Night of Flames: A Novel of World War II (29 page)

Out of the corner of his eye he saw his comrades, one-by-one, sprinting across the open fi eld toward the fence. His heart pounded, but he forced himself to wait.

The guard fi nished relieving himself and buttoned up his trousers. The second guard turned toward him, then went rigid and pointed at the fence. He dropped the dog’s leash and raised his submachine gun.

Richard squeezed the trigger, and the Bren gun erupted in a staccato burst echoing off the hillside.

Both guards fell to the ground. The dog bolted away, but the guard with the submachine gun started to get up. Richard fi red another burst, and he went down again.

Richard shot a quick glance toward the yard in time to see Henri slither through the slit in the fence. Jean-Claude, a few meters behind, crawled after him on his stomach. Franc and Gaston dove to the ground behind him.

Jean-Claude made it through the slit, then Franc. Gaston started wriggling through.

Richard looked back to the dead guards and froze in horror. From the 190

Douglas W. Jacobson

corner of the building charged the huge black Doberman, barking and snarling, the chain leash fl apping behind. Richard looked back to the fi eld. Paul Delacroix was almost to the fence, but Marchal was still thirty meters away, running hard.

An instant later the massive dog leaped onto Marchal’s back and knocked him to the ground. Marchal rolled over, struggling to get away, but the dog lunged for his throat. Marchal raised an arm, and the frenzied animal’s jaw clamped on the sleeve of his jacket, shaking it back and forth.

Richard swung the Bren gun around, trying to aim but it was no use. From this distance he could just as easily hit Marchal as the dog. Delacroix whirled and ran back to Marchal, clubbing the dog with the butt of his Sten gun.

Marchal rolled on the ground and broke free.

In that instant, the dog hesitated, unsure which man to attack. It was enough. Richard sighted down the barrel of the Bren and squeezed the trigger.

The dog collapsed on the ground.

Marchal tried to get up but stumbled. Delacroix grabbed his arm and helped him toward the fence.

Richard spotted four guards sprinting along the east side of the yard toward the repair building. “
Vite! Vite!
Hurry! Hurry!” he screamed at the group then swung the Bren gun to the east and inserted a fresh magazine.

Delacroix and Marchal made it through the opening and the group scrambled up the hill.

The guards shouted. Shots rang out.

Richard squeezed the trigger and fi red a burst. When he stopped and looked over the smoking barrel, two of the guards were sprawled on the ground but the other two had apparently made it to the corner of the building. He scanned the area, trying to spot them, but they were hidden in the shadows.

A siren wailed, and Richard looked back toward the guard shack at the main gate. Another group of guards ran along the conveyor toward the repair building. Then Marchal and the others were at his side.

“How many do you see?” Marchal asked, his breathing labored.

“Two are down, but two others made it to the north wall of the building,”

Richard said. “There’s at least four more running in this direction.”

Marchal glanced at his watch. “Two minutes before the charges inside the building go off.
Restez vigilant!
Keep those guards pinned down.” He turned Night of Flames

191

to the others. “Start making your way back to the top of the hill.”

Richard swung the Bren gun back and forth, sighting down the barrel, looking for movement. He heard Marchal say, “One minute.”

Suddenly, Richard saw two guards break for the fence. He pulled the trigger, and the burst from the big gun sent both of them diving to the ground. Richard sprayed the area as the guards clawed back toward the building. He released the trigger, and the gun fell silent . . . just as the fi rst explosion went off.

In a jarring detonation the northeast corner of the building blew open, and tons of iron and steel rocketed through the air, crashing in the fi eld. Three seconds later another blast erupted, and the metal roof shredded into a thousand shards of scrap iron.

Richard was knocked to the ground by the blasts and, wiping dirt from his eyes, gathered up the Bren gun and started climbing the hill, following Marchal and Delacroix. He turned to look back at the building just as the third charge went off. It was the one strapped to the acetylene tanks.

A thundering concussion echoed over the hillside, followed an instant later by a monstrous fi reball belching through the gaping hole in the roof.

Richard staggered backward, the heat so intense that he was certain his eyes and hair had been scorched. He saw Marchal yell something and wave at him, but his ears rang so badly that he couldn’t hear him. Richard scrambled to the top of the hill as the next set of charges went off.

The explosives strapped to the leg of the water tower went fi rst, and the top of the tower dipped a meter or two and then stopped.

“Goddamn it!” Franc cursed. “It’s not going to fall!”

Time seemed to stand still. Then another blast erupted, from the charges strapped to the locomotive. The immense machine lifted off the ground, enormous sections of steel fl ying in all directions. The attached coal car rocked wildly then rolled on its side, toward the water tower. Richard watched in fascination as the heavily laden car toppled into the base of the now three-legged tower. The tower shuddered then, in agonizingly slow motion, began to collapse. It tipped about thirty degrees when its roof split open and, with an enormous
whoosh,
a half million liters of water cascaded over the yard.

The torrent of water slammed into the yard like an avalanche, swamped the conveyor system and smashed it into kindling.

• • •

Douglas W. Jacobson

Marchal stood silently at the top of the hill, mesmerized by the awesome sight.

He knew the raging inferno in the repair building would continue for several days. Two locomotives and a coal car had been destroyed, along with the water tower and the conveyor system. The facility would be out of commission for a long time. Managing a smile, he glanced around at the rest of the group who stared transfi xed at the wreckage, their faces illuminated by the blazing fl ames in the night.

Chapter 35

Jan followed Tadeusz and Slomak into a wooden shed hidden among a stand of colossal oak trees at the end of a rutted dirt road. Inside, another man, thin and hard, perhaps in his early twenties, struck a match to a lantern. The man blew out the match and hung the lantern from a hook, illuminating a workbench covered with a gray canvas tarp. Jan moved in closer as the man rolled back the tarp revealing dozens of rocket fragments.

Jan sifted through the parts, examining the strange devices with care. Some had wires protruding at odd angles, others were nothing more than blackened metal shards and twisted sheet steel. He looked up from the workbench and turned toward the young man who was lighting a hand-rolled cigarette.

“Where did you fi nd these?” he asked.

The man took a drag on the cigarette and picked a speck of tobacco from his lower lip. “In a fi eld about two kilometers from here. A rocket crashed in the middle of the night. This was all we could get before the SS showed up.”

Jan sifted through the jumble of debris a second time, examining each piece, trying to understand what he was looking at. It was always the same—the rockets crashed with such incredible explosions that little remained. “I don’t know what these are,” he said. “Some of them look like a type of timing device . . . but I don’t understand the signifi cance. I don’t know how it all fi ts together.”

Jan rubbed his eyes and looked at Slomak. “We’ve been at this for almost a month, sifting through these shattered fragments. And I don’t know any more than when we started. If we could fi nd something that was more intact . . .”

His voice trailed off. Frustrated, he pulled out his notebook and made some 194

Douglas W. Jacobson

sketches and notations while Tadeusz took some photos. Slomak and the young man stepped outside. Jan had not been introduced to the man, which he had now come to realize was the way things were done in the AK. Everything was on a strict “need-to-know” basis.

When they were fi nished, Tadeusz extinguished the lantern and fastened the padlock on the door. Slomak waited for them, sitting in the cab of the ancient Russian-built truck provided by operatives of the AK. The young man was gone.

Tadeusz hid the notebook and the photos in the compartment under the fl oorboards then climbed in, behind the wheel. Jan settled in next to Slomak, and they drove off without a word.

Jan stared out the window at the bleak countryside and recalled the fi rst time he had witnessed a rocket launch from the forests near the training grounds. At that instant he knew this weapon was infi nitely more lethal than the British had imagined. During his training sessions at MI-6 headquarters, British agents had shown him aerial photographs of German rocket launch sites discovered in northern France. The fuzzy pictures revealed what looked like inclined ramps hidden in fi elds and forests. The British speculated that the ramps were a type of catapult for launching moderate speed, unmanned rockets. They called them V-1s for “vengeance weapons.”

But what Jan had seen blasting into the sky near Blizna was entirely different. This was a missile, launched vertically at unbelievable velocity, that disappeared from sight in seconds. The destructive potential scared him to death.

They drove on in silence, keeping to the back roads, avoiding villages and towns. The truck bed was full of rusty wheels and an old engine block that took up half the space—part of their cover as scrap metal dealers. Jan wondered how that would hold up if they were stopped but pushed the thought from his mind. There wasn’t much he could do about it.

It was almost six o’clock in the evening and completely dark when they drove into a farmyard on the outskirts of a small village Jan had never heard of.

The temperature had been dropping all afternoon, and fl akes of snow danced in the headlights of the lumbering truck. Tadeusz stopped the truck in front of a barn. A minute later a man emerged from the darkness, carrying a lantern and bent over against the wind. The man slid the barn door back, and Tadeusz Night of Flames

195

pulled the truck into the ancient timber and fi eldstone structure.

As they climbed out of the truck, the man lit two other lanterns, hung them from wooden beams and left the barn without a word, pushing the door closed behind him.

“Let’s get the radio out,” Slomak said. He lifted a ladder off two wooden pegs and set it up in a corner opposite the door. Carrying one of the lanterns, Slomak climbed the ladder, pushed open a well-concealed trapdoor and waved for Jan to follow as he disappeared through the hole.

Jan glanced at Tadeusz, who indicated that he would wait by the truck, then followed Slomak up the ladder.

When he got to the top, Jan pulled the ladder up behind him and closed the trapdoor. They were in a loft about ten meters square and four or fi ve meters high with a small window at each end. Under one of the windows stood a crude workbench and a small, three-legged stool. Slomak reached under the workbench and dragged out a wooden crate. Jan stepped over to help, and they lifted the crate onto the bench. Slomak opened the crate, revealing a long-range wireless set.

“Nice piece of equipment,” Jan said, examining the precision instrument with its English dial markings.

“We have several of these at various locations, compliments of our British friends,” Slomak replied as he connected wires to a 12-volt battery. “You brought one with you on the plane.” He glanced at Jan with a rare smile.

The remark took Jan by surprise. It was the fi rst reference anyone had made to the crates that had been shoved out of the airplane before he jumped. He leaned against a beam in the center of the room and lit a cigarette, letting Slomak tend to the task of tuning in the radio signal. As he watched him twist the dials and adjust the headset, he pondered again what an enigma the man was.

It was frustrating. Jan was certain that Slomak, who went by the name

“Krupa,” had recognized him when they met at Tadeusz’s farm. But the taciturn AK operative had not acknowledged it—not then or at any time since.

Whenever Slomak was with them he was all business, never any conversation beyond what was necessary. He would spend a day or two with them then disappear. They might not see him again for several days, often as long as a week.

There was never an explanation, and Jan had realized he shouldn’t ask.

“I’ve made contact. You can send your message.” Slomak said, getting up 196

Douglas W. Jacobson

from the stool and removing the headset.

Jan crushed out his cigarette and stepped over to the radio, pulling a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket. The paper contained a message he had en-coded as they were driving that afternoon. He had sent a message to SOE in London shortly after his arrival in Poland advising them he had made contact with the AK, but this would be his fi rst scheduled status report. He sat on the stool, smoothed the scrap of paper on the bench and tapped out the message which, decoded on the other end, would read,

Man in question genuine. Examining components with diffi

culty.

Device different from expected. Extremely lethal.

Chapter 36

The Gestapo’s Belgian headquarters were housed in a twelve-story building at the intersection of Avenues Louise and DeMot in Brussels. The building towered above the private homes in the area and had served as a suit-able symbol of power and dominance.

It had, that is, until a Belgian pilot named Baron de Longchamps, returning to England from a mission over Germany, fl ew his Typhoon through the city at treetop level and strafed the top fl oors of the building with machine-gun fi re.

Six Gestapo offi cials died in the exploit and now, almost a year later, the top four fl oors of the building remained boarded-up and vacant.