1945

by Newt Gingrich

  "No," Jim replied flatly. "I've had a lot of combat kills, but I've never done a field op."

  "Well then thanks for the advice, Martel." Johnson took the map from Jim's hand, turned away and motioned for his team to gather round. When they had done so he went on: "There's this bridge at the edge of the property. We'll have to turn onto it, so we won't be going that fast. But by the time we get to the far side of it we'll be going in like gangbusters. With our lights out, they won't know we're coming until we're on top of them."

  "What if there's a spotter on the bridge?" Martel asked.

  "They might have a spotter out there, but I don't think so. Whether they do or not, our best bet is speed and surprise. We'll give 'em the message before the spotter can." He nodded toward one of his men. "Gary, you drive the first car. If the hangar door is open even a little bit, smash straight in. Otherwise gain entrance as best you can. If there's any resistance at all, that's what Thompsons are for. I'll be driving the second vehicle. We'll pull up by the side of the house opposite the hangar and charge in. Kevin, you drive the third car. Your group holds back in reserve. You'll decide just what to do when you see where the action is. My bet is we'll all converge on the hangar, but we'll see, won't we? Okay, let's go to work." Johnson turned and walked to one of the waiting government cars and climbed in, motioning for Jim to join him.

  Jim started to do so, then paused to look quizzically at Harriman

  Take care of yourself, Martel."

  "Not coming along?"

  Harriman shrugged his shoulders. "General Marshall is coming in for the meetings with the Los Alamos crowd. Donovan absolutely requires an OSS presence on site for the duration of his visit. He gave me a direct order to stick with Marshall no matter what. Otherwise . . . otherwise nothing." He smiled painfully. "Besides, if it is Skorzeny you're tagging out there, I think we need someone inside Oak Ridge to rub Graves's nose in it."

  Jim nodded in silent commiseration. Donovan was right, but it sure must be painful to be Harriman just now.

  Harry's 5:40 P.M.

  "Well?" Standing just behind the half-open hangar doors, where he could observe without being observed, Otto Skorzeny had been waiting for Gunther to return.

  "We've got a strong radio signal, almost on top of us, I've been monitoring the channel for the last hour. We could have detected it from in here."

  Skorzeny led Gunther back into the corner of the hangar where he had set up a portable radio directional finder. "Frequency?"

  "Military, one of the channels used by their OSS transmitters. Here, let me set it for you." Gunther matched deed to word and stepped back. "He's been checking in every half hour. It's almost time for him to do it again."

  Gunther leaned against the hangar wall as Skorzeny began to work the radio, his right hand on the directional dial. For a while there was only static, but then a transmitter clicked on.

  "White Knight reporting. No activity."

  "Black Knight, our guests have arrived. Expect us for dinner."

  The signal clicked off. Skorzeny turned the dial slightly, centering the directional needle, and then sat back. "The

  bearing points right down the runway," he said quietly. "He's sitting up on the ridge."

  "'Guests for dinner,'" Gunther repeated.

  "Yes. I think we ought to expect company before very long." Skorzeny leaned back, contemplating his options. It was still five hours until the strike. If they took off in the Cubs now, whoever was coming would have time to vector in fighters over Oak Ridge. The last thing he wanted to do was arrange for a reception committee. Even a committee of only two or three would play havoc with a stream of unescorted 264s coming in at low level. No, leaving now was out of the question.

  "It's almost six o'clock. We're not supposed to leave for another three hours. Let's just wait. If they're going to do anything, they'll contact their man here first. If they've sent a heavy force we can block them, force them to deploy. That will give us time to get out. If it's a small unit..." He smiled. "They will serve as an appetizer before the main course."

  "How's everything else?" Gunther asked.

  "The flight's on schedule. The strike on Los Alamos just turned into Mexican territory as well, and no one's reported it so far."

  Skorzeny went to the back of the hangar and looked out assessingly. The grass along the side of the runway was nearly thigh high. Then he moved past some crates to the comer door that led to the cellar and called down.

  "Alfred, get up here."

  Alfred's head stuck up through the cellar door.

  "We've got company," Skorzeny said. "Take a Schmeisser, a silenced Luger, and a hand-held radio. Go out the back door. Use the high grass for concealment. Get inside the woods, then work your way down to the end of the runway. From there, ease up to the ridgeline and acquire our friend. We're pretty sure it's one man. If we're wrong about that, just call in and we'll send a team. Otherwise wait for further orders."

  Alfred went back down into the cellar and returned minutes later wearing a camouflage smock. "Good to get out for some fun." Slipping out the back door of the hangar, he went down low and disappeared into the matted grass.

  Nodding to Gunther to stay on the directional finder, Skorzeny joined the rest of his team where they lounged on makeshift cots in the cellar. "We are expecting some visitors shortly," Skorzeny announced as he went over to the far wall and motioned for some help lowering a crate. "All of you get into camouflage and be ready to move."

  As he spoke he pulled the lid back on the crate and lifted out a Panzerschreck. Looking over at his men he hefted the beast and smiled. "Won't our guests be surprised?"

  6:20 P.M.

  Just South of Harry's

  "Black Knight to White."

  There was a click as Mason's transmitter came on line.

  "White Knight here."

  "Anything?"

  "As they say in the movies, it's quiet, too quiet."

  Jim looked over at Johnson.

  "We go in as planned then," Johnson announced.

  Jim shrugged and spoke into the mike. "Dinner in ten minutes. Stay put."

  "Roger that," Mason replied.

  Johnson leaned out the window of his car, motioned for the two vehicles behind him to get ready, and then looked back at Jim. "Relax. We have them in the bag, and the Pacific ace gets to be a hero all over again."

  "Yeah. Right." So Johnson had a problem with that.... Speaking of the Great Pacific War, this felt worse than Leyte Gulf.

  6:21 P.M.

  Gunther looked up from the radio. '"Dinner in ten minutes.'"

  Skorzeny grinned, and passed the Panzerschreck he was holding to Gunther, reached back into the wooden case for a second one and tossed it to Kurt. The third he kept for himself.

  "Go. You know your positions!" The team ghosted out of the hangar, headed for the ambush site. After watching them go, Skorzeny picked up his short-range radio and clicked it on.

  "Albert?"

  There were three clicks in reply. That meant that Albert was sitting right on top of his target.

  "Kill him!"

  6:22 P.M.

  Wayne clicked his radio off and raised his binoculars to scan the airfield one last time.

  Damn, it had been a long twenty-four hours. Maybe, if they wrapped this up, he could still get back to Sarah by tomorrow night. Sarah—he was a bit nervous about it, but he couldn't wait to see her reaction when she saw what was in the little jeweler's box. He smiled in anticipation. Was it the six months she'd played hard-to-get, or what he'd got when she'd stopped playing? He wasn't sure. He just knew he wanted it for the rest of his life.

  Suddenly he was dying for a cigarette. What the hell, in five minutes the game went down anyhow. Even if the bad guys saw a flicker, they wouldn't have time to investigate. It might even provide a distraction. Having properly rationalized what he was going to do, Wayne pulled a Camel out of his breast pocket and reached for his Zippo, opening it as he did so. Usually that was a co
ol move, with flame leaping the instant the lighter saw daylight. This time, it snagged on his pocket and, already lit, jumped out of his hand and made for the tall grass. Or would have, except that with a fighter pilot's unconscious speed he jerked forward and caught it before it landed. Crack!

  6:35 P.M.

  There hadn't been much conversation on the trip in, and there wasn't any now as they turned into the rutted road and approached the little bridge. Had things not been so chilly Martel might have questioned the way their little caravan was bunched up. Well, he supposed, in a surprise raid you got everybody across fast, so that the target would not have time to react—bunching up being the price you paid for speed. He sure hoped their arrival was indeed a surprise, though. The car in front clattered onto the bridge, with the other two close behind.

  "What the—shit!" was Johnson's startled comment as he saw a dark figure step in front of the car in front of them and raise some sort of tube.

  Following a fighter pilot's instinct, Jim swiveled himself backward to "check six," and saw a second figure step out and point a similar tube at the car behind them. Before he could inform Johnson of that, a round slammed through the windshield of the car ahead and detonated inside.

  Johnson had already slammed on the brakes, and while the car skidded on the wooden planks of the bridge slapped the gears into reverse. Just as the car started to accelerate backward, the car behind them, also on the bridge now, exploded in its turn.

  "Out! Out!" Johnson screamed as he braked again.

  Jim struggled with the door handle, and even as he jerked it upwards he saw a third round coming almost straight at him. The irrelevant thought passed through his mind that if he'd been in a plane he'd have had a full second to kick in aileron and rudder and maybe dodge the shot. The door was opening, but far too slowly .. . and the rocket-propelled warhead missed the windshield with nearly an inch to spare. Shrieking its frustration, the Panzerschreck round crossed the road obliquely to blow up a tree on the other side. The exhaust vapors that swirled in through the car's open window stank like Hell itself.

  The door had opened enough now and Jim dived out, slamming against the wooden side-railing of the bridge. Urged on by the sound of a Schmeisser hammering rounds into the car he had just exited, he tumbled over the side, falling half a dozen feet into the muddy creek below as the Schmeisser continued to search for him.

  Looking up, he saw that one of Johnson's men had made it part-way out of the back door but was jerking spasmodically as half a dozen rounds stitched up his body. Another agent made it out of the car in a rolling tumble, but as he gathered himself to run, he took a hit in the shoulder that spun him half around and back to one knee. Before the Schmeisser could find him again he had regained his footing and sprinted around the back of the car and into the woods.

  As this was happening, Jim heard a splash on the other side and saw Johnson rising back up out of the water, pulling a forty-five semiautomatic out of its shoulder holster as he did so. Feeling foolish at his omission, Jim fumbled for his own.

  Aside from an afternoon's OSS orientation before coming down here, it had been years since he had last fired a handgun. The Thompsons and grenades, for which accuracy was no great requirement and might therefore have given him, with his off-the-charts reflexes, an edge, were half a dozen feet above him in the car they had just vacated. They might as well have been on the Moon.

  With a suddenness that was nearly as startling as the impact of the first Panzerschreck, the firing ceased. Shouted commands echoed in the silence ... in German. "Friedrich, Wilhelm, take the bridge! Two got out there; they must be hiding in the water. The rest come with me after the two who ran!"

  Jim looked over to where Johnson was crouched under the bridge, pistol raised and waiting, then slid over to cover the other side. . . . What was that smell? Christ! Gasoline was trickling down from the shattered car overhead and spreading out on the water. If they stayed in the water, all it would take to kill both of them was a single match. Jim looked over at Johnson, pointed at the trickle.

  Johnson, not lacking in courage, nodded and eased up the side of the embankment and peered over. An instant later he flopped back down into the muddy water. The top of his head was gone.

  Jim scurried back under the center of the bridge, clawed his way up the embankment so that his back was pressed up against its wooden planks. Half a dozen feet from him the gasoline continued to spill down.... Since Leyte, the prospect of being trapped in a fighter going down in flames with gasoline spewing into the cockpit had been his special dread. A dull plop sounded near to where Johnson lay. What could it be but a grenade?

  Covering his face with his hands, Martel waited for the end. But Johnson proved a better shield in death than he had in life. The grenade had fallen so that most of its force and shrapnel were expended on a corpse. What remained of it showered Jim with mud and bits of Johnson. An instant later there was an explosive whoomf as the gasoline caught in the backwater under the bridge ignited. The fireball washed around him, stinging the backs of his hands where they protected his face.

  He had survived the blast, but unless he did something to change things, in seconds he would still die, and a far worse death it would be than merely being blasted apart. He uncoiled from his fetal crouch and slid down, evading the worst of the rising heat trapped under the bridge. A Schmeisser snarled to his left. He saw someone standing by the side of the bridge, crouching down and firing toward the other side of the creek, where Johnson's tattered body lay.

  Jim raised his forty-five and squeezed off a round, catching his man in the leg, spinning him around. The man looked toward him, startled, as if Jim had somehow cheated by not being where he was supposed to be. Jim continued to fire. His next two missed, but the fourth round blew a hole through the Germans chest, causing him to collapse into the burning creek.

  Just as he started to hope, the flame-covered water began to froth as splinters showered down from above and holes appeared in the wooden planking. Some bastard was shooting through the bridge. Jim aimed straight up ... no, the car was there ... he aimed farther back toward the edge of the bridge and fired off his three remaining rounds —the Schmeisser s track went wide in an arcing curve, and then fell silent. Lucky shot. Well, he'd had precious little luck lately.

  Sliding through the mud Jim crawled out to the edge of cover offered by the bridge. He had to move now, before he succumbed to the fumes .. . scrambling up the side of the embankment, he crouched back down for a brief instant, and by the edge of the bridge he saw his second man—the bullet had caught him in the mouth. Lucky shot, indeed.

  From the woods to the north of the bridge loud shrieks suddenly cut through the silence —the words were not comprehensible, though they were English. One more shot, and silence. Then more shots echoed in the woods. Schmeissers. A forty-five answered, but only once. Skorzeny s crew was hunting down the other survivor. Jim fought down the temptation to try to help. It, was useless ... he tried to block out the heart-rending cries of the last OSS agent after the hunters had brought him to bay.

  Apparently they were trying to extract a little information before sending him on his way.

  Nerving himself, he ran crouching to the car he had ridden in. The radio was smashed. He reached into the back seat, dragging out one Thompson and snatching the clip from the second. No longer at quite such a horrible disadvantage now, he slipped into the woods.

  6:45 P.M.

  Otto Skorzeny drifted like a phantom from tree to tree. The air was heavy with cordite. The stink of it competed with the smell of resin on the shoulder of his jacket from when he had brushed against a wounded pine. He slipped out of the woods and up onto the road and approached the edge of the bridge. He paused for a second, kneeling down to touch Wilhelm's carotid artery... nothing.

  He crept up to the side of the burning bridge and peered over . . . Friedrich was floating facedown in the muddy creek, the back of his uniform smoldering from the lire that still flickered across
the water.

  He moved to the other side of the bridge and saw one of the two Americans half-submerged on the other side.

  No, it wasn't him. There had been a moment of recognition when the OSS men got out of the car—one of them was Martel. He scanned the ground by the embankment, and within seconds picked up the trail: muddy tracks and, here and there, a spot of blood. The hunt was still on.

  He held up his hand and motioned for one of his team to come forward.

  "You were supposed to hit the middle car," Skorzeny hissed. "At that range it should have been impossible to miss."

  Kurt nodded, unable to offer any defense for his poor shooting with the Panzerschreck. True, to call them inaccurate weapons was an understatement, but had he aimed lower, not tried for perfection, he couldn't have missed. "We tore the car apart anyhow," Kurt finally whispered.

  Skorzeny fixed him with an icy gaze. "Friedrich and Wilhelm are dead because of your disgusting ineptitude. If we both survive I'll not forget this."

  Kurt lowered his head.

  Skorzeny continued angrily, "By missing, you gave them seconds of warning. Their leader was in that car! That means the radio was in there too. What if they were transmitting at the moment we struck? They could have gotten a signal out. The whole plan was to wipe them out before they could possibly do that. Now, we don't know."

  Probably they had not been transmitting, but there was always the chance. A backup team—or for that matter a company of MPs — could be on its way, and they would not be taken unaware. He looked down at his watch. Six-fifty. "Get the rest of the team back to the hangar. Have the planes ready to lift off at the first sign of fresh company."

  Skorzeny checked the flare pistol at his belt. "Keep watch. If I set off a flare, get the hell out. If I'm still out there at," he paused again and looked at his watch, "at seven-ten, set off a yellow recall flare. If I don't respond within two minutes that means I'm either dead or pinned down. In that case Gunther will assume command. Gunther; you get yourself and the men the hell out of here."

  "You're not coming back with us now sir?"