SecondWorld

by Jeremy Robinson

  Miller studied the images, hoping to glean more information from them. The information in this book, if accurate, was interesting to say the least. But it didn’t reveal anything that might help them track down modern-day Nazis. Miller was convinced that Vesely had yet to publish the information that posed a threat to their enemies. If he had, they would have no reason to kill him. But he’d been attacked and that meant he knew something important; something worth traveling halfway around the world to discover. Miller looked at Adler, whose brows were furrowed. “What is it?”

  “There is no Ludwigsdorf in Germany,” she said. “Not anymore. After World War Two, the village was given to Poland. I think it’s named Ludwikowice Kłodzkie now. I’ve driven through a few times. A beautiful place.”

  Miller closed the book. “Looks like we’re going to Poland.”

  35

  “Scheiße, that is Air Force One,” Adler said when she saw the large blue and white Boeing VC-25, which was a highly modified 747, taxi toward them. It turned parallel to them and stopped, revealing the big UNITED STATES OF AMERICA painted on the side.

  Miller stood next to her on the tarmac, a grin on his face. The president had come through nicely. “Actually, it’s technically not Air Force One right now because the president isn’t on board. ‘Air Force One’ is the designation given to any military airplane carrying the president, whether it’s this giant or the Red Baron’s biwing. If he’s on a civilian plane, it’s ‘Executive One.’”

  “If the president’s not on board then what—”

  A strange-looking truck with a staircase on top of it pulled up to the plane. The “air-stair” vehicle stopped and raised its staircase up to the door, which opened a moment later. A tall, blond-haired man wearing a suit coat that screamed “FBI” gave a wave in their direction. Miller waved back.

  Adler craned her head toward him. “This is our ride?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Miller headed for the stairs. It felt strange, boarding a plane without a carry-on, never mind without the weapons he had gathered. He felt naked out on the tarmac. But better gear and weapons were waiting for him on board. “It works out well, actually. When I told Bensson about the five-day deadline he realized it was time to get out of Dodge and find an underground shelter. But he also knew the enemy might be gunning for him. So they deployed all of the presidential aircraft and ground vehicles, hoping to confuse anyone that might want him dead.”

  “So should we just paint a big target on the side?”

  Miller laughed and motioned to the plane. “These are the safest aircraft in the world. We’ll be perfectly safe.” Twin rumbles announced the presence of their guards. He pointed at the two F-22 Raptor fighter jets circling the airfield. “And we have two of the deadliest watchdogs in the world escorting us across the Atlantic. There is no faster or safer way to get us to Poland in under twenty-four hours. I promise.”

  “I can’t believe you left me, you son of a bitch!” Brodeur said when he reached the bottom of the air-stairs. He sounded serious, but wore a smile on his face and extended his hand. “I ought to kill you where you stand.”

  Miller shook his hand. “Quit whining. You’re fine.” He slapped Brodeur’s shoulder and laughed when the man cringed.

  “By the way, thanks for getting me back on duty,” Brodeur quipped. “I hate resting after being shot. Twice.”

  “You see?” Miller said to Adler. “This is why I joined the NCIS instead of the FBI. They’re all a bunch of pussies.”

  “Ugh,” Adler said, then pushed past the pair and started up the stairs. “Please tell me I do not have to sit with you two.”

  “Other than the two pilots, we have the whole bird to ourselves,” Brodeur said. “You can sleep in the president’s bed if you fancy.”

  Miller hopped onto the steps with a chuckle. “C’mon, Fancy Nancy. Let’s get a move on.”

  Five hours later, the 747 cruised over the North Sea, just south of England, at thirty thousand feet. At seven hundred miles per hour, it was one of the fastest passenger jets in the world. They had completed the majority of the nearly four-thousand-mile flight in just five hours—one to go. They would soon land at the Strachowice Airport in Poland and take a car to Ludwikowice Kłodzkie, where they would have to track down the strange concrete henge. Total time since hanging up the phone with Vesely—twelve to fourteen hours, maybe a little longer if the henge’s location wasn’t well known by locals. Not bad for a last-minute, round-the-world meeting. But Vesely had not given a time. They might miss the man, or end up waiting ten hours for him, especially if he was on the run. Of course, the wait would be much longer if he’d been killed.

  Miller sat in a brown leather executive chair at the head of a long oak conference table. He’d changed into a dark gray T-shirt and black cargo pants that could hold a good number of supplies and concealed weapons. He would have preferred a jacket, too, to hide more weapons, but it was summer and a jacket would make him stand out and sweat like a bastard. With his shaved head and dark garb he would look “military” but hoped the bright green John Deere cap would offset the look.

  Brodeur sat kitty-corner to Miller, still dressed in his black suit and red tie. An array of weapons rested on the table. Miller looked the weapons over with satisfaction.

  Two MP5 submachine guns and six spare clips.

  Three Sig Sauer P226 handguns. Two spare clips for each.

  A single SEAL team knife, delivered at Miller’s request, rounded out the armament. The SEAL knife underwent the most rigorous evaluation program for a blade in military history and beat out even the fabled KA-BAR blade favored by certain Delta operators he knew. Its seven-inch blade could chop, slice, penetrate, and saw almost anything it encountered.

  Miller would have preferred a couple of M4s added to the mix, but they’d be impossible to conceal. And since there were only three of them, there were plenty of weapons to go around. He took the two MP5s and slid them to Brodeur. “Keep them under your jacket.”

  Brodeur grinned. “Yehaw.”

  “I’ll keep two of the Sigs for myself,” Miller said, pulling the weapons and four clips.

  Brodeur motioned to the open double doors with his head. “Can she handle the third?”

  “Yes,” Adler said, appearing in the doorway. “She can.” She took the gun, two clips, and sat down across from Brodeur. She wore black pants and a dark short-sleeve blouse that matched her now-black hair and made her blue eyes stand out like LED beacons. But for all the color in her eyes, they looked heavy.

  “Couldn’t sleep?” Miller asked.

  “You could?”

  Miller had slept for four solid hours, but didn’t bother mentioning it.

  “There’s some instant coffee in the kitchen,” Brodeur said.

  “That would be great,” Adler said. “Thank you.”

  Brodeur sat in the chair for a moment while Adler stared at him. “You want me to make it?”

  “Sounded like you were offering,” she said without a hint of humor.

  Brodeur pushed up from the chair. “Fine. Fine. But be warned, I make my Joe with some kick.”

  “Make it two,” Miller said as Brodeur left.

  They sat in silence as Brodeur’s footsteps faded.

  “How did you do it?” Adler asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Survive.”

  Miller frowned. The topic of his survival grated on him, but he knew the question would be asked from now until the day he died. Even after they wrote books, and made movies, people would still want to hear the story from his lips. The air. How it tasted. The whale. The shark. The bodies. The close calls and the battles with Nazis. He’d prefer to forget it all.

  But then Adler clarified the question. “I don’t mean physically. Breathing and all that. Most people would have given up. I have no idea what you saw. I don’t really want to know. The little I do know is enough to convince me I wouldn’t have pushed on. I wouldn’t have survived.”

  “You’r
e here, aren’t you?” he said. “You’re a survivor, too.”

  “Not without you.” She placed her hand on his forearm. “I need to know. In case it happens again. In case I need to survive.”

  He looked at the table, reliving the emotions of survival. “At first, my reactions were guided by instincts and training. SEALs are conditioned to survive the harshest conditions on Earth. It’s what we do. I saw a news report saved on Scuba Dave’s laptop—”

  “Scuba Dave?”

  “The guy I took the shoes from. I saw a report about a group claiming responsibility for the attack. I guess revenge became my motivation. I wanted to survive long enough to take a shot at whoever was responsible. Had I met the SecondWorld assholes before Arwen I might have stayed in Miami until each and every one of them lay dead.”

  “But you met Arwen first.”

  He nodded. “She probably saved my life, too, though. As much as I’d like to think I’m invincible, it’s likely I would have been killed in Miami. Lack of air or neo-Nazis; one of them would have done me in eventually. Saving her became my motivation.”

  “And it still is, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, Oprah, it is. Her and everyone else. But vengeance is still a close second.”

  They smiled together, but Miller’s smile disappeared a moment later. He cocked his head to the side, listening.

  Brodeur returned with a tray holding three steaming coffee cups and a box of biscotti. “Java is serv—”

  Miller shot an open palm in Brodeur’s direction and shushed him loudly.

  The room fell silent.

  The noise that had been at the edge of his hearing grew louder—the rumble of a second, very large, plane.

  “What the hell is that?” Brodeur asked.

  Miller jumped from his seat and headed for the cockpit. Adler and Brodeur followed.

  As he pounded toward the cockpit, Miller glanced out the hallway windows. The deep blue sky of a new day greeted him. The sun was rising. Four days left. He quickened his pace and after reaching the cockpit door, gave it a firm knock. “It’s Miller.”

  The cockpit door opened a moment later. Colonel Keith Wallman, who they’d met upon boarding, smiled at them. He had a friendly manner and a kind smile.

  “I hear a second aircraft,” Miller said.

  “What?” Wallman replied. “Oh! That’s the KC-10.”

  The McDonnell Douglas KC-10 Extender was an air-to-air refueling plane that serviced all branches of the U.S. Air Force. It explained the noise, but not why it was here. “We’re on a 747,” Miller said. “We could probably make the round-trip from New Hampshire to Poland without refueling.”

  Wallman offered a nod. “And then some. This is the president’s plane, after all. The KC isn’t here for us.” He stepped to the side, revealing the rest of the expansive cockpit, which held more gauges, buttons, and lights than seemed reasonable.

  The copilot, Lieutenant Colonel Matherson, gave a wave and turned back to his job.

  “Take a peek,” Wallman said.

  Miller stepped forward and looked out the cockpit window. The ass end of the massive KC-10 hovered above and to the right of them. One of the two F-22 Raptors was attached to the long boom that sent fuel from the larger plane to the fighter jet. It made sense now. The Raptor’s range was far shorter than the 747’s.

  A moment later, the Raptor disengaged from the KC-10 and fell back. A second Raptor skillfully dropped into view and approached the boom. The boom found its target and linked the two planes in midflight.

  That’s when the Raptor exploded and all hell broke loose.

  The last thing Miller heard before being flung to the floor was Matherson’s voice shouting, “Missile lock! Missile lock! Missile lock!”

  36

  “Deploying chaff!” Wallman shouted as he lunged into his chair and toggled a switch. A distant choom, choom, choom sounded out from behind the plane.

  Miller gripped the cockpit door and hoisted himself to his feet. Matherson had banked hard as soon as the missile-lock warning sounded. The sudden movement had thrown him to the floor, but he was uninjured.

  For now.

  He glanced back at Brodeur and Adler. “Get to a chair and strap in! Now!” He thought for a moment that both of them would object. But they turned and ran for the chairs lining the hallway just beyond the cockpit doors. Miller sat in the cockpit’s third chair, just behind the copilot.

  Choom, choom, choom.

  More chaff.

  Chaff was a missile countermeasure that confused missile radar systems by dispersing a cloud of aluminium, plastic, or metallized glass. The sudden appearance of a secondary target, sometimes several, can wreak havoc with the guidance systems of radar-guided missiles. But the system was far from perfect. Modern missiles were often smart enough to stay on target.

  The radio came alive with shouted reports from the KC-10. “Eagle One! Eagle One! Be advised, attacker is Eagle Three! Repeat, attacker is Eagle Three!”

  A momentary silence filled the cockpit.

  Eagle Three was the second F-22 Raptor that had been escorting them across the Atlantic. Its pilot had waited for Eagle Two to connect to the fuel boom, effectively making the plane defenseless, and then destroyed it. Now it had turned its deadly sights on the 747.

  Miller did a quick calculation in his head. Time to live—five minutes. Tops. Make your peace with God and kiss your ass good-bye. The F-22 Raptor was a stealth fighter jet, which meant they had no way to track it. It could fly circles around them at Mach 1.82 (1,674 miles per hour) and while the 747 could fly far higher, the six AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles it carried weren’t called “beyond visual range” missiles for no reason. The fire-and-forget, active-guidance missiles could track them down at any altitude.

  The only positive of the situation was that they were aboard the world’s toughest and most heavily defended aircraft. Of course, the escort comprised a large part of that defensive capability, but if any aircraft stood a chance against the Raptor, the president’s transport was it.

  The last hope they had was that the mayday Wallman called out while Matherson communicated with the KC-10 would be responded to quickly. There were air bases all over Europe and he had no doubt that jets could reach them in minutes. But minutes was all they had.

  The silence in the cockpit ended with Matherson stating, “Missile lock, off.”

  The chaff had done its job for the moment.

  “Hawk Ten, Hawk Ten,” Wallman said into the radio transmitter, speaking to the KC-10 refueling plane. “Can you confirm hostile as Eagle Three? Are you sure?”

  “Hell yes!” the man on the other end shouted. “The boom operator saw it with his own eyes.”

  “Eagle Three,” Wallman said into the transmitter. “Stand down!”

  No reply.

  “Listen, you son of a bitch,” Wallman said, seething with anger. “If you—”

  And shrill alarm sounded.

  “Missile lock!” Matherson shouted.

  Wallman toggled the chaff switch again. “Deploying chaff.”

  Choom, choom, choom.

  “Missile away!”

  An explosion shook the plane from behind, but the plane was intact.

  “Doesn’t this thing have any offensive weapons?”

  Wallman shook his head. “Even if it did, the Raptor’s invisible.”

  Miller hated being helpless. He wanted to fight. To shoot back. But there was nothing he could do but watch, and hang on tight.

  Matherson banked hard to the right. The plane rumbled. A warning blared along with a flashing light.

  “An engine is on fire!” Adler shouted from the hallway.

  “Shutting down engine four,” Wallman said. The alarm fell silent.

  Choom, choom, choom.

  The sky behind them filled with chaff.

  An alarm blared.

  Before Matherson could shout out a warning, a second explosion shook the plane.

  And still, they flew.

>   Three missiles left, Miller thought. Just three more.

  “Take us up,” Wallman said. He sounded calm now. In control.

  The three remaining engines whined as the plane angled up and gained altitude. But Miller knew that all the altitude in the world couldn’t save them from the AMRAAM missiles. “Why up?”

  “Because when—if we fall, we’ll have more time to jump.”

  “Jump?”

  “Parachutes, but odds are we won’t need them.” Wallman looked back at Miller. “We’re either flying away from this or going up in a big ball of flame. If one of those missiles connects with a fuel tank there won’t be much of a plane left to jump from.”

  Choom, choom, choom.

  The plane continued to climb. Miller watched as the altimeter reached thirty-five thousand feet, which was the Raptor’s ceiling.

  “What the hell is he waiting for?” Miller asked.

  Choom, choom—

  “That,” Wallman said. “We’re out of chaff.”

  Miller’s respect for Wallman grew as the man reacted to the development as though they’d just flown through turbulence. He realized the pilot had another trick up his sleeve just before he spoke.

  “Deploying ALE-50.”

  Muffled clucks rang out. The ALE-50 countermeasure was a towed metal decoy that provided a large radar cross section and lured missiles toward it. The plane shook as the cables connecting the 747 to the ALE-50 snapped taut. The jolt felt stronger than Miller expected. “How many of them did you deploy?”

  “Four.”

  Four countermeasures against three missiles. Could be worse.

  “Missile lo— Incoming!” Matherson shouted. “Two from behind.”

  Was the enemy pilot hoping to sneak one of the two missiles past the countermeasure, or was he hoping the shock wave from the dual explosions would shake them apart? Miller didn’t think the latter was possible. The 747 was armored like a flying Abrams tank. It could take a beating. Of course, the engines were another matter. They were vulnerable to shrapnel. Hell, a gaggle of geese in the wrong place might be enough to foul the engines.