Vengeance 10

Inside, the atmosphere was sticky with waste heat from the electrical motors and instruments. Bethwig escorted Himmler and his staff to the glassed-in VIP gallery, but the Reichsführer refused to stay there, preferring instead to roam about the vast room interrupting the technicians and scientists at their work. At less than an hour to launch, Domberger came in, his expression disapproving yet excited. Although he had no responsibility for the A-10 project, he received a round of applause from the men at their desks and consoles. Domberger was a popular administrator, as dedicated as any of them to rocketry in spite of his official disapproval of the A-10 project. It was understood that he was a soldier first and a scientist second.

Dornberger even smiled and had a good word for Bethwig, the first in months. He was polite to Himmler and his staff, although it was obvious that this took considerable effort.

During the long afternoon the volume of sound inside the bunker had risen gradually until now it was a continuous roar and one had to speak loudly to be heard. The launch crew consisted of fifty-three people sitting at consoles in the concrete vault of a room that had all the earmarks of the Todt Organisation’s hasty wartime construction. The current joke was that in spite of reinforced concrete walls several metres thick, a nearsighted fly ran into and knocked down the bunker’s west wall — an obvious allusion to the vast fortifications under construction along the Atlantic coast of France, which even the Reichsführer had joked about and which was the usual excuse for the lack of building materials at Peenemunde.

* * *

An armoured glass viewing window was set into the front wall of the bunker. In spite of mild distortion, the squat, can-shaped rocket with its truncated nose was clearly visible. The concrete apron glistened with evening mist, and the rocket’s fuselage glowed under the batteries of searchlights. Bethwig would much rather have launched during daylight when the cinecameras could have done a better job recording the rocket’s flight. But the submarines would need the daylight to spot the rocket when — not if, he thought — it flashed into the Atlantic two thousand kilometres south-east.

The clock over the viewing window read exactly 1855 hours when the countdown reached minus one minute thirty seconds. The final LOX tank topping had gone off without the expected hitches, and Bethwig called a three-minute hold. The crew relaxed visibly, and the air was suddenly blue with cigarette smoke.

Himmler had begun pacing as the tension increased. Now he approached Bethwig and demanded to know why everything had stopped. Franz’s explanation — time was needed to bring various schedules into line and also to allow the submarine tracking vessel to regain station — barely pacified him.

The controller’s voice was droning the count at ten-second intervals now. At minus forty seconds the wisp of steam that Bethwig had been waiting for appeared near the nose as the hydrogen peroxide generators pressurised the fuel tanks.

As chief development engineer and project manager, Bethwig had little to do during the launch sequence but supervise. No longer did the project manager design the rocket, then weld, rivet, and install electrical gear, run the cinecameras, and do a hundred other tasks because no one else could be spared. Bethwig had no more idea how to operate a six-channel telemetry bank or the new recording machines that used a plastic magnetised tape to store data, than the operators knew how to design a rocket engine capable of producing three and a half million kilograms of thrust.

‘Well,’ Himmler said, turning to him. ‘What is your estimate of the chance of success, Herr Doktor Bethwig?’ He smirked at Dornberger. ‘After all, if the engineer who designed this monster does not know, who does?’

Dornberger frowned at Bethwig, a warning to guard his words. But Franz ignored him.

‘This is a first trial, Herr Reichsführer,’ he snapped. ‘A rocket is a very complex machine. I will be most surprised if the engines merely fire all together this first time. If it rises away from its table, it will be a miracle. The chance that it will fall to Earth within five hundred kilometres of its intended target is almost non-existent.’

Before the surprised and angered Himmler could reply, the firing control officer’s voice rumbled over the loudspeaker announcing the beginning of the ignition sequence.

Bethwig jumped eagerly to the window. The first tendrils of vapour were already curling about the massive base of the rocket.

‘Minus thirty seconds.’