Floodgate. Alistair MacLean
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Alistair Maclean
Floodgate
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
HARPER
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1983 then in paperback by Fontana 1984
Copyright © Alistair MacLean 1983
Alistair MacLean asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780006169116
Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2009 ISBN: 9780007289271 Version: 2016-10-11
To David and Judy
Table of Contents
The two oddly similar incidents, although both happening on the night of February 3rd, and both involving army ammunition storage installations, had no discernible connection.
The occurrence at De Doorns in Holland was mysterious, spectacular and tragic: the one at Metnitz in Germany was a good deal less mysterious, unspectacular and faintly comic.
Three soldiers were on guard at the Dutch ammunition dump, set in a concrete bunker one and a half kilometres north of the village of De Doorns, when, about one-thirty in the morning, the only two citizens who were awake in the village reported a staccato burst of machine-pistol fire—it was later established that the guards were carrying machine-pistols—followed immediately by the sound of a gigantic explosion, which was later found to have blasted in the earth a crater sixty metres wide by twelve deep.
Houses in the village suffered moderately severe damage but there was no loss of life.
It was presumed that the guards had fired at intruders and that a stray bullet had triggered the detonation. No traces of the guards or supposed intruders were found afterwards.
In Germany, a group calling themselves the Red Army Faction, a well-known and well-organized band of terrorists, claimed that they had easily overcome the two-man guard at the US Nato arms dump near Metnitz. Both men, it had been claimed, had been drinking and when the intruders had left both were covered with blankets—it had been a bitterly cold night. The US Army denied the drinking allegation but made no mention of the blankets. The intruders claimed that they had acquired a quantity of offensive weapons, some so advanced that they were still on the secret list. The US Army denied this.
The West German press heavily favoured the intruders’ account. When it came to penetrating army bases, the Red Army Faction had an impressive record: when it came to protecting them, the US Army had an unimpressive one.
The Red Army Faction customarily list the nature of their thefts in meticulous detail. No such details of the alleged secret weapons were published. It has been assumed that, if the Faction’s account was true, the US Army or the US Army through the German government, had issued a stop order to the press.