entrenchment. It had been that way for months, possibly that way for over a year. Koch and his men had, of course, been out on patrols since being pulled back into Norway, and, on several occasions, there had been a few minor brushes with Norwegian partisans. But essentially since returning to Norway, they had all been watching the war slip away from the comfort of their barracks.
And now these orders.
It had to be the one. The one he’d been waiting for.
He had only been informed that he and a platoon of handpicked men would be boarding a U-boat; that he was to present himself to the vessel’s commander, and then both he and the captain would be allowed to open their sealed orders. Even then, he had been told, the U-boat captain would not be allowed to know the objective, only the location he had been ordered to take these men to.
Such secrecy.
Koch smiled proudly. Perhaps this would be another Gran Sasso? He wondered if this wasn’t going to be the rescue of an important member of the Reich high command from Allied hands. He remembered reading about Skorzeny’s rescue of Mussolini from the Campo Imperatore hotel, his daring arrival by glider on the slope in front of the building, and how, with a handful of paratroops, he quickly overpowered the Duce’s guards and hustled him off the mountain in a Storch without a single shot being fired.
Koch found his young face creasing into a smile. He and his company had waited out the war for something like this. It was about time the Gebirgsjager, the Alpine troops, had an opportunity to show what they could do, that they were an elite regiment, that they were every bit as good as the Fallschirmjager.
The thirty men he’d selected from his company were as eager as he was to get on and do this thing, whatever it was, but he realised they were going to have one hell of a hard time coping with being boxed up inside this boat. These were lads who had spent their childhood in wide-open, natural environments, sleepy villages nestled on the side of glorious snow-capped mountains. Most of them were drawn from around Tyrol in Austria, some from Finland, even a couple of Norwegians. Two weeks in a submerged iron coffin was going to be tough on them.
The U-boat bumped against the pen wall with a dull clang and the ratings on the sub’s decks secured the lines. One of the pen workers wheeled up a gantry and pushed it out so that it rested on the deck.
Out of the foredeck hatch climbed the submarine’s captain. Koch watched him as he chatted to his men and exchanged a joke, clearly relieved to be stepping out of the cramped confines of the vessel. The men exchanged banter for a few moments before he turned away to step briskly up the gantry and onto terra firma. Koch let the man have a minute to adjust to the light, the air, the solid ground, the space, before approaching him.
‘Captain Lundstrom?’
Lundstrom turned round to face him. ‘Yes, who wants to know?’
‘Captain Koch, 3rd Company, Gebirgsjager regiment 141. I have some orders here for you.’
Lundstrom studied the young man. He wore the Eidelweiss badge on his cap, the elite Alpine troops, the Gebirgsjager, a respected infantry regiment. The young man had a tanned face chiselled out of muscle and bone, and a sprinkling of freckles that crossed the bridge of his nose from one cheek to another.
So young for the rank of captain.
That was something Lundstrom had noticed becoming more and more commonplace these last two years, battlefield promotions. Officers were getting younger and younger. Soon it would just be boys leading boys into the meat grinder.
The young officer was patiently holding out a sealed envelope.
Lundstrom reached out for it and noticed Koch was standing awkwardly to attention.
‘At ease, we’re both captains,’ said Lundstrom. Koch softened his stance and looked relieved.
‘Recent promotion I’m guessing, Hauptmann?’
Koch nodded. ‘Three weeks, sir.’
‘You’ll get used to not saluting other captains soon enough.’ He looked down at the envelope in his hand; it bore the stamp of the Reich Chancellor’s office.
‘This has come directly from Berlin to me?’
‘Via Kriegsmarine HQ, Bergen, yes.’ Koch produced a similar envelope. ‘I have one also. These orders came with the instruction that we’re to open them together.’
Lundstrom closed his eyes and breathed deeply. With a heavy heart he realised the envelopes could only mean one thing… another trip out.
He looked at his crewmen finishing off the task of securing the submarine and readying themselves for a week of shore leave, perhaps even an indefinite sojourn ashore. It was going to be hard breaking the news to them. Very hard. They had travelled back to Bergen in the firm belief that they wouldn’t be setting sail again.
‘Well, then… I suppose you and I had better find somewhere quiet to open these and see what lunacy has been lined up for us.’
Chapter 23
6 a.m., 25 April 1945, an airfield south of Stuttgart
By the gathering light of dawn Major Rall watched the B-17 as it banked around and made its final approach towards the runway, just a silhouette against the pale grey skyline. The bomber’s immense wings wobbled slightly as her wheels came down. The plane steadied as she dropped the last few dozen feet and the tyres made a heavy first contact with the ground. She bounced high before making contact again. This time, the wheels stayed on the ground and gradually the weight of the bomber settled onto them and the plane was down.
‘Kleinmann won’t win any awards for that landing, sir,’ said Leutnant Hostner.
Rall was irritated by his jibe. ‘He won’t have to land her, just flying her will do.’
The B-17 rumbled down the concrete strip, wheels passing smoothly over craters that had recently been filled in. Rall smiled smugly at a conceit of theirs. The strip had been repaired under the cover of dark, but large crescents of dark grey had been painted on the ground where the craters had been to fool the reconnaissance planes that flew over periodically.
The plane rumbled past Rall and Hostner and finally came to a stop at the end of the runway. It turned in a slow arc and began to taxi towards the hangar.
‘Good lad… let’s get her inside quickly.’ Rall scanned the sky around the airfield. There were no planes to be seen.
The bomber taxied towards the hangar, and Max nodded out of the cockpit window at the Major as they trundled by.
‘Do you think they’ll be ready in time, sir?’
‘I think they already are,’ Rall answered, dismissing the SS officer’s question impatiently.
Max steered the bomber carefully towards the open door of the hangar, and a member of the ground crew guided them into the dimly lit interior. He brought the plane to a halt.
Pieter craned his neck to look out his side window. ‘I see we have three more 109s in the family.’
Max shut off the engines and pulled himself up from his seat to look out. Lined up nose to tail and packed tightly within the limited floor space of the hangar were a number of Messerschmitt Me-109 fighter planes. Over the last few days several of them had flown in under the cover of darkness and two more had been brought in by trucks and assembled inside the hangar.
‘That gives us a grand total of seven escort planes so far, not exactly an intimidating number,’ he said to Pieter.
‘Better than four,’ Pieter replied.
‘Well, yes, I can’t fault your logic there, my friend.’
They both climbed down the ladder into the bombardier’s compartment and out through the belly hatch. Hans and Stefan followed them out.
‘I can’t believe how much room there is inside her,’ said Stefan.
