Eagles at War (53 page)

Bandfield wanted to encourage the little glimmer of interest.

"Yeah, like when I landed at Leipheim. I taxied in and told the old captain running the field that I was taking off in one of the jets he had parked on the line. He was agreeable as hell—
if
I signed a receipt for the airplane! As long as his ass was covered, he didn't care who took it."

Caldwell reverted immediately to his idée fixe. "But nobody knows where Hafner is! He's my only chance, Bandy. If I could get to him—or at least get to the material he has on microfilm—I might be able to beat the rap."

Bandfield nodded, even though he didn't agree. If the Judge Advocate General was out to hang Caldwell, some captured data wasn't going to save him. But as long as it gave Caldwell something to cling to, it was fine with Bandfield.

"You'd never recognize him, Bandy. You remember what a handsome devil he was in the old days? All the women used to throw themselves at him. Well, you fixed him. His face is twisted and burned, and his legs are atrophied. He's built up his arms and shoulders, though."

"If I see the son-of-a-bitch, I'll recognize him. He did me enough harm to remember him no matter how he looks."

They walked back upstairs to the deserted dining room. Their crew chief, Vince Lowe, was tired of living out of cans and had talked the German cooks into preparing a meal. The Germans had gone full out, delighted to have the American rations, and the table was glittering with white linen, crystal, and formal Luftwaffe dinnerware. Caldwell picked at the food, the highly prized C rations and a can of Spam, nicely presented, with German Army bread on the side.

"Damnit, Henry, you can't go on like this, never eating. What the hell is the matter with you, anyway?"

"There's nothing the matter with me that a shot from a forty-five-caliber pistol wouldn't cure. Anyway, who knows what will happen over here? Some Kraut might put me out of my misery. Or we might land at some field, and up would pop our friend Bruno."

Bandfield nibbled at his food, conscious that he was watching the death of a career and perhaps the death of the man. Caldwell had spent his life doing things for the Army that no one else could have done. It wasn't an exaggeration to say that he had laid the foundations for victory. But in the process he had made enemies—and some big mistakes. Now they were going to destroy him.

"Remember that meeting back in Yankee Stadium, Henry? You told me we'd get to fly everything, but I never thought we'd be flying stuff like this."

Caldwell agreed. "Some of it makes old Hadley's Operation Leapfrog look pretty tame."

So far they had collected half a dozen 262s, two of the strange Dornier Do 335 twin-engine "push-pull" fighters, an Arado reconnaissance jet, and a single-engine Heinkel jet, a 162. In the process they'd taken far more prisoners than they could handle, content to send most of them marching back without an escort, retaining only the best of the German mechanics. Bandfield had run the selection like a dockyard shape-up. He tried to figure out who had the most talent and sent the rest along on their own.

The most important catch of all came to them voluntarily, in the "Miracle in Frankfurt." Karl Hoffman was a mountain of a man who'd served throughout the war as a civilian production test pilot for Messerschmitt. He'd flown in a rare two-seater 262 to the bombed-out airfield at Frankfurt am Main. Bandfield had grabbed him, and Hoffman gladly agreed to teach them to fly the 262 and anything else they captured. He spoke English well enough to get by and had been with them ever since.

The "miracle" had been Caldwell sobering up for a demonstration ride in the two-seat 262 with Hoffman. He came down boiling with enthusiasm, looking more like an eager cadet than a tired and frightened old man. He stopped drinking on the spot, and the next day Hoffman sent him solo in a single-seat 262. Since then there had been increasing signs of life in Caldwell—and he had stayed on the wagon.

"Look who's coming, our newest recruit."

Hoffman bustled in to stand at rigid attention beside the table.

"I have some information for you. One of the most important pilots in the 262 program,
Oberst
Josten, is in the Oberfoehring Army Hospital in Munich. He is badly burned from a crash but conscious. You might want to talk to him about the airplane."

They were treated like kings by Major Pingel, the harried head of the hospital. As soon as they'd entered the hospital grounds, he materialized, all smiles and wringing hands, bowing and scraping.
"Oberst
Josten is recovering better than we could have expected. He's in considerable pain and we've kept him under sedation. He's been taking Dolantin, and we're beginning to reduce the dosage. His face and hands were badly burned, and he has two bullet wounds and a fractured hip." Caldwell asked impatiently, "Will he be able to talk to us?" "Yes, it might even help him. He needs to get his mind off the crash. Conscious or unconscious, he complains continually about having wrecked his aircraft." The major laughed heartily, as if he were sharing a rare joke with them. "As if it mattered anymore."

Bandfield spoke quietly to Caldwell. "Strange how easily they've gone belly-up, now that it's almost over. He's acting as though they just lost a rubber of bridge."

"Churchill was right—the Germans are either at your feet or at your throat."

The hospital was overflowing with the wounded, civil and military; patients were jammed into every room and beds lined the hallways. One entire wing was open air, the walls and roof gone. Yet the floors had been swept clean and the beds were lined up at regular intervals, patient charts in metal holders at the end, just as if it had been planned that way.

"We have a few rooms reserved for special cases." Pingel pointed to a heavy oak door and the two Americans went in.

There were only two beds in the room, and one was vacant. Josten was asleep, his arms and head covered with thick white gauze, his left leg in a hip-high cast.

"Can we wake him up? It's urgent."

"No problem at all!" Pingel seemed genuinely pleased to have to disturb Josten for them. "We have to awaken patients at all hours for their medication, they're used to it." He leaned down and shouted,
"Oberst
Josten! You have important visitors."

"Thoughtful fucker," Caldwell muttered.

Josten, hearing strange voices even before Pingel shouted in his ear, had already begun the long swim upward through the opiates to painful consciousness.

"Who is it?"

"Some old friends of yours, Helmut. I'm Henry Caldwell—we knew each other in Berlin before the war. And you met Frank Bandfield in 1936."

"1936?" Josten's voice was fuzzy. It took a moment for the names to register.

"Americans. Is the war over?"

"Almost. A few days more, at most. We need your help. Perhaps we can help you in exchange. You'll remember that I knew Lyra before the war. Can I be of assistance to her now?"

"Of course. Or at least—" His voice choked and Pingel thrust a glass straw through the slit in the bandages over his mouth. Josten slurped water noisily.

"At least I did. He had positioned two airplanes at Flensburg in Schleswig-Holstein. Near the coast. But he may be gone. I suspect that he has an arrangement with the Russians."

The expressions on Caldwell's face were changing like an electric sign, registering hatred, hope, anger, and hatred again in rapid succession. He jerked his head to the door and said, "Helmut, we've got to leave, now. We'll be back, and if we can find Lyra we'll bring her to you. Thanks for your help."

"I don't want your word as a German officer. I want your word as a human being, one who knows I'll shoot you if you break my confidence. I'm Lieutenant General Henry Caldwell, here on a secret mission. I'm charging you
personally
to see that Colonel Josten is taken care of—get him anything he wants or needs, and keep him safe. When I come back, I'll see that you are rewarded. If you fail, you'll regret it. And you will mention my name to no one."

Beaming, Pingel drew himself up to full attention.
"Jawohl, Herr
General.
I did not think you looked like only a major. I will not fail."

When they reached the commandeered Mercedes where Hoffman was waiting, Bandfield asked, "How the hell did they make the war last so long with pussies like that?"

*

Outside Flensburg/May 3, 1945

The ground crews had been working all night, transferring the microfilm material from the larger Junkers to the Ju 52. The week before the old tri-motor had been sprayed white, large red crosses painted on its wings. Hafner doubted if it would deceive anyone, but if he were intercepted it might be the only chance he had.

The Ju 290 was still on reserve. Himmler, aware that he might need to flee, had changed his mind and authorized only the release of the Ju 52. Hafner smiled to himself. Himmler didn't know that only one pilot was available. It would be wonderful to see the look on Himmler's face when he rolled out to the field to fly away in his 290—and found no one to fly it.

He was running late. He had planned to take off an hour before dawn, but yesterday afternoon the starboard engine had failed to start on a routine run-up. The mechanics had worked all night on it. He had tried to sleep in the Gluecksburg Castle, but it had been turned into a hospital. He'd come back to the field to rest under the wing. It wasn't until just after dawn when his pilot, Sergeant Alfons Holzamer, came toward him.

"We're ready to go now, Colonel Hafner. Did you wish to fly the airplane yourself?"

"No, Holzamer, thank you. I'll man the upper turret, just in case we run into something we can defend ourselves against."

"Jawohl.
Would the Colonel object to telling me where we are going so that I can plan the flight?"

"No, Holzamer, not until after we take off. Then I'll give you a sealed envelope. Those are my orders. Stay low, at treetop level. We'll be going down the Fehrman Strait, to the Baltic, and I want you down right at surface. Done much low-level flying?"

"Enough, Colonel. Don't worry, we'll be all right as long as the Mustangs don't catch us."

Hafner nodded and turned away to supervise the last of the loading. Holzamer watched him limp away, reckoning that Hafner would want to go to Sweden. That would be all right. Anything would be better than being caught by the Russians.

*

Approaching Flensburg/May 3, 1945

It had taken Caldwell three hours to get permission to fly from Munich to Flensburg, and it took another two hours after that to get confirmation that all the Allied fighters and antiaircraft units had been notified. It would have been suicide to fly without permission—the hungry night-fighters were running out of targets and the antiaircraft usually shot first and identified later.

Their route had taken five hours to fly, and they had rotated cockpit duties, the third man grabbing a little sleep in the back. Hoffman was a gifted pilot, as at ease now in the C-47 as he was in the 262. It was dawn, Bandfield and Hoffman were flying, and the spires of the church of St. Nicholas were glistening above the shadows of bombed-out, blacked-out Flensburg. Even this remote port was a shambles of sunken vessels and gutted warehouses.

Henry Caldwell stood between them, eyes searching the horizon, head swiveling on his long neck. He spoke into the interphone.

"Too bad Josten didn't know where Hafner was hiding out. There's an airfield south of town, but it looks like it's been bombed to bits."

Hoffman came on: "He probably went to the emergency fighter field past Murwik on the way to Gluecksburg." Hoffman sliced his ham-sized hand toward the northeast.

Bandfield turned the C-47 sharply, slowing down to 130 miles per hour and reaching down to switch tanks. "We've only got about another hour's flying time, gents—I'm going to go at economy cruise until we see something."

They had flown for only four minutes when Gluecksburg Castle swam into view, suspended like a toy ship on the mirrored surface of the lakes surrounding it.

"The field is on the left. See it, right where—"

Bandfield's voice broke in excitedly. "At ease, Hoffman. Look to your right, low on the horizon. That's a Ju 52, isn't it?"