Greg Iles - Black Cross

The roar of the fleeing Mercedes brought him back to his senses. He kicked open the door to the building he had seen Stern disappear into and stopped dead. Yellow light was pouring into an empty corridor from a doorway up the hall. Where was the electricity coming from? He stared in wonder at the empty corridor. Why were there no dead Germans here? Had the gas not yet penetrated this building? He closed the door behind him and concentrated on sounds.

It was difficult to hear through the vinyl mask, but there was no mistaking the sound of the diesel generator. He moved quickly up the hall toward the source of the light, which turned out to be the wireless operator’s room. Stern was already seated at the console, searching for a frequency on the dial.

Another chain of explosions rattled the floorboards.

Stern pounded the desk in fury. McConnell immediately saw his problem. Stern wanted to use the radio, but couldn’t risk removing his air hose to speak. He had no idea who Stern wanted to talk to, but the scientist in him knew instantly that there was only one solution. He grabbed a pen by the radio console and scrawled three words on a codebook beside Stern’s hand.

COAL MINE CANARY!

Stern looked up through the bulging eyepieces of his gas mask. Then he grabbed the infantry rifle he had taken from Sergeant Sturm and bolted from the room.

McConnell heard another drumfire of explosions, much nearer this time. The blast waves jolted the radio sets on the shelf. Shit! How bad could their luck be? To be on the verge of success and have it all blown to hell because of poor organization? Duff Smith should have known Bomber Command or the 8th Air Force might unilaterally decide to wipe out a power station like the one on the hill above Dornow. He should have taken steps.

McConnell jumped as Stern shoved a young SS man into the room and slammed the door. The brown-clad soldier was not wearing a gas mask, but he was alive. Stern handed his rifle to McConnell and shoved the SS man down until his mouth and nose were at the crack between door and floor.

“There’s our canary,” Stern said. “Stand on his back, and if he tries to run, shoot him.”

He jumped into the radio-operator’s chair and yelled into the mike. “ Atlanta! Atlanta! This is Butler and Wilkes, repeat, Butler and Wilkes, calling Atlanta !”

McConnell planted a boot between the German’s shoulder blades and rested the muzzle of the rifle on his kidneys. “What the hell are you doing, Stern?”

“Butler, repeat, Butler, calling Atlanta!” Stern said again, waving at McConnell to shut up. “May Day, May Day!”

McConnell expected at any moment to hear the deafening blast of bombs landing inside the camp perimeter. “Try to raise the planes themselves!” he shouted. “Brigadier Smith can’t stop the damn things!”

Stern whirled around and screamed, “Smith sent those planes, you idiot! He’s the only one who can stop them!”

McConnell felt suddenly dizzy. He was an idiot. Brigadier Smith had taken steps. And those steps demonstrated a degree of ruthless professionalism that left McConnell dazed. He could only watch speechless as Stern bent back over the console.

“This is Butler, repeat, Butler, calling Atlanta. . . ”

“ Ach du lieber , Sturmbannführer! What was that?”

Wolfgang Schörner watched with businesslike appreciation as the first incendiaries obliterated the Dornow power station. He shook his head in wonder. “I believe that last stick was phosphorous bombs, Koerber. Perhaps some thermite as well. Be glad you’re not under them.”

“But what are they doing?”

Schörner rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “They are preparing to flatten Totenhausen with their own agents inside. The question is why ?”

The incendiary bombs were what Anna Kaas had been waiting for. Not them specifically, but something like them. Something that would draw the attention of Major Schörner and his men long enough for her to drive the black Mercedes out of Totenhausen’s front gate without being seen. She had watched the troop truck race up to the gate, even recognized Schörner’s movements as he climbed down from the running board, turned, and jumped back into the truck. She thanked God she’d had the sense to keep her headlights off as she drove across the camp.

The troop truck had retreated two hundred meters up the access road that curved around the camp toward the hills, but Schörner was no fool. The truck still blocked the main route of escape and maintained an oblique view of the front gate. Anna needed to cross the forty meters of downward-sloping open ground between the gate and the river, where the single-truck ferry that led to Totenhausen’s secondary access road waited in the icy water. Without a diversion, she would never reach it unnoticed.

GENERAL SHERMAN provided that diversion. When she saw the orange flash reflected in her windshield from the enormous blast of flame on the hills behind the camp, she lifted her foot from the brake and idled forward between the smashed gateposts and dead SS men. The rubber bundle in the backseat was still jerking and fighting. Muffled screams pierced the silence. Anna knew the little girl inside must be nearly mad with terror, but she would have to wait. The dead sentries meant the nerve gas had drifted south at least as far as the gate.

She fed the Mercedes a little gas, all the while watching the twin beams of Schörner’s troop truck and praying his eyes were on the hills. Twenty meters to the river. Ten. She took her eyes off Schörner’s truck long enough to aim the Mercedes at the little ramp that led up onto the ferry. As the car’s nose drifted down, a bolt of terror hit her. Would the brake lights betray her position to Schörner? Yes . With a prayer on her lips she shut off the engine and let the Mercedes coast up the ramp. When she felt the wheels bump onto the wooden deck, she threw the car into low gear, slammed her foot down on the brake pedal and set the parking brake.

The Mercedes skated across the icy deck with a hiss. If the front bumper had not struck an iron post jutting up from the edge of the deck near the wheelhouse, the car would have slid right off and crashed into the river. When it jolted to a stop, Anna glanced back at the troop truck. It had not moved. She spoke comfortingly to the half-inflated vinyl bundle in the backseat and peered through the front windshield. The river was frozen along most of its length this time of year, but the ferry ran frequently enough to keep a narrow channel open during the day. The channel froze again each night, only to be broken open again in the morning. How quickly did it freeze?

She could not risk opening the door to find out. She squinted into the darkness. Directly ahead of the car’s hood there was ice, but it looked black compared to the white sheet that spread east and west along the river. The black ice ran in a straight line to the opposite bank. That blackness was river water. There was ice there, but it was thin.

She hoped it was thin enough.

Brigadier Duff Smith was monitoring the frequency of GENERAL SHERMAN when Airman Bottomley burst through the door of the little hut beside the runway.

“Switch to three-one-four-zero, sir! Hurry!”

Duff Smith had been in too many tight places to stand on form when he heard the strain of action in a man’s voice; he obeyed his subordinate without question. Static filled the hut as he spun through the frequencies.

“I was in the Junkers, sir,” Bottomley panted. “I was switching through the bands when I heard it.”

“Heard what?”

“ Them , sir! Transmitting in the clear!”

Suddenly a muffled voice with a German accent very like Jonas Stern’s crackled, “. . . repeat, Butler calling Atlanta! May Day! May Day !”