An engine sound, like the rough cough of a motorbike starting up, made him whip round. The three-wheeled tractor, a rigger at the wheel, was backing up to the nosewheel of the aircraft. Kruze watched as the tow-bar of the Scheuschlepper was attached to a torsion point and locked in place. With a thumbs-up signal from two groundcrew who checked the connection between the tow-bar and the Arado’s undercarriage, the driver gunned the tractor’s engine and the Arado inched towards the hangar door.
The idea formed in a second. Kruze knew that to delay, to think it through, would cause him to miss the opportunity: he had been given his passport across the runway. Provided the driver chose not to strike up a conversation, which would be difficult above the noise of the little tractor’s engine, he could get all the way to the dispersal point. He ducked as the Arado’s wingtip moved over his head, then ran round to the front of the aircraft, nodding curtly to the ground-crew who watched in bemusement as the officer chased the Scheuschlepper out of the hangar. The driver started as Kruze jumped onto the seat beside him, but before he could say anything, the Rhodesian pointed to the engine, shrugged, and blocked his ears. The NCO shook his head, as he always did at eccentric officer behaviour, and turned slowly towards the taxiway that bisected the runway and led to the gaggle of Arados on the far side of the airfield.
They were swinging around the corner of the hangar when he saw the small group of people not a hundred yards away from him, a mixed bunch of soldiers and, he thought, a civilian, marching into the first hangar. The goose-flesh was still rippling his scalp as the Scheuschlepper rounded the building, preventing the opportunity for another look, a chance to tell himself that what he had just seen could not possibly be.
Except that it was. Herries had a face he could never forget.
He was still asking himself why when the third Arado in the dispersal line directly across the runway from him exploded in a sheet of orange flame, the ignited fuel from its full tanks shooting into the sky.
The driver stopped, dumbstruck. A black pall of smoke billowed above the broken, burning aircraft. Kruze glanced at his watch. Forty minutes to go, there were forty fucking minutes to go!
He was still shouting his fury as the first of the Meteors screamed over the hangar, missing its roof by ten feet.
The driver wrenched his gaze from the explosion, aware that his passenger was yelling over the din of the Scheuschlepper’s engine and the eruption across the runway. Kruze felt a rough grip on his shoulder and remembered, too late, the presence of the NCO. The driver was staring into his face, a mixture of fear and bewilderment in his eyes, when the Rhodesian brought the butt of his automatic across the man’s head, leaving his body to slump over the wheel.
He leapt off the tractor in the same instant that another Arado blew up on the other side of the airfield, its attacker flying directly through the explosion, so low was its altitude.
The idiots were destroying the aircraft they had been specifically told to avoid. There was no time to think.
His fingers bled as he wrestled to detach the tow-bar from the nose-wheel of the bomber. At first, the nut holding it in place would not move, then it gave a fraction, enough for him to double his efforts. He felt no pain as he twiddled the fastener, not letting up until he heard the clunk of the bar as it hit the concrete.
He ran to the driver’s side of the tractor, aware that people were sprinting for the shelters around him. He engaged the single gear of the Scheuschlepper and rammed the unconscious driver’s foot against the pedal. The machine jumped forward and headed off at speed, relieved of the weight of the plane, across the grassland that lay between the taxiing strip and the runway.
Kruze had already discarded his coat and had one foot in the spring-loaded step on the Arado’s nose by the time the tractor was clear of the aircraft. Then he was on top of the fuselage, pulling at the pilot entry hatch. It gave with a lurch and flopped open on its hinge. He took one more look around him, spotted a Meteor sweeping low across the runway shooting a sustained burst of 20mm fire into another row of Ar 234s, and wondered how long it would be before they found his aircraft, tucked away in the shade of the hangar, while the world seemed to be exploding around him.
Then he swung his body into the cockpit and pulled down the clear cover, locking it shut over his head.
As he let his eyes race over the instrument panel, wondering where the hell he was going to begin, he heard the sound of shrapnel raining down from the sky on to the aircraft’s skin.
Herries and Hartmann were the last to step inside the hangar. No sooner had the access hatch swung shut behind them when the shockwaves from the exploding Arado and the scream of Meteor engines buffeted the building. The Gestapo officer’s face flushed with anger.
Then, over the noise of turbojets and cannon fire outside, he heard the wailing behind him.
Herries was on his knees, hands clamped over his ears, his face like a death mask.
A burst of cannon fire punctured the corrugated iron side of the hangar as if it was paper, destroying two aircraft that had been in there for maintenance. When Hartmann looked back he saw that Giesecke and the other two soldiers lay dead.
He pulled himself to his feet and only then felt the searing pain from the hot shrapnel that had cut a swathe through his thigh. He dismissed it as he dragged Herries towards the door.
“We must get out,” he shouted over the infernal din of aircraft exploding outside. “Your RAF pilot is not in here. We must look for him in the next hangar and to hell with those buzzards up there.”
Herries’ arms flailed so wildly that Hartmann thought he would have to lash out to bring him under control. “Don’t you see, Hartmann? This is the attack, the diversion, that has been laid on for him. You’ve left it too late. We have to get to the shelters, or those things will destroy us all.”
Hartmann battled to control his rage. The man that Herries called Kruze was still within reach. But where?
He pushed Herries through the little access doorway on to the concrete apron. Buildings burnt in the distance, mechanics lay dead in front of them, cut down by 20mm fire as they ran to the shelters. One of the two Heinkels that had been left outside the hangars smouldered away, its back broken. The other by some miracle had escaped untouched, but Hartmann knew that it would present an inviting target for the RAF aircraft on their next pass.
Across the runway, some of the bombers of the resident Kampfgeschwader blazed ferociously, their fuel tanks split by gunfire, while others were in the midst of their death throes, sending incandescent showers of exploding ammunition into the air, or launching brilliant, multicoloured fireballs up against the dawn sky as their RATO bottles blew up.
Herries’ mind was numb with fear. The jet sound. The culmination of every nightmare that he had had over the last five years, it bathed him in sweat and left him feeling weak and sick, unable to move.
Hartmann’s mind raced, shutting off the pain. The intruder pilot, if he was of the mettle Herries had described, would be searching out an aircraft, perhaps already be in one. Yet, wherever he looked, the bombers lay burning or wrecked. His eyes streamed from the smoke that drifted across the airfield.