“You'll have to get Decker out tonight. Tomorrow he'll be gone.”
“Yeah. Do tell.”
“You will be jumping off tonight,” Wallace went on, briskly authoritative now the matter was settled. As he had known it would be. “From Bitburg. They're mopping up now. You will contact Major Baldon at Eleventh Infantry CP. He will have further instructions for you. He will get you through the American lines. From then on you're on your own. Any questions?”
“Yeah, one,” Kieffer said dryly. “How do you get out of this chickenshit outfit?”
Wallace grinned.
“Section Eight…?”
It was 1647 hours on February 28 when CIC agent Martin Kieffer and Sergeant Jerry Marshall drove into Bitburg.
The fields along the road on the outskirts had been blanketed by a paper blizzard. Surrender leaflets, dropped by the Air Force. And obviously ignored.
The town itself had been taken that same day by units of the 11th Infantry Regiment, 5th Division, who'd fought their way in from the south against heavy opposition. Air had plastered the important road junction, and Corps and Division artillery had slammed barrage after barrage of steel and high explosives into it. The place was one huge pile of muddy rubble.
Kieffer looked around with awed curiosity as Marshall threaded the mud-caked jeep through the half-cleared streets, following the signs to Regimental CP. He knew that the famous Long Tom 155 mm. gun of the 244th Field Artillery Battalion had been brought into action to soften up the burg before the infantry assault. To reach its target with the required accuracy, the gun had been hauled so far forward that it was placed up among the mortar crews firing infantry support for the advance. The mortar men had bitched like hell. They'd caught a lot of the incoming mail of the German counter-battery fire searching for Long Tom. Judging from what he saw — and smelled — the gun had done its job on the town of Bitburg.
Major Baldon eyed Kieffer and Marshall with obvious wariness. He'd been handed a hot potato by Corps — and didn't like the possibility of getting his fingers burned.
“If you ask me,” he said, “you're nuts!”
Kieffer ignored him.
“Have you any idea where you want to cross?” the major asked testily.
“More than an idea,” Kieffer answered. “I've picked the exact spot.” He pulled a dirty, creased map from his pocket. It was a Wehrmacht area map he'd traded for a pack of Luckies with the IPW's who interrogated the prisoners. He'd carry it on the mission instead of a U.S. Army issue. Just in case. He spread it out on Baldon's desk. “I'll show you.”
He found the spot on the wrinkled map and traced his route with his finger as he talked.
“Right — here. There's a timbering path running through a forest. The contour lines show it sloping down toward the Kyll River valley, joining a small country road — here.”
“The Kyll bridges are all out,” Baldon interrupted. He seemed smugly pleased with the intelligence.
“I know. We'll ford it.”
“The river's pretty swollen.” The major sounded doubtful.
Kieffer felt a surge of impatience. He didn't feel like wasting his time explaining to the contentious officer that he had just spent several hectic hours interrogating the half-dozen members of a Luxembourg hunting and fishing club he'd been able to round up. In better days these sportsmen had fished in every river and stream in the area — including the Kyll. They'd trudged along its banks, stood planted in the middle of the water and searched for the places richest in trout. Better than anyone, they knew the width and depth, the current and bottom conditions of every inch of the river — swollen or not. From their information he had picked his spot.
“We'll make it, Major,” he said curtly.
He returned to the map.
“The road runs roughly parallel to the main highway to Mayen and joins it here — near Daun.”
Baldon looked at the map, orienting himself in the jumble of unfamiliar symbols.
“You'll have to cross in Able Company's sector,” he said. “Lieutenant Kinsey.”
Kieffer nodded.
“The Krauts are reported regrouping in the entire area,” he said. “The situation may be fluid enough to let us pull it off without a hitch. We've had reports of sporadic motorized activity. The sound of our jeep shouldn't cause any raised eyebrows.”
He folded up the map, missing the original creases, and put it away.
“You brief Kinsey we're coming up now, Major. We'll make our final arrangements with him directly.”
Baldon looked at him sourly.
“When do you want to take off?”
“After dark. At 2100 hours.”
2
Sergeant Marshall was coaxing the jeep along the muddy, bumpy back road at what seemed to Kieffer a lazy snail's pace. They had put the top up. They usually didn't — and somehow the jeep looked less GI to them. To the Germans as well, he hoped. The road was dark, and the shadows from the trees lining it heightened the gloom. The blackout hoods over the headlights permitted only two thin slivers of light to probe the blackness ahead.
Kieffer felt keyed up. For the hundredth time he took stock. The jeep was unidentifiable as belonging to the US Army. It could easily be a captured vehicle pressed into service with the Wehrmacht as were countless others. Both he and Sergeant Marshall were clad in a conglomeration of nondescript uniform items. They'd checked each other out before taking off, like a pair of paratroopers before a jump. He wore a wool cap pulled down over his ears; a wool scarf which effectively hid his collar tabs with his US insignia; a dirty, loose US mackinaw coat; and mud-caked paratrooper boots. His dogtags around his neck were stuck together with chewing gum to prevent their rattling. His underwear was fresh. If he got into trouble and was hit, the clean fabric forced into the wound would be less likely to cause infection and perhaps gangrene than dirty cloth. In his mind he repeated the passwords he and Kinsey had picked: Homecoming — Highball. It had been decided they'd cross back at the same place they left, at 0430—with or without Decker.
So far the mission had gone off without a hitch. Too easy. It made him uncomfortable. Something was bound to happen. He wished it would. He needed to cope with — something….
He and Marshall had located the forest path quickly. For a couple of hundred yards it sloped gently down toward the Kyll valley. They'd coasted slowly and silently until the jeep finally had come to a halt. There had been no challenge.
They'd started up, and had soon joined the back road that crossed the river.
As the Luxembourg fishermen had described, the river widened there and formed a natural ford, reinforced with bottom rocks and logs just below the surface of the rushing water.
The current had been strong. The jeep had labored on its buffeted course across the slippery rocks, but they'd made it without getting more than tolerably wet.
They had seen no activity at all. Only heard what sounded like light armor moving in the distance….
In a couple of miles they would join the highway to Mayen.
The trees were thinning out, the gloom was becoming less intense.
Suddenly Marshall pointed.
“Holy shit!” he whispered. “Look!”
Ahead of them was the road junction. And on the highway, directly across from the back road they were on, sat the massive hulk of a heavy transport truck hooked up to an artillery piece, a 15 cm Schwere Infantrie Geschütz. Around a fire were half a dozen of the crew; the others were working on a damaged driving track on the truck in the beam of a battery work light.
It was their first sight of the enemy.