Patrick could see her eyes shining brightly in the clear night, and he made the easy decision. “I will inform MacArthur that he will have to continue the war without me. Give me a few days to arrange things and we can go.” He paused. “Uh, what about Heinz and Molly?”
“Molly can handle him. She already informed me of that and in no uncertain terms. If she does need any help, there are people around, like Annabelle Harris, and I’ll arrange for them to look in. Somehow I think they’ll revel in the privacy, broken arm or no broken arm.”
They leaned toward each other and kissed deeply. Both were aware that a new threshold in their relationship had been crossed. Patrick had never been to Albany, never wanted to go. Now he wanted more than anything to go there and be with Trina. And he knew she wanted him there as well.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE BRIDGE ACROSS the small stream was a fairly solid-looking stone structure that easily supported the weight of a wagon loaded with materiel or the marching feet of fifty or so armed men. Until recently, the bridge hadn’t even been necessary. Generations of Long Islanders had simply eased themselves down the gentle banks on each side and walked across the stream, sometimes barely getting their feet wet. Even in a flood, the stream was rarely more than a few feet deep, and today it was quite shallow.
But a bridge was meant to be crossed and that meant traffic took advantage of its existence all day long and sometimes into the night. Blake Morris sat comfortably in the shade of a shrub and watched the quaint little bridge, barely two hundred yards away. The three men with him were all of his little band that he’d allotted to this task. The rest were in the warehouse area of Brooklyn, or what was left of that lovely city, and had their own assignments. There had been some discussion as to the wisdom of dividing up their small force, but the men in charge of the Brooklyn operation were more than qualified. They would hurt the Germans in the area of materiel; he would hurt their souls. As the Apaches on the mainland made the Germans fear the night, he, Blake Morris, would make them fear the day and cause what had been familiar and friendly to suddenly seem sinister and hostile.
Which was why the bridge, so quaint and charming, gently spanning a stream whose name he didn’t know, was such an appropriate choice.
“What time is it?” Blake hissed, unnecessarily quiet. The response came that it was a little past two in the afternoon. Blake sighed and continued to wait. If all had gone well in Brooklyn, that event was already over. Perhaps he should have gone there with his men. No, he reminded himself, this would strike at the enemy’s soul, if the Germans had souls.
A tremble, a murmur, passed through the air. He looked and the others had heard it too. There was the soft exhalation of their own breath. The wondrously punctual Germans were arriving.
Shortly, the sounds took on definition. The bastards were actually singing! A few minutes later he could see them as they approached the bridge, his bridge. His cute little bridge. First came a lead group of ten, a squad. These were followed by a handful of mounted officers and then the remainder of the battalion, hundreds of men in columns of four. They were in step, he noticed. Despite the fact that they were in the country, their commander had evidently continued to insist they march in step rather than walk at a natural pace. What a fool! Did he think the creatures in the meadow were watching his parade? He must be loved by his troops.
Blake’s three men checked for outriders and saw none. It wasn’t a surprise. There had been no outriders yet when the battalions changed positions, as they did every Tuesday at this time. When this battalion reached the encampment a few miles up the road, the one currently out there would return down the same road to the dubious comforts of Brooklyn.
The head of the column reached the bridge and crossed without breaking stride. It didn’t take long. It was such a little bridge.
Blake waited until the officers and the first company of infantry were completely across. The lead squad was near the red-leaved bush he’d arbitrarily designated as the end of the target area. “Now,” he ordered himself aloud and pushed down on the plunger. For the barest second nothing happened. There was the inevitable momentary fear that the device had failed, then the bridge lifted into the air and seemed to come apart, stone by stone, soldier by soldier. Before the Germans had a moment to even blink, lines of additional explosions walked down the dirt road in both directions from the now-atomized bridge structure. Almost immediately, the sound of the explosions and the shock waves engulfed them. Then there was silence.
It was several seconds before the screaming started. Because of the slow-settling clouds of dust, Blake couldn’t actually see what he’d done, but he was fairly certain the battalion no longer existed.
Later, he would meet up with the crew sent to Brooklyn. If all had gone according to plan, a score of the German warehouses had gone up in smoke and flame. His only regret was that they were not ammunition warehouses. Those were kept under tight guard within the inner German perimeter. What he had been able to gain access to were the stores of food and uniforms; thanks to his other crew, these had doubtless been dynamited as well.
The fucking Krauts wouldn’t starve or go cold any more than they would stop coming down the road and crossing the stream. But it would make them think every time they took a step or opened a door.
Tonight when he slept, maybe his wife would come to him and nod her approval. He smiled.
If there was anything more boring than guard duty, Ludwig Weber couldn’t think of it. Even peeling potatoes was more rewarding. Unless, of course, he had to work with Kessel. However, as a corporal and the captain’s aide, he really didn’t have to perform kitchen police and usually got out of pulling guard duty as well.
But this, as Sergeant Gunther calmly explained over Ludwig’s mild protests, really wasn’t guard duty. It was a roadblock and, because of the recent incidents of sabotage and worse, the idea was to check on who was coming up and down the road. So it was that he and a handful of others watched a dusty and largely untraveled route behind the German lines in Connecticut. At least, thanks to his exalted rank of corporal, he was in charge of the little group. Better, Kessel was not with them. Thank you, Sergeant Gunther, for that small favor.
Although not all of the men at the roadblock had been with him during that fateful stay in New York, they all had been touched by it. As far as he and his men were concerned, the whore who had murdered Ulli had not been found. Of that he was certain, even though a woman had been executed for the crime. Perhaps even worse than Ulli’s murder and castration was the fact that some poor woman who fit the general description of the prostitute had been arrested, shown to them, and, over their protestations, shot.
Ludwig shuddered. He hadn’t seen the woman who seduced Ulli, but the Schuler boys had, and they had tearfully insisted that the retarded-looking slattern with the greasy dark hair whom the military police had picked up wasn’t her. The German police simply insisted that she had to be because she had been found in the area and fit the general description. They had the company watch as a firing squad pulverized her with bullets. The poor thing had been wide-eyed and slobbering with terror. Her mouth was deformed and she wasn’t even able to speak, only grunt. It was then that Ludwig realized with a chill that the police were more concerned with closing the case than with solving the crime. Bastards. The event had seared them all. The death of dumb Ulli was such a waste, such a shame. What bothered him more than anything, except the attitude of the police, was the fact that some of his men, speaking in whispers, blamed the German military for having them here where they could be killed and not the slut who’d cut off Ulli’s cock.
And Ludwig had a hard time disagreeing with them.
“Hey, Ludwig, wagon coming.”
Ludwig shaded his eyes with his hand. Yes, it was a wagon. One lone wagon with two German soldiers in it, and it was pulled by one slow, old horse. Yes, it was a real threat. He rose slowly and started to walk the score or so strides from the shade to where the sun shone on the hastily improvised roadblock. This consisted of a length of wood on a stone stretched across the road, and a hand-painted sign that read “Halt.”