V-S Day: A Novel of Alternate History

HAMMER OF THE GODS

JUNE 1, 1943

A sergeant raised a whistle to his mouth and blew a sharp note, and the squad of soldiers standing on either side of the launch ramp pulled the ropes dangling above their heads. The camouflage netting fell away, revealing what lay beneath it.

Silbervogel rested upon its launch sled, the massive horizontal-thrust engine at its rear resembling the thorax of some immense wasp. Even in the dull light of a cloudy sky, the spacecraft gleamed in the late-morning sun, making the black crosses painted on its wings and stubby tail fins stand out. The launch rail stretched away into the distance; during the night, its own camouflage had been removed, the poles that had once supported the nets cut down by Dora prisoners and hauled away.

The moment Silver Bird’s camouflage was pulled away, a military marching band struck up the German National Anthem, almost drowning out the applause of the senior officers and party officials gathered nearby. Assembled on the wooden viewing stand one kilometer from the launch site, they’d come at the special invitation of Goering himself to witness the historic event. Some had had no idea that the Silbervogel Projekt even existed until they’d arrived; the operation had remained classified all the way to the end, in hopes that the Allies would remain ignorant of its existence until the moment the bombs dropped on America. Others knew about Silver Bird yet had not yet been apprised of its objective. Very few knew all the essential details, and they had been sworn to secrecy.

Standing in the front row, Heinrich Himmler turned to Eugen Sanger and, still clapping his hands, smiled at the Austrian engineer. “A magnificent creation, Herr Doktor,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the noise. “This must be a great day for you.”

Sanger didn’t say anything for a moment. Noticing the silence, Wernher von Braun glanced at Sanger. There were tears in the corners of his eyes, and his chin trembled a little beneath his heavy mustache.

“Like a father seeing his child for the first time,” Sanger said quietly, his words nearly lost beneath the orchestra.

His child, von Braun thought. How pathetic. Sanger had apparently forgotten Himmler’s threats about what Hitler might do if he was informed that Silver Bird wasn’t completed by the deadline Himmler had imposed on the project. That deadline had come and gone nearly two months ago, and it was only Dornberger’s fast-talking that had saved all of them from Himmler’s petulant wrath.

Now the strutting little chicken farmer was behaving as if everything had been forgiven and forgotten. And it probably was… so long as they were successful today.

Von Braun had to make a conscious effort not to grimace. It wasn’t just Himmler he had to worry about. Goering was there, too, as were Goebbels, Speer, Keitel… everyone except the Führer himself. Hitler had given no reason for not attending; through an aide, he’d simply sent word that he would not be there, and that was it. When he’d heard this, von Braun had been secretly relieved. He’d been forced to wear the loathed SS uniform again, but at least he wouldn’t have to play host to the Führer as well as the rest of the High Command.

“Of course it is,” von Braun said to Himmler as he gently tapped Sanger on the arm, drawing his attention. “Now, if you’ll excuse us…”

“Yes, of course. You have your duties.” A dismissive flip of the hand, as if von Braun were nothing more than a minor technocrat rather than the project’s scientific director. “Go.”

“Thank you, Herr Reichsführer…”

“Wait,” Goebbels snapped. A wiry and glowering little man, the propaganda minister reminded von Braun of a carrion bird. “Couldn’t we meet Lieutenant Reinhardt one last time, to give him our best wishes for his mission?”

Again, von Braun had to work to keep a neutral expression. He was perfectly aware of the official photographers lurking at the edge of the platform, ready to dart forward at Goebbels’s slightest gesture. The propaganda minister didn’t want to give Reinhardt his blessings; all he wanted was to have his picture taken, shaking hands with Silver Bird’s pilot. Von Braun had come to realize that everyone in Hitler’s inner circle had his own personal agenda; dealing with such colossal egos was a job of its own.

“I’m very sorry, but that’s impossible. Lieutenant Reinhardt is on his way to the Silver Bird even as we speak.” Turning around, he peered at the distant spacecraft and managed to spot a large truck pulling up beneath the bottom of the launch sled. “There, see?” he asked, pointing in that direction. “There is his support vehicle now.”

“Yes, I see.” Goebbels’s face darkened. “And why weren’t we given an opportunity to meet him earlier, as I requested?”

Before von Braun could answer, Walter Dornberger came to the rescue. “I’m sorry, Herr Reichsminister, but we were unable to comply with your request. We deliberately kept Lieutenant Reinhardt in medical quarantine for the last forty-eight hours, to make sure that no one carrying any germs or viruses would inadvertently make him sick just as he was about to carry out his mission. I’m sure you understand.”

Goebbels said nothing although his expression became even more vulpine than ever. If he was about to respond, though, he was cut off by a voice booming from a loudspeaker mounted on a nearby post: “Launch in sixty minutes! Repeat, launch in sixty minutes! All technical personnel, please report immediately to control bunker!”

“We must go,” von Braun murmured to Sanger and Dornberger, then he turned to the dignitaries in the front row of the viewing stand. “Thank you for your best wishes,” he said, giving them a hasty bow. “We’ll brief you following the conclusion of this mission.”

Without another word, he went as fast as he could to an open-top sedan parked nearby, Sanger and Dornberger trotting along beside him. He was relieved that none of the High Command insisted upon joining them; they weren’t so arrogant not to realize that their place was here, not in the bunker. Making a brief appearance at the viewing stand was something he and the others were obliged to do. Now that it was over, their real task lay before them: getting Silver Bird safely off the ground, into space, and on its way to its target.

The day had come. By the time it was over, New York would be in ruins.

Frieda Koenig was about to bicycle into town to go shopping when, from somewhere in the far distance, she heard something odd. Halfway to the front gate, she stopped, put down her market basket, and listened intently. No, there was no mistake. It was the Deutschlandlied that she heard echoing off the granite bluffs of the nearby mountains: “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, Über alles in der Welt…”

In the months she’d been living in Nordhausen, carrying on the impersonation of a recently widowed artist, she’d seen and heard enough to confirm OSS suspicions that the Nazis had a secret missile base located in the mountains not far from town. All these things she’d dutifully reported to London during her radio transmissions, which she was careful to keep brief and at irregular intervals. Yet this was the first time she’d heard martial music coming from the vicinity of Mittelwerk.

Listening, Frieda frowned. The only reason the Nazis would break out a brass band was if they had something to celebrate. On the other hand, it was only a few hours ago, just as she was getting out of bed, that she’d heard a couple of twin-engine Junkers transports passing low overhead, as if coming in for a landing. Party officials paying a visit? Very possibly, yes, but why…?

Suddenly, a bike ride to the village grocer was no longer important. Picking up her basket, Frieda hurried back into the cottage. She’d learned to leave a ladder propped up against the back wall of the house; the rooftop made a good observation post, with the chimney hiding her from the road. Once she climbed up there with her binoculars, she might have a chance to see what was going on.

First, though, she went into the bedroom. Frieda pulled the suitcase radio down from the closet shelf, placed it on the floor beside the bed, and plugged it in. Better get the wireless warmed up, just in case…

Stiffly and slowly, the rubber-insulated leather of his flight suit resisting his every move, Horst Reinhardt climbed down into Silbervogel’s cockpit. Once again, he was astonished by just how small it was. Not even the experimental Messerschmidt jet fighters he’d been flying before being recruited for this program were as cramped as this. He gritted his teeth as the two technicians standing on either side of the cockpit eased him into the heavily padded seat, one holding his arms at shoulder height while the other fitted his legs into the horizontal well beneath the instrument panel. The parachute he wore pushed against his lower back, making him even more uncomfortable. He muttered an obscenity, knowing that no one would hear him; his throat mike wasn’t yet plugged in, and the airtight goggles and full-face breathing mask that made him resemble a bug muffled his voice.

Once he was seated, though, he was able to move a little more freely. As one of the technicians reached down to move the air mask’s oxygen hose from its portable unit to the valve located beneath the dashboard, Reinhardt ran a line from his throat mike to the wireless system. “Radio check, radio check,” he said, clamping the throat mike between his thumb and forefingers. “Do you hear me, Control? Over.”

“We understand you, Silbervogel.” The voice in his headphones was unfamiliar. Apparently Dr. von Braun wasn’t in the control bunker. Probably still shaking hands with the brass.

“Thank you,” Reinhardt said. “Time to launch?”

“Launch in fifty-one minutes, thirty-one seconds.”

“Very good. Proceeding with preflight checklist.” A small notebook was attached to the upper-right corner of the instrument panel. While the technicians leaned in to wrap his seat and shoulder straps in place around him and clamp them shut, Reinhardt looked at the first item on the list. “Primary electrical system, on…”

The control bunker was a steel-reinforced concrete pillbox built into the mountainside not far from the tunnels, on the other side of the launch rail from the viewing stand. Resembling an oversized gunner’s nest, its slot windows were fitted with quartz glass five centimeters thick. The precautions were necessary, for the bunker was located only a hundred meters from the launch rail.

Within the bunker, nearly a dozen men were seated at workstations divided into two rows, each facing the windows and the large wall map between them. Pneumatic tubes were suspended vertically from the ceiling to each desk. Von Braun discarded the uniform jacket as soon as he came through the vault door that was the bunker’s sole entrance. Ignoring the brisk salute given him by the soldier standing guard, he pulled on his white lab coat as he headed straight for his station, the center desk in the third row back. Walter Dornberger sat down beside him, while Sanger went to a desk in the second row, the logistics section.

Von Braun sat down at the desk and pulled on a pair of headphones. He took a moment to light a cigarette, then opened the loose-leaf binder on the desk. Through the headphones, he heard both Lieutenant Reinhardt’s voice and those of the flight controllers as they made their way through the prelaunch checklist:

“Oxygen-fuel pressurization, complete.”

“Confirm oxygen-fuel pressurization completion.”

“Initiate gasoline-fuel pressurization.”

“Initiating gasoline pressurization.”

“Gyro platform check.”

“Gyro operational.”

They’d rehearsed the launch procedure countless times over the past four months, in practice sessions that lasted hours on end. This time, though, there was a tension that had been lacking before. Everyone knew that this was the real thing, not just another exercise. Scanning the room, von Braun saw that everyone was focused entirely upon the dials and meters before them. Now and then, there was a short, sharp hiss, then the hollow clunk of a message capsule dropping into a cup beneath the pneumatic tubes that carried handwritten data from one workstation to another, removing the need for the controllers to stand up and walk across the room. Otherwise, the bunker was quiet, disciplined.

Von Braun glanced to one side of the room, where three clocks hung against the wall. The first was the mission clock; it stood at L minus twenty-nine minutes and counting. The second clock was Berlin time: 11:31 A.M. The third clock was the most critical one: 5:31 A.M. New York Time. Once Silver Bird left the atmosphere, it would take one hour and thirty-seven minutes to reach its target. Because there was a six-hour difference in time zones, the plan called for the attack to occur at approximately 7:40 A.M. New Yorkers would be on their way to work by then, so it had been calculated that a strategic bombing at that time would increase the fatalities among commuters, with more deaths caused by the firestorm that would rage across Manhattan and the greater metropolitan area in the aftermath.

Von Braun forced this thought from his mind as he lit another cigarette from the first one. He wasn’t the only person chain-smoking. The glass ashtrays on the desks were already beginning to fill up, and the ceiling fans labored to remove smoke from the room. He flipped another page of his notebook and tried to concentrate on the checklist.

“Launch minus twenty-two minutes and counting.”

“Fuel pressurization complete.”

“Confirm completion of fuel-pressurization cycle.”

“Pilot ready for takeoff. Seal cockpit.”

“Confirm cockpit seal.”

“Check landing-gear servomotors.”

“Landing-gear servos operational, check…”

Hearing this, von Braun shut his eyes for a moment. According to the flight plan, once its mission was complete, Silbervogel would begin a long supersonic glide from an altitude of seventy kilometers, crossing the Atlantic until it reached Germany, where it would land on the Mittelwerk landing strip just a few kilometers away. Yet everyone who’d closely studied this part of the plan knew that it was optimistic at best. The spacecraft would be out of fuel by then, its pilot capable of making only dead-stick maneuvers. The math might support the notion of a glide return all the way to base, but common sense did not. It was more likely that Reinhardt would be forced to ditch in the ocean, and although he’d been given a parachute and a life preserver, the chances of his surviving a supersonic bailout, then spending countless hours in the high seas before being located by the U-boat that had been dispatched to the North Atlantic as an emergency recovery vessel, were not good.

This was to be a suicide mission. Everyone knew it, even if no one said so aloud. If Horst Reinhardt weren’t aware of this, then he was either a fool or a madman. But everything von Braun had observed about the young Luftwaffe lieutenant suggested that he was nothing more or less than what he appeared to be: a dedicated young pilot whose devotion to National Socialism and Adolf Hitler was so complete that martyrdom would be a death he’d welcome.

“Launch minus ten minutes and counting.”

“All personnel, clear launch area.”

“Switch to internal electrical systems.”

“Internal electric system on standby, check.”

Suddenly restless, von Braun stood up from his seat. He felt Dornberger’s eyes upon him as he walked past the rows of controllers to the window. Silbervogel lay upon its sled, fully revealed now that its gantry scaffold had been pulled away. The cockpit was closed, its windows barely visible. The ground crew was hurrying away, and even the soldiers were deserting the launch site. Reinhardt was alone in his ship, waiting for the countdown to end and the order to launch.

“Good luck,” von Braun whispered. Not for the mission, but for the man.

“L minus sixty seconds and counting.”

“All systems prepared for launch.” Horst Reinhardt turned the last page of the checklist, then curled his fingers within his thick gloves one last time before resting his hands on the control yoke. He took several slow, deep breaths to calm himself; nonetheless, he could feel his heart thudding deep within his chest. In all the thousands of hours he’d spent in cockpits, never before had he been so anxious about a takeoff.

With the canopy shut, the cockpit was oppressively close, made worse by the fact that, aside from the retractable bombsight periscope in the belly, he had no direct forward view, only two narrow windows on either side of his seat. The engineers who’d designed Silver Bird had never been able to completely solve the problem of maintaining cabin integrity while also making the hull capable of withstanding the stress caused by repeated skips across the upper atmosphere. The weak point was always the forward cockpit window, which was located in the very place where atmospheric friction would cause a plasma cone to form. The periscope and the side windows were a necessary compromise; for most of the flight, Reinhardt would be relying on his instruments for navigation.

It could be done, of course, and the pilot had spent countless hours in the Peenemünde simulator learning how. All the same, though, it was hardly comforting to know that he would be flying blind. So Reinhardt barely glanced at the windows before returning his gaze to his instruments.

“L minus forty seconds and counting.” Suddenly, the voice he heard was familiar. Dr. von Braun had taken over the microphone. “Ready, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, Herr Doktor,” Reinhardt replied. “For the glory of the Fatherland and Adolf Hitler.”

Von Braun’s response was dry, unemotional: “Sled ignition in nineteen seconds.”

“Understood.” Reinhardt gave his straps a final hitch, then fastened his hands around the yoke. “Main engines pressurized and ready for primary ignition sequence.”

“Sled ignition in ten… nine… eight… seven…”

Reinhardt instinctively braced himself, then remembered his trainer’s advice: stay loose, relax your body, let the seat absorb the shock. He had just done so when the countdown reached zero.

“Five… four… three… two… one…”

From outside, he heard the muffled roar of the sled’s giant solid-rocket engine firing. This was controlled by the launch bunker. Yet the sled didn’t move at once; for the next eleven seconds its brakes remained engaged, allowing the engine to build up thrust. The spacecraft shook like an overeager racehorse pushing against its stall.

“Launch in five… four… three…”

From the corner of his eye, Reinhardt saw oily black smoke billowing up around his canopy windows. Licking his lips, he raised his left hand to the instrument panel and gently placed his fingers on the main-engine ignition switch. In his headphones, he heard von Braun’s calm, detached voice:

“Two… one… launch!”

The sled brakes were released, and the massive machine bolted forward. Reinhardt was immediately thrown back against his seat. For an instant, he nearly lost contact with the all-important toggle switch for the main engine, yet he managed to shove his arm forward again and get his hand back where it belonged.

The sled hurtled down the long concrete track, its speed doubling, then doubling again, with each passing second. On the viewing stand, the officers and party officials had seen the sled engine ignite but had heard nothing. It had taken nearly three seconds for the sound to reach them, and by then the sled was already in motion. They were still puzzled by this when thunder, louder and more prolonged than any created by a natural storm, hit them like a tangible object, a blast that shook the viewing stand and blew hats off their heads and caused them to step back in fear.

“Stop it!” Himmler screamed, hands clamped over his ears, eyes wide with terror. “Stop it! It’s going to blow up!” Goering howled with laughter, while Goebbels cackled and clapped his hands like a child amused by a trick pony at a circus.

In the control bunker, cement dust was falling from cracks that had suddenly appeared in the ceiling. The windows shook in their frames, distorting the view of the sled as it rocketed away from the bunker.

Von Braun was on his feet, watching it go, microphone clutched in his right hand. “Steady… steady…” he said, fighting to remain calm. “Stand by to release…”

Flattened against his seat, pushed back by mounting acceleration, Horst Reinhardt watched his instruments through eyes threatening to squeeze shut, his hands locked on the yoke. The sled was traveling at five hundred meters per second when he yelled “Main-engine ignition!” and snapped the toggle switch.

The engine roared to life, and as an invisible hand shoved him even farther into his seat, he heard von Braun shout, “Release!”

Knowing that this meant that the sled’s cradle was no longer holding him, Reinhardt pulled back on the yoke with all his might.

Like a hawk taking flight, Silver Bird rose from the sled. It shot upward at a steep angle, stub wings clawing at the sky, main engine pounding across the valley and echoing off the mountainside. Far below, the launch sled reached the end of the track. Traveling too fast for the hydraulic brakes to slow it down, it ripped through the track, smashed into the ground, and exploded, an inferno giving birth to a phoenix.

In the control bunker, Eugen Sanger leaped to his feet. “My Silver Bird flies!” he shouted, fists raised above his head. “My dream is alive!”

Letting go of his breath, von Braun slumped in his chair. Through the windows, he could see Silbervogel rising upon a fiery pillar, thundering like a hammer of the gods.

“It’s done,” he muttered under his breath. And may God help us, he silently added.

Standing on the cottage roof, hugging the brick chimney as if it were a lover, Frieda Koenig felt the house beneath her tremble as the shock wave rumbled across the valley. Treetops swayed in the supernatural wind, pine needles and leaves ripped from their branches, and somewhere below her a window shattered, but she barely noticed these things. All she saw was the silver dart streaking up from the other side of the valley, faster than any aircraft she’d ever seen, leaving behind it a thick vapor trail that formed an arch across the sky.

“No,” she whispered. “No, no, no…”

Suddenly, she remembered where she was, what she was supposed to do. Letting go of the chimney, she squatted on her hips and skidded down the roof, heedless of the shingles tearing at the back of her skirt and legs. Somehow, the ladder had stayed where it was. Turning herself around and planting her feet against the rungs, she climbed down as fast as she could, dropping the last few feet to the ground.

From somewhere far above, a loud boom. She turned and looked up, half-expecting to see that the craft had blown up. Yet it was nowhere in sight; she saw only the vapor trail, its base already beginning to dissipate.

No time to wonder about that now. London had to be alerted.

Frieda was in the house in seconds, grateful that she’d had the foresight to plug in the radio and let it warm up. She’d already opened her codebook and turned it to the correct page for the day; she checked to make sure she was using the correct encryption key, then lay a finger against the telegraph key. Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she began to send her message:

Mistletoe to Big Ben. Black Umbrella is open. Repeat, Black Umbrella is open. Mistletoe out.

There. It was done. And so was she. Her mission was complete, and there was no point in remaining here any longer. In fact, it was dangerous to stay in Nordhausen. If her signal had been intercepted, then the Nazis might trace it back to her.

Frieda took a few moments to discard her frayed dress and put on a fresh one, then she gathered the documents she’d need, made sure she had enough money in her purse, and left the cottage. Within minutes, she was in her car and driving away, her life as a war widow already a thing of the past.

Horst Reinhardt didn’t hear the sonic boom caused by his craft breaking the sound barrier, nor was he aware of the chaos he’d left in his wake. He heard only the roar of Silver Bird’s main engine, felt only the pressure against his body.

As the spacecraft continued its climb, his vision began to blur, forming a tunnel through which he fought to see clearly. Fortunately, the instruments were directly in front of him, and he’d memorized his flight plan so well that it was thoroughly ingrained in his memory.

He continued to climb, watching his altimeter carefully the entire time. When he saw that Silver Bird was 5.4 kilometers above the ground, he reached down and pushed forward the throttles for the two auxiliary engines. Silver Bird surged upward even more; he concentrated on breathing, making sure that the acceleration didn’t force the air from his lungs and cause him to black out. He couldn’t see his instruments well, but he knew that he must be pulling nearly ten g’s. But only for a few seconds, just a few more seconds…

Gradually, the roaring of the engines diminished, slowly becoming a muted grumble. Reinhardt’s gaze swept across the instrument panel, then he throttled down the main and auxiliary engines and pulled back the yoke. An eerie silence descended upon the cabin; the pressure completely left him, and it suddenly seemed as if his body was lighter, without any weight at all.

Something drifted past his goggles, a tiny metal ring. A washer dropped by a careless workman. Fascinated, Reinhardt raised a hand and gently tapped it with a fingertip. At his touch, the washer tumbled away, turning end over end, until it reached the starboard side window and bounced off.

That was when Reinhardt saw where he was. Earth stretched out below him as a vast green shield, flecked with filmy white clouds, veined by blue rivers and lakes. He was somewhere over Poland, or perhaps even the Soviet Union; there was no easy way to tell, without any obvious borders to distinguish political boundaries. And above it all, a sky so black, it seemed like an abyss he could fall into forever.

Lieutenant Horst Reinhardt was the first man to see Earth from space.

He didn’t give himself an opportunity to reflect on this. No time to admire the view; he had a mission to accomplish. His altimeter was useless, now that it no longer had atmospheric pressure to register, but his gyroscope told him that he was climbing toward his maximum altitude of 130 kilometers. That was when he’d fire the auxiliary engines again, vector them so that his nose was pitched downward, and commence the series of atmospheric skips that would carry him around the world.

Reinhardt clasped his throat mike. “Control, Control, this is Silver Bird. Launch successful, orbital altitude achieved. Preparing to commence antipodal trajectory.”

He listened carefully, and for a moment he thought he heard voices through the static. Hopefully his message had been received, but it was possible that he was already out of radio range. This had already been taken into consideration, though. He would remain incommunicado for the duration of his mission; it was not until after he’d completed his objectives that he’d try to contact the U-boat that would act as his recovery vessel should he need it. Otherwise, the next time he spoke to anyone in the Fatherland, it would be when he stepped down from his cockpit and offered a salute to his beloved Führer.

That was a pleasant thought. Reinhardt kept it in mind as Silver Bird soared above Earth, on its way to New York and victory.