"Sean McMullen - The Devils of Langenhagen" - читать интересную книгу автора (McMullen Sean)

The Devils of Langenhagen
by Sean McMullen
This story copyright 1992 by Sean McMullen. This copy was created for Jean Hardy's personal use. All
other rights are reserved. Thank you for honoring the copyright.

Published by Seattle Book Company, www.seattlebook.com.

* * *


Above us the sun was a dirty orange colour from the burning ruins of nearby cities, and the sky had the
colour of muddy water. Soot and ash drifted down like dirty snow, and the smell of smoke had been with
me for weeks. On both sides of the road the trees were either burnt or smouldering, and the road itself
was torn and savaged by the bombing. Most of the time the truck that carried me could skirt the craters,
but sometimes we had to stop and dig ourselves a path.
Looking back, it seems such a strange and alien scene, out of place in our world. Yet all battlegrounds
must have been similar, whether of the Crusades, Poitiers, the American Civil War, or any from the
Twentieth Century. In the future they will be the same, because wars of the future will be all the wars that
ever were. That is my theory, at least: I am an elderly Lutheran minister now, and have no technical
expertise. I have only my memories for evidence, and the events are forty years old as I write.
As we neared the airfield I saw thicker smoke rising up ahead, and from time to time could hear an
explosion above the truck's engine.
"So the Allies still pay their respects to this airfield?" I said to the driver.
"Yes, last night, and the night before that," he replied wearily. "They bomb the runways, they bomb the
forest, they even bomb the wreckage of earlier bombings. How can they have so many bombs?"
"They must know that our jet interceptors still operate from here. They are powerless against our jets
in the air, so they bomb them on the ground. It is no different at the Lechfeld airbase, or anywhere else."
The road disappeared amid a tangle of torn earth and smashed trees, and the driver slowly picked his
way through the burning woods. The trees thinned out, and gave way to mounds of rubble and twisted
steel. The burned out wreckage of aircraft littered the ground, looming out of the smoke like the
skeletons of dragons as we passed. It was worse, much worse, than at the Lechfeld airbase.
"Is anything left at all?" I asked the driver.
"Not much," he replied with a shrug. "There are a few of the underground hangars that the bombs have
missed, enough runway intact to get the jets into the air, but that's all. Fuel and spares for the jets are
nearly all gone."
"And what of the new super-fighter, the 'flying-wing'?"
"I saw it land yesterday, at dusk. It really was only two wings, with jet engines either side of the
cockpit. Think of a huge bat and you have some idea. Something strange about the pilot, too. His uniform
is clean, and I have seen him smoke five cigarettes since last night."
The road became a runway. Emaciated figures in striped, ragged uniforms struggled to repair the
surface with shovels, carrying the earth in baskets, while guards strode among them, shouting and waving
their weapons.
"Terrible, terrible," I muttered.
The driver nodded. "The surface is terrible, but it's the best we can do." We turned off down a
dispersal track. Ahead of us two doors slid aside in a mound of earth, revealing an underground hangar.
The truck entered, and the doors closed. Paraffin lamps hung from the roof, and the floor was littered
with aircraft spares, radio equipment, drums of fuel and ammunition. An officer came over to the truck as
I climbed down.
"Oberleutnant Willy Hirth?" he asked in a hoarse voice as we saluted.
 "Yes. I am to meet a Major Schwartz with a consignment."