Kat and Die Wolfsschanze

by Michael Beals

  “Don’t be so negative,” she said, pulling on her shoes. “Sandro’s probably as good as you.”

  “I doubt it. He might be a great fighter pilot, but he’s a rookie in combat.”

  “Stop worrying. Look, it’s not difficult to aim a bazooka. It’s not exactly rocket science.” She frowned. “Actually, it is rocket science.”

  He gave her a wry smile. “You’re a nut case, Wolfram. Shall we go downstairs and see what they’re cooking up.”

  They found everyone out on the terrace, Dore deep in conversation with Gramigna. It was Gramigna’s team now. Kat didn’t like the idea of having a Commanding Officer, but the General did. While they were with him, they were under his Command. Walking up to them, she dug Dore in the ribs.

  “What are you both gabbing about?”

  Gramigna smiled. “Morning, Kat. We’re talking about landmines. They’re not easy to dig up.”

  “I can imagine.”

  Gramigna continued, “most of the mines the Germans plant are anti-tank mines, which means they’re less sensitive and easier to dig up. You still have to be careful. We can talk about it later,” he said, glancing at his watch. “The convoy went through half an hour ago. I want to watch them laying the mines. Knowing where they are is a lot easier than looking for them.”

  “Can we come with you?”

  “Absolutely. Alfonso’s gone to get the truck.” Turning to the trestle table, he opened the flaps of a cardboard box to reveal a collection of field glasses. “We’re watching the road from the hills, so you’ll all need a pair of these. We won’t be digging them up today. We’re only watching.”

  “What if a passing car sets them off?” Stewart asked.

  “The locals don’t use the main road. They all know it’s mined.”

  Five minutes later, a canvas-topped Mercedes truck pulled into the driveway. Arming themselves with Sten guns, just in case, they all piled into the truck. Knowing that the main road wasn’t far away, Kat expected the journey to be short. Still, it was a good half hour before the truck finally came to a stop. The road they were on was little more than a winding track that followed the crest of a meandering hill. The road they’d come to observe was a hundred feet below them and barely visible through a rocky hillside of acacia saplings.

  “You might want to bring a knife,” Gramigna said. “This area’s crawling with snakes and they’re poisonous, so keep your eyes peeled.”

  “Snakes?” Kat said. “In Italy?”

  “Fraid so. You wouldn’t see it if you were on your own. It would move out of your way. But there are twelve of us. If snakes can’t escape, they bite.”

  “Outstanding,” Dore remarked. “If there’s anything I hate, it’s snakes.”

  Kat racked her Sten gun, “don’t worry Sergeant, I have a Sten and 6 fully loaded magazines. I’ll protect you from all the forests crawly things.”

  “Thanks Lass. I knew I could count on you.”

  Pushing through the thick foliage, she scrambled down the rocky hillside. When they were a hundred yards from the road, Gramigna held up a hand. Not far below, a German halftrack parked. Behind the tank, a team of soldiers with pickaxes. They must have been there for a while because they were sweating as they hacked at the sandy surface. It was hard to tell if the road had ever been surfaced. Kat imagined it probably had been before the war. Now mostly crumbling tarmac and sand, not difficult to bury a landmine.

  “Okay, settle in,” Gramigna whispered. “I want to know the exact location of every single mine.”

  Finding a comfortable rock, Kat peered through her field glasses and studied the men. You would never have suspected them of laying mines. They looked as if they were only repairing the road. Working as a team, four men were digging holes with pickaxes, two were transporting the mines in a small handcart, and the remaining four men were burying and carefully arming them. Every so often, a Corporal would wave to the driver, and the halftrack would move on. Only one question in Kat’s mind, how many mines had already been laid before they got there? Because once covered up and sand brushed over them, the mines were completely invisible.

  “Do we know how long they’ve been here?” Kat whispered to Gramigna.

  “According to the lookout, they just arrived.”

  “Any idea how many mines they’re going to lay?”

  “They almost always lay five mines, then they move on. They’re almost finished laying the mines.”

  At that moment, a whistle blew, they loaded the handcart onto the back of the halftrack, and the men began clambering aboard. She glanced across at Kelly. The man with the bazooka was talking to him, and she realized why it was here. Making her way over, she listened to their conversation.

  “Twenty-five meters,” the man said. “Only at the road.”

  “When do I fire it?”

  “What’s going on?” Kat asked.

  “They want me to bazooka the road. It’s a scare tactic.”

  “We always do this,” Gramigna said, coming up behind her. “It scares the shit out of them, and they don’t lay any more mines.”

  “You don’t want them to lay more?”

  “No, I don’t. We have to carry them, and those that we can’t carry, we have to deton–” He stopped talking. The last of the men were climbing aboard the halftrack. “Get ready, Sam. The moment they move.”

  Kelly grabbed the bazooka, went down on one knee, and aimed it. The halftrack revved up in a plume of diesel smoke and began to move. Kat found herself watching Sam. The way his finger curled around the bazooka’s trigger, the lines on his face deepening as he aimed at the enemy, and she imagined him sitting in the pilot’s seat of a Spitfire, guiding the plane as he strove to keep a Messerschmitt 109 in his sights.

  Karooom! The road erupted in a deafening explosion, and the halftrack clanked to a stop. The Germans looked wildly around, a look of shock on their faces. Had they been mortared, or did they run over a mine? The halftrack backed up a few feet and stopped. Caught between the mines it recently laid and the unknown danger that lay ahead. To the left, the land rose steeply, to the right it dropped away to a deep gorge. It was trapped.

  One of Gramigna’s men fitted another rocket into Kelly’s bazooka and they waited.

  The halftrack sat there, its engines revving, smoke drifting from the freshly made crater. One of the men swung a swivel mounted MG34 around. The road now silent with nothing to shoot. The Corporal shouted something. The halftrack began to move again, steering around the crater.

  Kelly tensed as he aimed the bazooka again. The halftrack moved quickly now. Twenty kilometers an hour, thirty kilometers, forty… He pulled the trigger.

  A burst of hot air. Karooom! Another deafening explosion as the road erupted. The halftrack veered to one side, plowed through a bank of earth, swerved around the smoking crater, engine screaming. The gunner on the MG34 swung around and loosed off a burst of gunfire at the trees, bullets stripping the branches, pinging off rocks. Kelly dived behind a large boulder. One of Gramigna’s men was machine gunned to death.

  Cursing as she grabbed her Sten gun, Kat fired twenty rounds at the gunner, hitting him square in the chest and knocking him clear of the weapon. It wasn’t enough for Kat, what if someone else grabbed the machine gun? Spraying the other soldiers with two short bursts, she leaped into action, careening down the rocky slope like someone demented. The halftrack driver saw her coming. Yanking the hatch closed, he set off down the road at top speed. They last saw it as it slithered around a bend in the road and disappeared.

  Silence. A blackbird twittered as it burst from cover.

  Stepping into the road, Kat looked around. Everything looked different
from down here. She stood in the middle of a minefield, not knowing where the nearest mine was.

  “Someone give me a clue!” she shouted.

  “Back the fuck off!” came the reply. It was Dore scrambling down the slope towards her. “Walk backward, away from the gorge!”

  She stood in the middle of the road. She didn’t remember the Germans planting mines on her side of the road.

  “They buried one on our side of the road,” Dore panted. “Walk backward.”

  Very slowly, studying the ground as she retraced her steps, she backed off towards the grassy bank, then abruptly stopped. There were brush marks all around her feet.

  “Holy shit! I think I’m standing on one.”

  “Don’t move, Kat. Whatever you do, don’t move.”

  She twisted around. “Grammy!”

  Gramigna arrived, field glasses in one hand, a small brush in the other. Crouching down, he began brushing the sand around her feet.

  “Haven’t you got a metal detector?” she asked, peering down at him.

  “I don’t need one. You’re practically standing on it. Don’t move until I find it.” Probing the sand with the handle of the brush, he let out a sigh. “Found it. Walk backward.”

  Taking one giant step, she hopped onto the grassy bank. “Holy shit, it nearly got me.”

  “What the hell were you thinking? Never, ever run into a minefield. We know where all the mines are, but the road looks different when you get down here.” He twisted around. “Silvano! Jan Andrea!”

  As Gramigna had warned, digging up the mines wasn’t easy. The Germans hadn’t only placed them in the holes and covered them up. They hammered in rocks to jamb them in place. So Gramigna’s men had to prise the stones out before lifting the mines and disarming them. After a tense and nerve-racking moment, Kat could understand how Gramigna could lose some of his men. One false move, and boom!

  Hauling the lethal devices back up the hill, watching for snakes as they climbed, they loaded them into the truck and drove back to the villa. It was a warm and balmy afternoon, and they should have been able to relax, but the day wasn’t over. When the sun went down, they drove north, to find the German’s new encampment and then lay the mines in the only road going north, while in the dark. They would be that much closer to Bologna, and the road surface might still be intact. If it were, they would have to dig through it, in the dark. They could only hope that when the British bombed Bologna, they would also destroy the road.

  “Just before you reach Bologna, there’s a long valley with steep sides,” Gramigna said, as they ate a frugal lunch. “A river runs beside the road, so there are small bridges. The Germans have to cross those bridges. There’s no other way into Bologna.”

  “We gonna mine the bridges?” Dore asked.

  “We’re going to try. The Germans always lead the convoy with a tank. If we can blow that tank and ruin the bridge, the convoy will be screwed. We’ll be in the hills. We’ll be high above them. We can bazooka the whole convoy.”

  “Aren’t the Germans heavily armed in Bologna?” Kat asked.

  “We’ll be on a country road. They’ll never get there in time. We’ll be gone before they know it’s happening.” He turned to Kat, gazed at her for a moment and gave her a brief smile. “Kat, we need people like you. You’re very brave and very skilled, but you’ve got to follow orders. You could have been killed today. We watched those mines being placed in the ground so that we knew exactly where they were, but you ran straight into them.”

  “I’m sorry, I… I didn’t think.”

  “I know, and it’s human nature. You were taking out a dangerous machine gun. Then you went completely overboard. The Germans couldn’t see us, and they were desperate to leave. We should have allowed them to.” He turned to the others, sipped his coffee, and nodded to himself. “Tomorrow morning we’re going to ambush that convoy. timing will be everything. It will be early morning, and we’ll be tired because we’ll have been laying mines for half the night. Those tanks will be on the move at 0700, and we’ll have heavy rain tomorrow. The Germans won’t be able to see very well, and we’ll be firing bazookas from the hills.”

  He paused to take another sip of coffee. “But… if we don’t take out those tanks, and there’ll be four of them, they can blow us to kingdom come.”

  “What are you saying?” Kelly asked.

  “That we take out the tanks first. There’ll be six or seven halftracks, and they’ll be firing at us with heavy machine guns. They’ll be quicker to respond than the tanks, so it will be tempting to take them out, but we’ve only got four bazookas. In the time it takes to load another bazooka, the tanks will be on us… and then we’re lost. Until the tanks have been disabled, we use Sten guns to return fire. I’m going to order which unit hits which tank. I can’t be with you all, and it’s safer if we’re spread out.”

  “You’re splitting us into two units?” Kat asked.

  “I am. It’s safer that way.”

  “So who’s going to Command our unit?” she persisted.

  “It’s up to you. I’d suggest you use Jock. He’s the most experienced.”

  She glanced at Dore. He was gazing up at one of the paintings, “Jock? You want to Command our unit?”

  He smirked. “I don’t mind if ya don’t mind. Ya and Sam can be on one bazooka. Harry and Atkins can fire the other. One tank each.” He looked at her and grinned. “Sandro and I can orchestrate and shoot from the hip.”

  “Sounds like fun,” she remarked. “At what point do we turn and run?”

  “When we run out of rockets,” Gramigna said. “We’ve got twelve rockets in total. If we’re accurate, one rocket should destroy a single tank turret. If we’re not very accurate, it might take two.” Once they’re gone, we get the hell out of there.”

  “And, er… do we know where to position our units?” she asked, already feeling uncomfortable about the mission.

  “We do,” Gramigna said. “We’ve already scouted the area.”

  She was silent for a moment. The last thing she wanted to do was upstage Gramigna. He’d planned this mission before they’d even arrived, which meant that he must have discussed it with Commander Fleming. Damn you, Fleming, she thought. You presume too much.

  “So what you’re really saying is that we’re two separate units.”

  Gramigna frowned. “You’re not happy with that idea?”

  Once again, she paused. Gramigna wasn’t going to like what she was going to say, but she was responsible for Kat’s Rats. “General, we’re here to help, but I’m not happy about going in blind… especially in heavy rain. Because we’ll find it hard to see as well.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “Well, for a start, we’ve never laid mines before, which is already a risk. Secondly, we’re setting up an ambush in an area we’ve never even clapped eyes on. So I’d be happier if we can do our own scouting while you’re laying the mines. Then if Jock still wants to orchestrate the ambush, I’m happy to agree. Otherwise, I’m going to Command our side of the mission… even if I did almost blow myself up.”

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “Put it this way. I’d rather trust myself. We’ve never lost a single member of our team, and I don’t intend to start now.”

  Gramigna gave a questioning look to Dore. “And are you happy about that, Jock?”

  Dore scratched at the stubble on his thick neck. “General, if that’s the way she wants to play it, I’m happy about it.”

  “You don’t mind taking orders from a woman… who wasn’t even commissioned until two days ago?”

  “Italians don’t take orders from women
?”

  Gramigna laughed. “Only if he’s married to her.”

  CHAPTER 10

  It began to rain when they left the villa, large, warm drops settling the dust on the dry flagstones of the terrace. Dark clouds were rolling in, and the wind rising, Gramigna’s forecast storm was almost here. At Kat’s request, a second truck had been found. Apart from also deciding to take grenades, Kat found five Stokes Trench Mortars. There were no launchers for the more massive mortars, so if they would bury them in the grassy banks and set them off remotely, the Germans wouldn’t know what hit them.

  Despite the increasingly heavy rain, Kat loved the journey to the ambush zone. Following the network of narrow tracks that interlaced the hills, roads that the Germans didn’t know existed, they made their way towards Bologna. It was another world high above the valleys. The war hadn’t touched this part of Italy. They passed isolated cottages, horses grazing in undisturbed paddocks, small vineyards and cherry orchards. Life, still at peace in the hills.

  Dragging herself back to reality, she checked the magazine on her .45 making sure it was fully loaded. Usually, tonight would have excited her, just the danger of laying mines. But they weren’t going to lay mines, Gramigna’s men were doing that. Kat and her team were going to bury the Stokes Trench Mortars and scout where the ambush would take place. Choosing the wrong location could make the difference between life and death.

  They were coming to a fork in the road. Gramigna’s truck slowed as if it wasn’t sure whether to fork left or right. A shrine on the corner was one of the many memorials that existed in Italy. People put flowers in them or lit a candle at certain times of the year. To Kat’s surprise, that’s what Gramigna had in mind. Getting out of the truck, he walked over to the shrine and lit a candle, perhaps praying for a blessing for tomorrow’s mission. She watched him cross himself as he walked back to the truck, a man in his sixties, who shouldn’t even be on the mission at his time of life.