A Thousand Suns (11 page)

Chapter 14

Major Rall

As the light of dusk was failing, the truck rumbled through the outskirts of another shattered town and out into an open area.

Max stirred as the truck shuddered to a halt and he heard a muted exchange of voices in the gathering dark. He turned to Pieter, but he was fast asleep, as were the others, comforted by the warmth of the oil heater and exhausted from days of deprivation.

He leaned over and lifted the canvas at the back of the truck to look out. The last light of day was now no more than a dusty grey strip on the horizon. They were in an open field. He could only see the irregular outlines of trees against the sky.

Max could hear the driver talking to someone. The conversation ended, and the truck proceeded, bouncing across an open stretch of grass. A guard hut passed by and they were within a chain-fenced perimeter. Max spotted the unmistakable outline of an aircraft hangar. It was an airfield.

His heart sank.

The truck came to an abrupt stop moments later and he detected movement out in the dark. A torch momentarily snapped on and shone into his face.

‘Oberleutnant Kleinmann.’ It was Höstner. ‘Get your men ready and follow me. Quickly.’

The torch snapped off again.

Max turned back to his men; they were beginning to stir. ‘Okay, boys, we’re here.’

‘Where?’ asked Stef sleepily.

‘I don’t know. Get your stuff, we’ve got to get out.’

The four men wearily got to their feet, shuffled to the back of the truck and climbed down into the night.

The torch snapped on again and shone into their faces.

‘Follow me, please.’

A hand appeared from behind the torch and wrapped over its end, dampening the light to an orange glow. The muted torchlight began to move away. ‘Come on, hurry!’

Max nodded to his men and they followed him as he led them away from the truck.

‘Where are we?’ asked Pieter.

‘An airstrip. God knows where,’ he replied.

‘Shit. I
was
right. Another bloody mission.’

Leutnant Höstner led them towards a low bunker they didn’t see until the last moment. He rapped on a metal door with the torch, and almost immediately it opened a crack, revealing a faint light from inside.

‘I have Kleinmann, and his crew for Major Rall.’

The light went out, and Max heard the door creak as it opened.

‘Inside, quickly.’

Höstner ushered them through, and once inside they heard the door slam behind them.

A dim ceiling light came on, a single bulb illuminating a featureless concrete corridor. Höstner held out a hand to Max. ‘Sorry for bundling you out like that. I just wanted to get you men inside before any of their planes spotted the torch. They own the sky now.’

‘What’s this all about?’

‘I’m sorry. You’ll be seeing Major Rall soon. He will explain it all.’

‘Then at least tell me where the hell we are.’

‘Ulmsruhe, several hours south of Stuttgart.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘I have orders to take you to Major Rall immediately, sir.’

Max followed the man along the concrete corridor to a set of steps that took them downwards.

‘What is this place, Leutnant?’

‘A regional intelligence post. Well, it used to be until it was abandoned last week. Major Rall appropriated it a couple of days ago. So you’ll have to excuse us if it looks a little messy.’

The steps descended into another featureless corridor. Several doors opened on to it. The SS Leutnant led them down the corridor towards a door at the end. They passed a room filled with banks of radios, and in the middle of the room was a metal crate full of ashes; the brown, unburned corners of papers still smouldered. The floor around it was littered with boxes full of documents waiting to be destroyed, but forgotten in the haste of departure. The Leutnant followed Max’s gaze. ‘When we’re done here, we’ll finish the job.’

He gestured towards another open door off the corridor. ‘Canteen. Your men can help themselves to some food. I believe we even have some coffee too.’

Max nodded to Pieter. ‘Go on. I’ll be back shortly.’

Pieter led Hans and Stef in and they proceeded directly towards a steaming steel urn.

The SS Leutnant tipped his head towards the door at the end of the corridor. ‘Come, please. Major Rall is waiting for you.’

‘Don’t forget to leave me a bit, lads,’ said Max as he watched his men eagerly helping themselves to the coffee and opening several tins of pork.

Max fell in behind the Leutnant as he eagerly proceeded the last few yards down the corridor to the door and knocked gently on it.

‘Major Rall?’

Max heard a muffled voice from beyond the door. ‘Come in.’

Leutnant Höstner opened the door and gestured for Max to enter. He closed the door behind him, leaving Max alone in the room with Major Rall.

The room was a small, windowless, concrete cell. The walls had at one time been painted a dull ‘waiting room’ green. Scuffmarks and scrapes on the walls indicated this room had once contained a lot more furniture. Now a single desk and two chairs stood in the middle, and a solitary filing cabinet in a corner made the room feel a lot bigger than it was.

Major Rall stood beside the desk. He was a man of average build and height, but his face was instantly striking because of a burn scar that stretched from below his collar, up and across the left side of his face to his hairline. His left ear was little more than a hole with a small rib of skin around it, and his left eye glistened with excess moisture. Rall, it seemed, had made no concessions to his disfigurement and quite happily boasted a well-maintained moustache that disintegrated as it crossed his lip towards the scar tissue on the left.

Max was relieved that Major Rall wore a Luftwaffe uniform.

Rall picked up a manila file from his desk and opened it.

‘Oberleutnant Maximilian Kleinmann?’

‘Yes, sir,’ answered Max.

‘Hmmm . . . you’ve served for the last two years on the eastern front, before that in France. You earned an Iron Cross, followed by a Knight’s Cross. It looks like I chose well.’

Max spoke up. ‘Permission to speak freely, sir?’

Rall smiled. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘My men and myself have been brought here and no information has been given to us. We have no idea what this is all about, sir.’

‘No, that’s quite right. Those were my orders . . . I’m sorry about that. It was a precautionary measure in case you were intercepted on the way here.’

Rall gestured towards the seat nearest Max. ‘Please, make yourself comfortable. Would you like something to drink, a coffee perhaps?’

Max nodded eagerly as he settled down into the seat and Rall walked stiffly across to the door, opened it and quietly ordered a coffee. He returned to the table and perched informally on the edge.

‘Nothing quite as satisfying as having an officer of the SS wait on you, is there?’ Rall smiled conspiratorially.

‘Never had the pleasure, Major.’

Rall took a deep breath. ‘Right.’ The small talk was over. ‘I was passed your name by your previous commanding officer, Major Schendtler. You - and your crew - have a very impressive service record. You came highly recommended.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘It’s rare to find a bomber crew that have been together for so long.’ Max nodded; he knew Rall meant ‘
survived
for so long’. ‘Which is why I took the enormous effort to find you and your men. It really wasn’t easy, I can tell you. There seems to be very little logistical control over what’s left of our boys.’

Rall fell silent for a moment, it seemed he was pondering what to say next. His left eye, surrounded by scarred skin tissue and bereft of any lashes, leaked moisture onto his cheek. He wiped it casually away with his hand.

‘We’ve lost the war,’ he said out of the blue. Max instinctively flinched. True words, but recklessly dangerous spoken aloud. ‘We’ve lost, it’s over. Things may rumble on for a little longer, but we all know right now that this is finished.’

Max carefully guarded his response, suspicious of Rall’s candour. ‘There’s always a chance, sir.’

Rall smiled. ‘Kleinmann, relax, I’m not fishing for a treasonous statement. It’s just you and I, two airmen. Surely in these final days we can speak our minds freely, eh?’

Max remained silent, still wary of committing himself.

‘It’s over. The Russians are approaching the outskirts of Berlin and are settling in and making ready for an offensive to take the city. I’m sure they’re expecting as stiff a fight as we experienced in Stalingrad. But I’d say we have two, maybe four, weeks of fight we can give them.’

Rall left those words hanging in the air. There was a gentle rap on the door, and Leutnant Höstner entered awkwardly carrying a tray with two steaming cups of coffee on it. He placed it silently on Rall’s desk and left.

Rall waited until the door closed behind him before continuing. ‘We have an opportunity to end this war on our terms. One opportunity, but we need to work quickly to make it happen.’

‘A mission?’ Max asked uncertainly.

Rall passed a cup of coffee to Max.

‘Yes, a mission.’

Max looked down at the cup of steaming coffee, a delaying tactic; time to think carefully about what he had to say next to the Major. He owed that much, and more, to his men.

‘Sir, there’s no easy way for me to say this . . .’

Rall nodded. ‘Please, feel free to speak your mind, Oberleutnant.’

‘My men and I have fought in three campaigns. We have flown over three hundred sorties for our country . . . and maybe it’s God’s will or sheer blind luck that we’re all still alive. With respect, sir, we all feel we’ve done our duty for Germany, and I . . . ’ Max faltered, unsure how Rall would take his next words. ‘I can’t order my men to fly again, not with the end of the war only days away.’

Rall remained silent, impassive and motionless.

‘I can’t order them to. Sir, at the risk of a court martial, I won’t,’ Max added.

‘I understand,’ Rall said eventually, warming to the pilot’s loyalty to his men.

‘Which is why the mission is voluntary.’

‘Voluntary?’

‘Yes.’

Max looked up at Rall. The Major appeared to be sincere.

‘This mission is too . . . how shall I say? . . . delicate,’ Rall added, ‘to be undertaken by men under duress. Only if you and your men are willing, is this mission going to proceed.’

‘And this mission will end the war?’

‘Yes, it will. It will end this war in a way that guarantees Germany survives, that the Russians stop, turn around and leave our soil.’

Max looked back down at his coffee.

An end to the madness.

Now that the Allies owned the skies, any mission undertaken would surely be suicide. He guessed that this endeavour, whatever it was, had probably been hastily conceived by some ambitious staff officer desperate to extract a little glory from the final days of the war. A pointless and reckless gamble with the odds stacked heavily against Max and his men surviving it. Max had learned to despise those commanders who led from the rear and casually bandied terms like ‘acceptable losses’.

‘Kleinmann, I want to show you and your men something. And then I will explain the mission to you in detail. I will tell you everything. I will tell you things that only I, and a handful of other men, know about. For a short time, you and your men will have the privilege of sharing a confidentiality with, amongst others, the Führer.’

Max wasn’t entirely convinced his men could give a flying fuck about their Führer.

Rall smiled, realising the grim-faced veteran in front of him had been less than impressed by such a clumsy attempt to win him over.

‘Let me show you what I have, and I’ll outline the mission. Then, and only then, will I ask you and your men to volunteer.’

‘And when they and I refuse?’

‘You are all free to go.’

Max looked up at Rall, studying the man’s wrecked face, searching for a sign of sincerity or guile.

‘We are free to go?’

‘You have my word. Like I said, this will only work if we have volunteers.’

Against his better judgement, Max decided to take this man’s word, for now.

‘Then my men and I will at least listen.’

Chapter 15

Medusa

On the horizon Max could see a flickering of light, the telltale sign of a distant bombing run over Stuttgart. The flashes of light in the night sky, like localised sheet lightning, were accompanied by an almost constant muted rumbling.

Major Rall led Max and his men across the pitted and rubble-strewn concrete of the airfield towards a solitary hangar. The airfield was unlit and in the darkness the men had to make their way cautiously or run the risk of twisting an ankle. Max used the sporadic flashes in the sky to study the treacherous ground in front of him.

Three Waffen-SS stood guard outside the closed sliding doors of the hangar. In the darkness, they only became aware of the approaching men from the clatter of debris unintentionally kicked across the ground in front of the building.

‘Stop and identify yourself!’

‘Major Rall,’ his voice rasped.

A torch flicked on, and the beam flashed across the Major and the others.

‘Turn that fucking thing off!’ Rall hissed at the soldier. ‘If you do that again I’ll wrap it round your neck.’

The torch snapped off.

‘Sorry, sir.’

‘Just open the door.’

Max heard the metallic clatter of the door to the hangar sliding open. The intermittent flickering light on the horizon did little to penetrate the dark void revealed inside.

‘Okay, Max, gentlemen, this way.’

Pieter tapped Max on the shoulder. ‘What are we being taken to see exactly?’

‘I don’t know, he hasn’t said yet.’

Rall entered the hangar and the others followed him hesitantly. The SS guards pulled the hangar doors shut behind them.

In total darkness they heard Rall’s voice. ‘The Allies bombed this airfield to hell and back two weeks ago. As far as they’re concerned, this is now just rubble and craters.

‘They came back the following day to drop a bomb on this hangar because it was still standing. Since then the airfield has been left alone. As far as they’re aware it’s no longer usable. And that’s what we want them to carry on thinking. You see we’ve got something very valuable in here.’

Rall flicked on a torch and muted the light by placing his hand over the end. His fingers glowed red and faint amber light illuminated the hangar. Giant shadows cast from his fingers danced like enormous phantoms.

‘Look.’

He removed his hand from the end of the torch and swung the beam of light towards the middle of the hangar. Taking up at least a third of the total floor space, stood a B-17 bomber.

‘Magnificent, isn’t she?’ he said proudly.

Pieter gasped. ‘My God, is it a real one?’

Rall laughed. ‘Of course it is, go on, go and take a closer look.’

Pieter and the other crew members jogged over towards it and began inspecting it closely.

‘Major, how did you manage to get one of these?’ asked Max.

‘It was a gift made to us, over a year ago, courtesy of the United States Air Force. It landed undamaged in a field in Holland. The crew had become disorientated through the night and lost their way from the rest of the bomber group. They ran low on fuel and ended up putting down in the field. It was rather amusing, you see, they believed they’d made it back to England and were putting down on friendly ground.’

Max nodded with a little sympathy. Stef, his navigator, had managed on occasion to misplace them by a few miles, but in fairness he’d always managed to navigate them to the correct country.

He wandered beneath the plane’s giant wings and ran a hand over one of her Wright Cyclone engines. Rall stood beside him and watched the pilot caress the smooth steel plates of the engine casing.

‘It really is an awe-inspiring plane, isn’t it?’ he said.

‘What on earth convinced us we could win against a country that can produce machines like these in their thousands?’ he said more to himself than the Major.

‘Arrogance, foolishness. Didn’t we all think we were invincible two years ago?’

Rall panned the torch across the fuselage towards the front of the plane. The light picked out the painted image of a topless woman, breasts held at bay by crossed arms. The woman smiled malevolently, while the hair looked unkempt, wild and almost alive.

‘What’s that?’ asked Max

‘Ahh, yes, the nickname the American crew had for this plane, very clever. A little more thought went into this one than most others.’

‘What is it?’

‘
Medusa
. The Americans called her that presumably in the superstitious hope that enemy pilots staring at the plane, at her, would turn to stone. Silly, hmm? But clever.’

Max could understand such a foolish notion. Superstition governed many of the little habits and rituals he and his men privately acted out before every mission. It was a good name.

Pieter approached the two men. ‘Major, can we get a look inside it?’

Rall nodded briskly. ‘Of course, take my torch with you.’ He passed it to Pieter.

Pieter dipped his head formally. ‘Thank you, sir.’ He grinned and turned towards the belly hatch, leading Stefan and Hans up inside.

‘Boys in a toy store springs to mind, eh?’ Rall nodded and winked.

‘It’s too easy to forget they’re all still young, Major.’

Max watched the subdued light from the torch flicker faintly through the plexiglas canopies at the front of the plane and watched as the three young men clambered up into the cockpit and examined, with fascination, the interior.

‘We’ve modified the plane in several ways. Inside the cockpit the instrumentation has been relabelled in German, the Browning M2 machine guns have been replaced with our MG-81s.’

‘Why?’

‘Shell calibre. We would need to manufacture our own supply of 7.9mm shells to use them.’

‘Of course.’

‘And inside we’ve added additional fuel tanks to extend her range.’

Max looked quizzically at Rall. ‘These planes have a long range already.’

‘Yes, we know they have a range of four thousand miles; the extra tanks will give this one another thousand miles.’

Max turned back to look at Rall. ‘She’ll have a range of five thousand miles?’

The Major nodded.

‘I presume my men and I have been brought here to fly this plane.’

Rall nodded again.

‘Five thousand miles?’ he said again. ‘So where exactly are we going to fly her?’

The faint, flickering torchlight spilling from the bomber’s cockpit lit up enough of Major Rall’s face to show he was smiling.

‘I think perhaps it’s time you and I took a walk outside, and then I can tell you about our little plan.’