“One dude who’s been knocked out,” Chang reported. “We haven’t seen any others left alive.”
“This should force them to concentrate on defending their territory,” Dwynn said grimly. “Bind the one you do have; we’ll have him carted back to base. Plummer, there’s a woman in the hut near me and…”
“You want some pepper-up to put iron in your rod?” Plummer asked quickly. “I thought that danger did it for you…”
“Shut up,” Dwynn snapped. “She’s been raped and injured; you’re the medic, so medic her.”
“Yes, sir,” Plummer said, subdued. Dwynn walked back through the burning town, hardly more than a hamlet, and checked around. There was no sign of a German vehicle, not even a jeep, and he smiled. The RAF’s policy of shooting up as many German vehicles on the ground as possible must be having some affect somewhere.
“Control, this is Team Dwynn,” he said, into his radio. “We need pick-up, and a doctor. We have one prisoner and one rescued person.”
Vash joined him as soon as the team had checked the remaining buildings. “This is a mess and a half,” he said. “Were they this bad in the first time line?”
“Worse,” Dwynn assured him. He’d been researching the Germans in the Second World War; he hoped to meet Otto Skorzeny someday. The German was one of the few German heroes from the war. “They did this in Russia; doubtless they would have done it here as well.”
“We should just burn them off the planet,” Vash snarled. Dwynn winced; ever since one nuke had been used, the debate had begun; should more be used? He knew that some senior figures within the army wanted to use tactical nukes in the Middle East, and only resistance from Hanover himself – the Army respected Hanover – had prevented that debate from becoming public.
“We’ve had that argument before,” Dwynn said, suddenly very tired. He hadn’t caught enough sleep before the attack. “How are our guests?”
“Plummer thinks that the woman will be fine,” Vash said. “The German hasn’t woken up yet.”
“I see,” Dwynn said, as the CV-22 tilt-rotor came in over the horizon. He could hardly see it, but he could hear it and the low roars of the three Harriers escorting it. The Germans had based a handful of their own aircraft in Turkey, using them to conduct low-level raids of their own.
He lifted his radio. “Have you got everything?” he asked. “Don’t leave anything behind, children.”
“Yes, dad,” Chang said. “We have everything.”
“Good,” Dwynn said. “In that case, place the demolition charges and move out. This place has to be totally wrecked before the Germans realise what’s happened.”
“You mean more wrecked,” Vash said. Dwynn didn’t bother to argue.
Unterscharfuehrer Jagar’s first thought was that he’d been rescued by the SS, and then he realised how unlikely that was. He was clearly in a tent, but one equipped with wonders, from a television to a number of computers. Jagar knew what a computer was – he’d seen one in the SS training sessions – but he’d never been so close to one before. Only the most loyal officers were allowed near any of the handful that the Germans possessed.
“You’re in very big trouble, young man,” a voice said, in fluent if accented German. Jagar turned his spinning head carefully around, to see a British uniform. Dimly, he realised that there was a voice attached, and then a person inside the uniform. He winced, his head was so sore; the man seemed to have a voice of thunder.
“I am Sergeant Kettle,” the man said. “You get one laugh at my name; just one.” Jagar tried to laugh, and failed; his head was pounding. He felt dizzy, out of control, as if he were floating. “You have been taken alive from a German force; what were you doing there?”
It never entered Jagar’s mind to lie. “I was ordered to assist the preparations for creating a forward base,” he said.
“And what did you do to the people there?” Kettle asked. “What happened?”
“We rounded them up,” Jagar said. “They resisted; we shot those who resisted, and we set the others to work. The Hauptsturmfuehrer insisted on keeping some of the women; he said that he was a long way from his wife. We built what we needed and then…”
He was suddenly, violently sick. “They shot the men and used the women,” he said. “We waited and waited, but we were never allowed to leave and…”
“Why did your commanders want a forward base?” Kettle asked.
“They want to launch an offensive somewhere,” Jagar said. “The Hauptsturmfuehrer boasted that we would wipe out Palestine, and then move on into Suez.”
Kettle’s voice softened. “Tell me, how did you feel about what happened to the women?”
“I hated it,” Jagar said, though the strange haze that seemed to be covering his thoughts. “I wanted to die, I wanted to end it all, but I couldn’t… they made me take her and use her and…”
The strange haze rose up and swept him away upon a balmy sea. Before he lost any awareness at all, he thought he heard Kettle’s voice, at a distance.
“Perhaps we can offer you a chance for redemption, young man…”
General Flynn studied the report the morning after the attack. The SAS team had been flown to Cairo, where they would have a few days leave. They deserved it, Flynn was certain; they had perhaps answered a very important question for Flynn – and for Britain.
“So,” Flynn said, to his war council. “We think that we know where the Germans plan to hit. Palestine, all the way to Suez.”
“We think,” General Higgins pointed out. The burly man had served under him in the defence of Singapore, before being promoted and given command of some of the new regiments. “The young man could have been lied to.”
“That’s possible,” Sergeant Kettle said. “Psychically, he might well have been telling the truth – he seems to have felt revulsion at some of his acts – but we cannot guard against the SS simply lying to their own people.”
“And I assume that the drug was perfect?” Flynn asked. “Can we trust it?”
Kettle, who was an experienced interrogator for MI5, nodded once. “He was kept out of it on the flight back here, and then we ran the drug into his bloodstream while he was unconscious. All of the vital signs matched; he was born Gunter Jagar in 1920, which makes him twenty-one now. I’ve sent a request back to London, but I think he’s not in the history books.”
“Which is either good or bad,” Flynn mused. “I’m going to have to discuss this with London; tell me, do you want the young man for the Bundeswehr?”
“I think that General Rommel will want a look at him, yes,” Kettle said. “He certainly shows a great deal of remorse for his crimes.”
“I still think that we should shoot him,” Higgins muttered. “This is going to come back and bite us on the behind.”
Chapter Four: In the Heart of Darkness
Fuhrerbunker
Berlin
26th March 1941
The video was grainy, nothing like the modern videos he’d seen from the future, but Roth was unwillingly impressed anyway. The rocket, a scaled-up version of a V2 built from plans provided by their ally in America, had exploded. It had been on the pad one moment; the next it exploded in a blast of fire. Seconds later, the camera heeled up to catch the fleeting black object travelling across the sky, far faster than any possible pursuit.
“The British caught the dummy spaceplane,” Roth said. It wasn’t his first briefing, not even his first in front of the Fuhrer, but he had never gotten used to it. “The mock-up was destroyed in the ground and blasted to atoms.”