Forty-Eight Hours at the Dragon’s Teeth: Patton’s Relentless Dash Through Steel, Fog, and Doubt—After Berlin Boasted the Wall Would Hold for Months
The wall did not look like a wall.
Not from a distance.
From the ridge above the river, it looked like a farmer’s bad dream—rows of blunt concrete teeth scattered across fields, squat bunkers crouched in the hedgerows, coils of wire that glittered when the sun decided to show itself. Behind it, dark firs climbed the hills like a crowd holding its breath.
A correspondent standing beside Captain Ben Larkin—Third Army staff, too young to be this tired—tilted his head and said, “That’s it?”
Ben didn’t answer right away. He was studying the ground, the way the concrete “teeth” marched toward the tree line, the way the pillboxes were set not where a man would want to build them, but where an engineer would build them if he hated you personally.
He’d heard every nickname for this barrier in the last month. The West Wall. The border works. The “line.” The thing between the American armies and Germany’s heart.
But the nickname that stuck in Ben’s mind came from a private with mud on his helmet and no patience for grand terminology.
“Dragon’s teeth,” the private had said, staring at the concrete shapes. “Like some story where the hero thinks he’s brave until he sees the monster’s smile.”
Ben watched tank commanders point through binoculars. Engineers traced invisible lines with gloved fingers. Infantry platoon leaders crouched in the grass, speaking softly, making the future into lists of simple tasks:
Cut the wire. Find the mines. Mark the lanes. Keep moving.
A day ago, a rumor had reached the forward command post like a cold draft: Berlin’s leader had supposedly said this wall would hold for three months. Three months of the enemy learning the terrain, bleeding time into mud, losing momentum until the winter did what bullets didn’t.
Three months was an eternity in a campaign built on speed.
Three months was a dare.
And in the middle of the dare, the general was coming.
Ben heard the engines before he saw the vehicles.
A line of jeeps and staff cars rolled up the muddy track, splashing puddles like they were offended by them. Men straightened instinctively, even the ones who pretended they didn’t.
General George S. Patton arrived the way storms arrived—without apology.
His helmet shone like it had been polished by the wind. His face was sharp and restless, eyes scanning everything, always looking for the weak seam in the world. He stepped out, boots planting with finality, and said, “Where’s the map?”
Someone produced it immediately. Another man offered a pointer as if Patton might need help seeing.
Patton ignored the pointer and stabbed a finger at the river line. “We’re here,” he said. Then his finger slid forward, crossing the border on paper with the casual arrogance of a man who believed lines were suggestions. “And that’s there.”
A colonel cleared his throat. “Sir, reconnaissance reports the obstacle belt is intact. The bunkers—”
Patton cut him off. “I don’t care if they built it out of the Ten Commandments. Everything man-made has a seam. Find it.”
Ben felt the temperature change. The general didn’t have to shout. His certainty did the shouting for him.
Another officer spoke. “Sir, higher headquarters estimates a deliberate breach could take—”
“Higher headquarters estimates,” Patton repeated, as if the phrase tasted bad. “Let me tell you what I estimate. I estimate the enemy is tired, short on fuel, short on faith, and long on fear. I estimate we can make that wall regret being poured.”
He looked up from the map at the men around him—engineers, infantry officers, tank commanders, staff like Ben who wrote things down and pretended paper could hold back chaos.
Patton’s eyes landed on Ben.
“You,” he said, pointing.
Ben swallowed. “Yes, sir?”
Patton’s gaze was the gaze of a man who could measure your spine with one glance. “What’s your job, Captain?”
“Operations staff, sir,” Ben answered, voice steady only because fear had become familiar.
Patton nodded, as if confirming something. “Then you’re my clock. I want hours, not excuses. I want movement, not meetings. Forty-eight hours.” He jabbed the air, as if pinning time to the sky. “That’s all the wall gets.”
A hush followed that felt almost religious.
Someone tried to be cautious. “Sir, forty-eight—”
Patton turned his head slightly, like a wolf hearing a twig snap. “Did I stutter?”
No one answered.
Patton pointed again at the map. “Engineers,” he snapped. “Find me the seam. Tanks, be ready to punch through the instant there’s a lane. Infantry, you’re the hands that open the door. Artillery—” His eyes narrowed. “Artillery will sing.”
He stepped back from the map, scanned the landscape where the concrete teeth lay in the fields, and said, almost conversationally, “They said three months.”
He paused, then smiled—quick, sharp, joyless.
“Let’s give them two days.”
That night, Ben learned what it meant to be a clock.
He sat inside a damp tent lit by a lantern that made everyone look haunted. Phones rang. Runners came and went. Maps were unfolded, refolded, and smudged with fingerprints that looked like bruises.
Outside, the sky hung low and gray, and a fine mist drifted through the trees like a spy.
An engineer captain named Ellen Vaughn—who somehow had clean hands despite the mud—stood over a map with a pencil. She looked at Ben without blinking. “The seam isn’t in the concrete,” she said. “It’s in the ground.”
Ben leaned in. “Meaning?”
“Meaning the ‘teeth’ don’t cover everything. Not if the terrain doesn’t allow it.” Ellen’s pencil traced a narrow depression that ran toward the obstacle belt—an old drainage ditch, half-hidden. “This gives us approach concealment. If we can get men close enough, we can cut wire and find a lane through the mines.”
Ben frowned. “And the bunkers?”
Ellen tapped a cluster of symbols. “They overlap fire. They’re designed to make that ditch a trap.”
Ben looked up. “Then it’s not a seam.”
“It’s a seam if we make them look somewhere else,” Ellen replied calmly.
Before Ben could respond, the flap of the tent snapped open.
Patton entered like he owned the air.
He took one glance at the map. “What’s that?” he demanded.
Ellen didn’t flinch. “A ditch line, sir. Concealment. Risky, but it’s the closest approach to the obstacle belt.”
Patton stared. “Risky is fine. Slow is not. How long to open a lane?”
Ellen hesitated just long enough to be honest. “If the enemy is awake and the mines are dense—hours.”
Patton leaned closer. “If the enemy is confused?”
Ellen’s mouth tightened. “Less.”
Patton straightened. “Then confuse them.”
He looked at Ben. “Clock.”
Ben swallowed. “Yes, sir.”
Patton’s eyes were bright. “I want the first wire cut by dawn. I want the first lane marked before noon. I want armor moving before the sun thinks about going down.”
Ben scribbled on his pad until his hand cramped.
Patton turned back to the group. “You will not ask permission from the wall. You will not negotiate with concrete. You will not be impressed by anyone’s engineering. You will do your job, and you will do it quickly.”
He stepped toward the exit, then paused, half-turning as if remembering something important.
“And if anyone tells you it can’t be done in forty-eight hours,” he said softly, “tell them to watch.”
Then he was gone, leaving the tent full of men and one engineer captain who stared at her pencil like it might be a match.
Ben exhaled. Someone muttered a prayer disguised as a joke.
Ellen looked at Ben. “You heard him.”
Ben nodded.
Ellen’s eyes hardened. “Then stop writing and start moving.”
On the other side of the wall, Lieutenant Karl Fischer listened to the rain.
He was twenty-five, which meant he’d been old at nineteen and ancient at twenty-two. His uniform didn’t fit right anymore. Nothing fit right anymore—not the map, not the orders, not the world.
He stood inside a bunker that smelled of damp concrete and stale coffee. A small stove hissed weakly in the corner. His men sat close together, rifles cleaned more out of habit than confidence.
The bunker’s slit-like window faced the fields where the dragon’s teeth rose. Beyond them was the ditch, the wire, the mine belt, and the slope down to the river.
Karl had been told the wall would hold. He’d been told it was a masterpiece. He’d been told the enemy would throw themselves against it and be shattered by its teeth.
He’d also been told many things that turned out to be wishes.
A sergeant named Otto—older, scarred, the kind of man who had stopped believing in speeches—stood beside Karl and peered through binoculars.
“Quiet,” Otto said.
Karl didn’t like the word quiet. Quiet was not peace. Quiet was preparation.
“Any movement?” Karl asked.
Otto’s jaw tightened. “Not where you’d expect.”
Karl’s stomach sank slightly. “Meaning?”
Otto lowered the binoculars, eyes flat. “Meaning they’re not being polite.”
A distant rumble rolled across the valley. Not thunder—something heavier.
Otto pointed. “Listen.”
Karl listened, and the rumble became rhythm.
Vehicles.
Many of them.
A runner arrived, breathless, slipping on wet concrete. “Lieutenant! Communications from battalion—enemy pressure expected at first light.”
Karl nodded, as if he hadn’t already felt it in his bones. “Tell them we are ready,” he said.
When the runner left, Otto muttered, “Ready is a word that means nothing.”
Karl didn’t argue. He stared out at the fog drifting across the field.
In the mist, the dragon’s teeth looked like gravestones.
Karl felt something cold coil in his chest.
The wall was strong.
But walls did not fight.
Men did.
Hour One.
Before dawn, the American side came alive like a creature waking.
Ben walked the forward lines with his notebook and a flashlight he tried not to use. His boots sank into mud. His breath came out pale in the cold.
He found Ellen Vaughn near the ditch, crouched beside a coil of wire, her helmet tilted forward. Her engineers moved with the careful, deliberate grace of people who knew that one careless step could erase a name.
“Wire team ready,” Ellen whispered.
Ben glanced at his watch. “You’re early.”
Ellen didn’t look up. “We don’t have the luxury of being late.”
A faint noise rose behind them—artillery pieces being shifted, men murmuring, a distant engine cough.
In the ditch, infantrymen lay flat, faces painted with mud and shadow. Their eyes tracked the line ahead where wire and mines waited.
Ben leaned closer to Ellen. “How do you keep them from seeing you?”
Ellen’s mouth tightened. “We don’t. We keep them looking elsewhere.”
She nodded toward the left flank, where a faint glow began to build—an artificial dawn. Smoke generators hissed, releasing thick plumes that drifted across a different sector of the obstacle belt.
A deception.
A false mouth for the monster.
If the enemy watched the smoke and expected the bite there, the real hand could reach for the seam.
Ben heard Patton’s voice in his head: Find the seam.
Ellen lifted a hand. Engineers moved forward like shadows.
Wire cutters flashed briefly, then vanished.
The first strand of wire fell soundlessly into the mud.
Ben’s watch ticked.
Hour One, and the wall had already begun to unravel.
Hour Six.
The sky turned gray, and with it came the first real sound of the day: artillery.
It started as a distant thump, then became a rolling drum that shook the ground. Shells arced overhead with a hiss that sounded like tearing cloth. The far side of the obstacle belt bloomed with smoke and dirt.
Ben stood with a forward observer, watching the barrage stitch the landscape.
“Not on the wire,” the observer murmured, adjusting his headset. “On the bunkers. Keep their heads down.”
Ben nodded, though he wasn’t sure the man needed agreement.
Behind them, tanks waited under netting like sleeping beasts. Their crews smoked and joked too loudly, as if volume could defeat fear.
Ben moved along the line, checking his notebook, marking times, writing down progress like words could anchor the chaos.
He found Ellen again, now deeper in the mine belt, kneeling beside a small flag marking a cleared lane.
“How’s it going?” Ben asked.
Ellen’s face was streaked with mud, eyes sharp. “Dense,” she said. “They didn’t skimp.”
A private behind her used a probing rod, inching forward with surgical patience. Another man followed with a spool of tape, marking the safe path.
Ben glanced toward the enemy side. Smoke rose like a curtain. The bunkers were still there, squat and stubborn.
“Are they firing?” Ben asked.
Ellen listened. “Not as much as they could. The barrage is keeping them honest.”
A sharp crack sounded—rifle fire, distant, but real.
Ellen didn’t flinch. “They’re waking up.”
Ben’s stomach tightened. “How long until armor can use the lane?”
Ellen looked at him, and Ben saw the truth: time was not something you had. Time was something you stole.
“If the lane holds,” Ellen said, “before noon.”
Ben scribbled the words, then ran.
Because he was the clock, and the clock had to tell the general that noon might happen.
Hour Ten.
Patton arrived at the forward edge again, refusing to stay behind.
A colonel tried to steer him toward safety. Patton ignored him like he ignored bad weather.
Ben met him near a stand of trees where the ground rose slightly. Patton’s eyes were fixed on the smoke and the vague shapes beyond.
“Well?” Patton demanded.
Ben swallowed. “Wire cut before dawn, sir. Engineers are clearing a lane through the mine belt. Progress is good, but—”
“But?” Patton snapped.
Ben forced himself to speak without apology. “They’re waking up. Small arms fire. The lane will be ready before noon if it holds.”
Patton stared at Ben for a heartbeat, then grinned like a man hearing music. “If it holds,” he repeated. “Make it hold.”
He turned to a tank commander nearby. “The instant that lane is marked, you go through. You do not stop to admire the scenery. You do not stop for souvenirs. You move like the devil owes you money.”
The tank commander nodded, eyes wide. “Yes, sir.”
Patton looked back at Ben. “And you—clock—keep me honest.”
Ben nodded, heart pounding.
Patton’s gaze sharpened. “They said three months,” he murmured again, almost fondly, like he enjoyed the insult.
Then his voice rose, cutting across the line. “Two days!”
Men straightened. Some cheered quietly. Others just tightened their grip on their rifles.
Patton stepped away, boots splashing through mud as if the earth itself could not slow him.
Ben watched him go and realized something frightening:
Patton didn’t just want to beat the wall.
He wanted to embarrass it.
Hour Twelve.
Noon came like a knife.
The lane was marked with tape and flags, a narrow ribbon of safety through a field designed to punish optimism. Engineers stood at its edge, faces tense, watching to see if their work would become a miracle or a lesson.
Tanks rolled forward.
One by one, their tracks entered the cleared path, metal grinding softly. The first tank’s turret traversed left and right, searching for threats. Infantry followed close behind, stepping exactly where the flags told them to step.
Ben stood with Ellen at the edge, both of them holding their breath like children watching a door creak open in a haunted house.
A shot cracked from the far side.
The tank didn’t stop.
A machine gun rattled from a bunker slit, bullets snapping into dirt.
The tank didn’t stop.
Instead, its main gun fired once—a blunt, enormous sound—and the bunker’s slit vanished behind smoke and dust.
Ben flinched despite himself.
Ellen exhaled slowly. “Lane’s holding,” she murmured, like she was afraid to say it too loud.
Ben checked his watch and wrote:
H+12: Armor entering breach.
Twelve hours in, and the wall was no longer a wall.
It was a problem being solved.
On the German side, Lieutenant Karl Fischer felt the bunker shake.
Dust rained from the ceiling. A man cursed softly. The stove hissed like it was offended.
Otto peered through the slit and swore—a rare word from him, which made Karl’s chest tighten.
“They’re through,” Otto said.
Karl stepped forward, eyes straining. Through the smoke, he saw shapes—low, heavy silhouettes moving in the cleared lane. Tanks. American tanks.
“How?” Karl whispered.
Otto didn’t answer right away. He just watched, jaw clenched. “They didn’t hit the teeth head-on,” he said finally. “They found the ditch. They used the ground.”
Karl’s mouth went dry. “But the belt—mines—wire—”
Otto’s eyes flicked toward Karl. “They brought engineers.”
Karl felt anger flare—anger at the arrogance of the enemy, at the crumbling certainty of the wall, at the idea that concrete could be outsmarted by a pencil and patience.
He grabbed a field phone, calling the neighboring bunker. Static hissed.
“Enemy armor in the obstacle belt,” he reported. “Request immediate support.”
A voice crackled back, strained. “Support is… limited.”
Karl’s stomach sank. “Limited?”
The voice hesitated, then said what Karl already feared: “Fuel. Ammunition. Confusion.”
Confusion—an ugly word for a beautiful plan falling apart.
Karl hung up and stared out again.
The tanks were closer now, moving like they had places to be.
Otto’s voice was low. “They’re not here to trade shots,” he said. “They’re here to pass through.”
Karl swallowed. “Then we stop them.”
Otto’s eyes were tired. “We try.”
Hour Eighteen.
By evening, the breach had widened.
Infantry had cleared two bunkers and isolated a third. Engineers had expanded the lane and begun creating a second route for vehicles. The smoke deception on the left continued, keeping the enemy uncertain about where the main thrust truly was.
Ben’s notebook was full of times and notes and small miracles.
He moved through the makeshift command post—now a cluster of vehicles under trees—bringing updates to officers who looked like they’d aged years since dawn.
Ellen found Ben near a jeep hood used as a table. “We’re hitting a snag,” she said.
Ben’s heart tightened. “What kind?”
Ellen pointed on the map. “The second belt. The one they hid behind the first.”
Ben stared. “There’s another?”
Ellen’s expression was grim. “They built this like they expected us to be clever.”
Ben exhaled sharply. “How long?”
Ellen hesitated. “If they’re firing, longer. If we can keep pressure, maybe we crack it by early morning.”
Ben wrote it down with fingers that felt stiff.
A runner arrived, panting. “Captain! General wants you.”
Ben turned and hurried.
Patton stood near the edge of the command area, watching the distant flashes where fighting continued. He looked like he was carved out of impatience.
“Well?” Patton said.
Ben didn’t waste words. “We’re through the first belt, sir. Armor and infantry are on the far side. But there’s a second obstacle belt behind it—unexpected density. Engineers believe we can crack it by early morning if pressure holds.”
Patton’s eyes narrowed. For the first time, Ben saw something like annoyance—not at the news, but at the wall’s audacity.
“A second belt,” Patton repeated. “Those people sure do love paperwork in concrete.”
He looked out again, then spoke softly, almost to himself. “Fine. Then we’ll tear through two.”
He turned to an artillery officer. “Increase fire on those bunkers. Keep them blind.”
He turned to a logistics officer. “Fuel forward. I don’t care if you carry it in teacups.”
Then he looked at Ben again. “Clock,” he said. “How many hours left?”
Ben checked his watch, did the math. “Thirty hours, sir.”
Patton’s grin returned—thin, fierce. “Plenty,” he said.
And in that moment, Ben understood: Patton treated time like an enemy position.
He intended to capture it.
Hour Twenty-Four.
Midnight.
The breach held, but the wall fought back in the only way walls could: by slowing, snagging, exhausting.
Rain returned, turning cleared lanes into slick ribbons. A supply truck bogged down and had to be hauled out. A bridging unit misread a coordinate and lost precious minutes correcting.
Ben watched men work under blackout conditions, their faces lit by brief flashes of covered lamps. He heard curses and jokes and the low murmurs of tired determination.
Near the breach, an infantry captain sat on an ammo crate and stared into the dark.
Ben sat beside him for a moment, letting his legs rest.
“How’s it feel?” Ben asked quietly.
The captain laughed without humor. “Like pushing a piano up a hill, and someone keeps throwing extra keys at you.”
Ben smiled faintly. “We’re still moving.”
The captain nodded. “Yeah. That’s the part that scares me. We’re moving faster than any of this feels like it should allow.”
Ben looked toward the far side of the obstacle belt, where dim lights flickered—vehicles already passing into German territory, spreading like ink through a crack.
Ben checked his watch.
Twenty-four hours.
Half the time Patton had demanded.
And the wall was already behind them in places.
Ben thought of the rumor—three months.
He imagined some officer in Berlin saying it with confidence, believing concrete could force the future to obey.
Ben stared into the rain and whispered, “Not this time.”
On the German side, Karl Fischer had not slept.
The bunker’s air was stale. Men moved like ghosts, swapping positions, firing when targets appeared, listening when the shelling paused.
Otto leaned against the wall, chewing on nothing.
Karl stared at the map spread on a crate. The lines that were supposed to hold were bleeding.
He picked up the field phone again and called battalion.
No answer.
He tried another line.
Static.
Otto watched him. “It’s not just the wall,” Otto said quietly.
Karl’s throat tightened. “What do you mean?”
Otto’s eyes were fixed on the slit. “Their speed is the weapon. We built to resist force. We didn’t build to resist… momentum.”
Karl swallowed. Momentum was not a word in the manuals.
A sudden tremor shook the bunker again—closer this time. The sound of heavy vehicles moving beyond the first belt, deeper.
Karl pressed his face to the slit and saw a shape pass in the night—an American tank, moving past the bunker’s field of fire as if the bunker were already irrelevant.
Karl’s hands tightened into fists.
He had been told the wall would make him important.
Instead, it was turning him into a spectator.
Hour Thirty.
Just before dawn of the second day, the second belt cracked.
Ellen Vaughn stood at the edge of a newly cleared lane, face streaked, eyes red from fatigue. Ben arrived as she was shouting orders, her voice sharp enough to cut through exhaustion.
A bulldozer rumbled forward, pushing aside debris, widening the route. Engineers followed, marking and rechecking. Infantry moved ahead, hugging the edges, watching for hidden threats.
Ben checked his watch and felt a surge of wild relief.
Thirty hours in.
The door was not just open now.
It was being held wide.
Patton arrived again, because of course he did.
He stepped up beside Ben, eyes scanning the scene like he could see progress in the air.
Ellen saluted, then went back to work without waiting for acknowledgment.
Patton watched her for a moment, then looked at Ben. “That’s the kind of person who wins wars,” he said.
Ben nodded, too tired to speak.
Patton’s voice lowered. “How many hours left, clock?”
Ben checked. “Eighteen hours, sir.”
Patton’s grin was bright in the gray dawn. “Then we’re going to use them,” he said.
He turned, shouted to a column commander, “Move! Move like you’re late for your own wedding!”
The column started rolling—trucks, tanks, half-tracks—pouring through the breach in a steady stream.
Ben watched the vehicles disappear into the fog beyond the wall.
For the first time, he allowed himself to believe the impossible:
They might actually do it.
Hour Thirty-Six.
By midday, American units were fanning out beyond the obstacle belt, seizing crossroads, cutting phone lines, forcing the enemy to react rather than plan.
Ben’s job became less about the breach and more about keeping the story of speed intact—making sure fuel arrived, making sure routes stayed open, making sure units didn’t pause long enough to let the wall become relevant again.
He rode in a jeep with a driver who never stopped chewing gum and a radio operator who looked like he’d been born with headphones on.
Messages came in bursts.
“Resistance at the village—light.”
“Bridge intact—moving.”
“Enemy units withdrawing—some confusion.”
Ben wrote and relayed, wrote and relayed, his notebook turning into a timeline of a wall being turned into an afterthought.
In the middle of it, a message arrived from a forward armored commander:
WE ARE THROUGH. CONTINUE ADVANCE.
Ben stared at the words, then read them aloud to the radio operator as if hearing them might make them real.
The operator nodded. “You want me to send it back to headquarters?”
Ben swallowed. “Yes.”
The operator keyed the mic. “Message follows…”
Ben looked ahead through the windshield at rolling German countryside, damp and gray, and felt the odd sensation of standing inside history while it happened.
Hour Forty.
The enemy tried to close the gap.
A counterstroke—small, hurried, more desperate than coordinated—hit a forward American element near a wooded ridge. It wasn’t the massive slam Karl Fischer and his officers might have wished for. It was a shove, a frantic attempt to plug a leak with hands.
Ben arrived near the scene, watching infantry dig in along a hedgerow while tanks repositioned, their engines growling.
A lieutenant approached Ben, face smeared, eyes bright. “They’re trying to pinch us off,” he said.
Ben nodded, watching the map. “Hold the road. Keep the corridor open. We just need to keep moving.”
The lieutenant looked at him like Ben was insane. “Keep moving?” he echoed. “Sir, we’re already beyond—”
Ben cut him off gently. “That’s the point. We don’t stop to argue with the wall’s ghost.”
A distant boom rolled, then faded. The counterstroke hesitated, then fell back, as if the enemy realized too late that speed wasn’t something you could fight with caution.
Ben exhaled shakily. He could feel the end of the forty-eight hours approaching like a train you weren’t sure would stop.
Hour Forty-Five.
Patton called for Ben in the late afternoon.
Ben found him standing beside a map spread across a truck hood, officers clustered around like satellites around a sun.
Patton didn’t look up. “Where are we?”
Ben answered quickly, pointing. “Our spearheads are here and here, sir. The corridor remains open. The breach is secure. Supply is moving through.”
Patton finally looked up, eyes bright. “And the wall?”
Ben hesitated, then said the truth as plainly as he could. “The wall is behind us, sir. It’s… it’s no longer the main story.”
Patton’s grin widened. For a moment, he looked pleased in a way that was almost boyish—like a man who had just won a bet nobody else believed in.
“They said three months,” Patton murmured, and his voice was full of contempt for anyone who ever trusted concrete over initiative.
He checked his own watch. “How many hours left?”
Ben checked. “Three, sir.”
Patton’s eyes narrowed, and his smile became sharper. “Then let’s make sure it’s official.”
He turned to an aide. “Send the message. Tell them the wall has been breached and bypassed. Tell them Third Army is moving.”
The aide nodded, hurried off.
Patton looked at the officers again. “Gentlemen,” he said softly, “a wall is only a wall until someone decides it isn’t.”
He stepped away, boots firm, and Ben realized Patton was not celebrating.
Patton was already hunting the next barrier.
Hour Forty-Eight.
Night fell again.
The sky was black and heavy, but the roads were alive with movement—columns rolling forward, headlights hooded, engines humming like a promise.
Ben stood near the original breach point, now a busy artery rather than a knife-edge. Engineers had widened paths. Wrecked wire had been pushed aside. The dragon’s teeth sat in the fields like relics, no longer terrifying—just inconvenient lumps of concrete that had failed to predict the future.
Ellen Vaughn approached Ben, hands on her hips, face exhausted. “So,” she said, voice rough, “what’s the time?”
Ben lifted his watch, and for a moment he couldn’t speak. The second hand moved with indifferent authority.
“Forty-eight,” he said quietly.
Ellen exhaled, long and slow. “Well,” she murmured, looking out at the fields, “I hope someone in Berlin owns a calendar.”
Ben managed a tired laugh.
A jeep rolled up. A messenger hopped out, waving a paper like it was a flag. “Captain! Message from army headquarters—general orders acknowledgment. They’re calling it—” He glanced down, then back up, eyes wide. “They’re calling it a forty-eight-hour breach.”
Ben felt a strange hollowness in his chest. Relief, disbelief, exhaustion—all of it tangled.
Ellen looked at him. “You going to tell the general?”
Ben nodded. “He already knows,” he said.
Because Patton had known it the moment the first strand of wire fell.
Ben walked a few steps away from the noise, stood at the edge of the field, and stared at the dragon’s teeth under the moonlight.
They looked smaller now.
Not because they had changed.
Because the men who had faced them had changed.
Ben thought of Karl Fischer in his bunker, watching tanks pass. He thought of the engineers probing mines in the rain. He thought of infantrymen stepping exactly where flags told them, trusting strangers with their lives. He thought of Patton treating time like a battlefield and refusing to retreat from it.
A wall was supposed to make history slow down.
Instead, history had run straight past it.
Ben opened his notebook and wrote the last line for the timeline he’d been keeping like a heartbeat.
H+48: Wall breached, bypassed, and rendered irrelevant by speed.
He closed the notebook and let the cold air fill his lungs.
Behind him, engines continued their steady hum, moving deeper into the dark.
Forward.
Always forward.
