Blood and Ice
Page 15
But it was hopeless. The grenade sailed through the air and exploded at his feet. It caught Chink in its blazing, whirling fury, threw him high into the air, and when his terribly mutilated body smashed to the ground again, something rolled a few paces away to come to rest at Schulze feet in the snow. It was Chink’s head.
Schulze screamed. In a bound he had grabbed the dying Suslov and dragged him over the edge of the cliff. His face contorted by a bestial fury, he brought down his heavy boot, studded with thirteen hobnails, and crashed it into Suslov’s face. Time and time again. Bone splintered. Blood spurted out in scarlet jets from nose, ears, eyes. The eyes disappeared. Still Schulze did not stop. On and on he went, the only sound that of his own savage grunting breath, the moans from the man who was being stamped into the ground, and that persistent crunch-crunch of heavy metal against soft flesh.
Janosz could not bear to look. He had never seen such unspeakable ferocity in a human face in all his long life. It belonged to another world.
And finally Schulze was done. Sergeant-Major Schulze, the last survivor of SS Regiment Wotan, sank into the snow beside the man he had just killed, the tears streaming down his suddenly transformed, sweat-lathered face. ‘This fucking war,’ he sobbed. ‘This fucking, awful war.’
ENVOI
ENVOI
Schulze had been drunk for the whole week they had been waiting in Graz. One by one or in small groups, he had seen his little band of SS troopers, clad in the civilian clothes Janosz had bought them on the black market, depart. Now they were all on their way to face the brutal uncertainties of their own countries in which they would be regarded as renegades and traitors and not the bold ‘defenders of Western European culture against the red Bolshevik plague’, as the black and red SS recruiting posters had once screamed. Some of them were going to their death, some to long terms of imprisonment; but those of them who survived the bitter years ahead would carry to the grave the terrible stigma of being Europe’s lost sons – ex-members of SS Regiment Europa.
Now Janosz himself was ready to leave on the next leg of the long journey to that land of ‘milk and honey’, as he was calling it openly. With a sizeable portion of that seemingly unlimited ‘Christian charity’ of his, he had bribed a fat Wehrmacht transport Major, who had supplied him with a dozen ancient Wehrmacht trucks, complete with ex-Italian POW drivers, glad of this opportunity to return to their own homeland before the Russians came. They would take him and his refugees into Italy and the Allied lines.
Now the time had come for the incongruous pair, the towering, barrel-chested SS NCO and the undersized Jew to part. They stood in the soft-falling snow. Above them, hidden by the grey snow clouds, Soviet bombers were droning westwards on their way to Vienna. They could both hear the rumble of the guns at the front, softening up the German positions for the new offensive. Janosz jerked a thumb in the direction of the artillery barrage.
‘They’ll be here soon, Schulze,’ he said.
Schulze shrugged. ‘So what?’
‘Europe has got rid of one tyranny,’ the little Jew said softly. ‘But it will soon be replaced by another one, which will be much worse. I have seen it. Hitler is a novice in cruelty and repression in comparison with Stalin. You will see.’
He held out his hand. ‘Well, Schulze, this is the parting of the ways. I must get back to my flock. We move out in thirty minutes, once I get those Italian drivers away from fornicating with the local women.’
‘Those Macaronis have got the right idea,’ Schulze said, ‘fuck not fight.’ He took the old man’s hand. ‘The best of luck, Jew.’
‘The same to you, German.’ Without another word Janosz turned and walked away, his skinny shoulders bowed against the snowflakes.
Schulze watched him go. He had come a long way with the old Jew – they all had. Now it was all over. For a long moment he stood there on the empty slushy pavement, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, the snow falling sadly on his shabby black-market overcoat, with all his worldly possessions – soap and razor, a handful of useless marks and two hundred Turkish cigarettes – stuffed into its pockets. Ex-Sergeant-Major Schulze felt drained and very, very tired.
Suddenly a soft, winning Austrian voice impinged upon his consciousness, ‘Is the gentleman looking for a good time this afternoon?’ it inquired.
Schulze spun round, his despair forgotten in an instant. Two teenage girls stood there, dressed in identical peasant costume, their cheeks prettily flushed by the cold air so that a casual observer might well have taken them for country girls. But a delighted Schulze knew otherwise. Their scarlet lips and the knowing look in their tired eyes told another story. ‘You’re twins!’ he exclaimed somewhat stupidly.
‘That’s right,’ the one who had spoken said, ‘you catch on fast.’
‘You’re going to catch my dick before you’re much older, my little cheetah.’
‘It’ll cost you one hundred schilling for a jump,’ she replied, unimpressed. Which one of us do you fancy?’
‘Which one?’ Schulze roared, tugging out the carton of two hundred cigarettes and noting the sudden look of interest in their jaded eyes. ‘Not one, but both of you!’ He thrust the carton at them and putting a big hand around each girl’s plump young breasts, he cried out loud, so that the shabby, bent-shouldered civilians on the other side of the street turned in alarm, ‘Point me at the nearest bed, my little Austrian darlings! It’s going to be the screw of the century, that I can promise you!’
Ex-Sergeant-Major Schulze, the last survivor of that doomed, elite brotherhood, had just declared a separate peace. Now he could begin to live again.
Also by Leo Kessler and available from Spellmount Publishers in The Dogs of War Series
No. 1 Forced March
No. 2 The Devil’s Shield
No. 3 SS Panzer Battalion
No. 4 Claws of Steel
No. 5 Blood Mountain
No. 6 Death’s Head
No. 8 The Sand Panthers
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First published in 1977
Reprinted in 2006
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