My Immortal The Vampires of Berlin (11 page)

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about your men,” Hitler screamed. “Where is the damn girl?”

“She was last spotted near Berlin Cathedral, but that position got cut off. She won’t get far—she is sedated and we are organizing a counterattack to retrieve her. But with all due respect, there are more important strategic matters regarding the defense of Berlin right now than a Romanian peasant.”

And with that, Adolf Hitler went berserk. He stomped on the floor and flew into a rage, the likes of which his staff had never seen. He ran around the room like a militant chimpanzee, screamed obscenities in a fury and tore the map right off the table.

Bormann jumped out of the way when the first chair flew across the room. “It’s not my fault! Please calm down! Please!” he shouted.

“The war is lost!” Hitler shouted back as he threw chair after chair at Bormann. “We were so close! We were so fucking close! I can’t believe it! I am surrounded by idiotic incompetence! I’m going to kill you!”

Bormann tried to run away in the face of such an insane display of aerodynamic furniture, but Hitler cornered him before he got to the door. Bormann tried to protect his head and beg for his life, but the
Führer
would have none of it; he pummeled him until the blood flowed freely. Bormann was a strong man—he could have easily overpowered Hitler, but he was too scared to fight back.

Everyone stood to the side and watched the
Führer
beat the crap out of his trusted advisor. When Hitler was done with the beating, he screamed for his guards. “Take this traitor outside and shoot him!”

In stark contrast to the violent scene that was playing out in front of them, Adalgar and Heydrich stood by calmly—almost nonchalantly—as the SS guards dragged Martin Bormann out of the room kicking and screaming.

Hitler braced himself against the wall and shook with rage until Dr. Morell entered and gave him another injection. He calmed down as the powerful narcotics entered his bloodstream, but he still looked like he wanted to kill someone. “Where the fuck is she, Heydrich?” he snarled.

“She is still in Berlin. I can sense it.”

“There’s not enough time,” Hitler replied. “There’s not enough goddamn time. We’re finished. Everything we worked for is finished. The German people deserve to lose this war. They are not strong enough.”

“Everything will be fine,
mein
Führer.
The Tristan facilities in Prague are fully operational. We’ll have twenty-four hours to make the transfer after your...” Heydrich stopped mid-sentence. It took a few seconds to find the right word. “After your
journey
.”

The
Führer
grabbed Heydrich’s hands and looked deeply into his eyes. “Succeed,” he said. “You must succeed.”

21

Pig Face grew more stinking drunk as the night wore on. When he was just about out of cognac, he put the bottle down to pursue other pleasures. He called out to Sebastian. “Hey soldier. If you want to go to the airfield, you gotta share your whore with us. Besides, you can’t take her with you.”

“Leave her alone,” Sebastian replied.

“Not a chance. Give her to me.”

“She has been traumatized enough already.”

“Relax, soldier,” Pig Face replied. “I’m not asking for something for nothing. I’ll give you cigarettes and cognac. Now, give her to me.”

At that point, it became clear to Sebastian that diplomacy wasn’t going to work; any attempt to talk his way out of the situation would be perceived as weakness. The only thing that the SS understood was force.

Sebastian got up and raised his voice. “Stay away from her or we’re going to have a
problem
.”

The only problem was that Sebastian was bluffing—he had no idea what he was going to do if they rushed him. He was betting the farm that the SS needed every available trigger finger in case the Russians attacked the Neptune while they were still in it.

Wolf tried to diffuse the situation by changing the subject. “Time is running short, gentlemen. When will we try to reach the airfield?”

“Soon,” Varik replied.

“We’re not going anywhere until Fritz gets back,” Otto said.

“And we fuck his girlfriend,” Pig Face said, reaching for the bottle. He took a swig and spit at Sebastian. “It’s time. Give her to us. Now!”

Tired of the games, Sebastian posed a question to Otto the Jackal that instantly changed the dynamics of the situation. “Hey fatso—does Fritz have a big ugly scar on his cheek? From a bayonet or something?”

Otto looked up, surprised. “You saw Fritz?”

Sebastian threw a wallet at him. “If those are his family members in those photos, then don’t wait around for your scar-faced buddy. He’s not coming home tonight.”

The atmosphere in the Neptune crashed like a freight train. Then Sebastian pushed it one step further.

“But there is a silver lining to this black cloud. Fritzy died in Berlin Cathedral, so he probably got to say goodbye to God on his way down.”

The room fell silent. Otto sat down and wiped the tears from his eyes as he looked through the photos. The trickle of tears quickly became a downpour.

Sebastian was confused by his extreme reaction. People were dying all over the place in Berlin; surely no German soldier could expect a life span that was measured in anything but minutes or hours—especially the SS. “What the hell is wrong with him?” he asked.

“Fritz is ...
was
... his brother,” Varik said.

“Oh ... sorry ...” Sebastian replied meekly, having just made the most significant
faux paus
of his entire life.

Wolf slapped his forehead. Sebastian just killed any chance they had to accompany the SS to the airfield.

Sebastian sat with his back to the wall and one hand on his rifle as the furious SS troopers organized their weapons and equipment. He crossed the line, but he had no way of knowing that the dead soldier was the Jackal’s brother. He just hoped that they would leave without another incident.

When things calmed down, he poured water from his canteen into a cup. He gently turned Eva’s head towards him and lifted the cup to her mouth. Suddenly, Eva screamed and knocked the cup away!

Pig Face looked up in horror as the tin cup clanged across the floor. “Shut her up! That bitch is going to get us killed!”

22

As the Russian snipers searched for the machine gun position, Eva’s scream gave it away.

The Germans are idiots
, Lyudmila thought.
They slaughtered our patrol and stayed hidden for hours. Now the dogs are more worried about carnal pleasures than the battle to come.
This is why we are slugging it out with them in the streets of Berlin and not Red Square
.

Through the scope of her Mosin-Nagant rifle, Lyudmila spotted two German soldiers through the widows of the Hotel Neptune. She pulled Ruslan close.
“I found them. But we don’t have the firepower to take them out. Go tell Kolachenko. Quietly
.”

Ruslan crawled across the roof and peered over the ledge. After three days of fighting, the exhausted soldiers in the alley were sound asleep. In the middle of them, Major Boris Kolachenko snored like a bear. With his big stomach, long hair, blue headband and eye-patch, Boris looked like a misplaced buccaneer. Ruslan would never say that to him, of course, as he might find himself assigned to a vanguard minefield clearing detachment.

Next to the sleeping men, a truck carried the feared
Katyusha
. The Germans called the weapon “Stalin’s Organs,” because of the terrifying, screaming sound that the rockets made. The
Katyusha
worked well in Berlin because the Germans were in fortified buildings. Having no desire to see their men mowed down
en masse
, the Soviets lined up the
Katyusha
and other heavy weapons and pounded the German fortifications with high explosives until there was no resistance or building left. The weapon’s main drawback was its lack of accuracy. Of course, accuracy was much less of an issue in Berlin than was the ability to reduce a building to a steaming heap of rubble.

Ruslan tried catcalls and whistles to wake the men who were sleeping around their beloved
Katyusha
to no avail. He wondered if even gunfire or explosions would wake them. In desperation, he took a bullet from his belt and threw it. His first throw missed and rolled into the gutter
.
His aim was better with the second; it bounced off of a helmet and hit Boris right on the nose.

Boris swatted at the air and opened his eye. The one-eyed soldier was wide-awake the instant that he saw the look on Ruslan’s face. It told him everything he needed to know—they found the sons-of-bitches who had annihilated his patrol. Boris jumped to his feet and kicked his men awake. Revenge would not wait for first light. It was time to fight.

A few minutes later, the soldiers quietly pushed the truck-mounted
Katyusha
into the street in front of the Hotel Neptune. Boris almost had a heart attack when a new conscript sneezed. He would have shot him right then and there if it could have made their chance of detection any lower. They cringed and spent the next thirty seconds waiting for the machine gun burst. When that didn’t happen, the men breathed a sigh of relief and maneuvered the rocket launcher into position.

The battle plan, as Boris had explained it, was simple. Step 1. Launch the
Katyusha
point blank at the Hotel Neptune. Step 2. Go inside and kill any of those rat fucks that survived the blast.

The men worked quickly. Once they got the
Katyusha
in place, they could make it a very bad day for the Germans who were holed up in that little hotel. However, if they got spotted before the
Katyusha
was ready to fire, their odds of survival against an MG-42 were slim to none. After all, they were breaking the time-honored Rule #1 of Soviet Red Army street-fighting doctrine—get the hell out of the street.

23