“You want to know why…?” Lowenstein almost spat as he stared down, making no move to help the man who’d been almost his only constant visitor through almost a decade of imprisonment. “Because I’m a Jew, and you’re a fucking Nazi… that’s why!” This time he did spit at the ground by Müller’s twitching feet, as if to add emphasis to the venom in his words. “Because you played your part in this ‘grand plan’ to desecrate history, and took away my very existence in the bargain! Torture and interrogation, the likes of which you couldn’t even imagine in your worst nightmares, and ten fucking years of my life gone with the snap of someone’s fingers…” He clicked his own together in concert with his words. “You thought I was your friend, didn’t you, Joachim… but you threw your lot in with rabid dogs, and there’s only one way to deal with an animal that’s gone rabid…”
Without another word, Lowenstein coldly pointed the pistol at Müller’s head and fired again, the copper-jacketed slug punching a tiny hole in the man’s forehead and killing him instantly. Taking a moment, he checked inside his shirt and made sure all of the personal notes and papers he’d collected during his imprisonment were carefully folded and kept secure inside. He couldn’t afford for any of it to fall into the wrong hands now… not when he was so close to freedom. Stepping over the corpse, he stopped for a moment at the door to the outside world, peering through just enough to allow him a clear view of the area before deciding to fully step into the open.
“Samuel…!” He was barely a few metres outside the door before the soft voice had called his name in accented English, and he turned quickly to his right, pistol held low at his side but aimed all the same. “Samuel… I believe Monsieur Brandis told you I’d be waiting…”
“Of course: you must be François,” Lowenstein nodded with the faintest of smiles, lowering the weapon in his hand as Reynard stepped from the cover of some nearby shrubbery and jogged across to join him. “No need for us to hang about… I’d say its best if we get moving quickly…”
“I’d tend to agree with you,” Reynard noted with a wry grin as he glanced back through the open door to the stable and spotted Müller’s crumpled body. “Let me just get your friend out of sight first, though... it may buy us a little time if he’s not discovered.”
He moved back into the building quickly, dragging the body into Lowenstein’s cell before returning and closing the door behind him. As he returned to the scientist’s side, he drew a collection of identification documents from the pocket of his woollen coat and handed them over.
“These are your papers… your name is now Samuel La Forge, and you work as a dishwasher at the headquarters. You live alone at the nearby town of Beaucourt-en-Santerre, and your address is inside the first page there. Try to memorise as best you can… it’ll save us both if we’re stopped.” Reynard glanced around the area before clapping a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Now… let’s get out of here… time for you to take your first evening ‘stroll’ as a free man.”
With Reynard in the lead, the pair took off at a steady pace across the field behind the stable, heading directly away from the burning mansion and the chaotic scenes surrounding it. Fire trucks were finally pulling up around the structure, and a few jets of water began to stream up into the flames, soon to be joined by many more as more vehicles arrived. The pair would carry out a wide circle around to the east to avoid any patrols in the area, before turning and heading back toward the small wood that was their initial objective, 1,000 metres to the south.
It was turning cold that night… very cold… but Lowenstein couldn’t have cared less. For the first time in almost ten years he was able to run beneath a clear, night sky, and he was enjoying every second of it. Not for a moment did his mind think of Müller, or the manner in which he’d coldly shot down the only man who’d ever shown him friendship or even the slightest consideration during a decade of imprisonment.
“Contact report…!” The very relieved leutnant called out exactly five minutes later, “Single aircraft moving very fast… picked up by radars at Caen and Chartres, heading south-west over Normandy at approximately 500 knots. Fighter Control estimates it’ll cross the Brittany coast within fifteen minutes at current speed and heading.”
He’s heading for the Bay of Biscay… Schiller mused to himself, forcing his mind clear of everything else for a moment and trying to think fast. Must be the F-35... he’s staying subsonic to conserve fuel, and the F-22 wouldn’t have to… with supercruise, it could be pushing Mach 1.8 the whole way home and we’ve never catch him! He began to work through the ramifications of that information, needing to close his eyes for a moment and take a deep breath as the pain in his leg flared and threatened to bring him to his knees. We know from the Scapa Flow survivors that one of the enemy jets was shot down, so this F-35 must be out there alone… and if he’s already headed that far south, there’s no way he’ll make it back to England unrefuelled. The answer came to him in a flash. That means they have a tanker waiting somewhere out over the Atlantic…
He limped across to one of the tables nearby, picked up a large, stand-mounted microphone connected to the main radio transmitter and keyed the transmit button: it was already tuned to the correct frequency, and instantly connected him with the remaining pair of Flankers, awaiting take-off orders at Lille.
“Hawks, this is Generalleutnant Schiller – I have mission orders for you…”
“Hawk flight reading you loud and clear and ready for take off, Herr General,” the reply came in an instant.
“Hawk-Four: you’re to launch immediately and proceed south-west to the Bay of Biscay at best possible speed… there’ll be a thirsty F-35 somewhere out there looking to make an in-flight refuelling, and with your speed advantage and external fuel, you should be able to overhaul it before it reaches the coast. Hawk-Three: you’ll launch and proceed south-south-west to carry out BARCAP over the Scilly Isles. I expect there’ll be a tanker aircraft out there somewhere, and you’re to engage anything that comes within detection range!”
“Orders received,” confirmation was equally quick. “Preparing for take off…”
“Damage reports you ordered, Mein Herr… and casualty lists,” an NCO advised as he entered the CP, stepping up and handing over several sheets of hastily-written notes. Schiller scanned quickly through page after page through eyes slitted with pain and tension, his expression darkening significantly with every line he read. The headache that’d been building since the explosion had finally blossomed into a fully-fledged migraine, and it was making it extremely difficult for him to concentrate.
“God in Heaven…!” He breathed, feeling as if he’d been gutted as he took in the list of deaths and severe injuries. “They didn’t need a nuke to hurt us!” He finished the last page and turned it over, as if expecting more to be written on the reverse as he realised someone was missing fro the lists. “Chief Technician Müller… he’s not listed here at all… has anyone seen him…?”
“I… I don’t know, Herr General… I did ask, but no one else has been able to locate him either. Last reports were from a kitchen hand who thought he’d been seen heading out the rear of the building, toward the stables.”
“Bloody Lowenstein…!” Schiller had experienced so little contact or involvement with their single, ‘special’ prisoner over the last decade that he’d almost forgotten about the man they held in detention in the stables behind the mansion. The generalleutnant almost breathed a short sigh of relief at the news. “I should’ve guessed he’d look after his little friend out back… were the stables damaged in any way?”
“There was some initial threat of fire, but the trucks have since brought that under control,” the NCO replied quickly. “The stables are still intact and undamaged, as far as I am aware.”
“The pair of them are probably sitting around the stove and drinking coffee, no doubt,” Schiller forced a faint grin that came across more as gritted teeth. “Perhaps I should wander over there and keep them company.” The t
ruth was he was struggling to remain focussed and lucid inside that bunker, and he desperately needed some time outside and some relatively fresh air. He glanced around and took note of the gathering group of senior officers inside the CP, some also nursing minor injuries or burns. He picked out one man he recognised immediately and addressed him directly.
“General Guderian…!” He stepped across to face the man, coming stiffly to attention as he did so.
“Jawohl, Mein General,” General Heinz Guderian, CO of XIX Corps, also came to attention instantly. Although he technically outranked Schiller, the man was well aware that Reichsmarschall Reuters was incapacitated, and that under those circumstances it was Schiller who took command of his duties as a matter of course until advised otherwise by The Führer. No one else in Nazi Germany held sufficient power to order Schiller to step down during such a situation.
“You have command here at the CP while I’m gone – I need to attend to the matter of locating our chief technician. I should be no more than a few moments.”
“Of course, Mein Herr,” Guderian replied instantly with a crisp salute. Schiller returned the acknowledgement and headed for the door, only stopping at the entrance for a moment to address one of the pair of troopers standing guard there.
“You there… you have a sidearm at your belt, yes?”
“Jawohl, Mein Herr,” the man replied instantly, bracing up to attention as the officer queried him.
“Give it to me, please… I should feel a better walking about outside in this madness with a pistol at my belt.”
“Of course, Mein Herr…!” The man complied immediately, slinging his submachine gun over his shoulder momentarily as he drew his standard-issue P-38 pistol and handed it over butt-first.”
“Danke,” Schiller replied simply, checking the condition of the weapon’s loaded magazine and empty breech before tucking it into his belt, behind his back. A second later and he was gone, vaulting the steps up to the open air two at a time and disappearing into the hot, chaotic night.
Thorne kept the aircraft completely ‘dark’ as the F-35E swept across the French countryside, no active systems of any kind operating save for the absolute necessity of terrain-following-radar. He knew there were only two aircraft out there somewhere that were potentially capable of detecting his emissions, but he was in no hurry to run into either of them and he wasn’t interested in taking any chances while flying alone over enemy territory.
“How much chance do we really have of making it through without detection?” Trumbull asked, breaking the silence somewhere between St. Malo and Rennes.
“Honestly…?” Thorne shrugged and gave a grimace. “Reasonable chance, if we come across one of the bastards on their own.” He’d calmed down somewhat in the last twenty minutes since their escape from the target area. “If we run into both at once…” he gave another shrug “…then maybe fifty-fifty at best… our radar signature’s tiny – about all anyone would pick up is the bomb mounting carriage beneath the fuselage – but it’s still enough for a missile to lock onto at closer ranges, and those Sukhois also have excellent long-range visual and infra-red detection gear we can’t hide from.
“In the end it’d probably come down to who shoots first in a one-on-one with a Flanker … probably…” The emphasis at the end of that statement was in no way reassuring. “With any luck, neither of the jets will find us, and it’ll all be academic. We might’ve been ‘painted’ strongly enough by ground radar to return a signal while we were over the Collines de Normandie, but other than that we’ve been staying low enough to avoid solid detection most of the way. There are plenty of conventional night fighters up and about at the moment, but I’m not scared of them; we can dance rings around them without them ever knowing we’re there, and they’ll need to spread the jets over a lot of airspace to look for us. All we can do is wait and see, really…”
The Flankers had roared from the runway in formation within minutes of receiving their orders, the flare of each jet’s twin afterburners brilliant and clear in the night sky as they split into single flights the moment they were airborne and went their separate ways. Hawk-4 quickly found the Channel and turned south-west, skirting the French coast and climbing to high altitude. Huge 3,000-litre drop tanks hung from its four inboard wing pylons, and the aircrew would need every drop as the pilot slammed his throttles forward and hurled the Sukhoi across the night sky at almost twice the speed of sound.
The Su-30 crossed the Cherbourg Peninsula north of Caen within minutes and flew on, out over the Gulf of Saint-Malo, systems ever-vigilant and its missiles armed and ready. At full throttle, the earth below them was rushing by at more than 30 kilometres every minute, and heavy fuel consumption was already seriously eating into the aircraft’s reserves.
Hawk-3, similarly armed and fitted with extra fuel, headed off in a more westerly direction and at a much more leisurely pace. They had further to fly, and needed to conserve fuel as a result, but there was also less urgency involved in reaching their destination. They weren’t looking for a fighter, although the destruction of the slower, far larger target they were searching for would ensure the remaining F-35’s demise along with it.
Albert Schiller swore with soft bitterness as he stood in Lowenstein’s empty cell, pistol in hand, and stared sadly down at the lifeless body of his friend and colleague, Joachim Müller. There was nothing to be done… no way of telling how long it’d been since the scientist had made his escape, and the man could easily have disappeared into the mass of people flooding from the burning building in the insanity following the attack. He gripped the butt of the P-38 tightly, his knuckles turning white with anger as he released a long, hissing sigh of pain and frustration.
The migraine flared again suddenly, filling the back of his head with agony and leaving him slightly dazed as he reached out with his free hand to support himself against the nearest wall. For a moment, it was all he could do to remain standing upright, and it was through sheer willpower alone that he finally forced the pain to recede, his breathing laboured and shallow as a light sheen of perspiration broke out across his forehead.
Standing motionless in that small room, Müller’s body at his feet, Schiller could feel his mind beginning to seize up. The last remnants of his strength and endurance were quickly slipping away from him, and the thought of having to return to the CP and resume command truly terrified him. Poor Joachim was dead, and Kurt was out cold and in the care of a field ambulance unit. When he finally regained consciousness, Schiller would have the ‘wonderful’ news for him that Ziegler was plotting his demise with three of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany… and to all this could be added the loss of so many vitally important men, so close to the most important military operation they’d yet attempted.
It was at that moment he heard the door at the far end of the stable open, followed by muffled voices that were clearly whispering. His immediate, instinctive reaction was the thought that perhaps the perpetrator had returned to the scene of the crime for some unknown reason, and he quickly and silently backed into the corner between the doorway and the bookcase, pistol raised and ready as the kerosene lantern atop the bookcase continued to flicker dully beside him.
Zeigler, Strauss, Bormann, Hess and Göring had all been fortunate enough to escape the attack relatively unscathed, save for some minor burns and scrapes. The briefing room was situated toward the front of the mansion, and as such had not only been left intact and undamaged, but had also provided them with easy access to the front entrance and safety beyond.
Strauss had been separated from the rest during the mayhem that followed, but the group had otherwise managed to stay together, and now the danger seemed to be finally abating, they’d entered the stables thinking it a private place where secret conversations might well be continued undisturbed.
“Thank the Gods I took the liberty of having The Führer’s transport sabotaged,” Zeigler exclaimed with clear relief in his voice as they all filed in and Bormann secur
ed the door. “I’d intended it purely to allow us an opportunity to speak freely… it seems now it was a blessing in disguise…!”
“I’m looking forward to filling him in on tonight’s excitement,” Hess observed with an evil smile. “Reuters categorically assured him all of these ‘Hindsight’ jets had been destroyed in the Scapa Flow raid… it appears now this ‘guarantee’ was somewhat premature. I shouldn’t think that will go down well.”
“Looks like the lucky bastard will live,” Göring growled with obvious disappointment. “The officer at the field ambulance station said he’d pull through all right, although there might well be some recovery time in hospital.”
“Any time out of ‘Adolf’s’ presence is dangerous for someone wanting to maintain power,” Bormann noted with a faint smile of his own. “I’m sure we can make that work to our advantage.”
Schiller heard all of it as they coldly discussed the ‘good fortune’ of his commander and friend being hospitalised, his rage building the whole time. He’d known Reuters and had served with him the whole of his military career in one form or another, and the loyalty and protectiveness he felt toward the man was great indeed as a result. The generalleutnant didn’t realise he was grinding his teeth against the tension as another blinding moment of migraine tried to force its way through his consciousness.
He found that his free hand was now shaking almost uncontrollably, and it was only his vice-like grip on the pistol that prevented the other hand from doing the same. Closing his eyes tight against the pain in his head, he tried to ignore it and focussed his attention on the words of the men in the room outside.
“…First of all,” Bormann continued, “we still need to find out what that bloody aide of his did or didn’t hear outside the door earlier, and do whatever needs to be done to keep him quiet… we’ll all have some difficult questions to answer if Reuters finds out what we’ve been up to.”
England Expects (Empires Lost) Page 77
