Read Delta Green: Denied to the Enemy Online

Authors: Dennis Detwiller

Tags: #H.P. Lovecraft, #Cthulhu Mythos, #Detwiller, #Cthulhu, #Dennis Detwiller, #Delta Green, #Lovecraft

Delta Green: Denied to the Enemy (10 page)

BOOK: Delta Green: Denied to the Enemy
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“Thank you.” Bruning grabbed the folder and slammed the door on the man’s stiff salute. Placing his pistol down carefully, he greedily ripped open the seals on the document and spilled the pages out on his squeaky bed. The nearly blank title page leapt out from the mess of other pages covered in dense text. It read:

 

“PROJECT PARSIFAL (Thule/S.A.)”

 

Weber had lived up to his end of the bargain. Bruning spent the next hour assembling the documents carefully, placing them in order with his notes in his battered brown valise, along with an extra pistol and a simple outfit of clothing he took everywhere. It would be suicide to walk into Cherbourg alone in his SS uniform. He tried to picture the situation which would lead to his encounter with the Maquis, or less likely, with British or American agents. Nothing clear came to mind, but as he lay down, his thoughts drifted off easily. A sensation like coming to the end of a long journey filled him with a warmth he had not felt in a long while.

 

Bruning slept for the first time in more than a day and a half, with the valise clasped loosely in one hand and his pistol in the other.

 

 

Bruning dreamt of weapons practice at Bad Tolz. In his twisted nightmare the MG34s chattered away endlessly like crows, ripping up the targets behind him as he ran desperately down the line trying to gain cover. Only the helmets of his colleagues as they hunched behind their weapons could be seen downrange, hidden behind the licking flames of their muzzles. Why wasn’t he down there with them? Rounds punched past him by the hundreds, tearing into the targets and spitting dirt up in the air as he ran through it all screaming. But no matter how far down line he ran, the targets and machine gunners kept on going. He ran until his lungs burned and his knees shrieked, he ran until his loping steps faltered as he tried to limitlessly gain ground away from the endless machine guns. With a sudden jerk his legs betrayed him and Bruning spilled to the ground, face smashing into the dirt as hundreds of rounds ripped through the air around him. Wheezing, moaning, he looked up from the dirt as the bullets slipped into his body in a dozen different places, and before all went black, he saw the end of the firing line, a concrete overhang, precious cover, not five feet away from his bloody outstretched hands...

 

The MG34s sang and Bruning woke to the sounds of death.

 

Fear gripped him in his guts, and he leapt up from the bed and rushed to the north window, spilling his valise to the ground. In the thin orange light of the evening he could make out the muzzle flashes of the machine guns as they rattled on and on. A dozen or more SS men stood on the recently dried concrete ramparts holding MP40s, as two machine gunners emptied their weapons into the clots of stick men on the beach. There was nowhere for the slaves to go; they were stuck in the run which bisected the beach, a run which they themselves had created. Some crawled before the bullets finally tore through them, some walked about in a daze, but most charged straight into the guns as fast as they could. Wild-eyed and crazed with the knowledge of imminent death, the men had no fear. They would rush up the murderous run and throttle the guards so fast that no one would know what happened. Even half dead with starvation and sickness, the stick men were fast.

 

But the machine guns were faster.

 

They dropped like they had simply fallen, as if in moments any of them might get back up and try again for the summit. From Bruning’s perspective none of the atrocities of war could be seen. There was no blood or gore, no screams, no expressions on the tiny faces. Just stick men falling down on the beach amidst the repetitious and distant clamor of the machine guns, and the helmeted silhouettes of those on the ramparts as they watched. The sounds roared on the rock cliffs which surrounded the beach, rolling back in like the surf, and when the guns stopped their bellowing, the ghostly echoes played on for almost a minute before disappearing completely.

 

Clumps of the dead lay on the beach as the SS men cleared their weapons in the last mingling colors of the setting sun. Bruning looked away as a work detail of more Todt men were ushered out at submachine gun point to police the bodies of their own dead. What were they thinking? How did they feel? Bruning could not find a point of reference which would link his life to the things which lived and died on the beach.

 

It was time to go.

 

Bruning buttoned up his officer’s long coat and buckled his belt, slipping his pistol in his holster as he retrieved his valise from the floor in one fluid motion. Nothing moved inside him. He felt neither fear or regret as he walked towards the gate of the camp in an authoritarian stride. As he approached the huge double gates, he fixed his face with an incredulous expression and locked eyes with the unfortunate Rottenführer who had been left in charge of the seven men tasked with guard duty that evening. He would bluff his way out and he would make it to Cherbourg tonight.

 

“Rottenführer, I am leaving. Bring a car around,” Bruning ordered bluntly.

 

“Sir. This is impossible. I have orders from the camp commander, sir. No one comes in, no one leaves until the ninth of next month, sir,” the Rottenführer stated boldly.

 

Bruning’s mind swam. All his plans collapsed around his ears in seconds, quietly, as the guard waited for his response.

 

“Why?” was all Bruning could manage.

 

“Partisans, sir. We have had three incidents on the road to Cherbourg, sir. No one leaves until Oberscharführer Weber clears it, sir. I am sorry, sir.” The soldier’s eyes glazed over as he returned to attention in front of the gate, his submachine gun slung casually off his shoulder.

 

“I will see Weber.” Bruning said as he marched back to the center of camp with his breath trailing behind him like a dim fog.

 

 

Bruning burst into Weber’s office and found the man engaged in deep conversation with another SS officer in Scharführer markings. Bruning assumed it was Lutzen or Schwelm, but didn’t ask. He locked eyes with Weber, who finally said, very quietly:

 

“Excuse us, Otho.” And the man stood and left Weber and Bruning in the silence of the room.

 

“Is something wrong, Bruning?”

 

“Why am I not permitted to leave?”

 

“Was the Thule file not what you had expected?” Weber retorted, throwing his hands up in the air as if he could not believe what he was hearing.

 

“No...that is not what—”

 

“Well, then you agree I have fulfilled my obligation to you?” Weber sat, locking his eyes to Bruning’s.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Then fulfill your bargain with me. Wait for the ritual. You will then talk to Kitt. Vindicate my misdeeds as necessities for the greater good of the Reich and we shall be equal.” Weber stood and rolled the papers on his desk up. On them a complex construction diagram of the beach showed the firing arcs of machine gun emplacements on the new topography of the shoreline, isolating a kill zone illuminated in red in the center of he beach, where the Deep Ones would rise with their leader in less than fourteen days. It seemed Weber was not as foolish as Bruning had believed.

 

“Besides,” Weber continued, “we have lost more than ten men to Maquis attacks in the last few days on the road to Cherbourg. The courier from Offenburg is the last one to leave. And the last to enter!”

 

“Should you not alert Cherbourg command?”

 

“And bring a division of the Waffen-SS down on my head? While I misappropriate funds and slaves and God knows what else here on the beach? Do I really risk all this for some added safety from ill-equipped Frenchmen hiding in caves? Soon this all will be beside the point!” Weber hissed at him.

 

“Listen to me, Bruning. I played your game at Offenburg. Now you play mine. I have nothing to lose now, you have everything.”

 

“Very well,” Bruning said quietly.

 

“All right. I am sorry. You need not participate in the ritual if you wish. Just do not interfere with my operation and all shall be well.” Weber’s face softened a bit as he picked up the plans from his desk and slipped his gloves on.”You will have to excuse me. I have much to do. Good evening.” Weber said and gestured for the door.

 

Bruning left, walking slowly back to the officers’ barracks as the men on the beach continued to pull their dead into rough piles in front of the Deep Ones’ stones, lit bright white by the kliegs from the towers.

 

He heard the drone before he saw the contour of the plane as it streaked across the cold, starlit sky. Riding low above the channel it barreled over the camp in seconds, its engines building to a huge roar as it passed overhead, drawing the lights up from the camp after it, but they managed only to light an empty sky. Bruning caught the sight of a white American star on the tip of one slender wing as it blurred through his field of vision. It passed within feet of the cliffs of the Nez-de-Jobourg above the camp and disappeared on the far side of the promontory instantly, taking all sound and motion with it, like it was never there at all.

 

The only noise it left behind were the incredulous voices of the guards who muttered confused questions, the shouts of the men in the towers seeking orders, and then, building, the elated hoarse cries of half dead men, who had nothing left to live for but the hope of freedom.

 
CHAPTER
6
:
A home in dark grass
 
December 8, 1942: Cap de la Hague, France
 

The screams of the men chained to the stones on the Cap de la Hague beach brought Bruning out of his reverie. The time of the Deep Ones had finally come. With the elastic quality of a nightmare the time had raced away, while still somehow beguiling him into believing that this moment would never come. His mind turned in on itself to search for some inkling of hope, but nothing came of this banal, pointless self-reflection. All his plans had degenerated into useless clusters of clichéd ideas and all his thoughts circled and crashed into the present without bringing forward one practical conclusion. Every morning he would think: Today I shall plan my escape. And he would wake with the same thought in his mind the next day, inwardly cursing his procrastination.

 

And now it was too late.

 

There was no way out of the camp for him. Even now, outside his cabin two SS guards stood watch, as much to keep him in as to keep others out. Weber’s paranoia was seen around the camp in other, less subtle ways. The drills, the endless morale-building chatter over the camp speakers, the anti-aircraft guns rolled out onto the beach, each indicated that Weber had severed all ties to the outside world until the morning of the ninth of December. Then he would be vindicated as the ultimate hero of the Reich. Insanity traveled down the chain of command like poison through the bloodstream. The SS men who manned the camp were blank-faced automatons, sure that their post was the most important one in all the Reich, assured that a death defending that post would be glorious and just. There was no way to bluff past Weber’s robots, no way to scale the walls which surrounded the camp without being seen and ripped to pieces by machine guns. There were no boats to get out to sea; they had been deemed too great a risk after the Mors incident, and those that had been sunk were never replaced.

BOOK: Delta Green: Denied to the Enemy
12.9Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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