Heroes by David Hagberg (books under 200 pages .TXT) 📕

The beam of the light shone on the skidmarks from the raft and the footprints in the sand. The light flashed out to sea again.

“Holy Mother of God!” the man shouted. “The Nazis!”

Schey climbed up from the beach on the other side of the rock outcropping and quickly scrambled above where the man had been standing. But he was gone. Schey held his breath, listening, and he could hear someone farther up on the rocks, back toward the highway.

If the man got to a telephone, the U-boat wouldn’t have a chance. At first light the Navy’s spotter planes would be up, and every boat in the area would converge at the mouth of the bay.

Schey headed up toward the road, dropping all attempts at stealth, his powerful legs like hydraulic rams propelling him upwards, and recklessly he leaped from one rock to the next, mindless now of the cold and the blowing snow.

The coastal spotter, frightened that he had actually spotted the enemy, here in Maine, was puffing like an old steam engine by the time he made it to the side of the road, so he had no idea that anyone was behind him, until something leaped out of the darkness on his back, and he thought it was some sort of wild animal.

Schey jammed his knee in the man’s back, then sharply pulled his head back, breaking his neck.

It was over in a split second, although the man’s legs jerked spasmodically for several minutes afterwards.

Schey didn’t like this at all. He looked down into the man’s open eyes. He’d been nothing more than a coastal watcher. An amateur. Almost. certainly a family man, too old for active service, so he had chosen this. Just doing his bit for the war effort.

“Verdammt,” Schey swore out loud, his stomach churning.

But it was war—total war. The Fiihrer had ordered it. ‘

Just down the highway was the spotter’s old, beat-up pickup truck. Without having to think it out, Schey carried the man’s body over to a spot a few yards behind the rear of the truck and laid it half in and half out of the ditch. He lined the head and neck up with the inside rear wheel.

The man looked to be in his early to middle fifties, and Schey : . wondered what men like him would do after the war … whichever way it went. Would they fit in? He sincerely hoped so.

There had been enough suffering now; more was not needed. Back at the front of the truck, he released the parking brake, put the gear shift in neutral, and gave the truck a shove. It started back slowly at first, but then, as it angled over to the ditch, it ‘ picked up speed, the rear wheel bumping up over the dead man’s ‘ face and neck with a sickening crunch. Schey hurried off the side of the road and scrambled down the ) rocks toward the beach even before the truck had come to a halt in the ditch.

They’d find the man in the morning, run over by his own truck. A freak accident.

Catherine’s body was warm and soft beneath her flannel night gown when Schey climbed into the small bed in the front bedroom. She moaned softly, and automatically turned to him. |

“Hmmm?” she said, starting to wake up. Schey’s stomach was still churning. He kept seeing the dead man’s eyes looking up at him. “Go back to sleep, Katy,” he whispered.

But she was awake. There was a small amount of flickering light in the room from the glass window in the oil burner in the living room, just enough for him to see her face. She was smiling.

“Did you go outside?” she asked. “You’re cold.” ‘ | “I went out for a smoke.”

“Are you worried about your job?” She was always concerned about him. She was certain that she loved him more than he did her, and it frightened her at times.

“A little bit,” he said softly.

She kissed his nose and his cheeks. “Maybe we should go back. Our little house in Oak Ridge is nice.”

Schey smiled. Their little house was, besides the baby Robert, Junior, her source of intense pride. Damned few of the other women she knew had houses. But they had come to Oak Ridge much too late, after houses had become all but impossible to find.

“We’ll think about it in the morning,” Schey said, and he drew her closer, pulling her nightgown up so that he could feel her legs and stomach and breasts against his body.

Neither of them heard the baby coughing in the other room.

It was snowing in northern Germany, too, as Lieutenant Robert David Deland, alias Edmund Dorfman, stepped out of the mathematics center at Versuchs-Kommando Nord and hesitated a moment to pull up his coat collar.

For the first time since the OSS had sent him to Germany, he was seriously considering running. It was getting to be too much for him. Major Preuser had been at him again this afternoon, and this time it was serious. ‘.

Deland had been hired nearly nine incredible months ago, for < his expertise in trajectory mathematics. A background out of , Gottingen had been prepared for him, and so far it had stood up.

But now he wasn’t so sure. ?

Preuser had been on him about his snooping around. He had tried to explain to the major, who was chief of security for the M-Section at Test-Command North, that in order to come up with acceptable trajectory mathematics, systems that would work, he needed to know specifics about the mammoth rocket—the V2, they called the earlier models. That’s when the trouble began; Preuser had accused him of being a spy, rhetorically of course, . but it was creating too much attention. -, The frigid wind whipped across the island of Usedom from the ‘ Baltic, and Deland had to turn his face away from it as he hurried toward the S-Bahn terminal before the rush