V-S Day: A Novel of Alternate History (14 page)

Bliss opened the paper, glanced at the figure, then closed it again. “Thank you, Mr. McPherson. Would you please leave us alone for a few minutes? You can wait across the hall.”

McPherson hesitated, uncertain how to interpret this. When the colonel didn’t say anything further, he turned and left the office.

Bliss sighed, then passed the note to Jackson. “Who does he think he’s kidding? That’s more than my salary.”

Jack Cube took a quick look at the paper, then folded it and put it in his pocket. “He’ll negotiate if he wants the job. But we’re going to need two guys, Colonel . . . one as the mission pilot, the other as the backup. And with Calhoun out . . .”

“I’m afraid you’re right.” Bliss shook his head and looked at the remaining pilot. “Okay, then, Lieutenant Sloman, that leaves you. Or are you going to give us trouble, too?”

“Who, me?” Sloman asked. “No, sir.” Then a wry smile appeared. “But I don’t think you understand where either of those other guys are coming from. Fact is, they’re scared to death.”

Jackson stared at him. “They didn’t give me that impression.”

“Of course not. They’d sooner die than admit it. Hell, they probably don’t even realize it themselves. But do you think Chuck would’ve said those things to you if he didn’t want to get the colonel to throw him out of here?” He looked at Bliss again. “And I don’t know what Joe gave you as a figure, but I’d be willing to bet it was a way of making sure that you wouldn’t call him back.” He shrugged. “Truth is, they don’t want to climb into something that might blow up eleven seconds after it took off. They just didn’t want to say so out loud.”

“And how do you feel about that, Lieutenant Sloman?” Bliss asked.

“Skid.”

“Pardon me?”

“Everyone calls me Skid, sir. Or Rudy, if you’d like, but I think only my mother calls me that anymore.”

“Where did you get that name, Rudy? Skid, I mean.”

“Flight school in Pensacola, sir. I was bringing in a beat-up old Steerman when the landing-gear axle broke. Had to make a belly landing. Skidded all the way down the strip, but at least I didn’t turn over.” Another grin. “The name stuck, but I don’t mind. Kinda like it.”

“And you became a test pilot even after that?” Jackson asked.

“We weren’t in a war yet, so there wasn’t much call for fighter pilots. I wanted to fly warbirds, though, so I kinda just fell into it. Besides, I like the job. Taking up an experimental aircraft, seeing just how far I can push it . . . well, if there’s anything more fun than that, I don’t know what it is.”

Jack Cube was beginning to like this guy. Bliss had brought Jack down from Worcester to help him select the pilot for the mission, figuring that someone with military flight training would know what to look for. Jack had already studied Lieutenant Sloman’s record and was impressed even before he’d met him. All the same, though . . .

“This won’t be an ordinary airplane,” he said. “It’s something entirely new.”

“Is it going to have wings?” Skid asked, and Jack nodded. “Then I can fly it.”

“We won’t lie to you,” Bliss said. “It’s going to be dangerous as hell. And we’re not kidding about training. It’ll be more rigorous than anything you’ve ever done before.”

“Oh, now, Colonel, don’t tell me that.” The test pilot laughed. “Now I
really
want to fly that thing!”

Jackson looked at Bliss. “We’ve found our man.”

“I think you’re right.” Bliss hesitated. “And McPherson? You want him as backup pilot?”

“Unless you’ve got someone else.” Jack turned to Skid again. “We’ll train him beside you, but he’s just going to be there in case . . .”

He didn’t finish, but Skid did. “In case something happens to me, and I buy the farm.” He shrugged. “If you want that kind of insurance, go ahead and pay Joe what he wants. It’ll be worth it. But to tell the truth, the idea of getting in the history books really appeals to me. I got a girl back home, see, who’s kinda hard to please. Being the first guy in space might just do the trick.”

Bliss smiled. “That’s as good a reason as any, son.”

Skid nodded. “Glad you see it my way, sir, because if I do this for you, I’ve got one condition to make.” The colonel’s smile became a scowl, and Skid laughed out loud. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask for any more money. Far as I’m concerned, the Army pays me enough already just to have fun.”

“Then what is it that you want?” Jack Cube asked.

The smile became a wide grin. “Just a little paint and someone who knows how to use it.”

JUNE 1, 2013

“You picked the pilot rather quickly, didn’t you?” Walker asked.

Jackson shrugged. “I knew Skid was the right guy the moment I met him. Sure, we could have interviewed a dozen more flyboys, but we needed to start training our pilot immediately, and Skid . . . well, he was there and ready to go. Glad we found him, especially considering the way things came out with McPherson.”

“Yeah, Skid was a pistol, all right,” Henry added.

Walker nodded, then looked over at Lloyd to see if he had anything to add. Sometime in the last half hour or so, though, he’d dozed off in his wheelchair, head rocked forward and hands folded together in his lap. Without a word, his nephew reached forward and turned down the old man’s hearing aid. Apparently, everyone was used to his doing this. Walker just hoped that Lloyd was awake again before the story was finished; he wanted to get as much input from all three 390 Group members as possible.

“That was the way we did things,” Henry went on. “They spent months picking the crew for the first moon mission, but we couldn’t afford to do that. Everything had to be as fast as possible because we didn’t know how far along the Germans were. Jack and Omar selected the pilot in one afternoon, and that was it.”

“So you cut corners.”

“No.” Jack shook his head. “No, we did not cut corners. We just didn’t waste time, that’s all.”

“Look,” Henry said, “we had a way of doing things back then that you don’t see too often these days. We didn’t form committees or farm everything out to someone else. The 390 Group operated much the same way Bob’s original team did at Mescalero Ranch . . . everyone working together, everyone pitching in to solve problems.”

“It’s the same sort of tiger-team approach Lockheed used when they put together their Skunk Works,” Jack said. “In fact, they copied it from us. You get a whole lot of smart guys, put them in a room, give them a problem that needs to be solved, then step out of the way and let them do what needs to be done. Cut the bureaucracy, don’t let the bean counters and micromanagement types anywhere near the project . . . just give your people whatever they need to do the job.”

“That was Vannevar Bush’s idea,” Henry said. “Once he saw how Bob had done things in New Mexico, he rightfully figured out that this was the key to catching up with the Germans in a hurry. He put Omar in charge because he believed that the colonel could manage this sort of project, and he did pretty well . . . at least up to a certain point. Having the engine built and tested in New Mexico was a real pain in the . . .”

Mindful of the women and children in the room, he quickly shut up. “Ass?” Carl asked, grinning as he finished his great-grandfather’s thought.

Several people chuckled as Henry glared at him. “Where did you learn to talk like that?”

“Television,” his mother said, trying not to laugh. “Go on, Grandpa.”

“Hmm . . . well, that figures. Anyway, the propulsion system was just one of many things we had to figure out. Getting into space isn’t just about engines, y’know.”

“You wouldn’t believe how much stuff we had to work out,” Jack said. “Take the space suit, for instance. One of the reasons why we were in a hurry to select our pilot was that we needed his exact measurements so that we could custom-design pressure gear for him. That and the acceleration couch . . .”

“The whole cockpit,” Henry added. “I mean, we even had to take into account whether he was right-handed or left-handed, because if he were a southpaw, we’d have to arrange the instrument panel to accommodate that. And that was just for starters. The gyroscope platform, the radar system, the landing gear, the reaction-control rockets . . .”

“We had a checklist as long as your arm,” Jack said. “Now, some of this stuff we’d already figured out. The gyros, for instance, had already been developed at Mescalero . . . all we had to do was adapt them for our purposes. Caltech had done most of the research for our solid-rocket boosters, so that was another area where we had a head start.” He smiled. “And then there were Bob’s notebooks.”

“Bob Goddard had been thinking about this stuff for almost thirty years,” Henry said. “He was way ahead of everyone, even the Germans. And everything he thought about went into his notebooks. Whenever we hit a roadblock, Bob would remember something he’d jotted down ten, fifteen, twenty-five, or thirty years ago, and he’d rummage through all those binders he had stockpiled on the lab shelves, and more than half the time he’d find a design or a set of equations that, even if it didn’t completely solve our problem, at least gave us a direction.”

“Once the team got going, we moved pretty quickly,” Jack said. “We’d report to the physics lab bright and early every morning and pick up where we’d left off the day before, and work straight through until lunchtime. An hour or so to get a bite to eat, usually at the school cafeteria or a lunchroom on Main Street . . . Bob always brown-bagged his . . . and then we’d come back to the lab and work until late afternoon or early evening. Esther would drive Bob in and pick him up again at the end of the day . . . Corporal Hillman was staying with them, and the colonel, too, when he was in town . . . the rest of us would all walk back to the boardinghouse. We’d have dinner, listen to the radio for a while, maybe play a few hands of poker and gin rummy, then it was off to bed. Next day, same thing again.”

“Not always,” Henry said. “I mean, maybe for you guys, sure but . . .”

“Oh, that’s right. You had Doris.”

“Uh-huh.” Henry looked over at Walker. “I’m talking about my late wife . . . Carl’s great-grandmother.”

“Yes, you mentioned her earlier,” Walker said.

“Oh, yes . . . yes, I did, didn’t I?” Henry scowled and shook his head, a silent apology for an old man’s forgetfulness. “Anyway, I was seeing her as often as I could without our babysitters catching on. I didn’t want them to know that I’d met a girl because I was afraid they’d consider her a security risk and tell me to break it off. So I started brown-bagging, too, and at lunchtime I’d go over to the library and meet Doris there. There was a faculty lounge in the basement that wasn’t much used, so we’d go down there and have lunch together.”

“Did she know what you were doing?”

“No, of course not. So far as she was concerned, I was a graduate student in the physics department, that’s all. She didn’t learn the truth until later, when . . .” He suddenly shook his head again. “Sorry, getting ahead of myself there. Anyway, our routine might sound monotonous, but it really wasn’t. I mean, we were designing a spaceship! Maybe even the world’s first if we managed to beat the Germans . . .”

“Yeah, well, that was the plan,” Jack said. “We didn’t know it, though, but the Nazis had their own ideas about staying ahead.”

AUGUST 18, 1942

The bombs began falling shortly after 1
A.M
.

Wernher von Braun awoke to the wail of air raid sirens. He’d barely opened his eyes when he heard what he first thought was a thunderstorm rolling in from the Baltic. Then he realized what was happening, and in moments he was out of bed. No time to get dressed; he found his robe and slippers in the abrupt, violent flashes of light coming through the bedroom windows, then he was racing down the stairs, taking the risers two or three at a time, even as he felt the house tremble from explosions coming closer with each passing second.

The streets of Peenemünde’s residential area were filled with scientists, engineers, and military officers, all of them in their bedclothes as they scurried for the air raid bunker beneath the foreign workers’ barracks. Von Braun found Lise Muller in the darkness; she was wearing only her nightgown, so he gallantly put his robe around her, then took her arm and led her through the yelling, shoving crowd. Frequent flashes and explosions from the northeast end of the island told him that the industrial center was being targeted, but the housing complex might be next. Above the rooftops, searchlights roamed across the black and pitiless sky, while the luminescent tracers of antiaircraft guns sought targets too high for them to reach. No sign of Luftwaffe fighters taking off to do battle with the invaders; the airfield had probably been the first thing destroyed. Von Braun could see nothing when he looked up, but a loud, rolling drone that sounded like a swarm of immense bees told him that that hundreds of British bombers were up there, bringing wave upon wave of destruction.

Walter Dornberger found him and Lise just as they reached the shelter; he looked odd without his uniform, and for once he wasn’t smiling. They managed to make their way into the shelter just as the first bombs began falling on their houses. The concrete ceiling quaked, causing several women to scream in terror; Lise remained calm, but she clung tight to him. Taking her under his arm, von Braun shuffled through the crowded shelter, trying to find a place where, if the ceiling were to collapse, they might possibly escape being crushed to death beneath tons of rubble. It was a hopeless notion, of course—if a one-ton bomb made a direct hit, everyone down there would die—but it helped him feel just a little more in control.

For the next forty minutes, the people who’d taken refuge in the shelter listened as giants marched overhead, each footfall signaling another house, office, or workshop that had ceased to exist. The shelter was so tightly packed that no one could sit down; swaying lights revealed terrified faces and eyes that constantly peered upward as if expecting to see RAF Lancasters through the ceiling. Von Braun spotted Arthur Rudolph; he had his wife and children with him, and he was doing his best to comfort them. Looking around, he glimpsed various other members of his rocket team, peering out between the French and Polish workers who’d been the first to get belowground. He searched for Walter Thiel, his senior chemical engineer, but didn’t see him; von Braun hoped he and his family were safe.

A little after 2
A.M.
, the bombs stopped falling. No one moved, though, until they heard the sirens sound the all clear. Someone went upstairs and threw open the steel double doors, and everyone began to leave, pushing against one another in their eagerness to get out of the cramped and airless bunker.

Yet the nightmare wasn’t over. They emerged to find Peenemünde on fire, the flames spreading to even the places that the bombers had missed. Fire trucks raced through the streets, bells jangling as they headed from one blaze to another. Von Braun’s house was intact, but the cottage
Fraülein Muller
shared with several other unmarried women was gone. A couple of blocks away, von Braun was horrified to discover that Thiel’s house was nothing more than a burning heap of wood and brick. Soldiers were trying to put out the fire before it spread to other homes, but its occupants were nowhere to be seen. Staring at the Thiel home, von Braun realized that Walter and his family lay within the inferno.

The shock had barely settled in, though, when Colonel Dornberger found him and Lise again. There was no time to grieve; the colonel dragged them to the research-and-development district, which had been hit even harder than the residential area. There they found that the fire had reached
Haus 4
, and no firefighters had yet arrived to put out the blaze. As Dornberger ran down the street, yelling for everyone to drop what they were doing and save the headquarters building, von Braun and Lise took their chances and went inside. Keeping away from the part of the building that was on fire, they cupped their hands across their faces and made their way upstairs to von Braun’s office, where they managed to break down the locked door. While von Braun gathered the most important papers and blueprints from his file cabinets, Lise opened the wall safe and took out the
Silbervogel
master study. They fled the building before the flames could reach them; Dornberger returned with a bucket brigade just as the roof fell in.

By daybreak, the fires had been put out, but as the sun came up, it became clear that the raid had been a success. Entire buildings had vanished into bomb craters, and blackened iron skeletons and smoking piles of debris lay where houses, laboratories, and offices had been only yesterday. Many streets were impassable; scores of parked cars and trucks had been crushed or burned. Hundreds of people were dead, ranging from foreign workers to top-level scientists. Walking through the ruins, von Braun saw so many bodies covered by sheets that he soon lost count.

Ironically, the nearby concentration camp was largely untouched. Only a handful of Russians died there when a stray bomb fell on their quarters. But the camp wasn’t very large; because of the sensitive nature of the
Silbervogel Projekt
, it had been decided that prisoners would be used as forced labor as little as possible. Von Braun hadn’t been involved in this decision, though, and he’d deliberately tried to ignore the camp’s existence as much as he could, so the fate of its prisoners barely registered on his conscience.

Not all was lost. With the notable exception of Walter Thiel, most of the project’s key scientists and engineers had survived. Like von Braun, they’d taken shelter as soon as they heard the sirens. Just as importantly—miraculously, in fact—the raid had missed
Wa Pruf 11
’s most valuable facilities, the construction and test complex at the northern tip of the island. Whether it was sheer luck or because the bombardiers couldn’t see Peenemünde clearly from high altitude, von Braun didn’t know. Nonetheless, the wind tunnel, the static test stand, the liquid-oxygen and gasoline storage tanks, and the control bunkers had all gone untouched.

Most crucial of all, the bombers hadn’t hit
Silbervogel
. The spacecraft was in two adjacent work sheds: one containing the engine assembly, the other the unfinished fuselage. Neither was so much as scratched. When von Braun saw this, he felt his knees grow weak, and he had to grab Dornberger’s shoulder for support. If Silver Bird had been destroyed, the entire project would have come to an end; there was not enough time or money to start over again. And he didn’t want to even think about the
Führer
’s reaction. Hitler was notorious for not accepting failure even when it was for reasons beyond anyone’s control.

All the same, it was obvious that
Silbervogel
had to be moved from Peenemünde. The RAF could return at any time, and the next raid might not miss the most important targets.

Only a few weeks ago, Himmler had come through on his promise to find a launch site. Von Braun hadn’t yet taken a close look at the SS memo that had landed on his desk, but apparently it involved a couple of abandoned railway tunnels that had been carved into a mountainside somewhere in the Harz Mountains. There were also proposals to put the launch site in Poland or Austria, but both Dornberger and von Braun were opposed to this; it would be difficult enough to transport the spacecraft by rail across Germany, let alone to another country.

For now, though, the most immediate concern was cleaning up from the air raid. Von Braun set up a temporary headquarters office in his living room; Walter and Lise had found clothes by then, and both were working with him to organize the salvage operations. That would take a while, of course, but once that was done, the next step would be to work out a plan for relocating the entire project from the seacoast to the mountains.

Perhaps it was too soon to even begin thinking about such things, but von Braun needed the distraction. He felt numb, body and soul, from the violence of the night before; many people were dead, among them one of his oldest friends, and he was all too aware that the bombs had been meant for him, too. If he thought about it too much . . . No, it was better to work and exhibit the leadership the survivors needed just then.

He and Lise had only begun, though, when the rumble of motorcycles heralded the arrival of a motorcade. Von Braun had no sooner risen from his desk than the front door slammed open, and two soldiers stomped into the front hall. And right behind them, resplendent in a tailored white uniform, swaggered the bloated figure of Hermann Goering.

=====

“Wernher!” A broad grin stretched across the general’s fleshy face. “So good to see that you’re still alive!”

“Da, Herr Reichsmarschall.”
Ignoring the friendship Goering pretended to share with him by using his first name, von Braun took a formal stance, back straight and arms at his sides. As usual, Dornberger came to attention, his right arm snapping forward in a brisk salute that Goering didn’t seem to notice. From the corner of his eye, von Braun saw Lise stiffen. His secretary had once confessed to him, following one of the Luftwaffe leader’s earlier visits, that she could practically feel Goering’s eyes crawling over her. She’d begged von Braun never to leave her alone with him, and von Braun knew why. There were rumors about Goering’s sexual appetite, and rape was not beneath him.

“And I’m pleased to see that your lovely secretary is safe as well.” Goering hadn’t forgotten her, and Lise blanched when he favored her with a smile. Removing his white kid gloves, Goering found an armchair big enough to support him and sat down heavily. “I don’t suppose she could bring us coffee, could she?”

“Fraülein, bitte?”
Von Braun dismissed Lise with a glance, and she disappeared through a swinging door into the kitchen. He hoped for her sake that she’d take her time. “So,
Herr Reichsmarschall
 . . . what brings you here?”

Goering raised an eyebrow. “Come now,
Herr Doktor
. You don’t think I’d abandon you in your moment of crisis, do you? As soon as I heard about the raid, I drove here straight from Berlin.” Frowning, he shook his head in commiseration. “Horrifying. Utterly horrifying. England will pay dearly for its temerity.”

“As you say.” Von Braun had to work at keeping a straight face. It was well-known that Goering’s stature within the High Command had taken a major blow when the Luftwaffe failed to bring about Great Britain’s surrender. His planes could no longer cross the English Channel without being intercepted, and since he had forced Peenemünde to abandon the A-4 in favor of the far more ambitious
Silbervogel
, it was hard to see how he could make good on his threat.

Goering nodded. His pig eyes never left von Braun’s face; Wernher knew that he was being studied, assessed for any sign of disloyalty or weakness. “Quite,” Goering said drily. “I take it that you’re following Herr Himmler’s advice and preparing to move your operations to a less vulnerable location, yes?”

“As we speak, I’m preparing to determine how long it will take for us to relocate to . . .” Von Braun paused. “I’m sorry, but the name of this place escapes me.”

“Nordhausen. That’s the town nearby, but we will be calling the facility something else . . .
Mittelwerk
.”

“Yes, thank you for reminding me. May I . . . ?” Goering gave him the slightest of nods, and von Braun resumed his seat behind the desk. “It may be some time before we can leave, though. Most of our casualties were among the labor force. Not just the foreign workers, but also the war prisoners we’ve been using lately. Without them . . .”

“I’ll requisition more soldiers to assist you with the relocation effort. And you need not concern yourself with finding a source of labor at
Mittelwerk
. Herr Himmler has seen to this as well.” Goering shrugged. “I’m sorry, though, but we’ll no longer be employing any civilians who aren’t German citizens. The security risk is too high . . . and I’m convinced that one of the reasons why the British were able to strike us with such accuracy is that they had spies among the foreign workers. We caught two already.”

“That’s entirely possible,
Herr Reichsmarschall
,” Dornberger said, still standing at attention beside von Braun’s desk. “However, I’d like to point out that, since late last year, we’ve been careful to keep foreign workers away from the vital facilities. I doubt very strongly that the British or their American allies have learned anything about
Silbervogel
.”

Goering shook his head. “Perhaps so, Colonel, but we cannot take a chance based on that assumption. I’ve consulted Admiral Canaris, and on his advice, I’ve ordered the
Abwehr
to take active measures that will prevent the Americans from engaging in any countermeasures.”

“Active measures,
Herr Reichsmarschall
?” Von Braun blinked. “My apologies, but I fail to understand what you’re talking about.”

“In the past, you’ve told us of the American scientist who’s their key expert in rocketry . . . Dr. Robert H. Goddard, I believe?” Von Braun nodded, and the monster sitting across from him smiled. “You won’t have to worry about him for very much longer. The
Abwehr
is taking care of that particular problem.
Herr Doktor
Goddard will be found and liquidated.”