Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [165]
A heavier pry bar had been found, and the corner of the steel door had been bent several centimeters, enough for the bar to gain purchase higher on the frame. A TeNo man heaved on the bar. The door groaned but didn't give.
That was their problem. Eberhardt turned away from the door. The ventilation equipment had apparently been sabotaged, and the smoke was still so thick that he could not see as far as his hands. The bunker was still in loud confusion, with shouted orders and calls for medics and ragged gasps and shrill screams, the fire still working on the rugs and pictures and some furniture. TeNo men and SS guards rushed about, appearing and disappearing in the haze.
But it was over. The American was upstairs, dead or dying. The Führer was safe. General Eberhardt had never been to the front in this struggle. But the front had come to him. And he had prevailed. Right before the Führer's eyes. To the RSD chief, even the acrid, blinding, swirling smoke in the bunker corridor was sweet.
26
THE LAST RESCUE SQUAD member to enter the bunker could see no better than any of the others, with the smoke acting as a film across his eyes, so he turned right and took six steps to the wall, then followed the wall passed the cloakroom door and the conference room door to the third door. Bodies lay in front of the door. Like other TeNo troops, this Rescue Squad member wore a herringbone white uniform. The gas mask hid his face.
The American commando had been captured. The Rescue Squad's job was now to secure the bunker against fire and offer aid to the injured. This TeNo man walked into the room, brushing by another Rescue Squad member who had checked the room and was now leaving it. No one else was in the study. He stepped over the ruined furniture and blackened pieces of maps and reports, and walked into Hitler's bedroom.
The Führer was sitting on the blue sofa, a small mask covering his face, with a tube to an oxygen bottle on a stand near his feet. He was wearing the field-gray jacket that symbolized his role as supreme commander of the German armed forces. Hitler flicked his hand to dismiss the Rescue Squad member, silently indicating he did not need help. He turned back to the document in his hand.
Then Jack Cray removed his gas mask. He brought out a pistol from the folds of the Rescue Squad uniform.
Hitler again looked up. He pulled off the mask and put it aside. His face was blank. With difficulty, he stood.
"You are back. The Vassy Chateau killer," the Führer said, his voice echoing in the concrete room. The Iron Cross on his chest, won in the trenches during the Great War, testified to his bravery. He showed it now. "I thought I was rid of you. But I underestimated you. You got past them all, again. Got into the bunker, again. How did you do it?"
Cray smiled. "I'm not much at chatting."
He fired the pistol. The sound was a flat clap. A hole opened between Hitler's eyes and his brains dappled the portrait of Frederick the Great. Hitler collapsed to the blue sofa, his arm hanging to the floor, blood streaking the fabric.
Cray spun to a movement at the corner of his eye, bringing the pistol around. A soft cry came from a woman in a blue print dress who had appeared from the adjacent dressing room. She was wearing a gas mask, and her hand came up to the mask, and then she flew across the room to the body, ignoring the killer.
Cray returned the gas mask to his head, then backed out of the room and sidestepped the table in the study. The pistol was back inside his uniform when an SS guard rushed into the room.
"What's happened," the guard demanded.
"The Führer," Cray yelled.
As the guard hurried into Hitler's room, Cray reentered the central corridor. He could see little through the smoke, and instantly was lost among the other Rescue Squad troops and others. The corridor was still in a noisy uproar. No one was yet tending to the wounded or taking away the dead. Blood was everywhere. Fires still burned. Some had heard a shot, others had not. In the echoing hallway few could determine the shot's direction.