They were now passing through a part of the city where the buildings were shattered, leaning away from the blast center as if concrete and brick could escape from the fury of the thing that had destroyed Duren. Caved, in, burning with their victims still inside. One of the last buildings standing was the regional office of the Deutsche Bank about 800 meters from the center of the explosion.. Clearly imprinted on the stone steps was a dark silhouette of a man. Upon these steps at the moment of the blast a man must have been sitting, perhaps with an elbow on one knee and one hand supporting his chin, in an attitude of deep thought. Perhaps he'd just been told his account was overdrawn and a deposit was required immediately. Perhaps he'd been thinking of his friends, of who he could ask for a loan to tide him over. The incredible flash of the explosion had “printed” the outline of this man on the steps, marking the moment of his death.
Further in still was just rubble, burning rubble surrounded by the stink of roasted pork. The central portion of the city, directly underneath the explosion suffered almost complete destruction. The only surviving objects were the frames of a small number of strong reinforced concrete buildings, they hadn't been collapsed by the blast, but even these buildings had been gutted by interior fires, had their windows, doors, and partitions knocked out, and all other fixtures which were not integral parts of the reinforced concrete frames burned or blown away.
And then came something Lup had never seen before. Where the city center had been was a sheet of blackened glass. It was called Trinitite although he didn't know that. The black disk, surrounded by the blasted burning building and topped by the black and red-streaked sky with that awful cloud still hanging overhead looked like some obscene arena where demons played satanic games. The APCs drove out into the center of the hellish inferno that had once been Duren and then the armored vehicles stopped. They formed the five points of a pentagon, facing outwards as if to defend themselves from the horror that was engulfing them. From the armored vehicles on the disk of blackened glass Lup looked out at the tens of thousands of dead that surrounded him. And, although he didn't know it yet, he was already one of them.
NAIADS Command Headquarters, Potsdam, Germany
Duron, Aachen, Cologne, Essen, Dortmund, Dusseldorf, Duisburg, Bochum, Wuppertal, Bielefeld, Bonn, Gelsenkirchen, Monchengladbach.
The red circles were advancing across the map of Germany in a vicious, virulent infection, that ended with an electronic howl, a burst of static, then silence. The NAIADS operations center was quite now except for the quiet sound of the women weeping as they operated their communications equipment.
Krefeld, Oberhausen, Hagen, Hamm, Herne, Mullheim, Solingen.
The Mayor of Solingen had been fluent in English, educated in a British university, By a miracle he'd managed to get into touch by radio with one of the bombers closing in on his city. In English, he begged them not to drop, told them there were women and children in the city. The reply from the bomber had been a cold “Wir sprechen Deutsch nicht” Then an electronic howl, a burst of static and silence.
Neuss, Paderborn, Recklinghausen, Bottrop, Remscheid, Siegen, Moers, Bergisch, Gladbach, Iserlohn, Gutersloh.
Gutersloh had tried to surrender. Broadcasting across every frequency available. Broadcasts that ended in an electronic howl, a burst of static and silence.
Marl, Lunen, Velbert, Ratingen, Minden.
The early targets had all been part of the area covered by the North-Rhine Westphalia Regional Control Center. For a while, Field Marshall Herrick had hoped the attack was confined there, that the American bombers were just attempting to smash German industry. That hope had become thinner and thinner as Ruhrland city after city had vanished under the monstrous mushroom clouds. But Herrick clung to it desperately, hoping beyond hope or reason that the attack was a limited one.
Mainz, Ludwigshafen, Koblenz, Trier, Kaiserslautern.
All in the area controlled by the Rhineland-Palatinate regional control center. Herrick felt his world cave in still further. The vicious irony was tearing at his soul. He'd spent years on NAIADS, first fighting to build it, then scheming to defend it and secure the resources it had needed. He'd done it so that Germany would stand defended. Now, the system that should have crowned his professional life, that should have protected Germany, was reduced to a helpless spectator, fit only for monitoring Germany's destruction.
Stuttgart, Mannheim, Karlsruhe, Freiburg, Heidelberg.
A thousand years of history were being wiped out with casual contempt. In his mind’s eye, Herrick could see the American bombers cruising effortlessly over Germany, raining down death on the helpless country beneath. Every so often there would be a sharp cry from one of the women on the communications desks as her home town vanished under the red dots. Others reacted differently when the red circles reached their home towns. Some just watched in silence, a few fainted. One had smiled.
Heilbronn, Ulm, Pforzheim, Reutlingen, Ludwigsburg, Villingen-Schwenningen.
Suddenly there was a stir in operations center. A familiar figure had entered the area, Old Fatty himself. Only he wasn't so fat now. In fact, he was looking better that he'd done for years. It was rumored that he'd been weaned off the morphine addiction that had nearly destroyed him. The Reichsmarshal sat quietly in one corner of the Ops room, watching the spreading stains on the situation display.
Esslingen, Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, Kassel, Saarbrucken, Darmstadt, Offenbach, Hanau.
More electronic howls, crashes of static, more deadly silences. “However did we come to this?” Herrick was speaking to himself more than anybody else, his shocked mind not really capable of distinguishing between what he was seeing, hearing or feeling. But it was Goering who replied. “Sometimes, when flying at night, a pilot sets his course by the wrong star and there is nobody to stop him. By the time he realizes what he has done, he's so far into the unknown that no chart can help him back, All he can do is keep going and hope that somehow things will work out in the end. But they never do, the situation always gets worse and eventually the pilot crashes and burns. Germany set its course by the wrong star many years ago and nobody tried to stop us. So now we have crashed and burned.”
Hamburg, Bremen, Bremerhaven, Braunschweig, Kiel, Erfurt, Osnabruck, Oldenburg, Gottingen, Wolfsburg, Salzgitter, Gera, Hildesheim, Jena, Wilhelmshaven, Flensburg.
Three explosions reported over Hamburg, two over Kiel, three over Wilhelmshaven. The U-boat construction yards, Herrick thought dully. They'd given the Americans a bad time in 1942 and threatened the same three years later. Now the Americans had their revenge. God in Heaven what revenge they were taking. An old German saying popped into his mind. “Beware the wrath of a patient man.” But the people didn't deserve this. Again he didn't realize he'd spoken aloud. Again it was Goering, sitting quietly in his corner who answered. It wasn't a conversation it was more like two dead men speaking their last words at once.