on his face told them everything.
“So now you know what it’s like,” Carter said quietly. “You just went and killed your first man and it’s eating at you.”
“It could have been worse,” said Levin. “What if you were close enough to see their faces. I haven’t done either and I’m not looking forward to the experience. I just hope to hell I don’t flinch.”
“But I didn’t have to do it,” Jack protested. “I could’ve turned and flown away. I just got pissed off because they’d killed more of our people and they were shooting at me.”
Carter handed him a canteen. It contained a cheap cognac. “That’s right. They were shooting at you and they had killed some of our buddies. And don’t forget we’re in the army of a nation that’s at war with the most monstrous regime in the history of mankind. This isn’t a game, Jack. It ain’t football like you played at Michigan State. We were brought here to kill them, and that’s the plain and simple truth. If you had let them go, they would’ve set up shop and done it again and again. Look on the bright side, Bomber Morgan, Captain Jack-Off, you may have saved some lives in the future.”
“Doesn’t make it any easier to face, and I wish to hell you’d stop calling me ‘Bomber’ or that other thing. If anybody was alive in that truck, they burned to death. I can’t think of anything worse than burning to death.”
Carter sat beside him and lit a cigarette while Jack took another pull of the cognac. “Somebody once said that it isn’t that killing’s so awful, rather it’s so easy. I like to think it was Robert E. Lee because it’s such a worthwhile statement, but I don’t know.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” said Levin. “I’ve seen enough dead bodies to qualify as a wholesale funeral director. But Jack’s right, it’s different when you’re responsible for making them that way.”
Carter took a swallow. “Know what I did back at that last farmhouse? I stuck the barrel of my main gun into a basement window and fired. Anything in that house was obliterated, Jack, and I don’t give a shit who or what it was. I didn’t care if they were soldiers trying to kill me, wounded waiting to surrender, or civilians, or some nuns drinking beer and playing poker. There were Nazis in there and they were trying to kill me. Kill or be killed and fuck the rules of war, the Geneva Convention, and anybody else who thinks you can teach soldiers to play nice-nice in a game when the loser gets a decent funeral if they can find enough of him to bury.”
Jack looked at Carter and smiled. “Where’s your southern accent? You lost it again.”
“I’m bilingual” Carter said and burped. “I like to turn it on for the home folks and those officers here who think I’m just a dumb-ass cracker. When this war is over, I’m going into politics and sounding like a down home boy is just a good idea.”
“You’re deeper than I thought,” Jack said.
“Indeed I am that. And, by the way, I thought you might be lonely, so I took the liberty of giving my cousin your name and how to contact you. If you’re luckier than you deserve, she might write you a letter.”
Jack thought he’d like to hear from Jeb’s cousin. “Thanks.”
Levin grinned wickedly. “Jeb, you don’t have any Jewish cracker cousins do you?”
Varner was exhausted. He fell asleep in the staff car that took him to the outskirts of Berlin and the laboratory of the physicist, Werner Heisenberg. He had barely landed in Berlin after flying from the Seine in a ridiculous little plane called a Fieseler Storch.
The Storch’s pilot, a complete lunatic, was in his sixties and said he’d flown with von Richthofen in the First World War. He’d insisted on flying at treetop level to avoid being seen by American planes. When Varner wondered out loud if the Americans didn’t have better things to do than attack a plane as small as the Storch, the pilot had cackled and said planes like the Storch were the only German planes flying; therefore, they were a likely target. Varner thought that the comment did not bode well for the status of the Luftwaffe.
The Storch had a rearward facing machine gun which the pilot said would be used if they were attacked from the rear. If they were attacked from the front or side, the pilot said they were fucked. He also said it was Varner’s job to fire the machine gun if an American plane tried to climb up their tail.
When he’d finally gotten to the OKW, he was informed that Werner Heisenberg wished to see him and that Rundstedt also wished him to see Heisenberg. Immediately.
Before falling asleep, Varner had a chance to read the short letters sent him by Magda, detailing their journey and safe arrival at the farm. He was distressed at her telling of the death train, not only because Margarete had to see it, but because it was happening at all. Such stupidities should not be occurring in Germany.
He was appalled to find that the two women had been conscripted to help build the Rhine fortifications. Soon, those construction sites would be bombed by the Allies, if they weren’t already. He didn’t like to do it, but he would see if he could pull some strings and get his family out of danger.
Then he had dozed off while his driver dodged fallen buildings and bomb craters. It was just another afternoon drive in Berlin.
Heisenberg greeted him effusively in his cluttered office. “I’ve heard about your journeys to the west. I trust you found our defenses capable of stopping the Americans.”
“Just barely possible,” Varner said. “However, you did not bring me here to discuss Festung Seine or the Rhine Wall. Do you have more information regarding your nuclear bomb? Is it possible?”
Heisenberg smiled tentatively. “Indeed it is possible. However there are other practical matters you must discuss with Reichsfuhrer Himmler and others.”
“Understood, but why is it now possible when a few days ago it wasn’t?”
“Because one of my brilliant assistants suggested that I had made a significant miscalculation in my estimate of the amount of uranium that would be needed. Whereas I thought we would require tons, a revisit of the research indicates we will only need a few pounds. We could never have produced tons, but several pounds is well within our capabilities.”
“Excellent, but when will the bomb be ready?”
“If all goes well, a year. Can the Reich hold out that long?”
Varner laughed harshly. “We’ll know in a year, won’t we? Now, what are the other practical matters?”
“The sheer size of the bomb that must be built. It will weigh at least several tons, which precludes it from being part of a warhead on a V2 rocket even if we wanted it to be. A V2 is an unstable platform and many have exploded while being launched. Should that happen with an armed nuclear bomb on board, the results would be catastrophic to the Reich.”
Varner winced. He’d seen films of rockets exploding while launching.
“A bomber could possibly carry it, but, again, how likely is it that a German bomber would be able to penetrate Allied airspace and drop it on an important target, like London? More likely it would be shot from the sky and then the bomb would disappear in a relatively harmless poof. Perhaps I did not mention, but the bomb must be armed before it can detonate, and that should occur only when quite near the target and it is time to be used. For the same reasons, U-boats are not practicable and neither are the few surface ships we have remaining. There is a very high probability that they all would be caught and sunk.”
“What about the idea of building small bombs, Doctor?”
“Alas, it is for the future. The mechanism needed to detonate a nuclear bomb cannot be shrunk at this time.”
“Then we must build the bomb, plant it, and wait for the enemy to come to it,” Varner said thoughtfully. “And that means it will have to be detonated in Germany. Dear God,” he said.
Varner had a thought. “Tell me, Doctor, could the bomb be moved at all?”
Heisenberg was puzzled. “Of course, Colonel. Push hard enough and anything can be moved.”
Colonel Hans Schurmer arrived at the headquarters of General Courtney Hodges blindfolded, a tradition when crossing enemy lines under a flag of truce. Both men thought it was a ridiculous custom and Hodges thought it would be nice if the German actually saw the firepower arrayed against him and the vast quantities of supplies available to the American army. However, he was overruled.
