Five Past Midnight (26 page)

He was facing north, midway along the airstrip. An airplane taking off would have to pass within forty yards of Cray's position. The neighborhood to the north, across the Spree, had been hit by bombers that day and was still burning, a mile-long bank of fire that churned with liquid peaks and valleys. The inferno backlit the park, and black and broken trees stuck out from the ground at all angles. Refugee campfires dotted the Tiergarten, and low shapes huddled around meager flames. Other refugees moved between the blasted trees looking for shelter, blankets over their shoulders, a few pushing wheelbarrows, some leading children. Ash fell steadily, and Cray let it land on him, appreciating another layer of camouflage. Wind drew smoke from the fire and layered it over the park. Clouds of ash were kicked up by the wind, and drifts of it were growing against the bulldozer and grader and tree stumps.

A gray movement caught Cray's attention, something at the edge of the smoke, at the eastern end of the airstrip. A spark, then an orange flare, an intense point of light that instantly lit a soldier wearing a coalscuttle helmet and a rifle over his shoulder who had a flare in his hand. The soldier walked several paces to the corner of the airstrip, placed the flare on the ground, then retreated out of the cone of orange light and was swiftly hidden by smoke and night.

A second flare came to life, carried by another soldier, again off to Cray's right. The flare was planted into the turned ground, and the soldier stepped away. Quickly two more flares were lit and set on the ground, these to Cray's left, at the west corners of the airstrip. The soldiers slipped out of Cray's sight. Flares now framed the landing field.

Cray looked at his wristwatch. Midnight. The low drone of an airplane could be heard above the fire's distant seething. The sound of an engine grew louder, and was soon a hollow pounding. Cray looked skyward, but saw only black haze and a weak moon. Then the plane slid out of the night at the west end of the airstrip and was almost on the ground before it formed out of the smoke. It passed Cray as it slowed.

It was a Fieseier Storch, a wing-over, single-engine plane with a fixed undercarriage. The model had proved itself scouting for Rommel in Africa. This plane had been reserved for the Führer. The engine gained power to turn the plane around, and then it taxied west along the airstrip, passing Cray again, its propeller blowing up dust and ash. A black national cross was on its fuselage and another under its wing. It bounced over stones as it made its way along. Cray could not make out the pilot.

The sound of other engines came from the southwest, from behind Cray and off to his left. The strident howling of motorcycles. Their headlights had been taped over to allow only slits of light to escape. Cray could see nothing but narrow beams that drifted across the park. Behind them was an automobile, it too sending forth only restricted shafts of light. This was a touring car, a Grosser Mercedes, with windows thirty millimeters thick and with seat backs and doors reinforced with eight millimeters of steel plate. The tires had extremely low air pressure so that vibration would not upset Hitler's sensitive stomach.

Earlier in his reign, the Führer had used an open car so that he could stand to appear before crowds lining the roadways, but Heydrich's assassination in Prague in May '1942 had convinced him that an armored roof might be useful, and this Grosser Mercedes was enclosed.

Many of the automobile's parts—those not essential to the armor— were made of aluminum to reduce weight. Still, the heavy car seemed to plow like a ship across the soft ground, its tires sinking.

Two other automobiles followed the Mercedes, both black Horches. When the Fiihrer's limousine stopped near the airplane, bodyguards emerged from both trailing cars to surround the Mercedes. They huddled around the car, forming a human shield. Cray could see only dimly. The guards were a smudge against the trees at the end of the airstrip. Some of them might have been wearing uniforms—straps across their chests and helmets—but Cray could not be sure.

The knot of bodyguards began moving at a slow pace toward the plane. They cleared the automobile. An interior roof light was now on in the Mercedes, and allowed Cray to see that the rear passenger door was open, and the backseat was empty. When the guards reached the Fieseler Storch, one of them gripped the wing strut and stepped onto the landing gear. He opened the plane's passenger door. He, too, was forming a shield.

A man rose from the group of guards, many hands assisting him. Cray could make out nothing but a suggestion of movement. Partly hidden by the guard on the strut, the man climbed into the plane.

Cray was acutely aware of the risks here in the Tiergarten. He was acting hastily on information from Colonel Becker that could not be confirmed. But if Becker's news was accurate, Cray's target was fleeing Berlin, and in a few minutes Cray would have failed entirely.

He had done what he could in the past two hours, walking around and through the Tiergarten, dressed like one of the thousands of refugees camped there, trying to spot something amiss, but had detected nothing. Still, coming to the Tiergarten on such sparse intelligence was a gamble. Cray had weighed the risk against the chance of success and had decided to act. The Panzerfaust's backblast would pinpoint Cray for the guards, but he also accepted that risk.

The Storch's engine began winding up as soon as the guard on the strut jumped down. Propeller wash whipped his coat. He and the others quickly retreated to their cars, holding onto their hats, their pants blown tightly against their legs. The small plane lurched forward, then gained speed, bouncing on the rough runway.

jack Cray rose from his position, brought up a Panzerfaust, and placed it over his shoulder. The sight was a crude stick just behind the projectile. His hand found the trigger, and he centered the approaching plane above the aiming stick. The plane gained speed on the rutted runway. Cray's trigger finger came back.

Then the Storch's engine failed. At least, so it seemed to Cray, with the motor dying so suddenly. The plane slowed, tossing and swaying, and finally stopped, still a hundred yards short of Cray's position. For a brief moment Cray expected the doors to be thrown open, the pilot calling out his trouble to some mechanic, maybe back at the automobiles.

And then Cray knew his gamble was lost, that he had been set up. The Fieseier Storch—or, more accurately, the information that the German leader was leaving Berlin in a plane from this emergency landing strip—was the bait, and Cray had gone for it.

Cray slipped down into the crater, putting the Panzerfaust aside. He peered over the rim. The backlit refugees—black against the wall of fire to the north—had a new presence. New figures, also dark against the fire. The figures were forming up, solidifying out of the trees and refugees. A picket fence of men, surely soldiers, walked slowly in Cray's direction, still five hundred yards away, but closing.

He looked west toward the cars. The bodyguards had taken up positions at the end of the airstrip. He still could not see them clearly, but several appeared now to be carrying weapons, either rifles or submachine guns. Cray glanced over his shoulder. He couldn't make out anything of the night and smoke, but he had no doubt another phalanx of soldiers was closing in on him from the south. He was boxed in.

Next came the most fearful sound on a battlefield, the low rasp of armor, from Cray's left and right, and then from somewhere behind him. And across the airstrip several tanks and armored scout cars rumbled from down the street, the fires behind them, and the soldiers opened their ranks to allow the vehicles into their midst, into the box that held Jack Cray. Another tank crawled out of the darkness at the east end of the airfield.

Cray squeezed his eyes closed, and said under his breath, "Nuts."

EUGEN EBERHARDT'S automobile arrived at the airstripjust as the Storch pivoted around to return to the west end of the airfield. The pilot killed the engine, and the Führer's stand-in, an RSD major in a brown raincoat, climbed down from the passenger's seat. Eberhardt's driver pulled up beside an armored car, and the RSD general emerged from his Horch. The false-Führer's bodyguards, who were Waffen-SS, awaited orders.

Dietrich also climbed out of the Horch. Binoculars were in his hand. He stepped around the car's front bumper to Eberhardt.

"I think Jack Cray is in our square," the general said. "He fell for it. We've got him outgunned, with all the men and armor. I think we've got him."

"He may be inside our square," Dietrich replied gravely, "but that doesn't mean we've got him yet."

CRAY PULLED the pistol from his belt and scrambled up the crater's crumbling wall, leaving the Panzerfausts behind. He ran east in an infantryman's crouch. To his right came the sounds of soldiers closing in, heavy boots on loose soil and broken branches, a few sharp orders from officers, from back among the trees. Cray could see little, and ran with his left hand out to ward off tree limbs and brush, he knew what was coming. In a few seconds the airstrip and all that surrounded it would be lit as brightly as midday.

Cray dodged a fallen tree and sidestepped water-filled craters, sprinting east. A German voice called, "Did you see someone?" Others barked replies, lost to Cray in the sound of his breath.

The most formidable weapon may also be the weakest. Cray was forty yards from the tank at the south end of the airstrip when the night was split by a dagger of harsh yellow light. Then another and another. Flares descending from the sky on parachutes threw flat shadows.

His legs churning, Cray glanced to the south, toward Tiergarten Street. Soldiers seeped out between the trees. They had been told this trap had been set for the Vassy Chateau killer, and they moved warily. They squinted against the sudden light. A few saw movement and brought up weapons. A smattering of shots.

Dirt and stones splashed up at the American's feet. The tank's commander was standing in the cupola, the upper half of his body protruding from the turret. This was a Panzerkampfwagen III, a medium tank, and fast, known for chasing Bernard Montgomery around northern Africa. The commander was wearing a black side cap and a radio headset. His sleeves were rolled up, and around his neck were binoculars. His eyes found Jack Cray just as Cray reached for a handhold on the spare track links on the tank's nose. The commander reached down into the cupola, shouting for his pistol.

The tank's loader also saw the American through a vision block, and he reached for the grip of his machine gun. Its barrel protruding from a hole below the turret, the coaxial MG-34 sprayed bullets that churned the ground, but behind Cray. The machine gun's traverse was limited, and as Cray crawled up the hull of the tank, his feet finding a platform on the tread fender and his hand using the barrel of the 50-mm gun, he was inside the bullets' arc.

Clay launched himself at the tank commander, who was just bringing his pistol up through the hatch. Cray smashed the handle of his pistol into the German's temple. The black beret fell to the turret top, and the commander began to sag back down through the hatch. Cray straddled the cupola and dragged him out of the turret, his hands under the German's arms.

Running toward the tank, soldiers hesitated because Cray used the commander as a shield, but a few bullets clipped the air, and a few more clattered uselessly against the tank.

A second bank of flares lit the night. More shouts and curses and orders.

Cray threw the unconscious commander off the turret and jumped down through the hatch.

His feet landed on the commander's empty seat. Cray gripped the hatch rim, and let his knees buckle. He dropped fully inside the tank's fighting compartment.

The loader was bringing around a pistol. Cray lashed out at him with a boot, thrusting the loader's head back against the steel of the turret wall, and smashing it there. The loader slumped.

At the same instant Cray's pistol came around for the gunner, who was in his chair on the other side of the gun breech and recoil protector. One of the gunner's hands was still on the gun's elevating wheel. Two voice tubes were near his ear. He was unarmed. He spread his hands, his eyes locked on Cray's pistol. Behind the gunner was a gas-mask canister attached to the turret wall and in iront of him was his traverse indicator. The turret was lit by dull yellow lights.

Cray barked, "Tell the driver to back up the tank."

The gunner had a burn scar along his cheek. Probably an Afrika

Korps veteran Tough, not someone who would bend easily. The gunner shook his head, just a fraction, and said, "The driver—"

He didn't get out another word. Cray shot him through the arm, through the meat of his right biceps. The sound filled the turret and was gone just as quickly. Blood and bits of skin painted the turret wall.

"My next bullet goes through your head." Cray brought the pistol to the gunner's nose. "Do as I tell you."

The gunner blanched and swayed but knew better than to hesitate. He pushed his mouth into the speaker tube and weakly called the order. Slumped on the fighting compartment floor, the loader groaned and grabbed for his head. Cray kicked him again, and the loader was still. Then Cray swung the hatch above his head dosed and secured it with a lever. He was surrounded by steel thirty-four millimeters thick. He was scaled in. He felt better.

The hatch to the driving compartment began to open beneath Cray's feet.

"Walter?" the radio operator called.

When the metal door opened further, Cray yanked it out of the radioman's hands, aimed his pistol down into the compartment and sent a bullet into the radio operator's thigh. The man howled and slipped backward, clutching his leg, his headset slipping off him and dangling below the radio. He fell against a shell locker.

Cray moved the pistol several inches so that its snout was against the driver's beret. Staring down at the driver, Cray said, "Get me out of the Tiergarten or none of you will ever leave this tank. Do you understand me
?
Back your tank up."

"I can't see behind me." The driver had a soft Bavarian accent. He looked up at the American.