Chapter 580: Wolves in the Dark
Somewhere in the foothills of the Pyrenees, near the old smugglers’ trails
The cold night air lay heavy across the hills, wrapping itself around twisted oaks and gnarled rocks like a damp shroud.
Far below, a winding road cut through the darkness, intermittently lit by the dim yellow beams of convoy lamps.
French tanks rumbled along in uneven columns; sleek by French standards, armored hulls sloped at newly experimental angles, turrets bristling with 47mm cannons.
These were older tanks designed to compete with the Panzer I in the years after the Great War, and were still the primary armored fighting vehicle in the French Arsenal.
Flanking them were a small number of heavy tanks with 75mm Guns. Freshly off of Paris’s production lines.
The AMC-32s were flanked by trucks loaded with crates of shells, barrels of petrol, and men packed shoulder to shoulder, rifles resting on tired knees.
Above them, nestled among sharp crags and terraces of frostbitten grass, lay the Werwolf Group.
They were scattered in disciplined fire teams, their dark silhouettes broken by local wool cloaks and rough Catalan sashes.
From a distance they might have passed for Nationalist irregulars, another local militia eager to fight the reds.
Up close, the truth revealed itself: Khakigrau webbing cinched tight over homemade jackets, magazine pouches laden with 30-round bakelite magazines whose baseplates were stamped with German codes.
Each man’s rifle was a sleek hybrid of older German wartime brilliance and new postwar refinements.