Vengeance 10

by Joe Poyer

  Sussmann led him to the side door of a two-storey warehouse, produced a key, and got out to unlock the door. They clattered up iron stairs to the loft, and Sussmann showed them several packing boxes labelled for machinery. Four long wooden crates were stacked on a pallet behind. Sussmann levered open the top crate, peeled back the greased paper, and exposed ten MP40 machine pistols to the gleam of the torchlight. The corporal passed them out while Sussmann opened another case and extracted ammunition already packed into thirty-eight-round magazines. A third case held potato masher-style hand-grenades.

  ‘Enough to start our own war.’ Prager grinned as he hefted one of the machine pistols and cocked the action, it feels good to handle one of these again.’

  Sussmann directed him to park the car half a kilometre from the beach, and they went over the plan once more, then started off. They hiked along the beach towards the isolated building, depending on the sand dunes and the weather to conceal them. Two hundred metres from the building they came to the remains of the old fishing pier. They split here, Prager and Bethwig continuing along the waterline to the rear of the courtyard while Sussmann took the other four up on to the sand dunes. The sergeant major had been adamant: Bethwig would not be allowed to participate in the frontal attack. Prager had supported Sussmann, and Bethwig had given in. Their task was limited to seeing that no one escaped over the back wall. Faced now with imminent action, Bethwig was relieved at Sussmann’s decision. He discovered that he was scared to death in a way he had never been while serving with the V-2 battalion. There, death had seemed a random process of selection, much as a traffic accident would be. Here, it was entirely too personal.

  The wind whipped at them as they crouched in the wet sand. The floodlit courtyard gave them sufficient light to see by, while at the same time providing concealing shadows. Even though both men wore heavy duffle coats, the wind slipped through folds and crevices to set them shivering.

  Bethwig glanced at his watch again. The radium dial showed nearly 8 p.m. Less than four hours remained; and although he knew that Wernher was more than capable of carrying out the sequence without reference to him, if he was to complete the rest of his plan, he could not spare more than another forty minutes here. Yet he could not bring himself to leave until he was certain that Walsch was dead.

  Two grenades exploded in quick succession, followed by burst after burst of machine-pistol fire. Bethwig and Prager could see the flares and concussive shock waves rippling outward from the building, although the wind, blowing away from them, muffled the sound. Shouts and screams mingled with the gunfire, and Bethwig was in a fury of apprehension. The battle was loud enough, he was certain, to bring SS reinforcements, even though Sussmann’s first task had been to cut power and telephone lines.

  Prager nudged him; a head had appeared level with the wall. A moment later a figure dropped and, crouching, reached up to grab a weapon that someone was handing over. Prager’s hand was on his arm. ‘Wait until they are both over,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Aim low and fire short bursts.’

  Bethwig nodded and pulled back and up on the bolt handle, as Prager did, trying to remember his long-ago Hitler Youth training.

  ‘Now,’ Prager shouted, and fired.

  Over the sights Bethwig saw one man turn towards them; his face was hidden in shadow, but Bethwig could imagine the surprise that died as he fired two short bursts. The figure pitched forward, and Prager took the other as he dropped over the wall. Then Bethwig was running, propelled by the desperate need to reach Walsch. He ripped a grenade from his coat pocket, twisted the igniter, counted to three, and tossed it into the courtyard. Prager drew up, panting, machine pistol in hand, and mouthing blasphemies as he flung his grenade over as well. They both ducked against the base of the wall, and the bombs went off one after the other.

  Bethwig started up, but Prager yanked him back and threw another grenade to make certain the courtyard was clear. After it exploded, Prager swung himself to the top of the wall, inched his head up, then swarmed over. Bethwig followed, shouting uncontrollably with excitement.

  A man in black uniform lay dead. That made three. Prager held up a hand and edged towards the open doorway. From the front of the building sustained gunfire shattered the night. Sussmann’s rush had not carried the building as planned. Could they obtain reinforcements? he wondered. An explosion came, sharp and crisp against the wind - but from outside, not inside the building.

  ‘We’ve got to move!’ Prager shouted, and Bethwig peered along the dark corridor. He could just make out a partly opened door and, with a jolt, realised it was the cell in which he had been held the previous autumn. Two bodies were huddled on the floor of the hall. Prager jerked a thumb at them.

  ‘We didn’t kill those two. Who did?’

  Bethwig started to shake his head, then smiled in sudden understanding. ‘Inside! Is that Jan Memling?’ he shouted down the corridor. ‘This is Franz Bethwig. Do you remember me?’

  ‘Franz Bethwig?’ a voice called back doubtfully.

  ‘Yes, Wernher von Braun’s friend.’ Bethwig had switched to rusty English and was forced to search his memory for the proper words.

  ‘We were at Hotel ...’

  ‘I know who you are. What do you want?’

  The Englishman must have armed himself somehow. That could be the only explanation for the two dead men in the corridor. ‘How many have you ...’ He could not find the English word he wanted and awkwardly substituted one in German: ‘ …. töten?’

  ‘The hell with you, you bloody bastards!’

  ‘God damn you for a fool, Memling.’ Bethwig was so angry he began to stutter. ‘We must... we need to know how many . . . remain in ... are left, you damned ass.’

  The English swear-words must have convinced him, for Memling answered after a moment. ‘Four,’ he shouted. ‘What the hell is going on?’

  ‘There is not time ...’ Bethwig began, then switched to German. ‘There is no time to explain. Do you have a weapon?’

  Memling hesitated. It made no sense... but then nothing had for as long as he could remember. ‘Yes,’ he shouted back.

  ‘Some of us are attacking the front. We must come in through the back. Do not shoot us.’

  Bethwig did not wait for an answer but raised his machine pistol over his head and stepped into the corridor. Prager lunged for him, but Bethwig twisted away and started forward, heart in his throat, skin crawling, as he waited for the bullet’s impact. After a few steps he saw a hint of movement behind the partly opened door.

  ‘If you kill me,’ Bethwig blurted in sudden fright, ‘you will lose your last chance.’

  He was beside the cell door now, facing a crouched figure nearly invisible in the shadows. He pushed the door wider. The fear was as evident in Memling’s eyes as he knew it was in his own, but the machine pistol the Englishman held was rock-steady and aimed at his mid-section.

  ‘Get some clothes and come help,’ Bethwig said quietly, and put out a hand to halt Prager as he came up behind.

  ‘The Englishman?’ Prager asked, and Bethwig nodded.

  Prager stared at Bethwig, then went back down the corridor and removed boots, jacket, and trousers from one of the dead soldiers, tossing the clothes to Memling who began to pull them on as if in a daze. When Prager handed him two stick grenades, Memling clutched them a moment, then shook himself and braced his shoulders.

  ‘How many are left?’ he demanded in excellent German.

  ‘Possibly eight,’ Prager answered. ‘I think we should go around the side and ...’

  ‘I hold a commission as major in the Royal Marines.’ Memling’s voice was crisp. ‘This is your show, but I advise you to go through that door and fast.’

  Prager and Bethwig exchanged glances, and Prager nodded. ‘Tell us what to do.’

  ‘How are your men disposed in front?’ Memling demanded as he moved down the corridor towards the door, keeping well to one side.

  ‘Head-on attack by two men and one more on each fl
ank. Grenades and machine pistols.’

  That explained the explosions, then, Memling thought. He had not the slightest idea what was going on, and there was no time to find out. Already the volume of gunfire was slackening. He waved the two Germans to either side of the door; there wasn’t even time to ask if either had combat experience. Jan tried the door, and when it gave, a rictus of anger slashed across his face. He slung the machine pistol, twisted the screw covers from the grenades, and pulled their igniting cords.

  ‘Damned careless of them,’ Prager grunted as he threw the door open.

  Memling stepped forward and lobbed the grenades with easy underhand throws, aiming to bounce them from the walls so that the blasts would fill the long room with shrapnel. He hesitated long enough to see them strike walls; a white face turned towards him, the mouth forming a warning scream; a man in a suit paused in the midst of cranking a field telephone. Then Memling slammed the door. Twin blasts vomited through the front of the building and bulged the iron-reinforced door from its frame. It took the three of them to wrench it open.

  The room was a shambles. The cement-block wall had contained the explosion and turned the blast inward, leaving the walls and every piece of furniture gouged and splintered by shrapnel. There were five bloody, torn bodies, one of them barely recognisable as a woman’s. He had once seen an American Sherman tank in Sicily. A grenade had been dropped down the hatch, and the shrapnel had spun and ricocheted around the interior, so that the crew had looked as if they had been blasted over and over with buckshot. These bodies looked the same.

  A groan came from a small room off to one side, and Memling kicked the shattered door wide, almost losing one of his too-big boots in the process. Walsch was slumped on the floor. Blood ran down one side of his face, and his arm dangled at a strange angle as he tried to get to his feet. A small Mauser pistol lay on the floor nearby. From behind, Prager was shouting through a smashed window that they had succeeded. The wind howled in sudden fury, and papers flurried.

  Bethwig pushed past him into the room.

  ‘He’s mine,’ he said, swallowing hard to contain the bitter sickness. ‘He killed my father and . . .’ He could go no further. Walsch looked up and unexpectedly laughed in genuine mirth.

  ‘And the little whore. Please do not forget her. The Reichsführer gave her to my charge. So, you will kill me now,’ he choked. ‘You must kill me.’ Walsch slumped but recovered himself and stared up at Bethwig. ‘You see, I have a cancer in the lungs. I will die soon in any event. You will spare me the pain.’ He tried to laugh again but collapsed on the floor instead, coughing harshly.

  Bethwig raised the pistol. ‘I don’t give a damn for your cancer, you sadistic bastard,’ he screamed.

  Memling caught his arm. ‘Have you ever killed before?’ he demanded. ‘Shot a man to death in cold blood?’

  Bethwig shook his head. ‘This isn’t a man, he’s ... he is an animal.’

  ‘Then let me do it. It’s not an easy thing to live with.’

  Bethwig hesitated just as Sussmann staggered in. Walsch read the uncertainty in Bethwig’s eyes and tried to laugh at him. He knew.

  ‘It will live with you for ever,’ Memling warned.

  Sussmann leaned against the door-frame to watch. Walsch started to speak, but Memling turned then and shot the Gestapo officer once, through the forehead.

  ‘One more can’t make my nightmares any worse,’ he muttered.

  Bethwig parked the car on the northern boundary of the deserted POW camp. He and Jan Memling got out while Prager worked to bandage the surviving grenadier’s shattered arm. The corporal and the other grenadier had been killed, and Sussmann had received a shrapnel wound in the stomach. The pain and loss of blood were sending him into shock. He lay back in the front seat breathing heavily, his face pale.

  The wind whipped tatters of snow at them once again, and Memling shivered in his ill-fitting uniform. They stood just below a small rise where the trees had been cleared, and talked for what seemed a very long time. Bethwig told him of the work they had done, passing lightly over the details in his haste to cover everything. He wanted this quiet, capable Englishman to understand what had brought them to this night; more, he wanted his help.

  Memling nodded when he began to describe the V-10. ‘I know. I was here.’

  Bethwig hugged his coat about himself. ‘It was rumoured you killed four SS soldiers.’

  ’How do you know about that?’

  Bethwig laughed humourlessly. ‘Peenemunde abounds in rumours. They were confirmed when the Gestapo arrested Wernher von Braun, Ernst Mundt and Helmuth Gottrup.’

  ‘Arrested ... then ...’

  ‘No, all three were subsequently released. The SS wanted to hang them, but in those days we still had a few connections that meant something.’

  He took Memling’s arm and urged him up the slight rise until they were standing on the crest. Below them lay the immense sprawl of the V-10 launch complex. The area seemed a fairyland of lights and broad avenues leading to the towering conical shape of the V-10.

  ‘Jesus,’ Memling breathed.

  The rocket was immense. He had never imagined anything so huge in his life. It was as if he had stepped into another world, another time. Even at this distance it was staggering. A lorry moving past the rocket’s base snapped the scene into scale. The rocket was wider than the lorry was long. Technicians swarmed like ants over the three-stage rocket and its scaffolding. Against the moonlit sky the thrusting, brilliantly lighted shape glistened as if alive. Looking into the shallow valley formed by the surrounding hills, Memling knew he was witnessing for the first time in the history of the human race a scene that would be repeated endlessly into the future as man struck out from the tiny, cramped world of his birth in search of his ultimate destiny. That barely remembered French scientist had been right after all; they all, he and Franz Bethwig and Wernher von Braun and all the other scientists and technicians at Peenemunde shared a magnificent dream, which even the savagery of total war could not destroy.

  ‘The V-Ten.’ Bethwig leaned sideways to make himself heard over the wind, it was designed to bombard the eastern coast of the United States with atomic explosives.’

  Memling turned to him, eyes growing wide, but Bethwig shook his head before he could ask the question.

  ‘Our atomic projects were cancelled long ago. But not the V-Ten. We have test-flown four of them. This is the fifth and final rocket.’

  ‘Then you are going to launch it?’ Memling found his voice at last.

  ‘Yes. Tonight. But not at the United States.’

  ‘Where?’ Memling asked the question even though he already knew the answer.

  A sudden current of happiness shot through Bethwig; he could not explain it, but he laughed and clapped Memling on the back and pointed at the moon. ‘There, my English friend, to the moon, as we talked about all those years ago in Arnsberg, remember? Tonight, we shall do it.’

  Memling watched the car recede until its tail-lights disappeared. He then hitched on the sling of his machine pistol and started off towards the northern end of the island. Prager scratched his head and, as if reaching a decision, strode after him. The Englishman grinned as he came up, but said nothing. Both men were busy with their own thoughts.

  He had an idea of Prager’s mental struggle; he had been through it himself. It was conceivable, he had decided, that this rocket might have some military value, even though at this late date it could have no real effect on the course of the war. In any event, what Bethwig intended to do was far bigger, far more important to the human race, than any of its petty and - after tonight - outdated squabbles. He really had nothing to lose, Memling decided. His own chances of survival were slim in any event, and he might as well see that something came of this damned war. And besides, he admitted, he wouldn’t miss the launch of the first rocket to the moon for life itself. After a while the trees hid the launch site, but the glow remained in the sky as a beacon and they trudged on towards
the petrol and fuel storage tanks.

  No one turned to look at Bethwig as he entered the control room and stood for a moment watching the orderly chaos. This was the part he loved, these final hours when everything came together and a thousand men worked as one towards a single goal.

  Tangles of cable ran across and along the aisles, taped to the floor here and bundled together with lengths of flex there. A huge ready board was mounted on the wall where it could be seen from every corner of the room. Bethwig scanned the coloured markers quickly; everything was proceeding on schedule. As he watched, a technician scurried across the metal platform to replace a yellow marker with a green diamond indicating that the return stage liquid oxygen tanks had been pressure-tested successfully.

  A twelve-year-old boy skidded to a halt before him; the son of a test engineer, he was serving as a messenger. His face was flushed with exertion, and he could barely contain his excitement. ‘Please, Herr Doktor. There is a telephone call for you. From Brigadeführer Kammler. He has been waiting fifteen minutes.’

  Bethwig followed the boy to the main console where Wernher von Braun scowled at him. Bethwig nodded and drew a finger across his throat. Von Braun’s scowl deepened, but he offered the receiver, one hand across the mouthpiece.

  ‘I told him you were on the launch stand, checking the second stage gyro assembly.’

  ‘Herr Brigadeführer Kammler? How nice to hear from you. Have you been held up? We expected you this afternoon.’ Bethwig made his voice drip.

  ‘Never mind that now.’ Kammler was shouting, his words almost lost in the roar of atmospherics. ‘What the hell is going on there? I am being prevented from reaching Peenemunde ...’ The next few sentences disappeared in the crash and pop of static.