The Second Objective (13 page)

It was the American service paper,
Stars and Stripes.
His eye was drawn to a headline on the front page.

ALLIES BOMB IG FARBEN

German Industrial Giant Near Frankfurt Hit Hard

Daylight Raid Leaves Nazi War Machine Reeling

His father still worked at IG Farben. He’d had no contact with his family since leaving for Grafenwöhr in October, at which point both his parents were alive. That suddenly seemed in doubt.

Bernie’s gaze drifted to the improvised Christmas tree, gauze serving as tinsel, surgical clamps and scissors hung like ornaments. The meager attempt at holiday cheer, his own peril, and the growing crowd of wounded arriving for treatment brought him to the verge of tears. A nurse’s aide offered him a cup of coffee. He declined, and his forlorn look drew her sympathy.

“Hard being away from home this time of year, isn’t it?” she asked.

He looked up at her. She was a plain girl, early twenties, with crooked teeth and a one-sided smile.

“I guess you could say that,” said Bernie.

“I love Christmas. Never spent one like this before. Where you from?”

“Brooklyn,” he said, surprised when it came out of his mouth.

“Really? We sailed out of the Brooklyn yard on our way over a few weeks ago. You’ll be happy to know it’s still there. I’m from Wichita. That’s a long way from New York. Might even be farther away from it than where we are now.”

“I don’t think you can get any farther away than this.”

“Don’t worry now, you’ll be going home soon,” she said.

She patted him on the back. Her kindness made it hard for him to say anything more. He spotted Von Leinsdorf coming toward him through the room, wearing a doctor’s white coat, and stood up.

“Get in the jeep,” said Von Leinsdorf. “Keep the engine running.”

“Where are you going?”

“Make sure you’re pointed toward the road,” he said, taking off the coat and heading back toward the prep tent.

“I want an autopsy,” said Grannit. “I need to know what killed him.”

“Could have been any number of things,” said the surgeon who’d worked on Mallory, not eager to oblige. “Postoperative trauma, delayed reaction to anesthesia—”

“His original wounds were enough to kill him,” said a second doctor.

“We were told he’d come through that surgery, that he’d recover,” said Grannit.

“The truth is, Lieutenant, these things aren’t predictable,” said the surgeon. “We see it every hour of every day. Each man has a different breaking point. Sergeant Mallory reached his.”

Grannit looked at the weary doctors in their blood-soaked gowns—decent men, trained to heal, not kill. He could hardly expect a different reaction: What was one more dead soldier? After watching so many young men lose their lives, what else could they do but turn up their hands?

A passing nurse overheard the name. “Did you say Mallory?”

“That’s right,” said Grannit.”

“But he hasn’t even gone into surgery yet.”

“Yes he did, he was postop.”

“When did they operate?”

“Last night when he came in.”

“But I just admitted him fifteen minutes ago.”

“What’s the first name?” asked the surgeon, looking at the chart. “We can’t be talking about the same Mallory.”

“First name’s Vincent,” said Grannit. “Vincent Mallory.”

“Sergeant Vincent Mallory, that’s him,” said the admitting nurse. “I just took the information off his tags—”

“Where is he now?”

“In the prep tent.”

“Show me,” said Grannit.

They hurried toward the tent, burst through the flaps, and searched down the busy rows, the doctors following.

“Did he come in alone?” asked Grannit.

“No, a couple of soldiers brought him in—”

The admitting nurse pulled back the curtain isolating his cubicle. Gunther Preuss lay on the cot, an IV in his arm, bright red blood sliding from his mouth and nose, his body racked with convulsions.

The nurse and doctors hurried to the patient’s side, calling for help. Grannit caught movement out of the corner of his eye. An officer in uniform walking against traffic out of the tent at a rapid pace. Grannit took off after him, pulling his Colt, holding it aloft so people would notice.

“Out of the way!”

The crowd parted, some hitting the floor in alarm. The officer heard the shouts and, without looking back, sprinted out the front of the tent. Grannit hurdled a cot, bowled over a couple of soldiers, and jammed his way out after him.

A jeep was pulling out of the parking area, wheels skidding in the mud. Two men on board. Grannit saw the officer he’d followed haul himself into the front seat as it slipped away. The glint of silver bars on his collar. A lieutenant. No stripes on the driver’s jacket, a private.

Grannit gave chase to the edge of the parking area, aiming the pistol but unable to sight a clear shot. He waved down a motorcycle dispatcher, flashed his badge to the driver, then yanked him off the bike when he slowed and jumped on. Jacking the bike around, he downshifted to gain torque in the mud and slid onto the narrow road heading into Malmédy. He spotted the jeep a quarter of a mile ahead crossing a small bridge into town. Grannit downshifted again and opened the throttle.

“Keep going,” said Von Leinsdorf to Bernie. “Head southeast.”

“What happened? Where’s Preuss?”

“Just do as I tell you,” said Von Leinsdorf, glancing behind them.

Bernie whipped the jeep around the town center, a welter of narrow, ancient streets, avoiding collisions, wheeling around obstacles, ignoring traffic signs. The sidewalks were packed with citizens carrying suitcases and bags, pushing carts full of possessions, fleeing from the German advance. Twice he narrowly missed civilians who darted suddenly into the street, one carrying a bright green parrot in a cage. As they reached a narrow bridge leading out of town, they came face-to-face with an American half-track headed the other way. Bernie steered to the right without slowing and accelerated past it, only inches to spare, the jeep’s right fender sending up sparks as it scraped against the stone wall.

Behind them, Grannit dodged through oncoming traffic, weaving around slower cars and trucks. Crossing the first bridge into town, he veered into an intersection and nearly collided with a stalled wagon. Turning hard right, he jumped the bike up onto a sidewalk, leaned on the horn, and shouted for people to clear out of his way. He skirted a group of Allied soldiers organizing a defense along the town’s eastern perimeter on the near side of a second bridge. Halfway across the bridge, he slammed on the brakes when a column of American vehicles barreled into the village. Grannit stood up on the bike, looked ahead, and caught sight of the jeep across the bridge, moving down a long straightaway into the country. Some MPs jumped out of a jeep to set up a roadblock and direct traffic. Grannit shouted at them, showed him his badge.

“Clear this bridge, god damn it!”

The MPs waded into traffic and cleared a path for him. Soldiers riding into the village shouted at Grannit that he didn’t want to head that way. Paratroopers had taken the towns to the east, and columns of panzers were coming up behind them.

As their jeep cleared the outskirts of town, Bernie steered onto the shoulder. American military vehicles crowded the westbound side of the road, carrying soldiers on hoods of jeeps and hanging off the sides of trucks. The men wore the haunted look of battle fatigue and many were wounded. Bernie could hear the boom of artillery and the rattle of small arms to the east. Von Leinsdorf lit a cigarette and couldn’t keep a smile off his face.

“Quite a sight, Brooklyn,” said Von Leinsdorf. “Your amateur American Army. What did I tell you? Retreat’s too dignified a word—they’re bugging out after only four hours.”

Bernie didn’t respond, alarmed by an image he was picking up in the rearview mirror.

The moment the MPs opened a path, Grannit muscled the bike across the bridge, accelerating through the gearbox as he roared past the retreating American column. He caught sight of the jeep again, at the top of a rise less than a mile ahead, where the road headed into a stretch of gently rolling hills. He tried to coax more speed out of the jeep as they crested another hill.

“Somebody’s following us,” he said.

Von Leinsdorf looked back and saw the motorcycle clear the hill behind them. He picked up his rifle. When they reached the top of the next rise, the bike had closed the gap to less than half a mile.

“Who is it?” asked Bernie.

“I don’t know. Maybe we forgot to pay our bill at the hospital,” said Von Leinsdorf, screwing a telescopic sight onto the rifle. “Pull over at the bottom of the next hill.”

When they reached the base of the hill, Bernie pulled off the road onto a hidden drive that led to a farm house in a stand of pines. Once they were out of sight, he cut the engine. Dust settled. Over the country silence, they could hear the buzz of the approaching motorcycle. Von Leinsdorf steadied the barrel of the rifle on the back of the windscreen and waited. The buzz grew louder. He looked down the sight, settling the crosshairs on the peak of the hill.

Bernie swiveled around when he heard a clatter of breaking dishes from inside the farm house. The face of a GI appeared in a window, then the door swung open; a group of six young soldiers hurried toward them.

“Jesus Christ, get out of sight,” said one of them. “What the hell are you doing?”

Von Leinsdorf took his eye off the sight and looked over, annoyed.

“They’re right on top of us, get out of sight!”

A rumble shook the earth, along with it the high-pitched whine of steel grating on steel. On the far side of the woods to the east three Panther tanks appeared and wheeled to a stop on the summit of the next hill, straddling the road. Walking alongside and behind them, in skirmish formation, were a column of black-jacketed soldiers. On their collars Bernie saw the double-lightning insignia of the SS
Panzergrenadiers
.

Aboard the bike, Grannit hit the top of the incoming hill and skidded to a halt when he saw the tanks astride the next rise, a quarter of a mile in front of him. Behind them, stretching as far as he could see, was a solid column of soldiers, mounted artillery, and half-tracks filled with infantry. In a hollow below and to the right he spotted the jeep he’d been chasing. A squad of GIs was trotting toward it from a nearby stone farm house.

Von Leinsdorf found Earl Grannit in his sights as he crested the hill, and nestled him right in the center of the crosshairs. As he was about to fire, Bernie grabbed the barrel, yanking it off target.

“I think that’s one of ours, Lieutenant,” he said, for the benefit of the approaching GIs.

Von Leinsdorf glared at him but didn’t respond. Bernie refused to let go of the rifle.

“You don’t want the Krauts to know we’re down here, do you?”

The soldiers from the farm house reached the side of their jeep. They were all Bernie’s age or younger, frightened and confused.

“You got to get us out of here,” one of them said.

“Who the fuck are you?” snapped Von Leinsdorf.

“Rifle company, 99th Infantry,” said their sergeant. “We were mining a logging road near the Skyline Drive. Krauts started coming out of the woodwork. Our jeep got hit. We’ve been dodging ’em for hours, trying to get back to our line.”

“They’re all over the fuckin’ place,” said another. “What the hell are we supposed to do, Lieutenant?”

One of the young Americans, wearing a bandage on a leg wound, started crying. They all looked to Von Leinsdorf for guidance, like a lost pack of Boy Scouts. Von Leinsdorf could barely conceal his disgust.

“They haven’t spotted us yet,” said Bernie. “Hop on, we’ll make a run for it.”

The six GIs crowded into the backseat and jumped onto the running boards as Bernie turned the engine over.

Looking down into the valley, Grannit saw the officer he’d been chasing since the hospital stand up in the jeep and hold up his rifle. The man met his eye and waved jauntily, just as the jeep turned and headed onto a dirt road behind the farm house.

As Grannit turned back to the hill, a turret on one of the tanks turned in his direction. He spun the bike around and accelerated down the hill back toward Malmédy, just as the first tank round came whistling over his head and exploded off to the side of the road.

11

67th Evacuation Hospital

DECEMBER 16, NOON

T
he naked body of Gunther Preuss lay on a stainless steel countertop behind curtains near the back of the surgery tent, a makeshift morgue. Vincent Mallory’s corpse, already examined, lay on a second counter, covered with a bloodstained sheet. Earl Grannit had persuaded the head surgeon he’d spoken with earlier to examine both men’s bodies. While the doctor opened them up, Grannit sat off to the side and lit a cigar to kill the stench, a technique he’d learned during visits to the New York City morgue.

After making his way back to the hospital, Grannit had sought out a senior combat officer and given him a detailed report about the German battalion he’d seen on the road east of Malmédy. Returning to his own assignment, he found that Ole had secured the scene, quarantined evidence before it got tossed, and collected statements from witnesses. Among the evidence, Grannit took particular interest in the two plastic IV bags. Both had been cut open in identical fashion.