Night of Flames: A Novel of World War II

by Douglas W. Jacobson

  • • •

  An hour later Marchal’s group was ready to go. The two guards, walking slowly and smoking cigarettes, had just disappeared around the northeast corner of the repair building. They took the enormous black dog with them. By Jean-Claude’s calculations they had twenty minutes before the guards would reappear at the northwest corner.

  Delacroix and his son, Henri, began snipping the chain-link fence with the heavy bolt cutter. It took three minutes to cut a slit large enough, and then the six men slithered through, one-by-one on their stomachs, and sprinted across the field.

  Staying against the side of the building, out of the light, the group moved down to the large sheet steel doors. The handles were chained and padlocked.

  Gaston pulled a small pouch out of his pack, removed a set of picks from it and gripped the padlock.

  Marchal fidgeted as he watched the man insert one pick after another, searching for the right one as calmly as though he were fixing a watch in the comfort of his home. Marchal glanced at his own watch—seven minutes had passed.

  Another three minutes passed, and Gaston was still selecting picks and trying the lock. Marchal reached into his knapsack, removed the Walther P-38 and attached the silencer. Another two minutes and he would make his way to the northwest corner of the building, wait for the guards and shoot them as they rounded the corner.

  The lock clicked open.

  Marchal took a deep breath and stuck the Walther under his belt.

  Delacroix grabbed one of the large handles and pulled the door open just far enough for all of them to slip inside.

  The cavernous room was dimly lit by a few bare bulbs high in the ceiling. It smelled of machine oil and sulfur. Delacroix pushed the door closed, leaving a slight gap.

  Marchal removed the Walther from his belt and handed it to his son. He gave Jean-Claude a hard look. “Soyez courageux. If those guards stop to investigate, you know what to do.”

  Marchal led the group away from the door and spread the plans on the dirt floor near a giant steam locomotive parked on a turntable. He pulled a flashlight from his pack. Alternately looking at the plans and shining the light around the room, Marchal spotted several huge lathes and drill presses. Along one wall was a welding booth almost ten meters wide with a bank of acetylene tanks chained to the wall.

  Marchal turned to Gaston, who had removed several packages of PE-2 from his pack and was selecting detonator cords and timing pencils. “You and Henri set the charges inside the building,” he said.

  Gaston nodded and began preparing the charges.

  Marchal, Delacroix and Franc gathered their packs and sprinted toward the other end of the building. They found a small service door, which led out to the main yard. It was unlocked.

  Marchal pushed the door open. They were in luck. On the track closest to the building was another locomotive attached to a coal car. He scanned the area then ran to the locomotive followed by Delacroix and Franc.

  Marchal peeked around the side of the locomotive toward the coal pile on the west side of the yard. The main framework of the conveyor system was about thirty meters to the west, across the narrow dirt road, but it was bathed in light from the spotlight at the top of the water tower. The area was wide open and in plain view from the main guard shack.

  He cursed to himself. They would have to forget the conveyor. But the locomotive and its coal car extended all the way from the repair garage to the water tower. One of the four steel legs supporting the tower was in the dark, shaded by the coal car. The three men squatted next to the locomotive, and Marchal broke out the remaining packets of explosives, handing three of them to Franc who crawled off toward the tower.

  Marchal and Delacroix began fixing the explosive charges to the locomotive. When they were finished, Marchal waved at Franc over by the water tower. Franc activated the timing pencil on the charges he had fixed to the leg of the tower, then crawled back to the locomotive, joining Marchal and Delacroix.

  Marchal checked his watch. He waited two minutes then crushed the glass ampoules at the top of the timing pencils. It would take twenty minutes for the sulfuric acid released inside the tube to corrode the steel wires holding back the plungers. Then the detonators would explode the charges. They would have to be well out of the yard and back up the hill by that time.

  The three men slipped back into the repair building and headed for the double doors. Marchal waved at Gaston who activated the fifteen-minute timing pencils on the charges he had set and then joined them.

  When he got to the double doors, Marchal found Jean-Claude sweating profusely and studying his watch. “What’s the situation?” he asked his son.

  “The guards walked by five minutes ago,” Jean-Claude said, his voice cracking with tension. “They should be around the corner of the building by now.”

  Marchal nodded and pulled the door open.

  At his post on the hill, Richard was worried. The guards and the dog had again rounded the northeast corner of the building without noticing either the missing lock or the slit in the fence.

  But instead of continuing on to the south, they stopped and one guard unbuttoned his long, gray coat, handing the dog’s leash to his partner. Richard cursed under his breath as he watched the man undo the fly of his trousers.

  He looked back to the building and saw the door slide open. Marchal’s group started filed out and moved along the side of the building. He wanted to scream at them but couldn’t without alerting the guards. He grabbed the handle of the Bren gun and swung it around, aiming at the two Germans. He released the safety and waited, holding his breath.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw his comrades, one-by-one, sprinting across the open field toward the fence. His heart pounded, but he forced himself to wait.

  The guard finished relieving himself and buttoned up his trousers. The second guard turned toward him, then went rigid and pointed at the fence. He dropped the dog’s leash and raised his submachine gun.

  Richard squeezed the trigger, and the Bren gun erupted in a staccato burst echoing off the hillside.

  Both guards fell to the ground. The dog bolted away, but the guard with the submachine gun started to get up. Richard fired another burst, and he went down again.

  Richard shot a quick glance toward the yard in time to see Henri slither through the slit in the fence. Jean-Claude, a few meters behind, crawled after him on his stomach. Franc and Gaston dove to the ground behind him.

  Jean-Claude made it through the slit, then Franc. Gaston started wriggling through.

  Richard looked back to the dead guards and froze in horror. From the corner of the building charged the huge black Doberman, barking and snarling, the chain leash flapping behind. Richard looked back to the field. Paul Delacroix was almost to the fence, but Marchal was still thirty meters away, running hard.

  An instant later the massive dog leaped onto Marchal’s back and knocked him to the ground. Marchal rolled over, struggling to get away, but the dog lunged for his throat. Marchal raised an arm, and the frenzied animal’s jaw clamped on the sleeve of his jacket, shaking it back and forth.

  Richard swung the Bren gun around, trying to aim but it was no use. From this distance he could just as easily hit Marchal as the dog. Delacroix whirled and ran back to Marchal, clubbing the dog with the butt of his Sten gun. Marchal rolled on the ground and broke free.

  In that instant, the dog hesitated, unsure which man to attack. It was enough. Richard sighted down the barrel of the Bren and squeezed the trigger. The dog collapsed on the ground.

  Marchal tried to get up but stumbled. Delacroix grabbed his arm and helped him toward the fence.

  Richard spotted four guards sprinting along the east side of the yard toward the repair building. “Vite! Vite! Hurry! Hurry!” he screamed at the group then swung the Bren gun to the east and inserted a fresh magazine.

  Delacroix and Marchal made it through the opening and the group scrambled up the hill.

  The guards shouted. Shot
s rang out.

  Richard squeezed the trigger and fired a burst. When he stopped and looked over the smoking barrel, two of the guards were sprawled on the ground but the other two had apparently made it to the corner of the building. He scanned the area, trying to spot them, but they were hidden in the shadows.

  A siren wailed, and Richard looked back toward the guard shack at the main gate. Another group of guards ran along the conveyor toward the repair building. Then Marchal and the others were at his side.

  “How many do you see?” Marchal asked, his breathing labored.

  “Two are down, but two others made it to the north wall of the building,” Richard said. “There’s at least four more running in this direction.”

  Marchal glanced at his watch. “Two minutes before the charges inside the building go off. Restez vigilant! Keep those guards pinned down.” He turned to the others. “Start making your way back to the top of the hill.”

  Richard swung the Bren gun back and forth, sighting down the barrel, looking for movement. He heard Marchal say, “One minute.”

  Suddenly, Richard saw two guards break for the fence. He pulled the trigger, and the burst from the big gun sent both of them diving to the ground. Richard sprayed the area as the guards clawed back toward the building. He released the trigger, and the gun fell silent…just as the first explosion went off.

  In a jarring detonation the northeast corner of the building blew open, and tons of iron and steel rocketed through the air, crashing in the field. Three seconds later another blast erupted, and the metal roof shredded into a thousand shards of scrap iron.

  Richard was knocked to the ground by the blasts and, wiping dirt from his eyes, gathered up the Bren gun and started climbing the hill, following Marchal and Delacroix. He turned to look back at the building just as the third charge went off. It was the one strapped to the acetylene tanks.

  A thundering concussion echoed over the hillside, followed an instant later by a monstrous fireball belching through the gaping hole in the roof.

  Richard staggered backward, the heat so intense that he was certain his eyes and hair had been scorched. He saw Marchal yell something and wave at him, but his ears rang so badly that he couldn’t hear him. Richard scrambled to the top of the hill as the next set of charges went off.

  The explosives strapped to the leg of the water tower went first, and the top of the tower dipped a meter or two and then stopped.

  “Goddamn it!” Franc cursed. “It’s not going to fall!”

  Time seemed to stand still. Then another blast erupted, from the charges strapped to the locomotive. The immense machine lifted off the ground, enormous sections of steel flying in all directions. The attached coal car rocked wildly then rolled on its side, toward the water tower. Richard watched in fascination as the heavily laden car toppled into the base of the now three-legged tower. The tower shuddered then, in agonizingly slow motion, began to collapse. It tipped about thirty degrees when its roof split open and, with an enormous whoosh, a half million liters of water cascaded over the yard.

  The torrent of water slammed into the yard like an avalanche, swamped the conveyor system and smashed it into kindling.

  • • •

  Marchal stood silently at the top of the hill, mesmerized by the awesome sight. He knew the raging inferno in the repair building would continue for several days. Two locomotives and a coal car had been destroyed, along with the water tower and the conveyor system. The facility would be out of commission for a long time. Managing a smile, he glanced around at the rest of the group who stared transfixed at the wreckage, their faces illuminated by the blazing flames in the night.

  Chapter 35

  JAN FOLLOWED TADEUSZ and Slomak into a wooden shed hidden among a stand of colossal oak trees at the end of a rutted dirt road. Inside, another man, thin and hard, perhaps in his early twenties, struck a match to a lantern. The man blew out the match and hung the lantern from a hook, illuminating a workbench covered with a gray canvas tarp. Jan moved in closer as the man rolled back the tarp revealing dozens of rocket fragments.

  Jan sifted through the parts, examining the strange devices with care. Some had wires protruding at odd angles, others were nothing more than blackened metal shards and twisted sheet steel. He looked up from the workbench and turned toward the young man who was lighting a hand-rolled cigarette. “Where did you find these?” he asked.

  The man took a drag on the cigarette and picked a speck of tobacco from his lower lip. “In a field about two kilometers from here. A rocket crashed in the middle of the night. This was all we could get before the SS showed up.”

  Jan sifted through the jumble of debris a second time, examining each piece, trying to understand what he was looking at. It was always the same—the rockets crashed with such incredible explosions that little remained. “I don’t know what these are,” he said. “Some of them look like a type of timing device…but I don’t understand the significance. I don’t know how it all fits together.”

  Jan rubbed his eyes and looked at Slomak. “We’ve been at this for almost a month, sifting through these shattered fragments. And I don’t know any more than when we started. If we could find something that was more intact…” His voice trailed off. Frustrated, he pulled out his notebook and made some sketches and notations while Tadeusz took some photos. Slomak and the young man stepped outside. Jan had not been introduced to the man, which he had now come to realize was the way things were done in the AK. Everything was on a strict “need-to-know” basis.

  When they were finished, Tadeusz extinguished the lantern and fastened the padlock on the door. Slomak waited for them, sitting in the cab of the ancient Russian-built truck provided by operatives of the AK. The young man was gone.

  Tadeusz hid the notebook and the photos in the compartment under the floorboards then climbed in, behind the wheel. Jan settled in next to Slomak, and they drove off without a word.

  Jan stared out the window at the bleak countryside and recalled the first time he had witnessed a rocket launch from the forests near the training grounds. At that instant he knew this weapon was infinitely more lethal than the British had imagined. During his training sessions at MI-6 headquarters, British agents had shown him aerial photographs of German rocket launch sites discovered in northern France. The fuzzy pictures revealed what looked like inclined ramps hidden in fields and forests. The British speculated that the ramps were a type of catapult for launching moderate speed, unmanned rockets. They called them V-1s for “vengeance weapons.”

  But what Jan had seen blasting into the sky near Blizna was entirely different. This was a missile, launched vertically at unbelievable velocity, that disappeared from sight in seconds. The destructive potential scared him to death.

  They drove on in silence, keeping to the back roads, avoiding villages and towns. The truck bed was full of rusty wheels and an old engine block that took up half the space—part of their cover as scrap metal dealers. Jan wondered how that would hold up if they were stopped but pushed the thought from his mind. There wasn’t much he could do about it.

  It was almost six o’clock in the evening and completely dark when they drove into a farmyard on the outskirts of a small village Jan had never heard of. The temperature had been dropping all afternoon, and flakes of snow danced in the headlights of the lumbering truck. Tadeusz stopped the truck in front of a barn. A minute later a man emerged from the darkness, carrying a lantern and bent over against the wind. The man slid the barn door back, and Tadeusz pulled the truck into the ancient timber and fieldstone structure.

  As they climbed out of the truck, the man lit two other lanterns, hung them from wooden beams and left the barn without a word, pushing the door closed behind him.

  “Let’s get the radio out,” Slomak said. He lifted a ladder off two wooden pegs and set it up in a corner opposite the door. Carrying one of the lanterns, Slomak climbed the ladder, pushed open a well-concealed trapdoor and waved for Jan to follow as he disappeared t
hrough the hole.

  Jan glanced at Tadeusz, who indicated that he would wait by the truck, then followed Slomak up the ladder.

  When he got to the top, Jan pulled the ladder up behind him and closed the trapdoor. They were in a loft about ten meters square and four or five meters high with a small window at each end. Under one of the windows stood a crude workbench and a small, three-legged stool. Slomak reached under the workbench and dragged out a wooden crate. Jan stepped over to help, and they lifted the crate onto the bench. Slomak opened the crate, revealing a long-range wireless set.

  “Nice piece of equipment,” Jan said, examining the precision instrument with its English dial markings.

  “We have several of these at various locations, compliments of our British friends,” Slomak replied as he connected wires to a 12-volt battery. “You brought one with you on the plane.” He glanced at Jan with a rare smile.

  The remark took Jan by surprise. It was the first reference anyone had made to the crates that had been shoved out of the airplane before he jumped. He leaned against a beam in the center of the room and lit a cigarette, letting Slomak tend to the task of tuning in the radio signal. As he watched him twist the dials and adjust the headset, he pondered again what an enigma the man was.

  It was frustrating. Jan was certain that Slomak, who went by the name “Krupa,” had recognized him when they met at Tadeusz’s farm. But the taciturn AK operative had not acknowledged it—not then or at any time since. Whenever Slomak was with them he was all business, never any conversation beyond what was necessary. He would spend a day or two with them then disappear. They might not see him again for several days, often as long as a week. There was never an explanation, and Jan had realized he shouldn’t ask.