1945 (41 page)

Now the roof of the building was peeling back from the 
intense buildup of heat inside, revealing a fiery glow rising up from within. Flames consumed everything that was flammable, including the graphite core. Coils of dark and deadly smoke swirled up and drifted off to the east and south.

"Major!"

Radl turned and saw his lieutenant coming back.

"Are you all right, sir?"

Radl forced a smile. "It is time to leave. We have worn out our welcome, I fear."

11:22 P.M.

Martel clutched the Schmeisser that he had taken from the dead SS captain along with his ammunition and two grenades. Marshall, beside him, continued to scan the ground ahead, clearly illuminated by the inferno consuming the town. Five "MPs" lay sprawled on the ground before them.

"Welcome to Hell," Jim whispered.

A burst of machine-gun fire ratded across the doorway, then flayed the corridor behind them.

"They're in the building — " The shout from further down the corridor was cut short.

Jim looked back over his shoulder. "We better head downstairs."

Another burst of fire swept overhead. Marshall fired off a quick reply and then started to crawl backward.

There was a dull thud and then a sound like a snake hissing.

"Grenade!"

Harriman, on Marshall's other side, leapt over the general, attempted to scoop the grenade up but fumbled, grabbed again, and then simply fell on it. A muffled
pfoomph
lifted Harriman into the air.

Marshall started to turn Harriman over.

Jim grabbed Marshall by the shoulders and pulled him away. "He's dead, sir!" Jim shouted in a voice that was almost a sob. "Come on!"

Marshall nodded and the two started down the corridor, crouching low. Two Rangers joined them from the side rooms where Marshal had detailed them. They turned from the corridor into the stairwell and raced down the stairs, stopping short on the bottom level at the sight of a nervous MP looking at them over a leveled Ml. Fortunately, the MP recognized Marshall.

"They're right behind us," Jim hissed, urging the MP through the doorway.

The corridor, illuminated only by an emergency lamp at the end of the hall was packed with civilians.

"Is there a secured area here?" Marshall snapped.

The MP just looked at him, speechless with awe.

"Snap out of it, soldier!
Is there a secured area here?"

"Ah, sir. Down the end of the corridor. Records storage area A single big room. Real big. This corridor is the only way in."

"Unless they come through the ceiling." Marshall said. "But if they have time to figure out which floor matches where we are, and then do the demolition work, we're dead anyway. Let's get these people in there. The Nazis will be coming down this corridor any second now."

11:30 P.M.

"Sir, we're starting to have problems!"

Skorzeny slowed on the steps into the administrative building and looked back at his radio operator.

"What is it?"

"Gunther just reported back in, sir. The transports are landing now. But they've picked up a scramble alert from several American air bases. Fighters are coming this way. If they catch the transports on the ground, we're trapped."

"How much time?"

"Half an hour for the first of them."

Skorzeny looked down at his watch. They'd only been on the ground for fifty minutes. He'd planned for a minimum of two hours.

"What else?"

"A number of aimed civilians, many wearing bits and pieces of uniforms, were seen coming in through the east gate. Gunships are still sweeping the area, but they're running low on ammunition. The team at K-25 is running way behind schedule and we have no report at all from Radl, but the orbiting gunship reported a major ground explosion about five minutes ago."

"The reactor?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Never mind."

If the reactor had blown at least the second most important part of the mission was a success. The wind was west-northwest. That meant the radiation would blow toward Knoxville. Good. Keep them excited.

"All right, tell the teams to hurry up. Forty-five minutes and we start to pull out. And make sure they keep the landing area blacked out!"

Following his team in he started the sweep through the building, room after room. There was only scattered resistance. Behind him the intelligence team came tearing through. He decided for the moment to stay with them while the assault team pushed ahead. There was a shout of triumph when they found Groves's office. A minute later they exited the room and stood pressed against the wall. There was a muffled explosion, and they poured back in. The team started to scoop papers out of the safe, sorting them out as they did so. Just as they had rehearsed, some of the papers were spread out one after the other on Groves's desk, one of the team members photographing each sheet while another swept that sheet to the floor as a third man slapped down yet another in its place. Other team members began to grab documents and load them into oversized backpacks to be taken out.

"We've found the door to the basement!"

Skorzeny backed out of Groves's office and followed a sergeant who turned a corner and then pointed to a doorway at which several men were crouching.

"Well damn it, what are you waiting for?" Skorzeny shouted.

One of the men popped the door open and another hurled a grenade down the stairs. After the explosion had slammed the door back on its hinges, one of the men leaped through, firing as he darted down the steps. He made it to the bottom and was turning the comer before an Ml cracked and he crumpled.

Another man started down the stairs, leaned around the landing to throw a grenade, and then pressed himself up against the wall. When the explosion swept back up he raced around the corner, machine pistol low and firing. Two more followed him. A moment later Skorzeny had joined them. The point man stopped by the shattered door into the basement corridor, pulled out another grenade and tossed it through. There was a shout of warning from the other side, followed an instant later by an explosion.

The point man leaped through the doorway, turned right, and fired. Answering fire caught him from behind and he collapsed. The next man of the team now leaped forward, throwing a grenade through the doorway so that it bounced against the far wall and rolled up the corridor to the left. Almost before the explosion, he was through the door, crouching low, firing. The next man in covered to the right.

Skorzeny was next and last. He looked over his shoulder. A squad had finally caught up with him. Crouching low he went through the door. His two men were half a dozen meters up the corridor, lying on the floor, weapons poised. A dead MP was sprawled in the corridor, blood oozing out from under him.

The long corridor which ran down the main axis of the building was lined with office doors. Skorzeny motioned his squad in, and pointed down the corridor to the left. "Check each office. If possible, take some prisoners, especially any ranking officers. Marshall is down there. It would be better than Koniev if we bring him out still breathing. Now move it!"

The team started down the corridor, moving swiftly but cautiously. They stopped at the first door, kicked it open and swept in. Empty. Seconds later they were doing the same at the second room, and then the third. At the fourth, a pistol cracked as the door was kicked open, punching the lead man backward. Preceded by two grenades, the others swarmed in, Schmeissers chattering. Then they were back out, the squad leader signaling that there had been only the one man in the room.

Skorzeny snarled with impatience. This was taking far too long. He sprinted back up the stairs, shouted for a second squad to join the one in the basement. Then he went outside. Overhead a gunship was pulling up and banking after a strafing run against the buildings just north of them. Clearly its pilot was intent on wheeling around to do it again.

He spied his radio man. "What's the latest?"

"Y-12's on fire and Radl reports that the reactor is blown. The team is getting set to pull out."

Skorzeny grinned like a wolf. The entire town seemed to be going up in a raging firestorm, the rattle of gunfire sweeping across the hills. If the reactor was blown as well, all that was left for a perfect mission was to finish off K-25, kill the scientists—and get the hell out.

"What's happening at K-25?"

"They're running behind."

Not so good . . . Well, Holzer would do the job or die trying. "What about those fighters?"

"The bomber stream is already into North Carolina. Two have been shot down. It's getting confusing. We're not sure if we have any fighters coming here, or if they are all going after the bombers." That was as it should be. Some of the bombers were supposed to climb and make a high-altitude run-out with the intent of drawing off fighters from the rest of the stream—and also from Oak Ridge itself.

As they spoke, Skorzeny continued to watch the gunship wheeling up out of its strike. Suddenly there was a burst of fire from out of the darkness. The gunship continued its turn, but the tracers followed. Then, ever so gracefully, the gunship's turn tightened so that its wings pointed nearly up and down, and then it started to roll over on its back as it arced into the ground. An instant later it impacted into a hillside, adding its fuel and explosives to the inferno that had become Oak Ridge.

A P-51 fighter came racing in low at barely tree toplevel, and then pulled straight up and disappeared into the darkness. Skorzeny watched it, saying nothing. He looked over at his radio operator, who was gazing up in astonishment

"Signal back to Gunther that American fighters have arrived, and have him relay it out to the teams. Tell them to get a move on."

Skorzeny waited impatiently while the radio man carried out his instructions. Next he said, "Find out if the reserve bombers are still orbiting."

The radio operator relayed the inquiry and a moment later looked back up at Skorzeny.

"One has been shot down." Clearly the fighters were not equipped with radar; the bombers would be in far worse shape if darkness could not cloak them.

"Tell the team at K-25 to pull out of the building and mark it with flares. Send the rest of the bombers in—wait! Divert one bomber over to the reactor and have it drop its load there."

Even as he turned back into the administrative building he could feel and hear the ripple of explosions and gunfire coming from the basement.

11:45 P.M.

"Get down!"

Jim ducked down behind the barricade of filing cabinets that Marshall had ordered to be piled up a dozen feet back from the door. The cabinets had been knocked over and piled up two high, with traverses laid out dividing the defensive line into half a dozen small cubicles, with more piled up further back into the square room with its forty-foot sides. The scientists who weren't armed were now in the back comer behind a wall of cabinets, with a single Ranger as their final line of defense. Everyone else with a weapon was lined up behind the barricade, barrels leveled toward the door.

Suddenly, to the accompaniment of exploding HE, the heavy steel door was smashed open as by an angry giant's fist. The cabinets that had been set to block it skittered and tumbled into the room and against the far wall. Two commandos flung themselves into the room diagonally left and right, quartering the room with machine-gun fire as they did so. After a split second's shock the defenders opened up, and the two Germans were cut apart by a torrent of fire. A grenade rolled in, coming to rest against the barricade in front of Jim, who ducked down low. The explosion was strangely muffled by the contents of the stuffed file-drawer. For once, all the paper generated by a government agency had served a noble purpose.

Another German tried to come through and was cut apart in turn. Having learned the hard way that a single grenade did not answer their needs, the raiders now sent in a flock of them, some of which arced over the barricade, bursting toward the back of the room. One bounced off the front of Jim's barricade and went spinning into the defensive cubical next to him, where it detonated.

Jim pulled out one of the two precious grenades he had taken from the dead SS officer, pulled the ring at the bottom of the handle, and threw it into the corridor. At the very instant he did so commandos poised outside the now-empty door frame lunged into the room as a follow-up to their own grenade toss. Jim's grenade caught only the two who would otherwise have been last in.

Three more Germans were dropped coming through the door, but the remaining two managed to leap over the barricade, firing their weapons at point-blank range, sweeping the line. A Ranger, using his rifle like a club, smashed one of them down, while one of the scientists managed to drop the other with either a lucky or a well-aimed shot from his forty-five.

Ignoring the action, Jim kept his weapon leveled on the doorway. No one else came through. An MP jumped over the barricade and went up to the door, grabbing the machine pistols from the dead Germans and tossing them back to the surviving defenders. Jim vaguely recognized him as the one who had been awed speechless by Marshall's presence. 
Just as Marshall realized his intent and shouted "Don't be a dead hero, boy!" he slipped out the door and kicked one more weapon back through. Then he was down, jerking spasmodically from the rain of bullets that hit him.