Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [162]
A shot came from somewhere in the bunker corridor, a sharp slap that echoed back and forth in the underground compound. Screams, then a curse, and orders for calm.
Dietrich stepped from the antechamber into the central corridor, Koder behind him. Fire worked along the floor in many places. The carpet burned, sending runners of smoke into the already thick air. Dietrich could see little beyond his hand. He heard the pumping of a fire extinguisher. He bumped into Gestapo Müller, who was coughing into his hand. Kaltenbrunner was doubled over, breathing in deep rasps and struggling with a mask.
The detective waded through the smoke. His foot caught on a leg. The body of a TeNo man. An SS guard with a pistol blocked the door to the Führer's map room and bedroom. He had just shot the Rescue Squad member.
The TeNo leader, Captain Dreesen, emerged from the smoke to kneel over the wounded man.
"What are you doing, goddamn it?" he yelled up at the SS guard.
And now the SS guard swiveled the pistol and fired at Captain Dreesen, whose face registered rage and shock as blood gushed from his chest. He slid sideways into a card table. Smoke closed over him.
Chaos. The commando's tool. General Keitel screamed order after order, slapping his field marshal's baton against his thigh. He was ignored. Sounds of metal prying metal came from deep in the smoke, where a team was frantically working to open the ventilation room door. A TeNo man dropped to the floor, felled from behind by an SS guard, who roughly kicked the TeNo man onto his back to rip of f the gas mask. It wasn't the American.
"Don't shoot the TeNo, for Christ sake," the guard captain called. "Arrest them. Round them up. ..."
His orders were drowned out by the scream of a woman, a secretary who swatted at the flame that had caught the fringe of her dress. A Luftwaffe general wrapped his uniform jacket around her legs, smothering the fire.
General Jodl stepped toward the SS guard blocking the door to Hitler's rooms, but the guard raised the pistol. No one was to enter. The Alsatian howled and tried to enter the Führer's room, but was kicked back by the SS guard. Not even the dog was going to get in.
A TeNo man carrying a pressure extinguisher emerged from the smoke directly in front of Dietrich, who held up his pistol and ripped off the man's mask. Not the American. Dietrich pushed him aside and stepped toward the pistol-wielding guard at the door, his shoes stepping in the TeNo man's blood. He yelled over the turmoil, "Where's General Eberhardt?"
Something clinked near Dietrich's feet. A skittering sound. Metal tumbling across the floor.
Dietrich glanced down. A stick grenade flashed by, visible one instant, then swallowed by the smoke. Then a second grenade slid along the floor and disappeared into the haze. It oddly registered with Dietrich that the head of the second grenade was a different color than that of the first.
Dietrich had long known he did not possess the instincts of the soldier. He should have shouted "Grenade." Given the warning. Told everyone to get down. But fear slowed him, and the warning caught in his throat. Others beat him to it, maybe the generals who were up from the trenches, shouting a warning.
"Grenade," came from Dietrich's right.
"Down, down," from somewhere near the door to the antechamber. A rush of movement. More yells.
The detective lunged away from the SS guard toward the opposite doorway, which was to a dressing room. Just before he entered the room, the smoke opened for an instant and he glimpsed a TeNo man in a gas mask with his back against the corridor wall, holding an SS guard in front of him, the TeNo man's thick arm around the guard's neck. The TeNo man was using the SS guard as a shield. Jack Cray must be in that TeNo uniform.
Dietrich tripped on an overturned chair and fell into the dressing room. A rug burned at the back of the room, and fire was spreading to a rack of uniforms.
The first explosion was muffled, nothing like Dietrich had feared. Maybe a dud, he thought, lying there at the