North Reich (63 page)

      
“And the rest are spies, I’ll wager.”

      
“Doubtless, but they are all are being carefully watched.”

      
Neumann left.
 
Guderian waited a couple of moments, deep in thought.
 
He pushed a buzzer on his desk and Koenig entered.
 
      

      
“Did you hear?”

      
“Yes, field marshal.”

      
“He is capable of doing it.
 
I read his dossier.
 
He once led a unit into a Polish village near where partisans were active.
 
There was no evidence that anyone in that village was in any way involved, but that didn’t matter.
 
He had roughly five hundred men, women and children gathered up.
 
The women and children were raped repeatedly in front of each other and the men.
 
When they were done, all of them were stuffed into a large barn and the barn was set on fire.
 
When burning people tried to escape, his men gunned them down.
 
In a way, that was a mercy.
 
So, yes, he is capable of killing all those people.
 
He would have had that ship full of Jews scuttled if he had thought ahead and realized there was a chance that the Americans would stop it.”

      
“Sir, what is my assignment?”

      
“Quite simple, captain.
 
You are to follow him, find out what he specifically plans to do.”

      
“Am I to try to stop him?”

      
“I will let you know what, if anything, to do at the proper time.”

      
“But sir, isn’t he doing what the Fuhrer wants?”

      
“Is that what you wish, Koenig?
 
And what do you think the Americans will do when they take you prisoner and find out that you aided and abetted that monster?”
 

Canfield’s battalion moved out cautiously.
 
The beachhead perimeter had been expanded by about three miles in all directions and more troops had landed and were filling the beachhead.
 
This time, however, they were organized and ready.

They were still confronted by large numbers of German soldiers and the Germans had been fighting desperately.
 
Nor had the beachheads on the German side of the Niagara River been significantly expanded.
 
German artillery still had the range of the pontoon bridges, which meant that comparatively few tanks had crossed.

      
There was a sharp explosion and everyone fell to the ground.
 
A scream followed along with cries for a medic.
 
One of his men had stepped on a mine.
 
The German anti-personnel mines were terrible things.
 
Once stepped on, a spring of some kind launched them into the air and the exploded at approximately waist height. GIs were fearful of being castrated by these things that they called ‘bouncing betties.’
 
The advance would halt until the mines could be cleared.

      
The screaming stopped.
 
He and Dubinski looked at each other.
 
The guy had probably died and that was a fate worse than castration.
 
Since the German attack, the battalion had gotten fed, been given fresh equipment, and supplied with a ton of ammo. They’d also gotten fifty fresh replacements who looked scared and innocent.
 
Canfield thought they looked just like the others had when the fighting had first started.
 
Everyone looked scared, but the veterans were no longer innocent.
 
They had a haunted, desperate look in their eyes.

      
Rumor had it that the krauts were pulling back and abandoning the Niagara River line, which meant that they had to pass in front of the men in Truscott’s beachhead.
 
This also meant that the Germans would fight desperately to keep the route to the north and rear open.
 
They were all aware of the geographic anomaly.
 
The German escape route to the north actually led to the west because of the way the land between lakes Erie and Ontario curved.
 
No matter.
 
When the time came they would all head north and east to Toronto.

      
German machine guns opened up with their insane chattering. They actually had a different sound than American guns and were, just about everyone thought, much better weapons.
 
A German anti-tank gun fired and it was followed by the whump of an explosion. Another American Sherman tank had died because the Germans had better anti-tank guns as well.

      
“All we can do is try to overwhelm them,” Canfield thought aloud.
 
Dubinski and he others understood that he wasn’t talking to them and kept quiet.
 
They also understood that overwhelming the Germans meant that a large number of them would die or be maimed.

      
His radioman signaled for him to come over.
 
“What’s up, corporal?”

      
“Sir, Lieutenant Kosinski says he can see water.”
 
      
Canfield crouched and trotted the couple of hundred yards to where Kosinski’s men waited.
 
That a lieutenant commanded a company was a result of the heavy casualties they’d suffered.
 
Their captain had been killed the day before.

He found Kosinski in a stand of trees.
 
“Where’s the water?” he asked.

      
“If you climb up a tree, colonel, you can see it.
 
It’s definitely Lake Erie and that means we’ve cut the bastards off.”

      
“Either that or they’ve all escaped,” Canfield said.
 
“And I will pass on climbing a tree.
 
I assume your men are pushing forward?”

      
“Most definitely, sir.”

      
Canfield moved out with the lieutenant and was shortly looking at both the lake and the road that led to Hamilton.
 
There were ships on the lake and he presumed they were American. The road, however, was empty.
 
The krauts had escaped.
 
Well, he thought grimly, what had he expected?

Ike and Bradley were ecstatic.
 
With the collapse of the German river defenses, it meant that they could get a proper army across the Niagara and commence pushing north.
 
It also meant that they could send warships through the Welland Canal and on to Lake Erie.
 

Only a few days earlier the first American warships since the war of 1812 had appeared in Lake Ontario.
 
It was a flotilla consisting of two heavy cruisers, four light cruisers, and eight destroyers.
 
Additional support vessels were arriving almost every hour.
 
The original flotilla had been sent up the St. Lawrence under the cover of scores of land-based planes and had arrived without significant incident.
 
A few shots had been fired, but guns and planes had put a stop to it.

Nor did it go unnoticed that the guns of fourteen warships could savage German formations trying to escape via the road along the coast to Hamilton and then on to Toronto.
 
The two generals now agreed that they should have had the navy attempt to run the gauntlet earlier.
 
Their only regret was that the Germans had gotten away to fight another day.

“We almost had them,” Bradley said.

“They fooled us,” said Eisenhower.
 
“They moved their men and equipment out quietly and at night.
 
Some of our commanders suspected, but couldn’t do anything against a rear guard that fought like the devil.”

“Well, Ike, at least we now have the Canal.”

Ike lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of an old one.
 
“You’re assuming that they haven’t sabotaged it too badly.
 
Between the Germans and Canadian partisans, it might be a long while before our ships can go through it.”

“Yeah, but I’m confident our engineers can get the thing working in short order.
 
They might have damaged, even destroyed, the locks, but the ditch will still be there.
 
Right now I’ve got men assessing the damage and we’ll start working and do what has to be done.
 
One of the questions I’ve already gotten asked is what should be done about the carcasses of three U-boats in the canal.”

Ike grinned.
 
The raids had sealed the fate of the Kriegsmarine on Lake Erie.
 
It reminded him that he had to find time to pin a medal on the young pilot who’d lost a leg in the endeavor.

Most important, control of Erie meant that Americans could land anywhere they wanted along the coast.
 
The Germans fighting Patton would have to pull back or find themselves trapped.
 
Only this time, they might not be so lucky.

      
“Blow the damn things up,” Ike said genially.

Heinrich Stahl swore as he saw the police barricades keeping him several blocks away from his destination, a nondescript rooming house where four of his men lived.
 
To the best of his knowledge, they were the last Germans still alive and active.
 

The very large number of cops surrounding it were heavily armed and appeared to be very nervous.
 
Why not, he thought angrily.
 
They had found his last source of German manpower in the city.

      
He wasn’t worried about being recognized.
 
Not only were all eyes on the shabby boarding house he could barely see in the distance, but he had taken pains to change his appearance.
 
His head had been partly shaved to simulate baldness and what hair remained had been died white.
 
He had cotton stuffed in his cheeks and padding in his clothing gave him a fine middle-aged gut.
 
Using a cane added to the effect and nobody cared if he had an accent.
 
His papers said he was a Dane.

      
What did concern him was losing four good men, especially when there were no others.
 
It also meant he could not go back to his current residence in a cheap hotel.
 
He didn’t think that there was anything about him in the apartment shared by the four Germans, but he couldn’t be certain.
 
He swore at the injustice of it all.
 
How could he continue to serve the Reich?

      
Stahl prided himself on his memory, which some said was photographic.
 
Thus, he stared at the very pretty young woman in a WAC uniform who was with another army officer.
 
Where the hell had he seen them before?
 
He searched his memory and found the answer.
 
While he’d been questioning the fool scientist from that place called Camp Washington, the two of them had been sitting on a bench not too far away and pretending to be lovers.
 
He’d thought it strange at the time that they’d been sitting together in the cold wet weather, but had put it down to idiots being in love.
 
Now he knew better.
 
Those two had been instrumental in unraveling his intelligence network along with the FBI and the Washington police.

      
He thought about using the pistol in his pocket and blowing their brains out, but thought better of it.
 
He might get away in the confusion, but possibly not.
 
At any rate, he’d be on the run with pursuit too close for comfort.
 

      
Gunfire ripped through the air and people around him screamed and threw themselves onto the ground.
 
Stahl did likewise.
 
It would be foolish and possibly fatal to remain standing.
 
It would also be awful if he was wounded and sent to a hospital where they would quickly realize that he wasn’t what he appeared to be.

      
The firing had come from the rooming house and the cops replied with an enormous volley that ripped wood from the side of the building.
 
Bullets pierced the walls and Stahl wondered how many were striking flesh.
 
He recalled a time when he and his men fired into a farmhouse in Poland, shredding it, and later seeing only the pulped bodies of the family that lived there.
 
Too bad, he thought.
 

The Germans inside fired again and a cop fell to the ground, his leg smashed.
 
Someone yelled Heil Hitler and four armed men came out screaming and firing.
 
Stahl watched in admiration.
 
They would rather die fighting instead of by hanging or the electric chair.
 
They were heroes.