Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [163]
General Jodl's face was the color of the new smoke. His cigarettes had fallen from his pocket and were scattered across the room. Dietrich pushed himself up to a sitting position.
The second grenade detonated.
The first had been a smoke grenade. The second contained TNT and shrapnel. The corridor filled with a brilliant white flash. The sound was of a sledgehammer hitting an anvil, a metallic peal so loud it seemed to stab Dietrich's head. Air in the bunker pulsed. Dietrich's ears rang. His pistol was still in his hand. He rose unsteadily and returned to the hall, walking into a wall of smoke.
Two seconds of silence. Then moans and screams. Shrapnel had swept the room like a scythe. The SS guard used as a shield was sprawled face-up on the floor, blood oozing from a dozen lacerations on his chest and belly and legs. Near him on the floor, blood pumped from punctures in the SS guard who had stood at Hitler's study door and shot the TeNo men. His mouth silently opened and closed. Smoke rolled over them. Dietrich looked up, across the narrow corridor to the entrance to Hitler's study and bedroom.
The smoke thinned for an instant. The TeNo man stood there. Jack Cray. Face hidden by a gas mask, but surely it was him. Pistol in one hand, knife in another. Just standing there, next to the door into Hitler's quarters.
But just for that second. Then the smoke throbbed and the air clapped and Dietrich felt metal cut into his thigh and leg. The detective spilled forward, onto the body of an SS guard. He tried to catch himself but slipped on the gore. Lacerations in his leg shot pain up into his body. He clamped his jaw and rose, grunting with pain. Cray had thrown another grenade into the study, maybe inside as far as the bedroom. And now the American spun from his place against the wall and charged into Hitler's study.
Dietrich staggered after the commando, across the hall and into the study, slipping on someone's entrails. The grenade had reduced the study's table and chairs to splinters. Another SS guard had been in the study. His legs were against one wall and the rest of him was against the opposite wall fifteen feet away. The barrel of his Schmeisser was bent in two like a jackknife. Bits of maps floated in the smoke.
The detective high-stepped over the fragmented furniture, his leg in agony. The American commando's back was dead ahead, framed in the doorway to Hitler's bedroom. Cray was raising his pistol.
Cray twisted violently, ducking, just as a shot sounded from the bedroom. Then the American's knife arm slashed forward, out of Dietrich's sight. Cray stepped ahead again into the bedroom, the weapon at the end of his arm coming up.
The sound was of a melon dropped onto the floor. Then another. The commando pitched forward into the bedroom, his gun and knife hitting the rug just as he did. Dietrich moved through the smoke toward the bedroom.
The commando was sprawled facedown on the rug.
General Eberhardt stood near the pedestal, the bust of Frederick the Great in his hand. The general's handgun was on the floor, and his right hand was bleeding from a slash on his forearm.
Eberhardt smiled grimly. "I hit him with Frederick."
The detective grimaced with pain as he bent to the downed man. He rolled the commando over and pulled off the gas mask. "It's him," Dietrich breathed. "Jack Cray. I'll be goddamned. You got him."
"We got him," Eberhardt corrected kindly.
Hitler appeared in the smoke. He was holding a small oxygen mask close to his mouth and nose. The tube was connected to a bottle on a roller. He asked dryly, "That was a little close, don't you think, General Eberhardt?"
Gestapo Müller rushed into the room, his face a mask of pain and rage. His uniform was dappled with blood.