Last Citadel Read online

  ‘Do you have a sidearm, Major?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A weapon, sir. Do you have a gun with you?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘Please strap it on and come with me.’

  The fat officer sighed, then nodded, resigned. ‘Give me a…’

  The major started to close the door to dress but Luis gave him a displeased glance, that he would not care to linger outside a shut door, waiting. The major slid the door full open and turned to his task.

  The car jerked to the squealing of brakes, the train slowed and stopped. Under the gasps of steam from the locomotive, the officer donned his pants, tunic, and boots. Out of a travel case he took his Luger pistol and holster and buckled them on. He asked no questions.

  Luis led him down the hall to the passenger car door. He spoke over his shoulder. ‘As ranking officer on this train, I thought I should alert you, Major. I’ve received a radio message that the tracks are broken ahead at the Oktabrskaya station. We cannot get through just yet. I’ve ordered the train to a halt.’

  Luis stepped out of the train onto the rail mound. The major clambered down behind him.

  ‘Why are we stopping out here in the middle of…’

  ‘Shhh, Major. Please.’

  The train stood still, the locomotive continued its heavy metal breath, waiting for the order to continue. On either side of the tracks stretched a field, without trees or bushes. His ears caught nothing, not the rustle of a leaf or the shush of a breeze, so vast was the open land, just a flat earth black with unmown grasses.

  ‘They won’t come here.’

  ‘Who won’t come here?’ the major asked.

  ‘The partisans.’

  ‘Partisans?’

  ‘They’re trying to stop this train, Major.’

  Something in Luis’s flat tone kept the major from further queries. The officer’s bare head pivoted up and down the empty tracks, he seemed suddenly aware he was alone outside the train car with only a skinny SS captain and their two pistols. The notion of partisans was a fearsome one, bearded wild men in civilian clothes who fought with abandon, with vengeful crudeness and animal cunning. They were natives who knew every inch of the land and had the local populace to abet them. But there’s no danger right here, Luis thought. He’d seen enough ambushes, set a few himself, to know when and where they were likely Not here, without cover to attack and retreat. No, they’re waiting somewhere ahead. There will be trees beside the tracks and they’ll come out of them.

  Luis lifted his nose, sipping the night air, calculating. The major asked, ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘The SS has received reports over the past few days that the Russians would try to bomb the Oktabrskaya train station. This they did tonight, apparently quite well. Blowing up the station was just a delaying tactic, Major, to slow the train in case the first partisan attack fails. While we wait for the tracks to be mended, they’ll have time to organize another ambush.’

  The major fidgeted. ‘Another ambush?’

  ‘Yes. After the one tonight.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  The major was repeating things again, but Luis grew patient now that he knew what was going to happen. The engineer had followed his instructions and alerted him when the train approached Slatino, ten miles south of the Ukraine border with Russia, twenty miles south of Oktabrskaya.

  Luis eased his voice and said, ‘Yes. That’s why I’m here.’

  The officer cocked his head at Luis.

  ‘You may get back on board, Major. I’ll join you shortly.’

  Major Grimm turned on the sooty rocks. He climbed the steps back into the passenger car.

  From the steps he asked, ‘How did you know, Captain de Vega?’

  Luis nodded into the vast darkness of the Russian steppe.

  Yes, he thought, let’s begin, and he harkened back to the huge silence of the plaza when the bull first enters the ring.

  ‘I know, Major, because we have infiltrated the partisans.’

  * * * *

  July 2

  0200 hours

  Luis ate only half of the bratwurst sandwich. He offered the rest of it to the engineer. The man declined, making a face to indicate he was too nervous to eat.

  Luis looked around the locomotive compartment. It was not unlike the innards of a tank with all its dials and handles, everything made of metal and glass, but roomier. He admired the power of the big, pulsing machine to pull the immense weight trailing behind them. With a smile he considered how easily any one of his Tiger tanks straddling these tracks could shoot this locomotive into the ditch. But he did not say this, he was not feeling competitive. The engineer was executing his job well and with discipline, doing what Luis told him to do. The man did not also have to be brave.

  Luis kept watch on the terrain beside the tracks. Major Grimm had wanted to wait until morning to continue but Luis made the decision to keep going the rest of the way under the cloak of night, a trainload of new Tigers would be ripe for a Soviet air attack. Besides, this was his train, his first assignment back on active duty, and it was going to arrive at Oktabrskaya at sunup, as scheduled, even if the station there was in shambles.

  ‘That’s enough,’ he told the engineer. The man worked his levers and cords and the train slowed with a tremendous sigh. When it was stopped, Luis climbed down onto the rails, his Luger in one hand, a flashlight in the other. From one of the troop cars, a soldier climbed down and waited. Luis flashed his light at the soldier once, the soldier flashed back.

  Luis walked ahead. The train panted in stillness behind him. He trod the rail mound leaving the flashlight off, fixing his gaze on the racks; this was the third time in the twenty kilometers since Slatino he’d escorted the train through a passage of trees lining the rails. The scanty body he was trapped in made almost no sound walking the ties, his balance was so good he could stay on a single rail for a hundred meters before stepping off. His night vision was remarkable. He was sharp, like his nickname, cutting through the night.

  The partisans will come with fifty men, he thought. That was the SS intelligence.

  Somewhere close to the Ukraine border. He paused and turned back to the unseen train a half mile behind him now. He blinked his flashlight twice. He knew without seeing that the soldier he’d stationed a quarter mile between himself and the train was signaling with another flashlight for the train to move forward. In response to the signal, Luis heard only a distant heave of steam.

  The phalanx of trees was at least another mile long. The woods appeared to him as a jagged edge of deeper night, like the blackest paper roughly torn and pasted beside the tracks. He walked, head down, considering the partisan plan, filling in the gaps of his knowledge with what he would do in their position. Fifty men with small-arms, on foot, would wait in the trees. They’ll expect the train to come barreling past. When it does, they’ll blow the track under the locomotive or perhaps under one of the troop cars. The train will derail and the partisans will rush in a single wave out of their cover, across fifty meters of open ground on either side. Many cars will be upended, the garrison will be stunned or injured. They’ll engage in a quick and fierce firefight. In the midst of the shooting, they’ll head for the tanks with more explosives to spike the cannon barrels. Then the partisans will melt back into the steppe, and Luis will make his return to his SS division Leibstandarte by reporting the death of the ten Tigers that were under his protection.

  Luis stopped. He turned a full circle on the rails and tingled. He’d walked into the place where he would have set the snare were he the one lying in ambush. A curve in the tracks. A band of trees on both sides of the rails. Wide fields behind them, no villages close by. Luis cast his gaze into the brush and branches left and right, and peopled the dark with twenty-five dirty faces per side, breaths held, fifty fingers on triggers. He walked another dozen quiet steps, sensing the Russians’ anger; in the darkness he pitched his own wrath against theirs, and in the spark that was made when the
two met and struck, he saw the explosive.

  He froze on the track. The train was far back and puffing, waiting for his signal to come forward. The partisans would be waiting just ahead, expecting the train’s momentum to carry it past the point of the tracks they intended to blast, toppling the cars in front of them. Perhaps they haven’t heard the train yet; Luis himself could barely make out the huffing locomotive.

  He hoped they hadn’t seen or heard him, either.

  He bent low, approaching the mine with five careful strides. Wedged sideways between the tracks was a fat log, like a damsel tied there in the night. Luis knelt beside it, feeling the bark, listening into the darkness for the sound of boots coming to draw a knife across his scrawny neck. With exploring fingers, he determined the nature of the bomb. Jammed between one end of the wooden trunk and the left-hand rail were two bars of C-3 explosive, two and a quarter pounds of the stuff smashed between the wood and the steel. Luis skimmed fingers across the putty lumps of plastique, feeling for the blasting caps; there would be two, wired together in case one failed. He found them and pulled his hand away; blasting caps were notoriously volatile, far more than the C-3 itself.

  Luis admired the cleverness of the partisans. The section of tree trunk had been laid between the tracks as tamping for the explosive. When the C-3 blew, only one track would be severed, the one on the inside of the curve. This rail would break to the side, not up. The tram cars leaning around the bend in the tracks would derail to the inside of the curve, and because one set of wheels would be lower, the cars would spill over.

  Luis saw the single electric cord running to the blasting caps. The slender wire ran left, straight into the trees in front of him. This was not good. The partisans were right there, forty meters away. Slowly, he put his Luger pistol in the hand holding the flashlight, and reached his empty hand into a tunic pocket for his wire cutters.

  He dropped the Luger.

  The thing clattered, metal tattle-tale on the big granite stones of the rail mound. Luis wasted not a second. He clutched the wire cutter and snipped the wire, felt the wire coil away from the blasting caps, then pulled the caps out of the C-3 as quickly as he dared. Once the explosive was disarmed - the detonators were out in seconds but to Luis it seemed an hour - he jumped to his feet and took this new physique of his on its first flat-out run.

  He turned on the flashlight and blinked it three times into the darkness that swallowed the train. This was a different signal. Then he threw the flashlight away and drove his arms and legs as fast as he could. It was good to hear his boots were not always so silent; this time they tore down the rail ties with blaring purpose.

  The first shots sounded in the trees. He could not tell how close the bullets came to him, he was running and huffing so hard he would have to get hit by a bullet before he would know if they had a bead on him. He ran down off the rail ties into the grass; it made no sense to race straight down the tracks, it made him too easy a target. More reports cracked out of the trees on both sides. Luis reproached himself for a clumsy ass, dropping the pistol like that. He ran on, exhilarated, laughing with manic gasps at every shot fired behind him that missed; he was too thin to be much of a target.

  The waist-high grass beside the rail mound did not slow him. Like running on the moon, he thought, pumping his knees and elbows; whipped-up pollen flew in his face, a night breeze brushed his puffing cheeks. But what speed, he thought, where is the gravity of the world now?

  He lost count of the shots the partisans fired at him. He wasn’t worried about being wounded, they never got a clear look at him in his speeding black uniform. He just wanted to get back to the train fast, before the partisans could repair the cut wire and blow the track anyway, settling for that little victory and making their escape. Luis had more planned for them.

  The soldier shined his flashlight at Luis coming up out of the grass. Luis stopped and turned back up the tracks. He controlled his breathing as best he could to be quiet, to hear if they were still shooting or even following. He heard nothing.

  From the other direction came the train, rushing to where they stood. This soldier had done his job. When Luis flashed him three times, he was to summon the train.

  ‘Captain, are you alright?’ the soldier asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Luis huffed. ‘They… uh…’ he took a deep breath and blew it out, ‘… they spotted me. But I found it. I cut the wire…’

  ‘Are they following you, sir?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The soldier unshouldered his submachine-gun.

  ‘You go back to the train, Captain. I’ll keep them off you.’

  Luis took one more moment to look this boy over, the Czech one who’d delivered the message to his compartment an hour ago. This is why the SS is running out of men, Luis thought.

  ‘No, Private. Stay with me. You’ll get your chance in another minute.’

  The train rumbled up to them. The two ran alongside. Luis climbed onto the ladder to the locomotive. He stuck his head into the compartment. ‘Keep this speed, no faster,’ he shouted to the engineer. Then he dropped off the ladder and let the train haul the first of the passenger cars to him. He beckoned the Czech grenadier to follow, then matched the pace of the car and jumped aboard.

  He entered the car. Fifty SS troopers huddled in the seats; helmets, boots, belts, and barrels creaked and rattled with the joggling of the slow-moving train. Several of the soldiers snored.

  ‘Up,’ Luis said. A few leaped to their feet; the jangling noise animated the rest.

  ‘Now,’ Luis said.

  In seconds the men lined up like paratroopers in an airplane to leap from the passenger car doors. Luis turned to enter the next car.

  ‘Up,’ he said.

  When he had done this in all four cars, issuing two hundred trained grenadiers onto the rail mound, he jumped down the tracks, the Czech soldier at his heels. The train engineer, though a fearful man, had not sped the train up one jot.

  When his own passenger car rolled past, Luis saw the major peering out the open window of his own cabin.

  Luis waved. ‘You’re going to miss the fun, Major.’

  Grimm held up both palms to Luis and shouted down, ‘Wait!’ He disappeared from the window. Luis envisioned the fat officer scrambling in his dark compartment for his socks and boots to scoot off the train before it reached the partisans and their booby-trap.

  The train ambled by. When the flatbeds carrying the Tigers came up, he called to the guards on the first car: ‘Ready’

  Two of the guards jumped from the flatbed over to the connected car, which was covered by a tarp. With Luis and the Czech private watching, the guards slipped the ropes holding the canvas sheath. The tarp flapped in the moving wind and fell away from a sandbagged machine-gun position. The two guards leaped in behind the gun, primed the ammo belt in the breech, and slid by toward the partisans, pivoting the barrel left and right, ready just as Luis had commanded and planned. When the last car in the train rattled by carrying the second tarp-covered pillbox, Luis gave the same signal. The soldiers sprang to their assignment.

  Luis and the Czech stood behind the slowly receding train. The major trundled to the end of the steps and held on, hesitant to jump down to the moving ground, then hopped off, almost stumbling on the rocks. Luis looked at the Czech. The boy was eager like a dog, to fetch, to chase.

  ‘Go,’ Luis said, releasing him with his voice and an open hand. The boy ran off behind the train, to get his portion of the kill.

  Luis strolled behind the train, over the tracks he’d run across just two minutes before. He walked over to the major, caught his elbow and walked him forward along the tracks.

  ‘Shouldn’t we stay back here?’ the major asked, confused and apprehensive.

  ‘It’s safe, Major.’

  To punctuate this, small-arms fire erupted out of the night from up the tracks. Luis walked beside the officer, listening and calculating when the train would pass beyond the partisans’ defus
ed bomb. Gunfire spurted on both sides of the rail line, automatic weapons unleashed their rat-tat-tat, then gave way to single reports, then nothing. It was over. The train was safe.

  ‘What did you do?’ Major Grimm inquired. The man walked with both hands clasped behind his back, buttoned and belted belly out. His double chin hid part of his collar. Luis felt a twinge of vexation at this Wehrmacht officer, who carried on him as extra all the weight Luis had sacrificed, who cowered in his compartment until even that became unsafe, while others - SS men all - ran ahead into the dark to engage the enemy.

  ‘Once I found the place where the partisans wanted to blow the tracks, I cut the wire to their explosive. Clever idea they’d come up with, to wreck only one rail and spill the train on its side. They spotted me at the last second and I ran back to the train.’