An Army of One: A John Rossett Novel

Dedication

For Anna, who finally brought me home

Contents

1. Cover
2. Title Page
3. Dedication
5. Prologue
6. Chapter 1
7. Chapter 2
8. Chapter 3
9. Chapter 4
10. Chapter 5
11. Chapter 6
12. Chapter 7
13. Chapter 8
14. Chapter 9
15. Chapter 10
16. Chapter 11
17. Chapter 12
18. Chapter 13
19. Chapter 14
20. Chapter 15
21. Chapter 16
22. Chapter 17
23. Chapter 18
24. Chapter 19
25. Chapter 20
26. Chapter 21
27. Chapter 22
28. Chapter 23
29. Chapter 24
30. Chapter 25
31. Chapter 26
32. Chapter 27
33. Acknowledgments
34. About the Author
35. Also by Tony Schumacher
36. Copyright
37. About the Publisher

Prologue

Liverpool

It was raining.

Blowing in left to right off the river. Silver sheets that caught the streetlamps, looking like shoals of tiny fish, twisting and turning in a swell.

The Bear breathed into his right fist, then stretched his fingers before wrapping his hand around the rifle stock again.

He rolled his shoulders and rested his cheek against it. It was so cold it made his face ache. He waited, it warmed; he blinked, then looked down the telescopic sight.

The same peeled-paint door stared back at him.

He moved and the rifle creaked a little. The view in the sight smudged black, then came back into focus. He breathed out through his nose, then shifted his aim a fraction to the right.

The docker was still there, still smoking, still waiting by the car. Hunkered in his coat, looking left and right, making sure whoever was in the warehouse behind him wasn’t about to be disturbed.

“Time, time, time.” Softly, to nobody but himself, as the crosshairs crept up the docker’s chest, then settled on his face, just below his left eye.

The Bear blinked and saw his own eye in the reflection of the sight for a fraction of a second. He tried to focus on it, catching the swirl of a silver iris before it blurred out of view. He breathed in, slow and deep, trying to ignore the pain that was starting to knot in his neck.

He thought about moving position, climbing higher in the empty warehouse. He decided against it. He’d chosen the spot badly, he knew that, but there wasn’t much he could do about it now. He felt the pain, enjoyed the pain, lived with the pain, then forgot it.

If his neck was sore tomorrow it would be sore.

His right index finger traced the trigger guard, then folded back into place on the stock. The rifle creaked again, like it was stretching out an ache the same as him.

His mouth was dry. He had a canteen of water in his bag but decided it would have to wait. He listened to the rain dripping through where the roof used to be. High up above him, away in the darkness, off through the holes in the shredded floors of the empty bombed-out building he was hiding in.

He was down in the docks. Surrounded by the warehouses that had taken the worst of the punishment when Liverpool had been bombarded by the German army. Years ago now, back during the fighting that had taken place to gain control of the city during the Battle for Britain. There had been a collapsing clamor to get on the last ships, away down the oil-slicked river as the Nazis had choked the life out of the land all around it.

Back then the Bear had just been Karl Bauer.

Back then the Bear had been normal.

Back then the Bear’s hands had just been splashed with blood.

All these years later they were drenched in the stuff. The Bear saw it in his dreams, tasted it in his food, smelled it in the air, and sweated it in his nightmares.

He was blood.

He was Captain Karl Bauer.

He was the Bear.

He’d been a member of the Waffen SS that had thundered through France, then onward through England, before finally hammering on Liverpool’s door. What was left of the British army had almost universally scrambled to the few ports up north that were still operating.

The ships hadn’t hung around for long. They had slipped out of the river like shy lovers disturbed by the sound of a key in the door.

The River Mersey had slapped against the quayside walls the night the boats left. A sarcastic round of applause under a smoke-smudged sky traced with searchlights, flak blast, and shadows.

The ships headed north, running for the safety of the Atlantic. As far away as they could get, as quickly as they could get there. Most of them hadn’t made it; they’d been sunk even before the city surrendered.

Truth be told, from what Bauer had seen, it was a miracle Liverpool had managed to last two days.

A miracle or maybe a nightmare, depending on your point of view. For forty-eight hours, German ordnance pounded from all sides. Across the River Mersey a long line of artillery had lined up and shelled the city center, while from every main road into the city, tanks and armor had rained heavy death.

And rain it had.

Death had been a downpour.

Thousands had died in the tightly packed streets, in a bombardment that blasted tenements and terraces to pieces. There had been no way out for the population as the ring around it squeezed tighter and tighter, until on the final night—it choked.

By the time the Germans switched off their engines, there was barely one brick mortared to another.

It had taken a week for what was left of the population to be driven out of their holes and cellars, blinking into the new dawn of the New Order.

The Bear hadn’t stopped for long that first time he visited. There was barely time to catch the breath he’d been chasing since he crossed over the Channel from France a month earlier. He had moved north, pushing harder, crushing harder.