Blood and Ice (19 page)

The locomotive and the first coach still teetered on the edge of the line. Steam was escaping furiously from the locomotive’s ruptured boiler. Then the first coach began to sway, until it could be held by the shattered locomotive no longer. Amid the rending of metal and the splintering of heavy sleepers, the great black monster was dragged inexorably over the edge of the precipice. A second later it hit the valley floor and exploded with a great echoing roar that seemed to go on forever.

‘Well?’ Suslov demanded.

The snow-covered Eagle hauled himself over the edge of rock and slumped down in the snow, his big chest heaving with the effort of the long climb.

‘What did you find?’ Suslov asked again, impatient to hear just how successful their operation had been so that they could begin making their way back to their own lines under the cover of the snowstorm. The Eagle swallowed hard and looked up at his C.O., his face crimson and wet with melting snow. ‘Nothing, Comrade Commander,’ he answered.

‘What ?’ Suslov’s voice expressed utter bafflement – a shattering of comprehension.

The climber pulled himself to his feet. ‘I said, Comrade Commander, that the coaches were empty. There wasn’t a soul in either of the two I managed to reach.’

‘But that’s…that’s impossible,’ Suslov stuttered, his legendary calm destroyed for the first time in many years of war. ‘It can’t be!’

The climber shrugged, an air of injured patience on his broad White Russian face. ‘Then I suggest you go down there and have a look yourself, Comrade Commander.’

Suslov was too shaken to notice the impertinence. ‘Did you check the locomotive?’ he snapped quickly.

‘Yes.’

‘And what did you find?’

But the broad-shouldered climber never answered that question. For at that moment, Sven Hassel, the Swede, his lean face set in a look of implacable cruelty, squeezed the trigger of his spandau and sent a high-pitched burst of bullets into the group around the climber. The stream of lead ripped into his broad chest and he sailed over the edge of the precipice, trailing a long, thin scream after him.

The burst of machine-gun fire from the height overlooking the Eagles’ positions was the signal the little force of SS men had been waiting for. Machine-guns burst in frenetic, frightening life.

‘
Down!
’ Suslov screamed desperately. But it was already too late. The attack caught them completely in the open. Man after man went down, some screaming, some silent, some with a violent, threshing of their arms, some gently as if they were eager to lie down on the soft carpet of snow and die. It was a massacre!

‘Every man for himself!’ Suslov cried desperately, knowing that his Eagles were finished. Now it was a question of saving one’s skin. Everywhere his Eagles dropped their weapons and tried to run for it. It was futile. They fell on all sides, mown down by the murderous weight of fire.

Suslov was consumed by a burning, overwhelming hatred which triumphed over all fear. If he had to die, then he would make the Fritz bastards pay the price for his death. Raising his head as much as he dared, feeling the cold wind of the bullets scything through the air only millimetres above it, he surveyed the scene. There were machine-guns on the three heights to their north, south and east. The sheer side of the precipice was not covered though. Why should it be? The Fritzes obviously thought no-one could get out that way. No-one but Major Suslov, Commander of the Grey Eagles.

Suddenly he was up on his feet and running, bounding nimbly over the bodies of his dead soldiers, pushing those still not dead out of his way, running straight for the cliff-edge. The Fritzes spotted him almost instantly. Lead struck the ground all around him. He zig-zagged crazily. Time and time again the bullets missed. Then he was hit. A burning, searing pain in his right thigh. For a moment he felt he must fall. Abruptly the pain had gone and in that same instant he was diving over the edge of the cliff and out of sight.

Schulze took off his helmet and waved it over his head wildly. ‘That’s it,’ he cried, jubilation in his voice that the plan had succeeded. They had a long walk in front of them to Austria, but now the way was clear at last. ‘Stop your firing. Knock it off there.’ Reluctantly the young SS troopers took their fingers off their triggers, as if they could not get enough of death, eyes gleaming with an almost sexual excitement.

Janosz left the gun he had been manning and started to limp over to Schulze. The killing had finished and he was glad. There had been too much killing in Europe, a whole half a decade of it. He wanted to see no more of it. Palestine would mean peace.

He halted in front of Schulze, who was surveying the dead Russians lying everywhere in the snow in front of them ‘I shall go and fetch my people now.’

Schulze nodded and turned to Chink. ‘You’d better go with him and give him some cover.’

‘Right-o, Schulzi,’ said Chink, who had suggested the way of jamming the locomotive’s throttle which had formed the basis of their plan. Now the Jews were without a train, but Schulze could imagine that Janosz’s cunning mind and a liberal use of ‘Christian charity’ would find some other way of getting his refugees to Italy. There was no doubt about that

‘And make it snappy,’ Schulze ordered. ‘We want to be over the border by morning.’

‘I make Yid move like very hell,’ Chink said happily, slinging his rifle. ‘Schulzi and Chink must get Hamburg, open knocking-shop –’

A face suddenly appeared over the edge of the cliff-side. A terrible face, torn, lacerated, flayed into a mass of red gore by the rocks, out of which blazed two absolutely wild, animal eyes, filled, with unspeakable hatred. A clawlike hand, from which the flesh trailed in dripping red strips, rose into the air. Chink saw the black round object it held. ‘No!’ he screamed and held up his hands, as if to ward it off with his naked flesh.

But it was hopeless. The grenade sailed through the air and exploded at his feet. It caught Chink in its blazing, whirling fury, threw him high into the air, and when his terribly mutilated body smashed to the ground again, something rolled a few paces away to come to rest at Schulze feet in the snow. It was Chink’s head.

Schulze screamed. In a bound he had grabbed the dying Suslov and dragged him over the edge of the cliff. His face contorted by a bestial fury, he brought down his heavy boot, studded with thirteen hobnails, and crashed it into Suslov’s face. Time and time again. Bone splintered. Blood spurted out in scarlet jets from nose, ears, eyes. The eyes disappeared. Still Schulze did not stop. On and on he went, the only sound that of his own savage grunting breath, the moans from the man who was being stamped into the ground, and that persistent crunch-crunch of heavy metal against soft flesh.

Janosz could not bear to look. He had never seen such unspeakable ferocity in a human face in all his long life. It belonged to another world.

And finally Schulze was done. Sergeant-Major Schulze, the last survivor of
SS Regiment Wotan
, sank into the snow beside the man he had just killed, the tears streaming down his suddenly transformed, sweat-lathered face. ‘
This fucking war
,’ he sobbed. ‘
This fucking, awful war
.’

Schulze had been drunk for the whole week they had been waiting in Graz. One by one or in small groups, he had seen his little band of SS troopers, clad in the civilian clothes Janosz had bought them on the black market, depart. Now they were all on their way to face the brutal uncertainties of their own countries in which they would be regarded as renegades and traitors and not the bold ‘defenders of Western European culture against the red Bolshevik plague’, as the black and red SS recruiting posters had once screamed. Some of them were going to their death, some to long terms of imprisonment; but those of them who survived the bitter years ahead would carry to the grave the terrible stigma of being Europe’s lost sons – ex-members of
SS Regiment Europa
.

Now Janosz himself was ready to leave on the next leg of the long journey to that land of ‘milk and honey’, as he was calling it openly. With a sizeable portion of that seemingly unlimited ‘Christian charity’ of his, he had bribed a fat
Wehrmacht
transport Major, who had supplied him with a dozen ancient
Wehrmacht
trucks, complete with ex-Italian POW drivers, glad of this opportunity to return to their own homeland before the Russians came. They would take him and his refugees into Italy and the Allied lines.

Now the time had come for the incongruous pair, the towering, barrel-chested SS NCO and the undersized Jew to part. They stood in the soft-falling snow. Above them, hidden by the grey snow clouds, Soviet bombers were droning westwards on their way to Vienna. They could both hear the rumble of the guns at the front, softening up the German positions for the new offensive. Janosz jerked a thumb in the direction of the artillery barrage.

‘They’ll be here soon, Schulze,’ he said.

Schulze shrugged. ‘So what?’

‘Europe has got rid of one tyranny,’ the little Jew said softly. ‘But it will soon be replaced by another one, which will be much worse. I have seen it. Hitler is a novice in cruelty and repression in comparison with Stalin. You will see.’

He held out his hand. ‘Well, Schulze, this is the parting of the ways. I must get back to my flock. We move out in thirty minutes, once I get those Italian drivers away from fornicating with the local women.’

‘Those Macaronis have got the right idea,’ Schulze said, ‘fuck not fight.’ He took the old man’s hand. ‘The best of luck, Jew.’

‘The same to you, German.’ Without another word Janosz turned and walked away, his skinny shoulders bowed against the snowflakes.

Schulze watched him go. He had come a long way with the old Jew – they all had. Now it was all over. For a long moment he stood there on the empty slushy pavement, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, the snow falling sadly on his shabby black-market overcoat, with all his worldly possessions – soap and razor, a handful of useless marks and two hundred Turkish cigarettes – stuffed into its pockets. Ex-Sergeant-Major Schulze felt drained and very, very tired.

Suddenly a soft, winning Austrian voice impinged upon his consciousness, ‘Is the gentleman looking for a good time this afternoon?’ it inquired.

Schulze spun round, his despair forgotten in an instant. Two teenage girls stood there, dressed in identical peasant costume, their cheeks prettily flushed by the cold air so that a casual observer might well have taken them for country girls. But a delighted Schulze knew otherwise. Their scarlet lips and the knowing look in their tired eyes told another story. ‘You’re twins!’ he exclaimed somewhat stupidly.

‘That’s right,’ the one who had spoken said, ‘you catch on fast.’

‘You’re going to catch my dick before you’re much older, my little cheetah.’

‘It’ll cost you one hundred
schilling
for a jump,’ she replied, unimpressed. Which one of us do you fancy?’

‘Which
one
?’ Schulze roared, tugging out the carton of two hundred cigarettes and noting the sudden look of interest in their jaded eyes. ‘
Not one, but both of you!
’ He thrust the carton at them and putting a big hand around each girl’s plump young breasts, he cried out loud, so that the shabby, bent-shouldered civilians on the other side of the street turned in alarm, ‘Point me at the nearest bed, my little Austrian darlings! It’s going to be the screw of the century, that I can promise you!’

Ex-Sergeant-Major Schulze, the last survivor of that doomed, elite brotherhood, had just declared a separate peace. Now he could begin to live again.

Also by Leo Kessler and available from Spellmount Publishers in The Dogs of War Series

No. 1  Forced March

No. 2  The Devil’s Shield

No. 3  SS Panzer Battalion

No. 4  Claws of Steel

No. 5  Blood Mountain

No. 6  Death’s Head

No. 8  The Sand Panthers

First published in 1977
Reprinted in 2006

Spellmount is an imprint of
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