Sky Ghost (35 page)

“Twenty-five,” Moon intoned. “Twenty…”

At that moment, Lancaster pushed something and pulled something, and suddenly they were going forward again and a second after that, they were down.

Just like that. Down on the road, under the trees, just like it said in the mission film. Lancaster was able to stop the Lysander from rolling in less than 25 feet. Hunter was simply amazed. He reached up and slapped both pilots on the shoulder. Both men returned the gesture with a quick thumbs-up.

Then they just sat there for a few moments in silence, in the rain. They could hear booming and rumbling and Hunter wondered if it was the bombing of the nearby city or real thunder.

Or both.

Or neither.

Lancaster turned around and looked at Hunter as if to say: Well, sport, time for you to go…

Hunter got the hint and climbed down into the hold of the plane. He picked up his heavy gear and went out the door, securing a GI combat helmet to his head.

The downpour was incredible. Hunter could barely see his hand in front of him. He crouched down, picked a direction and started running.

The roar around him was so loud now, it hurt his ears. The sound of the bombers going overhead, the sound of bombs hitting Heidiberg nearby. But there was another roar. The roar of water. Hunter picked it out of the cacophony and ran toward it.

He broke through the tree line and found himself looking across a huge body of water. It was so wide and the wind and rain so fierce, there were waves topping it that were as high as any in the ocean itself.

The water was moving to his left. He ran along the shore and soon was able to see the edge of the dam itself through the sheets of rain.

Suddenly there was huge explosion off to the southeast and Hunter saw a gigantic fiery mushroom cloud rise above the hills and trees. The ground rumbled so violently, he was knocked to his ass and almost wound up in the water.

It looked like the world was ending right over the tree line. What the hell were they dropping over there, he wondered.

He regained his footing and started running again. Finally the western end of the dam came into view. There was a lone guard in a small guard house watching the far end of the dam. He was standing outside, using the roof for protection, having a smoke, watching the bomb blasts in the distance. Hunter came right up beside him and knocked him out cold with one punch to the jaw.

The man crumpled to the ground. Hunter took his gun and threw it in the water. Then he ran up to the road that went across the dam itself.

The road dipped a little and when Hunter got to the top of it, he discovered that the body of water on his left looked bigger than the Atlantic Ocean. The wind and rain were so intense, the waves were six or seven feet high and some were crashing over the stout retaining wall itself. It was a little unsettling when seen at eye level.

In complete contrast, to his right there was a sheer drop of at least 2500 feet. Hunter made the mistake of taking a look down and nearly lost his equilibrium. The dam was simply immense—10 times larger than he’d imagined it. Just the size of the thing made him a little dizzy. At the bottom was a trickle of a river which flowed down into what became the Ruhr Valley. Many trees and hills ushered it on its way. A small village stood about a mile down on the right. Hunter could see lights in the windows of the houses. There was no doubt in his mind this was a place where civilians lived—but it was way too late the dwell on that either.

Hunter took another look down the side of the sloping dam and gulped. What really sucked was he now had to climb down the side of this thing.

He hooked up his rope to a convenient tie-ring on the wall and then just threw himself over. Down he went, half falling, half rappelling. Twenty feet, 30 feet, 40 feet. More. The convex winds were fierce; they were blowing him back and forth, up and down. Down 50, then 60. The air was shuddering with the concussion of the bombs falling just a mile or so to the south. The shock wave from each explosion would slam him into the concrete wall. Already his hands, elbows and knees were scrapped and bloody.

Like so many times in the past few weeks he asked himself, over and over:
What the hell am I doing?

He finally reached a spot he judged to be 120 feet down from the top. It was a guess, but the plan after all was to slam a huge aircraft packed with explosives into the wall, so how precise did he really have to be? He fought with his backpack and finally got the heating ring out. He picked a spot, yanked off the adhesive cover and jammed it on to the cement. It stuck—thank God.

Next came the oversize batteries. They both contained enough stored juice to run a small village for a day, that’s why the damn things were so heavy.

He ripped the adhesive off the first battery, and thankfully it stuck too. The second one gave him a problem; he had to tie it to the first and then winch it up, using the heating ring itself. Finally it was in place. He did a quick test on both, saw they were at full power, then happily dropped the backup battery. It bounced and cracked and shattered itself all the way down the side of the dam.

Feeling lighter than air now, Hunter did a quick systems check and convinced himself the heating ring was connected properly. Then he climbed back up the side of the dam, lifting himself up and over the small wall and landing in a very ungraceful heap back up on the roadway.

Phase one done,
he thought. Now for the fun part.

He jumped to his feet and ran back down the road, off the dam, and into the woods again, this time further down from the dam face. He found a spot from which he could see the heating ring and the Lysander waiting patiently, engine running, in the clutch of trees about 100 yards away.

He took the radio set from his backpack and quickly turned it on. It was slow to warm, but at least it was still alive. He dialed in the prescribed frequency and after a minute of searching, finally found the explosives-laden drone-bomber. According to the homing signal, it was right overhead.

Hunter was mildly astonished. Would all this crap really work? Curiosity alone would have pushed him on.

He took out the remote control switch for the heating ring, pointed it in the general direction of the device about 500 feet away and clicked it to on. It was hard to see through the pouring rain, but damn if he didn’t detect after 10 seconds or so a faint glow coming from the one-foot diameter ring.

Jessuzz, that was money, he thought. He snapped on the homing beacon to full power and pulsed the bomber drone again. The readout said it was 4400 feet right above him, waiting for his order to come down.

Hunter just shook his head. Was it really going to be as easy as this? He hit the arming switch on his radio set. A green light blinked to life. All 22 tons of blockbusting explosives were now fully armed and fused.

He pushed the radio throttle control ahead a bit and listened hard to see if he could detect the sound of the drone’s engines burping a little at 4400 feet. But between the downpour, the wind and the nonstop bombing of Heidiberg nearby, it was impossible even for Hunter’s ultrasensitive ears to discern the sound.

No matter, he thought. The radio set said the plane was up there, and at this point, that was good enough for him.

He did one last visual check of his area and surroundings. He was about to bring down the wrath of God here; he wanted to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything in the rush.

The heating ring was now shining very brightly through the bad weather, like a neon halo in the upper left hand corner of the immense dam face. There was absolutely no activity coming from this side of the dam—the guard was still knocked out, and the Lysander was still snuggled into the woods nearby, its prop spinning, its feather-sound engine living up to its rep.

Hunter took out his hand beacon and blinked it twice in the direction of the Lysander. This wasn’t in the plan, but he wanted to at least warn Lancaster and Moon that all hell was about to break loose. His two blinks were returned with two in kind. They saw him, they got the message. Everyone was now waiting on him.

He moved a little closer to the edge of the cliff, out from under trees, for a clearer look at the stormy sky. He pulsed the drone again and everything came back as OK. He activated the plane’s heat-seeking beam, and instantly a red light popped on the control panel. The plane had a lock on the heating ring. That
was
easy!

Hunter threw the main activation switch and then gave the drone full throttle. The bomb-laden plane started on its way down…

He heard it a moment later. Sixteen big engines screaming for life as gas flooded their fuel injectors. The combination of full throttle and gravity would give the airplane an impact speed of nearly 800 mph—this was going to make quite a show.

The scream of the drone’s engines was blotting out all other sounds now. Hunter unconsciously moved back into the woods a bit. He was expecting the plane to come out of the clouds off to his right It would pass about eye level with him and then plunge into the dam wall to his left.

He closed his eyes and envisioned the plane hitting the dam, exploding an instant later, and when the smoke and debris cleared, a good-sized crack would be on the dam face. Most of the debris would be blown downward, he was sure, but he still had to keep his helmet on, for that stray chunk of concrete that might not know the principles of Newtonian physics.

The drone’s engines filled his ears now—he looked at the radio set. It was 15 seconds away. One last look around. Did he have enough time to blink Lancaster and Moon again? No, and what was the point? They might take it the wrong way and think something had gone awry.

Ten seconds. The wind screamed, the rain increased, but the drone’s engines were growing incredibly loud. Seven seconds. The heating ring was glowing so much, Hunter thought he could feel its warmth. Five seconds. Engines screaming. Ears hurting. He peeked out from the trees again, eyes glued on the mass of clouds up to his right. The drone should appear through them…right…now.

But it didn’t…

And in that instant Hunter knew something had gone wrong, knew all this bulky crap
was
crap and that he’d been foolish to believe it could all work.

But the airplane’s engines still sounded like they were right above him.
Where the hell was it?

He got his answer a second later.

There it was. Not off to his right as he anticipated, but off to his left. Coming in over the dammed water itself! It was flying wildly, nose wobbling, wings stunting, tail wing twisting. And it was going very, very fast. It hit the surface about 100 feet out from the dam wall, plowed through the waves, sending sheets of water on either side. Then hit the wall from the opposite side.

Then it blew up.

In the next microsecond all Hunter could see was water. Water was everywhere. It was as if he was looking up at a faucet that someone had turned on full blast. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t hear. He couldn’t breathe. He was tumbling, flying through the air while water was all around him. Water was going in his mouth, up his nose, in his ears. There was fire around him too, and smoke, and very large pieces of concrete and metal and trees. Tree limbs and leaves and dirt and roots were passing him by at high speed, flying and crashing through the water, just like him.

It was strange how much consciousness he retained in those first few seconds after the blast and the catastrophic dam burst He knew what had happened. The plane had come in the exact opposite direction as it should have and had blown a huge hole
outward
in the dam wall. This had instantly created the effect of an enormous tidal wave and destroyed the
entire
dam. The water surge went hundreds of feet into the air, and the gigantic wave was now careening down into the Ruhr. And Hunter knew it was all happening, for he could see it all around him.
What a way to die!
the thought flashed across his saturated brain. Flying through the air while still under water.

But there was even more strangeness in this, the last few watery moments of his life. Like Dorothy in the tornado he saw houses, cars, cats, dogs, people flash by him. And then he saw the Lysander too. It was caught in the tidal wave and it went by him tumbling and upside down. And he even caught a glimpse of Lancaster and Moon at the controls, fighting them like they could actually get a handle on this thing.

Hunter’s urge was to scream out to them, but they were gone in a swirl and flash, and then more water hit him, and he began to go under.

And then finally, everything just went black.

M
ORE THAN 70,000 PEOPLE
were killed by the flood.

A wave of water 600 feet high roared down the Ruhr Valley at more than 100 miles an hour. It leveled everything in its path. Three major cities, dozens of villages, and countless farms and camps were washed away in the deluge. All electrical power from the edge of the Rhineland to the Wuttenberg area in the south was gone. Sewage systems, water ducts, drainage, and fresh water supplies were all destroyed in the immense thousand-square-mile area.

The wave had a life of more than an hour before dispersing into the Boden Spee lake on the border of Switzerland.

It left many places covered in water. Villages, valleys, bridges, tunnels. Cemeteries.

Once the water settled deep on these places, things began to rise.

The great flood was only one of the problems for Germany.

The simultaneous bombing raids had resparked fires in several major cities—Hamburg, Dresden, Frankfurt, Essen, Bonn, Wiesbadan, among others—and dozens of smaller ones, like Heidiberg. Few military installations were hit by the firebombings. The targets this day were mostly population centers. 20,000 died in Dusseldorf, 32,000 in Cologne. 33,000 in Mainz. And, as planned, the bombers kept right on coming, some making two and three flights from the hidden carriers within the 24-hour period.

When it was over, at the end of the horrible day, nearly a quarter of a million people were dead in Germany, killed by either fire or water.