by Tricia Goyer
Out of the corner of her eye, she detected movement in the cornfields beyond the flare line. “We better make a run for it—now!”
Joseph threw his satchel over his shoulder, and he and Gabi set off for the Junkers, less than one hundred meters away.
“Run!” cried another voice.
Gabi glanced back and gasped as she watched a German soldier ramming a rifle butt between Pastor Leo’s shoulder blades. He screamed in pain and crumbled to the ground. The other men held their arms high as the Gestapo detail surrounded them with raised rifles.
Joseph paused.
“Run as fast as you can, and don’t look back!” Gabi shoved him hard. They had to get on that plane . . .
The pair set off as if they were jumping out of the sprinters’ blocks at the Olympic Games. Joseph reached the Junkers first, slung in his satchel, and hauled himself inside.
Gabi pumped her arms for the final dash to the finish line. She had just another twenty meters to go when arms wrapped around her waist, and her body slammed to the dirt. Gabi’s chin knocked the ground, causing her head to snap back. Pain shot through her chest. She struggled to rise. Struggled to breathe.
“Get up!” ordered a German voice.
Gasping for air, Gabi brought herself to her knees. She turned and attempted to focus on the man before her. Narrow eyes spoke of unrequited anger. A scrunched mouth that revealed gritted teeth. And then she saw it . . . the black trench coat—Gestapo!
The Gestapo chief grabbed her by the scruff of her neck. Gabi shrieked as he tightened his grasp. “To the plane!” He seized her left wrist, lifting and twisting until she complied.
Joseph stood in the open doorway, transfixed like a stone monument. The Junkers’ engines suddenly increased pitch, and the plane settled against the brakes.
Gabi kicked the German’s shins, diverting his attention momentarily. “Go, Joseph! Go without me!”
“Halt!” The voice sounded in her ear. Then she felt the cold metal of the pistol against her head. “Make one move,” the Gestapo chief called to Joseph, “and she’s dead.”
Then, just as quickly as she was captured, Gabi felt herself free. She turned to see the Gestapo chief crashing to the ground. Another taller German officer lifted his fist, then cracked it flush against the right temple of his trench-coated leader. If Gabi hadn’t seen it for herself, she would have never believed it.
“Run, Fräulein!” yelled the younger Gestapo officer as he pinned his superior to the ground. The Gestapo in the black trench coat, after a moment of disorientation, shook off the blow and landed his own right fist. The older one pawed for his pistol somewhere in the dirt.
Gabi scampered for the Junkers as the two Gestapo officers rolled in the grass. Joseph braced himself in the door, waving his arms at her in encouragement. She dove for the doorway, landing on the edge, half inside, half dangling outside. Joseph grabbed her jacket and left arm and dragged her inside.
“Close the door!” Gabi shouted.
Joseph swiveled the door shut, but failed to latch it.
“Here, let me—” Gabi scrambled to her feet and reached around Joseph for the handle. She shoved the door open about a foot, slammed it shut, and swung the handle to ZU with a resounding click. Instantly, the Junkers surged ahead, throwing her and Joseph to the floor.
She lay there, drawing in breath after breath as the transport plane lurched along the bumpy field toward the ebony sky.
Bill pushed the three engines to maximum throttle. If he had his druthers—or more time—he would’ve taxied to the other end of the field and swung the plane around for a southeasterly takeoff into the wind. Instead, he was forced to take off with a northwesterly tailwind, meaning the Ju-52 would need a longer runway and fifteen to twenty more kph to reach takeoff speed.
With a deafening roar, the groundspeed rose rapidly. He reached over to wind the flaps, which he had set at 1/4, down even further. As the Junkers thundered through the bumpy alfalfa field, the improvised flare path came to an end—and the field made a dogleg right! A hard right rudder slewed the Ju-52 to the right—just missing a chestnut tree and causing the left wheel to lift off the ground. They teetered several seconds, but Bill didn’t reduce his takeoff speed. He couldn’t if they wanted any chance of getting out of Germany.
Trees ahead! Bill quickly glanced at his groundspeed gauge, which had inched past ninety kph . . . too slow, but it was now or never . . .
He willed her off the ground, hoping the extra flap would help. The Junkers floated for a second, then settled hard, bouncing higher—airborne for about three seconds—then hit once more.
C’mon, c’mon.
Finally, the trimotor plane left the terra firma, climbing to one hundred meters—just enough to clear the oak trees lining the perimeter of the Ulrich farmstead. As he teased her up, Bill rowed through the treetops while turning to a heading of 200°, which he calculated would track them south directly toward the Dübendorf airfield.
A flushed Gabi, breathing hard, stepped inside the cockpit. “Nice work,” she gasped.
“And nice work yourself,” Bill replied, noticing Joseph standing just beyond Gabi. “Was I seeing things, or did one Gestapo officer fight off another so you could escape?”
“I’m not sure what happened out there. I’m still shaking.”
She turned toward their new passenger. “Excuse me, do you speak English, Herr Engel?” she queried in High German.
“Not learn,” he replied in English.
“Never mind,” she continued in German. “I would like to introduce you to our pilot, Captain Bill Palmer with the United States of America Army Air Corps.”
The German made a step closer in the cramped cockpit, and Bill momentarily diverted his eyes from the instrument panel and shook the proffered hand. “Excuse me for being abrupt, but I want the two of you to be on the lookout for German fighters. I’m sure we set off a three-alarm fire back there.”
Gabi translated for Joseph’s benefit.
“But our biggest concern is this—” Bill tapped his right index finger on the fuel gauge, where the needle vibrated next to the numeral 3, signifying around 300 liters of fuel. “We’re just under a quarter of a tank since I burned extra gas while we were on the ground. The longer takeoff siphoned off more fuel too.”
Gabi sat down in the copilot’s seat. “Do we have enough petrol to make it back to Switzerland?”
Bill shrugged. “You seem to be a religious person. I’d start praying. A lot.”
As the Junkers Ju-52 slipped southward in the moonlit sky, Kassler’s rage overwhelmed him. He turned the Luger around in his hand and took a step toward Becker, who was on his knees with his hands upraised.
“It was you! You were the treasonous vermin!” Kassler raised his pistol and struck Becker in the head once, then twice as he pistol-whipped the young corporal.
“I should shoot you now, but the Interrogation Room would be more appropriate—to make you suffer.” Kassler took a deep breath as he fought for control. “Wait. I have a better idea. I will personally deliver you to the Reichsführer’s office. I hear that Himmler has perfected the art of skin-peeling after finding the right technique with the Auschwitz prisoners. Get up and march!”
Kassler, with gun drawn, walked behind Becker toward the dying embers of the bonfire. Five underground members stood with their hands on their heads under the guard of the Gestapo contingent. As the men locked eyes with Becker, Kassler realized this personal aide had been in cahoots with these farmers all along. He would not wait for Himmler—nor could he wait.
“Halt!” Kassler walked around Becker, who froze in his step. “Everybody—kneel on the ground! Right here!”
With hands raised, Pastor Leo and the others approached Becker, and the six fell to their knees.
“How did you all work together?” Kassler demanded.
No one said a word.
“Were you responsible for intercepting Engel?”
Again, Kassler was gr
eeted with silence.
“What’s the matter, Becker? You lost your tongue?”
The corporal cleared his throat, and once more his Adam’s apple bobbled. “Once I talk, you’ll shoot me. I saw you do this a hundred—”
Kassler’s nostrils flared in anger. “Do not address me in that manner!” He approached the kneeling Becker until he stood two meters away and pointed his Luger directly into the corporal’s face. “My instincts tell me that I should kick your scrawny butt all the way to Heidelberg and wring every last bit of information out of you before putting you on a train to Berlin, but I don’t care. You betrayed me, and the sentence I impose upon you is death. The rest of you”—the Gestapo chief waved his gun at Pastor Leo, his brother, sister-in-law and the others—“are next.”
Kassler squared his shoulders and steadied his pistol to eye level. “Auf Wiedersehen, Corporal Becker. Eins—” Kassler’s hand remained rock still.
“Zwei.”
The clicking sound of a half-dozen bolt-action rifles diverted Kassler’s attention momentarily. His mouth opened in surprise as he turned and saw the guns of the other Gestapo soldiers turned on him. And as he glanced at their faces, he knew they were not Gestapo at all . . .
Then several volleys shattered the tension.
Sturmbannführer Bruno Kassler, his skull and upper torso fractured by copper-jacketed projectiles, fell backward into the field, arms akimbo. A gusher of blood ran down his face, and starburst-like entrance wounds filled his black trench coat.
Becker hustled over, beating his friends from the underground church—the ones he recruited that evening to be part of his Gestapo detail—to see what happened. “He’s dead— look at the eyes.”
Pastor Leo worked his way past the scrum and reached for Kassler’s left wrist. He pressed on the radial artery for thirty seconds before letting the limp arm fall to the ground.
“Brother Benjamin is right. It’s Judgment Day for this monster.”
31
Somewhere over Southern Germany
4:53 a.m.
Remember, the plane doesn’t know it’s dark outside.
Bill Palmer spun the pilot’s proverb around in his mind like the ever-spinning propellers as he concentrated on piloting the Junkers Ju-52 through the black void beyond the Plexiglas windscreen. He stifled a yawn, knowing he would need all his faculties to return them safely to the ground—wherever that happened to be.
What kept him alert was the amount of fuel—or lack thereof—remaining in the plane’s wing tanks. Fuel gauges were notoriously unreliable, but that thought did little to assuage Bill’s concern with the fuel needle’s steady march toward 0—or 0 x 100 liters. Time to make contingency plans.
“What did Mr. Dulles say about the radio?” Bill asked.
Gabi glanced over at the bulky radio box that she had set down next to the center console. “He said that it has a special frequency to reach him directly. The closer we are to Switzerland, the more likely we can establish radio contact. I couldn’t drum them up ten minutes ago. How much longer do we have?”
“A good hour to touchdown in Dübendorf. We should see the Rhine in forty-five minutes if the prevailing winds hold.” Bill looked over his right shoulder at Joseph Engel, who stood in the cockpit doorway with a pensive look on his face. Bill knew their German passenger would really have something to worry about if he realized they had no more than forty- five minutes of fuel, according to his reckoning. No way they would be landing the Iron Annie in Dübendorf today. Bill was shooting for any Swiss farm field south of the Rhine.
They told him in flight school that flying was the second greatest thrill known to mankind—and a safe landing was the first. Despite the chill in the cockpit, Bill felt damp patches forming under his armpits as he scanned the instrument panel one more time. The altimeter hovered around 1,500 meters—close to 5,000 feet off the deck. They needed the elevation since the Schwarzwald—the famous Black Forest— was coming up.
He glanced out the windows again, worried that the Krauts would unleash a fighter in their direction. Once a Focke-Wulf 190 had him in his reflector gun sights, they had bought the farm. Maneuverability was not the Ju-52’s strong suit.
Bill was surprised that bogeys weren’t already in the air since the Gestapo was part of the welcoming party back at that farmhouse. Surely someone in charge had radioed a nearby aerodrome and sent a fighter in pursuit. Maybe the rumors that Goering’s Luftwaffe was a shell of itself—a paper tiger—were true. Maybe the Krauts didn’t have a plane to send after them since the Nazis had their hands full on two fronts—and were losing on both.
Suddenly, a crimson flash burst several hundred yards in front of the plane, followed by the thud of its report. Then another . . . and another . . . like a sea of cherry-red umbrellas popping open from a sudden spring shower. The Junkers bounced and wallowed in the turbulence for several moments as more vivid explosions erupted in their vicinity. They were in a turkey shoot, and they were the turkey!
“What’s happening?” Gabi hung on tighter as the Ju-52 shuddered from the shock waves.
Bill had experienced dozens of aerial attacks in the past. “An anti-aircraft battery is hammering us with flak!” Eerie whumping sounds carried over the engines’ droning, and shards of razor-sharp shrapnel pinged off the corrugated aluminum skin like golf-ball-sized hail striking a car roof. Bill fought to control the sudden changes of pitch and yaw.
“They must have spotted the Swiss cross in the moonlight!” Bill pushed the ship down, then steered right to avoid the next flak barrage and make their profile more difficult to detect.
Gabi braced herself in the copilot’s seat, but Joseph— standing in the cockpit doorway—fell in a heap from a sudden lurch and scrambled into a passenger seat. The ship shuddered as Bill continued to bank hard right. When he felt certain they were out of range, he leveled out the Junkers and resumed their original course heading.
Bill stared through the Plexiglas toward the barely visible southern horizon and wondered how much precious fuel the escape dive had burned up. That was the last thing they needed.
“Steady as she goes,” he said, hoping his matter-of-fact voice would quell any panic inside the cockpit. “We should be fine—”
Another round of flak popped up around the aircraft like red Christmas lights, and a couple of loud bangs jostled the Junkers. This time when Bill took evasive action, the steering felt heavy and unresponsive.
“Look—the engine,” Gabi shouted. “Fire!”
Bill couldn’t see much more than the radial cowling and windmilling prop of No. 3 engine from his left seat. He peered at his instrument panel to make some sense—and sure enough, the oil pressure on the right engine was rapidly dropping.
“Flames! We’re on fire!” Gabi cried.
Bill’s damage-control training kicked in. He immediately closed the right fuel shutoff valve and pitched the Junkers into another dive, but this time at a much steeper angle.
“Everyone hang on! This is the only way to extinguish the flames!”
The bulky transport shuddered from the strain as Bill pushed the nose down farther, pointing her to the ground floor. The Junkers accelerated to 225 kph . . . 245 . . . 265, and the G forces squashed Bill into his seat. He dared a half-second glance toward Gabi, who was frozen in her seat. He squeezed the steering wheel with a white-knuckle grip to maintain steady control, and when he reached 600 meters in altitude, he leveled out the Junkers.
Audible gasps of relief swept through the cockpit.
“Gabi, how are we doing? Is the engine fire out?”
He saw Gabi tentatively look over her shoulder. “We’re good! Fire’s out!”
Bill whispered a silent prayer of thanks—and felt like he was getting more religious by the minute. Another glance at his altimeter revealed they were down to 500 meters. He immediately initiated a steady climb since the Schwarzwald foothills were coming up, then he checked the fuel gauge again. What he saw caused bile to rise in his st
omach. Now the needle was clearly hovering below the numeral 2. Any reserve had evaporated in the last five minutes, and losing an engine meant that he had to run the remaining two props with more power—and burn more fuel.
Gabi didn’t know how much more she could take.
Her stomach roiled from the plunge into the darkness, and her taut nerves put her on edge. If she survived this flight, she told herself, she would never board an aeroplane again in her life. But first, she needed to know where they stood.
She pursed her lips. “Will we reach Switzerland?”
Bill took his eyes off the instrument panel and made eye contact. “The good news is that we’re still in the air. The bad news is that we may not have enough fuel to escape Germany.”
Gabi felt her stomach spasm. “We’re that low on petrol?”
Bill drummed his thumbs on the steering column. “I didn’t want to worry you, but we left Dübendorf with a tad more than half a tank. It’s too bad that your General Guisan didn’t get us topped off, but in the confusion of getting out of there—”
Gabi took a look at the fuel gauge, which was fluttering between the 2 and 1 marks. “Is there anything we can do?”
“Not much except to stretch the fuel as far as we can.” He reached over to the pedestal and set his right hand on the fuel tank selector, which had three positions: L, Alle, and R. “I’m taking it that L means left and R means right,” he said.
“Rechts and links—yes, right and left.”
“Instead of running both tanks down, we’ll run the right tank bone dry and then switch over to the left tank when the engines start to cough. I want to make sure we use every last drop of fuel.”
“But what if we run out of fuel before the border?” Gabi stole a look at Joseph Engel, who was standing in the cockpit doorway again. She could see worry written all over his brow.
“Then we’ll glide across the Rhine.”
Gabi motioned for Joseph to come closer and relayed their getting-dire-by-the-minute fuel situation. In the faint glow of interior lighting, she saw his face turn pale.