PHOENIX: (Projekt Saucer series)

by W. A. Harbinson

  Taking the lift down through the interior of the mountain, Wilson emerged to the cleared area that had become a landing pad, now covered in a film of powdery snow. The saucer was resting on its four hydraulic legs, with its exit door tilting out from the base to form a short flight of steps down to the ground - a recent, much welcomed innovation. As the raised, transparent dome was uncovered, Wilson could see the crew inside. Ernst Stoll and Kammler were standing near the front edge of the saucer, talking with the artificial smiles of men who secretly despise one another. They drew apart when Wilson approached them.

  ‘Well,’ Wilson said, ‘the day has come at last. It’s been a long wait. No regrets?’

  ‘No regrets,’ Stoll said. ‘Naturally, I’d rather stay here with you, but I’ll do what I have to.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ Wilson said, looking into Stoll’s dulled gaze and realising just how much he had changed since first they had met in Berlin in 1938. Since then, Stoll had lost his dream of becoming a rocket engineer, lost his faith in the Nazis, lost his wife and child - lost everything. Now he only had Wilson, who cared little for him but was all too willing to use him. Wilson glanced at Kammler, then nodded at the flying saucer. ‘Is it ready to leave?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kammler said. ‘We were just waiting for you.’

  Wilson shook hands with Stoll. ‘Enjoy your work - and good luck.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Stoll said, releasing Wilson’s hand, shaking Kammler’s hand less readily, then ducking low to slip under the base of the saucer and clamber up the ladder into the machine. The ladder was drawn up electronically behind him, sealing the exit, then Wilson and Kammler moved back with the other men to take their positions behind transparent protective shields in the small caves hacked out of the rock. Artur Nebe, the deadly former SS officer, now in charge of Wilson’s security, was already there with some of his armed guards. He looked at Wilson with dark, inscrutable eyes, resting his hand, as always, on his holstered pistol.

  ‘Do you think he can be trusted?’ Nebe asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Wilson replied. ‘At least until he goes insane. Until then, just to be sure, we’ll visit him on a regular basis and check what he’s up to. I’m sure he’ll do the job well.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ Nebe said.

  A high-pitched whistling sound came from the saucer, then it changed into an angry roaring. A cloud of steam caused by melting snow swirled around the glittering machine as it lifted off the ground, swaying from side to side, bobbing gently up and down. The saucer remained like that for a few seconds, swaying and bobbing magically, roaring angrily, turning the swirling snow into great clouds of steam that made the light from the arc lamps bend and quiver to form a dazzling web. The saucer ascended slowly, vertically, as if on invisible strings, until it had cleared the snow-capped peaks of the mountain, just above Wilson’s office. There it roared even louder and seemed to quiver like a bow-string, until suddenly it went silent, became motionless for a second, then shot vertically into the azure sky and almost instantly vanished.

  ‘Perfect,’ Kammler said.

  ‘And here comes the other one,’ Nebe said, his dark eyes glinting watchfully.

  The other saucer, also 300 feet in diameter, had appeared out of nowhere to hover just above the snow-capped peaks and then begin its descent. It came down as gracefully as the first one had ascended and landed as lightly as a feather on the same launching pad. When it had whined back into silence, its trap door opened and angled down to the ground to form steps. A middle-aged man emerged, wearing a black coverall and boots. He was followed by the five crewmembers, all dressed in grey coveralls. When Kammler stepped forward to receive the flight records from the crewmembers, the man in black walked up to Wilson and gave a slight, formal bow.

  ‘Well?’ Wilson asked him. ‘Did it go well?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the man, Flight Captain Friedrich, replied. ‘We flew over a few air bases without much success, but finally, at Godman Field, near Louisville, Kentucky, we were pursued by four F-51 fighter planes. One of them was more foolhardy than the others and pursued us to nearly twenty thousand feet. We let him catch up with us. When he was still climbing and just below us, as close as he dared come, we used your new laser weapon against him. It worked, sir. Beautifully. The F-51 cut out, went into a spin, and was splitting in two even before it crashed. We later heard on the radio that the pilot was killed. Air Force pilot Thomas F. Mantell. A World War Two hero. A good choice, don’t you think?’

  ‘You didn’t exactly choose him,’ Nebe coldly corrected him, ‘but certainly, for our propaganda purposes, you couldn’t have come across a better victim. Now the US Air Force will be very frightened indeed, which is what we require.’

  ‘It’s also good to know that the laser weapon developed in Kahla actually works,’ Wilson said. ‘We’re pleased, Friedrich. You’ve done well.’

  He squeezed Friedrich’s shoulder, glanced at Kammler and Nebe, then turned away and walked back into the mountain.

  Chapter Seven Fuller made good use of his time before interviewing the former Projekt Saucer scientist, Walter Miethe. Forced by his assignment to return to New Mexico, he decided to learn as much as he could about the V-2 rockets before discussing them, and more important related matters, with the Kraut scientist now working for the Army’s First Guided Missile Battalion, located in White Sands.

  Driving out of town at dawn, past the bright orange-and-white signs saying ALAMOGORDO: HOME OF THE ATOMIC BOMB, CENTRE OF ROCKET DEVELOPMENT!, Fuller headed for White Sands, where a V-2 launching was to take place later in the morning. The drive took him across desert filled with nothing but sagebrush, past isolated gas stations charging twenty-five cents a gallon, to the 3,600 square miles of even more parched desert, sand dunes, and cattle-grazing land, which encompassed the White Stands Proving Ground, surrounded by the distant, closely bunched peaks of the aptly named Organ Mountains.

  Not particularly fond of ranchers, rattlesnakes, mountain lions or coyotes, Fuller was glad to reach the government’s first rocket centre. He knew he was getting close when he hit Highway 70 and found it clogged with motorists trying to find a good vantage point for the launching. Rather than being classified, the V-2 launchings (or ‘shoots’ as they were commonly called), which took place every couple of weeks, were treated as gala occasions and used as military PR exercises on the local populace. Fuller was therefore not surprised, when he approached White Sands in the morning’s dazzling light, to find himself in the thick of cars and buses coming in from Las Cruces, Alamogordo, and El Paso, bringing farmers, cowboys, housewives, young mothers with new-born babies, schoolchildren, Boy Scout troops, students from the international rocket school, ROTC men, National Guardsmen, and members of the Chamber of Commerce and civic clubs. Many of these would tour an assembly hangar and the White Sands Proving Ground Museum, housed in a long Army van, where a V-2 rocket was on display, see a movie about guided missiles, visit the launching site, then scramble for a good position in the camp viewing area, located approximately seven miles away.

  American know-how, Fuller thought proudly.

  He was even more impressed when he entered the White Sands camp and found it swarming with state and municipal officials, retired and active Mexican generals, ordinary GIs, naval ratings, Air Force engineers, and top brass from the Pentagon, West Point, and Annapolis.

  ‘It’s like the goddamned Fourth of July,’ he said to Captain Edward ‘Ed’ Gunderson of the First Guided Missile Battalion, in his office near the Proving Ground museum. ‘I thought all this would’ve been top-secret, but these folks are having a party.’

  ‘It’s kind of a festive day,’ Ed said. ‘The rocket shoots are still exciting. You can’t keep a shoot secret - I mean the rockets are so damned visible - so everyone’s invited to come along. The real secrets are the payloads in the rockets - and the public don’t see those.’

  ‘What kind of payloads?’

  ‘The permanent personnel of the Proving Ground are both civi
lian and military, so it depends on who’s financing and sharing the individual rocket. In this instance, General Electric has thermometers on board because they’re interested in the problems of heat transfer; the Naval Research Laboratory is sending up a spectrograph to measure the spectral qualities of light at high altitudes; and the University of Michigan is contributing an air-sample bottle, to suck in a sample of the atmosphere and then seal itself. Even Harvard University, would you believe, is sending up a packet of seeds to learn how cosmic radiation effects them. So while the rocket shoot isn’t secret, the results of the tests certainly will be.’

  ‘Who’s most interested in the rockets?’

  ‘Military men and scientists are equally interested, but for different reasons. The scientists are mostly interested in pure scientific research - an orbital satellite for the checking of weather and other atmospheric data is their long-term aim - but the military men – wouldn’t you know it? - are after an atom bomb transported by guided missile. That says it all, doesn't it?’

  Fuller’s instinct was to say: ‘Why not? We’ve got to protect ourselves from the Commies and other enemies.’ But realising that this might antagonise his new friend, he said, instead, ‘Yeah, I guess it does, Ed. So when do I get to talk to the Kraut?’

  ‘Dr Miethe?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Right after the launch. He’s out in the desert right now with one of the Recovery Officers, waiting to pick up the rocket’s scientific instruments at the point of impact. You can see him right after that.’

  ‘Can you take me out to the launching site?’

  ‘Sure,’ Ed said. ‘No problem.’

  They left the First Guided Missile Battalion HQ and drove in Ed’s jeep to the launching site, burning along the camp’s only paved road, which ran through seven miles of sagebrush and dunes, with the organ-pipe peaks of the mountains to the west, on the far edge of the otherwise flat terrain. The journey only took ten minutes, but the wind was hot and filled with sand, making Fuller feel dry-throated and sunscorched by the time the V-2 appeared as a patch of glinting white in the distance. A minute later, the jeep was close enough to let Fuller see that the rocket, painted white but with a pointed, silver warhead, now raised into a vertical position, was being planted on a portable launching platform by a specially equipped truck. Ed drove on to where the rocket was and they got out of the jeep.

  The V-2 looked lonely in the desert waste, even though about a hundred men, civilian and army, were gathered around it. The rocket was now straddled by a sixtyfoot tall crane, which had platforms at different levels, where the launch crew were working like beavers while GIs climbed up and down ladders, opening and closing the instrument panels, and, on the ground, the surveyors checked the vertical alignment. It looked like organised chaos.

  ‘Come on,’ Ed said to Fuller. ‘Let’s check out the blockhouse.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Headquarters for the shoot.’

  The blockhouse was an expansive, low concrete structure located about a hundred yards west of the launching platform, reminding Fuller of the pillboxes he had attacked as a marine during the war. Inside, it was blessedly cool and contained only instrumentation relating to the V-2, with lights flickering constantly on the consoles and other equipment making rhythmic clicking sounds. The thick, protective walls of the blockhouse contained three narrow viewing windows of thick laminated glass which, when Fuller looked, showed only the fins at the bottom of the V-2 being prepared for launching. There were also oxygen masks and bottles hanging on the walls.

  ‘The rocket could keel over and fall into the blockhouse,’ Ed explained reassuringly, ‘cutting off our exit. The walls of the blockhouse are so thick they probably wouldn’t cave in, but the masks would be needed to protect us from the toxic gases that could seep out of the rocket and fill this place before we could escape. Come on - only twenty people are allowed in here during a shoot and you’re not invited. You can come with me as part of a field crew. They’re stationed right across the Proving Range, in the desert and mountains. Their job is to keep track of the rocket’s flight and phone their reports in to the blockhouse. You wanna come?’

  ‘Hell, yes,’ Fuller said. He hadn’t enjoyed himself so much since fighting the Japs at Iwo Jima and was glad to get out of the packed, gloomy blockhouse. Once outside, he noticed that the GIs were no longer swarming over the raised V-2, but had been replaced by a lot of civilians, all on the third platform, about fifty feet up.

  ‘The guys in charge of instrumentation,’ Ed explained. ‘Let’s get in the jeep.’

  They drove away from the blockhouse, heading into the desert, arriving a couple of minutes later at Radar Station D, an encampment of half-a-dozen trailers, containing radar and other equipment, located a mile east of the launch area. When Fuller got out of the jeep and looked back where he had come from, he saw heatwaves rising off the plain in front of the rocket.

  Wiping sweat from his face, he followed Ed into one of the trailers. It contained the telemeter, which would transmit data on temperatures, wind pressures and cosmic rays during the rocket’s eight-minute flight, and three special cameras, which would make a pictorial record of the flight. Men stripped to the waist and wearing shorts, their muscular bodies sweat-slicked, had taken up positions behind the cameras. As this meant that the shoot was imminent, Ed led Fuller back outside, where they could get a good view.

  As zero hour approached, more people poured into the encampment, including a lot of full colonels. Instructions were being broadcast from a PA system that linked up all the field stations. Shortly after, a pair of Stinson L-5 observation planes appeared in the sky, the countdown began and continued until it reached X-minus One. Then the seconds were counted off: ‘Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one - Fire!’

  A distant, bass rumbling sound soon became a mighty roaring, then flames shot out around the base of the rocket and turned to boiling black smoke. From where Fuller stood, it looked as if the rocket was on fire, about to explode, yet remarkably it didn’t move immediately. Instead, the 1,900 pounds of explosive fuel built up beneath it, only gradually lifting it off the launching tower. The rocket rose slowly, dramatically, as if about to fall back again, but kept climbing in that leisurely manner out of spewing yellow flame and boiling smoke. When it broke free from the launching tower, spitting a red flame from its tail, the roaring washed over Fuller like a wave and the ground shook beneath him. He covered his ears with his hands and put his head back, looking upwards, feeling tremendous, almost sexual excitement as the roaring turned into the loudest noise he had ever heard and the rocket started putting real distance between itself and the Earth. Fuller’s neck could bend no further when the rocket became no more than a flickering flame, curving up and away, until it disappeared altogether, leaving Fuller to squint into nothing but the vast, empty sky.

  When he straightened his neck to look about him, he saw Ed’s grin and raised thumb. Fuller felt extraordinarily alive, completely physical, and at last had a very real sense of the world that was coming.

  No wonder they’re scared, he thought.

  Fuller didn’t like Commies, Japs or Germans, but he tried to be civil when he interviewed Walter Miethe later that afternoon in the headquarters of the First Guided Missile Battalion. The office was small and spartan, containing a desk and three chairs. There was nothing on the desk. Two of the chairs were at one side of it, with Miethe in one of them. Fuller, at the other side, had a good view of White Sands, its chapel framed by the window, which was open. The bawling of GIs playing on the basketball court came in loud and clear.

  ‘Cigarette?’ Fuller asked. Miethe shook his head, indicating refusal. He had black hair and eyes as dark as pitch, though they still revealed wariness. He was a man who had been asked a lot of questions and didn’t want to hear more. ‘Do you mind if I do?’ Fuller asked, lighting up before Miethe could answer. ‘No,’ Miethe said. ‘Of course not.’ Fuller grinned. ‘You don’
t smoke at all.’ Again Miethe replied by shaking his head in a negative gesture. ‘Filthy habit. Never start,’ Fuller said, puffing smoke rings and watching them drift away, pretty close to Miethe’s face. ‘So you know why I’m here, right?’

  ‘I can guess,’ Miethe replied.

  ‘You worked for an American called Wilson and we’re trying to find him.’ Miethe sighed wearily. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you. I can tell you what I know

  about Projekt Saucer, but I don’t know anything more about Wilson. He’s probably dead.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘There were two saucer construction programmes: one by Flugkapitän Rudolph

  Schriever, the other by Wilson. The two saucer teams were separated in 1944. Wilson’s team was placed under the command of SS Brigadier Hans Kammler and transferred under the supervision of Captain Ernst Stoll to Kahla, near the underground rocket construction plant at Nordhausen, in the Harz Mountains. I went with Schriever and his team to Prague, so I never saw Wilson after that. My closest associate on Projekt Saucer, Habermohl, was sent by Schriever to work on part of the programme in Breslau, where he was captured by the Soviets. As for Schriever, the last I saw of him was when he was running away from murderous Czechoslovak Partisans at the BMW Plant in Prague, when the Russians were advancing on that city. However, just before that happened, we received unofficial notification that Wilson’s team had been evacuated from Kahla in April 1944 and that Wilson had been shot by General Kammler, to prevent him falling into the hands of the advancing Americans.’