“The pair of them are probably sitting around the stove and drinking coffee, no doubt,” Schiller forced a faint grin that came across more as gritted teeth. “Perhaps I should wander over there and keep them company.” The truth was he was struggling to remain focussed and lucid inside that bunker, and he desperately needed some time outside and some relatively fresh air. He glanced around and took note of the gathering group of senior officers inside the CP, some also nursing minor injuries or burns. He picked out one man he recognised immediately and addressed him directly.
“General Guderian…!” He stepped across to face the man, coming stiffly to attention as he did so.
“Jawohl, Mein General,” General Heinz Guderian, CO of XIX Corps, also came to attention instantly. Although he technically outranked Schiller, the man was well aware that Reichsmarschall Reuters was incapacitated, and that under those circumstances it was Schiller who took command of his duties as a matter of course until advised otherwise by The Führer. No one else in Nazi Germany held sufficient power to order Schiller to step down during such a situation.
“You have command here at the CP while I’m gone — I need to attend to the matter of locating our chief technician. I should be no more than a few moments.”
“Of course, Mein Herr,” Guderian replied instantly with a crisp salute. Schiller returned the acknowledgement and headed for the door, only stopping at the entrance for a moment to address one of the pair of troopers standing guard there.
“You there… you have a sidearm at your belt, yes?”
“Jawohl, Mein Herr,” the man replied instantly, bracing up to attention as the officer queried him.
“Give it to me, please… I should feel a better walking about outside in this madness with a pistol at my belt.”
“Of course, Mein Herr…!” The man complied immediately, slinging his submachine gun over his shoulder momentarily as he drew his standard-issue P-38 pistol and handed it over butt-first.”
“Danke,” Schiller replied simply, checking the condition of the weapon’s loaded magazine and empty breech before tucking it into his belt, behind his back. A second later and he was gone, vaulting the steps up to the open air two at a time and disappearing into the hot, chaotic night.
Thorne kept the aircraft completely ‘dark’ as the F-35E swept across the French countryside, no active systems of any kind operating save for the absolute necessity of terrain-following-radar. He knew there were only two aircraft out there somewhere that were potentially capable of detecting his emissions, but he was in no hurry to run into either of them and he wasn’t interested in taking any chances while flying alone over enemy territory.
“How much chance do we really have of making it through without detection?” Trumbull asked, breaking the silence somewhere between St. Malo and Rennes.
“Honestly…?” Thorne shrugged and gave a grimace. “Reasonable chance, if we come across one of the bastards on their own.” He’d calmed down somewhat in the last twenty minutes since their escape from the target area. “If we run into both at once…” he gave another shrug “…then maybe fifty-fifty at best… our radar signature’s tiny — about all anyone would pick up is the bomb mounting carriage beneath the fuselage — but it’s still enough for a missile to lock onto at closer ranges, and those Sukhois also have excellent long-range visual and infra-red detection gear we can’t hide from.
“In the end it’d probably come down to who shoots first in a one-on-one with a Flanker… probably…” The emphasis at the end of that statement was in no way reassuring. “With any luck, neither of the jets will find us, and it’ll all be academic. We might’ve been ‘painted’ strongly enough by ground radar to return a signal while we were over the Collines de Normandie, but other than that we’ve been staying low enough to avoid solid detection most of the way. There are plenty of conventional night fighters up and about at the moment, but I’m not scared of them; we can dance rings around them without them ever knowing we’re there, and they’ll need to spread the jets over a lot of airspace to look for us. All we can do is wait and see, really…”
The Flankers had roared from the runway in formation within minutes of receiving their orders, the flare of each jet’s twin afterburners brilliant and clear in the night sky as they split into single flights the moment they were airborne and went their separate ways. Hawk-4 quickly found the Channel and turned south-west, skirting the French coast and climbing to high altitude. Huge 3,000-litre drop tanks hung from its four inboard wing pylons, and the aircrew would need every drop as the pilot slammed his throttles forward and hurled the Sukhoi across the night sky at almost twice the speed of sound.
The Su-30 crossed the Cherbourg Peninsula north of Caen within minutes and flew on, out over the Gulf of Saint-Malo, systems ever-vigilant and its missiles armed and ready. At full throttle, the earth below them was rushing by at more than 30 kilometres every minute, and heavy fuel consumption was already seriously eating into the aircraft’s reserves.
Hawk-3, similarly armed and fitted with extra fuel, headed off in a more westerly direction and at a much more leisurely pace. They had further to fly, and needed to conserve fuel as a result, but there was also less urgency involved in reaching their destination. They weren’t looking for a fighter, although the destruction of the slower, far larger target they were searching for would ensure the remaining F-35’s demise along with it.
Albert Schiller swore with soft bitterness as he stood in Lowenstein’s empty cell, pistol in hand, and stared sadly down at the lifeless body of his friend and colleague, Joachim Müller. There was nothing to be done… no way of telling how long it’d been since the scientist had made his escape, and the man could easily have disappeared into the mass of people flooding from the burning building in the insanity following the attack. He gripped the butt of the P-38 tightly, his knuckles turning white with anger as he released a long, hissing sigh of pain and frustration.
The migraine flared again suddenly, filling the back of his head with agony and leaving him slightly dazed as he reached out with his free hand to support himself against the nearest wall. For a moment, it was all he could do to remain standing upright, and it was through sheer willpower alone that he finally forced the pain to recede, his breathing laboured and shallow as a light sheen of perspiration broke out across his forehead.
Standing motionless in that small room, Müller’s body at his feet, Schiller could feel his mind beginning to seize up. The last remnants of his strength and endurance were quickly slipping away from him, and the thought of having to return to the CP and resume command truly terrified him. Poor Joachim was dead, and Kurt was out cold and in the care of a field ambulance unit. When he finally regained consciousness, Schiller would have the ‘wonderful’ news for him that Ziegler was plotting his demise with three of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany… and to all this could be added the loss of so many vitally important men, so close to the most important military operation they’d yet attempted.
It was at that moment he heard the door at the far end of the stable open, followed by muffled voices that were clearly whispering. His immediate, instinctive reaction was the thought that perhaps the perpetrator had returned to the scene of the crime for some unknown reason, and he quickly and silently backed into the corner between the doorway and the bookcase, pistol raised and ready as the kerosene lantern atop the bookcase continued to flicker dully beside him.