When they stopped shooting, the woods were quiet, the stillness unnerving after the deafening din just moments before. With his ears still ringing, Willi kept swiveling his weapon from side to side. Did the trees hide more armed enemies, waiting for them to move? Or were the French defeated, his freedom proof of their failure? In the first case, lying still and waiting was the key to survival, in the other it just made him feel a little silly.
“Herr General!” It was Major Feist’s voice. Von Seelow started at the sound, suddenly realizing how tense he was. Leibnitz called back. The danger was over, only minutes after it appeared.
Willi stood slowly, shaking off the last of the grenade’s effects. He walked over to the little clump of brush where they had just poured so much fire.
Two bodies lay at odd angles.
He pushed one corpse with the toe of his boot, rolling the man over, studying his uniform. A badge with a silver wing and sword on the dead man’s red beret identified him as a member of the 13th Airmobile Dragoons, an elite outfit like Germany’s own Long-Range Scout Troops or the American Special Forces. And yet they had been beaten. Willi nodded grimly. Not bad for a bunch of headquarters troops. He had to give Leibnitz a lot of the credit, though. Like Willi himself, the 7th Panzer’s commander had learned a hard lesson from the Polish raid that had killed Georg Bremer. The older man had taken special pains to strengthen his division’s headquarters security.
He turned away from the dead men.
Feist, panting, had arrived and was almost frantically reporting to Leibnitz. “No, Herr General, there were no reports of any other attacks, either by the Poles or the French. I’ve counted at least twenty French bodies so far. We’re trying to see how they infiltrated in, but it must have taken them a long time, almost all night.”
Leibnitz growled, almost an animal sound. The French never meant to negotiate. Looking at the German wounded and dead lying all around, he said, “It appears we have another enemy.”
Willi, ignoring rank, countered, “No, only one.”
The immediacy of combat had prevented him from fully appreciating Montagne’s treachery, but he could feel the anger burning inside. Before, the French had been self-serving fools. Now they were criminals.
The general nodded. He turned back to Feist. “Pass the order to all units. Tell them to fire on any Frenchmen they see.” He paused. “Then get me a secure channel. I need to talk to Berlin.”
He picked up the glasses and stepped out onto the bridge wing again. The cool North Sea night air, stiffened by a fifteen-knot formation speed, made him glad for the khaki jacket.
The Belgian coast was a dark line, invisible except for the uneven horizon it gave the water. A few scattered lights marked small towns, while a larger smear of brightness showed where the port of Ostend lay. It was a dark, quiet scene, with only a thin sliver of moon and almost no wind to stir the sea.
The darkness could hide a lot, like the blacked-out Task Force or the amphibious craft moving toward the beach. The first wave of LCACs — high-speed, air-cushion landing craft — had been launched fifteen minutes ago.
The coast seemed distant, but he knew better than anyone that they had been standing into danger since midnight. They were out of artillery range, but coastal missile batteries were mobile and hard to find.
Ward and his captains had been lucky so far. Taking advantage of Combined Forces naval superiority, he’d risked a daylight move the day before, and a short nighttime run, to put the assault force in position for a night landing. Now the darkness was on their side, and with luck the first wave would be ashore and well established by dawn.
Still, he fretted. No detections and good weather had given them a good start, but the element of surprise could be lost to one fisherman with a radio or a beachcomber with sharp eyes. Stealth was everything in a landing like this.
Virtually every aircraft in the Combined Forces was overhead, providing air cover, knocking out nearby radars and communications stations, or hitting nearby shore bases. Raids on Dunkerque, Calais, and Lille should keep the French occupied until it was too late.
If they were caught this close to land, with boats and helicopters deployed, even the weakened EurCon air and naval forces would have a field day. They were all taking a terrible chance.
He glanced down at
Ward walked over to the dark figure sitting in the admiral’s chair. Motionless, the man appeared asleep, and by rights should have been at this hour. Ward knew differently. “We’ll know soon, Ross.”
“How fast do those LCACs move, Admiral?” Huntington asked quietly.
“About forty knots, loaded like they are. It’ll take them about half an hour to make the run to the beach. During World War II, it used to take twice that long with the ships much closer in.”
“What could be longer than forever?” Huntington asked half-jokingly.
Braving the cold forty-knot wind and clinging tightly against the LCAC’s rough ride, Captain Charlie Gates, USMC, peered out over the bow ramp. “As if I could see anything,” he muttered. Even with his night-vision gear, they were still too far off the coast. The darkness could hide an army, he knew, and by the time he saw the flashes of hostile fire it would be too late for him, and for his men.
If he couldn’t see anything, anyone waiting on the beach couldn’t, either, unless they had night-vision gear, which these days was no trick. But they wouldn’t shoot now, he knew. They’d wait until the LCAC had beached itself and the ramp was down. Then they’d…
Cut that shit out, he thought to himself. He had his orders, and intelligence said there’d be no fire from the beach. Right.
Gates turned to check his men. In the dimness he could only make out forms, but they were all where he had last seen them, standing or sitting, waiting out the thirty-minute ride to the beach. Loaded down with weapons and equipment, there was no really comfortable way to rest, but his marines managed as best they could.
They were close now. He turned to the corner where his lieutenants were clustered and pumped a fist up and down. With a deceptive carelessness, he watched his officers find their sergeants, motion spreading through the company as his men took their places.
He knew what should be waiting. A nice, smooth, shallow grade led to a low seawall capped by a frontage road. The far side was lined by warehouses and light industry, perfect cover for enemy tanks or infantry — if they were there.
The roar of the LCAC’s turbines changed pitch as it slowed. They didn’t want to plow into the beach at forty knots, after all. Even at the lower note, the LCAC’s engines produced a deafening howl. He felt like it would have been quieter riding a steam calliope. If there were hostiles here, they didn’t need to see him. They must have been able to hear the marines coming for miles around.
“Captain Gates, I can see them.” The LCAC operator’s voice in his headphones almost made him jump. Gates looked over to the glassed-in cab where the craft’s “driver” sat. The petty officer was pointing, not that you needed his guidance to see the cluster of lights on the beach.
Dead ahead, he spotted a cluster of three lights: red, white, and blue. To the right, he saw another group of lights — right where they were supposed to be. No tracers, no other signs of life even through the night-vision goggles. All right. “It’s a go,” he answered in his microphone, and instantly the LCAC’s running lights flashed to life, almost blinding in the darkness.
The hovercraft lumbered up onto the beach, throwing spray and pebbles in all directions even as its giant fans wound down.
When the bow ramp dropped, Gates almost sprinted down it, anxious to get off the vulnerable landing craft. The rocky, pebble-covered beach didn’t provide the best footing, especially in the dark, but a little of the tension left him when he felt his boots slam down on solid ground again. The worst was over.
