‘We are,’ replied Wickham gravely. ‘In the long run, that is. Perhaps I should explain. I am a colonel in the People’s Commissariat of International Affairs … the NKVD.’
Bradley gazed at him in surprise. ‘You mean that you are a Soviet agent?’ he said slowly, after he had gathered his jumbled thoughts.
‘Afraid so, old boy. Ironic, isn’t it?’
Bradley felt impotent. ‘So what do you mean to do, Wickham, or whatever your name is?’ He gestured toward the window to indicate the sound of the klaxon which was dying away now. ‘That might mean Kendall and Horder have been discovered. What do you intend to do?’
‘I intend to kill you, for a start, Major Bradley,’ smiled Wickham. ‘I’m afraid that you have become so much dead weight.’
Bradley instantly launched himself across the bed, hands grasping for Wickham’s throat.
The suddenness of the attack caught Wickham off guard, throwing him against the wall before he could use his machine pistol.
It was then that the SS guard struggled back to consciousness. He had just come to, still slumped in his chair, when he saw the SS officer who had slugged him attacking what appeared to be another SS officer. His reaction was automatic. The officer who had attacked him was his enemy. It therefore followed that the second officer must be a friend. He grabbed for his machine pistol and sent a long burst into Bradley’s back. Bradley arched backwards across the bed and was dead before he hit it.
The guard came groggily to his feet.
Wickham had recovered and was straightening himself.
‘Are you all right, Herr Hauptsturmführer?’ asked the guard anxiously.
‘Perfectly, thank you.’ Wickham was smiling again now.
He was still grinning a second later as he depressed the trigger of his M38 and cut the guard almost in two with a shattering burst that was drowned by the sound of a second klaxon warning.
*
‘Neun!’
The level tone of the time-keeper echoed through the command bunker.
‘Acht!’
Heiden squeezed gently on the lever, feeling a shiver of anticipation run through his body.
‘Sieben!’
The future of the Third Reich depended on that gentle push of the lever, he reminded himself.
‘Sechs!’
He ran a tongue around his dry lips. Not long to wait now.
‘Fünf!’
*
The klaxon had finished screaming its warning across the launch site.
Kendall, leaning out from the gantry, jerked back. ‘Christ!’ he gasped. ‘They’re launching the rockets!’
Paul glanced down. He could see vapour beginning to trickle from the base of the rocket.
‘Let’s get the hell out of here!’ he yelled. ‘There’s no way we can do anything more.’
They scrambled down the gantry, feeling the heat blowing from the vapour trail. A terrible fear of being incinerated gave them hidden reserves of energy. They moved swiftly, faster than they had ever moved in their lives. From a point ten feet above the ground they threw themselves from the gantry, abandoning the tool bag. Paul landed clumsily and stumbled, but held his balance, while Kendall crashed to the ground and rolled over several times. Then both were running; running from the silos toward the horseshoe bank of earth and scrambling over it.
Above the rocket noise they could hear a voice accompanied by the static-crackle of a loudspeaker: … ‘Vier! … Drei! … Zwei! … Ein!’ As the counting ceased a soft thunder seemed to fill the air. The ground began to tremble beneath them. They buried their heads in their arms and pressed themselves flat. The smell of noxious fumes permeated the air about them. The heat was terrible. The world seemed to go white in spite of their eyes being tightly covered. Then … then the sensations eased.
Paul risked a glance upward.
The first rocket, mounted on a blade of white-hot flame, was rising into the sky. The second rocket was trembling and rising too, knocking aside its gantry.
‘God help us!’ cried Kendall, his voice filled with despair. ‘They’re taking off. We’ve failed.’
Paul stared at the majestic outlines of the sleek engines of destruction as they climbed upward.
‘You’ve disarmed one bomb,’ he muttered, his throat dry.
‘But not the other. There was no time.’
‘We’ve got to get moving!’ Paul urged quietly, becoming more aware of the personal danger that still surrounded them.
He turned, realizing that he would have to physically haul Kendall away from the spectacle of the slowly rising rockets. Half dragging, half pushing him, Paul stumbled back through the small conifer wood in the direction of the perimeter fence. His sense of direction was good: they came to the edge of the wood almost opposite the holes by which they had entered. But by this time the area was lit like daylight by the exhausts of the rockets ascending above them. Both rockets were climbing with increasing speed into the darkened night sky, their quivering, flaming tails acting like giant searchlights. Paul could see the sentries in the watchtowers staring upward. He could almost see the expressions of awe on their features.
He hesitated. No use making a run for it until the light died. They would be spotted for sure. He turned to see Kendall still staring at the departing rockets.
‘God help the people they fall on,’ the scientist muttered, ‘in fact, God help us all.’
Paul glanced up. Then he frowned, puzzled. The light from the rocket trails seemed to be oscillating.
He was about to comment when Kendall blurted, ‘My God! Oh, my God!’
*
In the control bunker there was a chorus of shouting and self-congratulations. Heiden was on the telephone waiting to be put through to Berlin. The connection was made.
‘Herr Reichsleiter,’ he smiled smugly. ‘We have ignition on both rockets.’
He heard a deep intake of breath at the other end of the line.
‘Excellent.’
‘The rockets are accelerating now,’ Heiden reported.
He tried his best to keep the relief from his voice. He had seen several V2 failures at launching, including one rocket which had simply keeled over on the launch pad and exploded, its warhead killing most of the technicians nearby.
‘Rocket One is accelerating on course at a height of one half mile. Rocket Two is accelerating at one quarter mile. Also on course. Both climbing … ’
‘Well done, Herr Brigadeführer. I shall tell the Führer. What is the estimated time of arrival over London?’
Heiden glanced at the chronometer.
Abruptly one of the technicians was yelling from his monitor.
‘What is it?’ cried Heiden, startled.
*
‘What’s happening?’ demanded Paul, gazing at Kendall’s fear-twisted face. Finally, he had to shake Kendall violently to get the man to look at him.
‘The rocket … one of the rockets is toppling … out of control. It’s going to crash back here, back on the launching site.’
Paul paused only a moment and then snapped, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here!’
Kendall laughed hysterically.
‘It’s the second rocket. The one I was not able to disarm. It’s no use running. When that explodes we won’t have a hope in hell. We wouldn’t even if we were ten miles away.’
Paul stared at Kendall incredulously. ‘Are you sure?’
Kendall did not answer. He just slumped to the ground on his knees. ‘God help us all!’ he cried.
In the command bunker the technician was fiddling with his instrument panel.
‘The second rocket is tumbling!’ His voice was hysterical. ‘Rocket Two is tumbling — the pitch and azimuth gyros are malfunctioning.’
Heiden went cold. The gyros, which kept the balance of the rocket, had malfunctioned a number of times during the history of V2 launches. Out of the one thousand rockets launched against England, at least one hundred had malfunctioned in this way.
> The chief technician turned a white, trembling face to Heiden, who stood with the telephone still in his nerveless hand.
The rocket has turned on its axis, Herr Brigadeführer. It’s falling back directly on this site.’
There was an immediate panic as technicians and scientists fought with security guards, all trying to get out of the door at the same time.
Heiden stood still, trying to get his mind to function. There was no point in running. If the super-bomb went off, then it did not matter in which direction he ran. He could not cover ten miles in ten seconds. Von Knilling had assured him that everything and everyone would be blasted into oblivion for miles in every direction.
He became aware of a muffled shouting at the other end of the wire. He raised the receiver against his ear. ‘Herr Reichsleiter,’ he said calmly. ‘It seems we have a malfunction. Within a few seconds you will hear whether the super-bomb was successful. One of the rockets is crashing back on this site.’
Brigadeführer Arnt Heiden stood alone in the control bunker, holding the receiver at arm’s length. He could hear the hurricane scream of the rocket descending.
Then the world went purple before his eyes.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Paul was aware of a shrilling noise; of a ball of flame plunging downward. The sound rose to a crescendo. In the split-second of silence which followed, Paul wondered why he was just standing there, standing as if rooted next to the kneeling Kendall. Then a blast of hot air threw him to the ground, which continued to rock for several seconds after he had hit it. Bits of burning debris were falling everywhere. Some of the trees were alight. Then there was a curious silence for a moment. Eventually the crackle of fire and the screams and shouting of men came to his ears.
Cautiously, Paul raised himself and looked around. Beside him Kendall was staring toward the silos in bewilderment.
They could see that a fire was raging beyond the small conifer wood, in the direction of the silos and the building complex. Several buildings seemed to have ignited. Now they heard a series of minor explosions, and ammunition began to scream into the air like exploding fireworks.
Paul shook his head to clear away the dizziness he felt. ‘Was that your super-bomb?’
Kendall shook his head. ‘No. The bomb didn’t go off. It … it didn’t work. That was just an explosion of liquid oxygen and alcohol from the fuel tanks. The bomb didn’t work.’
‘Are you sure it wasn’t the one you disarmed?’ demanded Paul.
‘Yes, I’m absolutely sure.’
Paul’s instinct for self-preservation overcame his curiosity. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘let’s not hang around until somebody notices us.’
Fires were flickering everywhere. He hoped that the sentries in the watchtowers were fully occupied by the conflagration in the interior of the site. He pulled Kendall after him, keeping close to the ground, and moved down to the perimeter fence. He led the way, wriggling through the gap, and their luck held until they reached the outer fence. They were just crawling through when they heard a sharp crack and Kendall grunted in agony and pitched forward.
Paul threw himself down full-length as a second shot rang out and a little puff of dirt flew up near his face.
He swung round, reaching for the Luger at his belt. One of the sentries must have spotted them and opened fire. He realized that the Luger wouldn’t have the range to be an effective weapon against the watchtower, but it might keep the sentry’s head down. He let off a shot and then reached forward to help Kendall. The man was groaning in pain, but managed to stumble to his feet with Paul’s support.
There was shouting from the watchtower to his left and then another terrifying explosion caused the ground to rock. Paul glanced over his shoulder and saw a column of flame rising beyond the trees in the direction of the silos.
The violence of another explosion caused Paul and Kendall to lose their footing and go pitching to the ground. The watchtower rocked crazily on its stilts. There was a sharp crack, even louder than the rifle shot. One of the tower’s wooden stilts snapped under the strain of the rocking earth. The tower swayed a moment and then keeled over with a great rending of wood, tearing the barbed wire with it. A figure, that of the sentry, tried to leap clear but jumped too late. Paul heard the man’s agonized screams as he fell into the whipping strands of barbed wire.
‘Come on, Kendall!’ yelled Paul. ‘Let’s move while they’ve got their hands full.’
Dragging the injured man along, Paul struggled forward into the shelter of the woods.
‘Was that the bomb?’ demanded Paul as he ran.
‘If it had been, we wouldn’t be here,’ Kendall grunted through his pain. ‘It was probably an ammunition dump or spare fuel supply. No, you can rest assured the bomb didn’t work.’
Paul exhaled sharply. ‘So all this was for nothing? The Nazi super-bombs didn’t work?’
Kendall grunted and tried to staunch the flow of blood from his shoulder. ‘Nothing? No, it’s not all for nothing. Maybe the first bomb would have worked, if we hadn’t got to it. Maybe not. Who knows? Maybe Von Knilling’s theory for the super-bomb was not correct. All we know is that the second atomic device failed. And we’ve made sure that the Nazis cannot prepare nor launch any further bombs in the time left to them.’
Kendall was right. Paul bowed his head contritely. ‘What about Bradley and Wickham?’ he said after a moment. ‘I wonder if they’ve made it?’
Kendall had slumped to the ground, unconscious. They were not far from the half-track now, so Paul stooped down and hoisted the man’s inert body over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. He strode as fast as he could. Even so, it seemed an age before he reached the small clearing in which they had left the half-track. He laid Kendall on the back seat and rummaged for the medical kit.
It took him just a few moments to examine Kendall’s wound, grunting with satisfaction when he saw that the bullet had only torn the muscle in the upper arm. No bone had been touched. It was a simple job, one that Paul had performed so many times that it was merely routine to him. Fifteen minutes later the wound was treated and dressed and Kendall was coming round from his swoon.
‘Sorry,’ he muttered thickly. ‘Pretty feeble thing to do, keeling over on you like that.’
Paul smiled. ‘You’ll be all right, Kendall. It’s a pretty clean wound. The sentry was using an old bolt-action Kar 98 standard Wehrmacht rifle. He’d probably have written you off with an FG 42.’
‘Bloody cheerful bastard, you are!’ protested Kendall.
‘Sorry. I suppose it’s the ex-army surgeon coming out in me.’
Kendall was frowning. ‘How long have I been out?’
‘About half an hour, all told.’
‘And no sign of Bradley or Wickham?’
Paul shook his head. ‘I suppose we should get away from here.’
Kendall nodded. ‘It will soon be first light.’ He managed to haul himself up on the back seat of the half-track. ‘Will you be able to drive this thing?’
Paul gave a quick affirmative gesture. ‘Sure, I’ll manage.’ He broke off suddenly.
‘Wait … ’ he said quietly. ‘Someone’s coming.’
He drew out his Luger and stared in the shadows.
‘Steady the Buffs!’ cried out Wickham’s cheerful voice.
Paul relaxed as the English officer came striding into the clearing.
‘Where’s Bradley?’ asked Kendall.
Wickham took out a cigarette and lit it. ‘The Major won’t be completing the trip, I’m afraid. Took a burst from an M38 in the back.’
Kendall and Paul exchanged a glance.
‘And von Knilling?’ asked Paul.
‘Dead. You were right about the radiation sickness. Died while we were there.’ Wickham turned to the doctor. ‘Some inferno you started back there, doctor.’
‘At least we’ve destroyed Project Wotan,’ Kendall said.
‘Are both bombs destroyed?’ Wickham pressed.
‘Both
bombs. I smashed the mechanism on the first rocket and the second one failed to explode when it toppled back on the site. Perhaps it was faulty, perhaps von Knilling’s calculations were wrong. We may never know.’
Wickham blew a reflective smoke ring. ‘And so with Von Knilling departed this sad world, it means you are the only one who understands the principles of this super-bomb business, eh, doctor?’
Kendall shook his head.
‘Not exactly. But … ’
He was suddenly staring at the muzzle of Wickham’s M38. ‘What the hell?’
‘Don’t try anything!’ snapped Wickham.
‘What’s the meaning of this?’ demanded Kendall.
‘It means that you and I, Kendall, are taking a little trip together … eastwards.’
Reichsleiter Martin Bormann was listening to the static crackle over the telephone receiver. The colour was draining from his face.
‘Get me re-connected to Project Wotan,’ he snapped at the radio operator.
It was several minutes before the operator rang back.
‘All the lines seem to have gone dead, Herr Reichsleiter.’
Bormann compressed his thick lips. ‘Get me SD headquarters either in Münster or
Dortmund. This is a grade one priority.’
The thick-set Party leader sat back at his desk and closed his eyes for a moment.
What could he tell the Führer?
*
Colonel Austin Roberts glanced up as his adjutant entered the room.
‘There’s an interesting report been picked up from one of the RAF pilots who was escorting a bombing squadron over Dortmund. I thought you would want to hear it immediately.’
Roberts frowned at the excitement in the young lieutenant’s voice. ‘What is it?’
‘One of the night-fighter pilots flying back from Dortmund saw two V2s take off from a site near Dortmund, almost halfway to Münster. He saw them as plain as day, in fact much better. The exhaust shows clearer at night than during the day. They were launched about 03.15 hours, the pilot reports.’
‘That’s not long ago,’ Roberts said, glancing at his watch. ‘How come we have this report already?’
The Doomsday Decree Page 22
