Stealing Trinity Read Online Free PDF Page A

For a craft that cruised at only ninety miles an hour, forty in the face was a daunting handicap. The pilot kept the manifold pressure as close as possible to the red line, and the lights of Malmo came shortly before sunrise. The pilot pointed out the vague Swedish coastline to his passenger, who sat in the rear. Rode s outlook brightened considerably.
    It was a pair of early risers from the Royal Air Force's 609 Squadron who spotted the Stork just at dawn. The two-ship of Spitfires eased up to the transport from behind, and the flight leader edged forward to be in the pilot's lateral field of view. He saw the Stork pilot clearly, and tapped his headset to suggest that a bit of radio contact would be in order. Instead, the Stork pulled down and headed for the dirt.
    The flight leader shook his head with disbelief. Heaving a sigh, he sent his wingman to a covering position and armed his guns. He also double-checked that his gun camera was turned on. With three Messerschmitts and a Heinkel to his credit, he had nearly finished the war one victory short of becoming an "ace." Now, fortune had interceded. An unarmed enemy utility aircraft presented little challenge, yet, by trying to evade, the craft had fallen well within the Rules of Engagement. And as they said around the squadron, "A kill's a kill."
    Little maneuvering was necessary. Two hundred rounds later, the boxy gray Stork pancaked hard into a foggy valley below. A brilliant incendiary flash stabbed through the mist for an instant before being swallowed by the low clouds. The Spitfires circled for a minute to confirm that there were no parachutes, then the flight leader arced his two-ship toward home. There he would make his claim.
    Colonel Hans Gruber came the closest. Traveling with a young woman and a bodyguard, he departed a monastery just outside Vienna in the early morning, heading south. Hoping to blend in, his little group wore workers clothing, old and in need of a wash. Neither of the men's faces had seen a razor in two days.
    Unfortunately, the car, a dusty but still magnificent Hispano-Suiza, was altogether too conspicuous, and they ran afoul at the first roadblock. The Russian troops had no complaints with the fine counterfeit documents, nor did they notice that the occupants' polite answers were accented not in Austrian, but something farther north. The soldiers did, however, take exception when the nervous, heavyset driver pulled out a Lugar and plugged the nearest man in the chest before trying to race away.
    The rest, a contingent of battle-hardened veterans, were quick to their Kalashnikovs and sure of aim. The Hispano-Suiza made no more than ten meters before its two left tires were shot out. The car skidded abruptly into a ditch, but the soldiers took no chances -- they'd all made it this far, and with one of their brethren already lying in a pool of blood, they kept at it. Their weapons blazed until nearly spent of ammunition.
    The soldiers approached the smoldering mess carefully, and one of the men pulled out his last grenade, icing for a ghastly cake. He was about to lob it through what had been a window when the authoritative voice of his lieutenant called clearly.
    "Wait!"
    It was a word that Colonel Hans Gruber, wounded and writhing in the wreckage, would later wish he had never heard.
     

Chapter 4.
    U-801 cut a rough line through the North Atlantic, choppy ten-foot seas washing across her dull black deck. Alexander Braun stood atop the sail -- the boat's hardened oval watchtower -- straining to see through the blackness that was amplified by a thin overcast above. The wind was out of the west, perhaps ten knots, but added to the fifteen-knot headway of the boat, and a temperature in the forties, it made for a brisk experience.
    Two other men were also stationed atop the sail, the assigned lookouts, one to port and one to starboard. They'd started their shift thirty minutes ago, but neither had yet found a word for Braun. He wasn't surprised.