Sky Ghost (7 page)

Yes, the DG-13 was a powerful weapon, and the Raeder-class submarines were ideal as a launching platform—but this particular mission was an ironic one for the two subs. It was both their last mission of the war and also their most futile.

Simply put, the German Navy was almost nonexistent. It was close to dead broke. Out of money, out of sailors, out of vessels. The number of German ships that could even make the trip across the Atlantic could be counted on one hand these days, and U-153 and U-419 were two of them.

This attack was also ironic in that the DG-13 warheads being used were the biggest of the war—6.5 ton mammoths developed a year ago by German naval warfare scientists but found to be too costly to go into mass production. So Germany’s largest warhead would be used in its last attack on the American mainland. It was a last-gasp mission if there ever was one; a desperate attempt at one last dribble of propaganda before Germany finally fell.

As their commanders back in Lyons had told the U-boat captains: “Make some noise. Then come home.”

It was the nature of the DG-13 missile that it was wild on take off, wild during its initial flight, wild when its gyropilot took over, and wild all the way down to the target. It was not a tactical weapon—it was much too imprecise for that. Or a strategic weapon either. It was a terror weapon, the last in a long line the Germans had produced over the last half century. Designed simply to kill innocents and inflict pain and suffering. The military equivalent of a bomb in a baby carriage.

The subs had six missiles between them, and thus six targets: Two for downtown Boston. One for downtown Providence. One for downtown Hartford. One for downtown Bridgeport. And the sixth one, a very long lob into Manhattan itself. The two subs were 42 miles off shore. The DG-13 had a range of 110 miles. All they really had to do was point the missiles in the right direction and fire away. If they came down anywhere within a downtown area, casualties would be high, especially at this time of day. The last missile was set to come down in Times Square itself. German intelligence—what was left of it—had informed the Reich High Command that an American victory party had already started in the square. It would be a perfect place then to aim the very last DG-13.

The subs also had one more thing going for them in this final attack: the element of surprise. U-boats firing missiles at the East Coast was nothing new. But there had not been such an attack in almost two years. The commanders of both submarines considered this very good luck.

The deck crews on both subs prepared their first missile and then stood by. Nearly forty tons of high explosives raining down on five Americans cities. That would, the sub captains knew, “make some noise.”

Then they could finally all go home.

Or so they thought.

The crewmen of the subs never heard him coming.

This was odd because the Pogo was not a quiet airplane. Its engines were huge and noisy and smoky. It would never be accused of being a stealth either.

But whether the deck crews of U-153 and U-419 were distracted by their mission or thoughts of going home, no one would ever know. The fact is, when the Pogo swooped down upon them, its SE/X whistle screaming, its engine in full growl, the deck hands looked up only at the very last moment. Then they simply froze and saw their end before them.

So the first pass came out of nowhere. The awesome six-gun barrage from the Pogo blew a hole deep in the forward water compartment of U-153. Half the deck crew were killed instantly. A fire in the electrical room directly below the deck roared to life. This explosion blew several more crewmen into the water. One of them was Hans Lans. He was U-153’s second-duty cook and first-duty missile aimer.

Lans found himself forty feet away from his sub, burned extensively on his arms and legs and watching in horror as the American aircraft pulled up and out of its murderous dive, disappearing into the thick morning cumulus clouds which had moved in above. Slipping into shock, Hans had a notion to swim back to his sub, burning and smoking as it was. But the screech of the airplane returned and Hans knew getting back to U-153 would soon be impossible.

He watched as the airplane came in level this time, unleashing its powerful barrage on the conning tower of U-419. There was much smoke, much fire, and when it all blew away, Hans could see right through the conning tower of the sub, the bullet holes were so big. Then two quick explosions erupted below decks even before the attacking airplane had pulled up and out of its run.

Lans had to duck underwater to avoid being hit by a huge chunk of flaming metal that whooshed by his head a second later. When he resurfaced, the conning tower of U-419 was gone. All that was left was a smoking hole in the middle of the deck. The sub tipped over, the hole quickly filled with water, and down it went.

That lost his idea of swimming to his companion ship. And now the airplane was coming back again. It was diving on U-153 even as the crewmen remaining on top were desperately trying to get back into the sub. But the sub was diving—and water was pouring in the access holes and the airplane was firing madly again. It was all of a submariner’s worst nightmares rolled into one. Lans saw his vessel sinking and heard his comrades dying horribly not 40 feet away.

But then, just as U-153 began to go under, a strange thing happened. Whether it was an electrical short circuit or a stupid piece of heroism on the part of one of his fellow sailors, one of the DG-13s launched off the deck. The huge clumsy weapon staggered off its launcher, stirring up a storm of water and spray. But somehow it made it to the prescribed height of 50 feet, where its secondary motor kicked in and off it went.

Lans felt a sudden and insane surge of pride—or was it revenge?

At least one missile got off, he thought, all feeling in his badly injured arms and legs gone now.

But then he saw the airplane turn over once again and make one long strafing pass over the remains of U-153, killing it for sure. Then with a spin of its wings and a burst of power from its engine, the Pogo took off after the DG-13 missile.

As Lans sank below the waves for the last time, only one thing was on his mind: could the crazy American pilot catch up with the missile before the missile blew apart an entire city?

It was a question the answer to which Submariner First Class Hans Lans would never know.

The truth was, catching the German terror missile was not the problem.

It left a contrail so thick and smoky, it could have been seen at night in bad weather by a blind man.

Stopping the missile once he caught up with it was Hunter’s dilemma. He already had two strikes against him. The Pogo’s six guns were powerful, but the amount of ammunition that the plane could actually haul into the air was limited. Translation: he was out of ammo.

Even worse, the Pogo’s big engine sucked fuel like a toilet sucked water. Whenever he hit the throttle, it was like a flush, and he could watch his fuel needle drop correspondingly. In fact, he was now on the reserve tank, even though he’d been airborne for barely 10 minutes.

So he had nothing to shoot at the missile and he would soon lose the ability to chase it. What could he do?

He knew he first had to catch up with the missile and pull even with it, no matter how much gas it took. So he laid on the throttle and flushed the toilet and watched the reserve fuel needle go down and the fuel warning light pop on. But the airplane burst through the air with renewed power.

It took him but a minute to pull even with it. But already the coastline of Massachusetts was coming into view. This DG-13 was one of the missiles targeted for downtown Boston. Hunter knew he had to act quickly, or the terror weapon would surely hit its mark.

With no ammo, Hunter really had only one choice. He flew a little ahead of the DG-13 and with the last of his fuel, laid on his engine hoping to disrupt the air flow in front of the missile. But the weapon just wobbled a bit and continued blundering on its way.

Hunter tried again, this time putting the ass end of the Pogo just a few feet away from the missile’s snout, but again the flying bomb only wobbled a bit and resumed its course.

Hunter had only one trick left. The coastline was looming up very fast. He might not have enough time to do it, but he had to try. Without thinking about it, he yanked the control column up, left, then left again. A moment later he was riding directly underneath the missile. Then, gently, he moved up on its right side. Then with a flick of the steering yoke, he tipped the Pogo violently to the right. His wing smashed against the missile’s, jarring it loose from the fuselage. Hunter hit it again, the missile’s wing began to flap some more. He hit it again and again. And again. Finally on the sixth try, he hit it hard enough for the wing to fall off. That’s when he kicked the Pogo all the way to the right. The missile fell away crazily to the left.

The big bomb spiraled down, impacted on a deserted beach next to a jetty, then bounced up and went into the side of a cliff. Hunter got the Pogo back under control and put it into a very steep climb. The missile went off two seconds later. The explosion was so huge, the flames chased Hunter right up to 4000 feet.

But he didn’t care.

He was suddenly laughing again. He’d killed the missile and lived to tell about it.

He turned the Pogo over, and though now dangerously low on fuel, he buzzed the huge crater made by the explosion. Already the seawater was running into it, creating a small lake right on the edge of the famous Cape Cod seashore.

How strange was this, he thought. How fitting as well…

Hunter pulled up and turned the plane back towards the inside of the Cape. As he did, he flew above the cliffs and noticed that they were out of place for the landscape. These were the highest places around, and as he passed over one particular place he thought he could see a farmhouse below him and a field that went right up to the edge of the cliff. It looked like a hayfield.

And when Hunter flew over it, he felt even better than when he first became airborne.

Why did he feel this way, he thought, looking down on this little farm with the hayfield at the edge of the cliff.

It would be a long time before he found out.

T
HE ATTACK SIRENS FINALLY
wound down at Otis.

At the last squeal, people began emerging from their hiding places. The shelters emptied out. The slit trenches too. People gathered in small groups and began discussing what had happened, which was useless, because none of them really knew. The attack warning had gone off, but there was no attack. It wasn’t a drill; they would have been notified by now if it had been. Was it a false alarm? It would be a rare occasion if it was.

But something else had happened here. Just as the alarm had gone off, someone had stolen one of the base’s Pogo verti-planes. These two events had to be related—the people knew no other way to think about such things. But just
how
they were related, they didn’t know.

Only the small group of men on the sixth floor of the admin building knew the answer to that—and even they weren’t sure what had happened exactly.

“Well, this guy is long gone now,” Agent Z was saying as he scanned the skies all around the base. “Though God knows where.”

The phone rang. X picked it up, listened briefly, then hung up again.

“That was an intercepted call from coastal patrol,” he told the others. “They report a large explosion over near Nauset Heights.”

“He crashed?” Z asked.

“They said it was very big—maybe a German missile,” X replied. “There’s a hole down there the size of a football field. That sounds a lot bigger than one he could have made.”

“Maybe there really was an attack then?” Zoltan wanted to know.

“If that was the case, where did the missiles land, Swami?” Z taunted him, irritated that the psychic officer would even dare to speak.

“It really is a mystery now,” X relented. “Too bad that guy is gone…”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” Z said.

They all looked up at him.

“Why?” they asked.

Z was standing at the big window looking out at the coast with his binoculars.

“Because I think he’s coming back…” he said.

“Coming back?”
Agent X and Zoltan said together.

They all rushed to the window, and sure enough, they saw the telltale exhaust trail of the Pogo approaching.

“This is rather impossible, isn’t it?” X said, never taking his eyes off the oncoming verti-plane. “He should have run out of fuel long ago.”

“Why would he come back?” Zoltan wondered aloud. “That’s what I want to know.”

Z turned to him.

“You know, for a guy that supposedly possesses so many psychic goods, you’re asking a lot of questions…”

Again, Zoltan almost said something—but thought better of it, and kept his mouth shut instead.

By now the groups of people who’d been chatting out on the flight line were aware that the Pogo was returning as well. They were pointing and gesturing as the plane approached, all of them just as surprised and startled as the men in the admin building.

Many began running towards the big circle painted on Runway 4, where the Pogos usually landed. A security detail, its vehicles equipped with high-pitched sirens, made their way for the same place.

X picked up the phone and was instantly talking to the base’s security officer.

“Arrest the individual flying that plane,” he told the man before gruffly hanging up.

The plane went right over the admin building, losing speed and altitude as it did so. As the three agents and the mystic watched, it came to nearly a complete stop. At the same time, it moved its tail down and its nose up and went vertical, just like that.

The Pogo was not a pilot’s dream. The reason they were used sparingly was they were a bitch to land. The pilot had to get a hover set and then look over his shoulder and ease the thing down. It was like tapping one’s head and rubbing one’s belly at the same time, as someone once put it. Up was down; right was left. Some Pogo landings went on for many agonizing minutes; the pilot backing off, going higher, only to complicate his task because the higher one went, the longer and more painful the landing process would be.