Order of Battle by Ib Melchior Read Free Book Online Page A

several moments they listened intently. Then they looked toward one man. He nodded. Not a word was spoken. A pair of wire clippers, a Schmeisser submachine gun and a couple of Luger pistols quickly appeared from the bundles, while four of the men loaded up with the knapsacks.
    Expertly, noiselessly two men cut the wire, strand by strand, until an opening was made, large enough to let them through one by one. The woman stayed behind with one of the men, armed with the submachine gun. The other five quickly melted away into the shadows among the stacks of cans and drums.
    Pfc David Rosenfeld was disgusted. Utterly disgusted. He’d been sitting in that Godforsaken Repl Depl back in Normandy for weeks, waiting for assignment. He was nineteen and raring to go. And what happened? Two days ago he finally got his orders.
    This is it! he had thought. I’m finally going to see some action. Tie down Germany, fellers, here I come!
    Rosenfeld kicked a stone in resentment. Some action! Guarding a fucking pile of tin cans. Walking peripheral post, yet. What a crock of shit!
    Rosenfeld looked toward a small group of huts located a short distance inside the area. A few jeeps, a staff car and an olive drab Cadillac sedan were parked outside. A couple of GI drivers lounged around the vehicles. Something was up at the Dump HQ. A lot of high brass had arrived not long ago. Probably another supply route snafu, Rosenfeld thought.
    He sighed. Sourly he contemplated the jerry cans, piled high in row upon row; the towering heaps of oil drums. Some action!
    He didn’t see the furtive shadow that darted between two stacks of jerry cans. He was too busy griping to himself. . . .
    The first blast obliterated Pfc Rosenfeld.
    It slammed a fist of roaring, boiling sound into the night sky. A split second later another explosion rocked the depot, and another. In an instant the dump was transformed into a blazing holocaust. Flaming gasoline, hurled into the air by the thunderous blasts, showered down on the HQ huts. The explosions shook the buildings violently.
    One of the drivers, drenched in gasoline, burst into flame. Like a flailing, fiery scarecrow he ran stumbling into a stack of jerry cans. Tumbling, the cans cascaded around him. Instantly the man was engulfed in a blinding eruption of fire.
    From the huts several men came running, silhouetted against the leaping flames. Desperately they tried to protect themselves from the flying incandescent debris. Some of them leaped into the two cars. The staff car was the first to race away. The sedan followed almost at once. Gathering speed, it careened down a path between huge piles of oil drums. Suddenly a tremendous explosion immediately next to the lurching car lifted it into the air and slammed it to the ground in a tortured mass of twisted metal showered with blazing oil. The car shuddered in its death throes, as the gas tank exploded into flame.
    Three bodies could be made out trapped in the funeral pyre. They were charred and mangled beyond recognition. But a rectangular piece of metal fastened to the front bumper could still be recognized, and on it the star of a U.S. general!
    Within seconds the entire dump area was alive with frantic action. Pfc Rosenfeld missed it all.

16 Apr 1945
Kronach
    1019 hrs
    The Liaison Room adjoining the top secret War Room on the second floor of the Corps CP building was relatively calm when Erik and his teammate, Special Agent Donald Lee Johnson, walked in. Major Lund, who ran the place, and who’d managed to make himself indispensable doing it, was briefing a brigadier general and two bird colonels gathered around a map spread out on a table. He acknowledged the arrival of the two CIC agents with a friendly nod, and without missing a comma in his situation briefing.
    Erik and Don had themselves taken Gestapo chief Standartenführer Gerhardt Wilke to Corps HQ for strategic interrogation. The man had turned out to be a veritable encyclopedia on the Gestapo setup in