Ice Fortress (A Jack Coulson Thriller)
Page 17
“It’s worse than that, Bluey. Way worse than that.” Jack shook his head solemnly.
“What do we do?” Sam pleaded for guidance.
“If this is all heading to where I think it is, we have to save the world, Bluey. We don’t have any choice. It’s up to us to save the world.”
Chapter 48
November 9, 2017, 10:45 UTC
U-Boot-Bunker (Submarine Pen)
Kriegsmarine Base 211
Ronne Ice Shelf (Antarctica)
77° 51' 19.79" S -61° 17' 34.20" W
“Hey, bullet-head, how about doing something about these cuffs? I’m gonna get gangrene like this.” Jack held up his swollen, discolored hands for the man to see.
Bullet-head came at him, his face a mask of anger and brutality, buttstock raised to strike. Jack bent at the knees, shifted his weight slightly and launched himself low and hard at the bullet-headed prick. With an oomph the man collapsed on the deck the wind knocked out of him by a well-placed shoulder to the solar plexus.
The second guard came in fast, gun up and shoved Jack out of the way. But Jack didn’t budge and the guard ended up locked in a tackle until finally Jack moved back to Sam’s position and let the two guards regroup.
“I ought to put a bullet in you right now for that little stunt … but I won’t.” The tight lipped smile on his face told Jack that something far worse than a bullet in the brain was on the cards.
“That worked really well. Thanks Jack, we’re so much better off now,” Sam sassed.
Jack opened his hands surreptitiously, revealing the cutters the guard used to snip his ankle restraints a short while ago.
Sam’s brows arched. “I think we’re gonna need more than a pair of pliers to get out of this one, MacGyver.”
“One thing at a time, Bluey. One thing at a time.”
“If we’re gonna end up dead in the next few hours, could you at least try calling me by my real name? My Mom made a real effort to choose it for me, the least you could do is try using it, just once in a while.”
“I thought you were an orphan? Didn’t some government pencil pusher pluck your name out of a hat or something?”
“Nice, Jack. That’s real nice. You ought to ask for a refund if we survive this.”
“What refund?” Jack quizzed.
“For that ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ seminar. Get your money back. It’s not work —”
A giant shadow cast over them.
Muller.
Jack didn’t even need to turn to see the hulk of a man. He could feel him.
“Enough talk,” Muller directed from behind them. His bulk blocked out much of the light from the Barracuda, casting a shadow that left Jack feeling unsettled. “You have the rest of your lives to chat among yourselves,” he sniggered. His peculiar accent unnerved Jack even more. He really didn’t like this guy.
“Where are the other six hostiles?” hissed Jack to Sam.
“Below decks in the U-Boat, like I told you, it’s not good. I think they’re …”
Jack didn’t let him continue. “I couldn’t care less what they’re doing. I just need to know where they are.”
Jack edged his way toward Jameson, whose hands remained unrestrained. The German militia didn’t seem to rate a nuclear submarine captain as much of a threat. Or he was one of them? Jack didn’t even want to think about that. He had his suspicions about Durand, too.
“Got a plan Coulson?” The captain knew Jack well enough to guess that he did.
Turning his back to Muller and the other guards, Jack palmed the cutters to Jameson. “Cut me loose.”
Snip.
“Cut Sam free as soon as it starts.”
“As soon as what starts?” asked Jameson.
“Don’t worry, you’ll know.”
Muller slowly made his way toward the group, staying clear of the line of fire between them and his men. Jack kept his hands together, holding the cuffs in place and appearing to still be in discomfort. Every detail had to be just right.
Bullet-head still looked pissed at having been taken down by an unarmed man. A handcuffed one at that.
Perfect.
“How’re you feeling bullet-head? Want to get crash tackled again for old times’ sake?”
“Scheisse!” Bullet-head’s face turned red as he pushed his way through the group to where Jack stood. His gun was raised, not as a club this time, but ready to shoot. Jack heard the safety click off.
When he was a few feet away, Jack let go of the cuffs and moved to intercept, closing the gap between them before the guard could draw a bead on him and fire.
The man’s finger was already on the trigger and ready to fire. But the trigger guard was oversized to accommodate gloves, which the guards had taken off in the warmth of the submarine. Jack slid his finger inside the guard, piggy backing the soldier’s finger and aimed the gun at the other guard. A body shot would be a waste of time. They were all still wearing body armor.
A three round burst from the H&K turned the guards head into an explosive mist of blood and skull fragments. The bullets tore his head off before the sound waves from the gun even reached his ears. The man was dead before he knew he was even in danger.
Leah was the nearest to the fallen guard. Her hair a gruesome sight, matted with clotted blood and chunks of brain matter.
Jack turned the struggling bullet-headed guard to bring Muller into his sights. In his peripheral vision he could see Durand shuffling slowly toward the dead guard, his eyes locked on the nearest weapon — a holstered semi-automatic pistol. Jack knew there was something not quite right about that guy.
Breaking ranks, Leah swooped down and grabbed the man’s weapon before Durand could make his move. That was unexpected. Backup from cute Oceanographer. She had his six.
Muller’s arms were raised. His H&K clattered loudly on the hard concrete. Also unexpected. He was sure this monster of a man would have gone down with guns blazing.
“Nazi pussies,” he murmured.
Then he heard the slide of a H&K USP pull back, chambering a round.
Click.
Safety off.
For a lab rat, she knew her way around guns.
“It’s okay Leah. I’ve got this under control,” said Jack without taking his eyes off Muller.
“I’m sorry Jack, but I’m afraid you really don’t.”
The cold steel of the barrel pressed against Jack’s neck.
That was most definitely unexpected.
Chapter 49
November 9, 2017, 11:15 UTC
South Pacific Ocean
Location: Classified
Tomahawk Land Attack Missile – Nuclear Variant (TLAM-N)
Countdown to impact: 2 hours.
Chapter 50
November 9, 2017, 11:15 UTC
U-Boot-Bunker (Submarine Pen)
Kriegsmarine Base 211
Ronne Ice Shelf (Antarctica)
77° 51' 19.79" S -61° 17' 34.20" W
Bullet-head hit Jack in the gut with the buttstock of his machine pistol, hard, doubling him over in pain.
Leah aimed her newly acquired handgun at the man’s temple and pulled the trigger. He dropped like a brick with a horrendous exit wound on the other side of his head. The sharp report of the gun made them all jump. The heat of the bullet had sizzled past Jack’s ear.
“Sorry about that, Jack. That little shit had it coming for threatening to shoot me if you tried to escape.” Leah’s voice was calm and devoid of all emotion.
“You haven’t changed a bit, have you, little sis?” Muller snatched his weapon from the ground, walked over to Leah and gave her a bear hug that made her look like a doll cradled in his enormous arms. “You still have that temper.” He smiled and wagged a finger at her like she was a naughty child. “You know I’m already desperately short of manpower, thanks to your boyfriend over there.” He pointed at Jack. “Now I’m another man down.”
“The man was too volatile. Besides, he st
arted it. And for the record, Jack is not my boyfriend.”
Sam and Jack gave each other a ‘what the fuck?’ look. Until now, neither man thought that their day could get any stranger.
“You did well finding this place. I wasn’t expecting you to actually be here, though. What happened?”
“In a word? Russians. There’s a Russian sub down there. It fired on us and we came here to stay clear of it.”
“Why didn’t you blow it the hell up?” Muller spread his hands wide in a gesture of mock despair.
“No weapons. They stripped this thing,” she looked toward the Barracuda, “bare to the bone to fit in all the equipment we needed to find the bunker.”
Muller roared with laughter so loud Jack swore he felt the air vibrate.
“They took a perfectly good nuclear attack submarine, stripped it of its weapons systems, renamed it ‘Barracuda’ and turned it into a floating sonar buoy. All because I told them I had a new technology that had strategic military applications.” Her voice bubbled with pride.
“You were right about that, sis.” Muller clapped her on the back and broke out a hearty belly laughed again.
“How did you get the coordinates to Barnes without them finding out?”
“Easy, I hid a subroutine in the sonar drone’s systems and it’s been zipping around out there transmitting to Barnes’ secure satellite network. Even these two clowns had no idea. Like programming a drone is complicated.” She rolled her eyes.
Juan and Dave turned pale.
“You bitch!” Juan spat. “You used us for … for … this?” He pointed to the bell shaped object only feet away from where they stood before taking a step toward Leah.
Muller and the remaining guard trained their weapons on the group. Their intention to fire made clear.
Juan balled his fists in frustration and glared at her, pure hatred burning in his eyes.
Boots clanging against steel on the nearby U-Boat deck drew their attention. The soldiers who had been working below had emerged, one of them nodded wordlessly to Muller.
Job done, thought Jack. But what job exactly?
“Kurt,” Muller called out to the other guard, “cuff the rest of them but cut the big one free. We need him.”
Sam raised his cuffed wrists and gave Muller a one finger salute.
Muller instinctively aimed his weapon at Sam, then thought better of it. “There’s no point killing you. I need you to help move the device into the other sub.” He paused. “But we don’t need a chubby Hispanic to do that, do we?”
He swung his machine pistol around onto Juan.
“Okay. Okay. I’ll help. Just don’t shoot him. Alright?” Sam pleaded.
“That’s better.” Muller lowered his barrel.
Chapter 51
November 9, 2017, 11:30 UTC
Signals Intelligence (SIGINT)
Fort Meade
Maryland
39° 6' 32"N 97° -76' 46 17" W
The door to Assistant Director Henry Preston’s office burst open.
“What the —”
“Sorry, sir, but you said you wanted to know as soon as we had some comms links operational,” the harried assistant blurted before Preston could yell at him. Again. The kid looked like he should be at a Justin Bieber concert, not acting as a liaison between the National Security Agency and the other military branches. Then again, everyone looked young to Preston these days.
“Well?”
“They’ve rerouted a lot of the satellite traffic through other stations that were on ‘hot standby’ but still nothing from the Barracuda or from Jack Coulson.”
“Who the hell is Jack Coulson?”
“They haven’t told you?” The assistant was unsure how to proceed. Maybe he’d said too much?
“Son, this is the military. Nobody tells anybody squat. Now who the hell is Coulson?”
“He’s a covert operative. He was at Pine Gap to be briefed when it got hit. They managed to escape and were air-dropped onto the Ronne Ice Shelf.”
“They?”
“There were two of them. The other guy is a navy enlisted man. They were sent on a search, find and secure mission after the U-Boat showed up on the surveillance images. Are you sure they didn’t tell you, sir?”
Preston’s cheeks flamed red.
“I think I’d remember if they told me Jason fucking Bourne and a deck ape were air-dropped onto the goddamn ice pack!”
Henry Preston took a deep lungful of air and counted to ten. He felt calmer straight away. That anger management therapy really did work, although Preston had a sneaking suspicion he was supposed to do his breathing exercises before screaming his head off.
“What do you want me to do, sir?” the confused assistant asked timidly.
“Get me everything you can on this … this Coulson and the navy guy.”
“Krupsky, sir. His name is Sam Krupsky.”
“I don’t give a flying fuck at a rolling donut what his name is. Just get me everything you can find and keep monitoring the entire region for traffic.”
“What kind of traffic, sir?”
“All of it! If two whales start humping and we pick it up on sonar, I want to know about it. Got it?”
“Sir.” The door slammed shut again.
Preston massaged his temples and squeezed his eyes shut. “The government’s got your back Coulson.”
An image of the Tomahawk missile cruising over the sea bound for the ice pack with an armed nuclear warhead flashed through his mind.
“Or not.”
Chapter 52
November 9, 2017, 11:45 UTC
U-Boot-Bunker (Submarine Pen)
Kriegsmarine Base 211
Ronne Ice Shelf (Antarctica)
77° 51' 19.79" S -61° 17' 34.20" W
“We have a new mission,” Jack quietly addressed the four surviving crew of the Barracuda. Captain Jameson, the XO, Durand and the two civilian scientists — Juan and Dave, all looked to Jack as their leader.
Even Sam listened intently as Coulson spoke.
They were all still assembled on the wet-dock while Muller and Leah argued. They couldn’t hear what the argument was about and they were speaking German anyway, but the word Glocke kept coming up. They appeared to be arguing about what to do with the bell shaped device they’d earlier unloaded from the U-Boat.
“We have to destroy that thing. No matter what the cost. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
They all nodded solemnly.
“If we take what I read in the U-2532 log, factor in these neo Nazi commandoes and consider where you found the U-Boat and its condition, then we have to assume, as crazy as it sounds, that this thing really does work and can, somehow, move through time,” Durand concluded.
He continued, “And if there’s only a small chance they could use it to go back in time and change the outcome of the war, then we have no option but to stop them, right here and right now. If they succeed, a Nazi ruled world would be ...” He couldn’t find the words.
“Unthinkable.” Sam summed it up in just one.
“Could they really win, though?” asked Jameson.
“They were already so close,” Durand explained, “that it wouldn’t take much, in time travel terms, to change the world as we know it.”
“Man, there was a time I would have thought it was cool to hear those words in the same sentence,” Juan lamented. After being so close to so much death and mayhem, Juan wasn’t as enthusiastic about the theory of time travel as he once had been.
“Seriously,” Durand went on, “all they would have to do is start building these Type XXI U-Boats earlier and they would control the seas for one thing. Imagine if they produced more V2 rockets or even larger ballistic missiles to strike New York or Moscow. I don’t even want to think about how quickly a Nazi atomic bomb on one of those things might have turned the tide against us.”
Silence.
“Okay, everyone understand what’s at stake here?” Jack asked all f
ive of them.
To a man, they nodded gravely.
“But how?” Dave spoke up at last and asked the obvious question.
“Bluey, are you ready to share your special skills with the rest of the class?”
“I think it’s time. You two,” he directed his attention to Durand and Jameson, “you said you found some crates of munitions. What were they and more importantly, where were they?”
“Over there, in some kind of grotto at the end of the dock. You can’t see it from here because the generators are in front of the entrance.” Durand pointed past the rusted shells of the disused generators. “I can read German but the stenciling on the crates has deteriorated pretty badly. I couldn’t really read much of it.”
“Well, what could you read,” asked Sam impatiently.
Jameson and Durand shared a look and shrugged.
“Panz … something or other, I think it might have said,” Jameson offered, “but I don’t think that’s right. Even I know Panzer is a tank and there sure as hell aren’t any tanks down here.”
“Panzerfaust? Could that have said Panzerfaust?”
Both men shrugged uncertainly. Durand stroked his chin, “Maybe.”
“Is that good?” Jack asked Sam. He had no idea what the big man had in mind.
“Good if they still work. We’re all dead if they don’t.”
“Captain, do you still have the cutters?” Sam asked Jameson. He nodded.
“Okay, I need to be cut loose so I can run like hell to the generators. To do that, I need a diversion. The kind of trouble only you can make, Jack. You haven’t pissed anyone off badly for, what, twenty minutes? You must be going stir crazy by now, right?”
“It’s like you read my mind, Bluey.”
Jack turned to face Muller and Leah.
“Hey Muller, are you telling your sister how you took me down with one punch? Did you happen to mention I was at gunpoint and you sucker punched me?”