My Immortal The Vampires of Berlin (20 page)

The squad hesitated on the riverbank as mortar rounds continued to explode in the cemetery behind them. Eva was still unconscious; the effort to heal Axel had completely drained her of energy. Sebastian slapped her on the cheek. When that failed to wake her, he put her over his shoulder. Crossing the river would be tough, but trying to do so with an unconscious girl in his arms could prove fatal. He desperately scanned the water for floating debris as he went into the river.

Klaus stared at swirling black water. “The current is too strong. We’ll drown,” he muttered.

“This is the only way out,” Wolf replied. “We have to get out of here. Let’s go.”

A sudden explosion sent shrapnel whistling overhead. “Now!” Wolf yelled as he jumped into the river.

Klaus stayed on the riverbank and watched Wolf and the others drift away. As his friends were about to learn, the old man was far more scared of water than he was of Russian bullets.

“Come on! We’ll help you swim!” Wolf yelled.

“I promise not to shoot you this time,” Axel added, trying to add some humor into what was turning into a desperate situation.

Klaus responded with an obscene gesture. Two more mortar rounds exploded nearby and the voices of angry Russian soldiers filled the air.

“Come on, Pop! They’re coming! Please!” Dieter yelled. Wolf pulled the kid deeper into the water as Klaus stayed on the shore and contemplated his fate. He had grown fond of the old man, but the time for indecision and debate was over.

A salvo of bullets hit the water just in front of Klaus. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw armed men running down the riverbank towards him.

“Pop!”

The old man took one last long look at his grandson. Then he ran back into the cemetery.

This was to be his finest hour.

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Klaus ran through the cemetery like a wild man; he was Custer taunting the Indians. “Hey ass face! Over here!” he shouted. When he finally made out the faces of confused Russian soldiers through the fog, he raised his rifle and shot the one with the red stripes on his sleeve.

Klaus ducked down behind a gravestone as the angry Russians returned fire. Then he threw a potato masher in their general direction as far as he could. He knew that the grenade had found its mark when the explosion was followed by the screams of a mortally wounded soldier.

“Stalin is a skunk!” he shouted. Then he jumped up and picked off several more Russians who were popping up between the gravestones to get a bead on him.

Unfortunately, Klaus saw the rifleman flank him a split-second too late. A bullet slammed into his forearm, instantly snapping his radius in half. He fell to the ground as gunshots ricocheted off of the gravestones.

Despite his horrific wound, Klaus surprised his adversary by rolling across the ground and quickly changing his firing angle. He took the Russian out with two carefully placed shots to the chest.

With a second to catch his breath, he looked down at his arm. His sleeve was red and there was a bone sticking out through it. The only thought that ran through his mind was that getting shot hurt less than he had expected; his arm was numb. Klaus felt tired and warm and began to black out.
This isn’t so bad,
he thought.
I’ll just fade away.
He saw his mother and father beckoning him down a long white tunnel and he felt incredibly happy and peaceful.

Angry shouts brought him back to the fight. The old man stood up and prepared to take on a determined enemy that was closing in on him like a pack of wolves. He leaned his rifle on a tombstone and took a few more down, but his position became indefensible when a Soviet machine-gunner blasted the stone monument to pieces.

Klaus staggered down the path as the blood gushed out of his useless arm. He didn’t have much time left on Earth, but he had successfully led the Russians on a wild goose chase away from his grandson and the rest of the men.

Mission accomplished
, he thought.

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The squad drifted downriver. When they heard the shouts on the riverbank, Dieter’s heart raced.
My grandfather is a survivor—he lived through the Battle of the Somme, for crying out loud
, he thought.
Maybe he got away! Maybe the Russians lost him!
His pulse quickened and he half-expected to see Klaus jump into the river.

Wolf had a far more realistic expectation of the situation. The old man led the patrol away from them. But like a soldier who dives onto a grenade, Klaus paid a steep price for his heroism.
He was right about one thing, though. He died in a cemetery—they wouldn’t have to take his body far.

Suddenly, another flurry of gunfire rang out, followed by the cheers of Russian soldiers. Dieter felt his stomach turn. He knew what had happened. He looked to the sky and made the sign of the cross. “Thanks, Pop.”

Under normal circumstances, that moment would have broken Wolf’s heart, but he had no time for sentimentality. The enemy wouldn’t assume there had only been one soldier in the cemetery. They would search the grounds until they got to the water, the obvious escape route. If the Russians caught them in the blood-filled river, they would be sitting ducks.

45

A bonfire fueled by Nazi parade banners and gasoline illuminated a surreal scene of drunken debauchery.

With their massive T-34 battle tank behind them, tank commander Sergei Tokolovskii and his crew drank vodka and sang obscene songs about Hitler. On the turret, twenty-seven crude slash marks kept track of the German armored vehicles that had fallen victim to their deadly 85 mm cannon.

Tokolovskii was a tough son-of-a-bitch from Minsk with a notorious reputation as a warrior who drank as hard as he fought. The crew respected Tok, but they also feared him; his tendency to lash out in a rage when he had been drinking was legendary. And he was always drinking.

As was his custom, he brought a guest with him to the party, a young, beautiful and rather unlucky German woman who had chosen the wrong Soviet officer to befriend in exchange for protection from other Russian soldiers. The
fräulein
wasn’t enjoying her evening, but Tokolovskii didn’t care. There were no innocent Germans as far as he was concerned.

As they did each night, the crew alternated taking shots of vodka and giving each other slaps in the face, a bizarre ritualistic pain contest between men who had caused more than their fair share of pain to others in this war.

Yuri didn’t take part in the festivities. He was more interested in tinkering with the huge abandoned searchlight that he found near the river. The crew was frustrated with his reluctance to drink with them, but they had long since grown used to his eccentricities. They tolerated Yuri because he was a brilliant mechanic and driver who helped them survive combat time and time again against the far superior German
panzers
.

“What the hell are you doing?” Tokolovskii asked, annoyed that Yuri couldn’t bring himself to enjoy even one night of mayhem with the rest of the crew.

“A report came over the radio. Some Germans escaped into the river in this sector.”

“Then they are fucking drowned. Drink with us.”

Yuri pulled a lever and the spotlight came to life, its intense beam pointed straight up into the sky. “Don’t worry, Tok. I’ll make sure the fascists don’t sneak up on us.”

Besides his burning desire to avoid getting mixed up in the inevitable drunken brawl, Yuri had another reason for working overtime, as it were. When he first picked up arms for the Soviet Union, the war wasn’t personal; it was a distant conflict that barely touched his life. That all changed when the Nazis wiped out his family at Babyn Yar. After he got that news, Yuri wasn’t inclined to take part in any celebrations until every last German soldier was either dead or on his way to a Siberian prison camp. The vodka could wait.

“Good luck on your fishing expedition,” Tokolovskii said, reaching for the bottle. There was still time left in the war. He was determined to enjoy every last minute of it.

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