1945 (39 page)

"Where's Muhler?"

"He was caught by the gunship," one of them replied bitterly. "Cut in half by friendly fire."

Christ. His demolitions expert was gone.

"What about Hiller?"

"Broken neck. He landed on a car, went through the windshield."

Muhler's backup was gone as well.

Radl pointed at one of his sergeants.

"Find the supply packs dropped by the two planes. I need the plastic explosives in here now." Then he looked at the other: "Get Lieutenant Bruckner with the second platoon to set up the two antitank guns. Tell him I said to place them facing both directions on the road and to set up the mortars for fire support as well. We've stunned them for the moment but they'll be back like hornets. The last time I saw Professor Schiller he was still up in the parking area. Bring him down here. Now go!"

The sergeants saluted and ran out the door.

Radl turned to the two men who had charged with him and survived.

"Get back outside and set up a security perimeter around this building. Pick six men to come in here to help me. Each man is carrying two kilos of plastic; collect it and don't forget to get it off the dead and wounded. I need a hundred kilos in here fast!"

Radl motioned for the men remaining with him to sweep around the sides of the reactor. When that was done, he walked slowly up the stairs and past the shattered door into the control booth. The floor was slippery with blood. Broken glass crunched beneath his feet. The air was thick with the stink of cordite and electrical fires. Sparks sputtered out from behind several instrument panels.

He came to a corner into a back room set against the side of the reactor. A low moan greeted him when he started to edge around it, his machine pistol pointing the way. Four men were sprawled on the floor. Three were obviously dead. The fourth was lying in the corner, fumbling to hold within it the contents of his abdomen. He looked up at Radl.

Radl walked up to him and knelt down by his side.

The man looked at him, wide eyed, staring at his uniform.

"Nazi monster," the man whispered in German.

He started to cough. Radl uncorked his canteen and held it up to the mans lips.

He took a sip, discovered it was cognac, gagged, but nodded for more. "A Jew just drank from your canteen," the man said when he could speak again.

"Yes."

"My luck to take my last drink from an SS canteen." The man reached up and seized Radl's hand, smearing it with blood. "The Americans, they'll build another just like this, you know, give you a taste of the hell you deserve." A groan escaped him. "Finish me. You must be an expert at killing Jews; what's one more to you?"

Radl stood back up and pulling out his Luger he pointed it down at the man's forehead.

The man closed his eyes. "Another glorious victory for the Fatherland?" he whispered.

Radl pulled the trigger and turned away.

He heard footsteps on the stairs leading up to the control booth and turned to see the mission's chief technical consultant arrive, escorted by four of his men.

"Everything's shot to hell in here," Schiller said bitterly.

"How am I to get any information? For all I can tell the reactor's getting ready to go critical on its own!"

"Just do your job. Grab what notes you can, take anything you believe will be of value."

Radl stepped back out into the main control room and saw more men coming in. Several of them dragged boxes loaded with plastic explosives already cut and shaped to be pushed in through one of the reactor openings for the fuel and control rods.

Radl called the physicist over.

"I've lost my demolitions men. Tell me how to blow this thing."

The physicist looked around and then turned and pointed back out into the main room at the pile below.

"That wall is solid concrete. They most likely have a graphite containment wall inside, and then the actual \ reactor pile. You need to breach right through the concrete and graphite, burst the whole thing wide open. While you are preparing for demolition, I'll start pulling the graphite control rods; that will get the reactor started toward meltdown. If we blow it and melt it at the same time, I promise you they'll never use it or the ground under it again. Never even come near it, except with bulldozers."

"How long will it take?"

"Half hour, perhaps an hour. I'll have to figure out which are the control rods and then pull them."

"The radiation. How dangerous will it be around here?"

"When it blows we want to be a kilometer away and upwind," the physicist replied softly.

A burst of machine-gun fire slammed through the building, sending Radl and then the physicist diving to the floor.

"Just get it done!" Radl shouted, "I'll start placing the explosives."

10:33 P.M.

As the last of the bombers swept across and added to the inferno below, Otto Skorzeny continued to circle the town, observing the results of his handiwork. More than three thousand fifty-kilogram bombs had been dropped on Oak Ridge by now, and fires raged from the turnpike all the way up the side of the hill, several square kilometers in all. In the glare of explosions he could see thousands of antlike figures running panic-stricken in the streets. Over in the next valley the Y-12 plants were ablaze, while off to the west the K-25 facilities were burning as well. There was just one more item....

Skorzeny banked and flew over the main administrative building and toward the airstrip. "Siegfried One, Siegfried One."

"Siegfried One here. We are in position."

"Get ready for your drop. Thor One will strike first. Come straight in behind him. Release on the flares."

10:34 P.M.

Jim Martel stood next to Marshall watching as the bombardment of the town continued to thunder through an agonizing climax of destruction.

And then there was a lull, the echoes of explosions continuing to rumble across the hills.

"General Marshall, sir!" A jeep, driven by Soratkin, squealed to a halt behind them. General Groves leapt out before it had fully stopped, followed by Harriman and Soratkin. Their jeep was followed by two more, both loaded with Rangers.

Ignoring Martel, Groves offered an Ml carbine to Marshall.

Jim suddenly felt naked without a weapon. He walked over to the jeep. The backseat was piled high with weapons. He reached in, grabbed a carbine, then took a pouch containing half a dozen clips, slinging it over his shoulder, indifferent to the pain.

One of the civilians, a gangly individual with thinning hair, came over to join Groves and Marshall. "If they're landing on the reactor that can only mean they intend to blow it."

"Oppie, don't you think I know that?" Groves shouted, "I've sent the remaining company of Rangers down there."

Marshall's attention snapped to Soratkin. "What do we have left in reserve?"

"Just a few security personnel, sir." He glanced at Groves, who didn't speak. "Everything else is going to K-25. We've got a reported paratroop drop there."

"What about Guard units, anything?"

The security man shook his head.

Marshall looked frantic. "Then how do we guard the scientists? Don't you realize they are our greatest asset?"

Soratkin just looked blank. His career had culminated in a job where his entire mission was to guard the physical assets of Oak Ridge. Until this moment the infestation of pointy heads from New Mexico had been nothing but an unpleasantly hectic interruption to the smooth administration of security on the base. Suddenly he paled, seeming to realize that his values had been askew.

Groves broke the tableau. "I'll call them back." He pointed at one of the Ranger Sergeants. "Go with that man to K-25. Bring back Company C. Tell the Company Commander it's a direct order from me, and I
know
what it means!" He turned to an aide and pointed at the jeep. "Use the radiophone to confirm what I just told him. Keep at it until you get through."

Before he had finished speaking to the aide, Soratkin, the sergeant, and his three men were making a high-speed squealing turn out of the lot and were gone.

Meanwhile Jim had continued to look toward the east and was the first to see several flares ignite and start to drift down over the open fields and parking lots beyond the administrative building. "Everybody down!"

Seconds later the sky seemed to explode as three gunships roared in behind a wall of explosions that swept over the administrative building, across the medical center and bus stations, and into the parking lot where they were standing.

Jim huddled down next to Grove s jeep as the firestorm swept overhead, cars around him exploding, screams echoing, glass and steel spraying down around him.

The storm passed.

Jim waited, then opened his eyes to see Marshall lying prone beside him, his face bleeding from tiny cuts. Several hundred yards to the east, over by the administrative building and the baseball fields to the south of it, dozens of black canopies were swooping down from the sky. "Paratroopers!" Marshall snarled, scrambling up. Jim stood as well. Groves was already up, carbine raised and firing.

The jeep that had held the remaining Rangers had taken a direct hit. Its occupants, who had used it for shelter, were nearly all dead or dying. From the field where the paratroopers had landed Jim saw a skirmish line already sweeping forward, firing as they ran, dropping everyone in their path. To the north, just short of the still-burning wreckage on the main road, another line of canopies were opening and sliding down.

Jim grasped Groves by the arm.

"General, does the main administrative building have a basement?"

The general nodded. "Why?"

"We're cut off. This is an enveloping sweep. We've got to get these scientists to shelter!"

Groves nodded in instant agreement. "Round them up. Let's go!"

Jim looked at Oppenheimer. "Have your people here grab what weapons they can and start moving to the Admin building!"

Oppenheimer nodded and did as he was told.

Arguing, pushing, shoving, and in one case threatening to shoot, Jim guided the mob to the only building that offered a hint of defensibility. Some with particular presence of mind stopped long enough to salvage the dead Rangers' weapons. As they ran toward the building, shots began to snap overhead as the team that had landed to the north started its sweep toward them.

Hoping to momentarily halt the line of skirmishers, Jim stopped to return fire, but it just kept coming. Then he noticed the sound, absurdly out of place after the roar and thunder, of a throttled-back Piper Cub engine sweeping by him to touch down where one of the paratroop teams had landed. Realizing who it might be, he snapped off a shot, but without real hope. The plane disappeared into the darkness.

4:45 A.M. (10:45 P.M. at Oak Ridge) The North Sea

Plumes of spray swept across the pitching deck as the cruiser heeled over sharply. Rommel ignored the captain's advice that he should go below, that there was no benefit accruing from the risk he was taking. Rommel had never seen a battle at sea.

The forward battery was already in play, joined seconds later by the 37-mm antiaircraft guns just below the bridge. The targets were low on the horizon, coming out of the pre-dawn darkness to the west, almost impossible to see. Suddenly there was a brilliant flash to the south; Rommel turned his binoculars to the brilliant glare. A transport was exploding. A thousand men gone.

The cruiser started to reverse its turn, nearly tumbling him over. Seconds later a geyser erupted a hundred meters off the starboard beam, the force of the explosion vibrating 
through the soles of his feet. Rommel looked up and saw a British Typhoon fighter bomber breaking out of its dive, skimming low over the water, tracers pursuing it into a low-hanging bank of fog.

Rommel gripped the railing as the cruiser heeled to the other side as another explosion erupted a hundred meters to port. This time the cruiser maintained the turn until it had cut a full circle. While it did so Rommel noted that several ships in the convoy were trailing smoke. A broken-backed light cruiser was swiftly sinking, bow and stern both pointing up at drunken angles.

Six more hours of this, he thought coldly. As well it had not started earlier; they would never have survived.

4:45 A.M.

The English Channel

"Break left!" Adolf Galland shouted into his mike. It was going to be a fight after all. He pulled his Me-262 into a sharp banking dive as he tried to line up on the British Meteor that was in turn trying to line up on his wingman. The RAF had been waiting for them. The Meteor broke away, but he could not follow; another Meteor was on
him.
He managed to jink away. What a furball. How much nicer it had been last time, when they'd caught the RAF napping.

He could sense already that the German attack was falling apart. By now they should already be over the coast, turning in to hit the airfields that ringed the southeast coast. He saw a plume of smoke and fire tumbling down, an Arado 234 breaking up in a fireball. Seconds later another plane plummeted past his portside: another Arado.