It was an important question.
If the weather was against them, this wouldn’t be a pretty flight.
“Weather is about a four,” Lancaster yelled back to him. “We could do better.”
Hunter strapped into the third seat in the plane’s roomy cockpit. He took a look around. The Lysander was a very odd aircraft. Inside there were berths for four, plus a stove, a kitchen, an eating table, even a head with a door on it. As a military airplane, it was more like a flying house trailer. What a concept!
He found his gear next to his seat. It was all stuffed into one backpack. Inside, he found the heating ring, three batteries, a Boomer, a rope, and a radio control set for steering the drone. He lifted the pack for weight. It seemed to be made of some kind of indestructible material and would fit snugly on his back. But the thing was heavy. Damn heavy.
They broke through the real clouds at 7000 feet, and for the first time in a while, Hunter actually saw the sun.
Both Lancaster and Moon put their oxygen masks and helmets on, so did Hunter.
They flew on in silence. Hunter settled back and sucked in some pure O—it helped wake him up a bit.
He’d gone over all the plan a hundred times how, but felt it wouldn’t hurt to do it again.
The first phase would be the most dangerous. Getting into Germany undetected. The bombing raid, launched from two other megacarriers nearby, would be a great cover, but the plan called for them to land practically in the middle of it.
The dam itself was only two miles from one of the bomb impact zones. From the air, and with bad weather, that might as well be inches. Their timing would have to be precise.
Once down, Hunter would leave the plane and set up the heat ring on the target. The batteries to be used were the most important element and they weighed a ton. But the heat ring had to reach at least 150 degrees Fahrenheit for the heat-seeker in the nose of the drone to work. Thus two batteries had to be placed in tandem, and hooked up just right. That’s why his pack was so heavy. He had to carry two main batteries plus a third as a back up.
Once the heat ring was attached, Hunter would find a safe place not too far away from the dam itself. The bombed-up drone would arrive overhead. At this point Hunter’s flying expertise would come into play—indeed that’s the real reason he was here. He would essentially be flying the big drone once the radio contact was switched over to him.
He unpacked some of his equipment. All these switches and tubes and radio equipment worried him. Like everything in this strange world, it all seemed to be bigger and bulkier than it should have been. He was certain that much of it could have been built smaller, but he had to work with what he had.
Oddly too, there was not much discussion about what would happen after the drone went into the side of the dam. Certainly the bomb-packed airplane would explode—but would it really be enough to make a crack in the thick dam wall? And would the crack be big enough? Or could it be too big? No one was really saying.
The OSS planners were sure though that the cascade of water from the busted dam would knock out most of the power in the western half of the Reich’s territory. If the Huns lost power for as long as a month, it would be a significant blow to the pumped-up German war machine. And it would give the Americans another 30 days to somehow figure a way to turn the tide yet again.
Once the deed was done, Hunter’s escape plans were fairly straightforward. The dam blows up, he climbs aboard the Lysander, and off they go. A flight of Navy long-range attack jets from the Cape Cod was promised to meet them and ride air cover for their getaway.
If all went well, Hunter could be eating soup in one of the carrier’s mess halls by dinnertime.
He made that his most immediate goal.
The flight passed for the next two hours without incident.
The plane was flying slow, and the wind was against them, but that was OK. They were still on schedule.
Then, about 0815 hours, things began happening.
They had just broken through a massive cloud layer when they saw them. Way off to the east and south. The bomber formations from the two other megacarriers. Again there were the two prime Air Corps types, B-17/36s and B-24/52s. There were at least 10 packages and each package had at least 25 planes in it. And these were just the ones that Hunter could see.
“Lot of airplanes just for the three of us,” Hunter heard Lancaster murmur.
“Lot of people chewing our asses if we fuck up,” Moon replied.
Hunter took another gulp of oxygen and remained silent. The formation of huge bombers looked impressive; he would have loved seeing them take off from the huge carriers. And he was sure they were chock full of firebombs—all of them. This sent him gulping for more O.
There were some fighters too; they were flying so high above the bombers that it looked like they were expecting an attack from Heaven itself. Hunter could only wonder if Sarah was up there flying with them. He took in some more oxygen; they hadn’t discussed anything about the mission the night before, which was good. He really didn’t want to think about what danger she might get into if she was involved.
The Lysander moved over and took up a position underneath one of the bomb groups.
They flew on in formation like this for the next half hour. The weather got worse the deeper they went into the east. By the time they made landfall over the European coast, the clouds above Germany itself looked like they were miles high, and blacker than black.
Storms of the most incredible kind must be taking place beneath them, was all Hunter could think. He’d never seen clouds so big and so dark.
At least, he couldn’t remember doing so.
They flew for another hour, the huge bomber formation all around them, the fighters above them.
They ran into some flak around Dokken in Occupied Holland and then again near Bacholt, inside Germany itself. But they were flying too high for the weak AA. And no German fighters showed up even to probe them.
Obviously there were all assigned to protect the bigger cities of the Reich.
Twenty minutes out from their target area, Lancaster began shutting down some of the aircraft’s electronic systems. They would aid anyone with a detection unit on the ground in finding them, plus it was always a good idea to shut off anything electrical you could spare if you were about to attempt a hairy landing.
And the plan called for this landing to be an especially hairy one.
The dam itself was three miles wide, and nearly one half mile high. Next to its western edge, there was a service road which ran through a woods for about 100 yards before flowing into a larger highway nearby. But the term “road” might have been used a little too quickly. It was essentially a path lined with trees on both sides. Its main advantage was that it was open at either end. In theory the Lysander could fly in at one end, and fly out at the other.
But once they got a look at the road from the air on the long-range TV screen, they all knew this would not be very easy.
First of all, the road was not just near the dam—it was right beside it. This increased their level of exposure to guards thought to man the small outpost on the dam’s western side, as well as to those in a much more substantial force, quartered on the eastern side. True, it would take these troops some time to get across the three-mile-long dam to the far side. But if the Lysander got stuck or was slow to take off for any reason, it could be a problem.
The second bad sign was the weather over the landing zone. Those huge dark clouds were now pouring sheets of rain over the target area, the dam, and the city of Heidiberg, just a few miles away. It was the bombing of this city that was supposedly providing the immediate cover for the Lysander to set down.
But the weather was so bad, there was a possibility that the local military might not even realize their city was being bombed, which would make the diversion meaningless. Hunter didn’t like this either.
But it was no time to complain. It was time to just go ahead and get the damn job done.
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So Lancaster began pulling back on the throttle and then put the nose of the Lysander nearly straight down. They started dropping like a rock. The engine got quieter as they went down. This impressed Hunter; there was some cool technology at work in that Whisper-engine.
Lancaster was able to bring the plane down almost vertically; Moon was working, hard too. It was a precision thing and again Hunter was impressed. They were dropping very fast however and none of them was wearing a parachute. But again, it was too late to think about that now.
He figured they were about 200 feet in altitude now. One group of bombers was going over them very low, and he could see the first bombs falling out of the lead plane heading for their targets in Heidiberg.
“One-fifty altitude,” Moon called out, somewhat calmly. “One hundred…”
Hunter hugged his equipment bag and once again held on. It seemed that was all he’d been doing since arriving in this strange world: trying to make it through one more heart-stopping landing.
“Seventy-five,” Moon called out. “Fifty…”
Hunter took a quick look outside but now couldn’t see anything, with the rain and the trees. Still it felt as if he was coming down in a helicopter rather than a fixed wing craft.
“Twenty-five,” Moon intoned. “Twenty…”
At that moment, Lancaster pushed something and pulled something, and suddenly they were going forward again and a second after that, they were down.
Just like that. Down on the road, under the trees, just like it said in the mission film. Lancaster was able to stop the Lysander from rolling in less than 25 feet. Hunter was simply amazed. He reached up and slapped both pilots on the shoulder. Both men returned the gesture with a quick thumbs-up.
Then they just sat there for a few moments in silence, in the rain. They could hear booming and rumbling and Hunter wondered if it was the bombing of the nearby city or real thunder.
Or both.
Or neither.
Lancaster turned around and looked at Hunter as if to say: Well, sport, time for you to go…
Hunter got the hint and climbed down into the hold of the plane. He picked up his heavy gear and went out the door, securing a GI combat helmet to his head.
The downpour was incredible. Hunter could barely see his hand in front of him. He crouched down, picked a direction and started running.
The roar around him was so loud now, it hurt his ears. The sound of the bombers going overhead, the sound of bombs hitting Heidiberg nearby. But there was another roar. The roar of water. Hunter picked it out of the cacophony and ran toward it.
He broke through the tree line and found himself looking across a huge body of water. It was so wide and the wind and rain so fierce, there were waves topping it that were as high as any in the ocean itself.
The water was moving to his left. He ran along the shore and soon was able to see the edge of the dam itself through the sheets of rain.
Suddenly there was huge explosion off to the southeast and Hunter saw a gigantic fiery mushroom cloud rise above the hills and trees. The ground rumbled so violently, he was knocked to his ass and almost wound up in the water.
It looked like the world was ending right over the tree line. What the hell were they dropping over there, he wondered.
He regained his footing and started running again. Finally the western end of the dam came into view. There was a lone guard in a small guard house watching the far end of the dam. He was standing outside, using the roof for protection, having a smoke, watching the bomb blasts in the distance. Hunter came right up beside him and knocked him out cold with one punch to the jaw.
The man crumpled to the ground. Hunter took his gun and threw it in the water. Then he ran up to the road that went across the dam itself.
The road dipped a little and when Hunter got to the top of it, he discovered that the body of water on his left looked bigger than the Atlantic Ocean. The wind and rain were so intense, the waves were six or seven feet high and some were crashing over the stout retaining wall itself. It was a little unsettling when seen at eye level.
In complete contrast, to his right there was a sheer drop of at least 2500 feet. Hunter made the mistake of taking a look down and nearly lost his equilibrium. The dam was simply immense—10 times larger than he’d imagined it. Just the size of the thing made him a little dizzy. At the bottom was a trickle of a river which flowed down into what became the Ruhr Valley. Many trees and hills ushered it on its way. A small village stood about a mile down on the right. Hunter could see lights in the windows of the houses. There was no doubt in his mind this was a place where civilians lived—but it was way too late the dwell on that either.
Hunter took another look down the side of the sloping dam and gulped. What really sucked was he now had to climb down the side of this thing.
He hooked up his rope to a convenient tie-ring on the wall and then just threw himself over. Down he went, half falling, half rappelling. Twenty feet, 30 feet, 40 feet. More. The convex winds were fierce; they were blowing him back and forth, up and down. Down 50, then 60. The air was shuddering with the concussion of the bombs falling just a mile or so to the south. The shock wave from each explosion would slam him into the concrete wall. Already his hands, elbows and knees were scrapped and bloody.
Like so many times in the past few weeks he asked himself, over and over: What the hell am I doing?
He finally reached a spot he judged to be 120 feet down from the top. It was a guess, but the plan after all was to slam a huge aircraft packed with explosives into the wall, so how precise did he really have to be? He fought with his backpack and finally got the heating ring out. He picked a spot, yanked off the adhesive cover and jammed it on to the cement. It stuck—thank God.
Next came the oversize batteries. They both contained enough stored juice to run a small village for a day, that’s why the damn things were so heavy.
He ripped the adhesive off the first battery, and thankfully it stuck too. The second one gave him a problem; he had to tie it to the first and then winch it up, using the heating ring itself. Finally it was in place. He did a quick test on both, saw they were at full power, then happily dropped the backup battery. It bounced and cracked and shattered itself all the way down the side of the dam.
Feeling lighter than air now, Hunter did a quick systems check and convinced himself the heating ring was connected properly. Then he climbed back up the side of the dam, lifting himself up and over the small wall and landing in a very ungraceful heap back up on the roadway.
Phase one done, he thought. Now for the fun part.
He jumped to his feet and ran back down the road, off the dam, and into the woods again, this time further down from the dam face. He found a spot from which he could see the heating ring and the Lysander waiting patiently, engine running, in the clutch of trees about 100 yards away.
He took the radio set from his backpack and quickly turned it on. It was slow to warm, but at least it was still alive. He dialed in the prescribed frequency and after a minute of searching, finally found the explosives-laden drone-bomber. According to the homing signal, it was right overhead.
Hunter was mildly astonished. Would all this crap really work? Curiosity alone would have pushed him on.
He took out the remote control switch for the heating ring, pointed it in the general direction of the device about 500 feet away and clicked it to on. It was hard to see through the pouring rain, but damn if he didn’t detect after 10 seconds or so a faint glow coming from the one-foot diameter ring.
Jessuzz, that was money, he thought. He snapped on the homing beacon to full power and pulsed the bomber drone again. The readout said it was 4400 feet right above him, waiting for his order to come down.
Hunter just shook his head. Was it really going to be as easy as this? He hit the arming switch on his radio set. A green light blinked to life. All 22 tons of blockbusting explosives were now fully armed and fused.
He pushed the radio throttle co
ntrol ahead a bit and listened hard to see if he could detect the sound of the drone’s engines burping a little at 4400 feet. But between the downpour, the wind and the nonstop bombing of Heidiberg nearby, it was impossible even for Hunter’s ultrasensitive ears to discern the sound.
No matter, he thought. The radio set said the plane was up there, and at this point, that was good enough for him.
He did one last visual check of his area and surroundings. He was about to bring down the wrath of God here; he wanted to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything in the rush.
The heating ring was now shining very brightly through the bad weather, like a neon halo in the upper left hand corner of the immense dam face. There was absolutely no activity coming from this side of the dam—the guard was still knocked out, and the Lysander was still snuggled into the woods nearby, its prop spinning, its feather-sound engine living up to its rep.
Hunter took out his hand beacon and blinked it twice in the direction of the Lysander. This wasn’t in the plan, but he wanted to at least warn Lancaster and Moon that all hell was about to break loose. His two blinks were returned with two in kind. They saw him, they got the message. Everyone was now waiting on him.
He moved a little closer to the edge of the cliff, out from under trees, for a clearer look at the stormy sky. He pulsed the drone again and everything came back as OK. He activated the plane’s heat-seeking beam, and instantly a red light popped on the control panel. The plane had a lock on the heating ring. That was easy!
Hunter threw the main activation switch and then gave the drone full throttle. The bomb-laden plane started on its way down…
He heard it a moment later. Sixteen big engines screaming for life as gas flooded their fuel injectors. The combination of full throttle and gravity would give the airplane an impact speed of nearly 800 mph—this was going to make quite a show.
The scream of the drone’s engines was blotting out all other sounds now. Hunter unconsciously moved back into the woods a bit. He was expecting the plane to come out of the clouds off to his right It would pass about eye level with him and then plunge into the dam wall to his left.
Sky Ghost Page 27