Alex Scarrow - A thousand suns

Lundstrom held out his hand. ‘Well, I wish you success with whatever it is you hope to achieve.’

‘Perhaps our little action will make a minor headline or two in some newspaper somewhere, and then you’ll find out what we’ve been up to.’

‘Maybe a footnote in a history book some day, eh?’

Koch smiled. ‘That would be nice.’ He nodded formally at Lundstrom before descending the ladder to return inside the sub and check one last time that all their field equipment had been bagged up and taken. A few moments later, the rest of his platoon spilled through the hatch on to the foredeck, followed by Koch. They quickly gathered together their firearms and wrapped them up in several waterproof canvas kit bags, then sorted themselves into three groups.

Lundstrom watched them with concern. Unlike seamen, these men were careless in the way they stood on the deck, close to the edge, not holding on to the railings, not keeping an eye on the sea for any approaching swells. They were men unused to the sea, and its ways.

Tonight, however, it seemed the Atlantic wasn’t thrashing as unkindly as it had promised. That and the good cloud cover as well. Perhaps fortune had decided to smile on this little endeavour.

Now that his part of the job was done, he wondered if he would hear any more about this operation after reporting back to Bergen. Maybe Koch was right; it would probably amount to no more than a small news item in the provincial newspaper that served this area of France. All eyes were on Berlin now.

‘ Thirty German bodies washed ashore near Nantes.’

‘Poor bastards,’ he muttered as he watched the first dinghy slide off the deck into the sea, and begin to bob unhappily as successive swells and troughs raised and dropped it by half a dozen feet.

The other two dinghies followed suit, and awkwardly, their inexperience showing, the men clambered down into them.

The last of Koch’s men scrambled down the side of the hull and the three inflatable rafts began to head away into the night, as paddles on all sides sliced into the foaming water.

He watched their painfully slow progress, as they seemed to move more up and down at the mercy of the swells than away towards land.

Ten minutes later, when Lundstrom could no longer make out the pale wake trailing Koch and his men, he ordered the helmsman to turn her around and head due north-west.

He sighed with relief, hoping this time he could take the U-1061 home to Bergen to await the end of the war in peace.

2.05 a.m., 29 April 1945, an airfield south of Stuttgart

Max had watched as the work assembling the cradle was done and the bomb, under the supervision of the recently arrived civilian, and under the cold gaze of the SS men who had come with him, had been carefully installed aboard the bomber.

The civilian had ordered his SS guards to continue watching the plane; none of the ground crew, nor the crew who were to fly it, were now permitted to approach it. Then the civilian had left the hangar for the bunker.

Max had also noticed the Major watching the whole process from a corner of the hangar, and as the civilian had departed, he had summoned Rall with a flick of his wrist. It appeared that all of a sudden this man was now calling the shots on the airfield. No longer did it seem to be the Major’s show.

That had been an hour ago. Max and the others now waited impatiently for the last of the fighters to be fuelled and the extra-large ammo canisters installed. Even carrying the extra ammunition drums, Schroder and his men would need to ensure they were careful to conserve what ammo they had. Yet another thing for them all to keep in mind.

Zero hour, Major Rall had promised, would be midnight, but the cradle had taken longer than planned. That was two hours of wasted night cover.

‘Shit!’ he muttered to himself. The waiting was getting to him. He slipped out through the hangar hatch door into the night.

It was playing on his mind, the fact that Rall appeared to have been outranked at this late stage. With the Major’s hand at the helm, he had begun to feel confident that the whole operation had a reasonable chance of success. There was a humourless common sense to the Major, a rigid backbone of efficiency and straight talking that Max had known in some of his previous commanding officers, and he had grown to trust those qualities without question. Now to see the Major sidelined by this civilian, at this final hour… it was unsettling.

It was cold enough to blow out a cloud of condensation. Max sighed and watched the small plume of steamy breath quickly disperse in the night air. He remembered being a child and doing that on a winter’s morning, pretending he was grown up and smoking a cigarette, holding a pencil haughtily between two fingers and puffing on it like a little gentleman of leisure.

‘Cold night, eh, Max?’ said Pieter as he slipped through the gap between the hangar’s sliding doors to join Max outside.

Max nodded silently.

‘You all right?’

He smiled at Pieter. ‘I’m all right, you go and check on the other two. We should be ready to go any time now.’

He watched his co-pilot trot back into the hangar. His crew were in good spirits, ready to get this thing going; all three of them, it seemed, certain that the right choice had been made to volunteer. Schroder and his men too looked eager to mount up and fly into whatever destiny awaited them. It seemed as if only he was having any misgivings.

Those overheard words were playing on his mind. Something was wrong, there was disagreement between Rall and this civilian.

What is the risk in using this weapon?

There was a risk, then. Something that rendered the bomb hazardous to Max and his crew? Perhaps this new explosive formula was unstable and could blow up inside the plane? It wouldn’t be the first time that an unready weapon prototype had taken lives on its first run. In fact, he’d heard of quite a few test-run disasters recently, unofficially, of course, gossip amongst the officers.

It was yet another thing to worry about, though, as if fighting their way across France wasn’t enough. But, in the end, Rall’s justification was right. If they managed to get all the way to America and drop this bomb on New York, then there would be millions of German lives saved. The Major’s common sense cut through all the shit. A rational transaction.

What is the risk…?

Perhaps the Major’s concern was for his men, for Max and his crew. That would explain it. The Major would undoubtedly feel strongly that Max and his men should know exactly what they were handling, especially if this formula was volatile, prone to blowing up before its time. Max suspected it might be something along those lines, a concern for his airmen that had triggered the angry exchange he had overheard.

All of a sudden, the lights in the hangar were turned out. Moments later, the large sliding doors were wheeled noisily back. By torchlight Max watched as a tractor towed the B-17 out into the open and returned inside the hangar to pull out the fighters one by one.

Pieter and the others emerged from the hangar and joined Max outside.

Max turned to his crew, his troubled mind for now wiped clean of ill-placed worries. ‘You gentlemen ready to go, then?’

Pieter yawned and nodded, his face momentarily shrouded by a cloud of vapour. Max knew him well enough to know the yawn was a nervous gesture. Despite the affected sleepy demeanour he knew Pieter was alert and anxious to begin.

Stef shook his head vigorously. ‘Ready as ever, sir,’ he answered with the slightest hint of tension in his voice.

Hans nodded silently, smoking what was probably the last cigarette on the airfield.