Fortress Falling (Moon Brothers WWII Adventure Series Book 2)

by William Peter Grasso

  “Negative,” Tommy replied. “I’ve got the fire in sight.”

  There’d be no time for Tuttle to deliver his napalm, anyway. The baby was on course, only seconds away from the start of her own dive to target. Waiting for Tuttle would mean putting her through a gradual, time-wasting full circle before having to line her up all over again.

  Her final plunge had to begin now.

  Tommy was suddenly so consumed with the improvised technique of diving the baby that he forgot, for a moment, Rocket Man’s report of GIs still on Driant…

  And that one of those GIs just might be his brother.

  The baby was less than a mile from the fort. The camera in her nose was providing a clear view of the napalm fire.

  Tommy had been slowing the baby gradually for the last few minutes. It was time to begin the stall maneuver.

  Throttle back all the way…hold the elevators up. Airspeed dropping…down to 105, coming up on 100…

  The baby seemed to hang in mid-air for a few seconds. Then her nose dropped suddenly, like the chop of an ax.

  She’d stalled. Now it was time to guide her fall.

  Pretty clean…wing drop wasn’t too bad. I’ve got them back level already and on course. Got to get those flames up to the top of the screen…

  There we go. Right where I want that target picture.

  Holy cow…look at that airspeed pick up. She’s one heavy bird.

  Okay…little bit of down elevator to keep her from going long…

  That’s good.

  Fifteen hundred feet and going down like a brick.

  Man, she does take her sweet time responding, doesn’t she?

  Can’t let her get ahead of me.

  As she flashed through one thousand feet, the monitor showed objects on the ground, outside the napalm flames. Familiar shapes he’d seen from the air so many times before:

  On, no. Are they Shermans?

  Please, Sean…not you.

  Then, like a movie from Hell, the flames filled the video screen. Before the next beat of Tommy’s racing heart, the screen’s image cut to snow, the thousands of dancing dots in varying shades of gray that indicated loss of signal.

  The baby was down.

  Tommy pulled his face from the monitor’s hood to look out the plexiglass nose. There was just enough of a break in the clouds to see the fireball and the rapidly expanding shock wave spreading in all directions.

  But it all looked so disappointing. Hardly the cataclysmic eruption he’d hoped for.

  Even the buffeting as that shock wave reached up to the mothership several seconds later felt like little more than mild turbulence.

  And then, as they turned back to A-90, the clouds—like curtains closing—concealed everything from their view.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  There was no time for relaxing on the mothership. They were barreling the thirty air miles back to A-90 at low level, trying to beat the squall line moving quickly to meet them from the opposite direction. Colonel Pruitt and Jimmy Tuttle were still airborne, too, looking to beat that same storm front home. But the mothership had landing priority. She had a casualty on board: Sergeant Dandridge.

  I should’ve made sure he didn’t fly, Tommy thought. Dammit, I even helped him. If he’s got bleeding on his brain, he’s in big trouble.

  If he dies, it’s at least partly my fault.

  And Sean…

  Did I just kill my own brother, too?

  No…I’m being crazy. There’s got to be hundreds of Shermans in this part of France right now.

  I mean, what are the odds?

  But odds be damned. What if I did?

  Major Kidd was thanking his lucky stars he’d been airborne at 1,000 feet and a mile south of Fort Driant when the Fortress fell. The shock waves of the ensuing explosions rocked his L-4 like a barrel in a storm-tossed sea. At one point, she was nearly inverted. No sooner had he gotten her upright, she sank rapidly, as if a giant hand was pushing her down. She was brushing the treetops before Kidd could get her climbing again.

  Had she been any lower when that thing crashed, it would’ve shoved her right into the ground, for sure. And she’s just been through a lot more aerobatics than she’s built for. Better take it real easy.

  But as long as he could still fly, he was responsible for providing the BDA, and Almighty Four-One was giving him the all clear to start it. Gingerly, he turned his battered little machine back toward Driant. All the while, he asked himself, What the hell did I just see? Did a bomber just crash? Maybe it got shot down? Or was it some kind of flying bomb?

  He started high—1,500 feet—to get a wide view and—hopefully—be a little less of an easy, slow-moving target for gunners on the ground. But near as he could tell, no one was shooting at him. In fact, the fort looked deserted, as it usually did except when you could see the tracers being hurled up at you. But there was something definitely out of order with the four main gun batteries.

  To begin with, the battery that stood just south of the fort’s center was nothing but a deep, smoking crater, littered with the twisted, charred, and unrecognizable remnants of what had once been an aircraft.

  The other three batteries, once lined up across the center of the fort’s expanse as neatly as a game of dominos, were now askew and smoldering, as if some sore loser had upset the playing table and then torched it. Their steel-domed turrets, each containing one cannon of 100 or 150-mm caliber, were smoking and displaced atop their concrete bunkers, each in its own peculiar way. Some were split open; others were tilted at odd angles, a few with their guns protruding like broken limbs.

  The concrete bunkers that housed those three batteries were still standing, but each had obviously suffered catastrophic internal explosions. Kidd could plainly see giant cracks in their structure, even from high above. Large chunks of their thick concrete roofs and walls had been blown out; those chunks now littered the ground all around the batteries.

  The other bunkers and the central fort’s blockhouse appeared scorched, with black scars like chalk smudges on the walls above the gun ports. Flames still licked from a few of the openings.

  The only structure that looked perfectly intact was the one they called the Moselle Battery, a three-turret bunker surrounded by its own barbed wire outside the fort proper’s perimeter, some seventy-five yards from its southeast corner. It had always seemed like some military architect’s afterthought, separated from the main fort as it was. The battery was buttoned-up, each gun pulled into a turret which was retracted into the concrete refuge of the bunker, like it always was when not actually firing. If there was anybody inside that bunker, Kidd couldn’t tell.

  By his second orbit of the fort, he’d seen enough. He radioed his report to 3rd Army HQ. His assessment: With the exception of the Moselle Battery, Fort Driant appeared dead.

  Kidd could see the storm coming, too. He wouldn’t dare try to penetrate it in his fragile craft, especially not after the beating she’d just taken. But he knew he’d never make it back to A-90, either. A small grass airstrip beside a field hospital a few miles to the southwest would be the port he’d seek to ride out this storm.

  The winds were blustery and it was already raining hard as the mothership touched down on A-90, its landing roll using up almost all of the slick pavement. Lieutenant Wheatley got her clear of the runway quickly so Colonel Pruitt and Jimmy Tuttle could land while they still had enough forward visibility to do it. The ambulance, with the flight surgeon on board, was waiting as the mothership, brakes squealing, shuddered to a stop on the taxiway.

  Sergeant Dandridge was lifted off the ship on a stretcher and hurried to the ambulance. Tommy was one of the stretcher bearers. The doctor did a quick and gentle examination of Dandridge’s head and eyes and then asked Tommy, “Has this man had any seizures or vomiting, Lieutenant?”

  “No, sir. Just loss of consciousness and a splitting headache.”

  “And I’m told he received a head injury in a vehicle accident last night?”r />
  “Yes, sir, that’s correct.”

  The doctor shook his head in dismay as he muttered, “What the hell was this young man doing up in an airplane?” Turning to Dandridge, he said, “You’re in good hands now, son. Just relax. We’ll get you fixed up.”

  Then he motioned for Tommy to get out of the ambulance. His voice soft and fatherly, the doctor said, “I’ve got it from here, Half. You can check back on him later. Now scoot.”

  General Patton wasted no time getting troops back on the burned-out shell of Fort Driant. Even the pouring rain was to be no deterrent, he ordered. “The Hun has been dealt a killing blow,” his commanders were told. “Let’s seize the advantage and move on to Metz without delay, gentlemen.”

  The first order of business was to neutralize Driant’s Moselle Battery. A company of 5th Division infantry undertook this task, surrounding its perimeter. The company commander pondered how on earth he’d actually take this bunker without the cooperation of the Germans inside—if there really were any inside.

  Or maybe we need another mysterious blow like the one that just leveled the main fort, he told himself.

  The company first sergeant had an idea: “Why don’t we just knock on that li’l ol’ door, Captain?” He pointed to the formidable steel door on the back side of the bunker, large enough to roll carts full of ammunition inside.

  One look at the captain’s face and it was obvious he had no intention of sauntering up to the door.

  The first sergeant smiled and said, “Oh, I don’t mean in person, Captain. I was thinking maybe a three-round burst from that thirty cal over there, right off the door. I’ll bet it sounds just like someone knocking real hard if you’re on the other side.”

  That was the best idea the captain had heard lately. And definitely the safest.

  As ordered, the machine gunner bounced a three-round burst off the door.

  But there was no response from inside the bunker.

  “Give it another try,” the first sergeant told the gunner, who quickly complied.

  The echo of those last three shots was still ringing as the GIs heard a muted clank, like a heavy metal bolt being disengaged. The door cracked open just enough for a white flag to be thrust outside.

  “You don’t think it’s some kind of trick, do you?” the captain asked.

  “Let’s find out, sir.” Then the first sergeant bellowed, “SOLDATEN, RAUS!”

  It took a few minutes before the door creaked fully open. They came out slowly, hands up, a soldier with the white flag leading the way. There were twelve in all; a few were older men, haggard and stooped from the weight of war; the rest were terrified teenagers, some of whom looked no older than fourteen. Their ill-fitting uniforms, getting steadily soaked by the rain, made them look even more pathetic and harmless.

  “These sure ain’t the same bunch of lunatics we run into before in this place,” the first sergeant said. “They sure don’t look like no supermen to me.”

  “Just twelve men in a three-gun battery?” the captain wondered. “You’d think they’d need twice as many to keep these things firing.”

  “Well, sir,” the first sergeant said, “I guess things are tough all over now. It ain’t like the handful of replacements we been getting are the cream of the crop, neither. But let’s check inside all the same.”

  A squad went into the bunker. Minutes later, they emerged. “All clear,” the squad leader reported.

  The infantrymen and engineers—two battalions’ worth—who swarmed over Fort Driant had much the same to report: All clear. Most of the Germans they found were dead. Those in and around the gun batteries were charred to a crisp. In the tunnels, they found corpses without visible wounds: “Killed by concussion,” an engineer colonel concluded.

  There were some survivors, mostly in the main fort’s observation posts and the outlying barracks. They were still stunned by the tremendous explosions that had struck them like mighty fists. They cowered in corners, the thought of actually fighting the Americans who were suddenly all around them the furthest thing from their minds.

  There was no need for them to offer the word kamerad. Their eyes were unmistakably pleading surrender.

  As best as the Americans could tell, there had been less than two hundred German troops manning Fort Driant. But there would never be an accurate count. Too many men had been turned to ash.

  An infantry colonel was having trouble understanding the devastation all around him. “One stinking airplane did all this?” he asked.

  The engineers already had a hypothesis for what had happened to Fort Driant. It didn’t take much, they explained, to understand the demolition of the battery into which the airplane crashed. A hurtling aircraft full of explosives and gasoline was apparently more than enough to shatter the structure and its guns. But how did the fort’s other fortified structures—some hundreds of yards away from the impact—suffer the devastation they were now recording?

  The engineer colonel used diagrams of the fort—the same diagrams the GIs had used in yesterday’s attack—to illustrate his conclusion on what had just happened.

  “It’s obvious the airplane that crashed into the fort must have been loaded full of bombs and fuel. Our hearts go out to any crewman who might have been on board, of course. The fact that it struck the fort so perfectly, though, has to be the most incredible piece of luck that ever befell the US Army. But once it did crash and blow the bunker it hit to smithereens, initial indications are that the ammunition in the bunker—a huge supply, it seems—detonated immediately. The combined explosive forces were channeled through these underground tunnels like a high-pressure hose spewing incredibly hot gases. Even those steel doors didn’t prove much of an impediment to its brute force. Those gases torched everything flammable and shattered everything breakable. Within seconds, it set off the ammunition in the other batteries, too, cooking their crewmen. The only people we’re finding alive are the ones who apparently weren’t underground at the time of impact.”

  An infantry colonel asked, “So you’re saying we got pulled back at the last minute to make way for some big bombing raid, and one very unlucky crew turned it into an unbelievable break for us?”

  “Do you have a better theory, Bob?” the engineer asked.

  “It’s just that usually when there’s a big air raid coming, we can hear them miles off. A formation of heavy bombers is about as quiet as a battalion of tanks. But nobody heard a damn thing. Hell, we don’t even know if that wreckage is an American plane or not. It could be British. It could be German, too.”

  “Regardless, it seems like someone just did us a big favor. Are you complaining, Bob?”

  “Hell, no, I’m not complaining…not about getting rid of Fort Driant, anyway. But if whatever the hell just happened here was part of some high-level secret plan, I sure as hell don’t like being left in the dark about it.”

  Heavy rain or not, Patton was going to get to Fort Driant and savor his victory in person. His jeep pulled through the towering and wide-open iron gates of the fort’s main entrance just after 1600 hours. Within minutes, he was posing for Army photographers as they snapped picture after picture of him in raincoat and steel helmet atop a shattered gun turret, their cameras beneath makeshift tarps to keep them dry.

  Convening his senior commanders in the shadow of the main fort’s observation tower, he said, “It’s time you gentlemen found out what exactly just happened here. We’ve unleashed a new kind of weapon, one of amazing killing power, as you can see.”

  Patton went on to explain the details of Operation Bucket and its mother, Operation Aphrodite. He concluded with, “I expect you all to keep the information I’ve just given you under your hats, gentlemen. We just might want to use one of these new-fangled flying bombs again in the near future. It wouldn’t do if some casual talk tipped off the Krauts to what we had in store. After all, they’re still just big, vulnerable airplanes…and they can be knocked down very easily if you know they’re coming.”

&n
bsp; At A-90, Major Staunton and his men were packing their gear, loading what they could fit into the mothership, leaving the rest for the C-47 cargo plane that would arrive and take them all back to England once the weather cleared again. The mood that hung over the men of Operation Bucket was like the sad but merciful relief one feels when a long-suffering loved one has finally passed away. Tommy Moon couldn’t understand all this gloom, so he asked Staunton to explain.

  “It’s very simple, Lieutenant,” Staunton began. “Despite the fact that we’re the only Aphrodite mission that’s ever succeeded, it looks like we’re getting the rug pulled out from under us anyway.”

  “Why, sir?” He could sense the major bristling at his insistence, but he didn’t care. He had to know.

  “Again, Lieutenant, it’s simple: while we were succeeding brilliantly, two other Aphrodite missions were being attempted against U-boat pens in the North Sea. Both failed miserably to reach their targets. Shot out of the sky, crashed into the sea. I’ve just been told that General Spaatz is on the verge of standing down the whole project. Apparently, one success out of fourteen tries, no matter how brilliant that success, no matter how much we’ve learned achieving it, is not sufficient to sustain the project.”

  “Gee, that’s too bad, sir.”

  “Yes, it is, Lieutenant.” Then Staunton’s irritation melted as he extended his hand to Tommy. “I do want to thank you, though, for the great help you’ve been. Sergeant Dandridge thanks you, too. He’ll be fine, the doctor says. Just needs some rest…and no flying for a while. I’d like to say there’ll be medals all around for what we’ve accomplished, but I can’t guarantee anything. Once you’ve fallen out of favor, the rewards are slow in coming, I’m afraid.”

  “No problem, sir. I’m not in it for the medals.”

  “Nonsense, Lieutenant Moon. Everybody wants that recognition.”

  He didn’t bother to disagree with the major. As they shook hands, Tommy was more sure than ever that those who had never been in combat could never fully understand the motivations of those who fought. You didn’t fight for the brass or the medals they doled out. You fought for your buddies…