Page 38 of Clive Cussler The Iron Storm
The soldier darted left toward another building, a long, low affair that had been erected by the German army when they’d taken over the castle. It had light spilling from every window and aromatic smoke coiling from several chimneys. The last leg of the chase was a footrace across a courtyard and the cook found a final burst of speed because he reached the door to what was apparently the kitchens ahead of Bell, though not by much.
The kid nearly yanked the door off its hinges when he reached the building and started yelling in excited German as soon as he was inside the industrial kitchen. Bell bounded in a few seconds later and came to a sudden stop. There were a half dozen men in whites getting ready to feed the garrison their breakfast. Some were stirring huge vats with what looked like boat oars, others were feeding splitwood into stoves and ovens, while a pair were working mounds of dough with floured hands.
They all looked up from their tasks as their young assistant tried to explain what was happening in between great asthmatic breaths. The cooks seemed utterly bewildered by what the lad was trying to say, but in a corner near a little potbelly stove a man enjoying a coffee, and the first of the day’s strudel, lowered the two-day-old paper he was reading. Bell felt the stare as if he’d been physically poked. He turned just as Sergeant Schmidt tossed aside the paper and came out of his seat as though he’d been launched by a catapult.
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Bell barely had time tobrace himself. He took the charge as though he were accepting being tackled, but then turned just at the last second, grabbed one of the thug’s arms, and tossed him over his hip. Schmidt hit one of the heavy prep tables on a shoulder and rolled up onto it, scattering bowls, spoons, and jars of honey.
Bell’s hand went to his lower back and the Luger, only to come up empty. It had fallen out when he’d hit the mattresses, but he hadn’t felt it because the jolt upon impact had been so strong.
The German rolled over to the other side of the table and stood, his big hands balled into hammer-like fists, a sneering snarl curling his lip. The cooks rightly scattered. As Schmidt turned right to come around the prep table, Bell dashed left to keep the heavy piece of furniture between them. He was in no condition to fight this guy. Schmidt had him by forty pounds of muscle and Bell had been putthrough a meat grinder over the past week. He needed a weapon. When Bell’s back was to the row of stoves, he reached behind him and grabbed an iron saucepan full of some dark bubbling liquid. He hurled it at the German.
Schmidt had seen the attack coming and dodged the heavy pan, but was hit with a spray of boiling beef stock that scalded half his face and cut vision from one of his eyes. In response he threw his full weight against the table in an effort to pin Bell against the hot stoves.
Bell jumped straight up to land on his heels atop an oven door handle and leapt again just as the two-hundred-pound table slammed into the stoves with a mighty crash. Schmidt hadn’t expected Bell to be so quick, and so he wasn’t ready for the solid kick Bell landed right in his mouth. Had he been wearing the tall leather boots pilots were issued, the fight would have ended then and there. But Bell had been given some insulated boots to help ward off the cold of flying at altitude and the padding at the toe cushioned the blow.
Schmidt was staggered by the kick, but didn’t go down. He spat a gob of blood on the floor and rushed at Bell once again. Bell jumped from the table, pulled the paddle from the vat of oatmeal, and brandished it like a baseball bat, clots of porridge scattering off the blade as he swung.
He lined up on Schmidt’s head and let fly a one-handed strike. The German didn’t flinch. He raised an arm in defense and absorbed the impact on his hard muscles. The paddle just didn’t have the weight to turn momentum into force. But that wasn’t its purpose. As Schmidt had been watching the paddle in Bell’s right, he hadn’t noticed him pick up a heavy cleaver in his left.
Bell jumped toward Schmidt as he took the hit with the improvised stirrer and brought the cleaver down in an overhead strike thatcame with everything he had. The edge of a cleaver doesn’t need to be particularly sharp to be effective. Efficiency comes down to the weight of the blade and the strength of the user.
Bell hit the German torturer a fraction of an inch from where his thick neck met his left shoulder. The blade cut through the clavicle like it was a chicken wing, tore its way through the first rib with little trouble, and hacked deep into Schmidt’s lung. Bell yanked the blade from the gruesome injury as his follow-through.
The German made to scream, but his lung was already filling with blood. Shock quickly overwhelmed his nervous system and he collapsed to the floor. He’d be dead in moments.
And moments was something Bell had run out of. The cooks were doubtlessly raising the alarm about an escaped prisoner and a fight in the kitchen. He ran out the door he’d entered and saw two sentries rushing toward the building. One shouted and started running at him. The other stopped and shouldered his rifle. Bell was around a corner before he could get off a shot.
Bell had always been gifted with rarely ever getting lost. He had an innate sense of direction that could help him navigate places he’d never visited, often with the confidence of a native. This night was no different. Though he’d never laid eyes on the castle and its complex of buildings until that afternoon, he knew how to reach his rendezvous point with the British flyers.
The first shots rang out seconds later as another patrol spotted him. Bell dove behind a parked truck and searched for the shooters. They were perfectly positioned to block Bell from reaching his target. He backtracked, keeping low and hugging walls where he could. Losing his pistol had been an unforgivable rookie mistake, one that could end up costing him his life.
Searchlights were being turned on, their long beams lancingthrough the night as they swept the compound. Bell circled away from the lights and got his first bit of luck since escaping the cell. A soldier had stopped to tie his boot on his way to join the search. He was alone and preoccupied. His rifle was on the ground next to his bent knee. Bell snatched it up and hit the hapless soldier before he knew he was being stalked.
He pulled two spare clips from the unconscious German’s bandolier and raced off once again. He spotted another patrol hunting for him, two men walking cautiously side by side, their rifle barrels in constant motion. He couldn’t go around them, so he took aim. The first man went down, and as Bell swung to aim at the second German, he raised his own rifle rather than seek cover. It was a fatal mistake.
As was inevitable in a situation like this, frightened conscripts with poor training and a genuine fear of death began firing at shadows. First it was one gun, then two, and soon it seemed everyone had opened fire at imaginary targets. No doubt some of the guards were firing at their own men. Levelheaded NCOs were trying to quell the fusillade, their whistles piercing the night.
Bell stuck to the shadows and avoided areas where the guns seemed the loudest. He was forced to backtrack several times to avoid roving patrols. He had to end this soon, as more and more men were turning out of their barracks. He was at the back of the keep, crawling on his belly because he was so exposed, when someone spotted him. The shot blew chips off a stone block an inch from his head. He wriggled to face the gunman, swinging the rifle to his shoulder in a classic prone shooting position. The gunman had just finished cycling the bolt closed when Bell spotted him and fired the only bullet he would need.
Bell got to his feet and started running. There were just too manyGermans out hunting him for him to try for stealth. He could only hope the Brits had done their part. At the corner, he paused. The old stables that the Germans had converted to a motor pool sat directly across from him, its doors sealed for the night. That was his destination. He’d tasked the flyers with getting a vehicle to make their getaway. He just hadn’t expected the whole castle to be awake to make that task all but impossible now.
Five soldiers stood in front of the main door to the space, their rifles held at their waists, but they appeared alert. The back of the stables was the castle’s main perimeter wall, so there was no sneaking around the building looking for a rear entrance, and from where Bell crouched he couldn’t see a side door, either.
This wasn’t a stalemate because eventually the Germans would recapture him. He had to move, even if a frontal assault was tantamount to a suicide charge. He replaced the clip in his rifle with a fresh one and was about to take out the first German when the tall door behind them suddenly exploded outward in a burst of splintered wood.
Emerging through the carnage like an enraged bull after a matador was a captured Mark II tank, one of Britain’s latest weapons. It was a beast of a machine, some twenty-six feet long, thirteen feet wide, and eight feet tall. It weighed in at just under thirty tons. To accommodate crossing wide trenches, the vehicle was essentially a large rhombus with the tracks on the very perimeter and its guns mounted in big boxy sponsons that jutted out from the sides.
Four of the Germans had fast-enough reflexes to leap out of the way of the charging tank. One poor fellow didn’t and vanished under its heavy steel tread.
Liam Holmes emerged from a hatch at the top of the massive vehicle brandishing a Spandau light machine gun, its ammo beltsway ing like a shiny brass ribbon. Accustomed to firing from a moving airplane at other moving airplanes, he had little trouble mowing down the stunned German guards while atop a lumbering tank.
The gun threw long tongues of flame as he raked the guards in the immediate area, clearing the way for Bell to break cover and rush at the tank. The side hatches were closed because the Brits didn’t know what they’d be facing once they escaped the motor pool, so he raced to the back of the crawling tank and leapt onto one of the moving tracks. It swept him upward with a jerk that nearly threw him back to the ground. He found his balance as he reached the top of the tank and jumped onto the armored decking just behind Holmes.
“A tank?” Bell shouted incredulously.
“Only Fox and I are pilots. The others were all gunners who got their start in the tank corps,” Holmes replied. “And when we heard all the gunfire we figured better safe in one of these than in some open truck.”
