The Ten Thousand (36 page)

Taking the map and sticking it under his left arm, Ilvanich began to stand up. As he did so, his wool cap fell to the floor, exposing the 9mm pistol in his right hand. Noticing that the hammer of the pistol pointed at them was cocked back, the two German sergeants rose. First one, then the other, glanced at the two Czech soldiers who had been left standing at the door.

Both had, while the Army sergeant was briefing Ilvanich, moved up to the counter. They now stood there, rifles raised and ready, staring at the German sergeants. Switching to his best High German, Ilvanich calmly began to issue his orders. “Now, if neither one of you gets excited, you and all your men will live to see the dawn. First, Sergeant, you need to assemble your squad out here without their weapons, where my sergeant can watch them. Then we need to call your platoon leader and company commander and convince them to join us here. Please, when you do so, be discreet, for although I really do not want to see you or any of your men dead, my American ranger friends here are quite upset about what your Chancellor has been saying and doing lately. Neither of them cares about your personal well-being like I do. They would, as the Americans are so fond of saying, just as soon shoot you where you stand as look at you.”

When he was satisfied that the German Army sergeant understood, Ilvanich turned to the customs sergeant. “And as soon as my trusted American deputy arrives, a young lieutenant eager to practice his soldierly skills and not particularly concerned whom he practices them on, you and I will go to the station control room and begin to make some changes in the routing of rail traffic. This is going to be, I’m afraid, a much longer night than either of you expected.”

Though he could see that both sergeants were quite angry, as much about the playful manner in which he was treating them as about the situation, Ilvanich could also see that they were confused and unsure.

So long as he kept them that way, he and the rest of his American ranger company would have the advantage and, with just a little luck, be able to pry open the door into Germany for the rest of the corps.

16 JANUARY

Used to the night shift in the small town of Pegnitz, located in southern Germany, police Sergeant Julius Reusch found no difficulty staying awake and occupied. His silent companion, Ernst Ohlendorf, recently shifted from day duty, however, had long ago given up trying to entertain himself and had drifted off to sleep. Slouched in a seat opposite Reusch, Ohlendorf was hardly disturbed by Reusch’s walking back and forth from his desk to the metal files as he sorted reports and documents that the day and evening shifts had not had time to file. Even when his lieutenant came in, flipping on the bright overhead lights, and told Reusch that he and Ohlendorf needed to go down to the rail yard and check out a report from an old woman that tanks were moving about down there, Ohlendorf didn’t budge.

After a great deal of effort, Reusch managed to get Ohlendorf moving, though barely. Every move, every exertion by Ohlendorf, still half asleep, seemed to be in slow motion. Reusch, accustomed to the difficulties that even young men had when shifting from day to night duty, was patient with Ohlendorf.

They had time. The lieutenant hadn’t seemed terribly concerned with the old woman’s complaint. She had made the same complaint when the American Army had moved into the Czech Republic the previous December, and when the German armored units deployed along the Czech border had suddenly been shifted north several days ago. No doubt, Reusch’s lieutenant had been right when he offhandedly commented that some brilliant military strategist in Berlin had made the startling discovery that the Czech border faced Bavaria as well as Berlin and that it might be a good idea to keep someone there as well. It would be, Reusch thought, just like the Army to hustle troops north in a great panic and then hustle them right back where they started from. While he checked Ohlendorf to ensure he had his uniform on right, pistol belt on, and hat straight before stepping out into the bitter cold, Reusch felt like an undertaker preparing a corpse. Half to himself, half to Ohlendorf, Reusch mumbled that a corpse at least was cooperative.

Driving carefully along the slick, snow-covered streets, Reusch glanced about. There was no point, he figured, in going out without making the most of it. So he took a route to the rail yard that led him past some of the buildings and shops that needed to be checked on a regular basis. Though he would have preferred to have Ohlendorf do the checking while he tried to keep the police car from slipping and sliding, Ohlendorf had lapsed back into a deep sleep. So Reusch drove and made the checks on his own, steering with one hand most of the time.

He was in the process of looking closely at the front of one of the banks when a vehicle with headlights mounted high above the ground came tearing around the corner from a side street. Without realizing what it was, and only catching a glimpse of the vehicle from the corner of his eye, Reusch had seen enough to know that if he didn’t do something immediately, there would be a collision. Jerking the steering wheel hard in the direction in which he had been looking, Reusch began to pump the brake.

Despite his best efforts, however, the right front of the police car slid on the snow-covered street, hitting the rear of a parked car. This impact threw Ohlendorf forward and into the dash in front of him as the police car bounced off the parked car. Rather than bringing the car to a stop, the impact caused Reusch’s car to spin out into the middle of the street, right into the path of the oncoming vehicle.

Realizing that he had lost control and unable to do anything but pray, Reusch stopped fighting the steering wheel and, ignoring Ohlendorf’s panicked cries, turned to face the vehicle that they were fated to hit. As terrible as his sudden loss of control and the collision with the parked car was to Reusch, it did not match his shock when he looked and saw the tracks of an armored vehicle, level and in line with his eyes, bearing down on him just a few meters outside his car door window. Though the commander of the oncoming M-2 Bradley had seen his car and was attempting to stop, the slick, snow-covered pavement carried it forward several more feet toward Reusch. There was only enough time for Reusch to close his eyes as he prepared to be crushed.

From atop the turret of C60, the bumper number of her M-2 Bradley, Captain Nancy Kozak held her breath as the white and green German police car disappeared under the front slope of her Bradley.

Preparing herself for the inevitable, Kozak winced, dropping down her open hatch and bracing herself.

But instead of a sudden and crushing impact, Kozak felt little more than a slight shudder. Relaxing her grip, she slowly began to rise back out of her hatch, ever so carefully leaning forward as she did so in order to see what had happened to the German police car.

Instead of a mutilated car and body parts all over the street, Kozak saw that the slick road had in fact saved the Germans, allowing the German police car to bounce back down the street when her slow-moving Bradley hit it. From her perch, Kozak watched the driver of the German police car slowly open his door and, moving slowly, get out.

Rather than become excited, Reusch could only stand in the middle of the street looking first at his police car and then at the American Bradley that had almost run him and his car over. How he survived was at that moment beyond him. Not that it was important, other than the fact that something had saved him. Turning to face his attacker, Reusch realized for the first time that the front of his pants and his right pants leg were wet. In the excitement of the moment, he hadn’t noticed the warm urine running down his leg. Only the cold night air hitting his wet pants caused him to notice. After looking down at his pants, Reusch looked back up at the Bradley, its commander now leaning out of an open hatch. Quickly replacing his shock and embarrassment with anger, Reusch began to step forward, toward the Bradley.

As he did so, he mechanically unsnapped the flap of the holster for his pistol.

Even in the pale light of the streetlamps and falling snow, Kozak couldn’t help but notice that the German policeman’s look of shock had changed to one of anger. His sudden turn toward her and the unsnapping of his holster caused Kozak to ease back down into the safety of the turret just as her gunner, Sergeant Danny Wolf, was sticking his head up to see what was going on. When he saw the angry policeman, his right hand resting on the butt of an unseen pistol, advancing on C60 like Gary Cooper in _High Noon, _ Wolf stopped. “Looks like the natives are restless, Captain.”

Kozak simply shrugged off Wolf’s concern. “Well, we knew someone was bound to get upset.”

Looking over at him, she added, “After all, most Germans don’t take too kindly to having their country invaded.”

Wolf, still watching the policeman as he stopped just off to one side of C60, chuckled. “I don’t see why they should get so emotional over something like that. Hasn’t everyone invaded Germany at least once?”

Unable to restrain herself at Wolf’s attempt at humor at a time like this, after a long, tense rail movement through the Czech mountains and into Germany, Kozak laughed. “True, that’s quite true. I guess they just don’t see the humor in the situation.”

As if his brush with death and his involuntary urination weren’t enough to upset and anger Reusch, the sight of the Americans who had almost killed him laughing caused him to lose control. Pulling his pistol out, Reusch held it pointed at the Bradley commander and began to shout at the top of his lungs for him to dismount and surrender himself. He didn’t realize, of course, that not only was the Bradley commander a woman, but that even if she wasn’t, she was under orders to meet force with like force.

Seeing that things were getting out of hand, and sure that her laughing wasn’t helping the situation any, Kozak dropped what Wolf called her official Commander Nancy face into place. Keeping one eye on the screaming German, Kozak slowly began to lower herself into the safety of the turret. When she knew her driver, Terri Tish, could hear her without the aid of the intercom, Kozak ordered Tish to slowly begin to move forward. Though she hoped that the German policeman would get the idea and move his police car, Kozak didn’t much care what happened. Already the column of tanks and Bradleys coming up from the rail yard was backing up behind her, waiting to get out of Pegnitz and move to their blocking positions to the west of Grafenwöhr.

With one eye on the angry German policeman and the other on the street ahead, Kozak guided her Bradley forward. When it made contact with the police car turned broadside in the street, she noticed a second policeman, his head bleeding, jump out of the passenger side. The second policeman paused once he was clear of his derelict vehicle and watched the Bradley begin to crush it. Looking at his doomed car, then at the parade of armored vehicles coming up from the rail yard, he decided that this was more than they could handle. Turning on his heel, he began to flee down the street and out of sight.

An excited cry from Wolf, just as the police car began to crinkle and rip under the treads of the Bradley, caused Kozak to see what he was up to. Glancing over her shoulder, away from the irate policeman who was still screaming and waving his pistol about, Kozak noticed that Wolf had a grin from ear to ear. When he saw his commander looking at him, his smile grew larger. “I always wanted to do this, Captain. I just wish we could’ve gotten some pictures to send home.”

Though she felt like saying something, Kozak didn’t. It was at this point useless to try to explain to Wolf the seriousness of what they were doing, that they would be lucky if after this they would be able to send themselves home. Shaking her head, she looked back at the policeman, now standing on the side of the street watching as Bradley C60 finished grinding his police car into compressed scrap.

Though he was tempted to shoot the commander of the American Bradley, Reusch decided not to.

Instead, he stood there and watched his police car reduced to a mass of twisted metal. It wasn’t that he had any particular affection for the car. It was no different than any other police car operated by the police in Pegnitz. What really bothered Reusch was the total disregard for his authority and the blatant disrespect the Americans had shown him. It was the image of the American perched high above him laughing as he tried to perform his most difficult duties that upset Reusch the most. When he had seen that and realized that they were laughing at him, Reusch wanted to shoot him. And he would have too had he been able to control his anger enough to steady his shaking arm.

That he would have been gunned down in a matter of seconds didn’t matter to him at first. His state of mind, and the minds of many Germans for days to come, would be unable to make the mental transition from peace to war instantaneously. Such things, as Big Al knew and counted on, took time. Even Reusch, standing in the street of Pegnitz waving his fist defiantly at the column of Bradleys and tanks as they rolled by him, failed to comprehend the deadly seriousness that the warlike Americans carried into this enterprise. Reusch’s confusion and inability to deal effectively with the situation because of a lack of understanding and precedent were to be repeated time after time as Germans going about their daily routines ran into the lead elements of the Tenth Corps as it spilled out of the Czech mountains and into the peaceful, snow-covered river valleys of Bavaria.

Almost as if it were a routine occurrence, the guard opened the gate for the Territorial Army regional headquarters. Merging in with the line of cars waiting to enter the military compound, the driver of Scott Dixon’s M-1A1 tank turned off the street crowded with early-morning traffic and rolled through the gate into the compound as if he were just another commuter going to work. Dixon, riding high in the commander’s hatch with the confidence that war machines like the M-1A1 Abrams transmit to their crews like a battery supplies energy, gave the German gate guard a smart salute as he went by. Ignoring the stares of the reserve soldiers and officers of the German Territorial Army scurrying about in the predawn darkness of the neat, well-laid-out compound, Dixon directed his driver around the circular drive to the headquarters building. Cerro, riding high in the hatch of the M-577 command post carrier, followed Dixon’s tank. Together, they represented the advance command post of the 1st Brigade, 4th Armored Division. Even more importantly, as they moved through the German Territorial Army compound, they represented the first test of official military reaction to the Tenth Corps march to the sea.