The locomotive, grinding along the tree trunks, did not stop. It did not appear to slow very much, either. Instead, its right wheels stopped screeching and sparking as they rode up onto one, then both, of the tree trunks.
And then the locomotive veered off the tracks.
Holy mother of God!
He felt the ground shudder repeatedly as the locomotive hit the shoulder, then the coal car followed, then the small passenger car.
That is a small passenger car! What the hell?
The pilot metalwork plowed ground as the locomotive continued to the treeline, where it sheared off a half-dozen trees before finally coming to a stop. The locomotive then rolled onto its left side. The coal car immediately crumpled behind it, then rolled onto its side. And then the passenger car, after impacting the coal car with a deafening crunch of steel and wood, rolled over, too.
“Damn it!” Szerynski said, jumping to his feet from under the ground cover.
“Where is the prisoner boxcar?” Polko said.
“How the hell do I know? Let’s go!”
Polko was on his feet instantly. He made a shrill whistle to his men, then hand signaled them to follow their lead. Polko turned in time to see Szerynski leap across the narrow rails, then run in a crouch, his Sten machine gun trained on the passenger car.
Flames began to rise from inside the locomotive, lighting the night, and the steam engine’s boiler made a strange pulsating hissing sound.
When Szerynski looked in that direction, a man he immediately decided had to be the engineer appeared on top of the rolled-over locomotive. The engineer struggled with a long-barreled weapon—Damn it! He’s got a shotgun!—and Szerynski smoothly took him down with a three-round burst of 9mm from the Sten.
Polko and Szerynski then carefully approached the rear of the passenger car. There was no more singing to be heard.
A young Nazi soldier, bleeding heavily from the nose and mouth, then came crawling out the back door, grunting at the effort. Szerynski saw that the collars of his gray-green SS field tunic bore the insignia of a master sergeant. The hauptscharführer looked to be maybe nineteen, somewhat younger than the SS they had seen guarding the sonderkommandos.
With the Germans suffering staggering casualties on so many fronts—nearly a million killed or taken prisoner in the Battle of Stalingrad alone—a new conscription law in January had ordered men between ages sixteen and twenty-five and women between ages seventeen and forty-five open to mobilization.
The hauptscharführer was going into shock—though not so severely that when he saw Szerynski he couldn’t turn on his side to pull at the flap of the holster on his belt.
Polko saw what was happening and quickly covered the distance between them. He slung the strap of his Sten over his left shoulder while slipping a Colt .45 ACP semiautomatic from his waistband. He aimed the pistol and fired once, hitting the hauptscharführer square in the chest and causing him to roll almost into a fetal position. Then he reached down and put another round in the base of his skull.
Polko glanced over his shoulder. He saw the rest of their men running up as Szerynski signaled for them to provide cover.
Szerynski and Polko then stepped closer to the passenger car.
There were no sounds—human or other—coming from it.
Szerynski peered around the corner of the doorway that the young hauptscharführer had crawled out of. But even with the flames from the locomotive he saw nothing inside but dark shadows. He could, however, smell the interior of the car. It reeked of peppermint—schnapps!—and cheese.
As he reached for his flashlight, he looked over his shoulder at Polko. He saw him pulling the dead bodyguard’s pistol from its leather holster. Polko put his .45 back in his waistband, then worked the action of the Luger. A 9mm round ejected. It landed at Szerynski’s feet. He saw it was a live one.
Well, that one sure as hell would have had my name on it.
Szerynski flicked on his flashlight and, pistol ready, shone the yellow beam inside the passenger car.
A parlor and a forward sleeping compartment . . .
This is a wealthy man’s transport!
The luxurious interior—rich carpet and draperies, leather-upholstered seating, and highly polished wooden paneling and heavy tables—was a shambles. Two more baby-faced young SS scharführer bodyguards lay crumpled against the door to the sleeping compartment, one sergeant atop the other. The one on top, whose head was turned at an impossible angle, suggesting a broken neck, had a drinking glass impaled in his blood-soaked face.
Szerynski’s flashlight beam next found the high-peaked black uniform cap of an SS officer—light reflected off its silver skull-and-crossbones Totenkopf and, above that, SS eagle insignias—then found the officer himself. He lay sprawled on his back against the crushed ceiling of the car. One of the highly polished wooden tables had sheared free and smashed into his upper body. A cut across his forehead had coated his face in blood.
So who the hell could he be?
Szerynski waved the flashlight beam around the interior one more time.