t a sanctioned German military maneuver. This was the last resistance against Allied occupiers, and Frank wondered how long the whole honor-and-glory thing would last.
They were screwed after all.
“Keep your mouth shut and don’t do anything stupid,” Frank whispered. “We’ll be OK.”
“Lieutenant, what the h—” the kid choked out, but before he could finish, one of the Nazis behind them whacked the kid with his rifle butt, sending him to the floor again. The guard — a big, burly man with blond hair and cold eyes — pulled Petersen back to his knees and slapped him on the side of the head with his palm. “Quiet,” he said in English.
And Frank was kind of grateful, because Petersen swayed a bit but finally stared straight ahead, silenced. One less thing to worry about for now.
And there they stayed, kneeling and under guard, while the Nazis around the table continued to… actually, Frank couldn’t tell what the hell they were up to. Several of the uniformed bigwigs in the center of the room were checking their wristwatches and pocket watches regularly. One was a Generalmajor and another an Oberst, with a third wearing the telltale insignia of the SS. Frank knew the Nazi ranks and insignia by heart; they were posted all over the base, in the hopes that patrols might ID and capture a senior officer if they got lucky. Getting captured by one hadn’t been given much consideration.
The Germans were waiting on something, Frank figured, and when they weren’t looking at their watches, they were looking down at something on the table — a map, maybe? — or fiddling with the knobs on a small radio set tuned to what sounded to Frank like a stream of gibberish. There was another, larger machine against the wall, about the size of a chest of drawers, with panels full of buttons, switches, dials, and lights — a big, bulky thing emitting a low hum. What it was for, Frank couldn’t begin to guess; he’d never seen anything like it. But between that gizmo and the radio, it looked a lot like how top brass might stand around waiting for an incoming broadcast. Maybe Frank’s patrol had gotten a little too close for comfort? He dismissed that idea out of hand; they were safely on the other side of the canal and wouldn’t have been any wiser. And they were shot at first, after all…
… and lured across the canal to investigate.
Frank’s blood ran cold. Maybe the errant shot had been a trap to get them across the bridge. Maybe they were meant to be guinea pigs for whatever strange crap the Nazis were working on.
But again, where were the Russians in all this? Frank’s men had only been a couple of blocks from the Reich Chancellery when they were ambushed. There was a goddamn firefight out in the open! Sure, the treaty officially dividing Berlin was only a few days old, but the Soviets had gotten cozy quickly, moving into the few houses left standing and pressing the locals into service — with severe consequences for anyone who pushed back. It was a dangerous place for anyone not a Soviet to be. So, what the hell was the Nazi resistance doing — well, that’s what they were, right? Some kind of resistance force, setting up shop right under the Russians’ noses?
Maybe they’d taken back this neighborhood, Frank thought. Killed the Russians who were supposed to be at that checkpoint on the canal, scraped together a few blocks they could call home. Then it was guerilla warfare in the streets, no doubt. But why drag the Americans in?
None of it made sense, and Frank knew the Germans didn’t even take a shit without a plan in triplicate first. Whatever they were up to, the fact that he and Petersen had been left alive was no accident.
Petersen’s trembling grew more pronounced. The air in the massive bunker had an unsettling chill to it, and they were wearing summer-issue fatigues. But Frank knew it wasn’t that kind of shiver.
The kid wasn’t doing a good job of keeping it together, but he kept his mouth blessedly shut. Whatever the Nazis were doing, Frank wished they’d do it quick. He thought of home, his family in Boston, his fiancée Elizabeth. He tried to put those thoughts out of his head fast — he wanted to be sharp. But throughout all his battles in the waning days of the war, he’d never felt this sense of dread, of impending doom, before. Maybe they’d be tortured for information. Maybe the Germans were hoping for a prisoner swap. Or maybe these crazy fuckers just wanted to make them die in unholy ways.
The sound that erupted from the radio shook Frank to the core. At first, it sounded like a big spike of static and feedback, but it continued… and continued… and soon Frank knew without a doubt that it was a scream, utterly inhuman, laden with pain and terror. It was the single most unnatural and eerie thing he had ever heard, even during the worst of war.
“What is that?!” Petersen shrieked. “Oh, God, what is that?!”
The Nazis all either rushed toward the machine or circled the table in the center of the room. One of them — a tall, lanky bastard with a thin, cruel face — started furiously scribbling on a piece of paper in front of him. Frank overheard him addressed as “Herr Doktor” and figured him for the man in charge. But given what had been discovered at Dachau, Frank had very little regard for any Nazi they called “doctor.”