“You should call me Yelena on duty, Miles. That’s how I am enlisted. But you are right. It will be dark soon. Let’s work another couple of trucks and then take what we have back. We have had a long day.”
“Two or three long days, it feels like. Hey, look over there.” I pointed. There was a long black sedan, a big car like a Packard, crushed under a flipped over truck. “That looks worth investigating.”
We unlimbered our rifles, crept up on the Staff Car. It was a LaSalle, god knows how it ever got here, but here it was. We cautiously approached, heard a groan, a curse.
We looked inside, there was a Hauptmann, three pips on his shoulder boards. He was much the worse for wear, the lorry had landed on the roof of his LaSalle, and crushed it down on him. The truck had landed on the left side, killing the driver, crushing the roof down almost flat. The driver was a mess of blood in the front seat, but Herr Hauptmann was still alive.
The first of the coolies arrived soon afterwards, we managed to horse that truck up off of the staff car and tip it up and away. We pried one of the doors the rest of the way open with shovels to find the Hauptmann, a stereotyped Prussian, a dead woman, who was obviously not military personnel, shall we say, and set into the divider between the front and back seats, an impressive little safe, with the door hanging open. Herr Hauptmann was alive enough to open his eyes, find us and try to speak, but was unable to even reach for the Luger by his side. I reached over and took that. Nice pistols, I always wanted one.
I tapped that little corporal on the shoulder. “You look fast. Run back, get another squad or two, a flivver, any officer you can find, and a couple medics with a stretcher. And lights. We are going to need lights. This is big. Hurry!”
“Yes, sir!” And off he scurried.
“How can you say that?”
“Do you read German?”
“Not well. No.”
“Then you will have to take my word for it. This is a big deal.”
>>>>>>>>>
She was still reading and taking notes, I stretched the officer out on a soft piece of ground, and fed him sips of water. He had some broken bones, probably a concussion or a fractured skull, he wasn’t going to die, but he wasn’t going anywhere under his own steam. That corporal came back with a couple of aides, a line major, and an ambulance. I guess they took our word for it. They loaded up the Hauptmann and all his papers, left us a couple of lanterns and some flashlights. I looked at Isis… Yelena, then, she looked at me, and we decided to call it a day.
I drove right to HQ, Stillwell was still hard at it. People’s heads turned when we walked in, and their noses wrinkled. We were more than rank. Long day. “You have a report, Colonel Akhtiorskaya?”
“I do. We found a Hauptmann in a staff car. I have not read all the way through his orders, but one thing is clear. They were not attacking us, they were fleeing the Persians. Reza Khan, who was Prime Minister of Iran and the former general of the Persian Cossack Brigade, he just became the new Shah, and he has united the Khurds, the Assyrians, the Persian patriots, and some of the other hill tribes. He has expelled the Germans and their allied tribes, and seized the ports. The Germans have nowhere to go. They were trying to reach Irkutsk, and the Trans Siberian.”
“They will not make it.”
“With God’s help.” She crossed herself backwards, in the Orthodox manner. I had never seen her do that before.
“God does not play favorites, Colonel. War is just hard serious business, and you had best not forget that. We are not playing games here.”
“Understood, General.”
“Thank you, General.” I just saluted. You didn’t have to tell me twice. She didn’t have a shower in her building, I splashed a little water here and there, collapsed in a heap. My last thought was “In the morning, it will be a whole new world.”