The Undaunted (Book 2 of The Undesirables)

Chapter 11: The Trouble-Maker

The only rational explanation was a completely irrational one.

That's why Krause had decided to let the animal go. He couldn't bear to turn it over to the men he hated so much.

The dog wasn't the only mysterious creature to appear that winter. There was also the girl.

She was captured in the same woods they were hunting for the dog. They thought she was a partisan, but it turned out she was American. She confessed to being a spy.

That confession had been beaten out of her. Krause witnessed her beatings. He made a point of attending every single interrogation. That impressed his superiors. It made him look like he was as sadistic as they were.

But he didn't watch the beatings because he enjoyed it. To the contrary, the violence against this young, starving, scrawny girl disgusted him.

He attended the beatings to prevent her from being raped.

He couldn't stop the violence. He couldn't prevent her eventual execution. But he knew that if he was there, as a witness, no one would ever dare rape her. Not in public view.

The girl, it turned out, hadn't been executed, after all. She had been rescued, thanks to the dog and unidentified assailants. Instead, the men who had beaten her were executed: Leutnant Schaefer and Feldwebel Krieger.

And that's how Krause fell in love. His platoon's Lieutenant was dead. So they were assigned a new officer, a new Lieutenant. Unlike his predecessor, Leutnant Polik was no Nazi. He was beautiful.

And, like Krause, he was gay.

He was also a tactical genius. With the limited resources of only eighteen men, Leutnant Polik succeeded in re-supplying and consolidating their control of the village and its tactically critical bridge. He did the former by treating the villagers like human beings, instead of vermin, and offering amnesty to the starving partisans hiding in the woods. He did the former by raiding Red Army outposts and stealing their fuel and heating oil.

Leutnant Polik's successes had been noticed by high command. They transferred him from the stabilized Leningrad front to the critical southern front, where his skills were more needed. He'd been promoted to Hauptmann and given command of a company in the 6th Army.

He'd brought Krause with him.

6th Army was well supplied. There were, of course, times when they outran their supply train. That's what happened during their advance to Stalingrad. The Russians hadn't fought; they'd retreated before 6th Army arrived. Every village was abandoned. So the Germans gobbled up territory at lightning speed. Eventually they were forced to halt outside the city on the Volga, lacking the petrol required to attack the metropolis.

Paulus, 6th Army's Field Marshall, expected a tough fight in Stalingrad. He wanted to make sure his men had enough ammunition, and his tanks had enough fuel. It was mostly the panzers – they required an enormous amount of petrol – that forced the delay.

Because the other assault, the simultaneous attack on the Bakugan oil fields, had failed. Those oil fields were supposed to provide Paulus more petrol than he could ever possibly require. But the Russians had torched the oil fields before the Germans could conquer them. The Russians had burned their own national treasure. When the panzers arrived, all they conquered was gouts of flame stretching hundreds of feet in the air.

So Paulus had no petrol and 6th Army was delayed. They waited for weeks until the petrol and ammunition could be sent all the way from Germany.

But now the attack had resumed. They had already pushed the Russians back, clearing out the suburbs. German infantry was thrusting deep into the city. There were pockets of stiff resistance: the grain elevator, the factories, the train stations, and Mamayev Hill. But each of those strongholds had already been surrounded, and already German troops had almost even reached the Volga. Despite the delay, it seemed as if Stalingrad would be taken more quickly and easily than General Paulus had anticipated.