Jesus Christ!, he said to himself.
It was the first of what turned into a night of Jesus Christ! moments.
Yaremche
The River Prut
They awoke, took a hearty breakfast—the hotel’s specialty—and then drove to the waterfall site. They parked and moved quickly to the halfway point of the bridge.
He pointed over the faux village to a wooded slope golden in the sun. Its details were murky at the distance, at least a thousand yards, but he stared hard at it, finding it so provocative.
If she had fired from there, he thought, with a decent rifle—
“So what’s the plan?” Kathy asked.
“It would be better if I had a range finder, if I had a compass, if I had a pair of binocs, but I don’t. So I’ll just sort of mark some potential firing sites from here, and we’ll see if we can find them up there. Then I can satisfy myself as to what kind of rifle she had to have.”
“Oh, look,” she said. “Another American.”
She pointed. At the far end of the bridge, a young man stood, smiling at them, posing as if in a hip commercial for a soft drink. He was wearing a yellow Baltimore Ravens cap, a polo shirt, a pair of jeans, and some trendy hikers. He looked like any young dad in a mall. He wore wraparound tear-shaped sunglasses and a big smile. He walked over to them.
“Hi,” he said. “Jerry Renn. It’s a pleasure to meet Bob Lee Swagger, Bob the Nailer. You’ve been a hero of mine for a long time. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”
CHAPTER 36
The Carpathians
Yaremche
LATE JULY 1944
The fire defied him. It would not burn fast enough, even in the drought of late July. He willed it to consume its tinder, to race down the slope, to despoil the forest and reveal the raw flanks of earth to the world, so that no sniper could hide and have the pleasure of a slow and easy preparation on the shot.
Even with ten of the Flammenwerfer-41s spurting out their Flammoil-19 in arcs of bright flame, igniting all that they touched, the natural world would not consume itself quickly enough for Captain Salid.
Like all his men, he wore a gas mask, for the acrid smoke hung low and dense and no wind came to push it away. He watched the blackness that followed the wall of flame as it spread slowly down the slope, devouring the greenery; he heard the crackle and pop of the spruces and junipers snapping as they were oxidized into a new form of matter; he watched the low black fog scuttle this way and that.
So much to worry about. The big Russian offensive would jump off any day. Katyusha rockets, a blizzard of artillery, then tanks and tank riders with tommy guns in the thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands. How quickly would they slice through Von Bink’s shorthanded Panzer army and get here?
Another worry: when would the parachutists get into position? It meant nothing to run a sweep up through the mountains if there was no blocking force. It also meant nothing if the Russians attacked by air and the parachutists were wiped out and escape to Hungary was cut off. With his three panzerwagens, more valuable than their weight in gold, he could possibly get his men around the mountains to the wider road to the south and out that way. But without the woman, it was a failure; without the woman, he would not win his Iron Cross, he would not return home a hero. Without the fucking woman, he was nothing. Aggghhh. Frustration clotted his vision and assaulted his brow, and the air, though purified by the filters of the mask, tasted foul and rancid. He almost threw it off, and took a cigarette, and dreamed of a cool, shadowy oasis far from all this madness and—
It was his signalman.
Both pulled up their masks.
“Sir, the Kommissarat. The senior group leader himself.”
“Oh, damn,” said the captain.
He turned, signaled for his Kübel to approach, jumped in, and directed the driver to the signals hut. He entered, and a lance corporal leaped up in front of the radio unit.
“Captain, urgent signal from the Kommissariat. I believe the senior group leader himsel—”
“Yes, yes, make contact immediately.”
The man sat down, worked the dials and radio protocols, then turned the telephone receiver over to Salid. “Hello, hello, this is Zeppelin Leader,” he said.
“One second, Captain,” came the voice at the other end.
A second later, “Salid, Groedl here.”
“Yes sir.”
“I want your men assembled in full combat uniform for assignment in one hour.”
“Sir, they are on details spread around Yaremche and—”
“One hour. Get them here quickly, Salid. I require your utmost in a very dangerous situation, do you understand?”
“I—But sir, the White Witch may escape without the pressure of the patrolling, and I thought—”