V4 Vengeance

by Nigel Seed

  “There was also a multi stage missile that was a development of the V2 rocket and was called the A10. That was intended to hit New York and other cities, when launched from Germany, but it was never finished. The one very few people know about was the V4 which is what you have found for me. The V4 was to be the Kriegsmarine’s contribution to Hitler’s vengeance.”

  He paused and took another heavy swig from his whisky glass, which had been quietly refilled by his servant.

  “The Germans could have won the war in Western Europe, but they abandoned the invasion of England and turned on my country, Russia. That was a foolish error, as we all know. They might have gone back to the invasion of England later, but America entered the war and changed everything. The V4 was the vengeance weapon to punish America. These submarines were designed to sail close to large American cities near the east coast and from their decks to launch modified V1 flying bombs. The terror would have been incredible. The US homeland was not prepared for war and no real precautions had been taken. They did not even turn off their lights in the cities, so confident were they that they were untouchable. Luckily for them, the war ended just before the V4 system could be deployed.”

  Jim was taken by surprise. The significance of the V4 markings on the conning towers had not occurred to him.

  “But why are you prepared to spend so much money to get hold of these submarines? And it won’t be easy to get one out, by the way.”

  “Major Wilson, you cut straight to the point. That is good, I like that. In the turmoil in Russia as the communist state collapsed and we moved to democracy, there were remarkable opportunities for men like me to make money, a lot of money. I have more money now than I could spend in a dozen lifetimes. So I want to use that money to rebuild Russian pride in ourselves and our country. When my country was invaded by the Germans and their allies, millions of our people were slaughtered. There are crumbling monuments to our heroes all over Russia and the Ukraine. But nowhere is there a museum that shows the true extent of what we did. One of the finest armies from one of the most technically advanced countries in the world attacked us and we won. Our people are starting to forget what we as a nation achieved. It was the Russians who stopped Hitler and it was not so easy. I want to tell that story to rebuild Russian pride in our history and achievements. One of these boats will be a major part of that.”

  Ivan leaned forward and said, “Hang on, sir. These boats never went to war, so how are they part of that?”

  “A good question, my friend. If Russia had not destroyed the German army and drained their forces away from the Western front, the British and Americans would not have reached as far as they did, as fast as they did. These boats were mere days, maybe even hours, away from being ready and they would have launched from this base and their missiles would have rained down on American cities, killing many of their people. I want the Americans to understand that. They owe us much more than they ever knew.”

  Jim looked at his team. They were nodding. It was a good argument and the museum a worthwhile goal.

  “You know about the bodies in the base, I take it?” Jim said.

  Romanov put down his glass. “Yes, Mr. Smith called me about them. My countrymen were used as slave labor and then murdered to keep the secret. They will have a heroes’ burial, all together, next to my museum on the Black Sea coast.”

  “That works for me, boss,” said Ivan and Geordie agreed.

  “OK, Mr Romanov, as you can see, on that basis, we have no problem carrying on working with you.”

  Romanov was pleased. “Good,” he said and turned toward his servant. Jim was surprised to see him still there, his talent for fading into the background was very well developed.

  “Andrei more of my good whisky for my friends!”

  Chapter 10

  In the morning they climbed into the big blue Land Rover and headed out to the base, leaving the large saloon cars behind. It was a tight fit as all three of the bodyguards insisted on coming along and crammed themselves into the drop down seats in the cargo area. As they drove up the hill track to the tent they had left on site; they saw three local teenagers wandering up from the other side. The bodyguards reached under their jackets and prepared to jump from the still moving vehicle.

  “No! Stay where you are!”

  Jim knew they didn’t understand him, but his meaning was clear and years of command had given him the manner to get people’s attention. They stopped the vehicle and taking their cue from Jim, all climbed out casually. Jim nodded to Ivan who steered the leather jacketed men away from the youngsters.

  “Geordie, time for you to do your thing.”

  Geordie grinned and walked over to the inquisitive visitors. His German was good, if a little rusty, and soon he had them walking into the white tent.

  “Will he hold them in there?” said Romanov.

  “Nothing so dramatic. Wait.”

  After a little less than fifteen minutes the teenagers left the tent with Geordie following them, still inviting them back. They accelerated away from him.

  Smith turned to Jim “How did you do that?”

  “You remember those odd items that I asked for? Roman pottery, broken Roman pottery in fact. Well Geordie has just been telling them far more than they ever wanted to know about the significance of two-thousand-year-old broken Roman pottery. He has bored them away. They should tell all their friends how dull we are and with luck they will avoid us like the plague.”

  “But how does he come to know so much about Roman pottery?”

  “He doesn’t. He knows damn all about it, but Sergeants are famous for coming up with convincing stories to get themselves out of trouble. He has just woven them a little boring fantasy.” Jim looked around, “Mr Romanov, can I suggest one of your friends stays up here for security? And please tell him to be discreet, we really do not want to attract attention.”

  Romanov called his men over and briefed one of them, then he and the other two walked up to the entrance hatch that was now open. Ivan and Smith had already gone down. The rest of the group followed quickly.

  As Jim landed on the deck of the middle submarine he looked at the three Russians. All of them were staring around, taken by surprise by the sheer scale of the base.

  “What would you like to see first?”

  Romanov looked at him with wide eyes, “Everything.”

  The next hour passed with Jim showing the Russians and Smith around the base, pointing out the things they had found. They were quiet when standing by the fourth dry dock, staring down at a war crime. The maneuvering dock impressed them and they wanted to know how to make it work.

  Jim explained. “We have yet to get in there and see what the Germans did to disable it. After that we can see if it is possible to bring it back to a working condition.”

  While the tour was going on Ivan and Geordie had continued their own exploration of other parts of the base. As Jim climbed back out of the conning tower after the inspection of the center U-Boat his two men were sitting on a crate by the gangplank, waiting for him.

  “Hi boss. We’ve found all sorts of fun things. Can we leave these guys to play while we show you?”

  “Is there anything we can send them off to look at?”

  “Yeah. Over behind the crates on the workshop area there is a green metal door that leads through into what looks like it was the Headquarters for the base. Nice little Officer’s Mess with a bar and some offices with desks that have papers scattered around. Quite a few bits of uniform lying about too, even one or two weapons. It looks like they all left in a bit of a hurry.”

  “That will do nicely.” He turned to see Romanov coming across the gangplank. “Mr. Romanov I think we have found something right up your street. Geordie, will you show Mr. Romanov to the HQ complex and then come back to me?”

  The Russians and Smith trailed behind the tall Englishman and went behind the stack of crates. Geordie reappeared moments later and they met at the rear of the dock basins.
r />   Jim looked at his team, “OK gents what have you got?”

  Ivan led the way to the large metal doors at the rear of the base. They had been heavily padlocked, but a large crowbar with Welsh muscle behind it had easily corrected that. He swung the door open and stood back. Jim looked past him and had to admit they really had found something. Lined up in the bay, on trollies just like the one he had seen inside the submarine, were row after row of V1 Flying Bombs. He walked in, counting as he went. There were thirty-two of them, with cradles ready for at least another twenty. He stood and looked at the size of the missile and its trolley, imagining the space he had seen inside the submarine.

  “My guess is that each sub will take ten of these,” he said turning to his team.

  “Yeah, that was our guesstimate as well,” said Geordie. “Quite a payload. Ten of these arriving in an unprepared city would have caused absolute chaos.”

  “That’s not quite all, boss. Come next door.”

  Ivan led the way as they walked around to the next bay.

  Jim looked above the double metal doors to read “Der Atem Des Drachen,” painted on the wall in Gothic script. The crowbar had done its work here as well. This bay was different. It was equipped as a laboratory of sorts. Nose cones that were clearly for the V1’s were lined up along a wide wooden wall bench and in front of each one was an aluminum frame with a mechanism attached. Across the room were large steel tanks and in front of these were cases of round glass canisters set into yellow foam padding. The middle of the room was taken up with chemical apparatus. There were protective suits and goggles hanging on racks and large ventilators set into the ceiling. There was something familiar about all this. It took a second or two for the memories to click back into place.

  “Oh my God. Do you know what this is?”

  “We were rather hoping you would know,” said Geordie.

  “When I was instructing Officer Cadets at Sandhurst, one of the PowerPoint lectures had a picture very similar to this in it. It was of the early years of the Chemical Warfare Research facility at Porton Down. This is a laboratory for assembling chemical warheads.”

  “Very good, Major,” said Romanov from the doorway. “We clearly picked the right man for this job.” Romanov walked into the laboratory and looked around. His bodyguards stayed in the doorway, watching. “Yes, the attack the Germans were planning on New York was to be chemical. Hitler had always shied away from using chemical warfare in Europe because he thought the allies had better chemical technology and would use it in retaliation. Maybe even that madman was horrified by the gas attacks he had seen during the First World War? Historians have always thought that the ‘D-1’ model of this missile, with its chemical warhead, was developed but never went into production. It seems they were wrong. By this stage of the war Hitler was getting desperate and wanted to truly terrorize the Americans so overcame his own horror of chemical warfare. Apparently he thought the outcry would be so great that the US would pull out of the war.”

  “So what gas is this material intended for?” asked Ivan.

  Romanov paused, looking at the tanks against the wall, then said, “My researchers tell me it was nerve agent. The Germans had been working on three very effective types, but all had problems. They were either too corrosive to store for long periods, or they deteriorated and lost their efficacy. This system was the solution, binary warheads. The nerve agent components were stored in different containers and were only mixed to form the toxic material as the missile had almost landed. It also made it much safer for the crews to handle. The missiles next door and these warheads, when launched from those submarines, constituted the V4 system and they were only days away from initiating the first attacks on New York when the Germans surrendered in May 1945.”

  “This lab is well named then,” said Jim.

  “What do you mean Major?”

  “The sign above the door as you came in reads ‘The Breath of the Dragon,’ which also explains the designs on the submarine conning towers.”

  Geordie had wandered across to one of the large stainless steel tanks and tapped the dials. “Err, boss. According to this gauge this tank is still pretty full.”

  Ivan stepped to the second tank and tapped the gauge on that one, “And this one.”

  Jim turned to Romanov. “You seem to be remarkably well informed about these missiles, especially since they were so secret. You must be aware this is pretty risky stuff to handle. If you won’t inform the German government, then we need a couple of very careful industrial chemists to deal with all of this and make it safe.”

  “I make it a point to be well informed before I commit to any enterprise, Major. And as for the chemists they are already on their way from one of my laboratories in Moscow. They should be here in a couple of days and should have made this safe by early next week.”

  Chapter 11

  Back in the main dock area Romanov turned to Jim. “Major, I think it is time for you and your team to solve our major problem.”

  “Which is?”

  “How are you going to get one of my boats out of here so that we can sail it around to my museum on the Black Sea?”

  Jim thought about it for a moment, “The big problem is going to be opening the front door and flooding the dry docks without destroying them,” he said. “The mechanisms are pretty old and we haven’t even found out how to open the main entrance yet. Plus, the Germans may have left some nasty surprises for us when they moved out of here.”

  “Indeed. Then I think I would be happy if you started solving those two problems for me.”

  Jim nodded, “You have one or two other small problems to solve.”

  Romanov had been turning away but stopped, “And they are?”

  “Those submarines have been there for seventy years or so. Seals could have dried out, if they weren’t properly prepared and batteries will have deteriorated. A thousand things could fail and if you are underwater that’s not what you want. It’s lucky the base has stayed so dry or there could have been major corrosion problems as well.”

  “All true, Major, but once we are on our way and clear of German territory, there will be very little time spent underwater. But you are of course correct and I have hired some submarine engineering experts, who are also on their way, to check which of these boats is in the best condition and to carry out whatever maintenance is needed. I may ask you to help them later.”

  Romanov turned and walked away, back toward the V1 storage warehouse.

  Jim turned to his team, “OK, you heard the man. Let’s go and solve some serious engineering problems.”

  They walked along the docks between the submarines until they came to the large maneuvering dock at the front end. They located a set of rungs set into the concrete and climbed down. As they walked across to the huge steel doors they could appreciate the scale of this place even more. The vision and skill of the engineers who had built all of this was truly staggering. Their methods in using prisoners of war as slave labor was considerably less impressive and the treatment of those men at the end was awful.

  They reached the doors and started to examine them. There was no water seepage around or under them, so presumably the other side must be dry. But it would be wise to check before opening them. If they got it wrong and managed to open the doors too quickly, the rush of water would be fatal to anybody in the dock and could well smash the inner dry dock doors protecting the three submarines.

  Ivan climbed the gates and identified a valve wheel on top of the adjoining coffer dam wall. It hadn’t been moved in a long time, but had been well greased before the base had been abandoned so a large amount of force from the big man’s shoulders and arms persuaded it to turn. They heard the valve operate within the wall, but nothing came from the inlet tube. It was a fair bet that it was completely dry on the other side. Ivan walked along the top of the gates, the wall of the cavern came down almost in line with the exterior wall of the maneuvering dock. Beyond the gates he could see that the hill
above appeared to have been partially collapsed into the entrance tunnel and concrete had been poured over that. Not a trivial task to remove safely. He dropped down another steel ladder to join the others.

  “As far as I can see, boss, the doors are safe to open. That should give us a good look at what we are going to have to deal with.”

  They identified the gate opening mechanisms, and after considerable effort and the judicious use of some favorite Army swear words, managed to free them. The doors themselves did not move. Climbing back up out of the maneuvering dock they brought one of the dock winches into use. Reeling out the cable, they connected it to the dock gates and started to reel it back in manually with the long winch handle. The cable tightened, vibrated, and strained. Jim and Ivan standing in the bottom of the dock retired to a safe distance; a cable of that size would be a little too exciting if it snapped and started to whip around the concrete basin. Little by little the dock gates gave up and swung slowly open to reveal the mass of material they were going to have to shift. It was just short of overwhelming. Luckily for Mr. Romanov, Royal Engineers are used to destroying large things and the mining expertise from Geordie gave them a real chance of success.

  They sat on the concrete floor of the maneuvering dock with their backs against the wall, staring at the pile of rubble in front of them that had to be shifted and wondering how deep it was. And even when they had blown it apart how the hell were they going to handle the huge mass of stone and debris, without heavy machinery like bulldozers?

  Smith’s head appeared over the dock above them, “Mr. Romanov was wondering how you were getting along?”

  Ivan looked up at him, “Just peachy. We just need a couple of picks and shovels and we’ll magic that lot out of there in no time.”

  Smith looked across to where Ivan was pointing, “Oh. I see your point. Can I help?”

  Jim looked up and said, “Actually you can. We need three sets of SCUBA gear, an inflatable dinghy and a compressor. Then we can take a look at this from both sides to make a full assessment.”