'Green or red?' Hess asked, his face taut.
'Red!'
'The canopy, Hauptmann! Move!'
Together the two men struggled to slide back the heavy glass.
Parachuting from a Messerschmitt was not common practice-strictly an
emergency measure-and quite a few aviators had died attempting it.
'Push!' the pilot yelled.
With all their strength the two men heaved their bodies against the
transparent lid of the cockpit. Their straining muscles quivered in
agony until all at once the frame gave way and locked in the open
position. The noise in the cockpit was deafening now, the engines
roaring, the wind a screaming, living thing that struggled to pluck the
men from their tiny tube of steel. Above it all, the pilot shouted,
'We're over the gap now, Herr Reichminister! Go! Go!'
Suddenly Hess looked into his lap. Empty. He had forgotten to ditch
his papers! No sign of them in the cockpit; they must have been sucked
out the moment the canopy opened.
He prayed they had found their way down to the sea, and not to the
island below.
'Jump, Herr Reichminister!'
Hess struggled into a crouch and faced the lethal tail fins
of the Zersts'rer. The time for niceties had passed. He reached behind
him and jerked the pilot's head back.
'Hauptmann!' he shouted. 'Heydrich only ordered those drop tanks
fitted to make sure you came this far! They are empty! No matter what
happens, you cannot turn back! You have no choice but to follow orders!
If I succeed, your actions really won't matter! But if I fail, you
cannot! You know the price of failure-Sippenhaft! Never forget that!
Sippenhaft binds us both! Now climb! Give me some draft!'
The Messerschmitt's nose pitched up, momentarily creating a small space
shielded from the wind. With a defiant yell Hess hurled himself up and
backward. A novice, he pulled the ripcord the moment he cleared the
plane. The tightfolded silk tore open with a ripping sound, then
quickly blossomed into a soft white mushroom that circled lazily down
through the mist toward the Scottish earth below.
Cursing, the pilot struggled to secure the canopy. Without help it was
twice as difficult, but Hess's final words had chilled him to the core.
Only a sheet of curved glass could now separate him from the terrifying
destiny he had been ordered to face. With the desperate strength of a
condemned man, he slammed it shut.
He dipped his left wing.@d glanced backward. There was the descending
chute, soft and distant and peaceful. Barring a catastrophic landing,
the Reichminister would at least begin his mission safely. It heartened
the pilot to know that a novice could actually clear the plane, but
something deeper in him recoiled in dread.
They had tricked him! The bastards had lured him into a suicidal
mission by letting him think he would have a way out! After all his
training, they hadn't even trusted him to carry out his orders! Empty
auxiliary tanks. The swine! They had known he would have sole control
of the plane after Hess jumped, and they had made sure he wouldn't have
enough fuel to turn back if the mission went bad. And as if that
weren't enough ... Hess had threatened him with Sippenhaft!
Sippenhaft! The word caused the pilot's breath to come in quick gasps.
He had heard tales of the Nazis' ultimate penalty for betrayal, but he
hadn't really believed them.
Sippenhaft dictated that not only a traitor's life but the lives of his
entire family became forfeit when judgment was rendered against him.
Children, parents, the aged and infirm none were spared. There was no
appeal, and the sentence, once decreed, was swiftly executed.
With a guttural scream the pilot cursed God for giving him another man's
face. In that moment, he felt it was a surer death sentence than a
cancer of the brain. Setting his mouth in a grim line, he hurled the
plane into a screaming dive, not pulling up until the rocky Scottish
earth seemed about to shatter the nose of his aircraft. Then-as Hess
had suggested-he ran like hell, opening the Zerstdrer up to 340 miles
per hour over the low stone villages and patchwork fields. In other
circumstances, the heart-stopping, groundlevel flight might have been an
exhilarating experience. Tonight it felt like a race against death.
It was. A patrolling Boulton Paul Defiant had answered a scramble call
from the RAF plotting room at Inverness. The Messerschmitt pilot never
even saw it. Oblivious, he stormed across the darkening island like a
banshee, sixteen feet above the earth. With the twin-engined
Messerschmitt's tremendous speed advantage, the pursuing British fighter
was outpaced like a sparrow behind a . hunting hawk.
Dun avel Hill rose in the distance. Height.-45
9 8 meters: the information chattered into the pilot's brain like a
ticker tape. 'There it is,' he muttered, spying the silhouette of
Dungavel Castle. 'My part of this insane mission.' The castle flashed
beneath his fuselage. With one hand he checked the radio set near his
right knee. Working. Please call, he thought. Please ...
He heard nothing. Not even static. With shaking hands he touched the
stick and hopped over a line of trees bisecting a sheep pasture.
He saw fields ... a road ... more trees ...
then the town of Kilmamock, sprawled dark across the road.
He swept on. A patch of mist, then fog, the sea!
Like a black arrow he shot out oVer the western coast of Scotland,
climbing fast. To his left he sighted his turning landmark, a giant
rock jutting 120 meters into the sky, shining pale in the moonlight.
As if drawn by a magnet, his eyes locked onto the tiny face of his newly
acquired watch.
Thirty minutes gone and no signal. Ten minutes from now his fate would
be sealed. If you receive no signal in forty minutes, Hauptmann, you
will turn out to sea and swallow your cyanide capsule ... He wondered if
he would be dead before his plane plowed into the icy depths of the
North Atlantic.
Christ in Heaven! his mind screamed. What mad bastard dreamed this one
up? But he knew-Reinhard Heydrichthe maddest bastard of them all.
Steeling himself against panic, he banked wide to the south and flew
parallel to the coast, praying that Hess's signal would come. His eyes
