Vengeance 10

Scowling, Bethwig continued: ‘I am pleased to announce that the countdown is proceeding well. We are holding at the moment, waiting for the Reichsführer’s aircraft to arrive. We have also received word from our two picket submarines in mid-Atlantic. Both are on station. The count will resume in one hour. We expect to launch this evening at 1900 hours.’

Franz and his new secretary, a pretty young land service girl named Katherine, went out into the watery autumn sunshine; a driver was waiting to take them to Launch Stand XII located near the centre of the island. The car drove off, keeping to the middle lane to avoid the pedestrians and bicyclists streaming towards the canteens for the lunch break. Few of them, Bethwig knew, were yet aware of the A-10; by this evening all would know about it. The massive test stand could be isolated and guarded in its remote, marshy section of the island, and the massive first stage could be shrouded during assembly and its move to the stand. But once the engines reached full thrust and the gargantuan vehicle rose above the trees and, one hoped, streaked down range, there would be no more secrecy. Bethwig’s staff had estimated that the noise would be heard in Stettin, some ninety kilometres distant.

As the car approached the test complex they had an occasional glimpse of the massive structure rearing above the pines, and even after a year and a half Bethwig still could not shake the feeling of awe it inspired in him.

The main control centre was housed in a half-buried bunker located a kilometre from the launch stand. He made a quick series of inspections among the consoles, then went up to the bunker’s roof where the cameramen were running checks on their equipment. One or two nodded, but no one spoke. Ordinarily the crews would have been excited and expectant; but the spectre of Himmler and his SS minions had dampened their enthusiasm. The A-4, a much smaller and less-complicated vehicle, had required three attempts before a successful flight was achieved. And numbers four and five, fired since, had failed. The crews realised that this was to be expected, but no one knew how the Reichsführer, the second most powerful man in the country and reputedly not the most stable individual, would view a failure on their part. The A-4 was an army project, and they were no strangers to failure. The A-10 was an SS project, and the SS did not admit to failure. Himmler’s reputation was on the line, and all recalled how the once mighty Goering had fallen when his vaunted Luftwaffe had failed to polish off the RAF in the summer of 1940; and how the army had sunk in esteem when the Russians shoved them back from the very gates of Moscow the previous autumn.

Bethwig tried to shake off these gloomy thoughts. The test firing sequence from static mountings had been pushed hard during the previous six months and had produced fairly consistent results. Lack of time had prevented them from incorporating the newest versions of his film cooling and fuel injection systems into the A-4 engines, but starting from scratch with the A-10, they had been able to do so. Combustion chamber overheating was a thing of the past. And only rarely did lethal amounts of fuel flood the chamber prior to ignition and cause an explosion. The construction and testing of the engines had proven easier than expected; relatively easier, he amended. The new fuel injection system made it possible to cluster the powerful engines to produce the massive thrust needed to break up and out of Earth’s gravitational well and reach the moon. He shook his head unconsciously. It never ceased to amaze him when he thought how great were the technical strides they had managed in the last three years.

‘Ah, here you are. Daydreaming, heh?’ Himmler had come on to the roof accompanied by two aides.

Startled, Bethwig turned quickly. ‘My apologies for not meeting you. I was not told you had arrived.’ His staff’s method of making certain that Himmler understood that he was not welcome? he wondered.

‘No matter.’ Himmler turned to stare out over the immense circular reach of concrete separating the bunker area from the launch table nearly a kilometre away. He stood with his hands on his hips, bouncing on his toes and smiling. ‘So this is what my late friend Heydrich began, hey? Look, Hans,’ he joked to an aide as he pointed at the concrete apron. ‘How many West Wall bunkers could be built with all that?’

Bethwig missed the answer as the loudspeaker announced the resumption of the countdown sequence. Three hours to go, he thought to himself. Three hellish hours of waiting made worse by Himmler’s presence.

The afternoon wore on at a snail’s pace. Early dusk came swiftly out of the west, and with it a damp cold that drove them inside. Floodlights went on as they re-entered the bunker; and in the distance Bethwig heard the drone of fighters patrolling against Allied reconnaissance aircraft.