Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [89]
He looked west toward the cars. The bodyguards had taken up positions at the end of the airstrip. He still could not see them clearly, but several appeared now to be carrying weapons, either rifles or submachine guns. Cray glanced over his shoulder. He couldn't make out anything of the night and smoke, but he had no doubt another phalanx of soldiers was closing in on him from the south. He was boxed in.
Next came the most fearful sound on a battlefield, the low rasp of armor, from Cray's left and right, and then from somewhere behind him. And across the airstrip several tanks and armored scout cars rumbled from down the street, the fires behind them, and the soldiers opened their ranks to allow the vehicles into their midst, into the box that held Jack Cray. Another tank crawled out of the darkness at the east end of the airfield.
Cray squeezed his eyes closed, and said under his breath, "Nuts."
EUGEN EBERHARDT'S automobile arrived at the airstripjust as the Storch pivoted around to return to the west end of the airfield. The pilot killed the engine, and the Führer's stand-in, an RSD major in a brown raincoat, climbed down from the passenger's seat. Eberhardt's driver pulled up beside an armored car, and the RSD general emerged from his Horch. The false-Führer's bodyguards, who were Waffen-SS, awaited orders.
Dietrich also climbed out of the Horch. Binoculars were in his hand. He stepped around the car's front bumper to Eberhardt.
"I think Jack Cray is in our square," the general said. "He fell for it. We've got him outgunned, with all the men and armor. I think we've got him."
"He may be inside our square," Dietrich replied gravely, "but that doesn't mean we've got him yet."
CRAY PULLED the pistol from his belt and scrambled up the crater's crumbling wall, leaving the Panzerfausts behind. He ran east in an infantryman's crouch. To his right came the sounds of soldiers closing in, heavy boots on loose soil and broken branches, a few sharp orders from officers, from back among the trees. Cray could see little, and ran with his left hand out to ward off tree limbs and brush, he knew what was coming. In a few seconds the airstrip and all that surrounded it would be lit as brightly as midday.
Cray dodged a fallen tree and sidestepped water-filled craters, sprinting east. A German voice called, "Did you see someone?" Others barked replies, lost to Cray in the sound of his breath.
The most formidable weapon may also be the weakest. Cray was forty yards from the tank at the south end of the airstrip when the night was split by a dagger of harsh yellow light. Then another and another. Flares descending from the sky on parachutes threw flat shadows.
His legs churning, Cray glanced to the south, toward Tiergarten Street. Soldiers seeped out between the trees. They had been told this trap had been set for the Vassy Chateau killer, and they moved warily. They squinted against the sudden light. A few saw movement and brought up weapons. A smattering of shots.
Dirt and stones splashed up at the American's feet. The tank's commander was standing in the cupola, the upper half of his body protruding from the turret. This was a Panzerkampfwagen III, a medium tank, and fast, known for chasing Bernard Montgomery around northern Africa. The commander was wearing a black side cap and a radio headset. His sleeves were rolled up, and around his neck were binoculars. His eyes found Jack Cray just as Cray reached for a handhold on the spare track links on the tank's nose. The commander reached down into the cupola, shouting for his pistol.
The tank's loader also saw the American through a vision block, and he reached for the grip of his machine gun. Its barrel protruding from a hole below the turret, the coaxial MG-34 sprayed bullets that churned the ground, but behind Cray. The machine gun's traverse was limited, and as Cray crawled up the hull of the tank, his feet finding a platform on the tread fender and his hand using the barrel of the 50-mm gun, he was inside the