“Be careful,” he said.
He would have gone himself, if he hadn’t been ordered to stay in Berlin. Given how much he knew about ongoing covert operations, his bosses didn’t want to take the slightest chance of him falling into enemy hands. Knox would probably get a noodle in the back of the head – SS slang for a bullet through the brain – but they’d take their time with Andrew, if they knew who he was. They’d drain everything he knew, then dump whatever was left in a mass grave…
The alarms began to howl. Andrew glanced up sharply, then swore as he realised the aircraft was far from completely unloaded. Knox grabbed his hand and dragged him towards the nearest shelter, the ground crews dropping whatever they were carrying and following the Americans as they ran. Three tiny dots appeared, low in the sky; they hugged the ground as they raced towards the airfield. A missile launcher swung around and opened fire, blasting one of the aircraft out of the sky, but the remaining two kept coming, their cannons spraying explosive shells into the grounded aircraft. Andrew had barely a second to turn and watch helplessly as the American aircraft exploded into a colossal fireball, a wave of heat scorching his face as he dropped to the ground. The easterner aircraft swooped around, dropping a pair of dumb bombs on the runways, then fled back towards the east.
Should have ringed the airfield with defences, Andrew thought bitterly, as he picked himself up. Four American aircrew were now dead, along with at least a dozen Germans. But they didn’t want to draw attention to the airfield.
“Damn,” Knox said. “Now what?”
“They’ll just have to send more aircraft,” Andrew said. “And we’ll have to lie about the pilots.”
He contemplated the problem, briefly. Shipping the Stingers into the Reich would be far harder than flying them in. The Reich rarely allowed British or American ships to dock, particularly in naval bases. Someone would certainly start asking questions if that changed in a hurry. But there might be no choice. His superiors were unlikely to authorise more flights to Berlin…
He ignored Knox’s angry stare as he looked at the flaming wreckage. There was no help for it, not if they wanted the operation to remain covert. The pilots would be recorded as having died in training accidents, with a carefully-manufactured paper trail to back it up – if anyone checked. OSS would make sure the families received a hefty payout in exchange for their silence, even though they might never know what had happened to their husbands and sons.
It galled him, more than he cared to admit. Intelligence – and covert operations – work called for secrecy, demanded secrecy. He’d had to lie to girlfriends, in the past; he’d have to lie to his wife, if he ever married. Knox’s scorn was quite understandable. There was something inherently honest about the Marine Corps, while far too much intelligence work was dishonest by nature. Manipulating someone into betraying his country was far too much like trying to seduce a married woman. And the pilots, men who had only been in the fringes of the operation, would never be applauded for their work. Their deaths would pass unremarked. There would certainly be no threats of retaliation.
Perhaps the whole story will be declassified, one day, he thought. He knew too much of his own work would never see the light of day – he’d seduced too many foreigners into working for the United States – but the pilots weren’t true intelligence operatives. And then their families can be truly proud of them.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Berlin, Germany Prime
27 September 1985
“Their advance spearheads are within five kilometres of the city limits,” Field Marshal Gunter Voss said, “and we have reports of recon units on both sides of the city. It won’t be long before they have Berlin completely surrounded.”
Volker Schulze barely heard him. They were standing on the roof of the Reichstag, staring into the darkness. A handful of fires could be seen within the city – and a couple more in the distance, outside the city – but otherwise Berlin was as dark and silent as the grave. The criminal element was slowly growing out of control, he knew; the police and security forces were badly overstretched. They were lucky, very lucky, that starvation hadn’t begun to bite – yet. When it did, he feared, Berlin – and the provisional government – was finished.
“They’ll have complete air superiority over the city tomorrow,” Voss added. “Even with the… special weapons” – Volker concealed his amusement at how Voss couldn’t quite admit, even in private, that the weapons came from America – “we’re going to have trouble enduring the bombardment.”
He paused. “We could call back some of the other aircraft.”
Volker shook his head, without turning his gaze from the darkness surrounding his city. The plan would work, he told himself firmly; it would work because it had to work. Move forces eastwards, get them into position to launch a two-prong counterattack after the Waffen-SS had over-committed itself… assuming, of course, that they could keep the SS from using its own airpower to knock out the advance. He’d pulled back nearly all of the remaining fast-jet fighters, Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine, to cover the gathering forces.
And, in doing so, I have left Berlin naked, he thought, grimly. The air attacks we have faced so far will be a pinprick, compared to what’s coming.
He turned to look at the Field Marshal. “And the retreating forces?”
“Most of the infantry have fallen back into the outer defence lines,” Voss said. “I’ve pulled a handful of the logistics units further back, just to support the main counter-offensive when it begins. The SS is now in control of far too much territory outside the city.”
Volker nodded. The American flights had been reduced – sharply – after one of their aircraft had been destroyed, then stopped altogether after the airfield had come under heavy shelling from the advancing forces. Getting even a handful of people out of Berlin now would be difficult, even though a couple of roads were still open. The SS had even started driving more and more refugees into the city, forcing him to choose between feeding them or leaving them outside the defence lines to starve. All his plans to move the poor bastards further to the west had come to nothing.
“They’ll try to take the city,” he said, quietly.
“It depends,” Voss said. “They may feel that starvation will do the job for them.”
Volker had his doubts. Stalingrad had been a nightmare, according to his father. The Russians had fought for every inch of ground and kept fighting, even when it had become clear that the battle was lost. In the end, they’d bled the Wehrmacht badly, although nowhere near badly enough to keep it from taking Moscow the following year. The SS’s generals would know the perils of fighting in a city…
…And yet time was not on their side. It was already growing colder, with reports of frost and snow further to the east, but that wasn’t the real problem. The longer the Reich remained sundered, the weaker it would become. Karl Holliston might inherit a broken state – a more broken state – when he finally marched into the Reichstag and planted his ass in Volker’s chair. No, the SS would launch an offensive into Berlin as soon as it felt it could actually win. And then… who knew what would happen?