Re: Blood and Iron - Chapter 729: The Ghosts of Algiers
Chapter 729: The Ghosts of Algiers
Feldwebel Klaus Eberhart stood resting against a stone half-buried in the dunes of the Sahara, more ghost than man beneath the merciless sun.
His camouflage sleeves were rolled to the elbow, revealing arms bronzed naturally by years of campaign and weather.
A keffiyeh, patterned in the same earthy tones as the sand around him, concealed his features.
Only the glint of his goggles betrayed humanity beneath the desert’s mirage.
If not for the khaki chest rig and body armor strapped across his torso, as well as the rifle in his hands, one might have mistaken him for a trick of the light, an apparition conjured by heat and distance.
But a mirage he was not.
The rifle he held was not a bolt action relic of past wars.
It was a precision semi-automatic instrument. Sleek, balanced, and painted in the colors of the dunes around him.
More akin to the MSG 90 than the old Gewehr 98 or 43.
Still, it retained the soul of its lineage, chambered in the formidable 8×57mm Mauser cartridge, each round meticulously engineered for range and consistency.
In another world, men might have called it match-grade ammunition.
Here, it was simply labeled Sonderverwendung… for special purpose use.
Its purpose: battlefield assassination.
Around Klaus, four men lay hidden in the dunes, weapons trained on the highway below.
Each bore a different instrument of war, suited for their role.
One cradled a belt-fed machine gun; more HK21 than MG42, lighter, modular, a child of a more advanced era.
Another held a Panzerfaust, its launcher wrapped in burlap and desert cloth.
A hybrid design of the Panzerfaust 250, RPG-2, and PZF-44 from Bruno’s past life. Taking the best from each design, and discarding the worst.
Together they were less a squad than a scalpel, cutting, quiet, deliberate.
These were the Jagdkommandos.
Special operations soldiers of the German Army, official, sanctioned, elite.
For twenty years, Reichsmarschall Bruno von Zehntner had experimented through the Werwolf Group.
A mercenary organization with ties to the German Reich but officially operating outside the influence of Berlin, or even Tyrol for that matter.
They were refined doctrine, equipment, and training across multiple continents, and battlefields.
And in doing so, Bruno had transformed unconventional warfare into a science.
The lessons of those shadow campaigns had since been adopted into the Army proper.
The result: a new breed of operator, schooled in infiltration, sabotage, and psychological warfare.
They could operate on land, sea, or air, and train others to do the same.
A single team, given time and resources, could unmake a nation.
But here, in the sands of North Africa, their purpose was not to ignite revolution.
Their mission was simpler, crueler, to spread fear among foreign soldiers, and to make the desert itself their ally.
The five men waited upon a dune overlooking the coastal highway. Through their scopes, the horizon shimmered.
The crosshairs of five rifles intersected across the road below, a perfect web of death.
Klaus checked his watch, its hands ticking toward a preordained moment.
When the second hand struck thirty, he saw it: the faint plumes of dust rising in the distance, the distinct rhythm of engines.
He lowered the scope slightly and counted the silhouettes.
Five scout cars, two jeeps.
Light armor, reconnaissance detail. Exactly as expected.
The Germans had spent the previous week planting IEDs beneath the road. Now the prey had wandered into the killing field.
Klaus gave a single nod. The AT gunner adjusted his sight, not at the lead vehicle, but the rear. The first would be bait, the last the trap.
Their weapons were silent beneath the wind, their bodies invisible against the sand.
When the convoy crossed the threshold, the desert erupted.
The lead scout car leapt into the air, torn apart by an invisible fist.
The explosion’s echo rolled across the dunes as shards of steel and flame rained down upon the convoy, panic ensued.
Engines roared, tires skidded, and men shouted into radios that no longer answered.
Then the AT gunner fired.
His rocket traced a perfect arc through the heat, striking the rearmost vehicle squarely in the engine block.
It vanished in a violent blossom of smoke and fire.
Between those two infernos, the remaining vehicles sat trapped, caught in a kill box with nowhere to run.
Klaus squeezed the trigger once.
A driver’s head snapped back. Another burst followed from the machine gunner, who raked the jeeps with clinical precision.
The desert came alive with the sound of gunfire, and the echoes of death.
The roar of rifles, the concussive thud of a 40mm grenade.
A thermobaric round burst amidst the chaos, consuming air and life in equal measure.
Men stumbled out of burning trucks, only to fall again beneath invisible bullets.
When the firing stopped, silence reclaimed the sand.
Klaus rose slowly, his rifle hanging across his chest as he surveyed the wreckage.
The air shimmered with heat and the stench of burnt oil.
His men followed, emerging from the dunes like revenants from myth.
Together they descended toward the smoking ruins.
“Check the bodies,” Klaus ordered quietly.
They moved among the dead with the detachment of surgeons.
One by one, they turned corpses until they found the man they sought.
A familiar face stared skyward, half-shrouded in dust and soot.
General George S. Patton, the man chosen to lead the Allied buildup in North Africa, lay broken beside his shattered command jeep.
His uniform was scorched, his pistol still holstered.
Even in death, his expression carried the arrogance of a man convinced of destiny.
Klaus crouched beside the corpse and studied it for a long moment.
Then he removed a small camera from his pouch, snapped a single photograph, and pocketed it.
Proof, not for propaganda, but for the archives.
History demanded witnesses, even when it buried them.
“Burn the vehicles,” he said finally. “Then we vanish.”
Within minutes, the flames devoured the evidence.
By the time the first Allied patrols arrived hours later, there would be nothing left but molten metal and rumor.
The Jagdkommandos moved out across the dunes, vanishing into the mirage as the wind erased their tracks.
