Hoellenfeuer

James Jackson

Description

1943. On the Eastern Front the Germans are losing the battle; to the west, they are assailed by the Allied Powers. But in a snow-clad valley in the Hartz mountains of central Germany, a British agent observes the visit of a senior Nazi to a top secret location. That Nazi is Hermann Goering and the Reichsmarschall does not have surrender on his mind. James Jackson comments: 'It was a moving and salutary experience to visit the tunnels of Nordhausen in which the Nazis built their V2 rockets. Given this facility was controlled by the SS while Goering was in charge of Germany's nuclear programme, the plot-lines started to form. Sixty thousand slave labourers worked on those tunnels and only half emerged alive. It is history worth remembering.'

Sujets

• Historical fiction

Informations

• Publié par: James Jackson
• Date de parution: 07 mars 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783010851
• Langue: English

Extrait

HÖLLENFEUER
The war has turned – but the Nazis can still unleash Hell
James Jackson
www.jamesjacksonbooks.com
Contents
LIST OF CHARACTERS
BEGINNING
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
ENDING
Copyright © James Jackson, 2011, 2013
First published in eBook format in 2011
Second eBook edition, 2013
The moral right of James Jackson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
All characters in this work – other than obvious historical figures – are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Epub ISBN 978-1-78301-085-1
eBook Conversion by eBookPartnership.com
The war has turned – But the Nazis can still unleash Hell . . .
1943 . On the Eastern Front, the Germans are losing the battle; to the West, they are assailed by the Allied Powers. But in a snow-clad valley in the Harz mountains of central Germany, a British agent observes the visit of a senior Nazi to a top secret location. That Nazi is Hermann Göring and the Reichsmarschall does not have surrender on his mind.
LIST OF CHARACTERS
THE NAZIS: Hermann Göring Reichsmarschall and Chief of the German Air Force. Walther von Porrbeck Göring confidant and fixer. Albert Vögler steel industrialist and proponent of atomic power. Dr Ernst Stahl chief of the Höllenfeuer programme. Heinrich Himmler Reichsführer, Interior Minister and Chief of the SS. Hans Kammler SS Brigadeführer and General, and in charge of secret projects for Himmler. The Specialist operative in the Sicherheitsdienst , the SS Security Service.
THE ALLIES: Allen W. Dulles European Chief of the OSS, America’s wartime intelligence agency. Tom Purton British Secret Intelligence Service. Emma Stirling British Secret Intelligence Service. Cal Ross American OSS. Frau Mendel Member of SIS network in Harz.
BEGINNING
Surrender had thrown up its own overnight crop. Whiteness billowed in sheets and pillowcases, bright and clean like the silk chutes of a thousand downed airmen. This was the end, spotless, unequivocal. Across the blitzed graveyard swathe of Europe, the survivors and the dead littered the streets and the camps, lay huddled in the craters and shell-scrapes. A wrecked continent, its blackened cities made rubble, its children orphaned. But here, in this corner of Swabia, the morning of 21 April 1945, just white and pristine cotton.
The Colonel squinted. Sure they wanted to save their homes, their livelihoods, their woodcarvings, their cute little bucolic, cow-bell infested idyll. Fuck ‘em. Yesterday, they were dancing around maypoles, screaming Sieg Heil !, marching to a different tune through other lands, running up their sacred swastika Hakenkreuz flags as readily as they now displayed their linen. So damn easy when fortune scowled, when the promise of a Thousand Year Reich had been reduced to a few last ragged days, a countdown to extinction. Total war, and they were well and truly totalled. Images reeled past, a girl emerging to stick out her tongue, her panicked mother ushering her hastily indoors, a horse rigid and fallen at the roadside, the hidden stares from blank and pretty houses. They were imprinted or forgotten, overlaid on a hundred others, the vehicles chasing on, bouncing along the pitted track, weaving fast towards the village of Haigerloch, the destination. Time was critical, speed essential. He breathed deep. Victory smelled good, of mountain air, fresh grass, of the promise of going home.
‘Sir, keep your head down.’
He ducked, his reverie punctured, his hand sliding instinctively for the Browning automatic at his hip. The man had a point. There were still remnants spellbound by the Austrian sorcerer trapped several hundred miles to the north. Defeat encouraged unpredictability. It could be a blue-eyed, pumped-up Hitler jugend teen with balls and a Panzerfaust , or a geriatric from the Volkssturm with a bolt-action Mauser. Whatever, it would be foolish to die at this late stage. Intel had predicted an entire Wehrmacht division somewhere in the area. Intel were usually wrong. Nazi command was shot, Nazi control vanished, Nazi communication non-existent. Any resistance would be patchy. His T-Force was equipped to deal with just such a patch.
The truck lurched, its gears protesting, and picked up momentum. Behind, the two requisitioned Hanomag half-tracks growled noisily, their progress trailing dust and smoke. In front, the lead escort of combat engineers, 6th Army volunteers, rode point. Tough guys, veterans, spoiling for a fight, pushing hard for the finish. He was grateful for their presence. If anyone could get him there, outpace the opposition, these dust-covered, wise-cracking sons of bitches would do it. He checked his watch again. On schedule. Across the Reich, other T-Forces and espionage outfits were mopping up and moving out, scouring ahead of the main armies, seizing blueprints, ripping the high-technology, top-dollar heart from Germany’s military corpse, spiriting its scientists and technicians back to the United States. A race, and Uncle Sam had the lead. T was for Technical, T was for thousands of tons of paperwork flown out from a myriad airfields, T was for things never before seen or thought of, things that were fifteen to twenty years in advance of any concept possessed by the Allies. And T was for the greatest mother-lode of all time. He was on a different path with a separate brief. No-one needed to know, no-one would stand in the way. It was a dangerous and difficult assignment, the science of Armageddon. The Alsos Mission.
That morning in Berlin, Red Army shells were beginning to burst on the doomed city. The Soviets had arrived, the spearheads of Marshals Zhukov and Rokossovki punching through the evaporating outer defences, grinding relentlessly into the suburbs of Köpenick and Spandau and on for the centre. A rolling barrage came, an endless, vengeful flow, chewing up ground, spitting out combusted bodies, the shriek of aircraft and ordnance lost in the shattering madness of detonation and street battle. No quarter was given, no prisoners taken, each block, every brick, contested with demolition-charge, flame-thrower, bayonet and trenching-tool. It was a man-made horror. It was Russian against German, fascism against bolshevism, small boy against T-34 tank. And in his subterranean bunker below the remains of the Reich Chancellery, the Führer, ill, deserted, cornered, stared at his maps, talked of salvation, and knew collapse was near. The morning after his fifty-sixth birthday. Some birthday present. SS General Steiner could counter-attack. But Steiner was retreating. General Wenck’s 12th Army and General Busse’s 9th could ride in to his rescue. But Wenck and Busse were nowhere to be seen. Other field commanders were indisposed or withdrawing, racing westwards to capitulate to the Americans. Everywhere betrayal, connivance, cowardice. Even Himmler had fled, even Göring had scampered for the mountains. So this was Götterdämmerung , the final orgy of destruction, the twilight of the Gods. A long way from his vision, further from the small house at 15 Salzburger Vorstadt in the Austrian town of Braunau. Germany, its people, had failed him, had proved unworthy. He would show them, display the courage they lacked. The moment would come, his sacrifice endure.
Nine days later, his position hopeless, surrounded, he and Eva Braun were to enter the green-tiled annex that served as a study and close the sound-proof door behind. His teeth clenching on a glass phial of cyanide, his newly-wed dying from poison beside him, he would press the muzzle of the heavy-calibre Walther pistol beneath his chin and fire. History transformed. Only a few days on.
From a distant valley, a bell was tolling. A warning or a welcome, the Colonel did not care. He swayed, bracing himself against a strut, steadying his excitement, reining back his thoughts. Had to focus, had to stay calm. Around, the tension-claustrophobia showed, in the sparsity of conversation, in fingers working a rosary, in the tightness of faces and the nervous brevity of smoking. He knew the signs, had travelled with them through France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark and on into Germany. Towns ticked off, locations searched, captives interrogated. Building the picture, closing in. Five minutes.
‘Get ready, boys.’ A hand proffered a Lucky Strike. He waved it away. ‘What are the scouts saying?’
‘Clear run in, sir. All the way. Inhabitants are out on the streets to cheer.’
‘Nothing like hypocrisy to add enthusiasm.’
‘Only thing to worry about are the French behind us.’
‘If they move out of Horb, I’ve asked the air jocks to strafe ’em.’
‘Shit, do it anyway.’
Laughter. The Colonel smiled. There was no love lost – no love at all – between himself and the French pussies crowding in on his turf. Hell, they had already ignored Ike’s order to stay west of the Necker. He could live with it, had the advantage. Alsos were going in.
The Americans entered the hamlet at speed, trucks and wheeled armour fanning to cover the approaches, maintain their options. And people app