Bright Red Line (Backyard Starship #22)

by J.N. Chaney

The trip to Belgium was uneventful, basically a really, really fast transatlantic flight. Essie had been given a location to rendezvous with Retta, a medieval castle called Chateau de Reinhardstein, located in easternmost Belgium, just five klicks from the German border. The castle sat on a prominent hill among rolling, forested hills interspersed with more open ground, mainly around towns and villages. This was the western Ardennes Forest, home to places practically burned into the American psyche during the so-called Battle of the Bulge—St. Vith, Stavelot and, about fifty klicks to the southwest, Bastogne. Most infamous, though, was the town of Malmedy, only five klicks from the castle, where American soldiers had been brutally massacred by the Nazis during their short-lived advance toward Antwerp.