Black Cross

“Get down. All of you.”

Ten SS men leaped to the ground and formed a line with their rifles and submachine guns at the ready.

Schorner adjusted the patch over his eye and stood erect. “There are at least two Allied commandos on the riverbank near the ferry, possibly more. The ferry is probably iced in, but there may be poison gas between us and them. Bock, Fischer, remain in the truck in case they try to flee this way in a vehicle. The rest of us will advance to the ferry on foot.”

Schorner moved up the line as he spoke, finding the eye of every man at least once. “I want five men to form a line in front of me, spaced at ten-meter intervals. I want one man on each side of me — twenty meters away — and one man behind, fifteen meters back. Fire on anything that moves. If any of us fall to gas, the rest will move in the opposite direction, but continue firing. Clear?”

Schorner had seen a few faces whiten when he mentioned gas, and the rest when they realized he meant to use them as human gas alarms. But situations like this were what the SS had been created for. Would Sturm’s concentration camp scum live up to the tradition of their corps? They might be scum, but they were German scum. He swept his eyes once more up the line.

“Remember your oath to the Fuhrer, gentlemen. ‘I vow to Thee and to the superiors Whom Thou shalt appoint Obedience unto Death, so help me God.’ Heil Hitler!”

As one, ten pairs of jackboots cracked and ten arms lifted to the cold night sky. “Heil Hitler!” came the answer.

Rifle bolts clicked in the darkness. The troops assumed the exact formation Schorner had ordered and moved quickly toward the ferry.

Anna nearly fired her pistol when the black-suited figure hammered on the window of the Mercedes. She had been watching the headlights of the troop truck and had not seen anyone cross the road. The swatch of tartan wedged into McConnell’s tank harness registered in her brain before she pulled the trigger. She got out of the Mercedes, closed the door, and hugged him tightly.

There was a sudden deep rumbling, and the ferry began to shudder in the water. Anna looked over the roof of the Mercedes. Stern was in the wheelhouse, giving the twin screws all the power they would take. The ferry heaved itself away from the bank and smashed into the sheet of ice covering the ferry channel, throwing Anna and McConnell to the deck. Stern shifted the engines into reverse, backed up and rammed the sheet again.

Nothing.

The third time, he backed the stern of the ferry flush against the dock, shearing off part of the access ramp with a screech of tearing metal. Then he shifted gears, gunned the engine, closed his eyes, and prayed. He heard the deep, shivering crack of ice as the first bullets shattered the windows of the wheelhouse.

“Faster!” Schorner shouted. “They’ve started the ferry!”

The major’s formation had been advancing steadily, parallel to the river, firing as they closed on the dock. While the men shot at the spot they thought the ferry should be, Schorner had kept his eye on the line in front of him, watching for signs of gas. But when the ferry motor roared to life, he knew the time had come to risk all. Eighty meters away, the flat craft nosed out into the river, a clear target now against the white ice sheet. Schorner opened his mouth to order his men to charge the dock at a full run. Then he realized that the man he had posted on his left side was no longer there.

“Gas!” he shouted. “Move right! Schnell!”

The line of men broke toward the water, still moving forward, still firing at the ferry. Schorner slammed into the back of the man in front of him, losing his balance. Furious, he got to his feet and shoved the halted trooper forward. The man would not budge. Then Schorner saw why. Two soldiers lay squirming on the ground thirty meters ahead. His five-man frontal screen had been reduced to three, plus the right wingman, who had been forced up to Schorner’s side when the squad pressed against the river. He glanced behind him. The rear guard was still on his feet.

“Hold here and give them everything you’ve got!”

Stern crouched low in the wheelhouse, trying to guide the heavy ferry without standing up inside the glass cube that enclosed the upper wheelhouse. Three sides of the enclosure had already been shattered by bullets.

Anna and McConnell were hunkered down behind the Mercedes, at the edge of the deck. There was no railing, and with Stern pushing the engines to the maximum — plus the give-and-take jolting of the bow smashing the ice — there was a real danger of falling into the river. Anna motioned for McConnell to get the little girl out of the backseat, but he thought the child was safer where she was.

Anna didn’t. Using the door handle to steady herself, she pulled herself into a half crouch and opened the door.

The Mercedes’ interior light clicked on.

One second later a rifle bullet tore through the opposite window and drilled through Anna’s right shoulder.

All McConnell saw was her body flying backward. Then she was gone. Screaming for Stern to stop, he closed the car door and jumped after her into the swirling black water.

“We’ve hit the pilot!” Schorner shouted, seeing the ferry slow three quarters of the way across the river. “Pour it in!”

As the volume of fire increased, he heard a choked cry behind him. He whirled. The man he had posted behind him seemed to be trying to grab his face with his left hand. Then he suddenly bent double, vomited, snapped back up and fired his submachine gun skyward in an uncontrolled burst. Schorner stared in horror as the man fell backward on the snow and ceased all movement. His nostrils filled with the nauseating odor of feces and urine.

The stench of death.

He held his breath and kept firing at the ferry.

McConnell fought his way toward the gas mask he saw bobbing in the black water. The current was pulling Anna toward the shelf of white ice that covered the rest of the river. If she passed under that, she would be lost. His arms seemed suddenly made of lead. Even in the oilskin suit the water chilled him to the bone, and his heavy rubber boots were pulling him down. He drove his gloved hands against the water and reached out . . .

Two fingers hooked under the leather harness of Anna’s air tank. He looked back. The ferry was twenty yards away. He got a firmer grip on Anna’s harness, then began swimming.

He knew he would never reach the ferry under his own power. At some point he had torn his gas suit. Its oilskin legs were filling with freezing water, dragging him toward the bottom. Only the buoyancy of their air tanks was keeping him and Anna from sinking like boulders. He had actually stopped swimming when he saw the ferry moving slowly back toward them.

Wolfgang Schorner had not felt real fear since the retreat from Kursk. But when he saw two of the three rifle-men in front of him begin jerking spasmodically, a film of cold sweat broke out over his whole body. Was he breathing the gas now? Was it entering his skin even as he knelt on the ground? With a last roar of anger and courage he stood erect and charged down the riverbank toward the dock.

McConnell shoved his right arm through a half-submerged tire on the side of the ferry and pulled Anna close to him. “Go! Go!” he shouted, gasping for air. “I’ve got her! Go!”

Stern firewalled the throttles. The ferry’s twin screws lifted the foredeck right out of the water as it closed the last few yards to the far bank, smashing ice as it went. Stern looked back at the dock they’d left behind. A barrel-melting burst of yellow muzzle flashes strobed in the darkness, throwing a hail of bullets across the water. Stern dove out of the wheelhouse as the slugs shattered the remaining glass and riddled the side of the Mercedes.

The ferry would have to land itself.

He prayed that none of the tires on the Mercedes had been punctured.