Look Behind You (The Order of the Silver Star) (16 page)

“You think something might have come after me to get at you?”

“It’s possible,” Martinez agreed. “There’s no telling what’s still after us. This way, we can keep you safe and keep drawing it away from the French at the same time.”

Chris glanced over his shoulder and shivered a little. “Guess you have a point, assuming something
is
after us.”

And it was a fair assumption. Matt didn’t know whether Chris had been aware of the attempted assaults on the palace every night they’d been there, whether he’d heard the sounds of battle outside or seen the plants outside the windows that had been lush and green at nightfall but brown and shriveled at daybreak. Even now, as the Rangers pressed further into the territory that wasn’t supposed to be covered by the wall, Matt couldn’t shake the sense of foreboding, of being pursued. Yet he felt protected at the same time, as if something—or someone—was standing between the Rangers and their foes.

Chris looked at him. “You think….”

Matt shook his head. “I don’t know. But something tells me our friends far outnumber our enemies.”

*****

At this point, as the crow flies, the Rangers were under 550 miles from Berlin. It would take eleven days or so for the Rangers to cross that distance on their fairy steeds unless they met significant resistance, or possibly less, depending on whether they kept to the roads or cut across country. But every unit of German land forces that had been allocated for the invasion, which included almost all of the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe, and Waffen-SS, was now engaged in battle somewhere between the Balkans and the Black Sea. And Minsk, perhaps the closest point from which to recall troops, was at least 700 miles from Berlin by road. Even if Hitler could be convinced immediately to withdraw troops or demand that his Axis allies send units to France—and between his own pride and his generals’ indecision, it would be days before such orders could be given—the conditions on the front were such that a withdrawal could not be accomplished quickly or without abandoning massive amounts of necessary equipment, and then the troops would virtually have to break the laws of physics to reach the Western Front in time to stop even the Allied forces that hadn’t yet landed, never mind the Rangers. And because of the time crunch, the Allies had been amassing their forces, including the Aggies seconded to XIII Corps, in Algiers as well as Plymouth; attacking western France from both north and south would increase the confusion and make the decision of where to deploy troops all the more difficult.

So that night, while Hitler ranted and raved and shot a few officers for their inability to locate Goering and ordered several more arrested for inefficiency, Nimrod sent London the go-ahead for the invasion and got to work on a report. By morning, Hitler was calmer but still struggling to accept the possibility that Goering had truly been captured; there had not yet been any announcement in the British press or disclosure to the Red Cross (and would not be for three more days, at Churchill’s request). Nimrod waited through the morning briefing while other officers cautiously confessed their continued failure to learn anything substantive, then stood with a modest cough, report in hand.

“Your Excellency knows how reluctant I am to suggest policy on mere hearsay,” he began. “I still do not have adequate confirmation of any of these reports. But given the urgency of the situation, I thought you should see this.” And he handed the report to Hitler.

Hitler accepted it with a frown. “What hearsay?”

“If the reports are true, the Texas Rangers are in France.”

A general murmur of dismay went up from the other men in the room.

“Where in France?” Hitler demanded.

Nimrod shook his head. “The reports are inconclusive. There is some evidence that they may have reached Paris.”

Himmler slammed his fist down on the table. “Why didn’t you report this before?”

“I could not give sufficient proof,” Nimrod replied. “And if it is true, it appears the Allies have done an excellent job of keeping this mission a secret. Would you have had me start a panic based on information that could have been false?”

Himmler scowled but didn’t answer.

“Perhaps, Herr Reichsführer, you could address certain other rumors that have reached me from France regarding the Atlantic Wall?”

Himmler’s scowl deepened.

“Out,” Hitler snapped. “All of you,
out!
I wish to read this report alone.”

Everyone complied.

But out in the hall, Himmler backed Nimrod against a wall not adjacent to Hitler’s office. “How dare you challenge me!”

“I meant no disrespect,” Nimrod replied evenly. “I meant only that there may be more to fear than night and fog.”

“What do you mean?”

“If the Rangers are in France, the wall has failed. And that could perhaps account for a certain degree of insubordination among the SS that I am told has begun to surface—if, for example, a curse should redound upon its caster threefold or a demon take possession of the man who summoned it….”

Himmler was rattled, but he hid it well. “The darkness is no threat to those who can control its power.”

“Perhaps. But can you? After all, ‘On earth is not his equal.’”

Himmler’s face cycled rapidly between pale and flushed as he stared at Nimrod for a long moment. Finally, with a snarl, he stalked away.

Nimrod kept his face neutral as he went his own way. And he waited until he was well out of earshot of anyone who’d heard that conversation to whistle “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”—all four verses, at a very cheerful tempo.

*****

The embargo on news from France dropped that afternoon, and Hitler’s headquarters was thrown into a tailspin as the various intelligence services tried to sort out fact from fiction. Another wave of Allied bombing that night served as a prelude to conflicting reports of paratroopers across the northwestern and southwestern coasts of France. Dawn saw the first waves of the invasion establishing beachheads in both locations… and the Rangers crossed the border into Belgium.

Rumors of the Rangers abounded by this time. One informant had seen them riding like ghosts through the Picardy countryside. A Luftwaffe captain in Reims claimed to have tried to gun Hamer down, to no avail. The Vouziers Gestapo tried to arrest Hickman and Wright and got their heads handed to them. Even in places where the Rangers couldn’t possibly have been, like Dijon and Marseille, tall tales were flying about the Rangers, larger than life, crack shots, expert horsemen, and completely bulletproof. The Resistance played the rumor mill like a Stradivarius, and when the Allied forces swarmed ashore, they found themselves met with an unprecedented groundswell of support from French citizens of all persuasions; those who sought freedom hailed them as liberators, and Nazi sympathizers—and not a few Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, and Wehrmacht units, especially those in Normandy that were still weakened by their brush with the wall—surrendered while begging for protection from
les diables du Texas
.

The story remained much the same as the Allies converged on Limoges and the Rangers reached the German border. A determined band of Hitler Youth outside Aachen presented the first real resistance the Rangers faced, but with half of Belgium at their backs, the Rangers’ victory was almost a foregone conclusion, even without the fairies’ aid. By the time the Rangers reached Cologne, the only German troops foolish enough to stand and fight were the demoniac SS men. The demons did resist fiercely, but Bill McDonald’s wisdom was proven yet again; the Rangers, calling on the Lord of Hosts and fighting for the right without hesitation or retreat, prevailed every time.

The delaying tactics the demons used did give Hitler time enough to recall some units from the Eastern Front and prompt Mussolini to shore up defenses on the French-Italian border, but by then it was too late for them to do any good. Vichy collapsed like a beach house in a hurricane. The Dutch and Belgians were rising against the Nazi occupiers with the same ferocity as the Baltic nations had risen against their Soviet occupiers. And the Rangers rode inexorably toward Berlin, slowed now only by the need to look after the many prisoners they took, including roughly half of the German General Staff. Eventually, Hamer got tired of the holdup and remanded the lot to the custody of the fae.

Through it all, Nimrod stayed at his post in Berlin, doing as much as he could to orchestrate the chaos and mitigate the damage without giving himself away. His MI5 juniors microfilmed every piece of incriminating evidence they could get their hands on to prepare for the war crimes tribunals. He kept his Abwehr juniors three steps behind in their efforts to destroy said evidence. He also kept as many senior officials alive and in Berlin as he could without raising suspicion, even succeeding in convincing Hitler that the Rangers would be sure to catch up to the nation’s leaders in Berchtesgaden if they did not find anyone in Berlin.

Once so convinced, Hitler gave the order to go underground. Nimrod didn’t try to stop him. The Rangers were already at the outskirts of Berlin, and Nimrod could, with only minimal effort, appear to be in two places at the same time so as to keep both Hitler and his own cover intact as well as guide the Rangers to the right location.

In the
Führerbunker
, while Nimrod looked on impassively, Hitler clutched his head and watched helplessly as his empire crumbled around him so swiftly he did not even have time to plan his escape. The remaining half of the General Staff bickered over whether to fight, surrender, or commit suicide. Everywhere underlings hurried back and forth, destroying papers and doing whatever else one did in the face of inevitable defeat. (Nimrod wouldn’t know, having never ordered so much as a temporary retreat.)

Then everyone froze at the sudden sound of a fist pounding on the door, and a deep voice bellowed the four English words that had haunted Hitler’s worst nightmares for a year:

“TEXAS RANGERS! OPEN UP!”

~~~~~

Epilogue

The war might be over in one sense, but there was still work to be done. Claus von Staufenberg and Dietrich Bonhoeffer had gone with Hamer to the Reichstag to contact London for surrender terms. Hickman and Wright and about half of the Ranger force were in the process of carting most of the bunker’s occupants, in varying states of incapacitation based on the resistance to arrest they’d shown, off to SS Headquarters because it had the most secure prison in walking distance. And Nimrod was overseeing the rest of the Rangers as they finished gathering up all the papers they could find to send back to England.

Matt closed a folder he’d been flipping through and tossed it into the top of a box that Martinez was about to carry outside. Then he looked around the main room of the
Führerbunker
and shook his head. “I still can’t believe anyone would actually
vote
for this creep.”

“He’s a very good liar,” Nimrod replied.

“Yeah, but... conquering neighbors? Censoring the press? Confiscating firearms? Putting kids in state schools from the day they’re born? Killing anybody he doesn’t like? Sure, there are people even in the States who think that’s smart, but how could a whole country go along with that kind of tyranny?”

Nimrod sighed. “Freedom relies on virtue. Take the ideal of justice for all. That requires the fortitude to act, the prudence to know when mercy is needed and the temperance to grant it, hope that the Judge of All will grant aid and guidance when they’re needed, faith that justice will find its reward in His eyes, and love enough for victim and criminal alike not to flinch from doing right even when it is hard. Should any of the virtues fail—if enough people let fear overtake fortitude, say, or reject prudence for profligacy—then the tyrant may find the foothold he needs.”

Chris shook his head in turn. “Wouldn’t happen in the US.”

“Don’t be too sure. No nation lives forever. Even your Founders knew that.”

Martinez stuck his head back into the room. “Schneider? We’re fixin’ to head out.”

“Be right there,” Matt called back. Then he turned back and offered his hand to Nimrod. “Well, been a pleasure workin’ with you, Nimrod.”

Nimrod took his hand. “Please, Matt. Call me Michael.”

And suddenly it was if a veil had dropped. What Matt
saw
hadn’t changed, but what he
felt
almost took his breath away. But... but that didn’t make sense....

“What,” Michael added with a small but highly amused smile, “you thought the
Sidhe
were the only ones interested in ensuring the outcome?” Then, after taking his leave with a wink and a clap on the shoulder for Matt and a similarly warm handshake for Chris, the archangel vanished.

It took several heartbeats of staring at each other for the brothers to shake off the shock well enough to rejoin the other Rangers and get back to what was evidently God’s work. After all, the sooner they finished here, the sooner they could head home and claim their happily ever after.

###

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