1945 (37 page)

York laughed.

"As for you Lloyd, well, surely
somebody
at the Lodge can dig up an old sailor suit."

9:30 P.M.

Twenty Miles East of Oak Ridge

Otto Skorzeny looked at his watch. Thirty minutes left. He looked out his port side; his companions were holding formation nicely. Skorzeny wagged his wings to signal his intent and then went into a sharp climb, pulling

up out of the valley they had been circling in for the last two hours. As he cleared the crest line, he could see the glow of Oak Ridge twenty miles ahead. He slammed the throtde up to the wall.

"All right, Gunther, call them in!"

Gunther picked up the mike, double-checking that the radio was set to the correct frequency.

"Valkyrie, Valkyrie, do you read?"

"Valkyrie One, here."

"Position check, please."

"Fifteen kilometers southeast of checkpoint C-A."

Skorzeny, listening in, grinned with delight. The head of the bomber stream was approaching Chattanooga. "We are thirty kilometers northeast of target. We will switch on our directional beacon in five minutes."

Oak Ridge
9:45 P.M.

"Christ, Martel, you look like hell."

Harriman met him at the door and guided him in. The sergeant escorting him started to follow. A captain on Groves's staff stopped him. "Sergeant, you're dismissed."

The sergeant hesitated and Martel looked back. "Don't worry, Sergeant, you did your job. Captain, I have no complaints," he added, not quite able to repress a sullen snarl as he mouthed the words that honor demanded.

"Mason, the others?" Harriman asked.

Jim shook his head. "All dead. They nailed us clean. We never stood a chance."

Harriman turned to Groves's staff officer, who was looking wide-eyed at the blood soaking Jim's left shoulder.

"You better get us Groves right now!"

Now it was the captain's turn to hesitate.

"Then take us to him!" Harriman shouted. Suddenly presented with a viable alternative, the captain said "Lets go," and led them back out the door and into a waiting jeep.

Abbeville, France
3:55 A.M.

"Clear!"

Adolf Galland looked over to his right where one of his ground crew waited, fire extinguisher poised in case the engine caught on fire.

A tongue of blue flame shot out as the jet engine of the Me-262D pulsed to life. He watched his instruments as power started to climb. He hit the ignition switch for his right engine. It too caught and held.

He revved them up, scanning his instruments.

9:55 P.M.
The Oval Office

President Harrison checked the clock on the mantel. In forty-five minutes it would be dawn over England. He looked at Donovan, who had just hung up the phone. "I just talked to an assistant sheriff near Oak Ridge, Mr. President. He confirms Martel's message. The sheriff was out at the airport. He says there was a slaughter. He's found fifteen people dead on and near the entry road to the airfield."

Harrison looked over at Mayhew, who was on another phone.

"Damn it, John, don't you have Groves yet?"

"Still trying to reach him, sir."

Another phone rang on the desk. Harrison nodded for Donovan to pick it up.

Donovan listened for a moment. Suddenly his jaw clenched tight. He hung up and looked back at the President.

"What is it?" Harrison asked.

"Sir. That was a report from General Warren, head of 8th Tactical Command, based in Atlanta. Civilian airports at Atlanta and Chattanooga report a stream of at least one hundred planes on radar near the Tennessee-Georgia border. These planes have ignored all queries. They're currently approaching Knoxville on a north-northeast heading."

Harrison heard the words but for a moment couldn't quite grasp them. Then, "Oak Ridge. Churchill was right," he whispered, closing his eyes as reality crashed its way through his illusions.

Donovan nodded dumbly. He too was in shock, though for him, unlike Harrison there was a simple answer to internal confusion.

"Mr. President?"

My God, what have I done?I should have seen it. All the signs were there, yet I didn't put them together.
Wouldn't
put them together. What have I done?

"Mr. President."

He opened his eyes. Donovan was leaning over the desk.

"Mr. President, what are your orders, sir?"

Much as he might want to he couldn't let go, Harrison realized. The future of the world rested on his shoulders. He couldn't run, he couldn't hide. He pointed to one of the phones on his desk.

"Call the Pentagon. Marshall's at Oak Ridge, but MacArthur should be over there. Tell MacArthur that until we get Marshall back he's in complete operational control of the US military. I want a full scramble of all aircraft and all naval forces. Any German forces discovered in this hemisphere are to be engaged and destroyed. Anything that tries to run is to be considered German."

He looked over at Mayhew, who stood stock-still, as if struck Harrison was shocked to see tears in the man's eyes, but didn't have time to deal with the issue. "Snap out of it, Mayhew! Get me Groves. Now!" Even as he spoke, he picked up another phone. The line had been opened hours ago and within seconds he heard a familiar voice on the other end.

"Winston, in about fifteen minutes nearly one hundred German bombers are going to start dumping their loads on Oak Ridge. God forgive me for holding you back. I think you should expect the Second Batde of Britain to start any moment. You must kill all the Germans you can."

4:02 A.M. (10:02 EST)
Whitehall

Winston Churchill stepped onto the balcony, and all in the war room were silent. He looked back down at the plot board. Over the Calais area a Wren slid a symbol representing a Luftwaffe air group into position. Within seconds, more ratings bearing little slips of paper were entering the map room in a steady stream, and more symbols started to appear all along the French coast clear down to Cherbourg.

Churchill turned and addressed his staff. "Gendemen. President Harrison reports that the United States is under attack by German forces, and he concurs therefore that the German forces assembling off our coast are engaged in an assault on our island. He urges us to seek out and destroy these invaders wherever we may find them. Never doubt that in the long run we must win. But first we must survive the initial onslaught, and for that we must all do our duty flawlessly and unstintingly. England's fate rests in our hands this hour."

After a pause he added more prosaically, "Rommel's forces will be landing by mid-morning a little more chewed up than he would like. And this time the Luftwaffe will not find our air force on the ground."

10:05 P.M. Oak Ridge

As Harriman emerged with a surly-faced General Groves in tow, Jim caught a glimpse of the smoke-filled room on the other side, illuminated by the glare of an overhead projector. The screen was filled with arcane equations.

"Now what?" Groves snarled. "How much more of my time are you guys going to waste with your damned Chicken Little stories?" He fixed Martel with his icy gaze, then did a double take. "What in hell happened to you?"

"Skorzeny. He was at that airfield, like I said. My entire team was wiped out. We could have used some help."

Groves's features set in stone. "Are you telling me that you and your precious OSS blew it?"

"Sir, we asked for help from the FBI and from your Ranger detachment. You refused," Harriman interjected. So we went in on our own, undermanned, without local knowledge—and got ambushed."

Groves wheeled on Harriman, but seemed to reconsider. He turned to an aide who had followed him from the conference room. "Get the FBI rep. Move it." The aide duly moved it. Since Groves did not seem willing to continue, the groups paused, waiting for the FBI man to appear. A few seconds later he did. It was Jim's old nemesis.

"Grierson!"

Before Grierson could respond, Groves said to both of them, "Let me talk." He then spoke directly to Grierson. "You told me this guy was crazy. Probably a traitor.

Unreliable. Under a cloud. Trouble from the word 'go,' and obnoxious to boot."

Grierson, who had paled on seeing Martel's condition, pulled himself together. "It's all true. He's the —"

"I don't want any more of your input, Grierson," Groves snarled. "Just listen." He turned back to the others, his features relaxing ever so slightly, "Harriman, I was operating on the information I had at the time."

Harriman just looked at him.

His gaze shifted to Martel. "So where's the demented son of a bitch now?"

Martel pointed straight up. "Right about there, sir. He and part of his team escaped in two Piper Cubs."

Groves looked puzzled and a bit relieved. "What can he hope to accomplish with two Cubs? That thing is shielded with seven feet of reinforced concrete. He could kamikaze the reactor with one of those and just bounce off. If he tries to parachute in, well, I've got a platoon of Rangers positioned there as well."

This was a point that had been bothering Martel. He simply figured that Skorzeny had a plan. Whatever it was, he did not expect to like it when he learned its precise nature.

"General Groves."

Groves turned to face an anxious lieutenant standing behind him.

"Sir, the President is on the line."

"Stay right there," Groves flung over his shoulder as he followed the aide briskly down a side corridor. "You too, Grierson," he added, when the ruined FBI man made to follow.

Less than a minute later he was back, running.

"Get General Marshall out here now!" Groves shouted as he headed for the main door.

Jim and Harriman followed the general outside, where he stood on the front steps, looking up at the night sky. For a moment Jim thought the general believed he could somehow make out the Pipers overhead, but then he suddenly extended his hands, gesturing for silence. "Do you hear it?"

Jim, his ears still ringing from the near misses of two grenades and a firefight, cocked his head but heard nothing. Then the door behind him swung open and he was startled to see General of the Army George Marshall standing behind him. Though out of uniform, Jim snapped to attention. Marshall ignored him.

"General Groves, what is going on?"

"Sir," Groves replied shakily, "the President just informed me that a stream of at least one hundred German bombers is approaching Oak Ridge, and will be here momentarily. Listen. You can hear them."

Marshall stood silent, his gaze following Groves's gesture. Suddenly a parachute flare ignited with blinding intensity, followed seconds later by two more.

"Skorzeny!" Martel shouted. "He's guiding the strike in!"

Marshall squinted up at the flares as they gently floated down, followed by several more. "Straight in on top of us," Marshall said, his voice awestruck. "Across the Atlantic, straight in on top of us."

10:04 P.M.

500 Feet Over Oak Ridge

"Yellow!"

Karl Radl watched the light by the open door. Below, just ahead, he could see glints from the moonlight-dappled Clinch River ... now it was below them ... they'd crossed it. His hands tensed, grasping the sides of the open bay. The light by the door snapped to green.

"Now!" Radl shouted as he flung himself out the door, sucking in a deep breath as the transport's slipstream blew him astern. From the corner of one eye he glimpsed the tail of the plane slashing by overhead, gone in an instant as his harness gave him a vision-blurring jolt. Now he was floating, not falling. He looked straight up: the canopy was deployed, lines looked good. Other canopies were snapping open above and behind him in a long string.

He saw a flash of light to what had to be the northwest. The first bombs were hitting K-25.

He looked down. Their aim had been almost too good. They were on top of the damned target; the square reactor building was less than fifty yards to his right. He drifted down past a smokestack, fearing for a second that he might tangle in it. He heard a curse, looked up, and saw that the man behind him had indeed caught on the top of the stack. One lost already. Even if he and the stack survived the bombing, he was stuck until the Americans fetched him off.

The ground was coming up, no, it was tarmac. This was going to hurt— He flexed his knees, drew in a deep breath, hit, narrowly missing the hood of a car, and rolled. Ignoring various skinned parts of himself he got to his feet and began dealing with his shroud lines, pulling them in to collapse the canopy. Next he hit the quick-release harness, peeled out of his parachute and dropped the reserve chute as well.

"Hey buddy! What the hell are you doing over there?" An American MP came walking toward him. Then he saw the parachutes drifting down.

"What is this, some sort of drill?"

Radl undipped his machine pistol from its sling, brought it up and cocked it.

The MP looked at him, wide eyed.