A thousand suns by Alex Scarrow

Author:Alex Scarrow [Alex Scarrow]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Policier
ISBN: 9781409117308
Published: 2010-08-15T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 32

Zero Hour

2.05 a.m., 29 April 1945, an airfield south of Stuttgart

Max had watched as the work assembling the cradle was done and the bomb, under the supervision of the recently arrived civilian, and under the cold gaze of the SS men who had come with him, had been carefully installed aboard the bomber.

The civilian had ordered his SS guards to continue watching the plane; none of the ground crew, nor the crew who were to fly it, were now permitted to approach it. Then the civilian had left the hangar for the bunker.

Max had also noticed the Major watching the whole process from a corner of the hangar, and as the civilian had departed, he had summoned Rall with a flick of his wrist. It appeared that all of a sudden this man was now calling the shots on the airfield. No longer did it seem to be the Major’s show.

That had been an hour ago. Max and the others now waited impatiently for the last of the fighters to be fuelled and the extra-large ammo canisters installed. Even carrying the extra ammunition drums, Schröder and his men would need to ensure they were careful to conserve what ammo they had. Yet another thing for them all to keep in mind.

Zero hour, Major Rall had promised, would be midnight, but the cradle had taken longer than planned. That was two hours of wasted night cover.

‘Shit!’ he muttered to himself. The waiting was getting to him. He slipped out through the hangar hatch door into the night.

It was playing on his mind, the fact that Rall appeared to have been outranked at this late stage. With the Major’s hand at the helm, he had begun to feel confident that the whole operation had a reasonable chance of success. There was a humourless common sense to the Major, a rigid backbone of efficiency and straight talking that Max had known in some of his previous commanding officers, and he had grown to trust those qualities without question. Now to see the Major sidelined by this civilian, at this final hour . . . it was unsettling.

It was cold enough to blow out a cloud of condensation. Max sighed and watched the small plume of steamy breath quickly disperse in the night air. He remembered being a child and doing that on a winter’s morning, pretending he was grown up and smoking a cigarette, holding a pencil haughtily between two fingers and puffing on it like a little gentleman of leisure.

‘Cold night, eh, Max?’ said Pieter as he slipped through the gap between the hangar’s sliding doors to join Max outside.

Max nodded silently.

‘You all right?’

He smiled at Pieter. ‘I’m all right, you go and check on the other two. We should be ready to go any time now.’

He watched his co-pilot trot back into the hangar. His crew were in good spirits, ready to get this thing going; all three of them, it seemed, certain that the right choice had been made to volunteer.

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