A Thousand Suns (27 page)

‘Büller?’ prompted one of his men. ‘What do we do?’

Whatever it is, it’s got to be quick
.

Büller turned back to study the guards just in time to see one of them pace casually along the length of the barricade and turn round to pace back. He saw the guard look up from his feet tiredly towards the hangar and stop. The guard cocked his head, and then they heard him call out to the other one.

Fuck it, decision’s made for me
.

‘Let’s get ’em!’ Büller rose from behind the stack of crates and fired a volley from the hip as he ran. His men emerged behind him, quickly spreading out and racing towards the two guards who now were beginning to sluggishly react to the alarming sight of ten German soldiers only a few dozen yards away and rapidly approaching them. One of them was swifter than the others in coming to his senses and swung his rifle down, firing in rapid succession four unaimed shots towards them. All of them missed wildly, thudding harmlessly into the wet ground. The other guard seemed to have woken up now and dived for cover behind a small sandbag bunker beside the barricade. The first guard dropped to his knee and prepared to fire some aimed shots this time. Büller found himself feeling a fleeting instant of sympathy for the guard as he aimed his sub-machine gun at the young man. It seemed like he’d been the only American on the airfield with his wits about him. He squeezed off half a dozen rounds in a short burst. Three puffs of crimson appeared in front of his chest and the young American was pushed backwards off his feet. Büller’s men covered the ground quickly and no more than three or four seconds later they were vaulting over the sandbag bunker. The other guard instantly dropped his weapon and threw his arms up quickly.

The hut
.

Büller looked towards the open door of the hut and saw a flash of movement from within. The door to the hut slammed shut with a bang.

‘Someone inside!’ he shouted.

One of his squad, Bergin, rushed the door and kicked it violently open. From inside Büller heard several shots being fired and Bergin dived back out of the doorway.

There were another three shots that followed the direction Bergin had thrown himself in and ragged holes appeared in the flimsy wooden wall of the hut, one of them inches above his head.

Screw this
.

‘Down!’ Büller shouted at Bergin and swung his MP-40 towards the hut. He emptied his magazine at the wall at about waist height. The rest of the squad followed suit while Bergin hugged the ground as a shower of wood splinters fluttered down onto him.

The firing ceased a few seconds later, their ears rung from the noise. The wall of the hut looked like a cheese grater.

Büller took a few steps forward and kicked at the door. It swung in quickly and bounced off a desk inside with a flimsy rattle. Büller raised his weapon and sidestepped into the hut.

As the acrid smoke cleared he could see the body of the third guard slumped over the crackling, hissing remains of a radio. The body slowly slid to the floor with a thump. One hand still holding tightly to the radio receiver.

‘Shit . . . I think we’re in for some company.’

Chapter 40

Leaving Town

It was a good five miles along the coast road before Mark eased his foot off the pedal and another one before he was happy enough to slow down and pull over. He brought the Cherokee to a standstill down a slip road hidden from the main coastal interstate and applied the handbrake. He left the engine running, though.

‘You going to tell me what’s going on?’ he managed to calmly ask after a while.

‘Jesus, Mark. Those bastards were going to kill me!’

‘I noticed.’

Chris shook his head. ‘My God, if you hadn’t come in when you did . . . Jesus.’

‘Yup,’ Mark answered drily. There was anger bubbling up in his voice. ‘You sure you’re telling me everything, Chris? Because all of a sudden, this has escalated from being an interesting find to being, well . . . I’ll be honest here, a fucking hazardous situation!’ He took a deep breath to compose himself once more.

‘You’re right, there’s a little more that’s gone on, Mark. I’m sorry, I should’ve kept you in the picture. But then, I honestly didn’t expect something like this to happen. I mean, for crying out loud, whatever happened with that plane out there, it was over half a century ago! Why the fuck does someone want to kill us for finding it?’

‘This is America, Chris . . . not good old England. The goons over here don’t box by the Marquis of Queensberry rules, if you know what I mean.’

‘Shit, yeah, I noticed already.’

Both men sat in silence for a moment, both still recovering from the experience.

‘So you going to tell me what’s been happening, then?’ said Mark finally.

Chris told him as quickly as he could about the call from Wallace, the old man on the beach, McGuire, and then the two men he’d seen down by the jetty. The disjointed events over the last few days, each on their own, had seemed much less disturbing in isolation, but putting them together now for Mark’s benefit, they tied together in a chilling way.

‘Jesus, Chris, it sounds like we’ve stumbled on something we probably shouldn’t have.’

‘I know, and I’ll be honest, this is really making me shit myself. Who do you think those guys were working for?’

Mark scratched his beard. ‘I dunno. CIA? Some other government agency?’

Chris looked out of the window at the blackness of the night, trying in his mind to colour the whole picture in. But there were so many gaps. It seemed they knew just enough to present a threat to somebody out there, but not enough to know what to do next.

‘There’s something in that wreck down there that opens a whole can of worms for . . . for someone. And it’s that very same someone who’s sent in these fucking psychotic hitmen.’

‘That’s great, Chris, but that isn’t telling us a whole lot.’

Mark was right. They were going to need to find out more than they already knew if they were going to walk away from this in one piece. For a start, they needed to know what was in that plane wreck that was so damned important, and maybe then, if they could find that out, they’d have an idea of who the hell had released the rottweilers on them.

He realised there was only one thing they could do right now. ‘We have to go back for this guy Wallace,’ said Chris.

‘No way am I heading back down that road to Port Lawrence. No fucking way,’ Mark answered adamantly.

‘It’s the only way we’re going to find out who’s after us. I know that wily old bastard knows far more than he let on this evening. I mean, he was really twitchy, like he knew someone was closing in on us. He knows who those guys work for, Mark, I’m sure of that. He knows who they work for, and what’s out there under the water.’

Mark drummed his thumbs on the steering wheel. ‘So what do you suggest we do?’

‘I know where he’s staying. We drive right back in and grab him, and then we run like hell.’

‘I see. And we happen to run into these guys again?’

‘I’ll kill them both with my death-ray eyes.’

Mark nodded. ‘Great, well that’s that covered, then.’

Chris grinned nervously. ‘We’ll get that old boy . . . and then he’s going to spill it all even if I have to pull his fingernails out to get him talking.’

A thought occurred to Mark. ‘They may have already got to him.’

And if they had, Wallace surely would already be dead. If Chris, with the little that he knew, was a liability worth silencing, then Wallace most definitely was.

‘We’ve got to try, though, Mark. I can’t think of anything else to do.’

‘We could go to the police.’ Mark puffed out air. ‘This is some heavy-grade shit you’ve walked into, Chris.’

‘Don’t I know it.’

They sat in silence, the only sound the waves from the sea pounding the beach a few hundred yards away, and the gentle idle of the Cherokee’s engine.

‘And anyway, I’ve still got this,’ said Chris, lifting his hand up so that Mark could see from the moonlight what he was holding.

‘Sheesh! You got the safety on?’ said Mark, reaching out for the weapon and tilting it away from his head. ‘That’s a Heckler and Koch you got there, and -’ his fingers sought out the safety control lever on the left-hand side ‘-
now
the safety is on.’

Chris drew in a gasp. ‘It was off? Shit, I’ve been fondling the bloody thing since we left my room. Lucky I haven’t shot a hole through my bollocks.’ He laughed anxiously.

Mark nodded. ‘Very lucky. HKs have a light trigger.’

Chris looked at the gun in his hand, wondering if he had the guts to use it. He hadn’t fired back at that hitman in the motel, but then he hadn’t even been aware that he’d still been holding on to it until now.

Mark must have read his mind. ‘No point taking it unless you’re prepared to use it. You wave that thing around in front of guys like that, and they
will
take you down in a heartbeat.’

Chris felt the cold, dead weight in his hands, and the odd, overpowering sense of comfort it gave him. ‘I’ll use it if need be.’

‘You ever trained with weapons, Chris? Ever fired a gun?’ Mark asked. ‘I’m not sure this is one of your better ideas.’

Chris flicked the safety lever upwards and downwards. ‘Okay. Safety on . . . safety off . . . right . . . that’s me trained up. We should go now, before I chicken out.’

Mark looked sternly at Chris. ‘Grab him and we run?’

Chris nodded. ‘Grab him and run, that’s the plan.’

Chapter 41

Mission Time: 5 Hours, 42 Minutes Elapsed

7.47 a.m., 2 miles outside Nantes

‘We’ve definitely got a damned leak,’ said Max, studying the fuel gauge.

Pieter tapped the glass of the display hopefully with his finger; the dial remained resolutely still.

‘Shit, that’s nearly three-quarters of it gone,’ growled Pieter.

Three-quarters of it gone, and we’ve flown about one-fifth of the distance
.

‘We must have taken some damage to the internal tanks and we’ve been leaking fuel since.’ Max could have kicked himself; he should have spotted this earlier. If it had been the familiar cockpit of a Heinkel he would have.

‘We haven’t got enough, Max.’

‘I know that,’ he answered testily.

There was not enough fuel left to complete the mission. The choices on how to proceed were limited. Either the mission was going to have to be aborted or they were going to have to go down with the fighters to refuel.

‘I don’t think we’ve got a lot of alternatives here, Pieter.’

‘We abort or we refuel?’

Max nodded. ‘If we abort, you know what that means, don’t you?’

Pieter knew. Major Rall had instructed them both very carefully on this potential outcome. If damage to the plane meant they would be unable to reach America, they should arm and drop the bomb anyway. At the very least, the detonation of the bomb, albeit not on the required target, would still demonstrate to the world that the Germans had got there first and had a massive destructive capability. That alone
might
still be enough to cause the Americans to think things over.

‘What do you think about refuelling?’ asked Pieter.

‘Let me think, let me think.’

They were approaching the last waypoint before Nantes; from there they should be able to navigate their way by eye to the airfield. It didn’t give him much thinking time. Going down with the fighters to refuel hadn’t been a part of the plan. It seemed the Major hadn’t considered what they should do if fuel became an issue. The extra tanks had been internal. Rall must have assumed they were safe from damage there.

Now Max was alone in having to make the risk assessment of doing this. If they were overrun while they were on the ground, the bomb could fall into the hands of the Americans.

‘It’s risky, Pieter. They could get their hands on it.’

Max pushed the mask to his face and switched to the radio frequency for their men on the ground.

‘
Medusa
calling, what is your status?’

He was about to call again when a reply came back.

‘
Medusa
we are ready for you now, come in as quickly as you can.’

‘How long can you hold there?’

There was some delay in the answer; when it finally came, it was a different voice that answered. ‘Half an hour, possibly as much as an hour if we’re lucky.’

‘It’ll take about twenty-five minutes to refuel the plane, if we forget the extra tanks,’ said Pieter. ‘Would that get us there?’

Max let his mask fall away again, so that their conversation remained between them. ‘It should do, this plane has a 4000-mile one-way range without them. It should get us there, with very little to spare, though.’

He heard Stef’s voice over the interphone. ‘Approaching waypoint seventeen.’

Pieter looked at Max. ‘Come on, we can’t throw it away now.’

Time was running out, and Max felt the enormity of this tactical decision resting squarely on his shoulders. He cursed Rall for not anticipating this scenario and giving him a brief for it.

‘If we go down, we should refuel first, the fighters will have to wait.’

Pieter sure as hell didn’t have a problem with that. ‘Fuck . . . yeah, of course.’

Stef was on the interphone again, asking Max to confirm he’d heard the last navigation call.

Pieter shrugged, ‘Max? What are we going to do?’

Time is running out
.

He tried to visualise Rall, to imagine what the Major would advise him under such circumstances. For what he knew of him, the Major seemed a cautious man, a meticulous planner, Max made a guess that he would reluctantly advise them to return home if they could make it, or if not, to drop the bomb right there. But then he could see Rall’s ruined face; a rakish smile on the good side suggested the man had gambled once or twice before in his life.

‘If we’re overrun, I’ll have to detonate it on the ground,’ said Max.

Pieter nodded with reluctant agreement. ‘You’ll have to.’

‘You understand what that would mean?’

Pieter nodded. ‘Yeah. There are worse ways to go.’

‘Fine, we’re going down, then.’

Max had made his decision; his hands loosened around the control yoke. He was relieved, almost elated to have cut through the last few moments of indecision.

‘All right, Pieter, let’s get ready.’

He pulled the mask to his face and spoke into the interphone. ‘Stef, Hans . . . we’ve got a fuel leak, which means we’re landing alongside Schröder and his boys so we can get a top-up.’