By 8:00 p.m. the autogiros had reached the landing zone, feathering silently to the ground as he had the day before. Once more, camouflage netting was produced. As the gloom of the evening settled in, enhanced by the low cloud cover, Cockran knew the camouflage was less necessary than it had been in the bright sun yesterday but there was no reason to take chances.
Cockran listened as Sullivan cranked up the field radio. Earphones on, Sullivan spoke in a low voice. After a moment, Sullivan looked up and took the earphones off so that they dangled around his neck. He gave Cockran a thumbs up. “All twins present and accounted for.”
Cockran returned the thumbs up gesture. “Game on,” Cockran said, as he swung a Schmeisser and a Thompson submachine gun over his shoulder and headed off into the woods. Armed the same way, Hudson and Sturm fell in behind him. The two women and Sullivan followed, the Irishman leaning heavily on the sword cane. Mattie carried the field radios.
Once at the tunnel, Ted Hudson picked the lock to the exterior tunnel door for the second time in two days. Surprisingly, Mattie had agreed with Cockran that she and Ingrid should wait at the tunnel entrance until they had secured the clinic. Cockran led the way into the tunnel and the others followed. Sullivan limped along behind Cockran, followed by Hudson. Sturm, electric torch in his left hand, Luger in his right, brought up the rear.
After the four men had traversed the half-mile long tunnel and were again at the door leading into the clinic, they switched off their electric torches and Cockran opened the door a crack. The corridor was silent and empty. Still, Cockran waited. There would never be a good time to enter the clinic. Anyone could come along. But he was determined to wait at least thirty minutes to make sure that, as before, there were no patrolling guards, armed or otherwise. After twenty minutes, he heard a noise, the sharp click of leather heels on the tile floor. Two guards walked by clad in a black SS uniform, submachine guns over their shoulders.
Cockran closed the door and switched on his electric torch. Armed guards were new. This was not going to be a walk in the park. He found some humor in the truth he’d learned over a decade before in the Great War. It was easy to plan an operation. He no more considered the possibility of his own death while doing so than he did when he was a child playing with the toy soldiers Churchill had given him. It was only when he reached the precipice of action, trapped at the bottom of a trench and staring at a wall of mud, that he would consider the peril into which he had deliberately placed himself. The waiting was always the hardest. Once over the top, adrenaline kicked in and his body took over. He knew what to do.
Cockran passed back the news of the armed guards and Sturm volunteered to spell him at the door and wait for the next set of guards to pass by. Cockran almost declined and then caught himself. Sturm, wearing the uniform of an SS Obersturmbannfuhrer, was going to be the first in harm’s way. He deserved a first-hand look.
Waiting, Cockran reflected on how loyalty to your unit transcended personal differences. Sturm was Mattie’s former lover and yet, instinctively, he had agreed to Sturm’s request to spell him at the door because he knew it would increase the German’s chance for survival and the unit’s chance for success. He had learned that lesson in the war. Men didn’t fight and die for their country; they fought and died to protect their mates in the unit. Officers who didn’t understand that didn’t live long in combat. If the enemy didn’t kill them, their own men would.
STURM’S thoughts at that time were less philosophical. Waiting was indeed difficult, but easy to master if you had disciplined your mind. Sturm focused on nothing but the details of the mission, clearing his mind of any emotions that might weaken his resolve. He knew precisely what he must accomplish but how he did so depended on many unknowns.
The timing of the guards’ rounds clear, he closed the door, then switched on his torch. “We’ll wait for the guards to make their next round. When they do, I will elmininate them. Wait for my signal.”
Twenty minutes later, the footsteps of the guards returned, echoing off the metal door which led into the tunnel. As they passed by, Sturm made his move but the door betrayed him. As he opened it and stepped into the hall, it emitted a soft squeak which sounded as loud as thunder to Sturm.
The two guards, both Untersturmfuhrers, spun around at the sound, their submachine guns aimed directly at Sturm. It was apparent someone had placed the entire clinic on a high alert. As if the Nazis had known they were coming. And the two junior lieutenants looked both nervous and inexperienced. If this didn’t work, he would be dead and Cockran would have to abort the mission.
Sturm slammed shut the tunnel door and and stepped into the hall, rising to his full height which was several inches above the two blond-haired SS guards who appeared barely out of their teens. “Idiots! Lower your weapons! Now!”
The guards lowered their weapons but Sturm could see the suspicion in their eyes. They recognized the uniform but not the man wearing it. “This facility is on high alert and were I an intruder, you would both be dead. I watched you twice walk by an external entry point,” he said pointing to the tunnel door “and you never once checked to see if it was secure.”
“You’re both being placed on report for dereliction of duty.” Sturm said as he closed the distance between them. “So shoulder those damned weapons; stand at attention; and salute a superior officer!”
The two guards slung the leather straps of their machine pistols over their shoulders and sprang to attention. “Heil Hitler!” they said in unison, their arms raised in the Roman salute. It was all Sturm needed. No time to think. Sturm pulled the silenced Luger from the black leather holster on his belt and shot the guard on the right in his forehead at point blank range, the .9 mm bullet exiting through the back of his head with a spray of blood and bone.
Reacting to the faint cough of the silenced shot, the guard on the left barely had time to lower his extended arm and look over and down at his fallen comrade when Sturm shot him in his right temple, his head exploding in a similar way. He went back to the tunnel door and knocked to signal all clear. Cockran opened the door and, followed by Sullivan and Hudson, stepped into the hallway and saw Sturm’s handiwork.
“Put the bodies in there,” Sturm ordered, pointing to the open tunnel door. Cockran and Hudson did so. Sturm and Sullivan followed them into the tunnel.
“Herr Cockran and Major Hudson, strip them of their tunics and caps and put them on. The three of us will clear the clinic. Kill any guards. As for the orderlies, bring them back to Herr Sullivan who can bind them and can keep them under guard in one of these rooms.”
As Cockran put on one of the dead guards’ tunics and Hudson did the same, Sturm motioned for Sullivan to hand him the field radio: “Ingrid? Do you read me? Over.”
The radio squawked and he heard Ingrid’s voice. “Advance through the tunnel until you reach the clinic and wait there,” he told her. “Herr Sullivan will meet you. Over.”
Sturm turned to Sullivan. “Wait for the women inside the door. I’ll keep this radio. We’ll call you once we have secured the facility.”
Cockran pulled out a floor plan of the single story clinic—two parallel wings joined at the center by a corridor and forming a crude H—and laid it out on the ground. “We’re in the bottom right-hand leg of the H,” he said to Sturm. “You and Ingrid were shown the top two legs. The bottom leg on the left was the locked one. We’ll clear the top and bottom of the right side first and then the top of the left side. We’ll save the locked leg for last.”
Sturm gave Cockran a curt nod and headed for the door. Hudson followed and Cockran fell in behind. In clearing the entire right or north side of the complex, they only came across two unarmed orderlies who were taken back to a room where they were bound and gagged by Sullivan who then rejoined the women just inside the tunnel door.
The trio proceeded across the bar of the H to the left side of the building when Sturm heard voices in conversation coming from the direction of the locked wing. He stopped sudd
enly as he reached the corner and motioned behind him for Cockran and Hudson to stay low. He was on the near side of the corridor wall while Hudson and Cockran crept along the far side of the wall. Hudson in the lead, Cockran behind. Hudson would be the first to see whoever it was coming up from the locked wing, Cockran the second.
There were four voices, joking and laughing in German. Three SS men and an orderly in white whose name apparently was Gunter.
“Tell me Gunter, how did yours compare to the two blondes we poked three days ago?”
“Much better. Like riding an unbroken young mare. Did you see how she bucked when I mounted her? Did you hear her moans after I brought her to heel? Don’t try to renege on our bet. I know I brought her off. Much more spirited than those blondes who lay there like dead fish.”
“Just like your wife, Olga, right Gunter? Shagging a dead fish should be nothing new for you.” the first man said, followed by more laughter.
“Olga is never like that with me,” a third voice chimed in. “She always flops around like a trout you speared with a pike and keeps begging me to stuff her more. She says Gunter’s pike just doesn’t measure up to mine or any of the other SS.” More laughter.
“We’ll see who’s laughing tomorrow.” the man named Gunter replied “I’m only an orderly but you’ll have to pay off our other bet when Doktor Josef publishes his pathology report on those two blondes and we learn whose seed was successful.”
More laughter and the first man spoke again. “We don’t need to wait. Just ask your wife. She’s practically an SS mascot. Whenever you’re on duty, she’s over at our barracks in a flash, naked as a newborn. We all take turns. She’s insatiable and that body of hers keeps a lot more than our spirits up. Face facts, Gunter, do you really believe her two blue-eyed blond children could possibly have been sired by a brown-eyed mongrel like you?”
Gunter’s life would not last long enough for him to reply to the renewed laughter.
75.
Ask Him His Name
The Verschuer Clinic
The Bavarian National Forest
Thursday, 2 June 1932
COCKRAN was concerned when he and Hudson stepped out from the corridor because he could see the fourth man was an unarmed orderly. It would be difficult to take out the three armed SS guards without harming the orderly. Hudson apparently didn’t care as he stepped out and squeezed off six rapid shots from his silenced Schmeisser grouped in a tight target over the orderly’s heart.
“Why kill an unarmed…?” Cockran began as the dead orderly pitched forward on his face but he never finished as Sturm turned the corner and joined Hudson in unleashing a deadly hail of .9 mm bullets from their Schmeissers at the three guards. Cockran then did the same. Like the first two guards Sturm had executed, all three wore the uniform of an SS Untersturmfuhrer, young lads all, who never stood a chance, their weapons still slung uselessly over their shoulders as the bullets hit them.
Both Cockran and Sturm fired short, controlled bursts and between them took down two of the guards with head and chest shots. Hudson had a different method. Unlike the orderly whom he killed quickly, there was now no danger. Hudson ran a line of bullets across the third guard’s stomach who cried out, his hands clasping his middle, blood streaming through them. Having gut-shot his target, Hudson approached within five feet and ripped off another burst in the same place, almost as if he were using the man’s hands as a target. This time the man did not cry out but merely gasped, coughing up blood as he sank to his knees, his body nearly cut in half. Cockran watched as Hudson approached the man, flicked the lever onto semi-automatic, stuck the barrel of the sound suppressor into the helpless man’s mouth, forcing his lips to form a wide “O” around it, and pulled the trigger, blowing out the back of the man’s head.
Hudson was still grinning, his eyes bright with the thrill from a kill as he looked at Cockran and Sturm and gave them both a thumbs up. Sturm regarded Hudson coolly and finally said “I was told you were a marksman. Hard to miss when your weapon is in his mouth.”
Hudson’s smile faded quickly. “Fuck you, Kraut.”
Sturm ignored the insult. Behind them, the main entrance to the clinic was halfway up the top leg of the H. “I’ll check the entrance,” Sturm said, “to make sure more guards aren’t on the way. When you’ve cleared the hallway, head for the locked wing.”
Cockran nodded and began checking the rooms on one side while Hudson did the same on the other. As expected, they found no twins. If they weren’t in this leg, Cockran thought, then it meant they were all under lock and key in the fourth wing. He walked back across the center of the H to the north side of the building and down to the door leading to the tunnel entrance to help Sullivan escort Mattie and Ingrid to the final wing. They had cleared three wings but he was taking no chances. Mattie came out of the door from the tunnel with her Walther in her right hand, held high beside her face. Ingrid was unarmed.
“Thank God you’re all right,” Mattie said as she embraced Cockran.
“Kurt, is he.…?” Ingrid began to ask, her voice halting.
“Von Sturm is fine,” Cockran said. “He and Hudson are taking care of the three SS guards we just killed. That’s a total of five. Our odds are improving.”
A few minutes later, the six of them gathered around the metal door leading to the last wing of the Clinic. In bright red letters were the words, “Authorized Personnel Only. Do Not Enter.” The locks looked more sophisticated than anything he had practiced on in his advanced training at Fort Holabird. Perhaps Hudson, still being in the military, had taken a more recent refresher course. “Ever see one like this before?” Cockran asked.
“Not really,” Hudson replied. “But I’ve seen ones by the same manufacturer. This is their latest model but maybe it works on the same principles. Let me see what I can do.”
Cockran and Hudson had doffed their SS tunics by now. Hudson reached into the inside pocket of his leather flying jacket and extracted his tools. He knelt down in front of the locks and set to work, a look of concentration on his face as he did so. Two minutes later he stood up.
“Damn! It feels like an older model, but what I just did should have opened it. Wait. Did we check the SS tunics to see if of the guards had a set of keys?”
“We did,” Sturm said, “the dead orderly also.” Sturm’s eyes narrowed. “But now that you mention it, perhaps we should question the other orderly.”
“Let me do it,” Bobby Sullivan said. “I have a natural affinity with Germans. For some reason, they simply can’t stop talking once I begin asking questions.” Sullivan smiled, twisting the handle on his sword cane and pulling the two-foot blade out of its sheath. Light from the overhead fixture glinted off its stainless steel surface as Bobby inspected it carefully.
Two minutes later, they all could hear a piercing howl come from that direction. Thirty seconds passed and another howl split the air. Then, silence. Finally, they heard the tap, tap, tap of the metal tip of the sword cane as Sullivan limped down the tiled hallway.
“Well?” Cockran asked.
Sullivan didn’t reply. He pulled the sword cane from its sheath, its sharp tip bright with blood. He reached into a pocket, fished out a ring of keys and lobbed them to Cockran who inserted them one after the other until he found one that fit and unlocked the door.
“Sturm will go first and intimidate any clinic personnel we encounter while Ted and I secure the wing. Then Mattie and Ingrid can search for the twins.”
Cockran opened the door and stepped aside for Sturm. A dark haired man in a knee-length white lab coat was standing at a high table halfway down the corridor. He turned at the sound of the door. His face was clean shaven and matinee idol handsome, maybe in his late 20s.
“Heil Hitler!” Sturm shouted, startling the young man who recovered enough to bark something at them in German, protesting the intrusion, but Sturm interrupted him with a stream of harsh sounding German. The man appeared to be thoroughly intimidated.
T
en minutes later, they completed their search of the wing and found only two patients, identical twin sisters named Andersen, one from Milwaukee, the other from Minneapolis. They had light brown hair, blue eyes and appeared to be in their early 30s. Both were heavily sedated.
“There were twelve twins here yesterday,” Cockran said. “Where are the other ten?”
The doctor professed ignorance and smiled nervously. At this, Bobby Sullivan extracted his sword cane from its sheath and approached, its tip still bright with blood.
“He doesn’t know where eight of them have been taken,” Sturm translated. “But he says we’ll find another pair of twin sisters in there,” pointing to the nearby steel door.
Cockran looked over at the door the man had pointed to and felt a chill. He didn’t need a translation. “Pathology Laboratory/Library”
“Ask him what his duties are in the clinic”. Cockran said.
The man straightened his shoulders, puffing his chest with pride as he answered Sturm’s question. “He says he runs the laboratory. That he is Verschuer’s principal assistant.”
“Ask him his name” Cockran said.
The man hesitated, then he clicked his heels. “Mengele. Doktor Josef Mengele.”
76.
We Have No Guidelines
The Verschuer Clinic
The Bavarian National Forest
Thursday, 2 June 1932
WAIT here,” Sturm said to Mengele and then walked back to Cockran, who was speaking in a low voice with Ingrid and Hudson. Mattie was standing apart from them with Bobby Sullivan at her side.
“Herr Cockran? May I have a word?” Sturm asked politely. “This wing is virtually soundproof. It’s possible that Mengele did not hear our silenced weapons. He believed my story that Ingrid and Mattie are my personal assistants. He also believes that you, Major Hudson and Herr Sullivan work for me in a plain clothes capacity. Shall I continue to be the Obersturmbannfuhrer and see what he will tell us voluntarily about the twins? Or would you prefer Herr Sullivan’s more direct methods?”
The Gemini Agenda Page 37
