by John Barnes
A great burst of red flame blossomed over the street and belched upward in a low, deafening roar. Every house in front of us caught fire.
“Well, we’re not going that way!” von Braun shouted in my ear.
“Deal!” I shouted back. “I think Engineering Fifteen is this way from here, anyway!”
It’s not a great place to be lost. We were out beyond the permanent buildings and in the free-floating shantytown that surrounds so many Third World cities; at least the area wasn’t a target for the cruise missiles now pounding the main citadel, but on the other hand much more of what was around here was flammable. Already the streets were beginning to jam up with people seeking to flee, but on that densely settled island, with no real cover except in the fortresses, there was so little place to flee to that only those who were burned out were sure they wanted to run.
Many simply came out in the street and stood around; the bombardment wasn’t happening right here, by and large, and they desperately needed to know what was happening.
I caught a glimpse of one radar tower and of the stump of one of the prewar office buildings, and now I knew where we were. Holding hands like scared kids or lovers in the rain, we rushed on toward Engineering Fifteen, taking any route we could, crashing through water-filled potholes, switching to one side or another to avoid blazing buildings.
The fire and smoke were getting thicker—later I realized that some of the cruise missiles had passed over the poor parts of the city spraying hundreds of pencil-sized incendiary submunitions, starting fires everywhere at once, overwhelming the fire crews, starting pathetic columns of refugees fleeing in all directions to block up the roads.
For a short distance we made good time following behind a militia unit that was trying to get formed up and get to its station, but after that we had to fight our way across a pile of stalled carts in a little public square. We had just made it across when we heard the Dopplered rising roar of incoming jets.
The fighters screamed in over the square, little high-speed Gatling guns on their wingtips spraying death into the unarmed crowd; as each peeled off, it let loose a bomb.
I knew before they hit what they would be, and von Braun clearly did, too, for both of us piled up against the wall. There was a hideous thud, and the jellied gasoline—napalm—sprayed into the crowd, sticking and burning wherever it went. People on fire ran in all directions, and no one fought the hundred fires that sprang up all around. From the next block we could hear the rattle of automatic rifles as the militia company tried to put up any kind of opposing fire.
“This is no raid,” von Braun said. “They are going to invade. This must be what Glenn saw from orbit. Dear God, where is that man going to land?”
We fought onward through the crowded streets, struggling through panicked crowds. Twice more fighters roared in at low altitude, wreaking whatever havoc they could. There were bodies in the streets now, and the sky that had been a perfect soft blue, just an hour ago when we were off to launch a man into orbit, was now black and gray from the smoke, tinged pink underneath with the blazing fires.
But Singapore had evolved. We were in the bad part of town, and the poor were stuck, but the fortress, after having changed hands six times in twenty years, had been rebuilt and rebuilt until it was awesomely tough. As we reached the perimeter we found well-organized authorities getting people under cover, moving the frantic refugee convoys into the safety of the special tunnels, giving first aid, tagging lost children to make sure they could be matched up with their frantic parents.
There was very little panic, if any. We showed our priority badges and were given access to one of the covered tramways; in no time at all we were back at Engineering Fifteen, far inside the complex.
Bombs were falling now, and cruise missiles were still hitting, but there is something about a yard of concrete between you and a bomb that makes the bomb so much less upsetting. “You think it’s really an invasion?” I asked von Braun. “Could they have made it all the way here from India—right down the coast of Sumatra—without getting spotted?”
He shrugged. “There are many ways here. But if it’s not an invasion, it’s a terribly big raid. German bombers out of Japan couldn’t have run the radar fence, and the fleet couldn’t have come from India—and those were carrier fighters—the most likely thing is that they slipped up here out of western Australia and the carriers are over on the other side of Sumatra. And these improved cruise missiles worry me. The Nazis haven’t improved anything since they won the war. If they’re getting the research habit again, and they keep it, they could bury us—they have a hundred times our facilities.”
I doubted very much that they were doing research; I suspected the Closers had merely gotten impatient and slipped them some technical improvements. But since von Braun did not know of my background, this hardly seemed the time to explain it to him.
Besides, if the Closers got serious about technical aid to the Nazis, then we would probably get buried anyway.
The tram had dropped us off at the concrete blockhouse that covered the entrance to our area; a lull in bomb hits let us chance a run to the main building. As I came in, several of my Malay and Thai employees saluted smartly, and the sergeant of the guard came up to me in haste. “Sir—we’ve had one attack by agents trying to penetrate the compound, and we’re cut off from the metallurgy building and mission control. We’ve heard shooting, but we can’t get out that side of the building; I’ve got a team that’s going to try to go around and get behind them—”
“Damn good,” I said. “We’ll go with your plan—carry on. I’ll join your sortie party.”
He gave me the biggest salute I’d ever seen in my life and started hollering orders. I jumped in with the ten men who were going to go around; the plan was to use one firefighting access tunnel that we had to get to a small instrument shack, then try to burst out of the shack and get to the back side of the metallurgy building. The trouble with it, other than an exposed run of about sixty yards, was that it would put us right between metallurgy and mission control—and we knew for sure the enemy was in the metallurgy building.
If they were in mission control as well, we were dead. But there had been a lot of our people in mission control, and nobody in the Free Zone ever went anywhere without at least a sidearm, and many people habitually carried a rifle or a carbine. So there was an excellent chance that mission control was out of touch but still with our side, and if we could get them to sortie—
It was worth a shot. Right now anything was worth a shot, actually.
We raced down the tunnel at a breakneck pace; I was in the middle of the party, not wanting to disturb my assistant’s plans by joining the van or rear guard. Everything would depend on speed—
I hit the concrete steps under the instrument shack and leaped up them—and almost fell over the body of one of my men. I jumped to the side, went prone, cursed the fact that all I had was my .45 and the shots were coming from—
Plenty close enough. I realized I was looking into the legs of a group of Nazi paratroopers charging the shack. I fired at them, upward, through the instrument shack door, which was propped open by the corpse of the lead man, who lay in the doorway. There were just two of us alive, besides me, and only one other man fit to hold a gun.
Praise god our team leader, Prasad, was the next one through and had three vital things: a tommy gun, good luck not to get hit right off, and lots of presence of mind. The enemy were totally out of cover and virtually at point-blank range, so he got virtually all of their rush in one long burst. Prasad emptied the drum mag at them, and that gave everyone else a chance to get up there and start laying down fire. The enemy fell back to the alley between the metallurgy building and mission control.
It was then that I got a clear look at the side of mission control, and if I hadn’t already thrown up from that ride on the dirigible, I would have had to now. They had dragged out everyone in mission control, put them up against the wall of the building, and
shot them. Black smoke poured from the building.
Between the dead from mission control and the dirigible, our space program was gone, or would be as soon as Glenn landed.
Prasad gave quick, crisp orders; we dropped back into the tunnel, set the time charge on the other side of the door, and ran like hell. We were most of the way back when it blew behind us; we could be pretty sure it had blocked the tunnel, but it would have made us feel better to know that it had taken a few of the enemy with it.
When I got back, von Braun was crouched at the phone. “I’ve got a patch through from a guy in the control tower, and I’m talking to Major Glenn,” he explained. He talked just a little longer, and then groaned, “Okay, fading out, we’ll talk again when you come back around.”
It looked like the building was being well defended, and there wasn’t a lot of need for my attention; nobody was low on ammo yet, and since my whole guard had turned out for the launch, there were about three times as many armed men on our side in the compound as we’d normally have any right to expect.
“Well, then,” I said, “what’s the news?”
“Well, the one piece of good news—” A bomb blew somewhere near the roof, but not on it, and though the building shook, it held. We both heaved sighs, and von Braun went on. “Glenn was able to spot their fleet from orbit. They’re over on the other side of Sumatra, just as you guessed, down by the Barisan Mountains in fact, where the Coast Watch wouldn’t have gotten much warning of them. They must have flown in through the canyons and ravines to avoid detection. What they don’t know is that we’ve got a wolf pack on patrol down that way—their carriers will be getting hit within an hour, and the bombers are already on their way from Borneo.
“But the bad news is a lot worse. He saw something in Florida as he passed over. There’s a cape somewhere along the north coast—”
“Canaveral?” I asked.
“That’s the one. Strange name—can’t imagine anyone would ever work there, but it is a perfect launch site if you’re going to go out across the Atlantic. And that’s just what they’re doing. They’ve got a launch facility there—looks like they have big multistage rockets. Perhaps from a career advancement standpoint I should have stayed at Peenemünde.
“Glenn saw one of their rockets take off as he was going over; the plume is unmistakable from orbit. And his radar now tells him he’s got a little shadow. They’re closing in on him; if he turns around and uses his engines to brake, he’s going to have to drop right across their sights. If he doesn’t—well, they’re in a lower orbit. That means they move faster than he does. They’re going to pass under him soon, and anything they shoot upward will come right into his path … and since orbital velocities are in thousands of miles per hour—”
I whistled. “They could bring him down with a brick.”
“Exactly,” von Braun said. “Could and possibly will. He’s going to keep relaying intelligence to us as long as he can, and then take his chances with them; he said something about ‘every fighter pilot knows there’s one way to be sure you don’t miss.’” I shuddered; von Braun looked at me curiously. “This disturbs you?”
“You bet it does. I think he’ll try to ram them. Which is good as far as it goes, but I suspect they’ve got more than one ship, and we don’t.”
We never heard from John Glenn again. After the war we found out the Germans had in fact lost the capsule that flew pursuit on that mission, but didn’t know how or why. I like to think it’s because he didn’t miss.
There wasn’t any chance to talk about any of that anyway; I heard a shout from Singh, my sergeant, and ran to see what he was pointing to. There were at least a hundred paratroopers coming down. “Not an invasion but a raid in force,” I said to von Braun. I told him what I had seen from the instrument shack, and had to wait a minute for him to calm down after the string of oaths poured out of him. Some of those people were ones he had lied to get out of death camp, taken with him in his flight, done everything possible to save—and now they were gone.
The paratroopers were hitting the ground before I got von Braun calmed down enough. I turned to Singh, and said, “This is hopeless. They aren’t after your men, and you can’t save whatever survivors we have here. Sauve qui pent, man, that’s all we can do.”
Singh shrugged. “It’s not a bad way to die. My family will hear of it soon. But those of my men who wish to flee, none of us will stand in their way. You, Captain, you’ve got to run for it, and you as well, Dr. von Braun. And I do think we can give you a few minute’s start if you can grab or destroy anything that shouldn’t fall into their hands.”
Swift, silent, and grim as death, the paratroopers—close enough now to see the SS thunderbolts on their uniforms—were closing in on the building. Von Braun laughed. “Chances are they are ahead of me, but I’ll go do what I can.” He was off at a run toward the front part of the building, where his office was.
I thought I had nothing, then realized. The SHAKK. Just because I had not been able to figure out how, or rather with what, to reload it, didn’t mean that the Nazis wouldn’t. Moreover, I had no idea whether the SHAKK was a common technology between ATN and the Closers, or whether it might be something bad to have them capture.
I pounded down the hall to the office, grabbed the SHAKK, stuffed it into my shirt, and turned around to find myself facing a small, cruel-looking man who had a Luger leveled at my chest. “What is that?” he asked.
“Uh, cereal box prize,” I explained. “My favorite toy when I was a kid. I didn’t want to leave it behind. After you … um, you know, do me, could you leave it on my body so maybe it will get buried with me? It’s got to be the last real Flash Gordon Ray Gun on earth, and … well, I just really loved it. As I guess you can see from the way I ran back here.”
He seemed totally unconvinced, and extended his hand to take it—just before he fell forward. He hit the floor, quite dead, and blood spread out from under him.
General LeMay stepped into the room, putting his service .38 back into its shoulder holster. His clothes were burned and he was sooty, but he seemed all right otherwise. “Von Braun said you’d be down here; figured when I saw the gent headed this way maybe I should see what was keeping you.”
“Thanks,” I said, and followed him out the door. We rushed back up the hall toward where I had left von Braun.
“Singh has a line of retreat opened up, and we’ve got an autogyro we can make a run in, if you’re game.”
“It beats staying here and getting shot,” I said. By that time we were headed down the steps.
“Yeah, my way of looking at it, too,” LeMay agreed.
After all the trouble leading up to it, getting out was ridiculously simple—Singh and his men covered our retreat, we ran to a hangar, and there was an eight-passenger autogyro warmed up and waiting to go. We kicked the doors open, opened a gate onto a service road, got in, started her up, and rolled down the service road to get space for a takeoff.
Autogyros are one of those things that never took off in our timeline and probably wouldn’t have in theirs, except that the Free Zone couldn’t do much research and the Axis didn’t. Basically it’s an airplane with a freely rotating wing—the wing turns like a windmill, or like helicopter blades, just from the forward motion of the aircraft. It isn’t as versatile as a helicopter, but it’s a lot easier to make it work, since you only need to put the rotor blade on a pivot and use a regular piston-prop engine up front. It can’t hover, it won’t fly backward, and it has a distressing tendency to bounce as it lands, but it will take off from a short runway, and the fuel economy’s okay.
Shortly we were airborne and headed out away from the city, across the island, and on up across the South China Sea to Saigon. As we got farther away, I looked back; a great pillar of black smoke, lit by the sudden flares of storage tanks and ammo dumps blowing, towered over us, but in a few minutes, we were out over the South China Sea, the fire of blazing Singapore was not the whole of that side of the sky
, and we were no longer under that black cloud. The sun came out, the sky was blue—
It was the same day on which we had launched John Glenn to orbit. I didn’t know it yet, but probably he was already dead, and when I found out he had not reported in, I was hardly surprised. The whole catastrophe had taken less than a full afternoon, and the future looked miserably bad.
14
If it looked bad for me, I couldn’t imagine how it looked for von Braun. To have lost the physical facility was one thing, but between the deaths on the dirigible—LeMay, like us, had thought he was the only survivor—and the massacre of technicians, Engineering Fifteen was dead for good. They had delivered rocket engines to several other projects of one sort or another, but the effort to get into space was going to be over for a long time.
LeMay’s escape had required both more guts and luck than ours; he had clung to the railing until the last moment, then jumped onto a corrugated iron roof, falling about ten feet, causing the roof to bow in and deposit him in an empty house, the residents apparently just fled.
He had seen the end of the launch stages because he had been down nearer the harbor; the dirigible had scraped off its now-burning gondola onto a warehouse roof. The gondola fell into a street with a sickening smash and the fuel in the auxiliary tanks blew; he doubted anyone had survived, though you could never tell.
