Bear Grylls: The Hunt

by Bear Grylls

Genres: Action & Adventure; Military Thrillers; Terrorism & Assassination Thrillers

Synopsis

THE HUNT IS ON FOR JAEGER 1945, and the Nazis' grand plans are in disarray. Defeat is imminent, so in a last attempt to protect their legacy, the high command hides their store of uranium deep underground, ready for them to fight another day. 2018, and ex-SAS soldier Will Jaeger stumbles upon this horrible truth. But the uranium is missing and, when he learns his wife Ruth has also been kidnapped, he's certain the enemy is on the move once more. That much uranium in the wrong hands could devastate the world. It's up to Jaeger and his team to find it before their worst fears are realised. But the enemy is always one step ahead, pushing Jaeger to the limit of his endurance. The danger is real, and the people who hold Ruth have a score to settle. It's a race against time. And the clock is ticking . . . * * * * * * * * What readers say about Bear Grylls: 'bloody brilliant! Absolute page turner, haven't been able to put it down' Goodreads review of Ghost Flight, 5 stars 'Bond and Bourne have good company in Jaeger' Amazon review of Burning Angels, 5 stars 'Will resonate with fans of classic spy thrillers' Mail on Sunday 'Great action and what an amazing story ' Amazon review of Burning Angels, 5 stars 'watch out Dirk Pitt or Jack Reacher, there's a new man on the block' Goodreads review of Ghost Flight, 5 stars 'Unputdownable!' Sir Ranulph Fiennes 'will keep you reading well into the early hours of the morning' Goodreads review of Burning Angels 'Will Jeager is James Bond on steroids' Goodreads review of Burning Angels, 5 stars ' Couldn't stop reading this book, every lunch break I was reading away!' Amazon review of Ghost Flight, 5 stars 'A gripping thriller set in the darkest of days' Jonathan Ross

Release date: May 31, 2018

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 369

Sample

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Daily Express, 21 May 1945

SECRET ARMY FOUGHT NAZI ATOM BOMB Four men hid three months in white hell

It can be revealed today that for five years British and German scientists fought their own war-within-a-war. They fought to perfect the atom bomb, which, with the most explosive force in the world, would have given either side walkover superiority.

But it was no war of theorists only. British and Norwegian paratroopers fought it out too, with Wehrmacht men and their quisling supporters, in the white hell of the storm-swept Hardanger Plateau in Norway.

The Germans opened the fight in the summer of 1940. A few weeks after moving into Norway, they seized the vast hydroelectrical works at Rjukan. These works, fed by the famous ‘smoking-cascade’ waterfall, supply electricity plentifully. And plentiful electricity was essential to the German plan and to the arms plant they intended to set up at Rjukan.

Their plan was to split the atom.

At Rjukan the Norwegians produced large quantities of a substance known as ‘heavy water’.

Heavy water contains atoms of hydrogen twice as heavy as those contained in ordinary water, from which it can be made electronically . . .

Scientists the world over had experimented with heavy water and they believed that if they treated the metal uranium with it, under great force, they could split the atom of uranium.

And in so doing they would release terrific energy – and produce a catastrophic explosion.

There are many technical difficulties but the Germans may have been near solving them.

 

 

 

Mail Online, Allan Hall, 10 June 2014

Did US fake top Nazi’s WWII suicide and spirit him away to get hands on Hitler’s secret weapons programme?

The blood of thousands on his hands, SS General Hans Kammler killed himself in 1945 in the dying days of Hitler’s Germany.

That, at least, was his official fate. The man steeped in the horrors of the death camps had met his just deserts.

However, it is now claimed that Kammler survived the war, spirited away to America and given a new identity by the US authorities.

For the general wasn’t just an expert in the technicalities of industrial-scale slavery and slaughter, he was also deeply involved in the Nazis’ secret weapons programme. The Americans, according to a TV documentary, were determined to have his know-how and not let him fall into the hands of the Russians.

Both the US and the Soviet Union tried to recruit Hitler’s scientists after the war to help with their own space and military programmes. But it is claimed that Kammler’s record was so monstrous that his death had to be faked and he had to have a new identity.

‘The whole history of suicide is staged,’ said Berlin historian Rainer Karlsch. ‘There are several documents that clearly demonstrate that Kammler was captured by the Americans.’

Another expert, Matthias Uhl of the German Historical Institute in Moscow, said: ‘The reports from America are more credible than those given about the alleged suicide by Kammler’s associates.’

Born in 1901, by the end of the Second World War Kammler was almost as powerful as SS Chief Heinrich Himmler and armaments minister Albert Speer. He had access to the Nazis’ most advanced technology, including the ‘weapons of retaliation’ – the V-1 and V-2 rockets that caused death and destruction in Britain but came too late to turn the tide of the conflict.

He was also involved in the construction of death camps, including the design of the crematoria at Auschwitz which incinerated most of the bodies of the estimated 1.2 million people murdered at the camp in occupied Poland.

The history books say that, one day after the Third Reich surrendered on 9 May 1945, he either shot himself or took poison in the former German city of Stettin, now Szczecin in Poland. His body was never found.

‘This whole story of suicide was staged by two of his closest aides who were committed to him,’ Karlsch told ZDF TV in Germany.

At the war’s end America, while taking part in the punishment of many top Nazis at the Nuremberg trials, also launched the covert Operation Paperclip – the secret exit of top Nazi scientists.

ZDF says in the documentary: ‘Sources say that Kammler was captured by the Americans and interrogated by the US Counterintelligence CIC. The secret service man responsible was Donald Richardson, a personal confidant of Allied supreme commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower.’

The sons of the secret service man told programme makers that their father was in charge of the German weapons expert after 1945.

One of them, John Richardson, said: ‘This engineer brought a special treasure from the Third Reich into the United States. He offered us modern weapons.

‘It was put to my father that he should bring this “useful” German into the United States to prevent him from falling into the hands of the Russian intelligence service.’

It is not revealed under what name Kammler lived or when he died, though some archival material speaks of a ‘special guest’ living under Richardson’s wing.

 

 

Daily Telegraph, Justin Huggler, 22 January 2015

NAZIS ‘BUILT UNDERGROUND NUCLEAR WEAPONS FACILITY USING SLAVE LABOUR’

Austrian documentary-maker believes he has uncovered a sealed complex of underground tunnels in the town where notorious Gusen II concentration camp was, larger than previously thought.

 

New evidence has emerged of a possible underground nuclear weapons facility built by the Nazis that has lain secret since the Second World War.

Andreas Sulzer, an Austrian documentary-maker, has put forward documentary evidence he claims to have uncovered that a sealed complex of underground tunnels built by the Nazis in Austria using slave labour may be far larger than previously thought, and include rocket launch silos.

Mr Sulzer has previously claimed higher than normal levels of radioactivity in the area are a sign the complex was used to develop nuclear weapons – although local authorities have disputed the results of radiation tests.

The possibility that the Nazis were close to developing an atomic bomb towards the end of the Second World War remains one of history’s unanswered questions. There have been persistent rumours of a secret nuclear weapons programme in the final years of the war, but no proof.

Mr Sulzer believes he has found it in a complex of underground tunnels near the town of St Georgen an der Gusen in Austria that have lain largely undisturbed since the 1950s.

The town was the site of the notorious Gusen II concentration camp, one of the Mauthausen-Gusen group, where forced labourers were worked to death. Some 320,000 people are believed to have died in the camps.

The inmates of Gusen II were made to dig the huge Bergkristall underground complex where V-2 rockets and the Messerschmitt Me 262, the world’s first jet fighter, were built.

Mr Sulzer believes the network of tunnels he has discovered nearby may have been a separate facility of the Bergkristall project.

But while the main Bergkristall complex was extensively investigated by the Allies after the end of the war, the Nazis appear to have gone to far greater lengths to conceal the second complex, sealing the entrance with huge granite slabs, and it has remained largely undisturbed.

 

1

Austria, 24 April 1945

They had been partying for hours.

The Allied guns might be pounding the German positions not twenty miles to the west, but these men in their smart Hitler Youth uniforms were drinking as if there was no tomorrow.

Patriotic songs echoed around the damp rock-hewn walls – the ‘SS Marschiert in Feindsland’ – ‘The Devil’s Song’ – being tonight’s favourite. The verses had been belted out time and time again.

 

The SS marches into enemy land,

And sings a devil’s song . . .

We fight for Germany,

We fight for Hitler . . .

 

The beer steins had long run dry, but the schnapps had kept flowing, glass after glass being slammed down onto the bare wooden tables, the noise echoing like gunshots off the rough walls.

Though feigning high spirits, SS General Hans Kammler – hawk-faced, sunken-eyed, blonde hair swept back from his high forehead – had barely touched a drop.

He ran a gimlet eye around the vast space, lit by a dozen lanterns. The beast of a weapons system that was secreted within the bowels of this mountain had feasted upon electricity, but forty-eight hours ago, the power had been cut and the machine shut down – hence tonight’s flickering illumination, casting grotesque shadows upon the curving walls.

Toast after toast had been drunk to the young men gathered here. Fired up with Nazism and a skinful of schnapps, they would hardly baulk at what was coming. There should be no eleventh-hour objections or last-minute nerves. And for sure, Kammler couldn’t afford there to be any, for further back in the shadows of this tunnel complex was hidden the Reich’s greatest ever secret.

It represented the fruit of the labours of Nazi Germany’s foremost scientists – the Uranverein. Together they had produced a Wunderwaffe – a wonder weapon – without equal.

Kammler’s grand plan – and arguably the SS high command’s most Machiavellian operation – relied upon the Uranverein’s work remaining hidden from the advancing Allies. Hence the coming sacrifice – an entirely necessary one as far as the general was concerned.

He glanced upwards momentarily. A narrow shaft rose almost vertically to the starlit heavens: a ventilation duct. These sixty young men would awaken to the dawn light filtering through with the mother of all hangovers. But that would be the least of their worries, he reflected grimly.

The tall, lean SS general rose to his feet. He took his ceremonial sword, its heavy hilt decorated with the distinctive skull-like SS death’s head, and rapped it on the table. Gradually the din subsided, and a new cry was taken up in its place.

‘Das Werwolf! Das Werwolf! Das Werwolf!’

Over and over the chant was repeated, growing in frenzied volume.

This army of fanatical young Nazis believed that they were readying themselves to wage a diehard war of resistance against the Allies. They had been given the name the Werewolves, and their supposed leader was SS General Kammler himself – Das Werwolf – the key orchestrator of tonight’s gathering.

‘Kameraden!’ Kammler cried, still trying to silence the din. ‘Kameraden!’

Gradually the chanting subsided.

‘Kameraden, you have drunk well! Toasts fit for heroes of the Reich! But now the time for celebration is over. The moment for launching the Great Resistance is upon us. Today, this hour, you will strike a glorious and momentous blow. What you safeguard here will win us the ultimate victory. With your heroic efforts, we will rise up in the enemy’s rear! With your efforts, we will wield a weapon that renders us invincible! With your efforts, the enemies of the Reich will be vanquished!’

Wild cheers broke out afresh, the noise rebounding off the walls.

The general raised his shot glass: a final toast. ‘To seizing victory from the jaws of defeat! To the Thousand Year Reich! To the Führer . . . Heil Hitler!’

‘Heil Hitler!’

Kammler slammed down his glass. He’d allowed that one shot of schnapps to burn down his throat: Dutch courage for what was coming, for the one part in tonight’s proceedings that he really did not relish.

But that would come later.

‘To your stations!’ he called. ‘To your positions! It is 0500 hours and we blow the charges shortly.’ He ran his gaze around the gathered throng. ‘I will return. We will return. And when we come to free you from this place, we will do so with unassailable strength.’ He paused. ‘The darkest hour is just before the dawn – and this will prove the dawn of a glorious new Nazi ascendancy!’

More wild cheering.

Kammler thumped his free hand on the table with a fierce finality. ‘To action! To victory!’

The last of the drinks were downed, and figures began hurrying hither and thither. Kammler followed their movements with his cold gaze. Everywhere seemed to be a hive of activity, which was just as he wanted it. He couldn’t afford for any soldier to have second thoughts or attempt to slip away.

Having made one last check deep in the guts of the cave to ensure that the massive steel blast doors were firmly closed and bolted, Kammler made his way towards the shadowed entranceway, where men were bent over spools of wire and detonation boxes, busy with last-minute preparations.

With a final word of encouragement, the general strode out of the entrance to Tunnel 88, as the vast edifice was known. In truth, Kammler had no idea how many tunnels made up this gargantuan complex. Certainly, hundreds of thousands of concentration camp inmates had died here, excavating the honeycomb of passageways that bored into the bowels of the mountain.

Not that he gave a damn. He was the architect of much of the mass murder. The genius behind it. Those who had perished here – Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, Poles; the Untermenschen, sub-humans – had got what they deserved. As far as he was concerned this was their birthright.

No, this was called Tunnel 88 for entirely different reasons. H being the eighth letter of the alphabet, 88 was thus SS code for ‘HH’ – or Heil Hitler. It had been named at the personal request of Der Oberste Führer der Schutzstaffel – the supreme commander of the SS, Hitler himself. In this place would be preserved the greatest achievement of Nazi Germany, something that might breathe life once more into the Thousand Year Reich.

For a moment Kammler paused to adjust his cap. It seemed to have fallen a little awry during the partying. As he did so, his fingers brushed against the SS Totenkopft – the death’s head – emblazoned on its front: blank, empty eye sockets staring into the distance, lipless mouth fixed in a maniacal grin.

It was a more than fitting emblem for what was coming.

 

2

Cap straightened, Kammler turned to speak to the figure at his side, who was dressed in the uniform of a staff sergeant in the SS. This man too had barely touched a drop of alcohol.

‘Konrad, my car, if you will. As soon as the charges blow, we will be on our way.’

Scharführer Konrad Weber gave a smart heel-click and hurried away. Old for his rank – not much younger than Kammler himself – Weber had never married and had no children. The Reich, and the SS in particular, was everything to him. His surrogate family.

Kammler turned back to face the mountainside that towered before him. Already the first bluish hints of dawn were streaking across the heavens, reminding him of the need to get this done. At this hour – this witching hour – few should notice the explosions, not that there were likely to be any witnesses. For days now Kammler had had his troops scouring the terrain to all sides, clearing it of hapless civilians.

From behind he heard the crunch of tyres on the single dirt track that led into this remote region. Hooded headlamps, partially blacked out to hide them from any marauding Allied night fighters, pierced the gloom.

Kammler smiled. Excellent: the ever-loyal Konrad at the wheel of his staff car.

The headlamps illuminated the scene before him, casting it into dull light and shadow. Thick pine forest clung to the lower slopes, making the yawning entrance to Tunnel 88 – and the series of similar openings to either side – all but invisible. From each sprouted a tangle of wires, set all along the rock face.

Kammler waited for his driver to park the vehicle, noting that he left the engine running just as he’d been ordered. Scharführer Weber was a good man, and he had proved an utterly loyal servant. An unspoken understanding – an instinctive empathy – had developed between them.

A pity, in view of what was coming.

A hand emerged from the darkness: it was Scharführer Weber’s, holding out the handset of the field telephone.

‘Sir.’

Kammler took it. ‘Thank you. Wait in the vehicle. Just as soon as I have finished, we will be off – the same route as we came in.’

‘Yes, Herr General.’

The car door slammed.

Kammler spoke into the handset. ‘Herr Obersturmführer, you are ready?’

‘Yes, Herr General.’

‘Very good. Proceed when you see my staff car stop at the edge of the clearing. But give me time to dismount, so that I can personally witness this glorious spectacle.’

‘Yes, Herr General. Understood. Heil Hitler.’

‘Heil Hitler.’

Kammler opened the passenger door of the car and slid onto the polished black leather seat, signalling for Scharführer Weber to drive. The smooth Horch V8 engine rumbled throatily as the vehicle pulled away. A minute later, where the sandy track snaked off into the thick cover of the fir trees, Kammler signalled a halt.

‘Just here will be fine.’

He swung his polished leather boots out of the vehicle and stood, facing the direction of the escarpment. As the early rays of dawn peeked over the mountains to the east, they burnished the rock face before him a golden bronze.

Kammler leant on the passenger door, bracing himself for what was coming. As he did so, his thick leather coat fell open a little, revealing the compact Walther PPK pistol he had strapped in a holster at his hip.

He brushed his hand against it, just as he had done with his death’s-head cap, checking that it was within easy reach.

Soon now.

Kammler forced his mouth wide open, signalling to his driver to do likewise, and the two SS men faced the mountain, gaping like fish. Even this far away, they needed to take precautions, for a blast this powerful could blow their eardrums.

The explosion, when it came, was all Kammler had hoped it would be.

A series of blasts flashed outwards from the trigger point – Tunnel 88 – the detonation cords igniting with such speed that they appeared indistinguishable from each other. All along a four-hundred-yard front the rock face seemed to dissolve as one, transforming itself into a whirling mass of shattered rubble.

The entire escarpment appeared to rise momentarily as it disintegrated into pulverised granite and boulders. The blast vomited hundreds of tonnes of shattered rock, which began to crash back down in a crushing tidal wave.

An instant later, the shock wave hit the two watchers, rocking the car alarmingly on its springs and tearing at Kammler’s cap and his thick leather coat before hammering into the forest to their rear. It was followed almost immediately by the sound wave, an impossible roaring and snarling that broke over them and bored into their heads.

Eventually it dissipated and Kammler straightened up. The sheer power of the explosion had sent him into a defensive crouch – not that he or Scharführer Weber had been in any great danger. He brushed down his coat, removing the thin film of white dust that had been carried with the blast.

He kept his eyes glued to the mountainside. When the air finally began to clear, he found himself marvelling at what he saw. Just as he’d intended, it looked as if a massive rock slide had obliterated one entire side of the mountain.

Here and there a dark slash of red indicated where a rich vein of minerals – iron, perhaps – had been torn asunder and slewed down the slope. Uprooted trees lay like heaps of scattered matchwood, crushed under the weight of the rock. But crucially, there was no sign – not the barest hint – of the tunnel complex that now lay hidden behind the wall of debris, not to mention the sixty young soldiers entombed therein.

Kammler gave a satisfied nod. ‘Good. We go,’ he announced simply.

Scharführer Weber slipped into the driver’s seat and blipped the throttle. Kammler clambered in beside him and, with a last look at the dust-enshrouded scene, signalled the staff sergeant to move off.

The dark forest swallowed them. For a few minutes they drove in silence, or at least comparative silence. Even at this hour the hollow crump of artillery could be heard in the distance. The cursed Americans: how they loved to flaunt their military superiority over the Wehrmacht.

It was Weber who broke the quiet. ‘Where to, Herr General? Once we make the metalled road?’

‘Where indeed, Konrad? Where indeed?’ Kammler mused. ‘With the Americans and British to one side, and the Russians to the other, where do we of the Schutzstaffel turn?’

For a long moment Weber seemed unsure of how to answer, or even whether an answer was expected. Finally he must have presumed that it was.

‘To the Werewolves, Herr General? To seek out their headquarters?’

‘Indeed, Konrad, a good thought,’ Kammler answered, staring out of the window at the dark trees. ‘A fine suggestion. That’s if they had one. A headquarters. But I suspect that no such thing can be found.’

Scharführer Weber looked puzzled. ‘But Herr General, a movement such as the Werewolves . . . Surely . . .’

Kammler glanced at his driver. The younger man was doubtless fitter too, so he would need to be careful. ‘Surely what, Konrad?’

Weber’s hands gripped the wheel more tightly. ‘Well, Herr General, how long can our Kameraden beneath the mountain hold out? They will need to be relieved. Dug out of there. As we promised they would be.’

‘No, Konrad. Correction. As I promised. You promised nothing.’

Weber nodded, keeping his eyes on the route ahead. ‘Of course, Herr General.’

The track swung down to cross a rock-strewn riverbed. Scharführer Weber would need to be extra careful not to get a puncture here, or damage an axle.

Kammler stared ahead, eyes piercing the gloom of the dawn forest. ‘If you could pull over, Konrad.’ He feigned a smile. ‘Even an SS general has at times the need to pee.’ He gestured at the river crossing. ‘Perhaps when we make the far side.’

‘Of course, Herr General.’

They crawled across the rough ground, the car groaning and bucking with every turn of the wheels. Once over, Weber pulled to a halt and Kammler climbed out of the car, taking several paces into the forest as if to relieve himself in private.

Once he was out of sight, he eased the Walther PPK out of its holster and cocked it. He was ready.

 

3

Kammler slid back into his seat.

‘I continue, Herr General?’ Scharführer Weber queried.

Kammler ignored the question. ‘Sadly, Konrad, none of those young men in that tunnel are destined to survive. Like so many others, they will have given their lives for the glory of the Reich.’

‘But, Herr General, we told them—’

‘Wrong again, Konrad,’ Kammler cut in. ‘I told them. If they have been misled, it is none of your doing.’

‘Of course, Herr General. But . . .’

‘You wish to know why. Very well. I will explain.’ Kammler gestured ahead. ‘Drive if you will.’

Weber eased the car into gear, the dappled sunlight sending beams of light lancing through the thick tree cover, throwing the interior of the Horch into sharp light and shadow.

‘Sadly, no one who has witnessed the hiding place of the Uranmaschine can be permitted to live,’ Kammler continued. ‘The reason is simple: the enemy will make those they capture talk, just as we would. That we cannot allow to happen.’

Weber changed up a gear, increasing speed as the track levelled out. A deer, startled by their appearance, darted away at their passing.

‘There will be an ordered and quiet vanishing of the senior ranks of the Schutzstaffel,’ Kammler continued. ‘This we have been planning for some time, ever since it became clear that the enemy would win this phase of the war. We will melt away, to rebuild and fight anew. This will take time; decades even. We have been preparing for many months: the funds, the weaponry, the individuals – key scientists, top leaders – all spirited away to carefully selected safe havens. This we have dubbed Aktion Werwolf – a long-term strategy to forge the Reich anew. It is we who are the real Werewolves.’

Kammler paused. Beneath his coat, he checked that he had a round chambered, his index finger seeking out the cold metal of the cocked breech.

‘As for any resistance, I am afraid it will come to nothing,’ he continued. ‘There is no one left to fight. We have thrown everything into the defence of the Fatherland: the old, the young, the war-wounded and the lame; women and girls even. But all to no avail. It is Aktion Werwolf that offers the only real chance of ultimate victory.’

The staff sergeant glanced at him from the corner of his eye. ‘But those young men? Those to whom you promised—’

‘Doomed,’ Kammler cut in coldly, matter-of-factly. ‘They will neither suffocate nor starve. It will be their water supplies that will run out on them.’ He shrugged. ‘Just a few dozen lives lost, and all for the sake of the Reich. It is but a small sacrifice, wouldn’t you agree, Konrad? We all have to be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice.’

Scharführer Weber nodded, understanding slowly dawning upon him. ‘Yes, Herr General, of course, if it is for the good of the Reich . . .’ He glanced across at his commander. ‘But tell me, how may I be a part of this Aktion Werwolf? How might I serve?’

Kammler sighed. ‘A good question. Of course, any SS caught by the enemy are unlikely to be treated well. We have all heard the stories, especially those of the cursed Reds. We are the Führer’s chosen, so the Russians hate us. And the British and Americans hardly like us a great deal more . . . Which is why I am very likely doing you a favour, Konrad.’

With that, the general eased his weapon out of its hiding place and shot his driver in the head. Moving quickly, he shoved the body to one side, grabbing the steering wheel, and the vehicle came to a halt, the dead driver’s foot having eased off the accelerator.

Kammler stared at the bloodied corpse. ‘No one means no one, I’m afraid. No one who might talk . . . You, my dear Konrad, have made the ultimate sacrifice, but you still have one last duty to fulfil.’

He slipped out of the passenger seat, opened the driver’s door and dragged the dead man’s body outside. He proceeded to remove Weber’s bloodied uniform, before changing out of his own and into that of his staff sergeant.

That done, he dressed his erstwhile driver in his own clothes, stuffing a wallet and papers into the dead man’s pockets. The preparations made by the SS high command had been exhaustive: the papers consisted of forged documents combining Kammler’s real identity with a photo of his driver.

When he was done, SS General Kammler was attired in the blood-spattered uniform of a man sixteen ranks lower than his own. If he were captured by the enemy – and he did not intend to be captured – he would stand a good chance of evading notice or retribution.

He dragged the corpse around to the passenger side and bundled it inside. Then, sliding behind the wheel on a seat slick with blood, he began to drive.

After thirty minutes, the Horch emerged from the rough track onto a minor tarred road. K. . .