“Get your hands up, Fritz…!” The older of the two – a lance-corporal – demanded loudly, his tense and frightened tone suggesting he might be ready to open fire at any moment. “You just put him down and get yer bloody hands up quick smart…!” He repeated as Ritter complied immediately, not wishing to give the man any excuse to use his weapon as he carefully lowered the unconscious Schiller back onto the ground exactly as directed.
“This officer is hurt… badly…” He began slowly. “He needs help or he will die…”
“I don’t give a bugger about that…” the corporal shot back without a hint of compunction. “Your slanty-eyes mates have killed most of my bloody company: you think I give a shit if he lives or dies?”
“Please…” Ritter pleaded desperately. “I beg you…”
“Stand down, corporal… stand down…!” Lloyd ordered sharply, charging into the clearing with his own weapon at the ready and assessing the situation pretty quickly. Throwing a glance at the prisoners for the first time, his eyes flew wide in surprise before he was able to recover, recognition registering in both faces as his gaze locked with Ritter’s. “You men get back to the rest of the group… I need you to send Captain Donelson and the doctor up here immediately…”
“Sir, maybe one us should…”
“Now, corporal…!” Lloyd barked angrily. “Both of you…”
“Sah…!” The NCO replied immediately, recognising a dismissal when he heard one.
As both men turned, Lloyd laid his rifle by his feet and crouched to check on Schiller’s condition.
“Eileen, you might wanna get up here ASAP…”
“What’ve we got, Evan?”
“You’ll want to see it,” he answered simply, adding: “You might wanna bring the doc with you… I’d be quick about it…”
“On our way…”
“Christ, colonel, you picked one hell of a time to turn up unexpected…” he observed pointedly, trying to force a thin smile and mostly failing. “Last I’d heard, you were locked up tight in the Abwehr somewhere, pushing papers about a bloody desk…!”
“Believe me, Corporal – Captain Lloyd,” Ritter replied with soft, pained sarcasm, correcting himself as he took note of the man’s rank, “at this point in time, I would be as happy to be back in Berlin as anyone…”
“I reckon this bloke would be as well…” Lloyd muttered, giving a telling grimace as he inspected Schiller’s injuries and immediately reached into leg pocket, dragging out a large shell dressing and beginning to unwrap it. “Doesn’t look like a bullet wound… shrapnel more like…” he added, mostly talking to himself as he stripped back what was left of the front of the man’s tunic and controlling his own gag reflex at the sight of the terrible, bloody holes in the man’s chest. “Two or three entry wounds I can see… one of ‘em bloody close to the heart.”
“He’s still breathing,” Ritter observed nervously, as if wishing alone might solve the problem.
“Yeah, for the moment…” Lloyd agreed with a mirthless smile as he worked to strap the dressing across the worst of the wounds “…and he won’t be for much longer unless he gets the kind of medical care we don’t have.” He lifted his eyes for a moment to stare directly at Ritter, his expression cold and blunt. “Sir, his chest is fucked, and nothing short of a bloody surgeon has any chance of saving his arse.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ…!” Eileen’s voice was filled with dismayed concern as she pushed through the trees behind Lloyd and joined the group. “Christ Almighty, that’s Albert Schiller…!” She exclaimed in that next moment, as she took her first good look at the wounded man Lloyd was tending to. Her eyes flickered nervously between Schiller and Ritter, worried that something might’ve already been said to compromise the latter’s position.
“He is unconscious,” Ritter assured finally, recognising the fear in her eyes.
“Unconscious and fucked...!” Lloyd added darkly, attempting to place a second shell dressing on the lower sections of the man’s wounds and not having much success. “I dunno if I can even stop the bloody bleeding, let alone anything else. As sucking chest wounds go, this one really sucks!”
“Let me see him!” Watson ordered, all business as he appeared behind Donelson and noted the wounded man Lloyd was working on.
“Gladly, doc,” he acceded immediately, rising and backing away as Watson charged in, unslinging his own backpack and diving inside to withdraw a number of medical instruments.
“You’re initial assessment of the patient appears to be quite succinct there, captain,” the doctor observed with dark humour as he took in the seriousness of Schiller’s injuries. “This will be a bit of a challenge…” he continued, mostly talking to himself to steady his own nerves as he uncapped a large hypodermic needle. “We’ve at least got a tension pneumothorax to deal with here, and just getting the bloody air out of his chest is going to be touch and go… if he’s got a haemothorax as well, then nothin’ short of an operating theatre’s going to stop him meetin’ his maker…”
“Do what you can, John,” Eileen urged gently, not recognising the medical terms he’d used but nodding her understanding of the general situation.
“Aye, that I’ll do,” he replied ruefully, selecting an appropriate point on Schiller’s chest and sliding the needle in, “but whether it’ll be enough is another question entirely.”
“Are you alright, Carl?” She asked worriedly, turning her attention now to Ritter. “You’ve blood all over your arms and shoulders as well. Are you hit?”
“A few cuts and grazes,” he advised with a dismissive shake of his head, lifting his arms to inspect a few of the tears in his tunic. “My eyebrows too, it seems…” he added, almost smiling at such a ridiculous thought as his fingers ran gingerly across his temples. “Nothing serious, although I have a headache worthy of a long night’s drinking…”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“The Reichsmarschall needed a Japanese interpreter, and Japanese is just about all I’ve been working on since I’ve been posted to the Abwehr.” He gave her a mirthless smile. “Ironically, I was asked to come because he needed someone he could trust…”
“You know this man…?” Watson demanded in sharp surprise, his attention momentarily drawn from his patient.
“Not officially, John, and what happens here goes no further than the four of us…” she answered in an equally-sharp tone, fixing him with a deadly serious glare. “Official Secrets: you understand…?”
“Not really,” he admitted, turning back to his patient, “but I’ll not speak of it again, if that’s what you're worried about…” he assured, possibly sounding a little miffed that she would not take him into her confidence despite the clearly top secret nature of what was happening.
“Thank you, John,” she replied, managing a smile he never saw. “Carl,” she continued, turning back to Ritter, “we’re going to get you out of here. There’ll be a flying boat waiting for us before midnight to get us the hell off this bloody island… at least, there was until you lot showed up. What hope we have now of getting away undetected, I’ve no idea…”
“No one else knows where you are,” Ritter blurted quickly, surprising everyone present. “We came across one of Kormoran’s crew who’d escaped from your party earlier today. He told us where you were going, but we did not speak of this to the Japanese.”
“Why would he not tell his own allies?” Lloyd demanded suspiciously, pointing at Schiller.
“There is much to tell you… much to tell and so little time.”
“There’ll be plenty of time on the way back to Darwin!” Eileen answered curtly, watching Watson work on Schiller. “We’re taking you two out of here tonight with us.”
“I cannot go with you, Eileen,” Ritter argued in return, seeing the reality of the situation as he rose unsteadily to his feet and dusted himself off. “I have not yet acquired the information Hindsight needs… the information you all need to make things right...”
“We have him.” Donelson pointed out, grimacing and turning her head away in distaste as he did so. “He knows the dates… he must… and we will get that out of him.”
“Look at him…!” Ritter snapped, waving a hand in the man’s direction. “If he doesn’t get urgent, expert medical he’s not going to be any use to anyone!”
There was a long, agonising moment of silence as Ritter and Donelson stared each other down, Eileen in no way prepared to give ground.
“I don’t like this, Carl...” She growled. “I dinna like this at all…!”
“He is no use to you dead,” Ritter repeated firmly, knowing he was in the right, “and his death would make things doubly difficult for me!”
“John…?” She asked finally – desperately – seeking a professional opinion.
“He’ll nae survive a plane flight like this, with no medical equipment to keep him going,” Watson shrugged, seeing no point in lying. “To be honest, I’d give him fifty-fifty even if he does get to an operating theatre…”
“The man will die for no good reason, and it will benefit you nothing…!” Ritter argued, his eyes nervously flicking this way and that, as if suddenly hearing noises in the surrounding jungle. “There isn’t time, and I have much to tell!”
“All right, damn it!” Eileen decided finally, feeling backed into a corner and not liking it one bit. “John; we’re going over here a moment to talk… do what you can for him in the interim: when I come back, we’re leaving! Evan: stay with him just in case... this won’t take long.”
“These devices… these ‘atomic bombs’… were a mistake!” Ritter blurted in a whisper, the moment they were alone, standing a few yards from the others in a darker part of the jungle, further away from the burning wreckage of the Land Rover.
“Two nuclear weapons loaded onto a freighter and sent to Tokyo, along with related scientific documentation, was an ‘accident’…?” Eileen queried, incredulous.
“A deliberate act, of course, but not one of my government,” Ritter elaborated, controlling his exasperation. “You have heard of the Direktors, yes? They were behind this, acting without the knowledge of Reuters or The Führer. As soon as the Reichsmarschall discovered this, he instigated orders to have the ship – this Kormoran – intercepted or sunk before it could make contact with the Japanese.”
“Which does match with what happened on the way to Ambon,” she conceded, thinking of the encounter with the U-boat.
“Germany wants nothing to do with a Pacific war,” he continued in a rush, desperate to speak. “This is why we are here, now: to find these bombs and try to do something about it. We’ve discovered one of them has already been taken… taken somewhere in the United States, although we do not know where. The Reichsmarschall fears it will be used to destroy an American city.”
“It’s already been used, Carl,” Eileen advised sadly, shaking her head. “The Japs destroyed the Panama Canal with it prior to a surprise attack on the US fleet off Hawaii. Thousands have been killed.”
“Mein Gott, this is terrible! Reuters warned the Americans of this… he had a message sent to their Embassy in Berlin, along with an offer of negotiation…”
“‘Negotiation’…?” Donelson asked sharply, very interested in that information.
“With the Americans… guarantees the Kriegsmarine would make no aggressive moves into the Atlantic in exchange for tacit recognition of German sovereignty in Continental Europe.”
“…And allow the United States to concentrate what naval forces they have left in the Pacific…” she concluded logically, seeing the point of it all clearly enough. “Smart…” A frown, then: “Not good news for the Commonwealth however, if the Americans even think about agreeing to that. Melbourne needs to be advised of this immediately!”
“There’s more…” Ritter went on, nodding in agreement. “The year…! I have the year, now…”
Albert Schiller’s first conscious thoughts were of nothing other than a searing, crushing pain in his chest. Too weak to struggle much, it was all he could do just to continue breathing as he felt someone’s hands touching him… working – he eventually realised as he lay there, eyes screwed shut – to treat his injuries. He couldn’t know that one lung had partially collapsed, or that the sudden, sharp stab he’d felt over and above the general levels of pain he was experiencing, had been a large hypodermic, plunged into him to release the unwanted air that was slowly killing him as it filled his chest cavity.
A few moments passed and, miraculously, it suddenly felt as if a great pressure had been released– which was indeed the case. As his breathing returned to something resembling normal, he was able to think a little clearer, and he began to tune in on the faint conversations around him. Most of it was unintelligible for some reason his addled mind was not able to currently determine, although he eventually worked out that it was English as his thoughts continued to clear. He was unaware at that point that he had unconsciously been trying to struggle weakly due to the pain, and that in addition to relieving the pressure in his chest, Watson had also given him a shot of morphine to ease that pain and settle him down.
He began to take stock of his environment. Apart from the talking, he could also hear the loud crackle of something large burning, and could feel the fire’s radiated heat all around. It was at that point his memories of being thrown over the side of the Land Rover also returned, and he began to realise what must have happened to him.
“We’re going over here a moment to talk… do what you can for him in the interim: when I come back, we’re leaving! Evan: stay with him just in case... this won’t take long.”
Those words – spoken by a woman! – were the first he was able to understand, and the recognition of the accent and realisation of who had spoken was enough to finally bring him back to his senses. Fighting to control the agony he still felt in his chest and taking great care to remain as limp as he could manage, feigning continued unconsciousness, Schiller cracked open his eyelids as slowly and carefully as he was able.
There was a medic of some kind kneeling above him, presently so focussed on administering to his wounds that it went completely unnoticed that Schiller had opened his eyes. Behind the doctor, he could also see an armed man standing guard… one wearing Australian army camouflage gear. It took a moment or two before he recognised the face of Evan Lloyd, one of the original Hindsight members, and it took all of Schiller’s self-control for him not to react instinctively and grasp for the pistol that still lay in its holster at his belt.
It was the faint voice of that nearby female however that truly called for his attention, and he allowed his head to casually ‘slump’ to the opposite side, as if the movement were an involuntary reaction to the pushing and pulling he was feeling through his chest. Staring through slitted eyelids in the direction of that soft voice, he was clearly able to make out two figures in the glow of the fire, standing some yards away and engaged in deep discussion. That he was able to recognise Eileen Donelson was chilling enough, but what truly sent a stab of ice through his very core was that Carl Ritter was standing with her, hands on hips and clearly talking as an equal rather than a prisoner.
That Schiller couldn’t hear what was being discussed was of no consequence; the body language of that interaction alone was more than enough to show that both parties knew each other and were engaged in a free and easy discussion. In the few tense seconds that followed his realisation, every discussion he’d had with Ritter regarding Hindsight, and Donelson in particular, rose up in his memory once more, filtered now through this new knowledge and bringing with it some very damning conclusions. What had seemed like the simple logic of the man’s arguments at the time now seemed to reveal a far darker, deeply hidden agenda.
And what will Kurt think of all this…?
That one terrible thought flared in his mind, and the weakness that swept through him in its wake left him unable to control either his thoughts or his pain any longer. With a mournful groan, he turne
d his head away and drew a hiss of agonised breath, arching his back slightly as a particularly strong stab of pain rippled through his body.
“Quickly… before he wakes up…!” Eileen whispered, nodding back toward Schiller as they heard a soft moan escape the man’s lips. “We need to –!”
Her next words were cut off as she heard the distinct sound of a branch cracking loudly in the undergrowth, some distance off to the north-east. Instantly alert, she shrugged the rifle off her shoulder and flicked off the safety, crouching and listening carefully with Ritter beside her, Luger in his own hand. The sounds of the jungle itself were ever-present – the hooting and calling of birds and other wildlife throughout the darkness of the night – yet there had been something distinctly unnatural about what she’d just heard… something somehow very human. Several moments of nothing, then another, similar sound of movement, decidedly closer this time somewhere off to the north; from a different direction.
“Either someone out there’s bloody fast…” she breathed softly, tension building in her voice.
“…Or there’s more than one of the bastards,” Evan Lloyd finished the sentence for her, creeping up beside her and Ritter with his own rifle at the ready. “You heard it too, then…”
“We need to get out of here!” She pointed out unnecessarily. “Warn Mal and have him ready the others to withdraw…”
Reaching up to his ear, Lloyd keyed his transmit button once more, his voice barely a whisper.
“Mal… mate, we’ve got company… you reading me…?” He added, immediately lifting the device to one ear to allow him to hear over the noise of the surrounding environment.
“Reading you, mate… how many…?”
“Unknown, but more than one…” Another sound of movement, further west this time. “A lot more than one, mate: the fuckers are trying to flank us on the sly. They know we’re here! Wait one…”
He paused for a moment, lowering the headset’s tiny, stalk-mounted microphone from his lips as he glanced about in the glow of the fire behind and thought seriously on their limited options.
The Dead Alone (Empires Lost Book 3) Page 81