Fortress Falling (Moon Brothers WWII Adventure Series Book 2) Read online

  Frantic controllers on the motherships, though still not quite believing what had happened, checked their equipment again and again as if it—or perhaps they—had somehow caused the explosion.

  When the radio report was made to mission headquarters, it was met with the typically ridiculous questions offered by those who could not—or would not—grasp the severity of the incident.

  The first ridiculous question: “Is the baby still flying?”

  “Negative. Repeat—negative. The baby has disintegrated.”

  The second question: “Are there any parachutes?”

  “Negative. Not possible. No chutes.”

  It finally dawned on Headquarters that they had a disaster on their hands. Their first instinct was exactly what GIs of all ranks had come to expect from the brass: obscure the truth for as long as possible. All personnel were ordered to maintain radio silence regarding the incident.

  But they couldn’t hide the obvious for very long: Project Anvil was off to a disastrous start.

  Chapter Two

  30 September 1944

  0800 hours

  Lieutenant Tommy “Half” Moon was running out of time. He banked his P-47 Thunderbolt hard left, trying to get a better view over his wing of the French terrain 8,000 feet below. But the low, broken cloud deck was making it difficult to find his target. If he didn’t locate Fort Driant and attack it in the next five minutes, the four-plane section he led would have to clear the airspace; it would then be the artillery’s turn to pummel the fort. The Thunderbolts—jugs in US Army slang—would have to find someplace else to dispose of the napalm beneath their wings…

  And the ground-pounders will think we’re letting them down again, Tommy thought. True, we haven’t been much help the last couple of weeks, but it’s been the damn weather’s fault, not ours.

  Or maybe they’d rather we bomb them by accident because we couldn’t see shit? Like that hasn’t happened a thousand times before.

  At least I’m back in the cockpit again, where I belong. That six weeks I was grounded with a broken arm was a real pain in my ass.

  He checked the clock on his ship’s instrument panel. It had clicked off another thirty seconds since the last time he looked.

  Cutting it real close…

  The only landmark he could see clearly through the clouds was a bend in the Moselle River. But it was so easy to mistake one bend in a river for another and be miles from where you thought you were. Fort Driant was just west of the river and about two and a half miles southwest of the city of Metz.

  But I can’t see the damn city right now, either. Nothing but clouds. It’s got to be to my north…or am I looking the wrong way?

  Tommy still found it hard to accept that now, in the middle of the twentieth century, the US Army was attacking nineteenth century forts—and failing miserably at it. Two rings of forts protected the ancient city of Metz and the frontier of Germany beyond, and the mutually supporting fire from the turret guns of those forts had stopped Patton’s 3rd Army in its tracks.

  Tommy Moon’s squadron—the 301st—had been attacking the forts of Metz for the past few days with high-explosive bombs to no apparent effect.

  It was like the sons of bitches bounced right off all that thick concrete and steel. Maybe if we can get this napalm on target and some of it runs down the ventilation shafts into the heart of the fort, we can burn the Krauts out. The intel people say Fort Driant’s the key: if we can knock her out, we can steamroll past the other ones.

  Another thirty seconds had ticked off the clock before Tommy got the break he needed. Through a hole in the clouds, he could see Fort Driant, its outline like a misshapen gray bell in a greenish-brown sea, an anachronism of concrete and steel burrowed into commanding terrain. Tommy’s four jugs—Blue Flight—would have just enough time for one dive-bombing run before the artillery barrage began.

  “Blue Leader to Blue Flight,” Tommy said over the radio, “target identified. We get one shot. Drop it all. On me, out of the north. Escape heading is one-eight-zero. Here we go.”

  He rolled his plane—named Eclipse of the Hun II—on her back and started the steep dive. As he did, the voices of his three pilots acknowledged in sequence, each with a simple Roger.

  It took hardly a minute for Eclipse to plummet from 8,000 feet to the release point at 3,000 feet. The pullout from the dive took her down to 1,500 feet before she sprinted away in level flight, clear of the incoming artillery rounds.

  At least there’s been no serious flak around here, Tommy told himself, so it’d be a damn shame to get knocked down by your own artillery.

  He wasn’t sure why they were bothering to bombard the fort with artillery at all. They’d been doing it for days and, just like the Air Force’s bombing, hadn’t hurt the Metz forts much, if at all. But Tommy had a theory: They’re probably just doing it so the Krauts will keep their heads down while our infantry’s moving in.

  Blue Flight was re-forming a few miles to the south as the last plane to drop its napalm—Blue Four—reported, “It’s burning like a son of a bitch, y’all. Great drop.”

  There was no doubt he was right. It had to be burning like a son of a bitch, because that’s all napalm did: it burned, and burned ferociously. The question was whether or not the flaming jellied gasoline had worked its way down into the bowels of the fort. If it hadn’t, the raging fire on Fort Driant’s roof was nothing more than a spectacular but ineffective sideshow. If it had, the fort’s vast underground chambers were being transformed into crematories, with the fires sucking the oxygen from the enclosed corridors, forcing those not already incinerated to the surface.

  Whether dead or alive, the Germans inside the fort already knew the answer to that question. The next ones to know would be the American infantrymen who’d try and attack the fort shortly.

  The napalm fires had burned themselves out, leaving behind a cloud of acrid black smoke that hung over Fort Driant like a shroud. The American artillery still rained down on the fort with great accuracy, pinpointing the infantry trenches and machine gun bunkers protecting its perimeter. Most of the rounds were fused for airbursts, intended to keep any German defenders not killed outright ducking for cover, just as Tommy Moon had suspected when he was hurrying to get his aircraft out of the artillery’s way.

  A battalion of American infantry from 5th Division—2nd Battalion of 2nd Infantry Regiment—was converging on the fort from the north and south. It had been relatively easy going so far; casualties had been light—only one man killed and a few wounded by machine guns which, once located, were silenced, at least temporarily, when an artillery forward observer shifted a volley onto the gunners’ heads.

  If an airman like Tommy Moon was having trouble accepting the idea of a fortress siege in the age of mobile warfare, it was nothing compared to the fear and incomprehension of the riflemen who actually had to conduct that siege. As they advanced slowly up the towering hill, they could see the thick belt of barbed wire encircling the fort at its peak like a crown of thorns. They wondered what was in store for them once the artillery clearing the way had to cease fire so they could set foot on the objective.

  “What’re they gonna do?” a GI wondered as he trudged reluctantly uphill. “Pour boiling oil down on us, like in them Errol Flynn movies?”

  “I’m betting it’ll be archers…with crossbows, maybe,” another soldier wisecracked.

  “Shut the hell up, both of you,” their squad leader said. “This ain’t no medieval castle. They’re gonna shoot your ass with rifles and MGs, just like they’ve been doing since we set foot in this fucking country.”

  Still another GI asked, “At least the artillery’s gonna slice that barbed wire up for us like cutting spaghetti, right, Sarge?”

  “We’d better fucking hope so,” the squad leader replied.

  A platoon of GIs managed to sneak through the wire right in front of Fort Driant’s central fortification, a diamond-shaped bastion hundreds of feet long. Its armored OPs were sur
rounded by a ditch wide and deep enough to swallow a tank. At the corners of the ditch, machine guns in concrete bunkers were laid to cut down anything trying to cross it.

  If the GIs were going to get into the fort this way, they’d have to cross that deadly ditch. A bazooka rocket was launched against a machine gun bunker; it splattered against the structure with a feeble thud, dislodging nothing more than a tiny chip of concrete.

  “Shit,” the platoon leader said. “They sure as hell know we’re here now. We’d better pull back and bring up the engineers. Maybe they can blow those things sky high.”

  But crossing the ditch would have to wait. At first the GIs thought the American artillery—which should have stopped firing—had accidentally been shifted onto them. “TURN IT OFF,” a company commander screamed at his FO as he watched his men being cut down left and right.

  The FO screamed back, “IT’S NOT OURS. IT’S THE KRAUTS.”

  The howitzers of Fort Driant couldn’t touch the GIs; perched on the hill, they couldn’t lower their barrels enough to put fire on the Americans. But her sister forts—Verdun two and a half miles to the southeast; Jeanne d’Arc three miles to the north—had no such problem. The Americans were learning the hard way just how mutually supporting the ring of forts around Metz truly were. Attack one fort, get clobbered by the cannon of a few others. The Germans inside Driant had no problems being shelled by their comrades; the forts, carved into hilltops, with their retractable steel gun turrets, hardened concrete blockhouses, and subterranean corridors, withstood German artillery just as easily as American.

  The battalion commander’s order for his men to withdraw wasn’t really necessary. It merely put a legitimate face on what was already happening across his command. He tried to tell himself his GIs were making an orderly withdrawal.

  But there was very little order in their retreat. It had the look and smell of a rout.

  There was no happy face to put on the end-of-mission debrief at 301st Fighter Squadron, either. The 3rd Army liaison officer—an arrogant major from Armor who probably thought prop wash was something that came in a fifty-five-gallon drum—had blunt words for the assembled pilots:

  “General Patton is most unhappy with your ineffective attacks on Fort Driant, gentlemen,” the major began. “The fort appears completely unimpaired. Its turret guns were firing on 5th Division positions less than a half hour after your napalm attack. You failed to get any napalm into the ventilation system, which was clearly identified in photo recon—”

  Colonel Pruitt, commander of the 301st, interrupted. “Just a minute, Major. Nothing—I repeat, nothing—was clearly identified in those photos except the gun turrets and the above-ground structures. We dropped the napalm precisely where intel thought the ventilators might be. The mission footage will back me up on that.” He gestured toward the large aerial photo of the fort hanging on the wall. “Now, if the general has someplace else on the premises he’d like us to drop the stuff, we’re all ears.”

  “Please don’t shoot the messenger, sir,” the major replied, his tone less cocky than it was a minute ago but—typical of Patton’s staffers—by no means apologetic. “I’m only here to relay the general’s directive.”

  “Fine,” Pruitt replied. “Get to the directive and spare the reprimand, Major. You haven’t got enough shiny stuff on your collar to be chewing me and my men out.”

  Chastened, the major stepped up to the aerial photo of the fort. “Very well, Colonel. As I was trying to say, General Patton continues to believe the fort is very vulnerable, as are all static installations.”

  Tommy Moon found himself grumbling along with the rest of his fellow pilots. Vulnerable, my ass, he thought. Hell, eighty-eight millimeter anti-aircraft guns are static installations, and they’ll knock the living shit out of a jug. I guess this tanker forgot those same static eighty-eights can turn his tanks inside out, too.

  Ignoring the dissension in the room, the major pointed to Fort Driant’s southernmost battery and said, “The ops order for tomorrow’s missions will specify the following: the 301st Fighter Squadron will attack this one battery—designated E for Easy—with napalm. The G3 believes that if a fire can be started in the chambers below the turrets, the cook-off of the one hundred-fifty-millimeter ammunition in those chambers will devastate the fort’s southern defenses as well as the bunkers connected to the battery by underground tunnels. That should allow our infantry an easy foothold within Driant’s perimeter.”

  Tommy asked himself, Ain’t that convenient? The fort’s got five batteries, labeled A through E, and we get the one called E for Easy. Is that some kind of sick joke?

  But he had a different question to ask out loud. “Sir, this squadron’s been hitting Driant’s turrets for days now with five hundred pounders, and the artillery’s been doing the same with everything they’ve got. It hasn’t hurt those turrets one bit. They just retract into the ground and seal up tighter than a drum. What makes Third Army think another dose of napalm’s going to make any difference? All we’re going to do is leave more scorch marks on the roof.”

  The two dozen assembled pilots murmured their agreement.

  The major tried to fix Tommy in an intimidating gaze as he replied, “Lieutenant, you know how napalm is—it flows like oil but sticks like glue. We won’t need to get much of it inside the fort—with all that ammo stored in those underground bunkers—to blow the top of that hill it’s on right off.”

  His gaze hadn’t intimidated Tommy or anyone else. His logic was equally unpersuasive.

  Colonel Pruitt took back control of the debrief. “All right, gentlemen…get a good night’s sleep, all of you. Briefing is at 0500. Be there, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”

  As the pilots filed out of the room, Pruitt motioned for Tommy to join him.

  “How’s the arm doing, Half?” the colonel asked.

  Half: the nickname that would never leave a short man with a last name like Moon. He’d been called that his whole young life, way back to the streets of Canarsie in Brooklyn, and he’d long since come to the rationalization that it was better than so many other things he could be called. Like Shorty or Tiny or PeeWee. His fortuitous surname even made Half Pint a waste of words. Half—all by itself—fit the bill perfectly.

  “The arm’s swell, sir,” Tommy replied. “Not giving me a bit of trouble.”

  “Very fine,” Pruitt said. “I was worried you and the doc were rushing it a little…but I do need you up there. Tuttle gave it his best as Blue Flight leader while you were down, but I missed your—”

  He hesitated for a moment, searching for just the right word, before concluding, “Let’s just say I missed your good judgment.”

  Chapter Three

  Blue Flight’s number two pilot, Lieutenant Jimmy Tuttle, was in fresh khakis, ready for a night on the town, however short an 0500 briefing would force it to be. He asked Tommy, “Are you coming into Nancy with us, Half?”

  “Nah, I think I’ll stay here, catch up with the maintenance guys and study the charts for this area.”

  “You ain’t still pining for that little French girl back at Alençon, are you?”

  “I guess you could say I am, Jimmy,” Tommy replied. “I’d rather be back there with her than touring the bars of Nancy any day.”

  “Suit yourself,” Tuttle replied. “But I’m telling you, Half…this town’s a whole lot hotter than Alençon ever was. Things have really been jumpin’ since your brother’s outfit blasted through here like a bat out of hell.”

  His brother: Staff Sergeant Sean Moon. Tank platoon sergeant in 4th Armored Division’s 37th Tank Battalion, part of Patton’s 3rd Army. A few years older than Tommy, a lot taller—

  And still a whole lot tougher than me, Tommy told himself.

  It had been only a matter of weeks since they were reunited at a field hospital. Tommy had fractured his arm when he hit the stabilizer bailing out of his shot-up plane, the original Eclipse of the Hun. Sean had survived his tank being blown up by a L
uftwaffe bomb, an attack that killed two of his four crewmen. But it would take more than a concussion, sprains, and bruises to keep the veteran tanker away from the fight. Two days after they’d found each other at the hospital, Sean had given the doctors the slip and went right back into combat with the 37th. Tommy had only seen him once since, when he’d hitched a ride on a supply convoy headed to 4th Armored.

  He’d gotten plenty of time with the little French girl at Alençon—Sylvie Bergerac—while his arm was mending and the squadron was still based there. But 3rd Army had moved steadily eastward, pushing the Germans across the battlefields of the last war toward the Fatherland, and XIX Tactical Air Command needed to stay close behind the ground forces on the tip of Patton’s spear. Fuel had become precious as Allied bases and supply lines stretched almost completely across France; tactical support squadrons like the 301st couldn’t be wasting it by having to fly their gas-guzzling aircraft hundreds of miles to get to the front lines.

  So, two weeks ago, the 301st had closed up shop at Alençon and moved three hundred miles to a just-captured airfield at Toul, a few miles west of Nancy and only thirty miles southwest of Metz. And though this new airfield—called A-90 by the USAAF—would keep Tommy Moon far from Sylvie, at least he was only miles from his brother’s unit.

  And if he keeps managing to not get himself killed, Tommy thought, maybe I’ll get to see him now and then.

  Sergeant Sean Moon was perched on the hatch ring of his M4 Sherman tank, listening in the quiet of this moonless night for the sound of German engines. The other three tanks of his platoon were dispersed and concealed on a tree-covered rise. It offered excellent fields of fire over the gentle terrain any German counterattack would have to cross. The dark shapes of the other Shermans had disappeared into the night a half hour ago.

  “I don’t like this shit,” Sean’s gunner Fabiano said. “We’re stuck out here in the fucking dark with the Krauts on three sides of us. I think Colonel Abrams has lost his fucking mind.”