He pushed the issue aside as the team placed explosive charges on the most famous front door in the world. Taking cover as the charges detonated and watching as the door literally disintegrated under the impact of the explosives. The remains caved in, allowing the commandos to rush into the building. They immediately ran into a terrified-looking elderly man. Skorzeny knocked him down and kept moving. They’d been supplied with pictures of all of the important men and women in the Downing Street complex, and he wasn't on the list. There were SS units that wouldn’t have hesitated to shoot down anyone who got in their way, but as long as they weren’t a threat and stayed out of the way, Skorzeny was content to leave them alive.
A female scream from above brought the commandos pounding up the stairs, running into a small room with at least seven beds, each one holding a young lady; Skorzeny checked them all, realised that they were Atlee’s secretaries, and led the team onwards. They weren’t important; the next room turned out to hold one of Atlee’s friends, who was shot out of hand. Henry Teasdale was well known for his hostile attitude to Nazi Germany.
“They’re not in their beds,” one of the commandos shouted, as the team broke into the Atlee’s bedroom. “They must have made it into the bomb shelter.”
Skorzeny led the race back downstairs, ignoring the growing screams and shouts of panic from the girls; they would have much more to worry about if they ever ran into one of the units the SS used to spread terror in an occupied zone. The handful of men he’d left on the ground floor nodded to him – salutes were forbidden in a combat zone – and waved to a set of bodies, one of them unmistakably Lord Halifax. Skorzeny checked quickly, just in case, and confirmed it; the Foreign Secretary had been caught in his rooms and killed by one of the commandos.
The search took only five minutes, but it felt like an eternity to Skorzeny, who was grimly aware that the British were gathering their resources to strike back and exterminate his team. He could still hear gunfire and explosions all over the area, but that might mean that the team had been beaten off from Buckingham Palace, or that they’d succeeded in their mission and were on their way back to rendezvous with the main unit before they started to execute the second part of the plan. The British barracks couldn’t have been totally destroyed, which meant they could expect a counter-attack at any moment, despite the chaos and the fighting in the sky, high above. The British had probably directed their fighters to engage the Luftwaffe high over London, although the transports would have beaten a retreat already; they were useless once their paratroopers had been dropped onto the ground.
“Found it, Otto,” one of his men called, finally. The unit didn’t stand on formality, something else that irked the regulars and most of the remainder of the Waffen-SS as well; if a man qualified to join, as far as Skorzeny was concerned, he could call him by his first name. “They had the entrance well hidden, but we found it once we checked all the walls and floors.”
“A bookcase,” Skorzeny said, shaking his head. The British had been clever; some designer had created a mechanism for allowing the bookcase to move backwards and forwards, as if it were a safe in a bank, hiding the entrance to the underground bunker. He nodded to his engineers and they started work at once, placing more shaped charges against the bookcase and then standing well back as the charges detonated. This time, their target stood up better to their assault; the bookcase disintegrated, but the armoured door behind it barely fell off its hinges. Two commandos grasped hold of it and pulled hard, allowing a third to throw a belt of grenades into the space beyond, causing an explosion that blew the door off its hinges.
Three commandos moved forward quickly and rappelled down the shaft, breaking through into what was clearly a lift. Skorzeny followed them as shooting burst out, painfully loud in such a confined space. Atlee would have a few defenders in a position to hold the bunker, even though they must know that they were trapped without any means of escape. His men were pinned down and radical action had to be taken. He unhooked a grenade of his own and threw it towards the defenders, who were only half-seen in the gloom. The explosion rewarded him with a scream from someone, but the enemy fire didn’t dwindle; he guessed that he’d hit a non-combatant with the explosion. He pulled out several more grenades and threw them, one by one, into the room; this time, the enemy firing trailed off and his men were able to race into the bunker. The noise of grenades and firing grew louder for a moment, shaking the air and sending dust clouds cascading down on his shoulders, and then faded away; Skorzeny lowered himself down and entered the bunker.
It wasn’t dark and drab, but clearly part of a much larger complex, one that his briefing hadn’t suggested existed. Just for a moment, Skorzeny felt a twinge of worry; down in the bunker, he had no way of communicating with his men on blocking duty, or with the group that was supposed to attack Buckingham Palace. His men were trained to seize the initiative at all times, not least because Skorzeny himself might be killed at any moment, but what would happen if the British mounted their counter-attack before he could complete his mission? He might fail…and he had never failed before.
“Search the bunker,” he yelled, as the men raced through. One door proved to be made of reinforced steel, too hard for them to break through without explosives, but the others led to sleeping quarters – empty – a kitchen – also empty – and a small collection of weapons, most of which looked to be as good as his own. The bunker system didn’t end there, but he knew, somehow, that they were right on the verge of success; as the engineers took out the sealed door, he saw the Prime Minister’s personal bunker.
It wasn’t that impressive compared to the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin, where Hitler had ruled the Reich during the war, but it was luxurious enough to prove that whoever was intended to use it, they were important. Skorzeny wasn’t too surprised; one thing that all of the regimes he knew about had done was see to the protection of their senior officers and leaders, even though the British had suffered a slight failure of imagination in that regard. He didn’t waste his time staring at the pictures on the walls, but looking at the man staring back at him with wild eyes, Clement Atlee himself.
Atlee looked as if he were grasping for words, his eyes flicking desperately to the woman beside him – Skorzeny knew that she was his wife – and the handful of other people in the bunker. Lord Halifax should have been there as well, but he’d been delayed, and had ended up being killed apart from the others. There was no time for sentimentality or even respect; he lifted his weapon, sighted carefully on Atlee’s head as his wife began to scream, and then fired a single shot into the Prime Minister’s head. Atlee toppled backwards as Skorzeny’s men continued the shooting, picking off the British leaders and their staff; Atlee’s wife caught a stray bullet through the arm and her screams just got louder and louder. Skorzeny finally smacked her on the head to silence her.
He ran through a quick check; most of their targets had been eliminated. The rampage through the other parts of the Downing Street complex had killed most of the others, although there were a couple who remained unaccounted for in the bloody slaughter. Leaving Atlee’s wife behind, Skorzeny led his men back to the shaft and back up the ropes, heading out of the building as quickly as possible. Their time was about to run out…and the British would be out for blood.
All they had to do now was escape.
Chapter Fourteen
London, England
“Sir, we have parachutists coming down in the park,” an army sergeant reported, running up to Monty and striking a salute. The panic was growing stronger by the moment. Half of the operating staff were on their feet, looking as if they expected the order to evacuate the building at any moment. Alex DeRiemer ran though the maps in his head and concluded that the Germans could be on them within moments…assuming that the War Office actually was the German target. “Captain Milligan is looking for orders, but the barracks have been hit!”
Monty took control of the situation decisively by firing a single shot into the ceiling. “We
’re not in any danger,” he said as silence fell, and the staffers stared at him. “Sergeant, inform Captain Milligan that I want him to deploy his men to defend this building while we summon up what reinforcements we can from the outer barracks.”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said, heading out the door at speed. The operators were slowly taking their places again, picking up telephones and continuing to try to issue orders, summoning the RAF back to London to defend it from the German parachute hordes.
Monty was thinking along the same lines. “They’re throwing away a unit of paras,” he said. “Why are they doing that?”
DeRiemer hesitated. “It has to be a strike intended to kill everyone who could issue orders to the armed forces,” he said, grimly. Monty looked up as a distant explosion made the bunker shake slightly, underscoring his words. “If they wipe out everyone in high command, who’s going to be able to get the word out to the troops?”
“This building will have to be defended, then,” Monty said. He picked up a phone, barked a series of orders into it, and then put it down again. “I’ve just passed on tactical command to the recovery site outside the city, somewhere that won’t be affected by the German bombings or the commandos they’ve dropped into London. Do you have a side-arm?”
“No, sir,” DeRiemer said, wondering just what Monty meant. He’d gone through firing courses as part of his work for MI6, but he couldn’t reasonably be called a soldier by anyone, unless the army was really desperate. He wiped his spectacles and peered at Monty; the old soldier looked as if he was weighing up the odds in his head. “What do you want me to do?”
“There’s two platoons of armed soldiers here,” Monty said, as he led DeRiemer out of the chamber and up the stairs to the main lobby. DeRiemer could hear the noise of firing growing louder and smell the haze from guns being fired in a confined space. “The Germans may know about the set-up here, but we kept the information on the duplicate set-up a secret, so they may want to take this place and kill us all. If that happens…”
He stopped as they reached a barricade; the sound of firing was growing louder. “Sergeant Yates,” Monty said, seeing one of the soldiers positioned to fire back at the enemy. “Report!”
Yates didn’t look at Monty; he kept his eyes on the door. “At least thirty men out there, sir,” he said, grimly. His voice was very dry; DeRiemer couldn’t understand how he remained so calm under the pressure of the attack. “They tried to rush us as soon as they got organised and we blew the shit out of them, killed at least ten of them and sent the others falling back. They got smarter and now they’re firing on us from all sides.”
Monty nodded. “And deployments?”
“Captain Benton has deployed one platoon here and one platoon to sniper positions,” Yates said, just before he fired a single shot out of the building. “Sir, I suggest that you keep your head down…”
A burst of machine gun fire from outside, blasting into the barricade and past it into the walls, underscored his words. “We had this entire building designed to be difficult to seize,” Monty said, his voice just as calm as the Sergeant’s voice. DeRiemer wouldn’t have been surprised to see him pull out a cigar and light it. “They might bomb us, but even then, we have the bunker.”
He glanced over at Yates. “Have the staff been evacuated?”
“Those who remained in the building, yes,” Yates said. He fired another shot as a German paratrooper showed himself for a second. “They’ve been moved down into the bunkers, sir; we don’t dare send them out to the streets with the Germans out there.”
“General,” a new voice said. DeRiemer liked Captain Benton on sight; he was short, brown-haired, and carrying enough weapons for three men. He passed an assault rifle to Monty and an older pistol to DeRiemer, who held it carefully, trying to remember how to use it. “I have an observer on the top of the building. He’s saying that Buckingham Palace and Downing Street are under attack and we’re just getting their remains.”
Monty frowned.
“We need this building held,” he said reaching for a telephone. It came off the wall in his hands; a stray bullet had smashed part of it, rendering it useless. “Have you sent a runner to the barracks?”
“I think they know that they’re under attack,” Benton said very dryly. Monty gave him a reproving look. “I’ve tried to send someone to warn them about the parachutists, but unless they come up here, we’re not going to be able to leave the building.”
“They can’t expect to remain in the centre of London forever,” DeRiemer said, feeling terror lurking at the back of his mind. Somehow, he had never even thought of the possibility of holding a normal conversation in the middle of a fire-fight; a noise from behind him made him duck instinctively, even as he realised that it was only Yates taking a pot-shot at a German soldier. “We have to catch them on the ground?”
Monty whirled around. “How the hell do they intend to escape?”
“I don’t know,” DeRiemer admitted.
“We have to remain here until we get reinforcements,” Benton said, before Monty could say anything. “Whatever the Germans are doing, we’re powerless to prevent it ...”
***
Major David Simmons picked himself off the ground and barked orders, watching as armed soldiers ran around, trying to form up into units. The Germans had bombed the Albany Street Barracks - officially known as the Regent's Park Barracks – with a precision he wouldn’t have believed possible; the flaming ruins had made it almost impossible to assemble the Royal Horse Guards in anything like their normal order. They’d been equipped to serve as a light infantry unit, but the alert hadn’t prevented them from continuing their ceremonial duties, something that might have saved hundreds of lives. The sergeants and military policemen were running around, trying to assemble the soldiers into composite units, but it wasn't going to be easy.
“Sir,” a runner shouted, sweat pouring down his face. “There are parachutists landing in St James’s Park and they’re attacking the Palace.”
Simmons felt his blood run cold. There was a closer unit, at Hyde Park Barracks, but if they weren’t responding to the crisis, it could mean that the German bombers had successfully killed enough of the soldiers to shatter their unit integrity and prevent them from interfering with the German mission. They probably wanted to snatch the King and his family, maybe even flying them out with a light aircraft from the Palace’s grounds. It was his duty to ensure that failed. The idea of catching the King in the middle of a fire-fight chilled him, but they must respond to the Germans before they completed their mission and fled.
“All soldiers, form up on the armoured cars,” he commanded. It had been sheer luck that the small unit of armoured cars, used mainly for preventing or breaking up riots rather than fighting the enemy, hadn’t been destroyed. The system was damaged, but with clear orders, the soldiers began to return to normal, preparing for the unbelievable; an assault against their own government, or at least it’s buildings. There were hundreds of very important people trapped with the Germans, and somehow he suspected that the thousands of people fleeing the scene didn’t include the main targets. The Germans were good.
“Sir, they’re wearing British uniforms,” the runner said, his voice calmer now that he’d managed to catch his breath. Simmons swore under his breath; fighting at night was dangerous enough without the disadvantage of knowing that the enemy looked exactly like his own side. “The Palace needs your help.”
The column of soldiers moved out at once, spearheaded by the armoured cars as the soldiers advanced down towards Hyde Park and the Palace. The streets were emptying quickly as policemen, some of them looking to be on the verge of panic themselves, urged civilians to get out of the firing line. It had been years, as far as Simmons remembered, since anyone had practised an evacuation drill; London was paying now for that little oversight. Flames could be seen in the distance, some of them billowing up into the sky and daring the puny humans to put them out, others, nearer, were risi
ng up from the direction of the barracks. Simmons detailed a runner to run to the barracks as the soldiers picked their way through Regent Street and down onto Pall Mall.
He toggled his radio and said a silent prayer under his breath. “This is Simmons,” he said, cursing the failure to set up a proper communications drill. The radio sparked and hissed at him, but he could hear voices, if very faint and barely heard. The Germans might be listening to the transmissions, but it was a risk they needed to take. “All active units, report in.”
The Invasion of 1950 Page 13
