The Apocalypse Watch (88 page)

Zero hour minus six minutes
. In the dark skies over the outskirts of Beauvais, Georgetown, and North London, the jets continued their maneuvers, sweeping away from the three targets, climbing at incredible accelerations, each millisecond counted off by the computers. The precomputed flight patterns were instantly activated. The jets turned, their engines cut back to minimum, and as rapidly as they had ascended, they descended with equal speed, entering air corridors chosen for their minimum populations, and that would lead them to the fields where their tail hooks would lash out and down, snaring the heavy steel cables that would pull the massive Messerschmitt ME 323 gliders aloft.

There was one final command that each flight leader was-prepared to issue when deceleration was complete. He
would give it over a determined radio frequency to each glider,
his
signal to deliver it being a red light on his computerized panel. It would come in one minute and seven seconds, give or take seconds, due to airspeeds and head winds or tailwinds. Everything now was sheer distance.

Beauvais. Zero hour minus four minutes
. Drew stared out the huge window overlooking the reservoir, while Karin sat at the desk with the major on a second red telephone, both linked to London and Washington. The two commandos stood with the general behind the radar specialist and his screen.

Suddenly Latham turned from the window and spoke in a loud voice. “
Lieutenant
, what did you say about that Daedalus’s wings?”

“They were made of feathers—”

“Yes, I know, but after that, something
about
the feathers? What
was
it?”

“Just feathers, sir. Some people—mostly poets—liken their density to air, the way they kind of float in the wind, born to the air, as it were, which is why they’re on birds.”

“And birds swoop down silently, it’s how the predators catch their quarry.”

“What are you talking about, Drew?” asked De Vries, the red phone still at her ear, as was the major’s. He looked up at the Cons-Op officer.

“They
glide
, Karin, they glide!”

“So, monsieur?”

“Gliders, goddammit! That may be it! They’re using
gliders
!”

“They would have to be extremely large,” said the general, “or dozens of them, perhaps more, far more.”

“And they would have been picked up by the radar, monsieur,” added the major. “Especially the airborne radar.”

“They were, in the photographs! Those two aircraft for Saudi Arabia—how many times have end-user clearances been manipulated? But they
wouldn’t
be picked up by your heat-seeking missiles. There are no engines, no
heat
! Probably very little metal either.”

“
Mon Dieu!
” exclaimed the general, his eyes wide, intense, as if sudden memories consumed him. “
Gliders!
The Germans were the experts, the final authority. In the early forties they developed the prototype for all the cargo gliders the world over, far more advanced than the British Airspeed-Horsing or the American WACOs. Actually, we all stole their designs. The Messerschmitt factories turned out the
Gigant
, a huge bird from hell that could silently float over borders and battlefield, delivering its deadly merchandise.”

“Could there be any left,
mon père
?” asked the major.

“Why not? All of us, on both sides, have kept our fleets—sea and air—in ‘mothballs,’ as the Americans say.”

“Could they be made operational after so many years?” pressed Karin.

“The enemy notwithstanding,” answered the old soldier, “the Messerschmitt companies built for the ages. Undoubtedly, certain equipment would have to be replaced or upgraded, but again, why not?”

“Still, they would appear on the screen,” insisted the radar specialist.

“But how strong? How strong an image would you get on that screen of yours with a flying object that has little or no metal, no motors, the struts made of replaced bamboo, maybe, which in the Far East they use for scaffolds—they claim it’s stronger and safer than steel.”

“My English is adequate, sir, but you speak so
rapidement
—”

“Someone tell him what I just said, just asked.”

The major did so, and the radar specialist replied, never taking his eyes off the screen. “It would be less strong than that of a conventional aircraft, that is true.”

“I mean, even clouds can produce some image, can’t they?”

“Yes, but one can tell the difference.”

“And people who own boats carry radar reflectors on board in case they get in trouble and want the radars to pick them up.”

“Again, quite normal.”

“So radar is basically interpretive, isn’t it?”

“As are medical X rays. One doctor will see one thing, another something else. Then there are experts, and I am one of them with radar, monsieur.”

“Good for you. Could you possibly be distracted?”

“By
what
? You become insulting, if I am permitted to say so.”

“You’re permitted, and, honestly, I don’t mean to insult you—”

“
Wait!
” said Karin, searching her pockets feverishly, finally yanking out a torn piece of paper. “This was in a carton from, I think, Jäger’s outer living room. I kept it because I didn’t understand it, it was only a partial sentence. It has just two words in German, ‘Aircraft made’ … the rest was ripped away.”

“Good God almighty,” muttered Gerald Anthony, reaching into the breast pocket of his French military fatigues and pulling up a scrap of a wrinkled note. “I did the same damn thing. I found this in Jäger’s chapel, at the foot of an altar that shouldn’t be there. Since then I’ve looked at it every once in a while, trying to figure out the handwriting. I did, and it fits with Mrs. de Vries’s information. These are the words: ‘
Aus Stoff und Holz
,’ that’s ‘of cloth and wood.’ ”

“ ‘Aircraft made of cloth and wood,’ ” said De Vries.

“Gliders,” added Latham quietly. “
Gliders
.”

“
Arrêtez!
” cried the radar specialist, breaking off the conversation. “The aircraft have reentered our space! They are within forty kilometers of the water!”

“Prepare to activate the missiles!” shouted the general’s son into a third telephone.

London. Zero hour minus three minutes ten seconds
. “Unidentified aircraft reappearing on screen! Direction, Code Intolerable!”

Washington, D.C. Zero hour minus two minutes forty-nine seconds
. “Son of a bitch! The unknowns are back and heading our way!”

*   *   *

Beauvais. Zero hour minus two minutes twenty-eight seconds
. “Scramble military aircraft everywhere!” roared Latham. “Get that to London and Washington!”

“But the
missiles
,” cried the general’s son.

“Blast them off!”

“Then why the fighter planes?”

“For what the missiles don’t get! Inform London and Washington.
Do
it!”

“It is done.”

In the dark skies above Beauvais, London, and Washington, the computerized neo-Nazi jets swept down toward their respective fields, their tail hooks released for the final approach.

“Fire rockets!”

“Fire rockets!”

“Fire rockets!”

Below, in three separate stretches of cut grass, there were instant explosions of ballistic fire below the wings of all six Messerschmitt cargo gliders. Each reached a pre-released ground thrust of four hundred miles an hour as the jets raced above them, their hooks grappling the cables, the huge gliders instantaneously matching the acceleration of their lifting crafts. Within seconds all were airborne, and at barely a hundred feet the underside rockets were released into the fields. Unencumbered, the gliders above London, Beauvais, and Georgetown were pulled to the prescribed, computerized altitude of twenty-seven hundred feet. The cables were snapped, the gliders free to begin their circling descents to the targets.

Suddenly, at higher altitudes, the skies were lit up like compressed bolts of lightning as the jets were blown out of the air, each exploding in erratic splashes of fire. Yet below, each glider pilot, aided by his own computers, knew his mission well.
Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer!

Beauvais. Zero hour
. “We’ve
got
them!” yelled the general as the splotches of white appeared on the radar screen. “They’re utterly destroyed. We’ve beat Water Lightning!”

“London and Washington agree!” shouted the major. “The results were the same. We have won!”

“No, you
haven’t
!” roared Drew. “Look at the radar grids! Those explosions took place thousands of feet above the initial entry level.
Look
at them! Tell London and Washington to do the same.… Now look below at those far less visible, skeletonlike images.
Look
. They’re the gliders!”

“Oh, my
God
!” said Captain Dietz.

“Jeezus!” exclaimed Lieutenant Anthony.

“What do you estimate the altitude, Mr. Radar?”

“I can more than estimate, monsieur. Those ‘images’ are between eighteen and nineteen hundred feet. They rotate in slow, descending, wide circles of between three and four hundred feet—”

“Why would they
do
that, Radar Man?”

“One must presume for accuracy.”

“How about the time to touch down? Can you give us a figure?”

“The winds change, so here I will estimate. Between four and six minutes.”

“That’s four or six hours in jet time.
Major
, alert London and D.C. and tell them to get their fighter planes to circle the perimeters of the reservoirs starting at fifteen hundred feet! Yours too.
Now!
”

“If they are there, we will shoot them out of existence,” said the general’s son, picking up his red telephone.

“Are you
crazy
?” screamed Latham. “Those aircraft are loaded with poison, probably liquid, and the casings will self-destruct instantly when they hit water or land. Maneuver the fighters so their jet streams blow the gliders off course, into unpopulated areas, fields or woods, but for Christ’s sake,
not
where there are people. So instruct Washington and London!”

“Yes, of course. Understood, monsieur. I have both on a combined line.”

The next few minutes were like waiting for mass slaughter, everyone present a part of that mass. All eyes were on the radar screen, when suddenly the skeletal images veered in different directions, violently to the left and
the right, away from the target zone, the Beauvais reservoir.

“Check London,” said Drew, “check Washington.”

“They’re on the line now,” replied the major. “They’re experiencing precisely what we have experienced. The gliders have been blown away from the water reserves, and are being forced to land in isolated areas.”

“Everything was computerized down to minutes, wasn’t it?” said Latham breathlessly, his face pale. “Bless high technology, it microwaves a corned beef sandwich and melts the plastic container. Now, perhaps, we
have
won, but only a battle, not the war.”

“
You’ve
won, Drew.” Karin de Vries walked toward him, placing her arms on his shoulders. “Harry would have been so proud.”

“We’re not finished, Karin. Harry was killed from within, and so was Moreau. Each was betrayed. So was I, but I was lucky. Someone has a telescope that looks into the core of our operations. And that someone knows more about the Nazi movement and the legacy of a mad general in the Loire Valley than all of us put together.… The strange thing is, I suddenly think I know who it is.”

B
eauvais. Zero hour plus twenty minutes
. The general’s son arranged for an army vehicle to drive Latham, Karin, and the two commandos down to Paris. And, as insignificant things keep occurring during cataclysmic events, their luggage had arrived from the Königshof Hotel in Bonn. It was in the back of a van that provided their transportation to the City of Lights, a city that until twenty-one minutes before would have been a city in panic.

“We’ll stay at the same hotel,” said Drew as all bade good-bye to their French colleagues in the Beauvais waterworks and started for the door and the ancient elevator. “And you two,” he continued, addressing Captain Dietz and Lieutenant Anthony, “you can tear Paris apart, all expenses paid.”

“With what?” asked the captain. “I don’t think we have two hundred francs between us, and our credit cards, along with any other means of identification, are up in Brussels.”

“In about four hours, a grateful government of France will supply you with hard cash, say fifty thousand francs apiece. How about it, think it’s initially enough? More to come, of course.”

“You’re nuts,” said Anthony.

“No, I’m not, I’m mad. Mad as hell.”

“
Monsieur, Monsieur Lat’am!
” exclaimed one of the numerous military aides, rushing out of the waterworks office into the dark stone hallway. “You are wanted on the
téléphone
. It is urgent, monsieur!”

“Wait here,” said Drew. “If it’s who I think it is, the conversation will be courteous but over quickly.” Latham
returned with the aide and picked up a phone nearest the door. “Cons-Op here.” The gruff voice on the line told him it was not the man he had expected.

“Well done,
chłopak
!” fairly shouted Colonel Witkowski from London. “Harry would have been proud of you.”

“I’ve heard that twice too often, Stanley, but thank you. It was a team effort, same as in hockey.”

“You can’t really buy that horseshit.”

“Oh, but I do, Stosh. And it started with Harry, when he said to that tribunal in London, ‘I brought out the data, it’s your job to evaluate it.’ We didn’t do it right.”

“I’ll let that pass until we’re not on a phone.”

“Good idea. The thread’s there and we missed it.”

“Later,” interrupted Witkowski. “What do you think about Bonn?”

“What do you mean? What about Bonn?”

“Haven’t you been told?”

“Told what?”

“The whole damn Bundestag is in flames! There are over a hundred fire engines from all over the place trying to put it out. Didn’t Moreau call you?”