Free iron pirate by Unknown Author Page B

the enlarged, military airfield there. Bombers and fighters could supply immediate cover, as well as mount an attack on enemy convoys or inquisitive submarines.
    Routine took over once again, and after the fuel bunkers had been topped up from lighters, they settled down to wait.
    Less than twenty-four hours after dropping anchor Hechler received a brief but impatient signal. He was to fly immediately to Kiel. After the uncertainty and the mystery of his orders it was something of an anti-climax. But as he was ferried ashore and then driven at reckless speed to the airfield in an army staff car, the choice of Bod$ as a lair for his ship became all the more evident. Everything was planned to the last detail, as if he had no hand in anything. He did not even know what to tell Theil before he left. He might even be going to Germany only to be informed he was relieved, that perhaps Theil was taking command after all.
    The aircraft, a veteran Junkers three-engined transport, arrived at Kiel in the late afternoon.
    Hechler had been dozing in his seat, not because he was tired but mainly to avoid a shouted conversation with an army colonel who spent much of the four-hour flight fortifying himself from a silver flask.
    As the plane tilted steeply to begin its final approach Hechler got his first glimpse of Kiel through a low cloud bank. He had not returned there for about a year and he was unable to drag his eyes from the devastation. Whole areas had been wiped out, so that only the streets gave any hint of what had once been there. There was smoke too, from a recent air raid or an uncontrollable fire, he could not tell. He had seen plenty of it in five years of war. Poland, Russia, even in the ship's last bombardment he had watched the few remaining houses blasted into fragments.
    Smokey sunlight glinted momentarily on water and he saw the sweeping expanse of the naval dockyard before that too was blotted out by cloud.
    It was hard to distinguish serviceable vessels from the wrecks in the harbour. He saw fallen derricks and gantrys, great slicks of oil on the surface, black craters instead of busy slipways and docks.
    In such chaos it was astonishing to see the towering shape of the naval memorial at Laboe, somehow unscathed, as was the familiar, gothic-style water-tower, like a fortress amidst a battlefield.
    The drunken colonel peered over his shoulder and said hoarsely, 'We'll make them pay for this!' He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. 'My whole family was killed. Gone. Nothing left.'
    The plane glided through the clouds and moments later bumped along the runway. Here again was evidence of a city under siege. Sandbagged gun emplacements with grim-faced helmeted crews lined each runway. Parties of men were busy repairing buildings and filling in craters. It seemed a far cry from Prinz Luitpold's ordered world and Leitner's luxurious headquarters.
    It felt strange to be here, he thought. More so to be amongst his fellow countrymen, to hear his own language in every dialect around him.
    A camouflaged staff car w r as waiting and a tired-looking lieutenant seemed eager to get him away from the airfield before another alert was sounded.
    No wonder some of his returning ship's company had seemed so worried and anxious. If all major towns and cities were like this - he did not allow his mind to dwell on it.
    Naval Operations had been moved to a new, underground headquarters, but before they reached it Hechler saw scenes of desolation he had not imagined possible. There were lines of men and women queuing at mobile soup-kitchens, their drawn and dusty faces no different from those he had seen on refugees in Poland.
    They drove past a platoon of marching soldiers who carried spades and shovels instead of rifles. They were all in step and swinging their arms. Some looked very young and all were singing in the staccato manner of infantrymen everywhere. But their faces were quite empty, and even their NCO forgot to salute the staff car.
    The