The Flight of Werner von Braun (Twilight of the Gods, #4) by Christopher G. Nuttall

Author:Christopher G. Nuttall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Wernher von Braun, Alternate History
Publisher: Christopher G. Nuttall
Published: 2024-05-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen: Near Frankfurt, 1949

The journey was incredibly uncomfortable, but it did have the advantage of being relatively quick. Kathleen would have been quite happy if they’d been able to stay on the train all the way to the Rhineland, yet the way the train paused in the next siding – with the driver stomping up and down the train while muttering to himself in a strong Bavarian accent – suggested they were in trouble. Her instincts were screaming an alarm, even before she heard the driver scrambling up into the freight car. If someone had issued the order to search freight trains too, they were in trouble.

She drew her pistol, cursing under her breath. She wouldn’t be able to get close enough to the driver to take him out in hand-to-hand combat, certainly without the advantage of surprise that would make up for her physical inferiority. The engine driver was almost certainly a strong man, well used to transferring coal from the tender to the boiler. She wasn’t fool enough to think she could best him without surprise ... the driver poked his head over the lip of the wagon and stared, eyes going wide. Kathleen shot him in the face.

Von Braun jumped. Kathleen blinked in surprise – surely, he'd heard a gun being fired before? – and then climbed over the edge of the wagon, allowing herself to drop to the ground. The pistol hadn’t been remotely silent and she was all too aware that the driver wouldn’t be alone. There was no sign of an SS checkpoint, but ... she hurried to the engine and peered inside. The fireman was gabbing into his radio ... Kathleen shot him too, then turned off the radio and ran back to the wagon. Von Braun was staring at the body ... Kathleen almost laughed, despite everything. Von Braun had been in the SS! If he’d never seen a dead body before he’d decided to defect, he was almost certainly unique.

“Help me get the body to the engine,” Kathleen snapped. Von Braun lowered himself to the ground. “Hurry!”

She cursed, again, as she dragged the body forward. The driver was a large man, so heavily muscled she had real problems moving him; she shuddered to think what his fists could have done to her, if she had tried to fight him without a weapon. Von Braun staggered up beside her and helped, hauling the body along the tracks and up into the engine. He let out a gasp as he saw the second body, bleeding from a neat little hole in the head. Kathleen saw the Party badge on his lapel and felt a flicker of vindictive satisfaction. The two men had probably been good little Nazis. They deserved to die.

“We don’t have much time,” she said, as she stared at the control panel. She knew how to drive, and how to fly, but the steam engine threatened to defeat her. SOE had never thought she needed to know how to drive one – a terrible oversight, she reflected wryly – and she didn’t have time to figure it out.

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