Bear Grylls: The Hunt (Will Jaeger Book 3) Read online

  BEAR GRYLLS

  Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Chapter Eighty-One

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  Chapter Eighty-Six

  Chapter Eighty-Seven

  Chapter Eighty-Eight

  Chapter Eighty-Nine

  Chapter Ninety

  Chapter Ninety-One

  Chapter Ninety-Two

  Chapter Ninety-Three

  Chapter Ninety-Four

  Chapter Ninety-Five

  Also by Bear Grylls

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Copyright

  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.