Casca 42: Barbarossa, page 8
“Enemy in sight,” Felix suddenly tensed, passing on the message that came to all crews. “Formation of tanks and trucks.”
“Trucks,” Gus exclaimed. “Oh, easy kills! Combat’s version of soft porn.”
“Watch for their armor – that won’t be so damned easy!” Langer said quickly. The Soviets had better tanks and had the range on anything the panzers possessed. Their only hope was to get in amongst them and melee. The range would be so short even the outgunned German tanks would be able to kill.
Ahead, a column of dust billowed up, produced by the Soviet formation. Heidemann’s voice crackled in Langer’s ears. “Right – the Luftwaffe has had their play with them, now it’s our turn. Recon says there’s T34s, KV1s and the usual T26s there as well as a load of infantry in trucks.”
“Party time, gentlemen,” Gus whooped and gunned the engine, sending the Panzer IV barrelling through a half wrecked barn and out the other side, shedding the debris like a buffalo emerging from a river.
“Christ’s sake,” Felix exclaimed, “you didn’t have to do that!”
Gus laughed. “No but it was fun! Russians ahead, look out.”
Langer swung the turret periscope. Dark shapes were moving ahead, from left to right, across their line of approach. A road ran there, packed with trucks. A few palls of smoke spiralled up off to the left, but these Russians had managed to escape the air attacks. To the fore and beyond, Soviet tanks were spreading out, seeking for more filthy fascists to pound into pulp.
The first many knew about the attack was when a series of explosions struck the vulnerable trucks, sending more than a handful up in flames, spilling their cargoes of burning, screaming soldiers onto the road and verges. The nearest Russian tanks swung their barrels and scattered, hoping to present a more difficult target, but the German artillery now opened up, targeting the road and the far side.
Explosions rocked the scene; fountains of smoke, fire, rubble and earth erupted into the air, and the sky became black from the burning pyres of dead or dying vehicles. Gus weaved the Pz IV madly around one shattered T34, hit by a point blank shot from another panzer after it had burned up a III. The crew were lying half in and half out of the open turrets, blazing along with their doomed tank.
Inside the panzer, it was chaos. Orders were shouted, the empty shells clanged to the floor with a resounding crash, the gun barked continually and Felix was fully occupied, sending short bursts of his machine-gun at groups of Soviet troops trying to get out of the way of the armored melee. The smells of oil, discharged guns and sweat mixed to give a sharp, metallic odor inside the fighting machine.
“KV1!” Langer snapped. “Right. It’s not seen us yet. Teacher, get it!”
Gus swung the panzer right, spinning sharply on one track. They had just emerged through the pall of smoke from the T34, and the colossal shape of the KV-1 had materialized only twenty yards away. It was blasting at more panzers straight in front of it. Teacher gritted his teeth, zeroed the sights on the tank, just at the junction of the turret and hill, and sent an AP shell straight into it, punching through the rugged armor. The KV-1 shuddered and ceased shooting, but began to reverse.
“Stop the bastard!” Langer growled.
The next shell smashed into the wheel bogies, crumpling them in and sending the right hand track flopping uselessly out to one side. The Russian skewed to one side before stopping. Incredibly the turret moved for a second, then stopped. The gun was close to pointing right at them.
Gus needed no order. He swung the panzer aside just as the huge gun belched flame and smoke, narrowly missing them. As they passed to the rear of the tank, teacher sent a third shell up its ass and the engine blew up, sending flames and smoke into the air. The hatches opened and three men scrambled out. What had happened to the other two was anyone’s guess.
One of the three, the commander, emptied his pistol at the IV, shouting something incomprehensible at them. Next moment he was staggering as a burst from another panzer stitched across his chest, and he slumped against the hull of his tank before sliding to the ground.
“Gus, left. Use that destroyed T34 as cover,” Langer ordered. The terrain, an open plain, was full of tanks driving this way and that, shooting wildly in panic. Another green formation, probably.
The panzer came to a halt and waited. Soon enough a T34 came rattling past, the big ’76 blasting at some distant target. The panzer would not have been seen until they began to pass, and the turret was beginning to turn as the Russians realized the danger. The panzer’s gun blasted a shot straight into the hull, blowing up deep within the tank. It came to a shuddering halt and the turret blew off in one huge explosion, cartwheeling lazily through the air. Something fell out of it, a rag doll, ablaze. Only it wasn’t a rag doll.
“Shit,” Steffan said, awestruck.
“Aye,” Langer agreed. “But that could have been us. Gus, move it.”
They burst out from the cover of the dead Russian tank, swerved round the one they’d just destroyed, and were then racing in the wake of three other panzers, heading straight for the road. The Russian convoy was a mass of fire, shattered trucks, and bodies. A few groups were readying themselves on the other side, guns, grenades and other weaponry ready.
One panzer exploded, struck by an anti-tank weapon. Langer ordered the panzer to keep on moving, then told Felix to hose down the road. The machine-gun chattered, the brass shells rattling onto the floor. Impacts hit the burning trucks, bodies, earth, and a few Soviet soldiers swinging their guns on the tank. Men were flung back and screams could be heard. Gus took the panzer up the slight rise to the road and over, passing in between two fiercely blazing pyres.
Russian troops shot madly at them, and a figure rose up just to the right, a grenade in his hand. Felix swung the MG and took him out just as he released the egg, which flew at them and exploded against the turret.
They shook their heads to get rid of the ringing noise and then continued. They chased the madly fleeing troops, sending them in all directions. Ahead, a group of men huddled around an anti-tank gun. Teacher blasted an HE shell into them, sending the gun toppling onto its side and flinging the crew aside, discards from the great game of war.
The panzer shuddered and span round. “Track’s gone!” Gus yelled. “We’re sitting ducks!”
“Felix, hose down the ground ahead. Steffan, use the turret MG.” Langer grabbed his MP40. “Teacher, Gus, grab every useful weapon you can. We’re baling out.”
The two MGs spat death in two directions, then the hatches were flung open and the crew bundled out. Langer scurried down off the turret, not wanting to be silhouetted against the sky. The smell of burning rubber was the most noticeable as he landed, checking quickly in 360 degrees.
A small group of Russians were pointing at them from the road. They were eager to kill some of the hated tankmen who had made such a mess of their formation. “Get down!” Langer snapped to Steffan and Teacher. He knelt, aimed deliberately, and sent a three-second burst at the Soviet troops who scattered, except for one who clutched his chest, then fell face down to lie still.
Langer threw himself to the ground as bullets spat at him. There wasn’t much cover, save for the panzer and they scrambled round to the other side away from the frantically shooting Russian soldiers. The problem was that on the other side were more Russians, who were running this way and that. Panzers rattled past, spitting death, and men fell, never to move again. As was common with battles, the scene shifted quickly. A Pz III came up onto the road from the other side and ran over the distracted Russians, mashing them to a pulp.
Gus cheered and pumped his arm to the panzer which zig-zagged in response, then passed by, still shooting. The Soviet formation melted away, fleeing back in the direction they had come from, and Langer sat up in relief, wiping his sweaty forehead. “Anyone hurt?” he asked, removing the clip from his MP40.
The others shook their heads and either sat up, or rolled onto one elbow, breaking out rations, or their water bottles. Langer took a look over the edge of the panzer and saw billowing smoke, flames and wrecked vehicles all round. “Looks like we hit them hard,” he commented.
“At a cost,” Teacher nodded towards a panzer that had been opened up as if by some insane giant. “No idea how many we lost.”
“That’ll come, Teacher,” Langer said. “Our tank will be repaired and we’ll be off on our way again before long. So get what rest you can, you lot. We won’t be allowed to sit on our asses if I’m right.”
Nobody argued – they knew the sergeant was right. Before long they’d be thrown back into the fray against the enemy.
CHAPTER NINE
The transfer for Isabella didn’t take too long. Fuessl was impressed enough with her, both as a secretary and in bed, to want her to work in his section. This involved a move away from her office to the castle, sited right on the banks of the Wisla River. She didn’t mind, it was a pleasant enough site, built in the eighteenth century on an existing structure, and looked just about the strongest point in Krakow.
She was partly relieved to find no Brotherhood tattoo on Fuessl; that meant she could relax more and not worry about being that close to her family’s arch enemy. It did, though, mean that somewhere close at least one of their membership was working. She had little doubt the whole exercise in trying to find Casca Longinus – Carl Langer – was down to the Brotherhood. All traces of the police investigation into the murder of Gutierrez in Berlin two years ago had been erased, thanks to her, so all this effort involving the SS and the Gestapo had to be their doing.
There were millions of files, and there were twenty staff working away, all innocently sifting through the records, checking each soldier or airman, or mechanic, or anyone in the armed forces for one reason or other. Even SS members were being checked, but that was by the more senior staff who naturally mistrusted the clerks.
Isabella was shown a desk behind which she was to look at a pile of papers, with the supervisor initially standing over her, a thin man with bad body odor and a prominent adam’s apple. Quite a repelling specimen, in fact. He informed her that her job was to check the name on the sheet, make sure it was attached to the correct buff colored file, check it, look at the photo, and the medical report. She was to look for scars, on the face, body and the wrist. She knew intimately those scars, having run her fingers over them during the fabulous time Casca had made love to her in Amiens last year. She still tingled at the memory. Fuessl was alright, but nothing compared to the immortal Roman who had naturally amassed centuries of knowing just how to pleasure a woman. God! He was so damned good! Her nipples hardened and she adjusted her bra and blouse. It would not do showing that!
She bent over her desk, upon which was a typewriter, an in tray, and on the other side of the desk an out tray. Each file was checked and those that were not possibles were thrown into the out tray and taken away, no doubt to some huge administrative center somewhere that held all the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe records. She wondered whether the Kriegsmarine, the navy, was having its own records checked.
Fuessl came past, eyeing the supervisor coldly, then leaned over her. “Thinking of me, Isabella?” he asked, nodding to her excitement showing.
Isabella colored, her hands automatically going to her chest. “Yes,” she whispered. “You are so good!” It never hurt to tell a lie like that. Men could be so vain when their virility was concerned.
“Then I must show you how good later,” he smirked and strutted off, not caring that everyone knew he was screwing the prettiest girl in the entire section.
Isabella smiled at the supervisor who looked decidedly unamused, then flicked open another file. This was of a tank crewman and her eyes switched to the photo. Many were of poor quality – didn’t anyone know how to take photographs properly? The army clearly had employed the wrong man to take these shots of the new recruits. Some were out of focus, some had too much space above the head, some not enough. It seemed the camera was fixed and if someone shorter or taller was put in front of the lens, there was no adjustment. Idiotic.
Fortunately the man was an ugly brute of a man, or at least, that’s how he appeared. There was a scar on his forehead, a small one and she looked down at the medical notes. Nothing much there but it did refer to the scar on his forehead, reputedly the work of a backstreet brawler this man, Fritz Buhl, had encountered one night, or so he averred.
“What of this one?” she asked the supervisor, wafting the sheet towards him.
“If the subject has a scar, then put his file in my tray. You have been told the procedure, fraulein.”
Isabella looked down, partly to wish to appear submissive, but also to hide the look of utter contempt she felt towards the pedantic, unimaginative man. He was the worst sort of administrator, blindly following orders from above without question, and demanding the same from those below him – the type of person that allowed fascism to succeed.
Clearly she would have to check the man’s in-tray regularly, for there were twenty in the section, and each hour around ten or so files found their way to his tray. She somehow had to either intercept them before they got there – they were taken by each clerk when a file was identified – or become the supervisor, a much harder challenge.
She had to find out what happened to any file the supervisor suspected of being the one they were searching. At lunch break she went for a walk along the banks of the Wisla – the Vistula – and took in the fresher air there, enjoying the greenery beside the castle. Fuessl was with Hans Frank, so she had the company of another man, someone who had slipped in when he saw she was alone, a neat, dapper individual who worked as a clerk in an adjoining section. His name was Curt Luttens, a man born in Krakow but of Austrian-German descent and therefore trusted.
He bravely took her arm and she didn’t object. She wasn’t keen on Fuessl and to be honest, he had served his purpose but she felt it was unwise to terminate her relationship with the man, and besides, he had rank and position and who knows in these days a woman needed such protection. That said, she was not averse to being on the lookout for another opportunity to get deeper into the hierarchy. She had done that in Berlin, and so Krakow should be a walkover. “What if Hauptmann Fuessl sees you, Curt?”
“Oh, he won’t but if he finds out, I’ll just say I was escorting you, making sure his sweetheart was safe.”
She smiled at his brazenness. They passed under a row of cherry trees, their branches sinewy and twisting. She thought they were pretty for perhaps just two weeks of the year when they blossomed, and at all other times quite ugly. “You’re taking a chance, you know.”
“I don’t care, I love being in your company!”
“You know nothing about me, Curt.”
“I know you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.”
“You’ll get into trouble, Curt, you know what the SS are like. You’re playing with fire.”
Curt wagged a finger in the air. “Ah, but I have connections in high places, far higher than the good Hauptmann.”
Isabella took a renewed interest in the young clerk. “Oh? And what connection would this be?”
“Ha! I knew you’d be interested – you like power, yes?”
She decided to go along with his supposition. “Oh yes! The higher the better! Perhaps I should try to gain the interest of the Herr Gauleiter.”
“He’s married!”
“So? That makes him doubly interesting,” she purred.
Curt almost shook. This woman was so sexually attractive, and her manner had him incredibly excited. He imagined she was the most passionate yet submissive woman ever, something he had little idea of which was impossibly contrary. Such were the fantasies of male imagination. He wanted her so much. She was everything he thought of as being the ideal woman, beautiful, slim, friendly, intelligent, and with that touch of naughtiness that turned him on. “My uncle is the new Burgmeister of Krakow, appointed by Herr Frank personally. He arranged for me to get a job here three months ago.”
“Burgmeister?” Isabella regarded the excited Curt square in the face. “Really?”
“Yes, yes! He is very well thought of, you know. He regularly dines with Herr Frank. I may even one day be invited.”
Isabella thought over the options quickly. A route into the machinery of the Nazi administration via an SS captain, or a possible fast-track hike through this young man’s family straight to Hans Frank? Frank was God, as far as the General Government was concerned. She could feasibly get any post she desired – any post – if she was thick with the Gauleiter. It was more dangerous, but probably guaranteed getting right where she wanted. The only thing was she would have to show ardent Nazi sympathies, something she detested.
There was one obstacle; Fuessl. Still, she had taken care of such obstacles before, and he was an SS officer. Her mind made up, she leaned forward and kissed Curt on the lips.
Curt was shocked, then beyond ecstatic. All his birthdays and Christmases had arrived at the same time. When she pulled back, smiling, he held her hands, still hardly believing his luck. “You mean you will become my sweetheart?”
“Of course,” she said. “But we must be discreet first. The Hauptmann will not be happy and may make trouble for you. You know what the SS are like.”
Curt nodded swallowing. “But-but I want you to meet my father, and my uncle!”
Isabella gripped his arm. “Leave that to me. In a week it shall be all right. Can you wait that long? One little week?”
Curt sighed, then nodded, his eyes shining. He returned to his work on a cloud of happiness, and Isabella worried he would give the game away – nobody could miss the point he had gotten himself a woman, and it wouldn’t take long for someone to find out who and then the word would be out all round the place. Fuessl would be in a royal piss, and probably shoot the young man. She had to act fast.
She wrote to her family via a post box in Vienna, for writing to Switzerland was not permitted. The letter appeared trivial and uninteresting, commenting on her job and life in Krakow, but their family had perfected the use of a code over the years, activating it with a certain word. A letter would be ordinary until the activation word ‘obviously’ was inserted, then every other word’s initial letter spelt the message until the deactivating word ‘consequence’ was written in.
