Final impact

As the plane lurched forward, the tips of its wings visibly flexed up and down. She was aware of the crew around her, performing the last of their preflight routines. She was more distantly aware of the other bombers in her squadron as they built up thrust and began to roll off the parking apron toward the long concrete runway, which was already beginning to shimmer in the morning sun. She briefly waved to the small crowd of observers gathered by the control tower and on the raked gravel garden beds in front of the airfield’s small cluster of administrative buildings. General Groves was certain to be over there somewhere. He’d spoken personally to all of the aircrews just over an hour ago, wishing them good luck and commending their actions to history. Some of the top civilians had also been present in the briefing room. She’d shaken hands with professors Teller and Oliphant, and shared a few moments with Oppenheimer himself, who seemed to be darkly amused by the squadron’s motto: “We are become death, the destroyers of worlds.”

It had seemed like a great joke at the time. Now, as she wrestled the Big Ugly Fat Fucker down the specially constructed runway, the mordant humor was lost on her. She knew, intellectually, that there weren’t yet enough atomic bombs in existence to destroy the world, but as the scream of the jets cycled up into a painful shriek, Colonel Caro Llewellyn could not help but feel that she was about to start a nuclear war.

D-DAY + 41. 13 JUNE 1944. 1415 HOURS (LOCAL TIME).

BERLIN.

It was over. He could feel it down in his meat. The Thousand-Year Reich was dying. Some part of Berlin was almost constantly in flames now. On those few occasions he ventured aboveground for more than a few minutes he never failed to spot hundreds of Allied bombers and fighters somewhere over the city. Right now, as he waited in the small courtyard of the SS safe house, penned in on all sides by high brick walls, he could tell that another raid was somewhere overhead. Possibly a bit to the north, hitting the rail junctions again. Even underground there was no escaping the destruction. In his deepest bunkers he could still feel the impact of thousands of bombs as they systemically pounded the old city to rubble and ash. Nor was Berlin the only target. With the Luftwaffe all but annihilated, every production and population center in the Fatherland was coming under relentless attack. He had no doubt that the fat criminal Churchill was behind that. He was a pig of a man and was obviously going to incinerate hundreds of thousands of innocents just so he could face his voters next year with proof of the vengeance he’d extracted for the Blitz. What a pleasure it would have been hauling him before a people’s court.

That would never happen now, however. They were well and truly into the end of days. The brave start he’d made with the high command, calling for a full and realistic assessment of their situation, had done nothing but convince everyone that said situation was hopeless. The Kriegsmarine lay at the bottom of the ocean. The Luftwaffe was a ghost force compared with its former glory. And the army was in disarray everywhere but on the Russian front. The certain knowledge of what would happen if the Communists broke into the heartland seemed to be stiffening the resolve out there; that, the doomsday weapons, and all the men and resources stripped from the battle against the Anglo-Americans. They couldn’t be certain, of course, but his Wehrmacht generals even suspected that Churchill and Roosevelt had ordered their forces to allow significant numbers of German troops to move east. Given their utter mastery of the skies and a preternatural ability to know exactly where and when to strike, there could be no other explanation. They were going to bleed his country white in the same way they had allowed the USSR to soak up so much punishment in the Other Time.

And they accused him of war crimes?

He craned his neck and sniffed at a freshening breeze that somehow managed to penetrate the well in which he stood. He could smell the acrid traces of destruction on the air, but not much besides. His SS bodyguards trailed him everywhere in the small, cramped yard. It was ridiculous really. He could only move about ten meters in any one direction, but they shadowed him anyway. He checked his watch. Twenty past two. It would be time for his daily strategic briefing in an hour. They would have to move off soon, although the pointlessness of it all was beginning to wear him down. If it were not for the fact that he still had a duty to the Reich and his race, he would have made good his escape by now. Some already had, as the chaos and panic that followed the Soviet atomic strike had made it impossible to keep track of people. It was telling that he had done nothing to capture these defeatists and make an example of them. There was just no time, and resources were too scarce.