The Man with the Iron Heart

we’ll stay hidden, and before too long we’ll be with our friends again. Once we are, we’ll give the Amis the horse- laugh. For now-let’s move!”

They moved. The only ones who seemed uncertain of the way were the physicists. The others had been down here longer than Wirtz and Diebner. And, unlike the slide-rule boys, the SS personnel were encouraged to explore their underground world. They might have needed to try an escape far more desperate than this one. Heydrich thought he could have done it in absolute darkness, without even a match to light the way. If you knew where to run your hand, shallow direction markers on the walls would guide you along. He was glad he didn’t have to try it, though.

Like the other escape tunnels, Three was carved out of the living rock. It wasn’t prettied up the way the main body of the command center was. It didn’t resemble barracks and offices. Heydrich’s boots thunked off stone as he hurried along. He led from the front. He might be dressed as a Sturmmann, but he didn’t act like one.

Heydrich grunted in satisfaction when his torch showed the stairs ahead. They led to the camouflaged mountainside doorway that would let him slide out of this trap as he’d slid out of the one the Amis set when he rescued the German physicists.

He climbed the stairs. There it was: the underside of the stainless-steel escape hatch. It would have dirt and grass on top of it. It also had a periscope beside it. If someone needed to come out here by daylight, he could make sure it was safe. Heydrich pushed up the periscope now, too, but he couldn’t see a goddamn thing. Either the diversionary party’s attack had knocked out the Americans’ lights or the Amis had had the sense to turn them off themselves.

Well, it wouldn’t matter. “Kill your torches,” he said. When the others had, he undogged the escape hatch and pushed up. It was heavy. He felt and heard roots and shoots tearing as he shoved. Then the hatchway swung open. Cold, grass-scented outside air poured into the tunnel.

“Come on!” he said. “North and west once we’re out!”

“How will we know which way that is?” Diebner asked plaintively.

“I can steer by the stars, if there are stars. And if there aren’t, I have a compass.” Heydrich didn’t bother hiding his scorn. “Now up! Move it!” He might have been a drill sergeant at physical training-except a drill sergeant wouldn’t murder a man who couldn’t keep up, while Heydrich intended to.

One by one, the Germans emerged. Heydrich looked around. No moon, but some stars. Once his eyes got used to nearly full dark again, he’d be fine.

Bernie Cobb sat on a boulder, watching the firefight down below. He wished like hell he were on his way down there to give the guys on his side a hand. He could slip off in the darkness, and that officer would never be the wiser…. How many other GIs had already done just that? More than a few, unless he missed his guess.

For the moment, discipline held Bernie here. For the moment. When they asked him why he hadn’t helped out, what would he say? I was only following orders, maybe? That didn’t cut it. Bernie knew it didn’t. They’d already hanged plenty of death-camp guards who tried singing that song.

“Shit,” he muttered, and then “Fuck,” and then “Motherfucking son of a bitch.” None of which helped. He stood up and took a couple of steps down the mountainside, drawn by the racket of automatic weapons and bursting shells.

Then he heard a much smaller noise behind him. There weren’t supposed to be any noises back there. It might have been another American soldier heading down toward the fight. It might have been, yeah, but it didn’t quite sound like that. Next thing Bernie knew, he was flat behind that boulder, the grease gun cradled in his hands, his index finger on the trigger. He didn’t know what was going on up there, and he didn’t want to find out the hard way.

The noise went on. It got louder. It sounded like somebody or something trying to push up through the grass from below. Unless it was the world’s biggest fucking gopher (did they even have gophers over here?), that should have been impossible outside of a horror movie. It should have been, unless….

Abruptly, the noise cut off. What followed was a perfectly human grunt of satisfaction, and what sounded like footsteps on stone or concrete. Then the footsteps were on dirt instead. And then somebody spoke in a low voice- but, unmistakably, in German.

Even as Bernie grabbed for a grenade, more people came up out of, well, whatever the hell that place was. An escape tunnel, he supposed. He waited. He’d only get one chance at this. He had to do it right the first time. How many of those assholes were there, anyway? Was it the whole fucking Reichstag? No-the other house was over on the far slope of the valley, making life miserable for the Americans down below.

At last, after what seemed like twenty minutes longer than forever, he didn’t hear any more footfalls on stone. The krauts milled around on the grassy mountainside, muttering in soft voices. Sorting out what to do before they do it, Bernie thought. Yeah, they’re Germans, all right.

Any second now, though, they’d go do it instead of talking about it. If he was gonna get ’em, best to do it while they were still bunched up. As quietly as he could, he pulled the grenade’s pin. Then he rose up onto his knees and flung it into their midst. He heard a thump, a startled exclamation, a blam! and all the screams he could’ve hoped for.

He fired a short burst from his grease gun. More screams! “Jerries!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “Whole buncha fuckin’ Jerries!” He squeezed off another burst and bellyflopped down behind the boulder again.

Just in time, too. Quite a few of the Germans had to be hurt. They all had to be discombobulated. All the same, some of them were pros. Bullets from one of their nasty assault rifles spanged off the boulder in front of Bernie and snarled by overhead. He slid to the left and returned fire again, more to give the krauts something new to worry about than in the serious expectation of hitting them.

If too many GIs had ignored the officer’s orders, he was screwed. The Germans would flank him out and slaughter him like a fat hog on barbecue day. Sure as shit, here came urgent running footsteps, around toward the right side of the boulder. Hardly even looking, Bernie twisted and fired. His magazine ran dry, but not before he won himself a screech and a moan from the Jerries.

And then fire started coming in on the krauts from both sides. M-1s and grease guns could put a lot of lead in the air. “Thank you, Jesus!” Bernie murmured-he did still have friends in the neighborhood, after all. With those friends raking the Germans, they had too much on their plate to care about finishing him off.

He stuck another magazine on his submachine gun and banged away at them again. It wasn’t aimed fire, but it didn’t have to be. If you spat out enough bullets, some of them were bound to bite. And even the ones that didn’t scared the crap out of people they just missed.

“Surrender!” somebody shouted in English, following it with “Hande hoch!”

Damned if that wasn’t the officer who’d told everybody to sit tight. He’d turned out to be 112 percent right- probably right enough to win himself a medal.

Bernie wasn’t sure any Germans were left to surrender. But someone called, “Waffenstillstand! Bitte, Waffenstillstand!” They wanted a truce. They even said please. No matter what they wanted or how polite they were, Bernie didn’t stand up.

XXX

When Lou Weissberg heard the shooting start on the mountainside above him, he thought he was really and truly screwed. How many troops had the Nazis hidden in this stinking subterranean fortress of theirs? A division’s worth? That had to be impossible…didn’t it?

But the shooting up there didn’t last long. As soon as it stopped, he forgot about it, because the diehards on the far slope were still doing their goddamnedest to murder him. And then, off in the distance, he saw the headlights of a truck convoy coming down from the head of the pass. He breathed a long heartfelt sigh of relief. As soon as the reinforcements arrived, his ass was saved.

And a great burden slid off his shoulders. He might have fucked up, but the radioman hadn’t. As long as