Greg Iles - Black Cross

“Hold on to your seats!” advised the pilot.

McConnell closed his eyes as the rattling Lysander hurtled toward the earth. The plane was packed full. They had crammed the suitcase containing the anti-gas suits and stolen explosives in the small space behind the seats. He held the case with the air cylinders on his lap. He also had his personal bag, which contained food, his Schmeisser, a change of civilian clothes, and some medical supplies.

“Are you going to be sick?” Stern shouted over the roar of the engine.

McConnell opened his eyes. He felt like a man plunging to his death, but Stern’s face was impassive. He wondered if he looked as authentically Nazi as Stern did. He wore a captain’s uniform and carried papers identifying him as an SS physician, but he felt about as German as a Hormel frankfurter. In the dark gray-green SD uniform and cap, with the Iron Cross First Class on his tunic, Stern radiated a sinister authority.

“ Damn this plane!” Stern cursed, adjusting the scuffed leather bag and Schmeisser on his lap.

“Bad luck!” yelled the pilot. “Couldn’t be helped!”

McConnell said nothing. The line of pale blue light silhouetting the eastern horizon was comment enough. Dawn was coming, and they had yet to reach the ground. The entire night had been a race against time. After the meeting with Churchill, they’d made a brief hop to a restricted airfield. There Brigadier Smith and an aide had led them aboard a captured Junkers bomber Smith claimed was so secret that they could not be allowed to see its pilot. The Junkers bore all its original Luftwaffe markings, which had made for a dangerous run out of British airspace, but allowed an uneventful trip to neutral Sweden. During the flight, Smith actually ordered the pilot to open the bomb bay so that he could point out German battleships on blockade duty below them.

Their problem began in Sweden. The Lysander detailed to carry them from Sweden to Germany — the plane they were in now — had developed engine trouble on its way back from a mission into Occupied France. And because the tiny black plane had but one engine, they had been forced to wait hours in a freezing shack while its pilot and the mysterious Junkers pilot repaired the problem. By the time they finished, dawn was scarcely an hour away. McConnell had suggested they wait until the next night, but Smith wouldn’t hear of it. He practically shoved them into the Lysander and ordered their pilot not to turn back for any reason.

McConnell had expected to fly just over the wave tops to avoid German radar, but the pilot told them there was more chance of being shot down by a Kriegsmarine vessel than by a Luftwaffe night fighter. They’d crossed the Baltic at nine thousand feet. Ten minutes ago they’d flown over the coast of northern Germany.

And then the dive.

“Thank God,” McConnell said, feeling the plane start to level out over the lightless plain.

“We’re going to touch down in a farmer’s field!” yelled the pilot. “The Met people say there’s been a hard freeze, so I’m not expecting problems with mud.” He looked back over his shoulder, revealing the face of a jaded twenty-year-old daredevil. “I won’t be turning off the engine. Himmler himself could be waiting down there, for all we know. I expect you to get yourselves and your gear out of the plane in less than thirty seconds.”

“Nice to know we can count on you!” Stern shouted back.

The pilot shook his head. “I take SOE people into France all the time. But Germany . . . you two must be daft.”

Great, thought McConnell. Even the help knows we’re idiots. Far out on the western horizon he saw a faint orange glow. “What’s that?” he asked.

“Rostock,” answered the pilot. “We bombed it practically into rubble in forty-three, but the Heinkel aircraft factory is still operational. They must have used incendiaries tonight. The fires are still burning.”

McConnell noticed that Stern had pressed his face to the perspex. “What are you looking for?” he asked.

“I grew up in Rostock,” Stern said. “I was just wondering if our apartment block was still standing.”

“Doubtful,” the pilot said needlessly. “The center of town is pretty well smashed. Looks like a bloody Roman ruin.”

“So that’s why Smith chose you for this,” McConnell said, forgetting his airsickness for a moment. “You know the area.”

“That’s one reason.”

“There’s the signal!” cried the pilot. “Get ready!”

He pulled back on the controls and climbed, then circled around for a high-angle approach. All McConnell could see in the blackness below were three dim yellow lights in a line, with a red one off to the side, forming an inverted “L.” The red light appeared to be blinking a Morse code letter again and again.

The Lysander fell like a hailstone on the wind. McConnell gripped his seat and watched the “L” race upward. The wheels hit hard, bounced, then settled onto the bumpy ground and quickly rolled to a stop near the red light.

“Get out!” bellowed the pilot. “Go!”

Stern already had the hatch open. The roar of the engine filled the cabin. McConnell saw him drop his bag out, then jump down. McConnell hefted his suitcase across the seat and handed it out, then climbed down himself.

“You’ve left a bloody case!” the pilot yelled.

McConnell hopped back into the plane and with a groan lifted out the suitcase containing the anti-gas suits and stolen explosives.

“Good luck!” the pilot called. Then the black plane was off, turning quickly on the frozen earth and accelerating back in the direction it had come. Only the fading grumble of the engine told them anything was there at all.

“You’re the athlete,” Stern said in the darkness. “You carry the air cylinders.”

When McConnell reached down for the case, it was gone. A huge man with a black beard, heavy fur coat, and an old bolt-action rifle strapped over his shoulder stood less than a yard from him. The heavy suitcase hung from one hand as if it held only a weekend’s clothes. While McConnell stared, the flare path that had guided in the plane winked out, and two more figures quickly materialized out of the blackness. One was a tall thin man with a fisherman’s cap pulled low over his eyes, the other smaller and bundled to the eyeballs in a thick scarf and oilskin coat. The smaller man carried no weapon, but was obviously the leader.

“Password?” he asked in muffled German.

“Schwarzes Kreuz,” Stern replied. “Black Cross.”

“You are . . . ?”

“Butler and Wilkes. He’s Wilkes. You?”

“Melanie. Follow us. Schnell ! We’ve been here all night. If we’re caught in the open at dawn, we’re dead.”

The shadowy escorts moved so quickly across the flat ground that even McConnell had trouble keeping up. Once, the leader dropped flat and motioned for everyone to do the same. McConnell thought he heard the faint rumble of an engine, but wasn’t sure. After three minutes, the leader got up and continued on.

Hurrying across the frozen fields, McConnell realized that the cold here was of an entirely different magnitude than that in Scotland. He should have prepared himself. Did it take a genius to figure out that in northern Germany, wind blowing from the north was coming from the Arctic? They were only twenty miles from the Baltic coast. The wind blasted across this plain like the fulfillment of a Norse curse, the uniforms he and Stern wore useless against its power.

He saw a few dim lights out to his left. A road? A rail line? To his right he saw nothing at first. Then the faintest corona of blue began to highlight the crest of a range of hills. He shivered. Beyond those hills the sun was rising.