by Daniel Wyatt
This was the V-4 — designated the Messerschmitt V-4 Experimental Series 1-1a — fourth in the series of the vengeance weapons.
The four men relaxed, lit cigarettes in the night air, and waited for the voice prompt from the tower. The sergeant in charge looked to the starry sky, devoid of any Allied bombers for the moment. But they’d be coming on schedule. As sure as the sun rises in the east.
Soon. In minutes, probably.
“Do you think these things will actually work?” one of the men said.
The sergeant dragged on his cigarette, delaying his answer. “It’ll be... interesting.” He nodded. “Yes, they’ll work.”
“I wish I could be up there to see them perform.”
“Me, too. You know, I have an idea.” The sergeant grinned. “Why not strap yourself to one of them?”
“Hey, don’t pass that around. Our superiors may ask someone to do it.”
The men laughed in agreement, their voices echoing off the hangar.
“Yes, you may be right.”
“I know I’m right.”
TWO
London — January 14
Wesley Hollinger got up fifteen minutes before the alarm could scream in his ear and kissed his wife on the cheek. No response. Then he shuffled his way to the bathroom, careful not to wake her. She needed her rest more than ever in her present pregnant state. Quietly as he could, he found his shaving brush in the medicine cabinet and lathered his face. He sighed, grabbed for the razor and began the routine.
“Ouch!”
“Sliced yourself again?”
Hollinger saw his wife at the door. “What are you doing? I thought you were sleeping.”
“Good grief.” Roberta tied her nightgown at her waist. “How can I, with the racket in here.”
Hollinger grabbed a piece of toilet paper to stop the bleeding on his chin and looked in the mirror. “Sorry.” Roberta never ceased to amaze him. She could climb out of bed first thing in the morning and still look like a million bucks.
She smiled, and stepped forward, hugging her husband from behind, kissing his neck, her long, shiny, red hair falling on his bare back. “Don’t flatter me.”
“Going into work today?” he asked, his voice soft.
“Later.”
“How’d you manage that?”
“I cleared it with the colonel.”
“Pull, huh?”
“Bloody damn right, Yank.”
He returned a smile, eyeing her in the mirror, while pressing the toilet paper to his skin. Under her floor-length nightgown, Roberta was a slim, brown-eyed, slender-nosed, extremely attractive English woman moored on thin but sturdy legs. She kissed him on the neck.
“And what, pray-tell, is that for?” he asked.
“I love you.”
“Normally, I’d return the favour and plant one. But I don’t want to smear blood all over your face.”
The young couple giggled.
She let go of him and stood sideways before the mirror. “Look.”
“What?” Hollinger continued shaving.
“Me, dummy.” She stroked her stomach.
“So?”
“I feel so bloated.”
“Come on, Robbie. You can’t even tell,” he teased her.
“I can.”
“Well, yeah, maybe a bit. Looks like you had an extra serving at the table.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” He slapped her on the rump.
“Hey!” She turned and slapped him hard on the back, then grabbed him.
“No, don’t!” he screamed. “We promised. Remember, no tickling! We made a pact.”
“I just broke it.”
“No!”
Laughing, he pinned her left arm to the wall and kissed her hard on the mouth, while she ran her free hand through his long, wavy hair.
“There, now you have blood on your face,” he said.
Four months into her pregnancy, Roberta Langford-Hollinger had been able to hide her condition so far, except for her fuller face. Her regular clothes still fit her, for now. According to her doctor everything was going fine. Despite some occasional morning sickness, Roberta told her husband and the doctor that she felt healthy enough. She was eating regular meals, without throwing up, and she had quit smoking.
After breakfast of toast and strong, imported American coffee, Hollinger quick-kissed his wife goodbye, donned his coat, left the third-story apartment with an umbrella, and strode the five blocks in the light, chilly rain to OSS headquarters on Grosvenor Street, only a few doors down from General Eisenhower’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force.
Along the way, Hollinger recalled his first sight of London. It was the fall of 1940, in the middle of the Blitz, when the city and the country had stood alone against Hitler. Hollinger was one of the first American Intelligence agents to arrive — new, green, impressionable, and single. Back home in the States, he had remembered the cool, calm, much-in-command radio voice of CBS’s Edward Murrow, broadcasting live from the war-torn city to millions of Americans, as if it were yesterday:
“This... is London. Trafalgar Square. The noise that you hear at the moment is the sound of an air raid siren. I’m standing here just on the steps of St Martin’s in the Field. It’s almost impossible to realize that men are killing and being killed, even when you see that ever-thickening streak of smoke pouring down from the sky which means a plane and perhaps several men are going down in flames. The sense of danger, death, and disaster comes only when the familiar incidents occur. The sight of half a dozen ambulances weighted down with an unseen cargo of human wreckage has jarred me more than the roar of dive bombers or the sounds of bombs. But London has gotten used to it. A near miss rocked the cab I was in one evening. The old man slid back the window and remarked, ‘You know, sir, Hitler’ll do that once too often, once.’”
Everything had changed in the five years since the awful Blitz. Hitler did do it once too often. The hunter had now become the hunted.
At the office, Hollinger dove into the papers his efficient, forty-year-old American secretary brought to him in a locked briefcase. Wesley Hollinger was a blue-eyed, six-foot, trim-as-an-athlete, twenty-seven-year old OSS agent, with a fetish for expensive custom suits and wide-brimmed fedoras. The ruggedly-handsome, hot-rock agent had worked his way up to second-in-command of the OSS Secret Intelligence branch — the SI — in mid-1944. Since then, he had been given his own secretary, who this morning had briefed him on information of the much-heralded German secret arsenal of weapons deployed against the Allies. The information included several fast jet and rocket aircraft, the deadly V-1 pilotless flying bomb, and the even-deadlier V-2 intercontinental rocket. With the war drawing to a close, the SI’s mission was to obtain all the data it could on the subject of Nazi secret weapons. So far, the OSS agents were doing their job in enemy territory, substantiated by the photographs and hand-drawn maps of the locations of these assembly sites in the file at his fingertips.
Hollinger looked it over until the desk telephone rang. He lifted the receiver, slowly. “Hollinger here.”
“Wesley. I want to see you. Pronto.”
“Yes, sir.”
Hollinger took to the main hall and ducked through the white-lettered oak door marked SI DIRECTOR, where Jack Dorwin was behind his desk. In his thirty-eighth year, Dorwin was a heavy-set man, built along the lines of an overweight football player. His face resembled a horse’s: long, with flaring nostrils. This morning his flowery red tie was too bright and his shirt too tight in the mid-section. He was one of the worst-dressed Americans at the OSS London headquarters.
“What happened to you?” Dorwin asked, looking up, inhaling a long cigar, pushing aside the memorandums in his OUT basket. He had the tired eyes of a typical overworked, stressed-out American.
“Cut myself shaving. You’re only the fifth one who asked.”
“Close the door, Wesley.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How’s that redhead wife of yours?”
“Still red. So far, so good. She’s coming along. Doesn’t show yet.”
“She will, quickly enough. Sit down, boy.”
“Thank you, sir. What’s up?”
“Here. Open it.” Dorwin slid an envelope across his desk. He stabbed his intercom box button. “Mrs. Cellborth?” he called his secretary.
“Yes, sir.”
“Would you please ask statistics for the B-49 log? In the meantime, Mr. Hollinger and I do not want to be disturbed.”
“As you wish, sir.”
“What’s this?” Hollinger wanted to know, spreading the envelope flaps.
“Orders from the boss.”
“Which one? I’ve got quite a few.”
“The man in Washington.”
“Donovan?”
“No, Roosevelt.”
“The president?” Hollinger began to read the text.
Dorwin nodded. “You’re going to rendezvous with the old man. He’s meeting with Churchill and Stalin. Son of a gun, boy, you must have kissed somebody’s fat ass at the capital.”
“Hell, I haven’t seen Roosevelt in a good three years.” Hollinger jabbed the paper with his finger. “By the way, where’s this Yalta place?”
“Crimea. On the Black Sea. The Soviet Union.”
“Oh, the Soviet Union.” Hollinger began to calculate in his mind as best he could how many miles that would be. Let’s see. Too many for him. That meant flying. He hated flying.
“I hear it’s warm there all year round. Like Florida. Palm trees. You’ll probably see some beautiful Russian women in bathing suits.”
Hollinger folded his arms. “Beautiful women, eh? In that case I had better check with the powers-that-be on this one.”
Dorwin frowned. “Who? Donovan?”
“No. My wife.”
Dorwin chuckled through widely-spaced teeth. He leaned forward, elbows on his desk, cigar clutched between the fingers of his right hand. “Let me give you some advice, Wesley. A little word to the wise.”
“Wise to the wise, is it? I’m listening, as always, sir.”
The director scribbled something on his blotter, then looked up. “My hunch on this is that your little Crimean get-together with Roosevelt has something to do with our research and collecting of information, if you know what I mean.”
Hollinger nodded. “I think I get your drift. German Secret Weapons.”
“Yes. Furthermore, let me say that we have here what the OSS calls a situation. You’re representing the SI and the OSS first, and not necessarily the will of the president. Our work is classified.”
Something didn’t sit right in Hollinger’s craw. “But... but, sir... he’s... the president.”
“That don’t mean shit, boy. We don’t want anything leaking to the wrong people. Fact is, the OSS doesn’t quite trust some people close to Roosevelt. Another thing, he’s not quite himself, I hear.”
“Why is he not himself?”
“Trust me on this one.”
Hollinger held his boss’s stare as long as he could. “Yes, sir. I understand.” I suppose.
Over the North Sea
Sergeant Arthur Benjamin Tooney of Jamestown, North Dakota bent down and slowly grabbed the brace that attached the turret to the fuselage. With the other hand he pulled the gun-elevation hand crank away from the holding clip and placed it in the socket. Then he released the brake and cranked the turret so that the guns dropped from aft to a ninety-degree elevation. He held the hand crank in position, reached over and unlocked the door, swung it open, and braked the turret’s position from the inside.
Tooney immediately heard the whistling slipstream and felt a strong draft. He flipped his goggles down over his eyes. Through the round, thirteen-inch-diameter viewing glass, he was able to catch a clear glimpse of the eerie North Sea below, and the sunlight blinking off the white caps. Then he stood up, gripped the brace, and eased down into the turret by placing the left foot on the seat and his right foot on the stirrup. Next, he spread his legs out on the footrests on either side of the window and dropped his five-foot-five, one hundred and forty pound frame onto the armoured seat. He glanced up and gestured to the waist gunner, who handed Tooney his parachute, before slam-locking the turret from the inside.
Sergeant Tooney was now alone, suspended at the bottom of the B-17 Flying Fortress bomber Lady Luck, cramped into the foetal position. The only sounds were the steady drone of his bomber’s four radial engines and the thundering slipstream. It was a perfect three hundred and sixty degree view inside the ball turret, which he called the best seat in the house.
He spread out on the small seat as best he could in the confined space in his bulky, fleece-lined flight gear. He scanned the blue sky through the Plexiglas. It was a bright, sunny day above scattered thick, white clouds. He flicked on the main power switch, and charged the guns by yanking back on the handles. Then he pressed the fire selector switch. By deploying the two joysticks in front of his face, Tooney controlled the movement of the hydraulically-powered turret. He spun the machine upright, then around, back and forth to check the field of fire. The turret whined and whirred in his ears.
A voice crackled over his earphone...
“PILOT TO BALL GUNNER. HOW DOES IT LOOK BACK THERE? ANY GAPS IN THE LOWER FORMATION?”
Tooney pinched his throat intercom button. “NOT A ONE, SIR. THE OTHER GROUP IS BANKED RIGHT ON OUR BEHIND.”
“THANKS. PILOT OUT.”
The bomber nosed up and climbed, the engines straining.
It was an impressive sight to Sergeant Tooney. He could see the other four-engine heavies jockeying for position, part of an American bomber stream of B-17s heading with purpose to Magdeburg, Germany, arranged in their respective groups and wings. Upper, mid, and low squadrons. Over three-hundred Big Ass Birds carrying high-explosive payloads, escorted by friendly P-51 Mustangs. From this vantage point he could see everything better than the tail gunner. He could tell who the good pilots were, and who were the so-so’s, and which squadron or group ran a tight formation or not. Gosh, she was a beautiful thing to behold for the nineteen-year-old prairie boy. He wondered how many other green crews out there in the wide blue yonder were on their first mission, like his crew was, with a brand-spanking new B-17G fresh from the Boeing factory in the States to play with.
“PILOT TO CREW. TEN THOUSAND FEET. PUT OXYGEN MASKS ON.”
Tooney wrapped the rubber piece around his mouth and studied the oxygen indicator beside him. Four hundred pounds pressure. He reached under his seat to plug in his heated flying suit.
“PILOT TO GUNNERS. TEST YOUR GUNS.”
Sergeant Tooney gripped the handles of his twin Browning .50-calibre guns, his peashooters, as he referred to them. He had 250 rounds for each gun at his disposal — five armour piercing shells to one tracer — each gun preset to the thirty-two-foot wingspan of an ME-109. Accurate range of the guns at best were six hundred yards, although they were still deadly at one thousand yards. He fired three short bursts, deafened by the sound of his own guns... and saw the all-important tracers.
He sniffed. The smell of cordite hung heavy in the cold air, cutting through his rubber mask.
Hamburg
The civilian radar technician attached to Zerstorer Unit 22 picked up the blips on the screen as soon as they were of height over the North Sea, east of the East Anglia coast, and wasted no time in waving his supervisor over.
“What is it, Wolfgang?”
“Here they come in force, Herr Leyberger.”
“How many?” the supervisor asked.
“I’d guess two hundred to three hundred. Thirteen thousand feet on a heading of one-one-zero degrees.”
Visibly pleased, Leyberger tapped his technician on the shoulder. “Excellent. I will send out the alert to Loebitz airfield.”
Over the North Sea
At exactly 1105 hours, the bomber formation climbed... then levelled out. In the sub-stratosphere, condensati
on trails began to form off the engines in the stream. In Lady Luck’s belly, Tooney could feel every move and jitter of the aircraft. Despite the sun peering over his right shoulder, he started to feel the intense cold on his face. Small lines of frost formed on the Plexiglas window at his feet, but, thankfully, not enough to blur his vision. He wiggled his toes in his boots, and pulled his insulated cap down closer to his eyebrows. It was going to get chilly.
“NAVIGATOR TO PILOT. ENEMY COAST COMING... IN TWO MINUTES.”
“ROGER.”
“WE SHOULDN’T EXPECT ANY FLAK. NOT IN THIS CLOUD.”
“WE HOPE. PILOT OUT.”
Tooney looked down at a jagged light-brown crease outlined by white surf. The coast. Tooney spotted snow and ground patches below. This was not friendly territory. He was over Germany for the first time in his life. His stomach tightened. He was in the presence of the enemy, in the range of their radar, their fighters, and their anti-aircraft guns.
“PILOT TO CREW. KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN FOR FIGHTERS.”
Sergeant Tooney saw a set of specks off to his right, appearing to move crosswise into the bomber formation. Distance, a few miles. They were closing. Fast! He remembered the flashcard images of German fighters and aircraft identification exercises back at the base. This was no drill. This was the real thing.
He counted the objects.
Two... four... six...
He pinched his throat mike. “BALL GUNNER TO PILOT. I SEE A BUNCH OF FIGHTERS. EIGHT O’CLOCK LEVEL. COMING STRAIGHT FOR US!”
“CALM DOWN. BE SPECIFIC,” the pilot, the crew’s voice of discipline, said. “WHAT ARE THEY? HOW MANY? ARE THEY OURS?”
“FOCKE-WULF 190’S, SIR. TEN... NO TWELVE. HERE THEY COME!”
Tooney went for his gun grips, but all twelve enemy fighters rolled over and flew by flat out, too rapidly for him to even get away a single round. He cursed under his breath. Gunner training back home over the Gulf of Mexico was never like this. He glanced to the side. They were heading for the low squadrons.