1945 (38 page)

Radl, feeling as if he were committing murder, squeezed the trigger, hammering the man with a three-round burst. He saw two more MPs at the guard post at the end of the parking lot and charged toward them. One of the MPs burst out the back of the shack and started to run. The other fumbled with the clasp to his holster. Radl first shot the MP who showed fight, then the one who ran away.

The plane with the second team was nearly overhead.

Another stick of parachutes streamed forth.

Staccato bursts of machine-gun fire started to echo. Most were Schmeissers, but an increasing number were not. The ground to his right was swept by a deep-throated burst from what must be a Browning. He rolled behind the shack and peered out.

The source of the fire was emplaced on the roof of the reactor cooling-building, which was located a little to the east of the reactor itself. He saw several men run out of the reactor building and start to sprint across the yard toward the cooling-building. Raising his gun he fired off another burst, dropping one of them. The rest made it to safety.

Several shots slammed into the guard shack, inches above his head. He rolled over and apparently just clipped a man charging up the slope from the reactor. The American, though hit, continued forward. Radl shot him again. Still he continued, but now on simple physical momentum, weapon fallen away, to crumple at Radl's side. Radl tried to ignore the fear in that brave man's eyes as his third burst ended his life.

This was a garrison soldier? Then he saw the patch on the American's uniform and understood. They were facing Rangers, fellow commandos who would never admit that, man for man, there were any soldiers in the world who could defeat them. Radl smiled with grim sardonicism. Wouldn't Skorzeny be pleased.

The machine gun opened up again, tracers soaring heavenward, cutting into several of his men as they drifted down on top of the building. Radl pulled out his whistle and gave three short blasts to rally his group for the assault on the reactor.

10:04 P.M.

"Valkyrie One, Valkyrie One, we've just dropped our flares over the primary target area. Bring your strike in on an east-to-west axis." As he spoke, Skorzeny edged his] plane over into a banking turn, circling at two thousand feet. The bomber stream would pass fifteen hundred feet below him.

A flash of light ignited off to the west, followed seconds later by a dozen more. Valkyrie Four, the strike on
K-25
had already begun.

He continued to wheel in tight over the administrative area. Traffic still flowed nearly bumper to bumper on the Oak Ridge Turnpike directly below. The streets were brilliantly lit so that the target area was as bright as day, standing out sharply against the dark hills. Then, over the radio, "This is lead marker for Valkyrie One. I am crossing! the river now! Stand clear! Stand clear!"

"There he is!" Gunther shouted, pounding Otto on the shoulder and pointing off to their right.

Otto looked where Gunther was pointing and saw a dark shadow come roaring in direcdy beneath them. As it did so it dropped twenty cylinders containing among them five tons of napalm. A half-mile length of the highway below was suddenly awash in fire, and the Piper Cub was batted heavenward by the explosion of superheated air. As he struggled to steady the small plane, Skorzeny gazed raptly
j
down at the destruction that was starting to walk across Oak Ridge.

10:07 P.M.

"Merciful God," Marshall gasped as the wall of fire swept down the main street, consuming everything in its path. Jim looked up at the general who stood rigid, framed by the doorway. The wave of fire swept past them less than a hundred yards away.

As a burst of heat began to scorch them, Jim grabbed

Marshall and wrestled him to the ground. The general made to rise. "Damn it General,
wi
ll you stay down?" Jim shouted angrily. The general apparently saw the wisdom of Jim's request and the two of them lay there crouched in the doorway, watching in horror as from out of the sea of fire wavering human torches began to emerge, their high keening cries clearly audible between explosions.

Suddenly the double doors behind Marshall swung open and a crowd of men poured out to stand transfixed. The individual detonations had begun to merge into a single drawn-out convulsive roar, a mad cacophony of explosions, shattering glass, the whooshing gasp of exploding napalm and, intermingled, less audible now, the shrieking cries of those caught in the inferno.

To the north of the flames, Jim saw a string of explosions blasting through the main residential area. Seconds later another stick of bombs came down, and then another. Each bomber was dropping eighty fifty-kilogram bombs, "HE," high explosive, intermixed with incendiaries in a stream hundreds of yards long. Well, there was nothing he could do about that.

Jim came to his feet and pointed toward the parking lot "Get away from the buildings! The buildings are death traps. Stay out of them, crouch behind the cars!" he shouted to all those within hearing. He encouraged Marshall down the steps with an urgent shove, then grabbed one of the scientists standing on the porch and got him moving in the right direction as well.

"Move it! Move your damned asses!"

Suddenly, somehow, Jim's message made it into the collective consciousness of the scientists, and there was something close to a stampede into the parking lot, so enthusiastic that it nearly knocked Jim over. A lone figure, however; remained stock-still

Jim was about to berate the man, but it was Groves who stood mesmerized, as plane after plane, the swastikas decorating their wings and tail assemblies clearly 
illuminated by the flames below, swept past. As Groves s gazing at all that in a very real sense his own intransigence had wrought, it seemed to Jim that here stood a man who did not want to live but knew he must, at least for a while. 
The entire hillside residential area north of the line of napalm seemed to be swept with an unending succession of strobe lights as dozens of bombs detonated with every passing second.

Groves looked over at Jim.

"Stay with the scientists and Marshall. Guard them."

"Where are you going, sir?"

"To get some defense organized. You stay with these people!"

Groves turned and started to run toward security headquarters, to save what could be saved. Harriman fell in behind him.

Jim returned to the parking lot, which was filling not only with panic-stricken scientists from the conference center, but with the everyday inhabitants of Oak Ridge who had been on the edge of the first napalm strike. The air filled with the cloying stench of gasoline and burned flesh. Brilliant flashes etched the ridgeline a half mile away to the south. Whatever facilities were hidden in the next valley were getting torn apart as well.

Jim saw General Marshall standing beside a jeep and joined him. Marshall looked at him and said softly, "Don't try knocking me down again son. I'll decide when it's time to leave my feet." Marshall pointed over toward the administration building. "Have you noticed that every single bomber is hitting north of the main road?"

"Sir?"

"They've yet to hit the major administrative buildings. I wonder why."

Suddenly, seeming to give Marshall the lie, a stick of bombs came walking out past them. Even Marshall ducked down low as splinters howled across the parking lot, shattering car windows and cutting down more than one 
spectator who had dared to stand too soon. Then another stick, and another. But still the main buildings were spared.

Jim crouched low beside Marshall, waiting for the madness to end. Concussion waves snapped over him, slamming the breath out of his lungs, forcing him to hands and knees. The ground beneath him rolled and bounced as if about to be torn apart. He closed his eyes and waited, but somehow death missed both him and Americas highest ranking military officer.

10:24 P.M.

Thor One! Thor One!"

Karl, crouched low against the curb of the reactor parking lot as a burst of fifty-caliber rounds swept the area, shouted into the radio. The entire perimeter of the reactor was a chaos of explosions, gunfire, men screaming and cursing. Worse, the Rangers still held the main building, and atop the cooling-building they had clear fields of fire covering the approaches to the north, south and west. The place was going to have to be hit before his team went in after all.

"Thor One! Thor One!" he repeated.

"Thor One here."

At last. Radl clutched the radio handset, ducked down as another burst of rounds stitched past him.

"This is Siegfried Two. We need fire support!"

"Coming in over your position now, Siegfried Two. Mark your target and perimeter."

"Mark our lines!" Radl shouted to his men, "Red flares!"

Radl looked over to a sergeant and nodded. The man raised himself to one knee, aimed a flare pistol at the cooling-building, and fired. The green target-marking flare arced up over the building. Before the sergeant could crouch back down a bullet knocked him over backward.

"We have the target in sight, Siegfried."

"Pull it in tight," Radl shouted. "We have teams all around the perimeter. Concentrate on the flare and the building due west of the flare."

"Get your heads down. Lining up now."

Radl surveyed his line as squad leaders popped off red flares and threw them forward to mark the perimeter. Above the staccato roar of the firefight he heard the deep, throaty rumble of the gunship wheeling in tight over its target. Then bullets vomited from the gunship. First the top of the cooling-building disappeared in an inferno, then the streak of fire smeared its way across the open courtyard to engulf the reactor building as well. As the gunship turned and wheeled the radio spoke once more.

"We're making another pass, Siegfried. Stay down!"

The 264 lined up again. Again the ground beneath it disappeared in a whirlwind of explosions. A shower of shell casings rained down as it passed overhead.

For a brief moment Radl wondered if the man stranded atop the stack was still alive up there. Perhaps he had found a ladder implanted in the stack and climbed down? Annoyed with himself, he brusquely dismissed the man from his mind as the irrelevancy he was.

Radl stood up, blew a shrieking blast from his whistle, and he and his team swept down the hill. When they came to the chain-link fence that surrounded the reactor area, the men equipped with wire cutters quickly and efficiently sliced their way through. Radl ducked down and through the hole held open for him, then weaved and dodged his way up to the side of the cooling-building. There still awaited a fifty-meter run across a wide-open field of fire to the reactor itself.

"Smoke!" Radl undipped a smoke grenade, pulled the fuse and threw it. Half a dozen more followed from the men behind him. He moved to the comer of the building, took
a
deep breath and started to run, hoping that the gunship had suppressed all resistance. Not quite. Halfway across the open area to the reactor one of his men pitched over and skidded as pieces of asphalt sprayed up around him. Radl kept on running, slammed hard against the side of the reactor building when he reached its blessed relative security

The gunship attack had converted the corrugated steel siding of the building into a ragged steel lace. From inside Radl could hear screaming.

Two men emerged from the smoke to crouch beside him. Radl motioned at the door, and the two pulled out grenades. Radl stood and yanked the door open. The grenades were lobbed in, and the three crouched back down.

From inside Radl heard, "Grenades!" The cry was punctuated by the dual explosion. Crouching low, he pulled the door open again and darted in, emptying a clip as he did so. His two companions entered firing as well. There were more screams, then silence.

Radl stood and slapped in a new clip. The corridor in front of him was a shambles, illuminated only by light filtering in through the hundreds of holes that had been punched into the building from a streetlight that, surreally, was still glowing outside. By its light he could see half a dozen dead in the corridor. Two were Rangers, the rest civilians.

Radl moved to a door on his right and repeated the entrance routine: two grenades; follow the explosions firing in a dive. This time there was no response and cautiously he stood up.

Several emergency lamps glowed dimly through the smoke. The open concrete floor in front of him was littered with a dozen mangled bodies. He craned his neck upward. With twenty-foot walls, the room was like an open warehouse. The ceiling was ripped to shreds. Halfway across the room was a staircase, leading into a booth several meters off the ground. The glass walls of the booth were blown out. A body hung over the side.

In the middle of the room stood the centerpiece: a blocklike structure fifteen yards high. The side that faced him looked rather like a pegboard with dozens of regularly spaced holes from floor level to halfway up the side of it. Each of the holes was marked with arcane symbols. Some of the holes had wires trailing out of them. Others were sealed with what looked like metal plugs.

He approached it slowly, cautiously, as if it were the temple of some dark god who would strike down unbelievers who dared violate its holy self. Suddenly he heard running feet behind him. He spun, ready to fire, but it was four more of his own, part of the second platoon.