A Thousand Suns

by Alex Scarrow

  Poor lad.

  It would have been good to have his help finding their way to New York, but it was clear from the traffic on the sea they weren’t too far off. Pieter smiled to himself. He just had to follow the ships; that was all he’d need to guide them in now. He checked their fuel. It was low, uncomfortably so. He estimated there was enough left for maybe another twenty minutes’ flying time. That was enough. Fifteen minutes or so to find New York, and five minutes to get some distance from it after they had dropped the bomb. If they couldn’t find anywhere suitable to land, they could bail out. Stef might be a problem if they had to do that, especially if he couldn’t be roused. In that case they’d just have to push him out, pull the cord and hope for the best.

  And what about Max?

  He suspected Hans would be happy enough to leave him aboard to go down with the plane. His snarling decision that Max was a traitor had sounded final. His own feelings were a little less certain. Max was no traitor, that much was for sure, but that strange note had clearly shaken him. He suspected that there was more to his odd behaviour than just that. Pieter had seen officers break down before, men that could seemingly endure an infinite amount of battlefield stress, and yet who suddenly seemed to suffer total emotional collapse. Several squadron leaders from KG-301 had suffered that fate, but for some reason he’d thought Max would never crumble like that. He wasn’t a traitor, and nor did he deserve to die. If it came to bailing, he’d make sure they all got out. Once they’d dropped the bomb, one way or another, this rift between them would no longer have any relevance.

  The note?

  The bloody thing had to be an attempt at sabotage, or a last-minute change of heart by some paranoid technician working on the project. But he wondered, for a moment, if the damn thing was for real, would that change anything?

  Of course not.

  If there really was a risk involved in dropping this bomb, a risk that the entire world could be incinerated, then it was the world’s fault for cornering them like this. The Russians were going to obliterate Germany anyway - better to bring them all down with them than for the Fatherland to die alone.

  Pieter nodded; he was satisfied with that justification. It would be everyone’s fault if it all ended in ashes; after all, they were just trying to defend themselves. What other country wouldn’t do the same if they had the chance? And anyway, who would be left to point an accusatory finger?

  No one.

  He smiled grimly. To have got this far required the intervention of fate. To turn back now would be an unforgivable act of weakness. Pieter knew that fate, destiny, or whatever you wanted to call it, was with him, with them. Now was not the time for doubts or second thoughts.

  He decided that that was the last of the thinking he should do on the subject. The only thing to do now was to concentrate on the job in hand.

  Max watched Hans as he kept the gun squarely aimed at him. However, the young man’s eyes darted frequently to the starboard porthole, anxious to watch America approach, to see the country first hand that he’d only so far seen in the occasional newsreel, and once in a film about cowboys and Indians. Hans saw the clouds and the dark coastline, surprised at how much like the coast of Normandy it looked. He’d always thought America was a hot place - blue skies, golden beaches and large, beautiful, snow-tipped mountain ranges. But it looked like yet another cold, dark and wet country. He decided with a silent nod that it would make it that much easier to blow up a large chunk of it.

  ‘It’s not like you imagined it, eh?’ said Max.

  ‘No,’ Hans replied automatically.

  Pieter’s voice came over the interphone. ‘Hans . . . tell him to be quiet, we need to concentrate.’

  Hans reminded himself of the new situation; Max was no longer the plane’s commander, no longer a comrade, a friend. He jerked the gun towards him angrily. ‘Shut up, Max, I told you to stay quiet.’

  Max raised his hands submissively.

  How in God’s name am I going to stop this?

  Time was running out for him to find a way to put an end to the mission.

  He wondered why it had been so easy for him to believe there was some truth in that note, and for Pieter and Hans to dismiss it so readily. There might have been a time, maybe two or three years ago, before their posting to the eastern front, before this war had become so barbaric, that he too might have sided with them and considered it a Jew’s attempt to sabotage things.

  But now? Maybe deep down, a suspicion as yet unspoken, he’d decided that their home wasn’t worth killing so many innocent people for. Maybe the world would be a safer place without someone like Hitler in it, who would gamble the world for his own ambitions; without easily led people like Pieter and Hans, who would do the same out of blind fealty to such a recklessly dangerous leader.

  As a country, Germany would vanish, and her people would become - what? Russian citizens. Some might argue, losing a flag and a language . . . they deserved a great deal worse than just that.

  Pieter leaned forward in his seat and looked out of the cockpit window. Below and ahead of them the coastline of America was upon them. He watched as greyish beaches, awash with the rolling surf of the Atlantic, slid beneath the nose of the B-17. There had been no more ships to follow in the last few minutes, so he had decided to hold his oblique north-westerly course until they crossed over the coastline and then he would pull round to the right and head due north, following the coastline until either they were nearly dry or he came across the city.

  The gauge was now showing empty; it wasn’t a precise display, a needle hovering over a crudely marked dial showing hundreds of pounds of fuel, it was an approximate reading at best. His watch showed the time was twelve minutes past the hour. Another eight minutes, he decided, and then the bomb would have to go, New York or no New York.

  ‘I’m pulling around to the north now, Hans, and we’ll follow the coast. Eight minutes to go.’ Hans acknowledged, and Pieter began to bring the plane smoothly around to the right.

  Chapter 56

  Question

  ‘The device in the bomber, it’s an atom bomb, isn’t it?’ asked Chris.

  Wallace made no discernible response.

  ‘The Germans beat you guys to it, and right at the end of the war they were about to bomb America,’ Chris added, hoping to prod him for a reaction. ‘They used an American plane, I guess captured sometime earlier, because it was the only thing big enough to make it across, and because it would be a disguise. And they nearly did it, didn’t they? They got within a few miles.’

  Wallace said nothing, he simply sipped at his coffee.

  Chris knew that he had it right there. No response was no denial. The old man was telling him all without uttering a word.

  ‘Jesus! Oh, for fuck’s sake, that’s bloody amazing!’ he laughed aloud.

  Wallace looked up from his coffee and smiled. ‘Congratulations, so now you know, I might as well give you and your friend the whole tour, then. But not tonight.’

  Chris shook his head. ‘No, no way. I want to hear what you’ve got, Wallace. I let you go earlier this evening, and we nearly lost you. I’m not doing that again.’

  Wallace smiled. ‘Very touching,’ he said drily. ‘Tomorrow, if you can drive me back to my home, not far from Queens, I’ll tell you it all. I have notebooks, evidence that you could use if you wanted to go public with this. I’ve been waiting a long time to find that old bomber and to know whether they really did manage to build the bomb. So now I finally know for sure . . . it’s time you and I show the world what we know, eh?’ said Wallace quietly, with a wry smile and a wink. ‘But that’s for tomorrow. Right now, I need to sleep. I think we all should get some sleep.’

  Mark nodded. ‘That’s probably good advice. I feel wasted after this evening’s goosing around.’

  Chris shrugged. ‘Yeah, sure . . . okay. Anyway, I need to make some calls tonight. If we’re going down on that wreck again -’

  Wallace placed a hand on Chris’
s arm. ‘No calls tonight,’ he said, ‘please. Let’s be careful about that. They can be traced. Right now, I think we’ve safely lost them. Please let’s keep it that way.’

  Chris patted his hand reassuringly. ‘Okay, no calls . . . it’ll wait another night.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s gone two in the morning. Shall we make it an early start tomorrow, then, chaps?’

  ‘Sounds good,’ Mark replied. ‘The sooner we clear out of here, the better.’

  Chris pulled out some bills and left them on the table, while Mark helped the old man up out of his chair. The three of them wandered out into the cool night.

  Mark handed them both the motel room keys he’d picked up earlier. ‘Rooms four, five and six. I’m hitting the sack, guys; too much fun for one day. Good night.’

  ‘Good night, mate,’ Chris replied, slapping him gently on the back. ‘I’ll come knocking at nine.’

  Mark waved as he walked tiredly across the neon-lit tarmac forecourt towards the motel rooms, a dozen quaint wooden cabins arranged in a tidy row.

  Wallace watched him go. ‘He’s a good friend to you?’

  ‘The best,’ replied Chris.

  ‘You trust him with this story?’ the old man asked carefully.

  ‘With my life, actually. Yeah, I trust him.’

  Wallace nodded and smiled. ‘That’s good,’ he said, raising one hand to massage his temple. ‘Please excuse me, I really must rest now.’

  ‘Sure. I think we lost those spooks. You go and rest up.’

  He watched the old man walk wearily towards his cabin. ‘See you tomorrow,’ he called out to him.

  Chapter 57

  Mission Time: 22 Hours, 12 Minutes Elapsed

  5.17 p.m., EST over the outskirts of New York

  ‘There it is! I can bloody well see it! Hans!’

  Hans jumped a little as Pieter’s voice crackled over the interphone.

  ‘We’re there! Look out the port side!’

  Hans kept the gun trained on Max as he leaned across to peer out of the porthole. Ahead he could see the faint silhouette of a cluster of tall buildings against a darkening grey sky. He guessed it was about fifteen miles away. A few thousand feet below he could see the start of an intermittent carpet of low buildings. By the look of them they were homes, a belt of suburbia.

  ‘Are we there?’ said Max quietly.

  ‘Yeah,’ replied Hans with a grin, too elated to feel the need to chastise him for talking. ‘We’re here, Max. We did it!’

  Pieter’s voice came over the intercom again ‘All right, Hans, time to get things ready. We need to drop this bomb as quickly as we can. I’ve got no idea how much time we have left before we’re dry.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ he replied, pulling his mask up and shouting excitedly into it.

  ‘Max knows, he’s already put in the code . . . it just needs arming. Get him into the bomb bay . . .’

  Hans nodded and turned to Max. ‘Time to get it done. Up you get,’ he said, nodding towards the bulkhead leading to the bomb bay.

  Max pulled himself up, stiff and sore from the cold and the inactivity.

  ‘I’m not going to do it, Hans, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘Just fucking MOVE!’ he shouted, his voice breaking hoarsely.

  Max slowly ducked through into the bulkhead and held on to the bomb rack beside the walkway. Hans followed, squeezing through after him, the Walther aimed at Max all the time.

  ‘You’ve made the bomb ready, Max, but Pieter says you’ve got to arm it . . . so do that now.’

  Max shook his head. ‘You know I won’t, Hans. We have got to take this bomb out to sea and ditch it.’

  Hans raised the gun and banged it roughly against the bomb rack out of frustration. ‘Shut up and do it, or I’ll bloody well shoot you right now!’

  ‘Hans, I’m going to open the bomb bay doors, make sure you’re holding on to something,’ Pieter shouted down from the cockpit into the bay.

  Hans held tightly on to the bulkhead, while Max tightened his grip on the bomb rack. With a loud clunk and a whir of motors, the bomb bay doors cracked open. A slither of brightness widened beneath them as the doors juddered open. The bay was quickly bathed with the sepia light of the waning evening sun. The wind rushed noisily below them, a roar and a high-pitched whistling together, and both men stared in awe down at the passing suburban tapestry.

  Hans cast a glance at the bomb. There appeared to be only one button on the whole contraption, a blue button beside a row of numbers.

  ‘It’s the blue button you need to press, isn’t it?’ he shouted against the roar of the wind.

  Max said nothing, certain that a denial would sound like an obvious lie.

  ‘It’s the blue button, isn’t it?’ Hans asked again, his voice rattling with anger.

  He remained silent.

  Hans nodded, all of a sudden certain that Max’s silence was nothing but an affirmative. There was nothing else on the bomb that looked like a switch or button.

  ‘I’ll arm the bomb myself then. It looks like we don’t need you now,’ he said, smiling coldly.

  ‘God have mercy on you, Hans, because those people down there won’t if they get hold of you.’

  Hans once more aimed the barrel of the gun at his head. ‘I never thought you’d let us down, Max, never. But you have, and now you’re the fucking enemy . . . it’s just me and Pieter left.’

  Max looked into his eyes, desperately searching for a trace of mercy. ‘Hans, don’t do this.’

  Captain Eugene Delaware caught the faint hum first, above the crumple of wind and the rumble of traffic and activity from down below. In the streets below, full of cars accelerating and braking in concert with the myriad of pedestrian crossings and traffic lights, the faint hum of the B-17 was the only engine on a steady note.

  ‘I can hear something, Mr President, sir,’ he blurted into the phone. ‘I think it’s coming from the south-east. Definitely a plane, sir.’

  Delaware pulled the binoculars up to his face and scanned the broken clouds in the distance over Brooklyn. He scanned systematically, sweeping from left to right, as the faint hum, every now and then fading behind the downtown symphony from below, emerged, a little louder, a little more distinct, a little closer.

  ‘It’s definitely approaching our position, sir. But I can’t see it just yet.’

  President Truman’s voice crackled over the phone, ‘Just keep looking, Captain.’

  ‘Sorry, Max, goodbye.’

  Max closed his eyes and waited for the bullet.

  ‘What’s going on!?’ shouted Stef.

  He opened his eyes to see Hans half turn in surprise, the gun pulling a couple of inches off target, away from his head. Leaning through the bulkhead, the young lad appeared groggy and confused by the sight of the handgun.

  Max, still holding tightly to the bomb rack, reached out with one hand for the gun and twisted it sharply in Hans’s hand.

  ‘Fuck!’ Hans bawled with surprise, squeezing the trigger three times in rapid succession. Even with the roaring of the wind below them, the report of the Walther was deafeningly loud. The barrel was close enough to Max’s cheek that he felt the sting of burning gunpowder from the muzzle flash. Two of the bullets rattled around chaotically inside the bomb bay, ricocheting off the metal spars of the rack. The third bullet was aimed upwards, and left the bomb bay via the forward bulkhead into the cockpit.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Stef shouted once more, as both Hans and Max wrestled one-handed to gain possession of the firearm, each of them holding on desperately with the other hand to avoid being pulled off balance and pitched into the gaping chasm below.

  All of a sudden the bomber lurched and started to roll to the left. Through the open hatch both struggling men paused in their efforts as they stared down to see the suburbs of Brooklyn slide away and the steely grey of the Atlantic begin to drift into view. The plane was rolling hard to port, taking them inland. If it continued much further
it would roll over onto its back and begin an irrecoverable dive.

  Hans suddenly screamed as he lost his grip on the bulkhead and swung out over the open chasm. The only thing keeping him from falling was his grip on the gun. His legs seesawed desperately as he tried in vain to swing them up onto the walkway above.

  ‘SHITshitshitshit!’ he gasped up at Max.

  Max held on to the gun with grim determination. ‘Hold on! Hans, grab my arm with your other hand!’ he shouted down to him.

  The bomber pulled out of the roll, momentarily levelling, before beginning to roll to starboard.

  Hans reached up with his other hand and grabbed hold of Max’s sleeve. Max was struggling hard to keep from tumbling out, his one-handed hold on the bomb rack weakening fast.

  ‘Get your legs up on the walkway! I can’t hold on to you much longer!’ he shouted down to Hans.

  His long legs swung several times, but came nowhere near close to the metal grating. He shook his head. ‘I can’t do it.’

  Max looked to Stef for help. The lad was making his way towards them on his hands and knees, groaning with the effort, but he looked too weak to be of any use. Max’s grip was weakening rapidly; another ten seconds and he could see both himself and Hans tumbling side by side down to earth.

  ‘Hans, I can’t pull you in, you’ve got to get your legs up!’

  The big German tried again. This time his left heel swung high enough to hook over the top of the walkway.

  ‘That’s it! Come on, you big idiot!’ called Stef weakly, lying on the walkway beside Max.

  Hans dug his heel into the metal grating and pulled upwards with his lower leg and his arms. He hefted himself up enough that his hands could reach up past the gun and grab the walkway.

  ‘Good boy, keep pulling,’ encouraged Max, relieved that Hans was bearing some of his own weight.

  Hans began pulling himself up and grinned foolishly at them. ‘Nearly fucking well lost it th -’