The Last Heroes Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  W.E.B. GRIFFIN’S ACCLAIMED BESTSELLERS

  BLOOD AND HONOR

  ‘‘ROUSING . . . AN IMMENSELY ENTERTAINING ADVENTURE. ’’

  —Kirkus Reviews

  ‘‘INTRICATELY PLOTTED and packed with those accurate details that fans of Griffin have come to expect.’’

  —Booklist

  HONOR BOUND

  ‘‘A TAUTLY WRITTEN STORY whose twists and turns will keep readers guessing until the last page.’’

  —Publishers Weekly

  ‘‘A SUPERIOR WAR STORY!’’

  —Library Journal

  W.E.B. GRIFFIN’S CLASSIC SERIES

  THE CORPS

  W.E.B. Griffin’s bestselling saga of the heroes

  we call Marines . . .

  "THE BEST CHRONICLER OF THE U.S. MILITARY EVER TO PUT PEN TO PAPER.’’

  —The Phoenix Gazette

  ‘‘A BRILLIANT STORY . . . NOT ONLY WORTHWHILE, IT’S A PUBLIC SERVICE."

  —The Washington Times

  ‘‘GREAT READING. A superb job of mingling fact and fiction . . . [Griffin’s] characters come to life.’’

  —The Sunday Oklahoman

  ‘‘THIS MAN HAS REALLY DONE HIS HOMEWORK . . . I confess to impatiently awaiting the appearance of succeeding books in the series.’’

  —The Washington Post

  ‘‘ACTION-PACKED . . . DIFFICULT TO PUT DOWN.’’

  —Marine Corps Gazette

  BROTHERHOOD OF WAR

  A sweeping military epic of the United States Army that

  became a New York Times bestselling phenomenon.

  ‘‘A MAJOR WORK . . . MAGNIFICENT . . . POWERFUL . . . If books about warriors and the women who love them were given medals for authenticity, insight, and honesty, Brotherhood of War would be covered with them.’’

  —William Bradford Huie, author of The Klansman and The Execution of Private Slovik

  ‘‘Brotherhood of War gets into the hearts and minds of those who by choice or circumstance are called upon to fight our nation’s wars.’’

  —William R. Corson, Lt. Col. (Ret.) U.S.M.C., author of The Betrayal and The Armies of Ignorance

  ‘‘Captures the rhythms of army life and speech, its rewards and deprivations . . . A WELL-WRITTEN, ABSORBING ACCOUNT.’’

  —Publishers Weekly

  "REFLECTS THE FLAVOR OF WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE A PROFESSIONAL SOLDIER.’’

  —Frederick Downs, author of The Killing Zone

  ‘‘LARGE, EXCITING, FAST-MOVING.’’

  —Shirley Ann Grau, author of The Keepers of the House

  ‘‘A MASTER STORYTELLER who makes sure each book stands on its own.’’

  —Newport News Daily Press

  "GRIFFIN HAS BEEN CALLED THE LOUIS L’AMOUR OF MILITARY FICTION, AND WITH GOOD REASON.’’

  —Chattanooga Times Free Press

  BADGE OF HONOR

  W.E.B. Griffin’s electrifying epic series of a

  big-city police force . . .

  ‘‘DAMN EFFECTIVE . . . He captivates you with characters the way few authors can.’’

  —Tom Clancy

  ‘‘TOUGH, AUTHENTIC . . . POLICE DRAMA AT ITS BEST . . . Readers will feel as if they’re part of the investigation, and the true-to-life characters will soon feel like old friends. Excellent reading.’’

  —Dale Brown, bestselling author of Day of the Cheetah and Hammerheads

  ‘‘COLORFUL . . . GRITTY . . . TENSE.’’

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  ‘‘A REAL WINNER.’’

  —New York Daily News

  ‘‘NOT SINCE JOSEPH WAMBAUGH have we been treated to a police story of the caliber that Griffin gives us. He creates a story about real people in a real world doing things that are AS REAL AS TODAY’S HEADLINES."

  —Harold Coyle, bestselling author of Team Yankee and Sword Point

  "FANS OF ED MCBAIN’S 87TH PRECINCT NOVELS BETTER MAKE ROOM ON THEIR SHELVES . . . Badge of Honor is first and foremost the story of the people who solve the crimes. The characters come alive.’’

  —The Times (Gainesville, GA)

  ‘‘GRITTY, FAST-PACED . . . AUTHENTIC.’’

  —Richard Herman, author of The Warbirds

  Also by W. E. B. Griffin

  HONOR BOUND

  HONOR BOUND

  BLOOD AND HONOR

  SECRET HONOR

  BROTHERHOOD OF WAR

  BOOK I: THE LIEUTENANTS

  BOOK II: THE CAPTAINS

  BOOK III: THE MAJORS

  BOOK IV: THE COLONELS

  BOOK V: THE BERETS

  BOOK VI: THE GENERALS

  BOOK VII: THE NEW BREED

  BOOK VIII: THE AVIATORS

  BOOK IX: SPECIAL OPS

  THE CORPS

  BOOK I: SEMPER FI

  BOOK II: CALL TO ARMS

  BOOK III: COUNTERATTACK

  BOOK IV: BATTLEGROUND

  BOOK V: LINE OF FIRE

  BOOK VI: CLOSE COMBAT

  BOOK VII: BEHIND THE LINES

  BOOK VIII: IN DANGER’S PATH

  BOOK IX: UNDER FIRE

  BOOK X: RETREAT, HELL!

  BADGE OF HONOR

  BOOK I: MEN IN BLUE

  BOOK II: SPECIAL OPERATIONS

  BOOK III: THE VICTIM

  BOOK IV: THE WITNESS

  BOOK V: THE ASSASSIN

  BOOK VI: THE MURDERERS

  BOOK VII: THE INVESTIGATORS

  BOOK VIII: FINAL JUSTICE

  MEN AT WAR

  BOOK I: THE LAST HEROES

  BOOK II: THE SECRET WARRIORS

  BOOK III: THE SOLDIER SPIES

  BOOK IV: THE FIGHTING AGENTS

  PRESIDENTIAL AGENT

  BOOK I: BY ORDER OF THE PRESIDENT

  BOOK II: THE HOSTAGE

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  THE LAST HEROES

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the a
uthor

  PRINTING HISTORY

  G. P. Putnam’s Sons edition / June 1997

  Jove edition / September 1998

  Copyright © 1985 by W.E.B. Griffin, originally published under the pseudonym Alex Baldwin.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form

  without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in

  violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-436-21971-6

  JOVE®

  Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  JOVE and the “J” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Lieutenant Aaron Bank, Infantry, AUS, detailed OSS

  (later, Colonel, Special Forces),

  and

  Lieutenant William E. Colby, Infantry, AUS, detailed OSS

  (later, Ambassador, and Director, CIA).

  They set the standards, as Jedburgh Team Leaders operating

  in German-occupied France and Norway, for valor, wisdom,

  patriotism, and personal integrity, which thousands who

  followed in their steps in the OSS and CIA tried to emulate.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Nothing ever written

  about Washington

  is true.

  PROLOGUE

  In January 1939, Professor Niels Bohr, a German physicist who had fled Germany and was then living in Copenhagen, traveled to the United States and visited with Professor Albert Einstein, a German mathematician who had also fled Germany and was then living in Princeton, New Jersey.

  Among other things, they discussed an interesting phenomenon observed when uranium, a natural element, was bombarded with neutrons: barium and krypton were formed, indicating that the uranium atom had been split into two nearly equal fragments.

  Professor Bohr further discussed this phenomenon, which he called fission, with a number of other eminent scientists. Among these was Professor Enrico Fermi (then of the University of Chicago). At a conference in Washington, D.C., on January 26, 1939, Fermi suggested that neutrons might be released during fission, and if this were the case, a continuous disintegration—a ‘‘chain reaction’’—might be possible. Fermi believed that such a chain reaction might release energy of a rather stunning magnitude.

  The first contact between the scientific community and the government concerning nuclear fission took place in March 1939, when Professor George B. Pegram of Columbia University arranged for Fermi to discuss the matter with certain officers of the U.S. Navy.

  Energy yields were of considerable importance to the U.S. Navy, whose engineers were constantly striving to extract a few more British thermal units from each gallon of bunker fuel oil and aviation gasoline. An increase of fifty percent in energy yield would give whoever owned the secret a tremendous advantage over his enemy, and these respectable scientists were talking of greater than tenfold or even hundredfold energy increases.

  And even if there were technical drawbacks that would keep the Navy’s fuel tanks from getting a sudden miracle energy boost, perhaps there was something in this mysterious process that would work for ammunition. Increasing the power of a cannon shell was always a welcome possibility.

  Professor Fermi told the naval officers that though he didn’t have any precise figures, still, as an educated guess, fission of one hundred pounds of uranium 235 would probably release as much energy as twenty thousand tons of an explosive like, say, trinitrotoluene, commonly called TNT.

  The Navy found that fascinating and asked if there was much interest in this sort of thing in Europe. Professor Fermi said there was. The Germans seemed curious about the subject. And there were uraninite mines in Germany.

  The Navy inquired if mining and refining this new explosive was difficult.

  Professor Fermi sadly indicated that it was, since not just any uranium would do. The kind of uranium required for a chain reaction, uranium 235, was an isotope, one part in 140. The current total world’s supply of pure uranium 235, he told them, was 0.000001 pound.

  In the summer of 1939, Alexander Sachs presented the views of Einstein and others to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

  Approximately six months later, Roosevelt made funds available to look further into the matter. The scientists thought they could do everything that had to be done for six thousand dollars, and that is how much the President gave them.

  How much money naval intelligence spent looking for a source of uraninite ore somewhere outside the borders of Nazi Germany has never been revealed, but it is known that by December 6, 1941, when the atomic fission project was put under the direction of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, the Navy knew there were several hundred tons of uraninite ore in Kolwezi, a small mining town in Katanga Province of the Belgian Congo.

  ONE

  Annapolis, Maryland 1330 Hours 4 June 1941

  The United States Naval Academy class of 1941, having more or less patiently endured the more or less predictably inspiring remarks of the secretary of the Navy, formed a line according to academic rank and moved across the platform to receive their diplomas and handshakes. As they walked back to their seats, they glanced toward the sky. The next item on the program was a flyover of Navy fighter aircraft.

  The commandant of the Naval Academy had not been enthusiastic about the flyover when it had been proposed to him. So far as he was concerned, the graduation exercises should not be turned into an air show. Indeed he privately believed that the Navy did not need combat aircraft at all, that the battleship remained the ultimate weapon of naval power, and that the Navy needed airplanes only in order to locate the enemy fleet. The notion of bright young ensigns applying for flight training offended him. They should be learning their profession aboard battleships and cruisers.

  An assistant secretary of the Navy, however, ‘‘asked’’ the commandant to change his mind. Fox Movietone News, as well as the press, would be attending; and it was entirely possible, the assistant secretary added, that if there were to be a flyover, The March of Time would also send a motion-picture newsreel crew. Between Fox Movietone News and The March of Time, a newsreel sequence of the graduation ceremonies would be in every movie theater in the country. It was a public-relations opportunity that should not be ignored.

  Thus the commandant ‘‘decided’’ that a squadron of Grumman F3F-1 fighters would be permitted to fly over the Academy immediately before the brand-new ensigns, in keeping with long tradition, threw their hats in the air.

  The Grumman F3F-1, a biplane, was then the standard Navy fighter aircraft. It was powered by a 950-horsepower Wright Cyclone engine, which gave it a maximum speed of just about 230 miles per hour. And it was armed with one .50-caliber and one .30-caliber machine gun.

  On schedule, the first V of three F3F-1s passed over the campus. They were flying at their maximum speed at an altitude of fifteen hundred feet, the minimum altitude permitted over populated areas by naval and Federal Aviation Administration regulations.

  Even at that altitude, the roar of their engines was impressive, and it seemed to last much longer than was actually the case, for six more Vs of three F3F-1s followed the first at thirty-second intervals. Even the commandant somewhat reluctantly admitted it was an impressive exhibition of naval might.

  As the last three-plane V of F3F-1s passed over and began to gain altitude, and just as the commandant was about to step to the microphone again, there came the sound of another—and much noisier—aircraft engine. It was louder both because t
he airplane was flying only at about five hundred feet and because the Wright supercharged 1200-hp engine, which powered the Grumman F4F-3 Wildcat fighter, gave off a mighty roar as it propelled the stubby silver-bodied monoplane. The aircraft approached more quickly than had the F3F-1s a moment before. The Wildcat, with its throttle pushed to full military power, had a maximum speed of 330 miles per hour, 100 miles faster than the F3F-1.

  The not yet wholly accepted F4F-3 would eventually replace the F3F-1 as the standard Navy fighter. It was so new that none of the people participating in the graduating exercise had yet seen one.

  With one notable exception. On the reviewing stand was a vice admiral, whose uniform bore the golden wings of a naval aviator. The second, unscheduled flyby had been his idea. He had reasoned that if getting F3F-1 Navy fighters into the newsreels was good, getting the new, greatly superior F4F-3 was better. He had also reasoned that if he suggested this, he would be turned down. Only a few Wildcats had come off the production line, and these were occupied with testing. They could not be spared for a showy display like this one, it would have been argued.

  The admiral beamed as the first F4F-3 did a barrel roll at 330 knots and then climbed out. Instantly another Wildcat came, also made a barrel roll at 330 knots, and then disappeared. Then came a third and final one. By the time it had passed over, the audience, including the secretary of the Navy, had broken into applause.

  The band began to play ‘‘Anchors Aweigh!’’

  The commandant was smiling. He had no other choice. The battleship bastard could hardly scream about broken regulations and unauthorized flybys to a secretary of the Navy who was smiling like a proud father.

  Anacostia Naval Air Station Washington, D.C. 1355 Hours 4 June 1941

  Anacostia Tower cleared Navy zero zero three—a flight of three F4F-3 aircraft—to land singly, at sixty-second intervals, on runway two zero. Commander J. K. Hawes, USN, flying the first F4F-3, broke off from the formation over the District of Columbia jail and General Hospital, and made a steep descending turn to the left. He passed over the Sousa Bridge, at the Washington Navy Yard, came in low over the Anacostia River, and touched down. A Follow Me truck waited for him.