Watch on the Rhine lota-7

by John Ringo

  The patrol he led had crept in the dense fog to near the banks of the Niesse River. There they had inflated their rubber boat, then carried the boat in strictest silence to the water’s edge. The men, Benjamin in the lead, had hesitated for only a moment before walking into the forbidding, freezing water. The shock of that water, entering boots, leaking through even thick winter uniforms, and washing over skin, had rendered each man speechless. It was as if knives, icy knives, had cut them to the heart.

  But there was nothing for it but to go on. As the lead men found their thighs awash they had thrown inboard legs across the rubber tubing at the front of the boat. The rear ranks still propelling the boat forward, the second pair had thus boarded, then the third, then the final. As each pair boarded the men took hold of short, stout paddles previously laid on the inside of the rubber craft.

  Finally, the boat drifting forward, Benjamin gave the command in softest spoken Hebrew, “Give way together.” The men dug in gently with the oars, quickly establishing a rhythm that propelled the boats slowly forward.

  Up front, David and his assistant patrol leader, a Sergeant Rosenblum, used their paddles also to push away any of the sharp bits of ice that might have damaged the boat. Once, when the horrifying image of a burned and frozen Posleen corpse appeared out of the fog, David used his paddle to ease it over to sink into the murky depths of the stream.

  Once gaining the far side, Benjamin leapt out, submachine gun at the ready. Meanwhile Rosenblum pushed a thin, sharpened metal stake into the frozen ground, made the boat’s rope fast, and then helped the others ashore.

  The last two men were left behind to guard the boat, the patrol’s sole means of return to friendly lines.

  Rosenblum and the other four waited briefly while Benjamin consulted his map and compass — the Global Positioning System was long since defunct — and pointed a direction for Rosenblum, taking the point, to follow.

  The patrol passed many Posleen skeletons, but few full corpses. David and the others pushed away thoughts of their families back in lost Israel, pushed away especially thoughts that those families were, most of them, long since rendered like these Posleen corpses and eaten.

  Benjamin faintly heard a horrified Rosenblum whisper, “Not even the Nazis…”

  Past the broad band of corpse-laden Polish soil the patrol emerged into an area of frozen steppe. Here, Benjamin elected to return to the edge of that band to rest for the day.

  Normal camouflage would have been a hopeless endeavor. Instead, staying as quiet as possible, the men created three small shelters of humped-up Posleen corpses and remnants of corpses. Under these, at fifty-percent alert, the six men slept and watched through the short day of Polish winter.

  Many times that first day of the patrol they heard the growls and snarls of Posleen foragers. Twice, the foragers came close enough to make out faintly in the fog. On those occasions, sleep was interrupted and the men went to full alert.

  “Something is bothering me about them,” whispered Benjamin to Rosenblum.

  “What is that, Major?”

  Rosenblum thought for a moment, trying to determine just what it was that seemed wrong. Then it came to him, “They are looking for the merest scraps of food, rotten food at that. It is as if they were starving.”

  “Well,” answered the sergeant after a moment’s reflection, “it is winter, after all. The harvest…”

  “They can eat anything, to include the harvest gathered a few months ago, and to include any winter wheat still standing. They can eat the grass and the trees and Auntie Maria’s potted geraniums. But why should they when there were so many Polish civilians trapped or captured? It doesn’t seem logical somehow.”

  * * *

  Though the increasing light told of a sun risen halfway up to noon, the fog still held the front in its grasp. A few dozen half frozen men had made it back by now, never more than one or two per patrol, though. The men told Hans’ intelligence officer — when they could be made to give forth something like intelligent speech from frost-frozen lips and terror-frozen minds — that it had been hopeless. The Posleen were too thick on the ground, too intent, to penetrate through to their rear and whatever might be lurking there.

  As he had for many a day, Hans Brasche cursed the fog in his mind.

  * * *

  The God King’s hand stroked the warm, light blanket covering him. He had not thought to send out counterpatrols. Indeed this whole human intelligence gathering activity seemed to him faintly perverse. It was not the Posleen way to skulk through the night and fog, avoiding detection. Rather, the People rejoiced in the open fight, the deeds done before the entire host for the Rememberers to record and sing of unto future generations.

  But, happy instance, on this occasion, necessity had provided what Borominskar’s own brain had not. Searching for scraps of food amidst the slaughtered of the previous battle, his host had inadvertently provided a thick screen against the threshkreen’s cowardly snooping. And, hungry as they were, the scattered bands of the People had every reason to concentrate on the loose bands of threshkreen wandering the steppe. Only thus could their hunger be assuaged given the severe rationing imposed on the host by Borominskar’s decree.

  It was nice to see something working for a change.

  Well, the Path is a path of chance and fortune, after all…

  * * *

  Fortune favors the bold. Benjamin remembered that as the title of some motion picture he had seen once with his wife, in happier times. It was true then, and was no less so now.

  At nightfall the band set forth again to the east. There were fewer Posleen patrols once past the strip of corpses from the prior battle. What bands there were were easily detectable from a distance by the light from their campfires. These Benjamin and his men skirted, taking a wide berth. These diversions David also recorded on his map.

  The next sunrise saw the patrol twenty kilometers deep into Posleen-controlled territory, at a desolate and deserted little Polish farming village. Not that the people had abandoned their homes, no. Their fleshless skeletons dotted the town’s streets and littered its dwelling places. But the souls were fled, the food was gone. All of Rosenblum’s scrounging revealed nothing more nourishing than a few bottles of cheap vodka.

  Benjamin’s men subsisted that day on their combat rations, German and thus as often as not containing despised pork. Well, many Israelis did not keep kosher. And for those who did? Necessity drove them to eat what was available.

  Perhaps the vodka, parceled out, helped overcome their dietary scruples.

  * * *

  Harz drew the duty of feeding the commander. Filling a divided tray with a mix of Bavarian Spätzle, rolls and butter, some unidentifiable greens and some stewed pork, one hand grasping a large mug of heavily sugared and mildly alcohol-laced roggenmehl[46] coffee, he stepped onto the one-man elevator that led to the other topside hatch and commanded, “Anna, up.”

  Still listening and peering into the gloom, Hans seemed not to notice as Harz emerged from the automatically lifted hatch and left the tray beside him. Harz stood there for a while, leaving Brasche alone with his thoughts. Finally, he made a slight coughing sound to get the commander’s attention.

  “I heard you emerge,” Hans answered.

  “Lunch, Herr Oberst,” Harz announced.

  “Just leave it there, Unteroffizier Harz. I’ll get to it when I have time.”

  “Sir, I must remind you of the wise Feldwebel’s words. ‘Don’t eat… ’ ”

  Interrupting, Brasche finished the quote, “… ‘when you’re hungry, eat when you can. Don’t sleep when you’re tired, sleep when you can. And a bad ride is better than a good walk.’ I’ve heard it before, thank you, Harz.”

  “Yes, sir. But it is still good advice.”

  “Very well, Harz. Just leave it. I’ll see to it in a moment. Return to your station.”

  An order was an order. Harz didn’t click his heels, of course. That habit even the reconstituted SS had
not readopted. But he did stand at attention and order, “Anna, down.” The hatch eased itself shut behind him.

  Alone again, Hans picked up the tray. The Spätzle, the vegetables, the rolls and butter he ate quickly. Then, pulling the collar of his leather coat tighter around him, and grasping both hands around the steaming mug, he peered once again into the fog.

  Hans’ earphones crackled with the intelligence officer’s voice. “Sir, they want you down by the river.”

  * * *

  With outstretched hand a cosslain offered Borominskar a fresh haunch straight from the slaughter pens. It was a meager thing, not more than half a meter long, by threshkreen measures. But the God King had decreed no meat for the cosslain and the normals, and scant meat for the Kessentai. The thresh must be saved for the nonce.

  * * *

  Had they looked, the setting sun would have shone bright into the eyes of the traveling group of Posleen. That might have been all that saved the patrol from the keen alien senses. Had the accompanying Kessentai, flying five or six meters above and slightly behind the party, checked his instruments they might have told him there were wild thresh about.

  What can they be saving them for? wondered Benjamin, at the sight of yet another small band of humans, apparently healthy and well fed, being herded to the east by Posleen showing ribs through thinned torsos. Any sensible, any normal group of Posleen would have long since eaten those prisoners and gone looking for more.

  Even amidst Poland’s flatness there were interruptions: waves in the soil, trees, towns. It was from one of these, another deserted town atop a low, slightly wooded ridge running north-south, that the Israeli patrol watched the slow progress of the Poles and their Posleen guards.

  Not one man of the patrol was of direct Polish ancestry. None but would have, had they delved into Polish-Jewish “relations” over the preceding several centuries, felt bitterness or even hate. Yet Benjamin spoke for almost all when he announced, “We’re going to free those people, tonight.”

  “There are twenty-four of them,” cautioned Rosenblum, “and a God King. Pretty steep odds, boss. And how are we supposed to move one hundred people thirty kilometers back to the river and then ferry them across, without getting caught? Major… I’d like to help them but…”

  “But nothing. We are going to do it. And I know just how.”

  * * *

  The stars shone here, five or more kilometers beyond the thick fog which still rose nightly from the Oder-Niesse valley. The half-moon did as well.

  The human prisoners huddled in the center of an alien perimeter. That perimeter, two dozen Posleen normals, half facing in, half out, seemed slack somehow, the aliens’ heads drooping with apparent hunger or fatigue.

  Above, circling endlessly, the lone God King’s tenar traced a repetitive path, moving on autopilot, between those normals facing in and those facing out. The Kessentai’s own head drooped in sleep, his crest flaccid.

  Rosenblum, carrying the team’s one sniper rifle — a muzzle-braked, straight pull action, Blaser 93, chambered to fire the extraordinary Finnish-developed .338 Lapua magnum cartridge — took in the entire scene through his wide-angle, light-amplifying scope. The sergeant’s job was to kill the God King, no mean feat at nine hundred meters with a moving target.

  “And don’t, Don’t, DON’T hit the power matrix,” Benjamin had warned. “It will kill all the Posleen, but all the people as well.”

  Rosenblum had promised to do his best, while privately promising himself that if it came to his comrades’ survival, or that of the Poles, the Poles would, sadly, lose.

  The sergeant’s ears were covered with headphones connected to his personal, short-range, radio. This was his sole hearing protection and, firing the Lapua, it was barely enough.

  In any case, the major had his patrol on radio listening silence. Who could tell what the aliens might be able to sense?

  * * *

  Listening, creeping slowly as a vine, stopping to listen some more before creeping forward again; this was the universe of Benjamin and his men.

  There were sounds to cover their movement, human cries of nightmare, Posleen grunts and snarls, and the ever steady whine of the tenar. Benjamin had counted on these to move his team quickly to within a few hundred meters of the enemy.

  Now, however, they were too close for quick movement. It fell to creep, listen, then creep some more.

  Benjamin, with two men and carrying all the teams’ six claymore mines, moved to the right of a line drawn between the abandoned town and the Posleen-human encampment.

  The claymore was nothing more than an inch-thick, curved and hollow plastic plate. Seven hundred ball bearings lay encased in a plastic matrix to the front. One and one quarter pounds of plastic explosive lay behind the ball bearings. Cap wells atop allowed the emplacement of blasting caps into the explosive.

  The claymore was often considered a defensive weapon and had often been derided by the ignorant as yet another inhuman “antipersonnel landmine.”

  Neither was quite true. Though the claymore could and often was used as a sort of booby trap, so much could be said for a hand grenade; a weapon the aesthetically sensitive had, so far, not targeted for its attentions. Indeed, so much could be said of a tin can filled with nails and explosive and wired for remote detonation. For the most part, though, claymores were used to help protect manned defensive positions, and were command detonated rather than left for a wandering child to find.

  Yet they did not have to be used defensively. The claymore could also be used to initiate a raid, giving instant fire superiority to an attacker while decimating the defense in the same instant.

  For claymores could be aimed, and had predictable zones of destruction. Moreover, these zones of destruction were twofold, near and far, with a wide safe area in the middle. Properly aimed, to graze upward out to fifty meters, the claymore would butcher an enemy to that distance. Thereafter, however, the rising ball bearings flew too high to harm a standing man… until they reached about two hundred to two hundred fifty meters away, at which point their trajectory brought them back down to a man-, or Posleen-, killing height. Benjamin’s plan depended on this.

  * * *

  Sixty meters away the sleeping Posleen stood like the horse it somewhat resembled. To Benjamin it looked and sounded asleep, its snarls and faint moans those of a dog having a bad dream, its head hanging down slightly.

  About ten meters past, and offset to one side, the inward-facing Posleen guard seemed likewise to be dozing.

  Carefully, oh sooo carefully, Benjamin emplaced the claymore onto the ground. He had tried forcing the pointed legs down into the frozen soil but with no success. Instead, separating those legs to form two shallow upside down Vs, he simply laid it on the ground, twisted his head to bring an eye behind it and fiddled until he had a proper sight picture.

  Fifty or sixty meters to either side of Benjamin, the other two men of his party did more or less likewise. When they were finished with the first claymores, the other two crawled further out and emplaced the second, aiming for additional pairs of Posleen guards. Benjamin saved the last claymore for a rainy, or even a foggy, day.

  All crawled back as soon as they were finished. The claymore’s scant sixteen meters of wire did not suffice for the Israelis to meet at a common point. Trying to daisy chain the claymores, or to link them with detonating cord for central control, Benjamin had deemed an exercise in foolishness, given the nearness of the enemy. Instead, during weary rehearsals conducted earlier in the day, Benjamin had measured the time from separation to emplacement to retreat to firing position. This he had then doubled for safety and added fifty percent to for a bit more safety. Thus, each man had one and one half hours from separation to be returned and ready for firing.

  When his watch told him the allotted time had passed, Benjamin lifted his own small radio to his face and queried, “Rosenblum? Machine gun?”

  * * *

  “There is a human radio transmission com
ing from one hundred and fifty-seven measures to the southeast,” the tenar beeped.

  “Wha? What!” The Kessentai was awake in a flash, though true alertness and rational thought would take longer. Checking his instruments first to confirm, he took over control of his tenar from the autopilot to which he had delegated it. For a brief moment, the tenar stood motionless in the sky.

  * * *

  “Here,” answered Sergeant Rosenblum.

  “Take your best shot,” said Benjamin, over the radio.

  “Wilco,” the sergeant answered, settling into final firing position and confirming that his sights were set on the now-motionless God King’s chest. His finger took up the slack in the trigger quickly. Then the sergeant continued applying the steady pressure taught to him long ago in a Negev desert sniper course.

  The explosion, when it came, came as a surprise.

  * * *

  The God King, just coming to full alertness, felt a horrid jolt that ran from one side of its body to the other and sent waves of shock and pain across its torso. It kept to its feet for the moment, but just barely. Twisting its head to look down at the side from which it thought the first shock had come, the Kessentai was surprised to see a small hole gushing yellow blood. Turning the other way the God King was shocked to see a plate the size of a double fist torn roughly from that side. The God King felt suddenly sick at the image of the damage wrought on its own body.