never endured. The Americans may crumble under the weight of the metal thrown at them.”
Zhukov concurred with Chuikov’s revisions to the original plan. He had to bow to the tyranny of logistics. They simply could not push on to the Rhine without the supplies Chuikov insisted were at Dortmund. As to the Americans crumbling, let Chuikov think that would occur if he so desired. Instead, he would have to prepare for the longer battle.
In the next few weeks, it was imperative that certain things occur: first, Chuikov would have to have some measure of success driving toward the Rhine while, second, Koniev would have to halt the inevitable counterattack that would come from the south. With many of his tanks stripped from him to support Chuikov, this would be a difficult challenge for Koniev.
Zhukov smiled inwardly. At least, he thought, if Chuikov’s armies were stopped in the north, Koniev was likely to get a bloody nose in the south. If that were to occur, his despised rival could not claim the upper hand in jockeying for the position of most favored general with Stalin.
Tony Totelli shrieked in horror as the Russian emerged from behind the tree and, equally astonished, confronted Joe Baker. It was their worst fear come true. It couldn’t be happening. Tony had checked the area and there had been no Russians around. Where the hell had this one come from?
Tony was more than a hundred yards away and he could only watch as Joe’s knife suddenly emerged in his hand and was driven into the chest of the Russian.
The Russian fell forward onto Joe and there was a sudden flash and the sharp crack of an explosion as the stick of dynamite Joe had been carrying detonated.
“No!” Tony screamed and stood up. It couldn’t be. Joe Baker was immortal. He couldn’t die.
Anton ran up to him, gasping. “I saw the Russian at the last moment. He had been taking a nap and must have just awakened. At least he was not part of an ambush.”
“We gotta help Joe,” Tony moaned. In the last few weeks, Joe Baker had been more than a leader to Tony. He had become a big brother to him, and Tony began to sob with the sense of loss.
Anton grabbed his arm. “Tony, we must leave. There’s nothing we can do for him and the explosion will surely bring more Russians.”
Reluctantly, Tony agreed. All they had been going to do was blow up a lousy telephone line using dynamite they’d stolen from the Russians. They had done it many times before and it was no great deal. Yet, this time, something had gone wrong. Joe had killed the Russian, but somehow the charge had detonated.
The smoke was clearing and Tony and Anton could see the misshapen and fragmented lumps that had once been Joe and the Russian strewn about on the ground. Neither man looked like anything human.
“Tony,” Anton insisted, “we must leave.”
“Yeah.” Tony shook the anger and sadness from him. What a fucking horrible break for Joe. “Let’s go.”
As they made their way from the danger area, they hid behind trees and were passed by a couple of trucks loaded with Russians who were heading quickly for the area of the explosion. The sight of them infuriated Tony and he wished he was carrying a weapon that he could use to avenge Joe. But he was unarmed. That was another of Joe’s thoughts. If you’re not carrying a gun or knife, you won’t be tempted to do something stupid with it. Even in his saddened state, Tony knew that attacking truckloads of Russians would certainly qualify as stupid.
After long detours, they made it away from the area of immediate danger to where Vaslov had stayed back at their last encampment. Their activities were somewhat protected by the fact that refugees of all types, ages, and nationalities were wandering Europe; thus, there was safety in the sheer numbers of people uprooted by the wars.
“What now?” Vaslov asked on hearing the sad details.
Tony had to think. For the longest time, other people had been doing most of his thinking for him. First it was his parents, then his teachers, and then his sergeants and officers. Joe Baker had taken over from them, as Tony really had made no long-term plans for staying alive in enemy-held territory.
Now it was time to do something on his own behalf. Sure, he had made it after his tank had been destroyed, but that was mere survival. Now he wanted to fight.
So what were their strengths? First, they had a couple of weapons and that NKVD uniform buried not far away. Second, they had the radio Joe had brought and they knew how to use it to contact his OSS superiors. All they had to do was decide how to use these resources in the best manner.
Oh yes, Tony thought, we are alive and free. They had survived the months since that fateful day of the ambush. That ought to count for something.
Lieutenant General Adolf Galland of the Luftwaffe felt the incredible surge of power beneath him. It was invigorating to be in a plane again and going to battle against the enemies of Germany even though he didn’t quite understand his status. Was he still a Luftwaffe general or, he laughed to himself, a prisoner of war out on parole? What the hell, he thought, he was flying the best plane ever made and the Americans were going to let him kill Russians while using British jet fuel. What was happening to his world?
Galland was forty thousand feet above the Weser River and stalking prey, this time Russian instead of American or British. It struck him as incredible that he and the other pilots had resumed working at their craft. He had fully expected to have been executed by Hitler either for insubordination or for having failed to stop the Allies, or, later, imprisoned for many years by those same Allies.
Instead, the war between America and Russia had brought him and his fellow pilots a reprieve. It had also brought the world’s first operational jet, the ME-262, back into the war, this time with American markings. It had only made sense to use the Germans who had piloted them, although there were a handful of Americans in the formation. Thank God he and some of his comrades spoke fairly good English and had been able to give the Yanks some solid but quick training.
The ME-262 was a weapon incredibly superior to any fighting aircraft other nations had. Unlike most of Hitler’s other attempts at a superweapon, the ME-262 actually worked. Heavily gunned, with four 30 mm cannon and twenty-four rockets, it could fly at 560 miles per hour, almost twice the speed of some of the Russian planes and still much faster than anything the Americans or British possessed. If only Hitler had permitted quantities of them to be built instead of the thirteen hundred or so that had finally been completed. It hurt Galland to realize that the majority of them had been either destroyed on the ground or captured in hangars because there was no fuel to fly them and no safe place for them to land. He was not aware of more than a few that had actually been shot down in battle.
The tactics were simple. The jets would be the first to attack the enormous Russian bomber stream that radar said was approaching the American defenses along the Weser. The jets would dive from on high and rip through the Russian air fleet at blurring speed, killing as many as possible and throwing the meticulous Russian formations into confusion. When they were finished, the other Allied fighters would take over and continue the battle. With luck, he and the others would be able to refuel and attack again and again. Jet fuel had been in short supply in Hitler’s Germany, but the Americans, even without any operational jets of their own, had devised a way to adapt British fuel and were well on their way to making their own.
There. He saw them. A long, ugly smudge of what looked like locusts coming in below him from the east. The hundreds of Russian bombers, quickly identified as Ilyushin IL-4s, were, as usual, flying in tight formation, close up and three abreast in a serpentine line that stretched for miles. Russian fighter pilots could be quite good, but their bomber crews generally were not.
He hand-signaled to his wingman, another German, a man who’d shot down more than two hundred Soviet planes, and received acknowledgment. They had kept radio silence and it was unlikely that the advancing Russians suspected their presence. They would logically expect American propeller-driven fighters, not jets.
Quicker than he dared think possible, they were over the Russians. Galland made another signal and the scores of sleek-winged jets began their attack, like wolves ripping into the herd of sheep below.
Tolliver winced and closed his eyes as the earth shook again. It was impossible to think clearly, much less hear. He glanced at Holmes and the couple of others in his trench on the west bank of the Weser and saw the pale terror on their faces. Did he look like that? God help us.
After a few drinks, some of the older men in the bars of Opelika had told of the incredible artillery barrages of World War I and how men went mad under the incessant thunder, knowing they could be blown to pieces, or turned to jelly by a near miss, or buried alive at any time. How long before that happened to his men? Or to himself? Buried alive was the worst of the three terrible choices. It was the stuff of nightmares.
The Russian barrage had commenced only an hour earlier, and that hour now seemed like forever. They
