Chapter 804: Phantom of the Night

“I say, this whole night has been anything but peaceful. Who knows what tricks the Germans are playing? We all have to stay sharp,” a Soviet platoon leader said, walking into the fortification. He approached a soldier on sentry duty, lit his own cigarette, and offered a reminder. He was an “official’s second generation” with some background in Moscow. Cigarettes, which were quite precious for frontline soldiers, seemed to always appear in his hands in greater numbers.

Precisely because his status was somewhat different from that of an ordinary Soviet soldier, he had not been sent to the more arduous places on the front line, but had been stationed here to defend an important railway bridge. According to the overall defensive standards, this place could be considered impregnable. There were blockhouses at both ends of the bridge, and machine gun nests for security in the surrounding area. If one included the several anti-aircraft guns for defense, the number of soldiers stationed here was as many as 140.

An infantry company reinforced with four anti-aircraft guns, though not at full strength, was not a small force either. After all, the closest German forces to this railway bridge were more than 50 kilometers away. If they were to charge all the way here, they would have plenty of time to leisurely blow up this bridge and then leave.

“Don’t worry, Comrade Platoon Leader. See that sentry post over there? The one with the silhouette of a person. If there’s any unusual situation, he’ll fire a warning shot. Then our machine guns here will open up, and no one will be able to break through,” the soldier on sentry duty said warmly, accepting the cigarette his superior had given him.

Nodding, this platoon leader shouldered his Mosin-Nagant rifle and walked towards the other side of the dark bridge. For safety, the entire company headquarters and the concealed shelters where some of the officers rested were all built on the other side of the bridge. This way, even if the Germans suddenly arrived and captured the blockhouse on this side, the troops on the other side could continue to resist—or rather, it would give these officials time to run.

At that forward sentry post in the distance, a soldier sat on a sandbag, holding his rifle, his head tilted back as if looking at the night sky, which had become quiet after the shelling had stopped. A cold wind blew past. He seemed to not care at all about his exposed neck, his head tilted back motionlessly, just quietly holding it up.

Facing the direction of the German positions, his pale face wore an expression of terror. In fact, he had been dead for a long time. His body was already cold, which was why he was motionless in the cold wind, which was why he just tilted his head back like that. A sharp dagger had slit his throat. The blood had already soaked the front of his uniform, and the deep wound also made his head tilt back so strangely.

And in the trench at the foot of this corpse, three Soviet soldiers lay scattered on the ground, all with fatal wounds on their bodies. This place had clearly been attacked, and as for where the attackers were now, no one knew.

“Hey! Time to change the guard, don’t be lazy!” The Soviet soldier who had just been talking with his platoon leader about the layout of the sentry post finished the cigarette in his mouth and called out to the new recruit behind him without turning his head. But he seemed not to have noticed that a sharp dagger had already been wrapped around his neck from behind.

A German special forces soldier, his face painted with black greasepaint and wearing a special black steel helmet, looking like a fierce ghost, silently drew his cold special-purpose knife across the throat of this pitiful Soviet soldier. From the time he had started speaking until his throat was slit and he quietly accepted death, he had not been able to figure out why the Soviet new recruit behind him had so viciously killed him.

Unfortunately, the friendly new recruit he thought had attacked him was at this very moment lying on the ground, clutching his own throat just like him, struggling to make a sound. But when he opened his mouth, blood gushed out from his mouth and his neck. He could not cry out, and even the anti-aircraft gun position, which was so close, could not hear his sound.

Even if he desperately pounded the dirt at his feet in the trench with his hands, no one would come to his aid, because in the anti-aircraft gun position not far away, several German soldiers had already finished off all the Soviet soldiers. They made a faint, regular clicking sound, telling the surrounding soldiers that they had already completed their respective tasks.

Two German soldiers, using the faint light from the camp near the bridge, raised their powerful crossbows. Their target was the Soviet platoon leader who had just reached the one-third point on the railway bridge. They aimed their weapons at the target. Behind them, one after another, German special forces soldiers, holding MP-44 assault rifles, were moving forward, crouched low, hugging the railings on both sides of the railway bridge, inching closer to the other side.

The platoon leader heard the dense sound of footsteps behind him, like the faint rustling of the wind blowing through a forest. He frowned, turned his head in confusion, and the cigarette dangling from his mouth became an excellent indicator for firing in the slightly dark environment. Two crossbow bolts flew over, one embedding itself in his chest, the other hitting him in the stomach. The impact made him stagger. His mind simply could not process what had just happened.

“I’m going back to Moscow soon… my father is a high-ranking official… the future is so bright for me…” This Soviet platoon leader’s mind was filled with unwillingness and regret. By the time he felt the pain and subconsciously wanted to cry out, the back of his head had already hit the ground hard, leaving him dazed and confused.

“Someone’s here!” he managed to groan out two words, but his mouth was already covered by the hand of a passing German special forces soldier. A cold bayonet plunged into his throat, and then, as it was pulled out, it brought with it an unforgettable pain. Then this bayonet was plunged into his chest, and this “second generation official” of the Soviet Union closed his eyes.

Soon, one trench after another, one position after another, was silently taken over by the all-black German special forces. They secretly controlled the bridge and even used steel wires to hang down from the bridge deck, easily cutting the detonation wires for the bombs that the Soviet defenders had fixed to the bridge.

“Who goes there!” When the German troops had felt their way to the command post here, a Soviet soldier finally noticed a problem. He had just raised his weapon and shouted a sentence when he was pierced by four crossbow bolts at the same time. He looked at the crossbow bolts sticking out of his body and collapsed like a pile of mud.

But this shout finally woke up the living Soviet defenders. But now there were only a pitiful two of them left. The Soviet officer in the company headquarters threw on his clothes and pushed the door open, only to be met with a cold pistol pressed against his forehead.

“The reason I’m not shooting is very simple. Tell me tonight’s street password,” the man said in familiar Russian, but his tone was icy. The hand of this German officer, who was holding the pistol, was also wearing black woolen gloves, similar in design to the “lightning gloves” of the 80s and 90s, with the fingertips exposed and a flap that could be folded over the front.

“Don’t shoot! I’m willing to cooperate! I’m actually Ukrainian! I’m really Ukrainian!” The Soviet officer raised his hands high and pleaded with a trembling voice. He could also see that these German soldiers were definitely not ordinary people. They hadn’t come here to capture a small company commander like him.

“How strange! Captain!” a German soldier holding his MP-44 assault rifle said with a smile to the leading officer in German. “We’ve come to Russia, but we haven’t met a single Russian yet. It’s either Ukrainians or Belarusians here.”

His words made the surrounding German special forces soldiers laugh. The German officer who was pointing a pistol at the Soviet company commander then continued to ask in German, “If you don’t tell the truth, I’ll shoot you. Tell me, what’s tonight’s password.”

“Azalea!” With a pistol pressed hard against his forehead, the Soviet company commander closed his eyes and shouted out the password he knew. Several of the German soldiers who had questioned other Soviet soldiers nodded. It seemed that the passwords everyone had given were consistent.

Crack! Before the other could react, the German officer had fired his gun and blown the unlucky company commander’s head apart. With this gunshot, the entire bridge once again returned to silence.

“Alright! Lads! Get to work!” the German officer clapped his hands and ordered loudly. And so, the German soldiers began to use the entrenching tools they carried with them to clear the bloodstains left in the trenches and other places.

Opening some of their backpacks, a portion of the German soldiers in black uniforms began to change into the Soviet military uniforms that had been prepared long ago. Some picked up the Soviet Mosin-Nagant rifles and carefully wiped the bloodstains from them.

In the walls of some of the trenches, the Germans had dug out small, concealed niches and had stuffed their own assault rifles and anti-tank rocket launchers into these hidden positions. More soldiers were burying the bodies, using some of the trench sections they considered less than perfect to bury all of these corpses.

All the work was carried out in an orderly manner under the faint light of flashlights. And in the Soviet company headquarters, at this moment, the harsh ringing of a telephone sounded. A German officer who had been waiting by the side snatched up the phone and said in a gentle voice, unlike his cold tone just now, “Good evening, comrade… password ‘Azalea’. Yes, everything is normal.”

As he fiddled with the Soviet company commander’s officer’s ID, he smiled and chatted with the person on the other end of the line about the weather. After chatting for a while, he hung up the phone and then showed a playful smile. He tossed the ID to the German soldier on the other side of the table. The German soldier carefully wrote the Soviet officer’s name on a blank Soviet officer’s ID card that had a German officer’s photo attached.

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