Eric Flint: 1634: The Baltic War

Another piece of a retort went through the thin wall as if it weren't there and landed on the barge holding the coal for the plant. Another, much bigger one, did the same thing to a different wall-and then shattered the wall of an adjacent factory as it struck, instantly killing two workers and starting the structure on fire.

Stone, iron and coal sprayed in all directions from the impact site. In other cases, only the doors to the retorts flew out, red hot frisbees delivering death and destruction. One of these struck the fireman holding the hose by the river, cutting him in half and throwing what was left of him into the waters of the Elbe. Another flew across the street into an apartment building, starting yet another fire. Fortunately, no one was killed outright, although a young mother was badly hurt and the baby she'd been feeding would wind up losing his arm below the elbow.

The last one flew unerringly into the vats of coal tar products, badly damaging the support structure for one of the vats. At the same time, pieces of burning coal from the retorts flew into the air, bombarding those passersby not lucky or smart enough to be crouching behind the wall or under shelter.

Mike rose from behind the wall and briefly looked at his escort to make sure they were unharmed. Some of the sailors and Marines were purposefully moving to put out flames and administer first aid to bystanders who had been hit by flying coal. The coal plant itself seemed to be fairly free of flames, now. There were a few piles of flaming coal but little other damage beyond the explosion. As he watched, he saw two people come stumbling to the wall.

"What happened to the plant?" the sergeant asked them.

Now leaning with both hands on the wall, one of the men shook his head. "I don't know. Robert…" He shook his head again. "Robert Stiteler. He was killed. I don't believe this."

"Do you work here?" Mike asked.

"Yes. I am the night shift foreman. Thorsten Engler." He nodded to the man next to him. "This is Eric Krenz, the crane operator."

Hearing a new sound, of collapsing metal, Engler and Krenz turned their heads around to look back. As they and Mike watched, the damaged vat began to shift, finally falling on its side. It impacted with a loud crack, and gallons of thick pitch began to ooze out.

By now, the fire chief had reorganized his men and moved to put out the fires in the adjacent factory and the apartment buildings across the street. Only one other structure was aflame, the roof of a shed near the river, away from both the coal tar and the machinery.

"What's in that shed?" Mike asked.

Engler looked over. "Nothing much," he said. "Just fertilizer. For growing plants."

Mike frowned. "Why do you have fertilizer at the coal gas plant?"

"It's very new. They call it… 'ammonium nitrate,' I think. Supposed to be the best fertilizer ever. We make it from some of the waste from the coal tar."

Mike would swear he could literally feel the blood draining from his face. Ammonium nitrate, for the love of God!

Bituminous coal mining operations rarely used explosives much, any longer, but he'd been around enough blasting operations to know what the stuff was used for besides farming.

The sergeant was staring at him. "Is it dangerous, sir?"

"Hell, yes, it's dangerous," Mike replied. "There was a cargo ship full of it in Texas City that blew up once and took out most of the town-not to mention that it was the stuff that provided most of the force for the Oklahoma City bombing."

Mike looked again at the shed. The flames had moved down from the roof to the walls, and the whole thing was being consumed. "Everybody down!" he yelled. Then, repeated the yell for the benefit of the firemen, accompanying it with frantic arm waving.

Fortunately, the fire chief wasn't pigheaded. He immediately ordered his men out of the area and behind the wall. Mike grabbed Engler and Krenz and dragged them over the wall, then dropped down himself below the top.

For perhaps twenty seconds, nothing happened. A few people started to get up, here and there. Then there was a tremendous explosion that seemed to obliterate everything in a sheer blast of noise. Half-dazed, Mike saw one of the bystanders who'd been incautious enough to raise his head over the wall get decapitated. By what, he had no idea. A piece of brick, who knew? One moment the man had a head, the next moment a corpse was collapsing to the ground with blood gushing out of a neck stump.

When it seemed to be over, Mike carefully peered over the top of the wall. There was a ten-foot crater where the shed had been. Some of its flaming remnants had apparently landed on the coal barge, and were completing its destruction.

Mike shifted his gaze, and saw that the vat that had tipped over seemed mostly empty. However, two more of the vats had shifted from the impact, and were now also tilted.

Engler's head had come up next to his, with Krenz following a second later. Mike pointed at the vats. "What's in those vats?"

"Coal tar," said Krenz. "Different kinds. We separate them, and sell the different kinds."

"The one that fell on the ground contained pitch," Engler added. "We usually don't have more than a few days' worth; there's a lot of demand for it. That one"-he pointed to the one starting to list-"contains something called 'light benzoils.' We don't get much call for it, so we've been saving it up to sell to the Americans."

"How much of it is stored up?"

"I add a new barrel or two to that vat every day," said Krenz. "Maybe a couple of hundred barrels worth."

Mike felt his face paling again. That was the equivalent of several thousand gallons of gasoline. If it spread and ignited, half the city was likely to burn down before it was all over.

He turned to the sergeant. "Get every available man from the base."

He turned to another Marine. "See if you can find Gunther Achterhof, the CoC guy for this district. We need all the manpower we can get. Tell him to bring shovels, buckets, whatever will fight the fire."

He looked back again. Fortunately, the pitch still hadn't caught, despite the hot fragments of furnace littering the ground. "Two of you Marines get shovels and buckets and get those fragments out of here before they ignite the pitch."

Once those pressing immediate tasks were seen to, he turned to the contingent of sailors and Marines who were gathered around him. "We've got to keep that vat from tipping over. Get some long pieces of lumber from the dockyards. Get block and tackle. Fast!"

Half a dozen sailors took off, heading for the base. As he looked again, he saw the pitch slowly oozing out of the plant and into the street. Beyond it, he saw the road leading to the open end of the sewer under construction. "Christ on a crutch," he said. "If the stuff in that vat gets in the sewers, the entire city will go."

"There isn't enough time," Engler said. "We have to get in there now." He climbed over the wall and into the plant's yard, heading for the coal tar vats. Krenz came right behind him.

Mike stared at them, decided they were right, and followed himself. His men joined him.

The ground was an obstacle course, requiring them to zigzag to avoid the still-hot debris from the explosion. They ran over to the fire chief, who was lying on the ground, stunned. "Wake up!" Mike shouted. "You've got to get your pump going."

"We still have steam, we can pump!" one of the firemen yelled, having heard him. "But we have to put out those fires now." He was pointing to the apartment buildings, and Mike could see that he was right. As tightly packed as those buildings were throughout most of Magdeburg, if a fire got out of control it would be almost impossible to stop.

One of the other firemen pulled out a knife and cut away the harness for one of the horses. The animal's back had been shattered by a big chunk of flying debris. The fire chief staggered to his feet and looked around. The first fireman ran over to him. "Sir, there are buildings on fire. We've got to put them out now!"