Delta Green: Denied to the Enemy by Dennis Detwiller Read Free Book Online Page B

changes in Mors’ attitudes during his study of the book. Indeed, he seemed happier than ever on the French coast.
     
    He was happy for reasons no one else understood.
     
    Mors proceeded directly to the motor launch dock with three pages he had torn secretly from the Cthaat Aquadingen that evening. When questioned by the sentry on duty at the boat dock, Mors offered the guard a cigarette. When the guard leaned in to have it lit, Mors impaled the man with a bayonet. The guard survived the attack, and later fired a warning shot as Mors sped off to sea in a small boat.
     
    It was initially thought Mors was attempting to escape to England, but once the base was alerted to his flight, and the lights were trained to the water past the breakers, it became obvious this was not his plan. Mors anchored the boat one hundred yards off shore and stood on the prow shouting at the waves in a shrill voice which, when the wind was right, could be heard from shore—although the alien language he shouted could not be understood. All hails to the ship were ignored. After contact by loudspeaker was attempted, Weber ordered a group of SS men to take a craft out and apprehend Mors to bring him back in unharmed. As the men boarded their ship and prepared to launch from the dock, the waves and wind started to pick up and Weber canceled the order. Under the advice of Scharführer Schwelm, a sharpshooter was sent to the end of the rock outcropping on the bay to shoot Mors as he stood illuminated in the base tower lights.
     
    A boat was standing by, still tethered to the dock in the rough water, waiting to recover Mors’ body after the sniper had fired. It is uncertain whether Mors had completed his ritual or the bullet struck him down during a lull, but the shot hit Mors high in the chest and threw him from the ship. The second boat immediately pushed off from the dock and sped to the scene of the now pilotless craft.
     
    It is unclear what happened next. Several of the eyewitness reports vary significantly from those of the command staff, but of the forty or more people on the shore, dock, and ships, nine were killed in the pandemonium and fifteen were hospitalized for a variety of reasons. Whatever was seen in the water caused Major Horst Krofft, an Iron Cross-awarded Wermacht veteran of the Polish campaign, to open fire on his own men with his Gewehr 41 rifle, hitting four before he was tackled. Another man, Hauptment Arthur Berlich, could not be roused from the fetal position after running desperately more than four miles from the beach in a dash which took him through two rows of razor wire. He was later sent to the Strasbourg Sanitarium, as were five other men who were present on that beach.
     
    Others simply tried their best to disappear completely. One man, Oberleutnant Georg Friesler, made it all the way to the frontier of Switzerland four days later before being shot trying to sneak over the border at Les Rousses. Leutnant Hans Springer chose a simpler method of escape; he swam out to sea and drowned after being smashed against the rocks on the rough night surf.
     
    What exactly was seen in the water remained a mystery, even in the privately circulated report which was hidden from Karotechia command at Offenburg. Nothing specific was mentioned of the sinking of the two boats, although it is certain that both boats were violently sunk and all hands were lost about a hundred and fifty yards off shore. Several of the eyewitness reports hinted that the ships were sunk by some creature of unprecedented size and configuration, which rose up and overwhelmed both craft with its bulk. Others insist the “beast” was actually a huge hand, the hand of some enormous submerged and unseen creature, which rose up from the waves and swatted the vessels to the bottom. Most refused to talk of it at all, and insisted that the boats were destroyed by the overpowering waves.
     
    Weber’s typed testimony of the episode, which was circulated only