Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [154]
He looked at his watch. The room continued to twitch and ripple as the earth carried bomb shock waves to the bunker. He was to wait five minutes from the first blasts. A few more seconds. The entry buzzer sounded with the correct sequence. Two, one, one. Kahr ignored it. The canaries sang unknowingly.
Another glance at his watch. At the control panel he threw five switches, each engaging an electric motor that closed a gate in the ventilation system. After a few seconds signal lights on the panel indicated all five gates had worked. Instead of bringing in fresh air, his system was now recycling old air, taking it out of the bunker, circulating it through his pipes, and returning it again to the bunker. If Kahr were to do no more, and if the air purification system remained off, it would be several moments before occupants of the bunker noticed that their air was becoming warm and foul.
But he had more to do. He opened a service gate on one of the green pipes, then pushed wads of the damp and reeking mattress stuffing into the pipe. He compressed them a bit, making sure the wet wads were not entirely blocking the pipe. Then he opened another green gate, and stuffed another wad of diesel-impregnated fabric into it. He repeated the procedure nine more times, until each green pipe contained his preparations.
He unbuttoned his pants and yanked on the matchbox. He grimaced as hairs came away with the tape. He opened the box to fish out a match. Again he checked his wristwatch. The time had come. He struck the match against the box, and it flared to life. He pushed the small flame into the opening of a green pipe until it was against the fuel-soaked wad. The material caught fire. He quickly closed the gate, trapping the fire inside the pipe. It would burn slowly until it had new air.
He set another clump of fabric on fire in a second pipe, then flicked his hand to extinguish the match when it began to cook his fingers. He tossed it aside and lit another, and in the next few minutes set all the wadding on fire.
Next, Sergeant Kahr engaged the fans, but at a low speed, not so fast as to extinguish the pipe fires, but enough to move the black diesel smoke from his fabric fires through the system and into the bunker. He pulled his gas mask from its box and put it over his head.
And now he waited. The entrance buzzer sounded again, and he heard a muffled, "Sergeant Kahr. Open the door."
But still he waited, listening to the fans as they filled the bunker with smoke. Black haze began pouring into his room through the grates. Once again up came his wristwatch. Five minutes more, and he would turn his attention to the green pipes. He sank into his chair and glanced at the bags of flour. Pounding at the door became louder. "Sergeant Kahr." One voice, then three voices, all yelling his name. Fists beat on the metal door and the buzzer sounded again and again. He waited.
20
THE BOMBERS had come from the northwest, then wheeled over the Havel River, and had followed its tributary, the Spree, into the center of Berlin. The city offered a bomber pilot's dream: unmistakable landmarks close to the target. Dead center in the vast expanse of the Tier- garten was the Victory Monument, and at the northwest corner of the Tiergarten was the burned-out Reichstag and, just south, the Brandenburg Gate. These structures stood out like beacons. The target—the government quarter—lay at the east end of the Tiergarten, and the route to the quarter was as clear as the creases on a B-24 navigator's palm.
The bombing run was unusual for the Americans in the spring of 1945. They came in low—at two thousand feet, unheard of for B-24s— and they came with only twenty planes. And these twenty planes aligned themselves like ships of the line, rather than in their box formation. They roared over the Reichstag and over Joseph Goebbeb's home and across Unter den Linden,