North Reich (31 page)

      
A police officer got out.
 
“Open this gate, son,” the cop said.
 
He seemed to have an accent.
 
“This is important.”

      
Lieutenant Norton showed up in time to hear the cop’s demand.
 
A couple of trucks were behind the cop car and they were filled with men in uniform, probably more cops, Louis thought.
 
Norton gave the order to unlock and open the gate and the three vehicles swept in.
 
Men tumbled out of the trucks and Louie noticed that those weren’t cop uniforms.
 
Christ, they were Germans.

      
He tried to swing his rifle but was too slow.
 
The cop had a revolver in his hand and fired it twice, hitting Louie in the head.
 
Lieutenant Norton started to say something but he was cut down as well, but he didn’t die as quickly.
 
He moaned and screamed.
 

The German soldiers fanned out, entering the control building as well as the barracks and little mess hall.
 
Automatic weapons fire rang out as the small number of soldiers and technicians was cut down.
 
Hand grenades were tossed through windows and explosions and screams followed.
 
In another couple of minutes, all wires to the outside world had been cut and demolition charges were set around the base of the vital towers. Moments later, the girders were shattered by dynamite and the towers fell on their sides with a crash that made the Germans cheer.

Albers grinned.
 
The attack had been a complete success.
 
Better, he had improved on the idea of using a police car as a decoy.
 
It had been child’s plan to steal several more vehicles and dress them up as police cars.
 
Now they were attacking the other towers with what Albers presumed would also be complete success.
 
In a few moments they would be checking in to confirm the fact.
 
The Americans along the Niagara front were blind.
 
The Luftwaffe would pour through the gap and attack with impunity.

Dick Morowski knew he wasn’t the smartest man in the world, but he did understand the irony.
 
For the past several years, the massive Ford Motor Company facility at River Rouge, Michigan, had been working day and night filling the orders for the military.
 
Tens of thousands of workers were making more than he was, but he didn’t resent it.
 
During the pits of the Depression he’d had a job with what everyone referred to as “Fords” while those tens of thousands stood in lines waiting for a handout, or maybe they sold apples on street corners.

What goes around comes around, he thought.
 
He did think it was especially ironic that the American military was hinting that they had more than enough of the vehicles that Ford was making and were going to cut back on orders.
 
That meant that the smug workers and even smugger management would have their hours cut down, maybe even have their jobs eliminated.
 
Some of the workers were already grousing that they should have a union, but they all knew that Henry Ford would kill to keep the UAW away.
 
While the UAW had pledged no strikes while the country was at war, Ford’s chief goon, Harry Bennett, wasn’t taking chances.

There was another rumor and in this one the car companies would be allowed to start making civilian vehicles, and that hadn’t happened since shortly after Pearl Harbor.

Hence, Dick Morowski not only had a job, but carried a gun. He was not in charge of all security at River Rouge, but he did have a crew of thirty and many of them also carried guns.
 
Dick had spent several years as a Detroit cop before being let go for being too hard on some of the scum he dealt with.
 
Luckily, he’d found a home with Bennett’s private army.
 
Soon he would retire with a pension from Ford and some money from Social Security.
 
It wouldn’t be much, but it would cover beer and cigarettes.

The phone rang, jarring him back to alertness.
 
He was alone in the guard room.
 
“What is it?” he asked harshly.
 
He quickly re-thought his rough answer.
 
His troops knew better than to trouble him over something trivial.

“Chief, a whole shitload of small boats is coming up the river and they’re full of people with guns.”

Morowski thought quickly.
 
They were either pricks from the UAW or Germans from Windsor.
 
His first thought was the UAW, but coming up the Rouge River wasn’t something they normally did.
 
The union wanted publicity.
 
Hey, maybe they wanted to seize the plant.
 
Good luck, he thought, it was as large as some cities.

“I’ll be right there,” he said and slammed down the phone.
 
He got in one of the last Fords made for civilian use and drove to the Rouge River.
 
Yep, there were a number of boats and men were pouring out of them and running around the factory compound. Worse, they were armed.
 
These weren’t union fucks, he realized, these were fucking Germans.

Two other guards joined him.
 
“What do we do?” one asked.

Morowski was about to admit he didn’t know when one of the Germans took a shot at him.
 
The German missed, but the bullet smacked into a metal pipe behind him.
 
He thought briefly about pulling his revolver and firing back, but quickly changed his mind.
 
He was an overage and overweight ex-cop, not a soldier.
 

“What we do now is run,” he said.
 
They got into the car and drove back to the guard shack where he called the Dearborn Police along with making a call to Henry Ford’s stark gray stone mansion at Fair Lane where he left another message.
 
As he did this, he heard explosions and realized what the Germans were up to.
 
They were going to blow up the River Rouge complex.

Christ, he thought, there were people working in the complex.
 
Not many this Saturday night, just a few hundred, but they needed to be warned.
 
He hit the switch that activated the fire alarm and sirens began to wail.
 
Workers poured out of the buildings, looked around and saw smoke coming from the river.
 
Morowski got in his car and drove around, yelling at the men to get the hell out of the Rouge complex.
 
In short order, they got the message and streamed out.
 
Despite that, he heard the sounds of gunfire and wondered just who had decided to be a hero?
 
Then he realized that in sounding the fire alarm he might have sent men back to fight a fire and caused them to confront the German army.

Shit.

Edward Jeffries was the forty-five year old mayor of the prosperous, dynamic, and growing city of Detroit.
 
He felt that he had a future that would propel him to higher office.
 
He had just attended a quiet and private dinner followed by lengthy card games, cigars, and good booze with political friends in a suite at the elegant twenty-two story Leland Hotel.
 
It was located on Bagley Street in downtown Detroit.
 
He had decided that his very long night should come to a close when his attention was drawn to the sounds of sirens and what might have been gunfire.

      
The mayor raced outside in time to see a column of strange vehicles roaring up Woodward Avenue towards the north.
 
He grabbed a bewildered cop by the arm, belatedly realizing that the cop had drawn his pistol.
 
“What the hell’s going on?”

The cop looked confused.
 
“I’m not certain.
 
Somebody said that Germans have come through the tunnel and others over the bridge.
 
I guess that means we’re at war.”

      
The mayor ran the few blocks to where he could see the road that led to the tunnel entrance.
 
Several cars were on fire and there were bodies on the sidewalk.
      
One of the bodies was smoldering.
 
He felt horrified and sickened.

      
Several more vehicles emerged from the tunnel entrance and Jeffries stepped out into the street to get a better look.
 
A machine gun mounted on top of one fired and a dozen bullets ripped through his body, nearly cutting him in half.
 
As life faded, he wondered just how his beloved city was ever going to recover from the beating it was taking.

“Canfield, when was the last time you heard from the radar stations?”

      
Canfield winced.
 
Even though the radio reception made the colonel’s voice sound tinny, the anger and frustration came though clearly.
 
The colonel knew damn well that the stations were supposed to check in with brigade and not Canfield’s battalion and were to do so every hour.

      
“I haven’t talked to anyone in a couple of hours, and I’m assuming you haven’t either.”

      
“You’re right.
 
I sent a plane up and they can’t even find the towers in the dark and the snow, although they did spot a couple of fires burning.”

      
“Colonel, I think that means that the krauts have struck.”

      
“Agreed, Charley, now get your ass down the road and find out for certain.”

      
With that the colonel abruptly signed off.
 
Canfield gathered his officers and called for a company of infantry in jeeps and trucks to be ready in five minutes.
 
Since it was the middle of the night and so many men were off post, it took more like half an hour to get the caravan moving.

Canfield’s ad hoc column consisted of twelve trucks stuffed with bewildered and confused GIs carrying their Garand rifles, and followed by a handful jeeps.
 
Other than some .30 caliber machine guns mounted on the jeeps, he had nothing resembling heavy weapons.
 
If the Germans were out in force, his company strength unit would be cut to pieces.

      
Normally, he would have moved slowly and sent out patrols, but his orders had been succinct.
 
He was to find out what had happened to the radar stations and speed was essential.
 
If the column got shot up, the survivors were to press on.

      
Canfield decided his best bet was to leapfrog.
 
One platoon would turn into the first radar station area while the rest of the company continued down the dirt road to the other sites.
 
He would take the first one.

      
Leading two jeeps and three trucks, they turned down the access road, stopping just short of the gate to the radar station compound, or at least where it once had been.
 
The gate was open and off its hinges.
 
A couple of bodies lay nearby.
 
One young soldier was clearly dead, but a lieutenant was breathing but unconscious.
 
It was nearing dawn and they could see fairly clearly.
 
The place looked destroyed and abandoned.
 
The control building was a smoldering wreck and the radar towers lay on their sides like dead animals.
 
The worst part was the sick-sweet stench of burned flesh.
 
He’d smelled it first at house fires when he’d been working as a cop.
 
Canfield had a sergeant radio in a brief report confirming their worst suspicions.

      
“I’ll bet you they’ve all cleared out,” Dubinski said as he looked around nervously.
 
“You want I should take some men around the back of the place?”

      
“Do it.”
 
Dubinski nodded and took a squad on a patrol around the back of the compound.
 
Canfield ordered those men not involved in the probably hopeless but necessary task of checking the burned buildings for survivors to stand down and be careful not to shoot their own side.

      
A short while later, Dubinski returned with four men in tow. Two of them were wounded but all were conscious and angry.
 
Their senior man was a buck sergeant with a bandage around his head.

      
“Fuckers jumped us.
 
We were on the lookout when they rode up to the gate, bold as brass, and led by a cop car.
 
Hell, we thought it was more help, maybe even relief, so we relaxed.
 
But then they shot the lieutenant and the kid at the gate and roared in, shooting everything in sight.
 
Me, I got lucky.
 
I had just gone off duty and gone out back for a smoke when the shit hit the fan.”

      
Canfield had no doubt what his other units would find - just more of the same.
 
Still, they would confirm the obvious.
 
He would leave a squad to protect the survivors and would call in for medical assistance.
 
His men could stop looking for survivors in the burned ruins.
 
He mentally kicked himself for not having brought ambulances with him, but he didn’t have any immediately available and his orders precluded waiting.