Pah, Rommel thought, and followed the massive SS man back into the Chateau. He suspected that Skorzeny was as bored as he was, the man had been in Das Reich, one of the new SS divisions, before being transferred to guard one inconvenient prisoner. Inaction sat as well with him as it did with Rommel; not very well. Skorzeny wanted to be in the thick of battle, particularly with the war with the future British… not going as well as it should have been.
Darkness fell over the Chateau and the SAS men prepared themselves for battle. Dwynn had led them some distance away from the enemy, after leaving a small collection of microcams, so they could rest up without risking discovery by an enemy patrol. The data being fed freely through the air – the Germans being unable to detect it, let alone triangulate its source – was fed directly to Britain and then back to the SAS team.
“Here’s the plan,” Dwynn said, examining the chart of the Chateau. The PJHQ had finally managed to locate a plan of the Chateau, which had been destroyed by fire during the Uprising of 2010. It had once hosted a British Prime Minister. “Assuming that nothing changes, Sergeant Yates and his team will take up commanding positions around the Chateau, sniping any of the SS who move. In the meantime, Benton and I will take my team and snatch Rommel out of his rooms.”
He tapped the chart thoughtfully. “Unfortunately, we don’t know for certain which room he’s in,” he said. “I guess that he’s in the main room, here, but the guard commander might have taken that for himself. In that case, the five of us will sweep the entire Chateau for him, and kill any SS we meet, understand?”
They nodded. “Good,” he said. “The SS won’t have NVGs, so we’ll go in when its dark. Keep the automated settings on; the RAF is going to take out the barracks for us in” – he checked his watch quickly – “thirty minutes, and then hit several other targets nearby. Once the strike goes in, we follow, understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Yates said.
“Good,” Dwynn said. “Now, let’s get into position.”
The RAF had been getting used to making high attitude precision raids on German targets, once the air war over England had slowed down to just V1s and the occasional fighter raid. The pilot grapevine argued back and forth over the possible reasons, ranging from the Germans having run out of pilots, to them having decided on other missions. Now that the RAF was receiving a steady supply of ASRAAMs, many German pilots had been proving reluctant to engage the Eurofighters one on one; the RAF might well have crossed the hump.
For his part, Flying Officer Victor Abernathy was glad of the rest. He knew that it probably meant that the Germans were plotting something, but the RAF needed the rest. With the sudden need to send some aircraft to the Far East, the RAF was overstretched. If the Germans had ever managed to figure out where the RAF was based, the losses might have become appalling. As it was, the Germans were bombing cities, ports – and a handful of disused airfields from the last war.
We usually end up training for the last war, Abernathy thought absently, as the Eurofighter crossed the coast of France, already kicking up to Mach Three. The Germans had nothing that could hope to intercept it; the Eurofighter was outrunning the warning of its presence. Now we have a chance to fight it – and at least we’re doing better this time around.
The night sky was empty. The Germans hadn’t even begun to develop a proper nightfighter, and their experiments with AWACS aircraft had become targets for the RAF as soon as they realised what the Germans were trying to do. In the dark, the RAF’s advanced radars made it as clear as day, and the Germans blinder than bats. After a handful of quick and sharp defeats, the Germans had conceded the night sky to the RAF.
“This is Charlie-one, heading for new target,” he said, and brought the Eurofighter into a tight turn. His ECM was reporting the existence of German radars, trying to track the supersonic aircraft, but they would do the Germans no good. The Germans had been experimenting with slaving their anti-aircraft guns to radar, but as yet they hadn’t developed a proper proximity fuse.
“Acknowledged, Charlie-one,” the AWACS said. “Your targeting should pick up the laser point at any second.”
Abernathy smiled, and pulled the Eurofighter up into a tight climb, wondering if the Germans were still trying to track him. The AWACS was pumping out jamming signals now, crippling the entire network by providing thousands of false returns. If the Germans could still see him, they had other problems to worry about as the Eurofighter topped out at nearly its maximum height.
“Beginning run,” he said, and set course. The targeting sensor picked up the pinpoint of laser light with ease – 1940s France didn’t have the thousands of possible sources that had so confused the USAF over Syria – and provided a lock-on at once. “Releasing weapon now.”
The Eurofighter shuddered as the bomb fell from its wings, falling down towards the ground, its tiny rockets guiding it towards the pinpoint of laser light on the ground. Abernathy watched as a pinprick of light blossomed for a long moment, a tiny flash of light that meant hellfire for the men and women on the ground, and shrugged. The RAF intranet was overflowing with complaints about the targeting restrictions from the MOD; the Germans dams had been left untouched despite the fact that destroying them would cripple Germany’s power supply.
“Mission accomplished,” Abernathy said. “Requesting permission to return to the barn.”
“Negative, Charlie-one,” the AWACS said. “Remain on station; your support might be needed again.”
Slowly, like ghosts in the night, the SAS men spread out around the Chateau and waited. Their watches provided them with the time, but time always seemed to slow down when they were on patrol. Half the team split up, targeting the German guards with their sniper rifles, the other half waited in position to charge the gates.
We should do one of the stunts that rat bastard put us on film doing, Dwynn thought grimly. Abseiling ninja-style into the compound and kidnapping him without anyone any the wiser. Against stoned-out ragheads I might have tried, but the SS is way too disciplined for that to…
Even the SAS team was stunned by the sudden and violent explosion as the barracks blew apart. A hail of shots rang out in the night as the snipers fired, hunting down the SS men in the open and slaughtering them before they could react. Dwynn picked up the Stinger missile and fired; directly at the gates. A second explosion blossomed in the night, the five team members ran forward, covered by the snipers. A German jumped up and aimed his rifle; he was dead before he could squeeze the trigger.
“Now,” Dwynn subvocalised, as they quickly checked the grounds. Yates launched a second Stinger, targeted on the main door. The explosion shattered the door and Dwynn ran up, pausing only to toss a tear gas grenade through the hole. An SS man stumbled, coughing in sudden panic, and Dwynn shot him quickly, before running in.
“Secure the door,” he snapped, and ran down the corridor, trusting Benton to follow him. A form leapt up in front of him and he fired without thinking; a pyjama-clad SS man fell over backwards, missing half of his head. He kicked down the door to the main bedroom and jumped through, scanning the room. It seemed to be empty, but an infrared scan revealed the form hiding at the end of the room, in the shadows.
“We’ve come to get you out,” he called, in his bad German. Before beginning his SAS training, it had been worse. “Field Marshall, stand up please.”
The condemned man gets a good bed, Rommel thought wryly, as he turned in for the night. It was a good bed, nice and soft in all the right places, designed subtly to roll to bodies together in the night. He missed his wife, or even his temporary mistress; the room was just made for romance. Skorzeny had thought that it was soft, but until the Fuhrer passed judgement on him it would be well to avoid cold cells and torture.