Black Cross

The commandos worked mostly in silence, albeit at a frantic pace. They had rehearsed the operation a dozen times at Achnacarry. Cochrane and Lewis attached the cylinder/roller wheel combinations at ground level, then used the block and tackle to haul the apparatus to the top of the pylon. McShane and Colin Munro handled the transfer to the auxiliary conductor wires.

At Achnacarry, Munro had likened the transfer process to hanging a 130-pound Christmas ornament on a tightrope. The cylinder was the ornament, and the roller wheel and suspension bar formed the hook. The analogy was apt, and it stuck. Hanging the ornament required perfect balance and enormous strength, as it had to be lifted off of the tackle hook that had brought it up to the crossarm, then raised still higher and set down on the outermost auxiliary wire — all without man or metal touching the live wire that ran just inches away.

McShane provided the strength, Munro the balance. Once the roller wheel had been fitted onto the wire, Munro would climb from the crossarm onto the cylinder itself, while McShane held both man and machine in place with a rubber rope attached to a hook on the cylinder’s bottom. Then McShane would let the cylinder — with Munro astride it — roll down a predetermined distance from the crossarm. When it stopped, Munro would remove a lubricated cotter pin from a pouch on his belt and fit it through a hole in the roller wheel. Then he would simultaneously arm the six pressure triggers that protruded from the hard wire netting covering each cylinder. The final step was to attach clips on a heavy gauge rubber rope to the oversized ring at the end of the cotter pin. It was this rope — attached in reverse sequence, so that the cylinder farthest from the pylon would be freed first — that Jonas Stern would use to initiate the gas attack.

Everything went according to plan until the last cylinder. McShane and Munro had decided to rest for sixty seconds before fitting the last tank into place. It hung just beneath them, still suspended from the block and tackle controlled by Cochrane and Lewis below. The two men were resting side by side on the crossbeam — McShane sitting, and Munro squatting with uncanny balance — when they heard a loud boom from the power station behind them.

Whether it was a lightning strike or a limb that had fallen across a live wire, neither man knew, but Ian McShane grunted explosively as the auxiliary wire energized and the rubber rope came alive in his hands. The Highlander did not know he had made a sound; he knew only that his arm had been yanked by a gorilla, so he tried to yank back. Then suddenly the current was gone and he toppled off the crossarm.

His toggle rope saved him. Tied from his belt to the crossarm, it held him suspended fifty-seven feet above the ground, in a perfect position to watch his mission end in catastrophe. He stared helplessly as the farthest cylinder from the crossarm began to roll down the wire toward Totenhausen.

Then he saw the most remarkable feat of bravery or madness he had ever witnessed. A black shadow flew through the air above him and caught itself on the four-foot suspension bar between the moving roller wheel and the cylinder head. At first he thought the shadow was an owl or a nighthawk.

Then he realized it was Colin Munro.

The weapons instructor had heard McShane’s grunt and seen him try to jerk free, in the process yanking the pin from the cylinder farthest from the crossarm. Without an instant’s reflection Munro had leaped off the crossarm.

McShane stretched out his hand in a futile attempt to snatch Munro back, but the moment was past. Man and machine trundled away down the wire, quickly gathering speed. Seconds later he lost sight of both in the darkness.

Forty yards down the auxiliary line, rolling rapidly toward the second pylon, Colin Munro felt electricity crackle in his hair. The knowledge that the wire above him was live — that he himself was “live” — nearly made him lose his stomach. It was a miracle he was not dead already, in that he had landed atop the cylinder without tripping one of the armed triggers. Yet he knew that for the next few seconds, at least, he was safe. Just as a bird can perch on a live conductor wire, so can a man if he is not grounded and if the voltage is not too high. This knowledge calmed him long enough to make some very quick calculations.

He had perhaps thirty seconds before the roller wheel reached the next pylon, smashed the porcelain insulator there and shorted out the entire system. Then his “Christmas ornament” would roll the remaining distance down to Totenhausen, crash to the ground and detonate with him aboard, filling his lungs with deadly nerve gas — if he had not already been killed by the fall. The mission would be blown, his friends hunted down and killed. All he could hear was his own voice saying something he had told the Achnacarry recruits a thousand times: No matter how well we train you, lads, there will always arise a situation for which you cannot be prepared. It is then that the men separate themselves from the boys. . . 

Steeling himself against pain, Munro clutched the suspension bar in his hands and swung both legs up and over the conductor wire to try to slow his descent. The friction of the wrapped steel wire burned right through his woolen trouser legs and his skin. The cylinder slowed, but not enough. When the wire sliced though his calf muscles to the bone, Munro screamed, and he knew then that he did not have the courage to mutilate his hands the same way.

He was less then forty feet from the second pylon when he remembered his toggle rope. With his left hand he reached behind him and snatched it off his belt. Then he swung the wooden handle over the wire, just ahead of the roller wheel.

The wheel snapped the handle like a twig, but the toggle rope itself tangled in the aluminum forks and began to foul the roller mechanism. The cylinder skidded for two yards, then began rolling again. This final motion jerked the remainder of the toggle rope up into the mechanism.

The rope took Colin Munro’s arm with it. His hand went under the wheel and snapped with a louder crack than the wooden handle had made. Roller and cylinder skidded down the last ten feet, dragging the flailing commando behind it.

Just before it struck the crossarm, the wheel jerked to a stop. Colin Munro did not. His body was flung up over the pulley and onto the crossarm, closing a circuit between the live wire and the earth.

From two hundred feet up the hill, Ian McShane saw a bright yellow flash with a sizzling blue core. Then he saw the distant lights of Totenhausen dim once, twice . . . and come back on.

McShane “burned” the pole in his haste to get to the ground. Creosote and splinters raked his arms and face as he slid earthward. When his boots hit the snow, he raced down the hill, leaving Cochrane and Lewis to tie off the rope holding the final cylinder in place.

At the foot of the next pylon, McShane found his friend’s body. Munro was lying on his stomach. His right hand was mangled, the arm torn and broken, and his tattered trouser legs were soaked in blood. The air smelled of ozone, as if a bolt of lightning had struck here. Munro himself smelled of burnt hair and cooked flesh. McShane dropped to his knees and felt for a carotid pulse, knowing it was useless.

He crouched there thinking until Cochrane and Lewis appeared.

“What the hell happened, Ian?” Alick asked breathlessly.

“Damn damn damn!” McShane cursed. “The auxiliaries energized. Shocked me blind. I accidentally jerked out one of the pins. My rubber gloves must have been dirty, and let the current bleed up to my arm. The cylinder got away, but Colin jumped out onto it. By God, he stopped the bloody thing.”

McShane stood and peered into the darkness high above them. “That looks like what’s left of a toggle rope up there. Colin managed to foul the wheel with it.”

“Damn me,” muttered Cochrane, looking closer at Munro’s body.

“He grounded himself on the pole,” said McShane. “He was dead before he hit the ground.”

“What the hell happened to his foot?” asked Lewis.

Munro’s right foot was bare and split open at the ankle, as if it had burst from within.

“The current must have come out there,” McShane said. “Blew his damn boot off. Either I didna catch the full current, or it must have traveled down an arm and a leg on the same side. Missed my vitals. Colin wasn’t so lucky.”

“No,” Cochrane murmured. “But he saved the mission, Ian. He saved us.”

“That he did, Alick.” McShane waited until he knew his voice was steady. “But we’ve still got two cylinders to hang. The one back there and the one over our heads.”

“What about the Germans?” asked Lewis. “I saw the lights flicker down below.”

McShane walked over to the nearest support pole and jammed one of his spikes into the wood. “Either they