The Stein & Candle Detective Agency, Vol. 2: Cold Wars (The Stein & Candle Detective Agency #2)

by Michael Panush

  “A whole family?” Mort asked.

  Belasco nodded. “These are the Steins. The daughter’s lucky enough to be in boarding school in America. Everyone else has a small army of Waffen-SS as unwelcome houseguests. Dr. Wolfgang Stein’s wife, Hannah, is an Englishwoman, and she has the misfortune to be of a race Hitler doesn’t like. If Dr. Stein doesn’t follow his marching orders, Hannah and little Weatherby go straight to the camps.”

  Morton had heard about the camps. He knew the charnel horrors inside. “Christ,” he whispered. “We’ll rescue them? That’s the mission.”

  “Exactly. And make sure you bring them back to us. The Third Army will be nearby, so you pull them out and then join up with us.” Belasco took back the picture. “The Stein family has produced the greatest occultists in Europe for generations. They’ve conjured up powerful elemental spirits, created artificial life, made deals with the Devil, and transmuted lead into gold. We want them.”

  “Even the little boy?”

  “Even the little boy.” Belasco smiled. “Imagine all the juicy little secrets they have rattling around in their brains. Imagine the power America can wield when we pick them clean.”

  “You’re talking about human beings, Belasco,” Candle said, feeling a hint of anger blossom inside of him. “Not folders of intel.”

  Belasco opened his mouth to respond, when Patton clamped his arm on the OSS operative’s shoulder. “Why don’t you go outside, Bobby? Go see what the men are up to?”

  Still smiling, Bobby Belasco stepped outside. Candle watched him go. Patton waited until the tent flap swung closed, and then reached for a bottle of whiskey and two cups. He slammed them down on the map and starting pouring. “You like whiskey, Sergeant?” he asked. “We’ve liberated enough fancy French wine to drown an army, but I wouldn’t use that swill to wipe horse crap off of my boots.” He looked up at Morton as they emptied their glasses. “And I wouldn’t piss on Bobby Belasco if his heart was on fire.”

  “Permission to speak freely, general?” Candle wondered.

  “You go right ahead. I do that every time I open my goddamn mouth.”

  “He’s a rat,” Candle said. “A weasel. I know his type from back home. The kind that would sucker up to the coppers or the crooks, depending on the time of day. The kind that would shoot his pal in the back, as long as there was some easy money in it.”

  “I guess so, sergeant. And I trust him about as far as I can throw him. He’s worse than the goddamn commies. And he doesn’t care much for anything, unless there’s profit in it.” Patton tapped the map. “But the Steins are still held captive by the Nazis. That nice family is getting tortured by a bunch of German monsters. And I think we’ve got an opportunity to do something about it, kick some ass, and save the day. And if that’s not why we’re here, then I don’t know the goddamn reason!”

  Sergeant Candle smiled. A speech from Patton could a light of fire inside anyone. “I’ll rescue them, sir,” he said. “You can count on my squad.”

  And so they had taken a risky flight over the Black Forest, bailed out and parachuted down into the woods around Castle Stein. And Dr. Wolfgang Stein and Hannah Stein were dead, giving their lives to save their son. And here they were, trapped in a ruined church with the Waffen-SS closing in, like a noose around the neck of a hanging man.

  But Candle and his soldiers weren’t going down without a fight.

  They worked all morning, and most of the afternoon, breaking only for chow and a quick rest. They didn’t stop until they heard the sounds of boots in the shaded forest floor, and the rumble of engines and machines among the boughs of the trees. The SS weren’t playing it quiet. They didn’t have any need to.

  Candle stood up. “All right!” he said. “Grab a gun and get to cover! Jerry’s incoming!”

  He scrambled into the trench that his men had dug, next to Newt and Dutch. All three men raised their guns, aiming them into the woods. Tiny prepped the machine gun, threading in a belt and cocking it. In the steeple, Elkins leaned the barrel of his rifle on the ledge. Charlie stood inside, a stolen MP40 sub-gun in his hands, ready to go where he was needed.

  The Germans started coming in. They were moving through the trees, dozens of them. These were the brawny Waffen-SS fighters, wearing dark forest or pure white winter camouflage. They were big men, Teutonic giants unleashed on an unsuspecting world. Candle didn’t allow himself time to be scared. He started firing, careful bursts that dropped the nearby Nazis.

  Tiny’s .30 cal roared to life behind them, sweeping the forest with lead. Bark and branches went down, and men did too, ripped to red shreds by the heavy gunfire. Newt and Dutch rattled away, their carbines spitting out lead nearly in tandem. Morton didn’t like it. It was all going too well.

  A mortar round came whistling down, striking the side of the church and raising a fountain of dirt and flame. Candle wasn’t panicking. He simply waited and listened, and then Elkins’ sniper rifle cracked off a shot, and then another. The mortar team had to have been nearby. That was their mistake. Elkins never missed, and the Germans wouldn’t be stupid enough to try that again.

  Sergeant Candle and his squad fell into the familiar pattern, a well-practiced dance they had done since Normandy. Flanking fire, covering fire, suppressing fire, reload and do it again. Herding the enemy where they wanted him to go with bullets and the occasional grenade. And when the enemy reached the chosen destination, he got a long burst from Tiny’s .30 cal. Candle didn’t like how well it was going. He knew the bad times were going to get there soon.

  Then he heard the rumble of a Panzer tank drawing closer, and knew the bad times had arrived. Mort Candle peered through the shade under the trees as the treads whirred through dirt. He recognized the tank instantly. It was a Tiger, a vehicle legendary for its sheer power. The 88 mm gun swung their way, slow and ominous as an executioner’s axe.

  “Fall back to the church!” Candle cried. Newt and Dutch hurried for the doors, and Mort would have followed them, if the tank hadn’t chosen that moment to fire.

  Mort went into the air. He was lucky, the explosion striking only near the edge of the trench. But it still knocked him flat on his back and left his ears ringing. Everything went slow and soft around him. Candle gritted his teeth, grabbed his gun and started firing, even as he summoned up the strength to move. The Tiger’s only machine gun started to whine, cutting into the ancient stone walls of the church. The German infantry in the woods surged towards the church, using the tank as cover.

  A hand gripped Mort’s arm and hauled him back, like he was a child. He looked up and saw it was Tiny. The big gunner hurled captured stick grenades into the German ranks. “Come and get some of that, you hear!” he bellowed. “I got plenty more, just you see!” They started going off, blasting back the infantry. Tiny hurled back Mort and tossed him inside the church like the sergeant was a bundle of rags.

  “Tiny, you imbecile!” Mort tried to sit up, but it was too late. A bullet burned into Tiny’s side, flattening him on the ground. Candle felt a bit better now, and he grabbed his Thompson and prepared to run to his friend.

  Charlie beat him to it. “Cover me, sir!” Charlie shouted, dashing out. His pistol was flashing in one hand, a medical kit held tightly in the other. “Taking out that tank would be nice!”

  “You got it.” Mort looked back at Dutch and Newt. “Come on, boys,” he said. “That Panzer ain’t gonna wait all day.”

  They dashed outside, running straight for the tank. They split up, weaving across the open field. The Tiger Tank’s fearsome main gun fired again, carving off a corner of the church, but missing the paratroopers. Candle didn’t bother to look behind at Charlie and Tiny. He trusted them and he had his own problems.

  He and his rifleman hurried to the dark brown sides of the tank. The armor of the Tiger was thick, tough enough to take shots from Allied tanks without getting a scratch. Busting it open with grenades was not an option. But Sergeant Candle and his boys had a different idea. Mort hopped on
to the side, clambering to the top. He still felt like his innards were mush from being blown back by the Tiger’s shot, but he stood his ground and Dutch joined him. Newt stood near the treads, keeping the German infantry back with his carbine and the last of his grenades.

  “All right, Dutch,” Mort said, looking at the hatch and slapping down a tiny satchel charge. “Ready for shooting fish in a barrel?”

  “Sounds like fun,” Dutch agreed.

  Mort popped the satchel and it went off. It sent up a small line of smoke and cracked open the hatch. Mort and Dutch looked inside. A couple German tank operators looked back. Mort and Candle tossed in one grenade each. The explosions would rattle around inside the Panzer, cooking off the shells inside and reducing the men to shreds.

  They hopped down from the tank as the explosion boiled up from inside. Metal split and greasy smoke poured out. “Back to the church!” Candle ordered, and they pounded across the ground. Now Sergeant Candle looked up, staring into the opening of the church, and the figures under the archway.

  Tiny was leaning against the wall, a bandage slapped across his shoulder. His .30 cal lay on the ground, the ammo belt next to it. Charlie sat behind the gun, staring forward blankly. Candle ran to his side and knelt down, Dutch and Newt close behind. The German infantry were closing in. “You crazy, Charlie?” Candle demanded. “This ain’t no goddamn picnic! You’re gonna get your head—”

  He noticed the red splotch on Charlie’s uniform and the sightlessness in his eyes. “Oh Christ,” Candle whispered. He had seen men buy it before, tons of men, in tons of places. But it never got any better. “Oh god.”

  “He patched me up,” Tiny said, suddenly reaching for the .30 cal. He raised it, the ammo belt swinging as he lashed the string of bullets around his arm. “He took the shot and kept working until his hands went still. Until his hands went still!” He turned around to face the Waffen-SS soldiers and leapt to the top of the firing trench, the .30 cal blazing to life like a sudden storm.

  There was no stopping him. Tiny didn’t bother with bursts. He kept shooting in an endless stream until the charging Nazi soldiers were ripped to pieces and turned to run, and he gunned them down before they could reach the cover of the woods. He shot the corpses, and shot the wounded. He kept shooting until the belt was gone and the heavy machine gun clicked empty and he was still squeezing the trigger.

  Candle grabbed Tiny’s arm and pulled him back to the church. He got him inside and wrenched the gun from his hand, then gave him a long glare. Their eyes burned into each other. Tiny lowered his head. Newt and Dutch came back, carrying Charlie with them. They laid him down on one of the pews.

  “Sarge!” It was Elkins. “Sarge, they’re falling back! They’re going into the woods!”

  Slowly, Sergeant Candle turned around and risked a look out the stone window. He saw the SS infantry hurrying back, leaving their dead and the smoking remains of the Tiger tank behind. He sighed and looked back to his squad. “They’re licking their wounds,” he said. “We ought to lick ours. Go out there and get all the spare clips and guns we can find.” He looked at his Thompson. It was on its last magazine. “And don’t go far.”

  They listened to him, hurrying outside in furtive crouches. Elkins came down from the steeple, his rifle slung over his shoulder. “We got them good, Sarge!” Elkins laughed. “You should have seen them Krauts run, they were—” He saw Charlie and fell silent. “Ah Hell,” he muttered.

  “Yeah,” Mort muttered.

  The tent under the altar stirred. Weatherby poked his head out and saw Charlie. The boy started to run out, but Mort stepped in his way and caught him. “Don’t leave your tent, kiddo,” he said, carrying Weatherby back. “You stay there and rest. Save up your strength, you’ll need it.”

  “C-Charlie?” Weatherby asked. “Mr. Candle, what happened—”

  “He’s gone. He’s gone and you still need to rest, because you’ve got to move later.” Sergeant Candle set the boy down, inside the tent. “So just stay there and rest. Okay?”

  “A-all right.” Weatherby’s voice quivered. “Okay.” He wrapped himself in the soldier’s coat and lay down. A shudder ran through his small body.

  Candle turned away. He looked at Charlie and shook his head. There’d be no time to bury him. He took off the medic’s dog tags and pocketed them. That was all they’d be able to carry. He looked out through the archway and into the forest. One attack had knocked out one member of their squad, and the German ranks were still going strong. At this rate, they’d be dead by nightfall.

  He stepped outside and helped his men collect fallen weapons. There was nothing to do but grab all the Kraut guns and ammo he could find, hold out, and wait for the end.

  In the later afternoon, just as the sun was going down and shadows thickened under the boughs and branches of the Black Forest, Von Koch’s troops came again. This time they started with mortar strikes, with several teams scattered under the cover of the trees. Sergeant Candle heard their whine when he was carrying a heavy German rapid-firing rifle and several clips back to the church.

  “Mortars!” he cried, seconds before the first round struck the side of the church, blasting aside ancient stone bricks and clumps of dirt. “Get to cover!” He jumped into the nearest trench and stayed down, waiting as more shells streamed from the sky. Another blasted into the church’s roof, rocking the structure. Faded stained glass shattered and tumbled down. A sliver went into Mort’s hand, and he wrenched it out with a stifled cry. It was worse than any storm, the kind of downpour that would herald the end of the world.

  The church steeple took a shot and rocked backwards, the stone groaning as it tumbled down over the roof. It bounced twice, and came to a sudden crashing stop in the dirt. Candle looked through the dust and fire. That was Elkins’ post. The poor Okie hadn’t stood a chance.

  “Sarge!” But then he saw that Elkins was running back to the trench, his rifle swinging on his back. “They got the sniper’s nest!” He hadn’t been up there. It was luck, and only that, which had saved the sniper’s life.

  “Doesn’t matter!” Mort stepped aside, and Elkins joined him. Dutch and Newt were there, and Tiny hurried to grab his BAR. The .30 cal was out of belts, and the BAR was down to its last two clips. Candle looked down at them. “All right,” he said. “We fight. We hold out. We give Patton time to get closer. Then we blow this joint and run like hell to the Third Army. We take Weatherby with us. No matter what happens, the kid makes it. Any questions, ladies?”

  The mortar strikes roared down around them. Candle knew they couldn’t pound them into oblivion, for fear of killing Weatherby. They were trying to soften the Screaming Eagles up, to demoralize them and make them panic. It wouldn’t work. He gritted his teeth and treated the mortar shells like rain. All he had to do was wait for them to stop.

  When they did, the Germans sent in their infantry. Now the paratroopers opened fire with stolen German rifles and submachine guns. Candle had his rifle out and emptied clip after clip as he brought down the charging Nazis. They took cover in the corpses of their allies, and around the smoldering Tiger Tank. Grenades flushed them out, and gunfire finished them.

  But more troops came from the woods, backed up by heavy machine gun teams, and even a few soldiers with Panzerfausts. Rockets blasted into the dirt and the hastily dug trench, and Candle tasted the burns and smelled the gunfire. Smoke formed strange structures in the air in front of them. The Nazis were throwing men into the gun sights of the Americans, trying to overwhelm them. It appeared to be working.

  “Back to the church!” Candle shouted. “Fall back and regroup!” He stood up, as his gun finally clicked empty. He tossed it down and then drew his Colt automatics as he turned to run. Not many soldiers could pack a pistol in each hand, but Mort could and he was proud of it.

  He ran through the archway, with Newt and Dutch with him. Newt pitched forward and hit the ground. Mort saw flesh and blood in his left leg, and he dragged it as he came to his feet. “Damn i
t to Hell!” Newt cried. “Can’t run! Can’t run for nothing!”

  Elkins and Tiny got inside, both turning around to keep the infantry away from the doors. They held the line, forcing the Nazis back to just over the trench. Tiny’s BAR held them back, until it finally ran out of shells, and then it was finished.

  “Jeez Louise!” Dutch cried, helping up Newt. “They’re throwing everything at us!”

  “Everything they got,” Tiny said. He lowered the empty BAR and grabbed an MP40 sub-gun from the pile. It seemed tiny in his massive hands, like a child’s pop gun. “They want the boy bad, Sarge. They’re willing to throw lives away to get him.”

  “Fine by me.” Candle bent down and looked at Newt’s wound, tying it off and stopping the bleeding as best he could. He looked up at the soldier with weary eyes. Newt couldn’t run. Newt couldn’t leave the church and make it to Patton’s ranks. They all knew that the wound was a death sentence. “It’s bad,” he said.

  Newt nodded. “Feels that way,” he agreed.

  Before they could say another word, they heard Weatherby scream. Sergeant Candle looked to the altar and saw a figure that was gray and spindly and had knives for fingers dragging Weatherby out of the little tent, a long silver blade poised to slit the boy’s throat.

  Weatherby’s scream ended. “M-Mr. Candle?” he asked, and Mort could hear his whisper over the sound of the gunshots and the screams. “I need help!”

  “Don’t worry, kiddo,” Mort said. “I’ll be right there.” He dropped the pistols, pulled the Ka-Bar from his boot and jumped to meet the monster.

  The battle was short and messy. One second, Sergeant Candle was slashing his knife into the upper chest of the strange pale creature, though no blood flowed from the wound. Then the creature was on top of him, reaching down with long claws to skewer his eyeballs. It wasn’t breathing, and he could smell sterile chemicals and formaldehyde, almost overpowering. He gritted his teeth and pushed the monster’s wrist back, then brought up his knife. The big blade went into the living corpse’s neck, and he didn’t stop until he had taken off its head.