Peace Keeper
Page 3
The two men began to push forward and were followed by Mr. Fisher. All at once, they spun around at the sound of whimpering. Mieke, the woman who’d remained belligerent and boisterous all throughout the trip, was leaning against the frigid brick wall, weeping.
With the shock of discovering secret Nazi tunnels underneath the city, William had momentarily forgotten that she’d just lost her mother. He paused and turned back around. The room trembled as the ceiling shook directly overhead.
He frowned to himself. William guessed that the motorcycles had just been obliterated above them.
“Mieke, I have no words that can express how sorry I am for what happened to your mother,” William earnestly replied, rubbing a hand over her shoulder. “When I lost my brother, Harry, I felt like my world would crumble around me. I thought of his wife and his son. I wondered why it wasn’t me.”
When he said those words, William felt a tinge of guilt at the resentment he’d once held toward his brother. Ten years his junior, Harry had accidentally gotten his secondary school girlfriend pregnant amidst William and Amelia’s most sincere efforts to have a child. William had scoffed at the irony and secretly hated him for it. Now Harry was dead, and William thought of those feelings every time he brought a meal to Trixie and her five-year-old son.
“I won’t try to minimize it or say that things will improve for you any time soon, but I will remind you that we must keep moving, or her purposeful sacrifice will be for naught.”
Mieke tearfully nodded as an unwilling gasp escaped her lips. She wiped away her tears and stood with still-reddened eyes. William was struck by how little pain she revealed. The woman had taken a tumble down the same stairs he had, and William felt as though every step was agony. Then again, the young always did have more vitality than those rapidly approaching forty.
He clamped a hand down over hers and nodded with resolution. The Germans and the British were similar in one striking personality trait: the ability to squash down emotions and pretend that they hadn’t been there in the first place.
Mieke seemed to understand. She would carry on. Her mother knew exactly what she needed to do once that machine had spotted her. If she would have dove for the door, the explosion surely would have brought the home crumbling down. She spoke up with more angst than she meant to.
“What the hell is the point?” she asked aloud. “I know what you all are thinking, and you’re right. Why is everyone trying to get my family out?”
Her gaze fell across her father who seemed to avoid eye contact.
“Was machst du wirklich, Vater?” she demanded.
“Mieke asked her father what he really does for a living,” Friedrich explained.
“Dies ist nicht die Zeit, darüber zu sprechen, mein Schatz,” Mr. Fisher replied.
“He says, this is not the time to talk about it,” Friedrich continued.
“Wenn nicht jetzt, wann sagst du es mir?” Mieke replied with a questioning inflection.
Her father trembled before turning back in a furor to face his daughter.
“Ich sagte nein, jetzt nicht! Lass mich schweigen! Ich trauere auch!”
His voice echoed through the cavern and Mieke choked slightly as tears began to form anew. Her father turned and continued their journey once again.
“He says that he mourns, and wants a few moments of silence,” Friedrich sighed almost inaudibly. He placed a firm palm on his comrade’s shoulder and joined him at the vanguard of the group.
William pulled up beside Mieke as she shuffled her way deeper into the dank ancient cavern.
“He feels much as you do, I’m sure,” William whispered. “That is a broken man if I’ve ever seen one. I do believe he just wants to see you out of this horrible situation.”
“As I wanted to save her,” Mieke whimpered. “How do I—”
She turned to William.
“How did you continue in the days after your brother…passed?”
“Day by day, yes? The same way we continue every morning with this blasted awful conflict. It’s bloody hard when you feel your back is against the wall.”
William walked on, trying to find the words to cheer up the girl.
“Perhaps whatever it is your father does for a living will provide an aid to end the war.”
“By God, I hope so,” she muttered, staring at the enigmatic man before her.
The four walked for hours, making turns at forks and trusting that Friedrich was taking them in the correct direction. Unsurprisingly, William’s navigation was not mapping their position correctly, but he was sure they’d traversed several kilometers.
As they journeyed a bit farther, they were met with a surprising smell.
“Now I understand why this system has remained hidden for so long,” William frowned.
A thin wooden wall seemed to separate the hidden tunnel from Berlin’s main sewer. The stench filled the group’s nostrils before they were within a hundred feet. As the group approached, Friedrich pulled a large jerry can out from a pile of dusty crates. He carefully carried it toward a tarp that seemed to be obscuring a vehicle of some sort. He drew back the covering and revealed a transport that was as old as the caverns the group walked within.
“Is that a Kübelwagen?” William wondered, pointing at the boxy vehicle.
“It is indeed,” Friedrich nodded. “I was lucky enough to find this beautiful machine when I first cracked open these ancient catacombs.”
“And you think it will start?” Mieke asked.
“With enough cranking, sure!” Friedrich replied as he set the jerry can down gently. He retrieved a monkey wrench from the boot, lifted a lever at the front of the tan-colored boxy transport, and the engine revealed itself. At the front was a small box that had a squared off protrusion. Friedrich stuck the end of the wrench over the box and turned. The engine groaned as it was forced to wind its starter gearbox for the first time in over a hundred years.
“It will take some time!” he shrugged. “Approximately fifty full turns will be needed at a minimum.”
“If it starts on the first ignition, and the cylinders are in good working order,” William added. “I needn’t mention, I’m sure, how odd it is that you have a perfectly preserved specimen of military memorabilia sitting at the end of a bloody Nazi escape tunnel.”
“I’ll start working on the boards,” Mieke breathed, feeling disconnected from the situation. She just wanted the whole nightmare to be over. She wished for her mother to be standing at her side. Mieke missed the feel of her mother’s delicate form perched on her back. She loved giving her rides. It made Mieke feel useful instead of standing out like a freak. She yanked an old crowbar from the side of the vehicle and breathed heavily as she stood before the aged boards. She felt a tear stream down her cheek in the cold sub-city tunnel.
Mieke lifted her arms above her head and brought the crowbar slamming down onto the first set of boards at the center of the wall. A pair of two-by-fours went clattering forward as they received the strike and splashed down into the gooey sewage remnants on the other side.
“Christ,” William muttered as he carefully began to lift the jerry can to the fuel cap. “Think I’ll try to stay on her good side.”
Mieke’s father looked with disdain at Doctor Rutger as he stared at the enigmatic young woman.
“I get it,” the man grunted, grabbing the can from William. “You pour too fast. Dirt get in.”
William knew that diesel particulate was easily disturbed. He was trying to pour as carefully as he could manage. He had a hunch that Mr. Fisher’s frustration stemmed from more than the isolated act of pouring fuel. Despite this, Doctor Rutger knew where he wasn’t wanted. He joined Friedrich at the head of the vehicle as still more boards were sent flying into the adjacent room.
“She’s quite like a barbarian, isn’t she?” William said softly.
Mieke rotated her head to face the doctor with fire in her eyes. William had once again inserted his own foot into his mouth.
Mieke spun about with even more rage and pummeled the crowbar into the edges of the continually widening hole. Another pair of boards were pulverized and actually snapped at their midsection. William noticed the tears flying off Mieke’s face as she repeatedly hammered the wall.
“It’s her way of coping,” Friedrich whispered over the clanking of the starter mechanism. He timed each sentence carefully, so his words were masked by the continual click-clicking of the Kübelwagen. “Despite our best efforts, Mieke has never really fit in with her peers. She’s faster than all her male friends, and leagues stronger than her female acquaintances. That is, if they are even to be called that. People can be cruel to those who are different, Doctor Rutger.”
William began to grasp a bit of her frustration. As she obliterated the barricade bit by bit, he saw a woman who’d grown up as an outcast. She focused her rage into disassembling the barrier that stopped their progress because if she didn’t, she’d have to cope with the fact that her only confidant was dead. Mieke seemed to have a closer relationship with Friedrich than she did with her own father. The lonesome woman focused her frustration into demolition as a Jeep-sized hole began to take shape in the wall.
Taking a deep breath, Friedrich strode to the driver’s side and pressed the ignition button. The gears whirred like a grandfather clock just before the starter clicked like a hammer striking steel. The crankshaft had seized.
“Scheisse!” Friedrich cussed. “William, try giving the wrench a twist. I suppose the weight of the years hangs heavily on the engine.”
The doctor did his best, but the wrench wouldn’t budge. Across the room, Mieke seemed to twitch as she tossed the beaten-up crowbar toward the vehicle. She picked it up and pressed it roughly into the holder on the side of the vehicle before traversing to the back of the Kübelwagen.
“Friedrich, shift to first,” she ordered, taking position behind the vehicle. “William, hop on and try twisting as I push.”
Mr. Fisher took position beside his daughter at the rear of the vehicle as they tried again. The starter hammered again but slid slightly as the father and daughter pushed. Finally after some straining, the wrench twisted freely and dropped to the floor. The starter let out a mournful thunk and then a cloud of jet-black smoke billowed from the tailpipe.
The familiar scent of diesel fumes filled the cavern in an instant, and Friedrich hooted in success. He ignited the headlamps of the Kübelwagen and illuminated the tacky brown mess ahead of them. The transport would doubtlessly traverse the sewage without issue, but it would never look or smell the same.
As the fumes changed to a dull white, William slammed the hood shut and joined the others inside the vehicle. They still had a long road ahead of them, but it felt like their first real victory.
After a kilometer of trudging through shit, Friedrich urged the transport up onto a section of cement which seemed to function as maintenance access. He followed the narrow path upward until he reached a locked gate at the edge of a large body of water. He hopped from the Kübel and slipped the crowbar in-between the handles of the padlocked gate. Using little leverage, he freed the chain from its lock and drove the Kübel forward. The scene they were presented with was off-putting.
“Ach du großer Gott!” Mieke whispered as she covered her mouth.
“Oh my God,” Friedrich translated.
“Thought as much,” William replied.
The doctor stood up in the rear seat of the Kübelwagen to get a better view of the carnage that surrounded Lake Tegel. The impact crater of the peacekeeper sat before him on the opposite shore. Trees flattened out in a football pitch-sized circular shockwave. He winced at the sight of the decimated German line. Allied troops had fallen all along chest-high steel barricades. It was hard to tell, but it looked like the gunfire from the gatling had passed directly through the protective shielding.
Hundreds of men were taken apart. He felt grateful that he couldn’t see details. All that he could clearly make out was a pooling of red that flowed downward toward the lake shore. Gigantic wounds in the terrain seemed to match rocket impacts all along the line. It was one thing to see views of peacekeeper decimated terrain days after its absence but seeing the fresh wounds of an annihilated populace was challenging even for the seasoned doctor. As he ruminated on the sight, a realization dawned on him.
“The peacekeeper landed north!” he gasped, retrieving his navigation from his satchel. As he activated the display, the arrow pointed back at his own chest along with a tiny white number in the lower corner.
22.75 Kilometers to destination.
“Friedrich!” William groused. “We are farther than we were at the start!”
“Yes?” he growled back. “We also have a vehicle. It should be no more than a half-hour away, as long as we keep to the back streets.”
William groaned in frustration as he waved the vehicle onward. He was glad to have transport, but he didn’t like the thought of making the journey while having to take precise care not to be discovered by the veritable harbinger of doom which patrolled the city.
As the transport drove away, Mieke’s sharp eyes caught something small and bright glinting at the opposite shore. She tried to make out details, but at over two-thousand meters, she was surprised to see it at all. Something black and shiny seemed to be staring directly at her. She shivered at the almost familiar form of the thing and turned to Friedrich.
“We need to move quickly,” she spoke. “There’s someone watching us.”
Friedrich pressed harder on the pedal and nearly maxed out the speed of the lumbering, but utilitarian, vehicle. He trembled at the girl’s words. Friedrich was almost sure that the specter would reach the escapees before they could make the rendezvous. He changed plans accordingly.
Friedrich turned to Mieke and spoke quietly so that the engine would drown out his words.
“I know, mein liebling. I know.”
4
Edelweiss
“Friedrich, please!” William shouted as the Kübelwagen hit torn-up street so hard that it vaulted upward into the air. “I know we need to make haste, but this is excessive!”
The wagen groaned with a rapid pitter-pattering as he pushed the vehicle to its limit.
She will have the advantage in the city. I can at least keep pace in a straightaway, Friedrich thought.
“Is this about—” Mieke shouted, holding on tightly to her seat cushion which bucked upward dramatically with every bounce. The cloth seat belts had seen much better days and weren’t to be trusted with safety. “Is this about what I saw across the lake? What is it?”
Friedrich shook his head, unwilling to answer. He jolted as the roar of a high-compression engine echoed through the long tunnel they’d just exited.
She’s 1.2 kilometers back, then, he continued within his own mind. That means I have a minute, maybe two.
On his left, summoned by serendipity, he saw two colossal English words perched atop a building facade.
Park Center
Friedrich eased the wheel sideways and aimed for the extra wide set of double doors at the front of the mall.
“Cover your head!” he ordered, careening toward the entrance at almost eighty kilometers per hour. The Kübelwagen’s transmission whined as it soared through the doors and sent crystalline shards scattering all about the open vehicle cabin.
As the wagen continued into the mall, William saw the problem behind them for the first time. A sport bike mounted by a sleek rider slowed just a bit more than Friedrich had in order to more safely traverse the shattered glass. Friedrich urged their vehicle forward at an entirely reckless velocity.
Scanning the store fronts he finally spied what he needed. He braked rapidly but still screeched into a trash can as the exhausted Kübelwagen came to a halt.
“Get in!” he shouted, pointing at a jewelry store. “Run, q
uickly!”
Despite the questions in his mind, William had an idea of what Friedrich was searching for—protection.
Mieke, her father, William, and Friedrich all poured into the storefront as the sound of a motorcycle filled the mall atrium. As soon as William was through the gigantic steel door, Friedrich pulled the heavy steel until just a crack of light remained. Before continuing, he took off his jacket and stuffed a bit of the lightweight fabric into the gap in the door. He took a deep breath as the motorcycle closed on their position.
He then slammed the leaden door with such force that the room echoed as though he’d turned on a jackhammer. Mere milliseconds later, a loud rapping beat against the heavy door as though it was being hammered upon with an aluminum bat.
“Doctor Schmidt, don’t make this harder than it needs to be!” a voice roared.
The metal-on-metal slamming continued with increasing force. Such powerful repeated blows caused a piece of the interior trim to burst loose from the wall. It was like a sledgehammer was being pounded with the quickness of a fist.
“Who is she?” Mieke shrieked with worried eyes in the darkness, illuminated only by pure-white flashlight beam.
William looked at Friedrich with an entirely different gaze.
“It’s Doctor Schmidt, then?” he seethed. “I believe you haven’t been entirely forthwith, Friedrich.”
Friedrich shuffled about the jewelry store, fishing for anything large and heavy that he could throw up onto the countertops. A brightly polished silver menorah fell onto the glass display with such force that it sent spider web cracking along the length of the case. He tossed a bell the size of a cantaloupe a few more feet down the line and then patted it, letting a slight ring peal out from the ring on his finger.
“Doctor Schmidt!” William called impatiently. “Who is this assumed assassin and why does she want you dead?”