Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [158]
The crew at the ventilator room door jammed the pry bar's blade into the space between the steel door and the steel frame, but it was a question as to whether the door or the pry bar would give first. Two guards yanked on the bar, but it lost its purchase, and the guards had to catch themselves to prevent spilling backward. The captain plunged the bar again into the crack.
Smoke flowed from half the grates, now darker and more dense. It hid the ceiling, and more of the acrid haze was sinking toward the floor. Keitel could not restrain himself. He marched over to the guard captain. "I order you to evacuate the Führerbunker, Captain."
He let up on the pry bar. "Sir, there is no fire belowground."
Keitel's chin went up. The dueling scar on his cheek was magnificent, even in the smoke. "I will not stand for impudence from a…"
"If there's no fire, we stay here." A new voice.
The captain was relieved to see RSD General Eberhardt, who had just entered the bunker. Eberhardt's countenance was grim. He slipped the straps of a gas mask over his head.
"Eberhardt, we cannot breathe this air," Keitel said. "It is time to leave the bunker."
Not wanting a trace of self-pity to color his words, Eberhardt spoke carefully and firmly. "I have failed to stop the American commando. He is still out there, and I have no doubt he is nearby."
Keitel's black scowl dissolved as he coughed, a rattling hack that bent him over so that his medals hung away from his coat, and that ended in a whistling wheeze. He managed, "Look around, for God's sake, Eberhardt. We can't stay down here. We'll suffocate."
General Eberhardt's voice was weary. "Your mask is secure against the smoke, sir."
Still staring at the ventilation grates, Albert Speer said, rather idly, his words lost in the tumult, "What's that new material? Chalk dust? Coming from the second set of vents."
Speer did not have long to wonder, and perhaps no one else belowground noticed the white powder.
At that instant, in the locked ventilator room, Sergeant Kahr dropped the match into the green pipe and slammed shut the cover.
The flour-air mixture in the pipes ignited. Fire roared through the system.
The guard captain heard the muffled explosion, and turned from the ventilator room door to see fire pour out grates that lined both long walls of the bunker hallway, flame rushing into the hallway from six grates and spilling to the floor.
He opened the sprinkler valves at his station in the corridor, twisted both valves to their fully open position. A few drops of water came from overhead sprinklers, but nothing more.
"Extinguishers," yelled the guard captain. He pushed the nearest SS guard's shoulders and pointed at the door to the kitchen wing. The guard hurried through the door for them.
Fire pooled in the hallway beneath the grates, then spread across the floor like rushing water. A secretary screamed. Speer removed his jacket to try to douse one of the lakes of flame. A patch of rug caught fire. An orderly turned to run but knocked the gramophone off the table, and it shattered on the floor. The dog fled. Smoke was thick and choking. Fire crawled up the cement walls, blackening them. Flames leaped about, as if searching for combustibles. A gilded chair that had been under a grate was a ball of flame. The air temperature in the bunker rose quickly. More screams and confused shouts.
The guard captain punched the TeNo button on a wall box, then, not satisfied, lifted a telephone handset from the wall. He yelled into it, "We need fire and TeNo crews in the Führerbunker immediately." He listened a moment, then added, "I don't give a goddamn if your entire building just blew apart. I mean right now. This is no drill."
Eberhardt caught the guard captain's eye. Patches of fire were