“Where are the jacks?”
“Under those sheets, there.” Hausser gestured towards a jumble of machinery half-hidden by a tarpaulin over by the hangar wall.
“Get them,” Fleming said.
Minutes later, the Komet was raised, its wheels a few inches off the ground. Another German scientist, a young, nervous-looking man, worked with a spanner to free the jettisonable undercarriage dolly from the skid.
Hausser clipped a catch and pushed the canopy hood open. Fleming turned to find the old man trying to pull himself up on to the wing, the only stepping stone to the cockpit in the absence of a ladder.
Hausser winced. “I must now raise the landing gear,” he said.
“I can do that,” Fleming said. “Just show me what to do.”
He sprang up on to the wing and was settled in the pilot’s seat a moment later. Hausser, on tiptoes, leant over the cockpit wall and nodded to a lever by Fleming’s right hand.
“Push it hard forward and the skid will come up.”
Fleming reached out, gripped the lever and pushed. He felt the heavy clunk as the skid retracted.
Then he saw a movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned to see the scientist with the spanner running for the door.
“Oh God,” Fleming heard himself say, “it’s booby-trapped.”
His hand went down again to the lever, found the thin strand and traced its way along the length of the wire to the underneath of the seat. He felt the grenade, grabbed it by its wooden stock and heard the rasp as the tape ripped away from the metal pan.
He threw it with all his might at the large windows half way up the hangar wall, then ducked back into the cockpit. There was a crash of glass, followed by a deafening explosion.
The Komet rocked on its jacks, then steadied.
Fleming came up to see half the assembled company lying prostrate on the floor. He tried to stand, but his legs gave and he fell back, drained, into the seat.
There was a scuffle away to his left. The man with the spanner had been knocked to the floor by a paratrooper standing guard by the door.
Jewell sprinted over to the Komet.
“What the bloody hell happened?”
“Our friends decided to make things a little more difficult for us,” Fleming replied, trying to force a smile. “A grenade was rigged to explode as soon as the skid was retracted.”
“The little shits!” Jewell barked. “We’d better round them all up.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Fleming said. Slowly his breath was coming back. “If Hausser had known it was booby-trapped, he wouldn’t have been talking to me from the edge of the cockpit.”
“Then what do I do with him?” Jewell jabbed his finger at the scientist by the door, who was struggling against the paratrooper’s headlock.
“Ask him if he’s got any other surprises. Then tie him up and dump him. The Russians can have him.”
“Done!” Jewell said.
“I hope one of your men wasn’t having a quiet smoke outside when the grenade went off, Colonel.”
Jewell smiled. “More likely to be one of yours, Fleming. The paras haven’t got time to stand around, unlike the RAF.” He clapped Fleming on the shoulder. “You’re a cool customer, Fleming. We’ll make a paratrooper of you yet.” Then he was gone.
Hausser, his face a death mask, pulled himself off the floor and looked into the cockpit.
“I never realized,” he whispered.
Fleming touched him gently on the arm. “I know,” he said. “But from now on, we take no chances. Have the rest of your men search the Komet for any more of those things. Then get the fuselage apart. We’ve got to be out of here in twenty minutes.”
Jewell watched, trying hard to be patient, as the twin Walter rocket engines were detached. The front and rear halves of the fuselage easily fitted into the two Yorks, once the cargo doors had been removed. The pilot set about getting the major components arranged around the aircraft’s centre of gravity so that the extra weight exerted as little effect as possible on flight characteristics during the return leg.
Colonel Jewell’s calm finally evaporated.
“Look, man, if you don’t get these two aircraft out of here now, you’re not going to have to worry about any fucking return journey, because the only trip that you’ll be making is to Moscow.”
Fleming made sure their prize was secure then told the two pilots it was time to move. Paratroopers swung the two aircraft around to face the hangar’s great sliding doors. The magnetos whined as the propellers started to turn, then the motors caught. Fleming waited an eternity for the engines to stabilize. Jewell was already on the radio preparing to stage his tactical withdrawal to the beach where his men would be picked up by boats from the Royal Naval destroyer.
The York led its stablemate out of the hangar. Fleming, sitting by the open cargo door, saw the first of Jewell’s troops making their way towards the beach. Many were being supported by comrades, others limped or bore field dressings. Staverton would tell him it had been worth it, whatever the cost to the paratroops, but right now Fleming wondered how many of them would not be leaving that remote and desolate Baltic shore.
The engines roared to the response of opened throttles, taking Fleming by surprise. The pilot must have decided to take off on the shorter secondary runway, without bothering to line up into wind. It was risky, but the alternative was overflying the German positions at the far end of the airfield.
The crates holding the 163 shifted with each bump under the York’s wheels until the ropes went taut with the strain. Fleming tried not to look at his own men or the two German scientists under their charge, for the fear on their faces did nothing to soothe his own tattered nerves. At last the York clawed its way into the air and Fleming stared at the ground below, agonized at the slowness with which it receded. Away to the left he could see a procession of olive-green tanks rolling down one of the slip roads that led to the airfield. The red flashes on their turrets were barely discernible, but they were obvious enough to tell him that the Soviets were only minutes away from catching Jewell’s men in the act of highway robbery.
He undid his safety harness and squeezed past the crates until he was at the flight-deck. He grabbed the spare headset and microphone and tried to raise Jewell on the radio. No reply. He gave up after two further attempts. The colonel was cutting it fine if he wanted to rendezvous with the navy.
CHAPTER TEN
“So there’s one Nazi on the loose in our sector. So what?” Nerchenko had not even bothered to address Malenkoy to his face. He carried on writing his report, the thick gold embroidery on his cuff scratching the paper noisily as his hand moved across the page. “You think one SS insurgent is going to cause a problem? A platoon, that’s a problem, but one man… go back to building your dummy tanks, Malenkoy.”
Malenkoy shifted nervously.
“There may be others, Comrade General, we just cannot be sure. Their camp was close to the maskirovka at Chrudim, too. Shouldn’t we at least try and find this man and make sure?”
Malenkoy braced himself for the explosion, but it never came. Instead, the General put down his pen, wearily removed his wire-rimmed glasses and rubbed his eyes. He continued to talk while he kneaded his eyeballs.
“I thought that the whole point of assembling armoured divisions out of wood was that the enemy would notice them and believe that we were mounting a massive attack in that sector. Or maybe I’m wrong. You’re the camouflage and deception expert, Comrade Malenkoy, you tell me.”