Alternate Generals (37 page)

And all gawking at him as if seeing a ghost.

Galland, pretending to cough, growled the explanation in his ear, "The last words spoken in this room were: Get Werner Moelders back here right
now
!"

A vast expanse of uniform full of the Reichsmarschall advanced to meet him. Ice blue eyes raked up and down the young ace. Goering missed only a beat before he told Moelders flatly, "Faster next time."

Nobody laughed. It ought to have been funny, and no one laughed. Something grim was afoot.

Porcine eyes stayed fixed hard on Moelders. Goering knew full well that Moelders wasn't here in answer to any summons. That he'd left the Russian front without orders. Goering prodded with silken menace. "Apparently you have a report for me."

Moelders' speech, rehearsed all the way here on the HE 111 from Tscheplinka airport scattered and blundered out in one lament, "Herr Reichsmarschall, why have you abandoned me?"

Pupils shrank to pinpoints within the ice chips of irises. Blue Max quivered under his chins. Goering hissed, "Udet talked to you!"

Moelders blinked, adrift. "Udet?" That was who was missing here. Moelders had an earful prepared for Udet too, the Director General of Equipment. Aircraft production was a singular joke. "Where is Udet?"

A leaden pause. Someone finally answered, "Dead."

A hitch. A cough. Sorrow muffled in shock. Heard himself bleat, "How?"

An exchange of eyes. A hesitation.

"It was an accident," said Goering, pointedly. "Test flying an experimental aircraft."

And there was the reason behind the sudden recall of everyone to Berlin—to serve as honor guard at the State funeral for Udet.

Moelders wouldn't let go of it. All anger, confusion, and demands: How had it happened? What kind of aircraft? Who was the Erk? Had sabotage been ruled out? Where was the SS when you actually wanted them? He wanted a thorough investigation—

Finally catching furtive desperate wave-offs from the other pilots as if he were coming in for a wheels-up landing.

He shut up.

A door opened. Heels rapped together.
Heils
. Nothing more to be said now. Only listen to Hitler talk of the fallen ace Udet, of the Great War, of sacrifice, duty, honor, destiny.

Once outside among his own kind, Moelders took up his questions again. Where had Udet crashed? How?

"Let it go, Moelders." Galland cupped his hand against the wind to light his cigar. "Just let it lie." Wagged out the match. Turned up his leather collar. "And stay clear of the Fat One. You drilled him whether you know it or not."

"I don't like operating without complete information."

"You'll just have to." Galland clamped his teeth on his cigar. "There are no answers to those questions."

"Someone must know—"

Galland wrenched the cigar from his mouth, spelled it out for him, "There aren't any answers, because they haven't made up that part of the story yet, you dickhead!"

Moelders blinked great eyes like a deer in the crosshairs. Let Galland yell at him:

"It wasn't an accident. It wasn't even in an airplane. It was a free death."

Moelders murmured hollowly, bewildered, "They didn't say."

"And they're not going to. Can't tell the German people the second highest scoring ace of the Great War was so depressed he took his own life."

Blinked quickly. Turned his large eyes up to keep tears trapped. Felt his face crinkle, lips twitch. Meant to sound calm, official. Ought to be used to losing friends by now. Voice betrayed him, bobbled all over, "Did he say
why
?"

"No one's admitting it even happened. But rumor has it there was a note scrawled on his bedboard." Dark eyes gleamed black humor. Smoke jetted from his nostrils. Dark mustache spread with the wry twisting of his lips. "It said something like: Reichsmarschall, why have you abandoned me?"

They carried the Old Eagle to rest next to Richthofen in the Invaliden Cemetery under a somber November sky. It was a long procession. Nazi salutes lined the streets on either side, and Moelders and Galland, mismatched bookends, marched a slow goose step alongside the flag-draped coffin on its horse-drawn caisson. Goering brought up the rear.

At the gravesite the Reichsmarschall bid Udet arise to Valhalla. Moelders crossed himself. Knew he'd hear about that one later. And did.

Felt as if he'd just walked over his own grave.

Moelders was taking off his black armband when he had a visitor. Filled the entire doorway. His shadow fell across everything.

Which Hermann is this? Moelders had to wonder. The jolly, magnanimous ace of the first war who wants to be my buddy? Or the demanding, small, tantrum-throwing dictator? And how angry is he?

"I thought I grounded you, Moelders."

It's my buddy.
Moelders relaxed. "I haven't been flying fighters," he hedged.

"I'm told every morning you fly over the front in a Feisler Storch."

This had been reported with gushing admiration—how Moelders carried his own radio right up to the front, dove into a fox hole, and directed the fighter attack from where he could provide up-to-the-second information.

Moelders was always a lead-from-the-front sort of man. Greyhound slender, with a deceptively delicate look, he was easy to underestimate. Got airsick. Flew anyway. Always thinking of better ways to do things.

He had been the one to break up the tight, showy, ridiculous, Italian airshow triads that had once been the prescribed formation for fighters in combat. You spent more effort keeping formation than you did watching for the enemy. Moelders spread his fighters out and sent them up in pairs: One to hunt, one to watch both your tails. Fighter and wingman. You didn't even think of flying any other way now. It became the basic fighting unit in the Luftwaffe—and of every other air force that ran up against its deadly-efficient simplicity.

Werner Moelders was the most successful fighter ace there ever was. And didn't get there by stepping on anyone who wasn't the enemy. Too busy teaching his green fighters to survive up there. Men adored him. Called him
Vati
. Daddy. He was twenty-eight.

"You're too valuable to lose, Moelders," Goering chided.

"Going to the front and looking for myself is the only good way to get accurate information from the front to the pilots," Moelders defended his unauthorized flights.

"It's a good way to get yourself
shot
."

"I have to know what I'm sending them into. I won't spend my men like bullets."

"They're not your bullets."

"As a matter of fact, they are. You gave them to me. You made me General of the Fighter Arm."

"Not any more."

Moelders closed his eyes. Here it comes. He is angry after all.

Chummy tone turned to a snarl and then to a bellow, "They all say what a brilliant tactician you are. Since you seem to think you know all about equipment shortages,
you're
the new Luftwaffe Director General of Equipment!"

Udet's job. Eyes flew open. "That kill jar?" Moelders cried.

The Fat One frowned, offended. "You're supposed to thank me."

"For putting me in a position to be frustrated to
death
? Under layers of paper-pushing generals who would rather use aluminum to build termite-proof bunkers in Africa than build
modern
fighter aircraft? I'm still using Stukas in the Crimea!"

"The Führer likes Stukas."

"Retreading obsolete aircraft—and turning them out at a pitiful 375 per month—will lose Germany air superiority within the year."

"The war will be won within the year. We don't need to waste resources developing new types of aircraft. Jeschonnek says
360
aircraft a month is adequate. Anyway, wouldn't it be silly to step up production when we don't have enough pilots who can land an airplane rubber-side down as it is?"

"Then train more pilots! A
lot
more pilots—now! And train them
better
! Because our Chief of Staff is short-sighted, backward-thinking, and flat out wrong—and Udet knew it!"

Goering's voice became a lethal, ironic whisper. "Are you going to kill yourself?"

"I can't," Moelders snapped. "I'm Catholic."

Anger welled to an icy boil. "
I didn't abandon you
, you insolent pup! I'll authorize every stupid thing you ask for! I'll go over the Chief of Staff's head. I'll give you all the rope you want and just see if you don't twist it round your neck and hang yourself with it!"

When General Moelders finally located his new desk, his head was buzzing from too many toasts celebrating his promotion. Galland had come from France for the funeral, so there was champagne aplenty with which to drink his rival completely under the table.

Moelders' brain felt like a barrage balloon within the tiny confines of his skull. And, flying a desk now, there was no oxygen mask to press to his face.

He squinted where the desk had to be, buried under a shambles of notes, specs, requisitions, bids, all left in the chaos of Udet's last desperate days.

Moelders pushed at the papers. They shuffled thunderously.

On top of the heap, a big note shouted at him with huge, over-sized letters in the heavy gouged scrawl of a despairing man:

build fighters
.

The Allies had pounded the Pas de Calais to dust, and all but pushed the Luftwaffe off the French map. The constant bombardment had taken out 1500 German locomotives, all the bridges that might carry supplies to German troops on the French coast, and any radar station they weren't going to leave intact to receive false signals.

All was in readiness for Overlord. They waited only on weather and tide.

Then suddenly they found their eyes punched out.

Allied reconnaissance flights stopped coming back. The German antiaircraft gunners must have got very good, because there was nothing in the air that could overtake a swift Mosquito reconnaissance plane at 408 mph. Till now, anyway.

Knew the Germans were moving aircraft back into France because the activity showed up on long-range radar. Couldn't pinpoint the new airfields to bomb them. Flak thick enough to walk on. Not a good development. Someone new had to be in charge of Luftwaffe operations on the Western front.

A glint in the sky over Portsmouth, moving very fast, drew Allied eyes up from the decks of transports where men dragged camouflage netting over rows of tanks.

Mosquito?

No. Wood planes don't glint like that. And even Mosquitos didn't move that fast.

Faster than a Mosquito.

Faster than a V1 rocket.

"It's a UFO."

"It's Superman."

"It's the bloody Hun!"

A shark shape with swept-back wings. A pair of them, like Huns on a free hunt.

Ack-ack opened up on them, but failed to lead off an angle anywhere near to catching them. Had to wonder where the interceptors were. And what happened to bloody radar?

No answers came. Only a lot of worried, muttering brass. The Hun was meant to believe that the invasion force would hit Pas de Calais. Someone wasn't buying it. Not if the Hun was looking for them here in the packed harbors of England's southern coast.

In the void of answers, the name Dieppe echoed over and over.

No one was telling the massed troops that the Hun had come in under radar and climbed to altitude fast as thinking about it. The intruders had hied halfway home before the Mosquito interceptors got airborne.

Radar had been able to clock the fleeing bandits, but there had to be a mistake.

"How fast?"

"Five hundred forty miles per hour."

A dead pause. Said something brilliant: "Can't be."

Looked over the mustered invasion forces of Overlord. "Jets." On the eve of invasion. Too easy to picture 300,000 dead soldiers floating facedown in the churning Channel water. "Hitler's got jets."

Knew this place. Moelders had been here before. His pilots used to eat lunch in the open sunlight, at tables with linen cloths, with vases of cut flowers and bottles of French wine. They had toasted an invasion that never came to pass.

Four years later they expected invasion again. Incoming, this time.

No tables in the sunlight now. His men hid under trees, camouflage netting, and a roof of flak. Fighter planes crouched in blast pens. Erks propped fake trees to hide the long runways needed to heave a jet fighter into the air.

Fortunately the ME 262's low-pressure tires allowed takeoffs from grass, or there would be no disguising the runways at all.

Generalfeldmarschall Hugo Sperrle had retreated from the bombed-out airfields of France. As his final act as General of the Third Air Fleet, he pulled back the last of his fighter groups to Berlin.

Here Moelders begged to be cut free of his desk and sent to the front to put his new aircraft into operations for himself. His record of 101 victories had fallen two and three times over, so the Reichsmarschall let him back into a cockpit.

Moelders' first order as the new General of the Third Air Fleet was to move the Luftwaffe bases back into France. If the railroads and bridges were out, well then
fly
the equipment in, just
get
it in. As for defense, this was German territory. Defend it or lose it. And losing was not an option.

Retreat was not in his nature. Men die in retreat.

He abandoned Sperrle's plush headquarters in the Luxembourg Palace in Paris. His HQ was in Pas de Calais. Where the invasion was said to be coming.

He could not believe how far out of hand the situation had gone. Sperrle should have been put out to pasture years ago. His attacks on England over the past two years had been sporadic at best, and at the wrong target. Sperrle's target had been London.

Bombing civilians ran against conscience, and struck Moelders as poor strategy besides. Should have hit their airfields, their factories, their radar. And he should never have stopped
looking
at England. Sperrle's idea of reconnaissance only went to show how long it had been since that man had ever been in a cockpit.

To a fighter pilot, seeing—seeing
first
—was life.