Final impact

He had twelve men to protect thirty-four German rocket scientists from an estimated eighty or ninety SS troopers, all of whom seemed to have gone to Plan B: kill everyone in sight. Harry himself was holed up in some sort of canteen on the second floor of the residential complex, with Nazis above and below him, and the rest of the squadron cut off on the other side of the H-shaped building.

The crash of small arms and Mills bombs did not let up. The scientists huddled together behind a makeshift barricade at the very rear of the mess hall, where Anjela Claudel and three of Harry’s men, who would have been better used up here on the firing line, guarded them. Harry crouched behind an upturned table, a solid oaken slab of cover that protected them from the German Mausers. For now. There was only so much damage it could take, however, before it was reduced to splinters.

“Bit of a cock-up then, guv,” Sergeant Major St. Clair commented.

“Just a fucking bit,” Harry agreed.

Captain Ronsard shrugged theatrically. “Such is life, non?”

There’d been no warning that two companies of SS Panzergrenadiers were posted at the residence, and before the two sides got themselves sorted out there were probably forty or fifty casualties in the mкlйe. Now Harry’s squadron was split over three floors, in a dozen different rooms. What looked like two full-strength platoons of Waffen-SS were blocking them from linking up with the other squadron, and tac net was blaring warnings of a battalion-sized enemy force racing toward Donzenac from Tulle. Gunships had peeled away to attack them, but there would be more to follow.

Harry had already ordered six of the Chinooks to depart with his wounded troopers and those captured rocket scientists they had managed to get out. But he needed to see the remaining prisoners away, too, because numbered among them were two of the Reich’s foremost missile researchers, perhaps even their best: Wernher von Braun and Major General Walter Dornberger. Both had worked for the United States after the war, in his time. Since this was common knowledge now, the fact that they were still alive spoke volumes for their importance to the Third Reich. Harry was determined to get them out of here and back to England, no matter the cost.

If that proved impossible, as a last resort he’d put a bullet into each of their brains.

The sounds of close-quarter battle were so loud they penetrated his helmet’s gel seal, making it difficult for him to communicate with his men, even using the throat mikes. The upturned table shuddered under the impact of concentrated rifle fire. At first he’d wondered why the Panzergrenadiers hadn’t just tossed a couple of potato mashers over and finished off all the white coats he’d put in the bag. They’d done just that on the floor below, killing half a troop of his men and the six technicians they’d been shepherding.

But then, von Braun and Dornberger hadn’t been part of that group. The Germans must have had orders to keep them alive no matter the cost. A mirror image of Harry’s own mission brief.

For the moment, then, they had arrived at a stalemate.

The frenzy of small-arms fire and hand-to-hand fighting that had marked the opening minutes of the encounter had settled down into a more measured exchange, with each side trying to pick off the other, man by man. Harry couldn’t even rely on his lads’ night vision to give them an advantage. The SS were kitted out with their own Gen2-type goggles. He and St. Clair could have blinded them with flash-bangs, which their 21C optics were smart enough to blot out. But the rest of his men were equipped with NVGs no more advanced than the Germans’-perhaps a little less so.

An SAS trooper next to Ronsard who’d raised himself up to take a shot suddenly flew backward, a gout of dark fluid jetting from his splattered skull.

“Merde,” grunted the Frenchman.

“Who was that?” Harry asked St. Clair.

The giant noncom glanced over. “Looks like Asher, guv.”

“Bugger. I’ve had enough of this, Viv. They just have to keep us here long enough, and they win. That’s why they’re not pressing the issue.”

St. Clair nodded. “Fair enough.”

Captain Ronsard lifted his Ivan gun above the table and squeezed off a three-round burst. “You have a plan?”

“It’s a bear hunt. We can’t go through them. Can’t get around them. We’ll have to go over them.”

“Sorry, guv,” said St. Clair. “Left me jet-powered backpack at ’ome.”

“Not to worry. I have a cunning plan. Is Private Haigh still in the land of the living?”

It was a bugger of a thing not being able to call up his men’s biosigns. It meant he was never quite sure at any given moment who was drawing breath and who wasn’t.

“Gideon!” St. Clair cried in a harsh whisper. “What are you up to, you nasty little man? Not ’aving another wank, I ’ope.”

“No, Sergeant Major,” came the reply over the tac net. “I’m down by the big fridge at the back of the room.”