The Valhalla Exchange - Jack Higgins [42]
'All right, I take the point,' Strasser said. 'Do as you think fit.'
He sat there, his jaw working, fists tightly clenched. He's thrown, Ritter thought, and badly because, for once, he isn't in charge. He has no control. He isn't playing the game - the game's playing him.
Berger was using plain language. 'This is Fiesler Storch AK40, calling Plodin. I am dangerously short of fuel and urgently require assistance. Come in, please.'
There was an immediate response. A voice said urgently, 'Suggest you try elsewhere. We've been completely cut off by Russian troops since seven o'clock last night.'
'I'm afraid I have no choice in the matter,' Ritter told him. 'My estimated time of arrival is o-three-forty. Five minutes after that, and if I'm still airborne, I'll be gliding.'
There was silence, only the static, and then the voice said, 'Very well, we'll do what we can.'
'Right, gentlemen, here we go again,' Berger said, and he started to descend.
Two aircraft were burning at the side of the runway as they went in. 'Expensive landing lights,' Berger said, 'but I'm grateful, nevertheless.'
There were a couple of hangars, a small control tower, a complex of huts a hundred yards or so away, some trucks parked beside them. There was no sound of conflict, no shooting, only the two planes burning at the side of the runway as they touched down, an old Dornier 17 and a Ju 88s night-fighter.
As Berger taxied towards the control tower, half a dozen ground crew ran forward, two of them carrying wheel blocks, and the door opened and an officer stood there framed in the light.
He was an Oberleutnant, his Luftwaffe fliegerbluse open at the neck. He was twenty-three or four, badly in need of a shave and looked tired.
Berger held out his hand. 'Heini Berger. Not too worried about blackout, I see?'
'What would be the point?' the Oberleutnant said. 'With those two blazing like the candles on a Christmas tree. Our water main was fractured in the initial bombardment so we've no fire-fighting facilities. My name's Frankel, by the way.'
'You are in command here?' Strasser asked.
'Yes, the commanding officer, Captain Hagen, was killed last night. Russian tanks shelled us at eleven o'clock and raked the buildings with machine-gun fire.'
'No infantry attack?' Ritter asked.
Frankel took in the uniform, the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords, and straightened his shoulders. 'No, they stayed out there in the dark, Sturmbannfuhrer. Shelled us again approximately an hour ago. That's when the planes got it.'
Ritter walked forward into the shadows. There were bodies here and there and on the far side of the runway, another Junkers tilted forward on its nose, tail up, an enormous ragged furrow in the ground indicating where it had belly-landed.
He turned and came back to the others. 'How many men have you left?'
'Half a dozen,' Frankel said. 'The aircrews of those planes all got away before we were hit. And then there are some of your people. Arrived last night just before the Russians. They're down at the huts now. You can just see their trucks - four of them.'
'My people?' Ritter said. 'You mean by this SS, I presume. Which unit?'
'Einsatzgruppen, Sturmbannfuhrer.'
Ritter's face was very pale. He reached out and grabbed Frankel by the front of his fliegerbluse. 'You will not mention scum like that in the same breath as Waffen-SS, you hear me?'
Einsatzgruppen, action groups or special commandos, had been formed by Himmler prior to the invasion of Russia. They were, in effect, extermination squads, recruited from the gaols of Germany, officered by SD and Gestapo officers. Occasionally soldiers of the Waffen-SS convicted of some criminal offence were transferred to them as a punishment. The phrase scum of the earth summed them up perfectly.
It was Strasser who moved forward to pull Ritter