Frank Ballard took a whiff of the pine trees, relished the fragrance that was so thick in the air. The nearly constant overcast had blown over with the dawn, and despite the wintry season, a rare day of clear skies and sunshine had him thinking of spring. Wet snow still lay deep in the woods to either side of the road, but on the southward-facing banks and shallow hillsides the sun had almost completely eradicated the seasonal blanket. Idly he wondered which would happen first: the snowmelt, or the end of World War II.
Certainly, the prospects for bringing the war to a close were looking good, far better than they had at any time since the attack on Pearl Harbor. It had been seven full days since CCA had lost a man to enemy action—though, sadly, a corporal had been killed and a private paralyzed with a broken neck when a jeep had rolled off of a slippery road.
But there had been no letup in the speed of the advance, which was reminiscent of those heady days in France, during August of the last summer. After the lightning crossing of the Elbe at Dessau, CCA and the rest of Nineteenth Armored had raced northeast, knowing that the rest of Third Army, as well as friendly German forces, were advancing on their flanks. Organized resistance seemed to have come to an end, and even the vexing snipers had faded into the countryside.
As if to challenge his complacency, a rattle of gunfire distracted him.
Ballard flinched reflexively, almost ducking down through the hatch of his turret. But the shots were distant, and were almost instantaneously amplified by a barrage of machine guns from CCA vehicles. Two tanks chimed in with HE rounds and the colonel saw a small house and nearby shed, perched on a hillside with a good view of the road, vanish in a cloud of fire and smoke.
He looked down the road, saw no signs of excitement—no one was calling for the medic, or aiding a wounded man. Good … looked like the CCA luck was holding. Still, the shots, probably resulting from an amateurish attempt at an ambush, provided a pointed reminder that the war was still on and that he, Frank Ballard, still had a job to do.
Leaning out of the tank as it rolled forward, he looked along the column, trying to understand the source of the disturbance. He saw an infantry sergeant explaining something to the commander of one of the tanks that had just blasted the building, and directed his own driver to pull off next to the NCO.
“What happened, Sergeant?” Ballard asked, shouting over the rumbling of his tank’s engine.
The man shook his head in embarrassment. “One of my boys, one of the replacements, thought he saw something moving up there and took a few shots. Naturally, the rest of the company chimed in. Turns out it was only a cow, coming around that farmhouse. Poor ol’ Bessie never had a chance.”
“Hey, Colonel?” called the other Sherman’s commander, a sergeant who had been with the unit since Normandy. “How ’bout I send some boys up there and see if we can round up some steaks for dinner?”
Ballard laughed at the thought, but shook his head. “Sorry, Buck. But we’re in a race, remember—no time for a barbecue!”
Buck waved good-naturedly and reached down to tell his driver to keep moving. Ballard’s tank fell in behind as a gap opened, almost magically, in the tight rank of Shermans on the road. One thing about being the CO, he reflected—you never had to wait for the column to make room for you.
A jeep skittered along the shoulder of the road, coming back against the flow of the tank traffic, and he recognized Captain Smiggs. The recon officer’s driver nimbly backed the four-wheel-drive vehicle down into the ditch, facing the road, and when the command tank rolled past the little car lurched onto the shoulder and raced along beside; the two officers could talk this way without any delay in the advance, though the jeep driver was forced to wrestle with the steering wheel as he drove through the mountains of slush and mud kicked up by the column of Shermans.
“See anything interesting up there?” Ballard shouted down.
“Met one of Rommel’s scouts at the next crossroads,” Smiggy called back. “We should veer right there—that’ll lead us past Potsdam. Sounds like Fourth Armored and Panzer Lehr are getting into a traffic jam on the outskirts of the place, so the right turn will let us skirt around the city.”
“Straight to Berlin, that’s what we want,” Ballard said with a smile.
Indeed, when General Wakefield had caught up to them at the end of the previous day and given them the go-ahead, the old man had been unusually enthusiastic. Apparently some of Patton’s fire was rubbing off on the normally stodgy division commander. In any event, Berlin was a prize that had achieved almost mythical status in the minds of the GIs of Third Army. Now it was their objective, assigned by no less an entity than the president himself.
Ballard found himself grinning at the very thought.
“What’s so funny?” Smiggs called out.
The colonel just shook his head. “I was just thinking about how strange this war is,” he replied. “We fight our way through France, and now that we’re in the enemy’s home country we’re racing along like it’s a Sunday road rally!”
“Tally ho!” Smiggy shouted, mocking a British accent as his jeep sped away.
The column continued on, but it was only a few minutes later when Ballard was tapped by his radioman, who was down inside the turret. “Colonel—it’s General Wakefield on he horn for you.”
Ballard took the headset and microphone but stayed on top of the turret. This was too nice of a day to climb down into that metal cocoon, even if he did have the division CO talking to him. “This is Texas One—good afternoon, Dallas,” he said.
The big man’s voice came through clearly, and the colonel had no trouble hearing. “Texas One, there’s a small plane en route to you. Set up a landing field marked with smoke, and let me know when you take delivery,” said Wakefield in his deep growl.
“Roger, Dallas, we’re on the job,” Ballard said cheerfully. “Anything you can tell me about what it’s carrying?”
“It may involve some diversion of forces,” Wakefield said. “Do you copy?”
“Diversion of forces, Dallas? But we’re twenty-five miles from—” He paused a moment while he tried to remember the code word for Berlin. “—from Birthday! We could be having dinner there tonight!”
“You can still be at the birthday party,” Wakefield said sternly. “At least most of you nineteen Texans. We have Arizona and Iowa still en route—you won’t be lonely. Dallas out.”
“Arizona” was today’s code word for the Fourth Armored Division, and Iowa represented Panzer Lehr of the German Republican Army. Ballard lowered the mike and asked his radioman to switch to the combat command’s channel.
There were smooth pastures all over the place, and Ballard picked one that had a good approach into the wind, with no trees to block an aircraft as it came in to land. He brushed aside the questions of his officers as they clamored for an explanation, telling them to take advantage of the break to heat up some rations or to get out and stretch their legs.
As soon as the time interval had passed, he had one of his Shermans fire a
couple of smoke rounds, one at each end of the proposed runway. Not only did they mark the spot, but the plumes trailing away from the impacts provided a good gauge of wind speed and direction for the pilot. For a few minutes nothing happened, and as the breeze finally dispersed the markers he had another two rounds fired. No sooner had these exploded than he heard the droning of a small aircraft engine, nothing like the powerful thrum of a fighter or dive bomber.
Soon the craft was in sight, a high-winged Piper with stilt-like tripod landing gear and oversized windows around the compartment. The pilot made a low pass, then circled around until he was flying into the wind. He dropped lower, almost stalling, then set down on the bare ground, bumping along for only a hundred yards or so—barely a quarter of the available distance—before coming to a halt.
One man, an American officer, got out of the passenger door and started across the field toward the Sherman tanks parked beside the road. Ballard climbed out of his turret and started away from the column, wanting to talk to the fellow with some degree of privacy. Even before he had taken a dozen steps, the Piper was turning around in the field, engine revving as it started a takeoff run. By the time the newcomer was close enough for Ballard to identify him, the plane was back in the air, heading west.
“Sanger, how the hell are you?” he said, as the two men shook hands.
“It’s good to see you again, Frank. Got some place where we can talk? And can you ask Smiggy to join us?”
Ballard gestured to a deserted farmhouse he’d commandeered. In a few minutes, the two men were seated at a kitchen table, a fire roaring in an old stove. “Frank, before we get started, I want you to know that this is a little bit off the reservation. I talked to General Wakefield before I flew here, but this is an operation that doesn’t have top brass approval, and we could all end up with our tits in the wringer. If we’re unlucky, we’ll freeze our asses out here in the cold and waste time and men when we could be in Berlin.”
“And if we’re lucky?”
“We’ll put the bag on a top Nazi bugging out of Berlin with a shitload of gold and what he thinks is a get-out-of-jail-free card from one of Rommel’s top men. It’s one of those double-double-double-cross situations.”
Smiggy grinned. “Is the man big on the camp operations side?”
“The biggest.”
“Count me in.” He pulled his service .45 from its holster, twirled it expertly, and slipped it back in.
Ballard spoke up. “Okay. What do you need?”
“I need enough forces to cover these roads and intersections …”