The battle for the nave of St. Matthias was not a glorious clash of armies; it was a chaotic, industrial slaughter in a box of stone.
The interior of the church had become a strobe-lit nightmare. The darkness was shredded every fraction of a second by the muzzle flash of the MG42, a manic, flickering strobe that illuminated the terrified faces of the defenders in jerky, stop-motion animation.
BRRRRRRT. BRRRRRRT.
Vogel was screaming as he fired, a continuous, wordless roar that matched the cyclic rate of the machine gun. Brass casings cascaded from the ejection port, a waterfall of hot metal that chimed against the flagstones, piling up around his knees in a shimmering drift.
"Change barrel!" Vogel shrieked, his voice cracking. "It's glowing!"
Peter scrambled forward, his hands slick with sweat and dust. He grabbed the spare barrel from the carrier. It was cold steel. He reached for the release latch on the gun's shroud.
"Clear!" Peter yelled.
Vogel snapped the latch. Steam hissed violently as the overheated barrel—now a dull cherry red—popped out. Peter kicked it aside; it sizzled in the mud. He slammed the fresh barrel in.
"Loaded!"
The gun roared to life again instantly, cutting down a shadow that had vaulted the cemetery wall.
But there were too many shadows. The Soviet infantry was not a wave; it was a rising tide. They poured over the rubble, moving with a desperate, fluid aggression. They threw grenades—crude iron pineapples that bounced on the stone floor with a terrifying, heavy clatter.
"Grenade!" Hanke yelled.
Peter dove, grabbing Schultz by the collar and dragging him behind the heavy marble base of the pulpit.
CRUMP.
The explosion was deafening in the confined space. Shrapnel pinged off the marble like angry hornets. A cloud of black smoke rolled over them, smelling of bitter nitrates.
Schultz was curled in a fetal ball, his hands over his ears, sobbing. He wasn't shooting. He was broken.
"Get up!" Peter slapped the boy's helmet, the ringing sound sharp and brutal. "Shoot, Schultz! If you don't shoot, they will kill us all!"
Schultz fumbled with his rifle, his eyes unfocused. Peter grabbed the weapon, aimed it toward the breach, and fired blindly. He shoved it back into the boy's hands. "Do it!"
Suddenly, the wall behind them groaned. It was a sound deeper than the explosions, a tectonic grinding of stone against stone.
The eastern wall of the chapel, weakened by the earlier shelling, disintegrated. A T-34 had decided to stop playing games. It simply drove through the masonry.
The scene was surreal. One moment there was a wall with a fresco of St. Peter; the next, there was a gaping hole filled with the brutish, sloping armor of a tank. The machine was inside the church. Its engine roared, filling the nave with thick, blue diesel smoke that choked the lungs.
The turret traversed. The coaxial machine gun opened fire.
It wasn't a battle anymore. It was an execution.
"Vogel!" Peter screamed.
The tank's machine gun swept the altar area. Vogel, still firing his MG42, was cut in half. The burst caught him in the chest, knocking him backward over the rubble pile. The MG42 fell silent, its barrel pointing uselessly at the shattered roof.
"Pull back!" Peter roared, his voice tearing at his throat. "To the crypt! Everyone to the crypt!"
It was the only option. The nave was a kill zone. The T-34 was churning up the pews, turning the holy space into a crushing yard.
"Hanke! Get the boys!"
Peter provided covering fire with his MP40, spraying short bursts at the infantry swarming through the breach behind the tank. He saw Russian soldiers dropping, but for every one he hit, two more appeared. They were vaulting through the windows, clambering over the altar.
He retreated step by step, firing, moving, firing. He backed toward the heavy oak door of the sacristy behind the altar.
"Go! Go!"
Hanke herded the survivors—Muller, Klein, and a stumbling Schultz—through the doorway.
Peter fired the last of his magazine. The bolt locked back. He didn't reload. He turned and sprinted.
He dove through the sacristy door just as the T-34 fired its main gun.
BOOM.
The shockwave hit Peter like a physical shove, throwing him down the short flight of stone steps into the darkness. The oak door above them shattered, splinters the size of javelins raining down.
He landed hard on his shoulder, the breath driven from his body. He rolled, coming to a stop against a damp stone wall.
"The grate!" Peter gasped, scrambling to his feet. "Close the floor grate!"
Hanke and Muller grabbed the heavy iron grille that covered the stairwell. They heaved it shut with a clang just as a grenade bounced down the steps.
It exploded against the iron bars. The blast washed over them, hot and angry, but the shrapnel was caught by the grate and the angle of the stairs.
Silence returned.
But it was a different kind of silence. It was the silence of the tomb.
They were underground.
Peter fumbled for his flashlight—a captured American angle-head torch. He clicked it on. The beam cut through the dust, revealing a low-arched tunnel of ancient brick. The air here was cold, smelling of mold, wet earth, and centuries of decay.
"Sound off," Peter whispered.
"Hanke here."
"Muller here."
"Klein here."
"Schultz..." A whimper. "Here."
Five.
"Where is Weber?" Peter asked, dread pooling in his stomach.
"He... he didn't make it to the door," Hanke said, his voice flat. "The tank tracks. I saw..."
Peter closed his eyes. "Don't say it."
Seven men lost. Five left.
Peter checked his tunic. His hand went instantly to his left breast pocket. He felt the square of paper through the wool. It was still there. The letters. The apology. As long as he had that paper, he wasn't dead. He was just a messenger waiting to be delivered.
"Check injuries," Peter ordered. He forced his voice to be steady, though his hands were shaking uncontrollably.
"I'm bleeding," Klein said. The boy was holding his arm. "Shrapnel."
"Hanke, you're the Sani now. Bandage him."
Peter walked away from the group, further into the crypt. The beam of his flashlight played over the walls. These were the catacombs of the original medieval monastery that the chapel had been built upon. Niches were carved into the walls, some empty, some containing the crumbling remains of monks who had died three hundred years ago.
He found a heavy wooden door reinforced with iron bands about twenty meters down the corridor. He pushed against it. It held.
"We are trapped," Peter said to himself.
There was no way out. The stairs were blocked by the Russians. The T-34 was parked in the church above their heads. They could hear the heavy thud of boots on the flagstones upstairs, the shouted commands in Russian.
Davai! Davai!
They were clearing the ruins. Soon, they would find the grate.
Peter sat down on a stone sarcophagus. He turned off the flashlight to save the batteries. The darkness was absolute. It was a sensory deprivation tank.
"Peter?" Hanke's voice came from the dark. "What do we do?"
"We wait," Peter said. "The crypt is narrow. They can't bring the tank down here. They have to come single file. We have a fatal funnel."
"And when we run out of ammo?"
"Then we use the bayonets."
"And then?"
Peter didn't answer. He knew the answer. And then we die.
He leaned his head back against the cold stone. The adrenaline was fading, leaving behind a crushing exhaustion. His body ached. His ears rang. He was thirsty—a deep, cellular thirst.
He thought of the letter in his pocket. The Release.
He had told her to live. He had told her to forget him. But sitting here in the dark, buried alive beneath the earth of Germany, he felt a sudden, selfish pang. He didn't want to be forgotten. He wanted to be remembered. Not as the soldier who died in a hole, but as the boy who bought the peach.
He took the flashlight and clicked it on for a second, shielding the beam with his hand so it only illuminated his lap.
He opened the flap of his pocket. He didn't take the letter out. He just touched the edge of the paper.
"I'm sorry, Dolce," he whispered. "I'm sorry I'm dying in the dark."
"Sergeant," Schultz's voice was right beside him. The boy had crawled over. "Are we going to see the sun again?"
Peter looked at the boy. In the dim spill of the light, Schultz looked like a child who had woken up from a nightmare only to find the monster was real.
Peter could have lied again. He could have told him about the reserves, about the Luftwaffe, about the secret weapons. But he had run out of lies. The letters had drained him of his capacity for deceit.
"I don't know, Schultz," Peter said honestly. "I don't think so."
Schultz began to cry again, soft, hitching sobs.
"But," Peter added, putting his arm around the boy's shoulders. "We are together. You are not alone. Do you understand? No one dies alone tonight."
Above them, a grenade dropped onto the grate. CLANG. It didn't explode. A dud? Or a warning?
"They found the stairs," Hanke whispered.
"Get ready," Peter said, clicking off the light. "Watch the beam. If they open the grate, fire at the sparks."
He raised his MP40. He had one magazine left. Thirty rounds.
He closed his eyes and saw the fountain. He saw the water sparkling in the sun. He held that image. He wrapped it around himself like armor.
The grate shrieked. Metal grinding on metal. They were prying it open.