Initiative (The Red Gambit Series Book 6) (18 page)

The prisoners were being assembled, as per the divisional commander’s orders.

The small field was gradually filling up as the dejected soldiers arrived; shambling groups of Poles and British infantrymen, with a handful of Spaniards, all taken during the recent failed Allied attacks on the positions of 1st Guards Mechanised Rifle Division and her sister units of the newly reconstituted 2nd Baltic Front, the grouping tasked with halting and reducing the Polish landing incursion.

Kriks, sipping on the ever-present flask containing something of non-regulation issue, eyed Deniken with concern. The personality change that had swept over the young Colonel since the loss of Yarishlov, and the heavy casualties infected upon his men in and around Naugard, seemed to have darkened the man irrevocably.

What had been a close relationship between them had quickly floundered, seemingly becoming more of something to tolerate for Deniken, a situation that was unusual for Kriks after his friendship with Yarishlov.

True to his word, he stuck as close to the 1st Guards’ commander, or as close as the man’s moods would allow.

He moved up to Deniken’s side and offered the flask as a reminder of his presence and the good relationship they once had.

“No.”

Kriks stayed close as Deniken moved forward to where the burial party had just completed its digging.

Other men moved forward to place fourteen men in the soil of Poland forever, men who were born and bred in Mother Russia.

Today was a bitter day indeed for the man that Yarishlov had seen as the future of his country.

As per his wish, Deniken assisted in carrying one of the bodies, that of his long-time friend, Vladimir Grabin, with whom he had shared breakfast, and now would bury, all in the same day.

The soldiers, without distinction of rank, spoke their piece over their dead comrades, heartfelt eulogies to men with whom the trials of a life of a soldier had been shared for months, and often, years.

More than one man shed tears as the earth was moved back into its former place, entombing the dead in its cold embrace.

A few prisoners watched dispassionately, some with understanding, some without comprehension.

A few, a very few, moved away from the site.

Deniken concluded his silent tribute to his close friend and made his vow, the mirror of the one he had given as the train carrying the hideously burned Yarishlov pulled out away from the station, and the one he had repeated on a number of similar occasions, when men under his command were forever confined in enemy soil.

He stood at attention and saluted the turned ground, holding his tribute long enough to repeat the names of those beneath his feet.

Taking a deep breath, he nodded to the waiting Captain as was the agreement on implementing his order.

Two DSHK machine-guns chattered into life, sweeping away those who had gathered to gawk at the internments.

Rifles and sub-machine guns joined in.

Kriks, horrified, shouted and screamed for a cease-fire.

A few men heeded his calls, but were quickly encouraged back to the killing by their own officer and NCOs, or, for a few, by the shouted threats of their divisional commander, Colonel Deniken.

Kriks rushed towards Deniken, screaming his protest.

“What are you doing, man? For the love of the Rodina, stop this madness! Stop it!”

Deniken turned deliberately, his eyes burning with fury and lacking any hint of reason.

He gesticulated at the bloody field in front of him.

“Those bastards put your friend… our friend… in a hospital or worse. They’re responsible for this whole fuck up, all of it, so don’t tell me to stop firing! I’ll kill the bastards every opportunity I get!”

He turned and fired his PPd in the direction of the massacre, emphasising both his point and his lack of control over himself.

Kriks grabbed him.

“What are you doing, man? Stop this insanity! Have you gone mad?”

Deniken brought the sub-machine gun up, crashing it into Kriks’ jaw and sending the
Praporshchik
flying.

“Serzhant!”

The nearest NCO turned and leapt to his Colonel’s side.

“Arrest the
Praporshchik
, remove his weapons, and take him away.”

Kriks mouthed a protest that was stifled in blood and broken teeth.

Detailing two men to the duty, the sergeant had the injured Kriks dragged away, as Deniken turned back to oversee the end of the killing.

Soviet soldiers picked their way through the littered corpses, occasionally halting to slide a bayonet home, or issue a coup-de-grace shot.

It is often said that there are always survivors from such massacres, but Freienwalde was an exception.

Seventy-two allied servicemen were executed on the orders of a man driven to the edge by personal loss.

The one man who could have saved him from himself lay in a peasant hut, under guard, being treated for his facial wound, and decidedly disinclined to have anything to do with the murdering colonel ever again.

[Modern day Chociwel was once called Freienwalde.]

The newly arrived units, two reinforced MP platoons allocated from the Corps command, had been assigned to the static defence of the hospital site.

In reality, Hanebury had recognised that the new arrivals were not up to the task of rooting out an experienced enemy unit and, for the matter, neither was the green Captain in charge.

The officer offered no opposition to Hanebury’s continued command of the hunt, and accepted the passive role of his units with relative good grace.

The search had commenced early in the morning, when Hanebury led a reconnaissance cum assault on the positions in which they had observed the enemy the previous day.

With the exception of some excrement that might have been human, and traces of blood that could equally be so, the only certain indications of a recent human presence were suitable sized areas of grass that were slightly flatter than others… and a footprint.

The tell-tale marks of the metal studs declared everything that Hanebury needed to know.

The birds had definitely flown.

Lucifer took the proffered HT set and contacted Stradley.

“Execute Alpha, Execute Alpha, over.”

“Roger.”

Plan Alpha was the only plan they had, but it had been put together to sweep up the area around the medical facility in the first instance, and then move outwards, embracing the likely area into which the enemy had melted. Trying to put themselves in the enemy’s boots, Hanebury and Stradley had decided that the likely area was a large expanse of woodland that ran due south from Bräunisheim, extending some six kilometres, north to south, by five kilometres wide. They would move around the zone, watching out for signs and interrogating any locals they might come across, before methodically reducing the area down, although more troops would be needed to ensure success.

In any case, First Sergeant Hanebury had understood that he needed more help, so the armed medical staff, plus a handful of combat soldiers from amongst the wounded, were added to his force.

Utilising some of the new arrivals, he would be able to establish the picquets necessary for the plan.

He also had assistance from an unexpected but most welcome source.

Whilst not an official Kommando, a handful of German citizens had appeared, offering their services to the hunters.

Initially, Hanebury was perturbed that such things were public knowledge, but moved on immediately; he’d take all the help he could get.

Most of the score of Germans were ex-military, and wore their old uniforms, tactfully altered to remove certain ‘devices’ from a previous political era.

Most wore medals that marked them as combat veterans.

One had spent his life as a woodsman, and he was already positioned with Stradley’s force, along with five of his compatriots.

Another six, including the two WW1 veterans, were kept within Hanebury’s force. Initially, Lucifer’s thoughts had been to reject the two ‘grandfathers’, but there was something about the older men, particularly the elder of the two, who proudly wore the ‘Pour-le-Mérite’ around the neck of a tunic that bore the insignia of the German Empire’s 13th Infanterie Regiment.

The remainder were split between the units that would be deployed outside the perimeter of the hospital.

Hanebury’s vehicles rallied below the height, and he got his unit mounted in record time, before they moved off, heading for their allocated line of march down Route 1229.

Stradley’s force was already heading down the 7312, in the direction of Altheim.

Those that were the hunted had regrouped and concealed themselves on the side of a sharp rise that oversaw a small valley, some two hundred metres off the Ettlenscheisserweg, one kilometre north-east of Lonsee.

It was the rally point that Lenz had originally selected, and it proved an excellent spot for him and his men to hide up, although the lack of a close water supply was not in the location’s favour. However, there was one only five hundred metres to the southeast, which made the site almost perfect.

Well-concealed by the thick canopy of trees, the undergrowth was lush and welcoming and, despite the numerous small paths used by forest workers, a large area away from the beaten track proved perfect for the Kommando to rest and recuperate.

The report from Weiss regarding the military presence in the camp, and the subsequent foray precisely to the position the Kommando had occupied was met with silence, although every man was aware that their commander’s decision had undoubtedly saved them from a difficult situation.

“Thank you, Unterscharfuhrer. I’ve set the guard… now get some sleep. We’ll move to the southeast when it’s dark.”

Weiss’ men needed no second bidding, and they soon joined the lucky ones from the main body, curled up on soft vegetation, and dreaming of a time when they could sleep in a bed with sheets and pillows.

The old man carrying the saw and axe stumbled and cursed.

“Verdammt!”

Lenz, having taken himself off to one side, had fallen into a deep sleep, from which the man’s shout had swiftly dragged him.

Gripping his PPSh tightly, he tried to orient himself, seeking the source of the noise, trying to establish the level of threat to his well-being.

Despite his years of service, his heart pounded, making a tangible sound in his throat.

Something broke underfoot, immediately jerking his head off to the right, where a man emerged from behind a large trunk.

He eased the Russian sub-machine gun out of the way and found the handle of his combat knife, a wide flat-bladed and double-edged weapon he had taken from a dead hand in Yugoslavia.

Silence was a key requirement of the Kommando, and he planned to kill the man without a single murmur.

The German woodsman stopped and examined a lofty trunk, clearly assessing everything about the tree.

Finally, he lit up a cigarette, and looked around to choose a felling path.

The man did a double take, noticing Lenz lying in the undergrowth.

Lenz placed a finger to his lips, and stood up, trying to appear as unthreatening as a man wearing a camouflaged jacket and holding a large knife can appear unthreatening.

The woodsman’s eyes widened at the SS insignia apparent on Lenz’s camouflage jacket, and the other insignia and medals clearly in display where he had opened the jacket up before falling asleep.

Lenz walked forward, looking around in case there was more than one.

“Kamerad, you are local?”

“Yes, yes, Herr Offizier… Bruno Weber… I live just back there…”

The woodsman turned his torso to point at his hamlet, less than a kilometre to the south, his eyes seeking something else in the undergrowth.

Sharp metal protruded from the side of his neck before the woodsman even suspected that Lenz had covered the three metres between them.

The entire blade had made the journey through the man’s flesh, the metal buried guard-deep from one side of his neck to the other.

Taking the dead man’s weight, Lenz carefully lowered the corpse to the ground as he continued to survey the area.

A figure rose out of nowhere, then another, then there were four.

The last one still kept his rifle lined on his target.

Unterscharfuhrer Uwe Weiss gestured at his men, and they spread out around the killing area, protecting their commander.

The rifleman relaxed and turned outwards, keeping his eyes focussed and his senses alert.

Weiss did not salute; the Kommando was well past such things.

“Hauptsturmfuhrer, you’re unhurt?”

Lenz recovered the blade from the woodsman’s neck, having to put a steadying foot on the head to get enough purchase to wrench it free.

“I’m unhurt, thank you, Unterscharfuhrer. Explain?”

“We didn’t know you were there. We watched him… thought he was walking past, so I decided to let him go… then he didn’t, and spotted you.”

Weiss shrugged his shoulders.

“He made a bad decision.”

Sliding the blade into its scabbard, Lenz could only agree.

Taking a last look at the corpse, he posed the real question.

“Bad luck for him… but will he be missed?”

It was a rhetorical question, his mind already made up to move the Kommando as soon as possible. That would depend on the balance of their physical needs against his interpretation of the likelihood of discovery.

There was also another factor to consider.

“How’s Jensen?”

“He’s feverish and the leg is undoubtedly infected, Hauptsturmfuhrer. Emmering’s had to gag the poor bastard to keep him quiet.”

Lenz took a moment to himself.

‘He needs medical help… but what can I do…’

His face set.

‘You will do what you must, of course!’

“Let’s get back and get the boys moving. I want distance between us and this place as quickly as possible. Get your men to hide the body.”

Lenz moved away, leaving Weiss to organise the disappearance of the evidence.

The three men made a reasonable scrape in the ground and dragged the corpse into it, shovelling the earth back again, and adding rocks and undergrowth for good measure.

Weiss admired the men’s handiwork and decided that the body would not easily be found, at least not until they were well away from the area.

On the verge of leaving the site, he decided on one last look.

Immediately, his senses lit off, the senses of a combat veteran, honed in the hardest schools that war can offer.

He dropped to his knee, bringing his ST44 up in readiness, his eyes searching for some clue to the presence that he felt.

His men responded in kind.

Eyes moved from left to right, ears strained to catch the tiniest sounds, and bodies tensed, ready for immediate action.

There was nothing.

No sound.

No movement.

Nothing.

Weiss rose up and relaxed his grip on the assault rifle.

“I thought I heard something… obviously not. Let’s go.”

The small group moved off in military fashion, leaving the small space to the trees and the dead.

Peter Weber hardly dared breathe, the tears streaming down his face, but the grief he felt at watching his father murdered controlled, simply to preserve his own life.

He waited for what seemed like a lifetime before heading away, as best as his one leg and crutches would allow, heading to warn his family that the SS were back.

The Kommando was up and ready to move.

Lenz and Emmering finished a private conversation, and Emmering quietly called for the SS soldiers to listen, and detailed an order of march.

Weiss’ men were given a few moments to police up their belongings and check their areas for giveaways of their presence, before Emmering ordered the move.

Lenz double-checked the area, finding nothing to betray their recent presence, and quickly moved on to catch-up.

He had debated killing Jensen. Indeed, most men in his position would undoubtedly have advised it, but something had softened inside of him, even if only towards his soldiers, and he had decided on another course of action.

He had sold it to Emmering with ease.

“They simply wouldn’t expect it, Oberscharfuhrer.”

Kommando Lenz headed north.

All except two men, who, with different orders, moved south.