by Leo Kessler
And far away at the tail-end of the Stormtroop column, young Lieutenant Haas heard the faint sound of firing to their rear and felt an icy finger of fear trace its way down the length of his spine. Instinctively he knew what had just happened. Behind them the road to the rear had been cut. They were on their own in Russian-held territory. There was no way back.
SECTION TWO:
A TRAP IS SPRUNG
ONE
‘Sir!’
Colonel Stuermer swung round on Sergeant-major Meier who was marching behind him at the point of the long slow column of mules and mountaineers. ‘Yes, Meier? What is it?’
By way of an answer, Ox-Jo pointed a big finger at the foot hills to the right of the road that led to Chursuk. Outlined a stark black against the crimson ball of the late afternoon sun, a handful of riders were plodding along on a parallel course to their own.
‘Must be well over a couple of kilometres away,’ Meier confirmed what Stuermer was thinking. ‘In this mountain air, you can see much further than in the plains.’
Stuermer nodded, and flinging up his glasses, focused them on the mysterious riders. There were a dozen of them, mounted on ponies not much bigger than their own mules, and as far as he could make out, they wore no uniform. But it was clear that the dark objects they bore across their shoulders were rifles. They were an armed party.
The question was who were they?
It was a question that Major Greul aired a moment later.
‘What do you make of them, sir?’ he asked, lowering his own binoculars.
Stuermer did the same slowly. ‘Don’t know exactly, Greul. They could be partisans. They could be this tribe — the Karatski — that Intelligence mentioned.’
‘One thing is certain though, sir,’ Meier interrupted. ‘They know we’re here and they’re watching us.’ He pointed his finger at the sudden bright gleam that came from the ranks of the strange riders. ‘Binoculars.’
‘Yes,’ Stuermer agreed. ‘You’re right there.’ For a moment he stood there, his brow creased in a puzzled frown, while the column came to a halt behind him. Then he made his decision. ‘There is nothing we can do about them. We’re on foot, they’re mounted. Meier?’
‘Sir?’
‘Pass the word back — everyone is to keep his eyes peeled, and you and Jap better hoof it to the rear of the column to give Lieutenant Haas a bit of muscle — just in case.’
‘Right, sir,’ Meier said cheerfully, and nudged his running mate. ‘Come on, we’re going to have a look at mule arses from behind. It’ll be better than looking at your ugly mug all the time.’ Holding onto their machine pistols, the two NCOs doubled the length of the column, passing on the C.O.’s orders, while the men of Stormtroop Edelweiss checked their weapons in anticipation.
But nothing happened. As that long afternoon passed, the riders kept level with the column, but made no attempt to attack it. After a while the mountaineers gave up their regular glances in their direction and concentrated on the march towards the glittering peaks of the snow-covered mountains, above which the still air seemed to shimmer an electric blue.
As the afternoon started to draw to a close, and the temperature began to become bearable, the character of the country also changed. The steppe became more broken. Grey rock outcrop was more frequent and the grass grew yellow and stunted, as if it had been pressed down for a long time by the winter snows. Here and there a sweating trooper buttoned up his tunic, shivering a little at the cooler wind which was blowing from the mountains, in welcome relief from the almost unbearable heat of the steppe.
Just before nightfall, Stuermer ordered a stop near a pleasantly babbling mountain stream and when the tired troopers stumped sore-footed to it, they found the water icy-cold, as if it had originated in one of the far-off glaciers. As Jap complained through suddenly chattering teeth: ‘Cold enough to freeze the eggs off yer.’
‘Yes, if yer had any to freeze off,’ Meier agreed, pouring a canteen of the icy water over his big head.
Standing a little way from the men grouped around the stream quenching their thirst and bathing their sore tired feet, Stuermer surveyed their position.
The place was as good as any for an overnight camp. The area was littered with small boulders — probably the result of some Ice Age moraine — with solid tufts of large thistles dotted here and there between the boulders. It would make an ideal defensive site just in case.
For the first time in the last hour or so, he remembered the strange riders who had accompanied the column for most of the afternoon. He swung round and focused his binoculars on the hills to their right. Screwing up his eyes against the almost horizontal rays of the setting sun, he searched every nook and cranny. Without success. The riders had vanished as abruptly as they had come. A few moments later the sun slipped behind the hills and the valley was swamped in darkness. Stormtroop Edelweiss was alone again.
They had eaten the last of the pea soup, washed their canteens in the stream and now, with the stars glittering a hard silver in the immense purple sweep of the sky above them, the men of Edelweiss lay in their blankets, drifting off to sleep.
Colonel Stuermer lay next to young Haas, his head resting on his rucksack, fully dressed save for his boots, thinking over the events of the day. Far away he could hear the faint howl of the timber wolf. Idly he wondered if it could have any significance. A warning perhaps?
‘Do you think we’ll reach Chursuk tomorrow, sir?’ Haas broke into his thoughts.
‘Very probably Haas. With a bit of luck.’
‘But those riders, sir. Do you think they could be partisans?’ Stuermer misunderstood the anxious note in the young officer’s voice. ‘Don’t worry, Haas, you’ll get to climb the mountain,’ he said with a soft chuckle. ‘Remember, I promised you you’d carry the flag on the ascent.’
‘Thank you, sir, but…but perhaps I won’t be good enough for a climb like that.’
Again Colonel Stuermer chuckled. ‘Don’t worry, any son of Colonel Haas is good enough. Your father would have my hide if I refused to let his son in on something like the ascent of Mount Elbrus. God forbid!’
Lieutenant Haas remained silent and again Colonel Stuermer misunderstood. ‘Your father is of the old generation. Almost nineteenth century,’ Colonel Stuermer went on, unaware of the young officer’s real reasons. ‘The English started climbing, you know. The rich sons of the fat bourgeoisie. They were sick of the commercialism of city life. They wanted a new challenge — a new dimension of existence, the English climber Edward Whymper called it. On the one hand, they wanted to get away from civilization, and on the other, climbing mountains was a sort of symbol that human beings could tame nature, even the highest peaks. Your father belongs to that generation. I understand his motives, but I don’t quite agree with them.’
Lieutenant Haas turned in his blankets and stared through the velvet gloom at the white blur of Colonel Stuermer’s face. How he wished his father were like the colonel: a man to whom he could talk openly, express his inner fears his emotions, his weaknesses! ‘Why don’t you agree, sir?’ he asked softly.
Well, I agree in the sense that it is good to get away from civilization — remote from city squalor, the noise, the purposeless activity of buying and selling. But the conquest of nature. No! Nature is simply there, it is nothing that you can fight and conquer. That is a kind of philosophy to which I cannot subscribe. It smacks—’
‘Of the brown uniform and the crooked cross,’ the young Lieutenant beat him to it.
‘Perhaps,’ Colonel Stuermer agreed, and smiled softly. Haas knew; he had seen through him. ‘But, my dear Lieutenant, I think we’d better drop that particular subject for this night. After all, one can’t have a unit commander talking treason with one of his officers, can one?’
Haas laughed softly and a little nervously. ‘No, one can’t, Colonel.’
‘Good night, then, Haas. Up at five tomorrow.’
‘Good night, sir,’ Haas replied, feeling reassured and c
onfident again. ‘And thank you, sir.’
Colonel Stuermer turned on his side and made himself more comfortable on the hard stony ground, but he didn’t close his eyes immediately. ‘Thank you sir,’ the boy had said. He wondered idly: Why?
Slowly the Stormtroop men fell asleep. Now there was no sound in the little camp save the snores of the weary mountaineers, the soft tread of the sentries and the crackle of the watch fires. Above them in the heights, the watchers counted the number of fires and carefully noted their positions. The woman was a stickler for details; she wouldn’t tolerate any carelessness. Thus they watched and waited.
TWO
Sergeant-major Meier raised his right leg and gave a soft fart. ‘Heil Hitler,’ he said automatically.
‘Shut up!’ Colonel Stuermer whispered. ‘Do you want them to hear, you stupid lout?’ He waved his pistol. ‘Follow me.’ Together with Ox-Jo, Jap and six of his veterans, he began to steal into the thin night mist which writhed through the boulders, their sock-covered boots almost noiseless. They waded a little torrent, its rushing water again drowning any sound they might have made. On the other side, Colonel Stuermer knelt and ran his hand over the damp earth. His fingers traced the outline of what he had expected to find there — a horse-hoof mark.
‘They’re up this way,’ he whispered to Ox-Jo, ‘and remember when the balloon goes up, I’m not looking for corpses, I want prisoners.’
The big NCO clutched the sandfilled sock he had prepared specially for this night’s excursion more firmly in his ham-like fist, and whispered back, ‘Never fear, sir, you’ll get one — handed to you on a silver platter.’
They went on, the track becoming more difficult. Stuermer veered to the right, telling himself that whoever was watching them would need a clear field of sight over the camp below. They worked their way through a group of mountain pines, carefully lifting back branch and holding it until the man behind could catch it and do the same for the man coming after him. The method was almost soundless, in spite of the thickness of the trees.
Stuermer was holding the last pine branch when his nostrils were suddenly assailed by the warm sweet smell of horses. In that same moment, they must have scented him. There was a faint whinny and the sound of a fretting horse pawing the earth. He froze. They were there. The unknown watchers could only be a matter of metres away. He crouched low and slid into the glade. Before him, there was a line of boulders, with beyond, far down below, the faint pink flickering of the mountaineers’ campfires. This was the observation site. He began to crawl forward. Behind him his men emerged one by one, and veterans that they were, they split into two groups, intent on converging on the boulders from both sides.
Now Colonel Stuermer’s nostrils picked up the scent of unwashed human bodies and the stinking black Marhokker tobacco the Russians smoked. They were very close now. He could feel the sweat begin to break out all over his lean body, in spite of the coldness of the night. And he knew why. It was at the prospect of violent action.
The horses, tethered somewhere out of sight beyond the boulders, obviously sensing that the strangers represented danger, continued their fretting and nervous low whinnying. But the unknown watchers seemingly were asleep. There was no reaction from their positions. Colonel Stuermer told himself they must be amateurs. Even partisan units usually put out sentries when they slept. But then perhaps his own trick of leading out this little patrol in the middle of the night, when the rest of the Stormtroop had been asleep for hours, might well have lulled the watchers into a false sense of security. He crept on, body tense and tingling, expecting the shout of alarm and fear to come at any moment.
It did. The very next moment. But from a quarter he had not expected. Suddenly he stumbled and nearly lost his balance. At his feet, a pale blur of face stared up at him in shocked surprise. For what seemed an age, the two men stared at each other, soundlessly, motionlessly. Stuermer recovered first. Just as the Russian opened his mouth to sound the alarm, Stuermer’s pistol clubbed down on his head. With a soft moan, he flew back into the hole grubbed in the stony earth in which he had been sleeping.
But the moan was enough. Beyond the boulders, the horses reared up in alarm, tugging and jingling their traces, whinnying with fear.
‘Stoi?’ a voice broke the silence.
Stuermer knew they had been discovered. ‘At them!’ he cried.
Sleeping men woke up startled. Here and there a man managed to scramble to his feet before the attack descended upon them. A Russian tried to grapple with Ox-Jo. The big NCO didn’t give him a chance. His blackjack smashed into the back of the Russian’s head. He fell, as if pole-axed. A man broke away from the furious mêlée. Instinctively, Stuermer knew he was heading for the tethered horses. Stuermer jerked the trigger of his pistol. Scarlet flame stabbed the darkness. The running man faltered, his hands fanning the air, spine curved in unbearable agony. Then, as the light vanished, he flopped to the ground, face-first.
Another man broke loose from the scene of murder and mayhem. Stuermer pulled the trigger. No one must escape, he knew that. Nothing happened! Angrily he pressed it again. Once more nothing. He swung round to Jap who was acting as his bodyguard. ‘Fire — damn you!’ he roared. Jap did not hesitate. The machine pistol chattered in his hands. The running man zig-zagged violently, vicious spurts of sparks thrown up at his heels. But the man bore a charmed life. Just as Ox-Jo slugged the last Russian into insensibility, the running man disappeared behind the cover of the far boulders. A moment’s silence. Next instant there was the frantic clatter of horse’s hooves down the stony trail that led to the valley. Stuermer let his shoulders slump, suddenly feeling very tired. The Russian had got away. He would warn the others, whoever they might be.
‘All right, shithouse mouse,’ Ox-Jo snarled, drawing back his big fist. ‘Sing, or you’ll get the biggest knuckle-sandwich you’ve ever eaten!’
Their sole prisoner, the man Colonel Stuermer had stumbled across, stared back at the big NCO numbly, his face gleaming with sweat in the light of the torch that Jap held. He shook his head.
The Stormtroop corporal, who spoke some Russian, repeated the question that Stuermer had posed. ‘Who are you and what is your mission?’
Again the man shook his head.
Before Stuermer could stop him, Ox-Jo dropped his fist. He pulled out his pistol and cracked the muzzle against the prisoner’s mouth. With a yelp of sudden pain, he opened it. In a flash, Ox-Jo’s pistol muzzle had penetrated into his throat and thrust him back against the rock-face. Gagging and choking, trying to free himself from the gun, the man’s head writhed back and forth as Ox-Jo cursed him roundly in his thick Munich accent.
Colonel Stuermer had had enough. He understood Ox-Jo’s reason for using this kind of method to extract the information they needed. Time was short. The man who had escaped might already be bringing up reinforcements. This was not the proper place for a long-winded interrogation. All the same, he could not tolerate torture in Stormtroop Edelweiss.
‘All right, Sergeant-major,’ he snapped, ‘that’s enough!’
‘But sir, I’ve just got the perverted banana-sucker where I want him,’ Meier began to protest.
‘I said that’s enough!’ Stuermer cut him short. ‘Let him go, do you hear?’
Meier did as he was ordered. The prisoner sank to his knees, face wild with pain, bloody, pulpy tissue spewing from his wide-open, frantic mouth.
Stuermer licked his lips. ‘Ask him the question once more, Corporal,’ he commanded in a weak voice. ‘If he doesn’t talk, we’re getting out of here.’
The interpreter repeated the question.
The prisoner looked up at the circle of hard faces, hollowed out to death in the blue light, and probably told himself he could expect no mercy from them. They would kill him if he didn’t talk. He spat out a broken tooth, and a gob of thick blood, and began to speak.
Hastily the corporal translated; he, too, wanted to be on the way back to the camp before the escaped Russian r
eturned with his comrades. ‘He says, sir, that he belongs to a partisan group…. They were formed in the winter…. They have units all over the south…they are supplied by air.’
‘Ask him why they were watching us?’ Stuermer asked. Far away he thought he could hear the clip-clop of horses’ hooves picking their way with difficulty, up the steep trail in the darkness.
The Corporal translated swiftly.
Again the prisoner spat out blood. Now his answer came more slowly. Perhaps he, too, heard the sound of horses. ‘I was ordered to, that’s all he says, sir,’ the corporal interpreted.
The clatter of hooves was getting louder now. ‘Who ordered him to watch us?’ Stuermer flung a last question at the prisoner. The prisoner seemed about to refuse to answer. Ox-Jo raised the bloody muzzle of his pistol threateningly. The Russian gulped. He spoke.
‘Well?’ Stuermer demanded, when the interpreter did not speak. ‘Who?’
‘A woman, sir. A blonde woman from Moscow,’ the corporal answered, his face puzzled.
And then as the first wild bullets began to howl from the boulders all around them, the men of Stormtroop Edelweiss were scrambling for safety back into the trees, leaving their one-time prisoner unconscious in the blood-stained dust.
THREE
Major Greul had had the men awake and ready to march off, as agreed with Colonel Stuermer, when he had heard the sound of the small fire above, in the mountains. Together with the sweating, hard-breathing little patrol, they had disappeared into the night, their haste communicated even to the normally slow-moving mules, followed by the wild erratic fire of the new group of partisans. They had escaped without a casualty, and after a while the firing had died away altogether, and they had been able to slacken their pace to the normal sixty paces a minute.
