Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [161]
Finally Dreesen barked, "Get out of my way, asshole."
The SS guard waved Dreesen and his men through. A line from the generator truck was clamped to an electrical box. If needed, the truck would provide electricity for emergency lights. Another TeNo man placed a pack radio on the walkway near the bunker. Two TeNo radiomen entered the bunker, one carrying a second radio, and another unwinding wire from a reel. Should the bunker's telephones fail, the TeNo crews above- and belowground would still be able to communicate.
More Rescue Squad members trailed in from the haze. Several wore fire-resistant canvas vests with "TeNo" stamped on them in white. Some carried coiled ropes, others hauled oxygen bottles, pry bars, and sledgehammers. The SS guards stood aside as they passed through the door into the blockhouse.
And then it came to Otto Dietrich, came with a force like a blow to his chest, crushing the wind out of him.
The SS guards had checked the TeNo captain's identification, but were allowing his men into the bunker without being screened.
TeNo men had come into the ruined garden as a group, and were entering the bunker as a group, all in their white herringbone uniforms, some wearing gas masks, all hauling equipment, rushing underground as they had rehearsed time and again. And as the SS guards had witnessed time and again.
No one was examining each TeNo face.
"Arrest them," Dietrich yelled, waving his hand wildly. "All of them. All the TeNo men." He dug into his coat for his pistol.
The SS guards glanced at Dietrich with indecision, but only for an instant. They brought their weapons up, and stepped across to bar the blockhouse door.
Outraged, the TeNo radioman began to loudly protest but was choked off when the bore of a Schmeisser found his nose. The guards quickly surrounded the Rescue Squad members still aboveground.
His pistol in front of him, Dietrich tore off the nearest TeNo man's gas mask. A dark-haired man with black stubble across his cheeks and chin. Looked nothing like Jack Cray.
Guards shouted orders. The TeNo crew dropped their axes and bars and ropes, and lifted their hands above their heads.
Dietrich ran to the telephone at the blockhouse door. He lifted the handset and pressed the button. He yelled into the phone at the guard captain, "The American is in the bunker. Jack Cray is in a TeNo uniform."
Then the detective grabbed a gas mask from a guard and ran into blockhouse and down the stairs, into the smoke and gloom.
DIETRICH DESCENDED blindly, unable to see through the rising smoke, roughly pushing aside TeNo men slowed by their equipment, awkwardly trying to put on their masks. The detective knew any one of them might be Jack Cray working his way into the bunker, but Dietrich suspected the American would have been one of the first TeNo men down the stairs. Cray was already in the bunker, Dietrich was certain. Koder followed Dietrich down the stairs.
From below came cries of alarm, shouted orders, a dog's barking, and the crackling of fire. Heat rose in the stairwell. Dietrich held his pistol in front of him. His mask leaked and smoke stung his eyes. He reached the antechamber where two SS guards held their weapons on TeNo men, keeping them from entering the bunker. Smoke drifted among them, collecting in the antechamber before being pulled up the stairs. When the detective held up his ID, the S S guard glanced at his face, then nodded that he could enter.
"Arrest the TeNo men," came the harsh voice of a guard captain who had been yelling the order again and again since Dietrich's call sixty seconds before. The captain was hidden in the gray clouds somewhere down the corridor. "Block them from entering the Führer's quarters." His voice rose even more. "Block them."
"What the hell?" the TeNo captain yelled. "Who gave that order?"
"Arrest all TeNo men," the guard captain yelled again. "The American