Sentimental Journey (65 page)

Some days things just went your way. Skip dropped his bag on the ground, crouched under the first group of planes, and began to set the charges while the notes of Wagner played from a scratchy phonograph.

COMMAND BUNKER

Rheinholdt left the commons room. Too many of the men were smoking inside, and the cigarettes swallowed up all the air. He felt as if he could not breathe, so he took his cup of ersatz coffee, something brown that tasted like strong tea mixed with machine oil, and walked outside. He stood there for a moment, adjusting to the cold night air before he crossed over to the middle of the compound, where the light was softer and he could see the stars overhead. It was cold out, but he was dressed in new long underwear and one of the wool uniforms he’d purchased on leave in Tobruk.

While there, he had a spot of luck and was able to speak to his wife, his daughters, and mother. They were still in their
Berlin
apartment, but the building next door had been bombed the week before. They were moving to the mountains soon, with Heddy’s cousin, if the bombings continued.

He told them not to wait. To go now. Rumors of Allied invasion of
France
were all about, although the point of the invasion changed from day to day. Still, information indicated that the Allies were readying for an offensive. He felt the bombings would get worse before they got better.

Like so many other officers, he had not been home in over two years. For some officers on the Russian front it had been even longer. The Wehrmacht did not let them go home. The voices of his family, even for a few minutes, were a gift for him to hear.

He’d also received information on his sister. Liesel and her children were thankfully alive in
Hamburg
. His niece and nephew were being hidden in one of the many brothels in the Reeperbahn, while Liesel worked as a cook, laundress, and maid for the prostitutes there. There had been no trouble as yet, and they expected none, since the woman who owned the brothel was a sympathizer with connections so high in the
SS,
they never searched her place.

But his Heddy was working with Alfred Goebbels, who, unlike his brother, Joseph, was helping save people marked for the camps. Alfred had been instrumental in getting many families out of Nazi-occupied areas and to safety in the neutral countries of
Switzerland
and
Spain
.

There was no word on Joseph and his family. No one knew where they were. His friend was gone, and no one could seem to find out anything. Not Goebbels as yet. Not anyone.

Rheinholdt wanted to go home more than anything else. He wanted to hold his daughters and his wife and drink beer. He wanted to toast Joseph with a beer and song, and to laugh. He wanted life to be the way it had been before, before
Poland
, before
France
. Before war.

He was not alone in his feelings. Morale was low. His leave on the coast didn’t boost his spirits even though he had slept and bathed and lived without fleas for a time. The men were tired, and supplies were cut off more often than not by the Allied planes and navy in the
Mediterranean
. The desert took more from a soldier here than it gave. It took a man’s juice and then boiled him in it.

They were on equal footing, the Allies and the Axis, but the Italians were giving up by the dozens. Word was that Rommel was matched by
Montgomery
and the Allies were better supplied. The engineers had only last week finished building the fuel tanks here, and now trucks came by convoy from the coast with fuel to fill them.

He took one last look up at the night sky, then walked back toward the bunker. He rounded the corner and came face to face with the enemy.

For a heartbeat, they stared at each other.

He dropped his cup and reached for his Luger.

The man carried a submachine gun.

I’m dead, he thought as he pulled his pistol; it caught on the holster.

But the man didn’t fire his gun. He stared at him. “I know you . . .
Drop the gun!”

“Your wife is blind.” Rheinholdt recognized him through the black smeared on his face.

“I said drop the gun.”

Rheinholdt looked at the pistol in his hand.

“Halt!” someone shouted in the distance.

The place exploded in gunfire. Cassidy came at him. Lights flooded the area. He was blinded for an instant, then, all he saw was the butt of the submachine gun. It caught his chin. White light and pain flashed before his eyes for a mere instant, then there was nothing but blackness.

SUPPLY BUNKER

Red watched the officer in the center of the compound. He just stood there drinking coffee and looking up at the sky. As long as he was there, Red had to stay put. He checked his watch. He couldn’t shoot him without jeopardizing the whole mission, so he leaned against the wall holding his BAR. Waiting.

“Halt!”

He didn’t move. The order was distant, as if it came from the truck depot. He heard the enemy running. A lot of enemy.

He scrambled up and bolted out into the open, his BAR firing toward the depot, which lit up suddenly like Texas sunshine.

Bullets spit back at him. The enemy came out from everywhere. He fired rounds, running until he made it to the shelter of a metal shed.

The SIG trucks were surrounded. What gave them away? Machine guns were going off from all four corners of the compound. Bullets hacked into the flimsy shed walls, popping through the metal and past his ears and head.

He ducked down, jammed in more ammo. His BAR was smoking. The steel barrel was so hot from firing that it was a purple-red.

One of them came around the corner.

Red raised his gun and fired.

Click.
Nothing. It jammed.

He swung and smacked the guy in the face with the red-hot barrel. It sent him down screaming.

Red grabbed the soldier’s MP40 and took off across the compound, firing at the enemy near the SIG trucks and watching them fall. The crossfire was deafening. Bullets shadowed him, tearing up the ground.

Tracers flashed from the LRDG position, then a petrol tank blew up black and orange like Halloween. Hot air and smoke hit him in the face. The blast rattled through his teeth; he could feel it in his fillings and eardrums.

For an instant there was no other sound. Deafening silence, something more frightening than enfilade noise.

He checked his watch. Bingo . . .

The supply building blew, shattered by his charges. Concrete flew like shrapnel through the air. Pieces slammed into his helmet. He went down, head ringing, but he crawled for cover behind a pile of crates, pulled himself up, trying to focus, shook his head, then got to his feet.

He heard the dull pop of a bazooka. Ten feet away a truck blew up. That blast sent him flying. He hit the ground hard on his back. He couldn’t breathe for a moment. He couldn’t move. Someone could shoot him. The air was gone from his chest. He was terrified.

Then just as suddenly he caught his breath, swore, and rolled, came up running, firing the submachine gun like it was an extension of his arm.

An LRDG vehicle roared up from behind him, rear mounted machine gun firing, the bearded Brits inside shouting. He couldn’t hear what.

This was war. It sounded like war.

The Brits shouted at him again. They were waving at him to hop on.

“No!” he shouted, and shook his head. He wasn’t leaving his team.

They disappeared over the dunes.

He ran between the fences and saw the airfield burning. He turned.

Coming at him was a JU88. Enemy bomber. An enemy armored car came careening around the corner and sped under the plane’s wing.

Red stepped back, crouched down in the shadows, checked his ammo, and waited for them to get closer. The car pulled in front of the taxiing plane.

Suddenly the tail went up in the air. The plane’s nose lowered, leveled. The 20mm cannon started blazing. The Junkers shot the hell out of the armored car.

Red stood frozen, confused. He looked up at the cockpit.

Inskip was in the pilot’s seat.

Red ran for the plane.

WESTERN EDGES OF PERIMETER

J.R. dragged the unconscious lieutenant away from the bunker and into a ditch near the dunes. He moved his way back around the corner of the bunker again and spotted the firing exchange with SIG, near the truck-fueling area.

He had to get to the airfield. Stuffed into his uniform were the most recent code books, diagrams for two planned combined Panzer operations, and a list of Afrika Korps officers along with their units and positions—a treasure of information that could help ensure the success of a combined Allied invasion of North Africa.

All hell broke loose. He took off running, his Tommy firing.

A second later the fuel blew and flames went high into the sky. The LRDG did their job. He kept running, around a burning truck and over a low wall of crates. He stopped and looked at them.

Guns and ammo. He checked his watch. He was already late.
What the hell . . .

He went down on one knee and pulled out a charge, set it and took off again. A minute later he heard it go off.

Bingo!

For the next three minutes it was him against them. One after another came at him. Then there was nothing but the noise.

He made it to the eastern edge of the compound, went over the fence, and fell on his ass.

He turned over.

A JU88 turned and was coming past him. He raised his gun and pulled the trigger.

It didn’t fire. He swore and tossed it away, scanning the ground. He spotted the barrel of an MP40 and pulled it out from under the dead soldier. Ready to give ’
em
hell, he looked up.

Red was hanging out of the cockpit. “Cassidy!”

Three enemy came at him from the south. J.R. fired until there was no one firing back.

He heard a car, and the Desert Rats flew out of the compound and disappeared over the dunes as if they had been a mirage.

He turned back toward the plane. It was on the road and moving away. They were going to take off. He just might make it.

J.R. took off running.

He was close, then closer.

He pumped his arms and legs.

“Run, Colonel! Run!” Walker was hanging out the plane door, gripping the side of the belly door, his hand extended.

He was still a few feet away from it.

Faster! Faster! Faster! I can make it! I can!

Bullets suddenly ate the ground behind him.

Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!