Vengeance 10 (54 page)

Bethwig was half-way down the hall as he asked the final question. Von Braun started after him, demanding to know where he was going this time and why he couldn’t take care of the Englishman himself, before he realised Bethwig had already gone. Von Braun tore off his cap and slammed it to the tiled floor in frustration.

Outside, Bethwig hesitated, then turned away from the car park. There might be roadblocks and he could not afford the delay. The SS guard normally stationed at the blockhouse door had disappeared; he did not know if that was a good sign or not, but as there seemed to be no one about, he plunged through the shrubbery and began to run.

Jan Memling crouched in the shadows beside the fence while Prager, a few metres on, pushed up a strand of wire and wriggled through. The few incandescent lamps mounted on high poles swayed with the wind, flinging shadows and light in every direction. Memling slipped through after him, and they trotted towards the looming bulk of the tank farm. There were only two guards, one at each entrance - the first asleep in his hut, the other sheltering from the wind and staring glumly into the night. It was obvious that neither expected the slightest bit of trouble. And why should they? Prager observed. In the six years of its existence, the Peenemunde facility had had only one actual taste of war: the bombing in 1943. And here they were, a year and a half later, guarding a useless farm on a miserably cold January night while they waited for the Russians.

‘The tank contains approximately fifty thousand litres of alcohol,’ Bethwig had explained. ‘Not enough to do more than make a big flash. Wernher’s brother, Magnus, is in charge of our security, and he made it his business to see that if we needed it, a suitable distraction could be produced. The thirty thousand metric tons of high explosive removed from the V-Ten warhead has been stored inside a deserted petrol tank near to the alcohol tank. If it could be exploded, I am certain it would keep the SS far too busy searching for Russian saboteurs to interfere with us.’

Prager hissed, and they both went to ground. A shadow passed on the single-track road, and a moment later they heard the racketing sound of a motor fading into the night. The two men exchanged glances.

‘Let’s get this over with fast,’ Memling muttered, ‘before they come back. Do you have your bearings yet?’

Bethwig had given them the code number of the alcohol tank and described its location on the seaward side of the farm. Their way was impeded by a tangle of pipes, fire barriers and deserted buildings, and it was 21.39 hours when they reached a concrete wall that overlooked an isolated cluster of tanks squatting above the beach. The moon, jousting with broken cloud, silhouetted their target against the sullen Baltic.

They vaulted the wall and trotted down the slope. Memling explored the surrounding area for the fill pipes, which he then traced back to the metering valves mounted on the tank itself. The piping was stainless steel - to prevent contamination of the alcohol - which only made their task that much more difficult. The joint where the piping ran into the tank proper was well protected by a heavy riveted iron flange.

He backed off then and stared upwards. The tank was made of cast-iron sections, and therefore it had to be lined with glass or stainless steel to prevent contamination; somewhere inside would be the emergency drain valve. Memling found the ladder on the north side, jumped, caught hold, and went up quickly.

The top of the tank was gently rounded and covered with a glare of ice. He crouched against the wind and made his way along, clutching the handholds for dear life. The cloud was broken enough to make visible the entire northern end of the island. In the vague moonlight he could see the smaller, squatter petrol tank downslope and a hundred metres or more distant. He thought about the thirty thousand kilos of HE stored inside, and shivered. The damned thing had to be full of petrol fumes; it was a bomb waiting for a spark. Yet he had to be certain. Amatol was incredibly stable and damned hard to ignite. Only because of that had they dared hide it in the abandoned petrol tank.

He ducked his chin into the collar of his jacket. To the south, five kilometres or more distant, the launch area glowed as if aflame. Behind, the wind-whipped Baltic disappeared into the invisible horizon; somewhere out there was a submarine waiting for his signal. They would wait for a long time; the Gestapo had taken the ‘Joan’ radio transmitter lent by the OSS. For a moment the old uncertainty and fear swept him. Once the tank exploded, the SS would be out in force. Unless he and Prager kept moving and were exceptionally lucky ... he stopped the wild, random thoughts. Bethwig and his mad scheme. The man was crazy, or was he? Wouldn’t he do exactly the same if he had the chance? This was perhaps the final opportunity of their generation to fulfil one of man’s oldest dreams. He had been asked to play a very small part and would do so no matter the cost. Bethwig was right. A man’s dreams are all he ever really has.

Memling found the access door leading into the interior and went down into pitch-blackness. The intense odour of raw concentrated alcohol was overpowering, and by the time he found the emergency drainage system near the base of the liner, adjacent to the fill-pipe junction, he was wobbling. He fumbled the clips holding the access door open, overrode the exterior lock, and swung the door wide, scaring Prager half to death.

Memling opened the emergency drain petcock wide and ducked out quickly as the liquid spurted. With Prager’s help he climbed the slope and crouched behind the retainer wall. The fumes were beginning to clear from his head, and after a few moments he pushed himself up beside Prager. Liquid had already overflowed the hatch sill and was coursing slowly down the slope. As he watched, it gathered in a small hollow, changed direction, and then resumed its course. It took ten minutes before sufficient alcohol reached the abandoned petrol tank to show in the fitful darkness.

‘Do you think there is enough there?’

‘Go ahead,’ Memling said, and Prager took the battered Walther flare pistol from his belt, loaded it, and hesitated.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Damn it, unless you have a better way to do it, go ahead and shoot.’

Prager shrugged, aimed carefully, and fired.

The flare arced in a shallow parabola and burst below the tank. Memling held his breath, but nothing happened. Prager swore, broke the pistol open, and loaded another round. This time he aimed well above the hatch.

Memling had an impression of a tongue of flame spewing upwards from the alcohol-soaked ground, and then all hell broke loose. The tank disappeared with a dull whump, vaporised into a perfectly round ball of flame. The concussion slammed them backwards, and a moment later a gale snatched the breath from their lungs as air rushed in to fill the void where the tank had been. The fireball rolled skyward, so bright that they could not look at it. It seemed to be standing on a single column of flame and smoke, and then bits and pieces of metal whirled out of the night.

‘God damn,’ Memling heard Prager muttering over and over again as they crouched behind the scorched wall. He grabbed his shoulder then and pointed. The base of the old petrol tank was ringed in flame.

‘Let’s get the hell out of here ….’

They vaulted the retainer wall and raced up the slope, running desperately for the shelter of the far side. Memling had tried to memorise the way they had come, but the tangle of piping and jungle of tanks and columns were confusing in the moonlight, and he gave up trying to do anything more than maintain a heading. Prager ran beside him, clutching his side, his breath coming in harsh gasps. The anticipation was exquisite. They had no idea how long, if ever, the intense heat of the flaming alcohol would take to ignite the high explosive.

They could see the fence and the Luftwaffe guard shouting into a telephone when the sudden flare of light warned Jan. He dived for the ground, but the concussion caught him in mid-air and sent him sliding across the gravel surface. He buried his head in his arms as the world ended.

Explosion after explosion rocked the island; pillars of flame arced into the blazing sky. The tank farm had become an inferno of sound and fire. A searing wind raged across the sand waste, and Memling felt it scorch his back even through the wool jacket. He half turned then and stared with awe at the incandescent mushroom of smoke and gas erupting beyond the hilltop. He got to his knees, still staring, awestruck at the destruction they had caused. Nothing remained of the tank farm but twisted steel and flaming buildings. Prager was urging him up, dragging him towards the fence, shouting at him, and suddenly Memling began to shake. That cloud could have hovered over New York, or London. Janet could have been one of its many victims. He vomited, harshly.

Bethwig showed his pass to the SS guard, pushed through the glass doors, and hurried along the corridor. The few people about glanced at him in surprise, but he ignored them all. When he entered the ready room, a technician completing a pressure check on an oxygen bottle did a double take at finding the chief project engineer here and not at the command centre. Bethwig pointed to the dressing room, and the man could only nod.

Inside, the pilot was putting on the heavy pressure suit. Surprised, he tried to snap to attention and toppled into the arms of a technician.

‘Is everything ready, Artur?’ Bethwig asked the chief technician who was helping to right the pilot.

‘Yes, sir. The suit checks out properly. Everything is set. The command centre reports on schedule for boarding at T-minus-forty.’

‘Very good, gentlemen. Will all of you please leave us for a few minutes? I’ll send Lieutenant Gross out to you in a few moments.’

The four technicians, their white uniforms soiled with the exertions of the past twenty-four hours, exchanged puzzled glances but trooped out. The pilot tried to fix an earnest look on his face but failed miserably. Bethwig suspected that for the first time the man was beginning to comprehend the odds against him.

‘I understand the submarine is in place,’ the pilot began, thereby betraying his apprehension, but Bethwig cut him off. ‘Never mind that now. You will not be flying tonight.’

The pilot’s expression showed a combination of relief, surprise and disappointment. ‘Not... but why ...?’

‘The flight is cancelled.’ Bethwig spread his hands in apology. ‘Wind conditions are near gale force at eight thousand metres. We are rescheduling for tomorrow night. I thought I should come and tell you in person, knowing what a disappointment it must be.’ Bethwig slipped from his pocket the syringe prepared earlier. ‘Well that’s a relief, I’ll bet,’ he said in a hearty voice. ‘Let’s have that suit off, then.’

The pilot’s hands went automatically to the zipper, and as he peeled the suit over his upper arms, Bethwig slipped the needle through the layers of woollen underwear and into the muscle. The pilot jerked back, but it was too late.

‘What the hell...? What are you doing ...?’

Bethwig spoke softly: ‘It’s just a sedative. You’ll wake up in a few hours ...’

The pilot’s eyes rolled, and his knees collapsed. Grunting, Bethwig stripped the suit off, strapped the unconscious Lieutenant Gross to a gurney, and hauled him into the storeroom.

Back in the dressing room, Bethwig removed his own clothes and pulled on the two layers of woollen underwear. He had to sit down on the floor to wriggle into the cumbersome leather and rubber pressure suit, a modification of the high-altitude pressure suit worn by Luftwaffe pilots in the Me163B rocket plane. When the zippers were closed and fastened, Bethwig tugged on the close-fitting cotton flying helmet, adjusted the earphone pads comfortably, and lifted the heavy plastic helmet over his shoulders, settled it into the rubber gaskets, and gave it a partial turn to lock it in place. Immediately the glass vision plate steamed over.

Moving clumsily in the heavy pressure suit, he made the connections to the cart containing the air bottles and air-conditioning unit and started up the systems. Bethwig sighed with relief as air began to flow into the helmet through the perforated shoulder piece. The air brought with it the smell of stale sweat, rubber, solvents, leather, and a host of other odours. The suit was amazingly stiff in spite of its cleverly articulated joints, and the twenty-five-kilo weight dragged at him. Bethwig took a deep breath, dragged the cart with him to the door, and knocked. The chief technician opened it quickly. He clipped a wire lead to the helmet and slipped his own earphones on.

‘Are you cert - ‘ he began, then broke off, and shrugged. ‘A bit too late to be worrying about that, isn’t it?’ The voice was tinny and distant through the built-in headset.

Bethwig lifted a ponderous arm and clapped him on the shoulder. When the technician asked where Bethwig had gone, he waved vaguely in the direction of the inner office and stepped into the corridor, at the end of which, beyond the glass doors, he could see the lorry waiting to drive them to the launch site. Technicians and well-wishers, family members of the staff and non-technical employees, had gathered to applaud the pilot as he passed. Bethwig waved, thankful that the vision plate was tinted, so his features could not be seen. The doors were opened for him, and he stepped out. A brilliant flare lit the northern horizon at that instant, and moments later sound struck them with the ferocity of a hurricane.

Prager’s estimate of the SS garrison’s ability to respond was obviously faulty, Memling thought with some bitterness. He had lost sight of the Gestapo officer just after they had slipped back through the fence and started towards the woods. A rifle shot snapped past, and the wind brought the sound of a lorry engine racing towards them. Memling made it to the cover of the trees, but Prager had disappeared in the darkness.

He could not see the soldiers crossing the field, but he could hear them: an officer’s whistle, the sound of booted feet on frozen ground, an occasional shout. When he was satisfied that they were in an extended skirmish line, suggesting that they did not know their quarry’s exact location, Memling trotted a few hundred metres into the scrub pine, switched direction abruptly, and headed north-east towards the coast, which, unless he had badly mixed his directions, was two kilometres away. There was nothing he could do for Prager except to hope the man had got clear.