Final Mission: Zion - A World War 2 Thriller

by Chuck Driskell

  Hörst nodded gingerly, careful not to dislodge the man’s finger.

  “Do I have your solemn word this time?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “If you don’t obey, Hörst, I swear on everything holy to me that I will come back and kill you. And I promise you it won’t be nearly as painless as this.”

  “I believe you,” Hörst answered quickly.

  The man grasped Hörst’s left hand and held his pinkie right beside his own. In a quick motion, he removed his own while jamming Hörst’s inside the hole.

  “Where’s your bag?” the man asked. “The one with the needle and thread you used on me.”

  Minutes later, as Horst talked him through the three-stitch procedure, the man took a damp rag and wiped the skin. “No blood flowing out. I would imagine if you keep some pressure on it, it’ll clot up.”

  “There’s a lot of pressure on the Jugularvene,” Hörst whimpered. “Are your stitches tight?”

  The man peered closely. “They look fair enough to me. Not pretty, but not leaking, either.”

  Hörst was ashen gray, sucking on a cigarette as he sat wavering on the side of the bed. He held a wad of gauze tightly on the puckered seam of the three stitches. The man washed his hands in the bowl before tossing the pink rag on the German’s lap.

  “I’m ready to leave now. Do we have an understanding?”

  “Yes, we do.”

  “And you know what I will do to you if you renege?”

  “No, I don’t. And I don’t want to.”

  The American’s smile was humorless. He pulled on his coat and left with nary a sound.

  As soon as the man was gone, Hörst had a very good cry—while holding steady pressure on his wound.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Neil sat alone in the small kitchen of the Heinz farmhouse. In front of him was a piece of paper with two paragraphs of text, written in pencil, the language German. He was proud of how well his German had returned in the past weeks but, at this moment, melancholy occupied his mind far more than senseless pride. He placed his cigarette in the ashtray and wrote one final paragraph, this one to Peter and Gabi. Wanting to go on but knowing not to, Neil wrapped his feelings up with a final sentence of thanks, placing only an N at the bottom of the page. He stacked ten thousand reichsmarks on the paper, along with another note instructing Frau Heinz to use only someone she trusted to remove the aircraft parts before spring. Or better yet, bury them.

  He walked to the window. In the lowermost field, the one adjacent to the field that had hosted his abrupt arrival on the Heinz property, he could see the two women of the Heinz family working with the mule and wagon next to them. He didn’t know what they were doing, but he knew that whatever it was, it needed to be done. They were some of the most efficient workers he had ever met.

  Earlier in the morning, when he had returned from his session with the veterinarian, Neil had patted the back of Frau Heinz’s hand as she had sat there, trembling as she took her morning coffee. He told her she never had to worry about Hörst the veterinarian again.

  “And you don’t think he will seek revenge? He’s crazy, you know,” she’d said.

  Neil shook his head. “He won’t ever bother you again.”

  Frau Heinz had sipped her coffee and nodded. Her face was stolid, but her eyes had glistened with the prospect that old Hörst had gotten his comeuppance.

  Now, Neil walked back to the bed where he’d healed. The room was again Peter’s—all of Neil’s things had been put away. He thought of the many games of checkers he had shared with the boy. Thought of their conversations. Even today, Peter was at school, proudly presenting a paper on Bismarck that Neil had helped him write.

  Neil felt as if he might get emotional—uncharacteristic for him. It was time to go—he had a mission to complete. He buttoned his flannel shirt to the top and slung the new canvas bag over his shoulders, so that it was held across his chest. With one final glance about the small farmhouse that had become his home, Neil stepped out the door and into the yard. Staying to the far side of the yard, he made his way to the south. As he began to walk, he heard a voice. It was Gabi.

  Neil cringed as he turned. She was approaching on the horse, probably coming to the house to retrieve something.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded, staring at the bag.

  Neil cut his eyes away. He said nothing.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m leaving, Gabi. I have to.”

  Gabi dropped off the horse and walked to him, her eyes never wavering as she wiped her hands on her trousers. “You don’t have to. You said you’d leave tomorrow.”

  “Yes, I do. My being here is too risky for your family.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  Neil wasn’t going to argue with Gabi. Leaving the Heinz family—especially her—was killing him. But time was against him, along with the men who were searching for him.

  “Stay one more day,” she pleaded.

  “I can’t.”

  “You can.”

  “Gabi, I’m leaving. I’m sorry.”

  Tears began to well in Gabi’s eyes before she slapped him across the face. Neil took it without response. Gabi covered her mouth with her hand, sobbing as she turned and ran into the house.

  Not quite understanding what had just happened, Neil resumed his walk, heading due south, walking straight toward the looming Alps, making a path through the fields and woods. He made a deliberate effort to push the Heinz family from his mind, concentrating on the task ahead.

  No matter how hard he tried, he still felt sick.

  Utterly sick.

  ~~~

  By lunchtime Neil had reached the rutted road at a town called Kreuth, situated below a soaring peak. He stopped at the mercantile to purchase some food, asking the older man inside about the road through the mountains. The man informed him that the road led through Aachen Pass, and then to a lake known as Aachensee, inside the now informal northern border of Österreich. Neil decided not to ask about Innsbruck until he reached the lake. No sense in leaving a trail in the event he might be followed.

  A mile outside of Kreuth, just as he began the steep portion of the ascent to the pass, Neil heard a foreign sound. He turned his head to see a dog just behind him, its claws clicking on the macadam. The dog seemed to be a mix of Shepherd and some type of hound, with auburn hair and black, floppy ears. The dog appeared quite old, with significant gray around the muzzle, but didn’t seem to be mangy or underfed. Neil stopped and watched as the dog approached his hand, licking it. Exasperated, he knelt, quickly determining that he was actually a she. Neil didn’t want to pet the dog because there was no sense in encouraging what was obviously someone else’s pet. Three times he used his harshest voice, pointing back toward Kreuth and telling the old dog to go home. Each time, she would sit, looking at him with droopy eyes and a solidified countenance.

  He tried English. She lay down, content to listen.

  He switched back to German. She rested her head on her paws, cocking an eye at him.

  He could yell to the heavens. But this dog had made up her mind, and she was coming with him.

  Finally, opening his hands in a resigned fashion, Neil patted his knees to beckon her. He rubbed her ears and off they went, together, headed upward in the Aachen Pass. Although he would never admit it, even to himself, Neil was thrilled with his new companion. The wrenching melancholia of leaving the Heinz family had twisted his stomach on itself like a sour sponge. As he climbed, the memories of each Heinz family member crept back in, floating through his head: the father-like, manly moments with Peter; Frau Heinz’s stiff, hard-to-detect approvals when Neil did something she was fond of; and of course, Gabi, with all her inner beauty, doggedness and strength.

  He pressed forward, physically and mentally.

  The afternoon brought clouds followed by a light, swirling rain as he neared the pass. The upper levels of the adjacent mountains were jagged, churning spires of dry
snow, their peaks towering over each side of the winding road. The cold rain had quickly become almost unbearably frigid, and he began to be flecked with pellets of ice as he neared the crest of the road. Neil wore work gloves and wrapped a muffler around his face. An occasional automobile passed, but he did not thumb a ride. Whenever they sensed a car, Neil and his new friend moved to the side, hiding from view.

  When the light of day began to recede, at the top of the ascent, Neil left the road, leading the dog through several inches of slush in search of a crevice to bed down. This was the worst environment to sleep in, but Neil’s energy had given out in the cold and elevation. Several hundred feet off the road, in a flat area, he found something better than a crevice. Located directly under a perilous rock overhang was a cave of sorts. It had a wide mouth, but gradually narrowed into the mountain like a horizontal wedge. Neil pushed into the cave’s bowels, finding stacks of dry wood, a tattered bedroll, and even a small pile of garbage. Not surprisingly, there had been others here before him. Names and phrases adorned the rock wall, painted by travelers. One had even coined the cave Gasthaus Bergspitze, or Mountain Top Inn. Whatever it was, Neil was thrilled to have found it.

  It took him a half-hour to get the space situated to his liking. He searched the nearby area, finding a dead tree that was mostly dry. It had grown from a crevice in the rock under another ledge and died, probably from lack of water or nutrients. He twisted the slightly damp log out and dragged it back to the cave, doing the same with several other large pieces of wood. Satisfied he had enough firewood, Neil began to gather rocks, making his aching side feel as if it might split open at any moment. The dog, seemingly impervious to the cold, followed him every step of the way, curiously watching his every move, her brown eyes drinking in his actions as if he were the most important man in the world.

  Neil took the stones to the back of the cave, stacking the largest ones on the ground. Like he’d been taught as a boy in the Sierras, he built a two-foot-high windbreak, leaving himself enough space between the wall of the cave and his temporary wall to slide through. The light of the day was now gone, so Neil went to work with the available dry wood, creating a pyramid in the sheltered space.

  The dog made herself at home on the bedroll as Neil worked. He stacked the small pieces of wood, along with several smaller branches from the tree, arching larger sticks over the top. He found some paper in the garbage pile, sliding it underneath. Satisfied, he removed his only box of matches, staring at them. After his swim in the Atlantic, his lighter was still out of naphtha, something he’d kicked himself over since his crash landing. He hadn’t smoked a single cigarette during his walk, saving the last of the Heinz household matches for just this type of emergency.

  Neil lit a match. Out it went as the chilly wind swirled in the semi-protected space. A second match. Out. He exhaled loudly, crouching over the would-be fire, trying to shield the wind. A third. A fourth. A fifth.

  “Damn it,” he growled. He looked at the dog. She was curled into a nearly perfect circle, her head tucked over her back legs. Her eyes looked up to him, giving him a, “Sorry, mister, but you’re on your own with all this,” look. Neil followed her lead, lying flat on the ground, surrounding the wood with his body. From the backside, he held the matches directly adjacent to the paper, lighting one and watching as it set the paper aflame. He waited, watching as the once enemy wind began to work for him, fueling the flame as the kindling and pine needles began to burn. Two minutes later, the wood was alight.

  After allowing all of the pieces to catch, Neil stacked the larger wood in a square around the small fire, building it like a log cabin, but leaving space for air. He put the damp logs on the bottom so they could dry out and eventually provide fuel late in the night. As the larger pieces began to burn, he dragged the long limbs to the wide mouth of the cave, using two boulders as a lever and his body as the force to crack the limbs into workable pieces of wood. When finished, Neil had more than enough wood to last him the night.

  The fire was now raging so hard that Neil actually had to slide the bedroll backward—with his new friend still lounging on top. He removed his quilt and his other jacket, situating them so he could use them when he was ready to sleep. The way he had constructed his sleeping area turned out to be correct. What wind did infiltrate was forced to go through the heat of the fire, making the back of the cave warm enough that eventually he had to unbutton his coat. From his experience, snow or ice at this altitude, upon melting, was generally safe to drink. After retrieving a quantity of ice pellets to make sufficient drinking water in his canteen, he mounded ice for the dog for her hydration. When she would take in no more, Neil finally allowed himself a chance to relax. He lit a cigarette from the fire and smiled as the dog inched her way into his lap, placing her front paws over his legs and resting peacefully.

  Neil decided to just sit and think for a bit. It couldn’t be past eight in the evening. Even though he was exhausted and sore from the walk, if he were to sleep now, he would be awake during the most frigid portion of the night. Instead, he ate two cans of beans, pouring the third and last can out on a flat rock for the dog. They shared his small loaf of sourdough and, seemingly sated, they both reclined at the back of the cave as the fire danced and crackled.

  Having another cigarette, Neil thought back to the years he had shared with Jakey Herman. A childhood rivalry burgeoned into an adult male bond that only two men with such a union can understand. There had been no secrets between them. Joyous moments and sorrows: each was shared, dissected, and discussed. Jakey and his women; Neil and his constant struggle in the secret depths of the War Department. Their differences bound them even closer.

  The Army had split the two men up after training, but after Neil had developed a bit of influence at the Unconventional Warfare School, per his recommendation, the adjutant had located Jakey. From that point forward, they were always in the same unit. And before the United States even entered the Great War, a small faction of their unit went to France, helping the French and Belgian armies see the battlefield through a different eye. It wasn’t long before Neil and Jakey flouted their advisory duties—just like Sergeant Wingo and Major Hamilton had in Gallipoli—and waded into the fray. What Neil possessed in tenacity and instinct, Jakey more than equaled in cunning. A kind man, first to part with his basic necessities to help another, he could be equally fierce if he thought the other person was his adversary.

  Neil remembered the fateful night, inside the German border, when Jakey had saved his life. Neil had been working on an improvised bomb, creating it from kerosene and fertilizer he’d lifted from a Saarlander’s barn. Despite the cold, he remembered the sweat dripping from his nose as he completed the bomb’s placement underneath a German armory. Jakey had been standing sentry on the path from the rear. An unseen soldier on guard must have heard them, sneaking to their position from the front. He’d slipped up on Neil, ordering him to stand at the tip of his bayonet.

  Neil could remember the fierce expression the soldier had worn—that had been Neil’s night to die. The soldier had questioned Neil as he prodded the underside of his jaw with the sharp point of the knife. When Neil would say no more, the German told him to turn. Of course, Neil refused and watched as the soldier pulled the bayonet back, coiling his arms, ready to run Neil through. Without a second to spare, Jakey rushed in from the soldier’s side, as silent as Neil could ever have managed, tackling him. After tumbling to the ground, Neil watched Jakey slit the man’s throat. And as the German soldier lay dying under him, Jakey whispered a brief sermon into his ear, eventually closing the soldier’s stunned eyes and dragging his body under the armory, next to the fertilizer bomb.

  “Jakey saved me that night,” Neil said aloud. “He saved me then, and again when he sent me the letter.” The dog lifted her head as he stroked her between the ears. Neil stared at her, sharing the moment.

  “What shall we call you?” It didn’t take long for Neil to inventory his German. “Schatze,” he n
early yelled. The dog tilted her head.

  “You like that name?” he asked. “Okay, Schatze, I believe it’s time you and me get some shuteye.” Neil groaned at the first movement after a long time of sitting in the same position. The fire was doing its job but, just in case, he stacked three more thick logs over the top, placing four more damp ones at a hand’s reach. The damp logs continued to dry, hissing as they expelled water in the form of steam.

  Neil nestled on the mat and pulled his quilt over him, layering his other clothes on top. Below his sweater, which would act as his pillow, Neil placed his Colt. It was locked and loaded.

  Schatze waited patiently and, once Neil was settled on his side, his head resting on his arm, she curled in the shallow of her new master’s torso. Deeply saddened by the way he’d left the Heinz family, Neil was thankful to have Schatze by his side. Man’s best friend can certainly take the edge off. They were both asleep in only a few minutes. Neither moved until well after seven the following morning.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  THE SAME LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM that had produced rain and ice for Neil was now swamping Velden, Germany with flooding storms. Preston Lord sat in the town’s only café, sipping coffee as he waited. The heavy woman at the constable’s home, who Lord assumed to be the man’s wife, informed Lord that the constable didn’t come home last night because he had been out “on a case.” Judging by the size of the town, the only such case that would require an all-nighter would be, perhaps, chicken thieves. Or, maybe during the worst of crime waves, horse thieves? Even through his derision, Lord had to give it to the Germans; they made good coffee—this brew was the best he’d had in months. Strong and thick, and certainly better than any of the impotent java he’d had in tea-crazy London.