Countdown

by Jerry Ahern

  “I think I know what we’ll have to do. We can’t sabotage all the aircraft themselves. We’ll have to destroy the opening and closing mechanisms for the doors. The doors themselves will be bombproof, and there should be emergency controls away from the main control stations, unless these people are imbeciles. And, I wouldn’t count on that.”

  “Neither would I. So, you mean we destroy the actual mechanism for opening and closing.”

  “Exactly,” Paul Rubenstein told him. “I watched how they run. It looks to be a series of levers and the levers are exposed on the interior side of the doors. If we can sabotage just one of the joints, the doors will be jammed shut until repair parts can be brought in. That should give us enough time to get out of here.”

  “What about the takeoff and landing bay we use for our escape? Think we can screw with the aircraft in there?”

  “I don’t know,” Paul Rubenstein told him. “We’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it, see what Natalia and Annie and Emma Shaw and the SEAL Team guys are able to do before we get there. They’ll have plenty of explosives, but not plenty of time to use them.”

  Darkwood’s eyes followed their course on the control panel map. The gondola was nearly at station fourteen …

  Realizing that the liberated Nazi gunship could never get them out of the facility into which they would hopefully soon be entering, Emma Shaw, Annie Rubenstein and Natalia Tiemerovna had decided on a means by which the gunship could still be utilized. With the SEAL Team personnel assisting them, before getting their craft airborne, they wired explosives into the fuselage, the explosives linked to the synth-fuel tanks, the weapons systems, everything which might explode.

  Natalia Tiemerovna had wired the system into the aircraft’s control panel herself. If all went well, she could remotely detonate the explosives, to at least partially seal the takeoff and landing bay after them. If they were attacked by a superior force the instant that they landed, either she or Emma Shaw could flip a toggle switch beneath the forward control panel and the explosives would instantly detonate. Emma Shaw had called it a dead woman’s switch.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Three minutes remained before the second gun-ship should be requesting permission to land over the Nazi distress frequency. When Paul Rubenstein had begun landing the gunship he’d flown here carrying Michael and James Darkwood as his only passengers, he had advised the tower that a second ship, carrying injured survivors of the battle for the headquarters complex in Canada, was close behind them and should be admitted.

  If the dead bodies he, Michael and James Darkwood had left behind them so far weren’t discovered, there was a very good chance that Natalia or Emma (at the time the first gunship left, it had not been determined who would be pilot and who would be copilot) should be able to land and the second and most important phase of the plan—to their own survival at least—would be under way.

  Natalia’s suppressed Walther PPK/S in his right hand, behind his back, Paul Rubenstein exited the monorail gondola after James Darkwood at station fourteen.

  Beyond the confines of the station itself lay a guard post and elevator banks similar to those where they had boarded the gondola.

  There was a Sturmmann on duty here, a little older-looking despite his one-grade lower rank than the Rottenführer who had proven so helpful to them. This man would have to die as well.

  It had been different, fighting the Russians. There had been good and bad among the Communists, men and women trapped into a fight not of their choosing who, under other circumstances, might have been worthwhile persons, perhaps still were. But the Nazi forces, because the Nazis had no real country, their only true ally Eden itself, was an all-volunteer force, the sons and grandsons and great-grandsons of Nazi sympathizers from New Germany, and Eden as well to a lesser degree. Each man in the SS, the Nazi’s only military arm, was a volunteer and a Nazi Party member, hence embraced their cause.

  Within the SS there were several areas of responsibility, the modern equivalent of the Luftwaffe, or air corps, and commando/shock troop forces.

  The divisions within each group were broken down according to race. There were ethnic German units and there were units comprised entirely of personnel who were not ethnic Germans.

  The commandos, the highest-ranking divisions within the SS, wore the distinctive Totenkopf skull-and-bones symbol originally associated with the Third SS Panzer Division.

  James Darkwood spoke to the Sturmmann on guard, saying, “Tell me if you have seen any armed men passing this way.”

  “I have seen none, Herr Obersturmbannführer.

  Papers please. Access to unauthorized personnel is restricted beyond this point.” The man’s weapon was held at high port.

  “Certainly, Sturmmann.” Darkwood began fishing in his uniform tunic and Paul Rubenstein’s eyes drifted to the passive alarm visible on the guard’s right wrist. Passive alarms were sensible devices, cued to the wearer’s body orientation and pulse rate.

  Any radical change in either—such as might be precipitated by a sudden fall—would trigger the alarm. The person wearing the alarm had fifteen seconds to deactivate it before the alarm was broadcast into the receiving net.

  Paul Rubenstein did not know if Darkwood had noticed it or not. There would be a code which had to be punched into the alarm in order to prevent its being broadcast. Without the code, the alarm could not be neutralized.

  There was only one way around the system. Paul took it, walking up to the guard very quickly and sticking the muzzle of the suppressor to the man’s temple. “Move and I will kill you. Cooperate and you have my word that I will not. What will it be?” He had stretched his German near to the breaking point.

  Darkwood’s pistols were out as well, pointed at the guard.

  The guard’s tough demeanor vanished.

  Darkwood snatched away his rifle.

  Paul told Darkwood in English, “We have to get him slowly to the floor, then tie him so securely that he can’t activate the alarm. He can’t be killed, either.”

  “Shit. All right.”

  Darkwood pulled off his foraging cap, secreted within the turned-up ear flaps, the modern equivalent of plastic flex cuffs. Darkwood moved the Nazi guard’s wrists slowly around behind the man, then bound them together.

  Once this was accomplished, Paul still holding the pistol to the man’s head, Darkwood similarly bound the fellow’s ankles. If someone arrived at the monorail station, a shooting war would begin on the spot, but there was nothing else to do, and no more rapid pace could be trusted to succeed. Darkwood reached into the pocket of his parka and produced a syringe kit. He told the guard in German, “This injection will not kill you, merely put you to sleep, I promise that the needle is clean.”

  Paul looked at Darkwood for an instant, asking, “This won’t slow his pulse too much?”

  “It shouldn’t, unless he has a reaction to the drug.”

  “Go for it.” Darkwood wiped the man’s neck with an antiseptic pad, then used a disposable syringe to administer the drug. By the time Darkwood had removed the needle, the guard was beginning to go under.

  Together, they caught up the fellow’s body, lowering him slowly, gently into a reclining position, then carrying him into the sentry station, resting him on the floor within the enclosure, out of sight unless someone looked into the enclosure. “He’ll be missed,” Darkwood supplied.

  “In another few minutes, there’ll probably be an alert anyway.” Paul looked at the watch that he wore. The second helicopter gunship should be touching down almost to the instant.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  The SEAL Team commander announced, “Is everybody ready?”

  Armed personnel were moving toward the gun-ship as it touched down on the pad to the far side of the takeoff and landing bay. Emma Shaw could see the first gunship, recognizing on the fuselage the serialization which she had memorized. It was good luck that they had been allowed to land in the same bay.

  Me
dical personnel were standing by some distance away from the pad, so at least the story that there were wounded Nazi commandos aboard the gunship was partially believed.

  Natalia ordered, “Make every shot count. There are vastly more of them than there are of us. We need to be clear of the helicopter before the shooting starts in earnest,” she reminded. “Don’t forget!” Then Natalia turned to her as they unbuckled their seat restraints, saying, “Stay close to me. Annie will be with me, too. This isn’t your usual kind of fighting. Remember, the idea is to put someone down. You’re good with a gun. Don’t get frightened by what’s going on around you. Keep your purpose in mind. Remember, the three of us will stay together.”

  “I understand.”

  “Get ready to use your guns, then,” Natalia advised her.

  Natalia started aft, Emma at her heels, Annie already standing beside the fuselage door, a Nazi assault rifle at high port. Like Natalia’s and her own, Annie’s hair—considerably longer than theirs—was stuffed under a black SS foraging cap.

  Half of the men from the SEAL Team would exit the gunship first, Emma and the two other women mixing in between these men and the other six.

  “It should take all of forty-five seconds for us to get some distance between ourselves and the aircraft. But for those forty-five seconds, it is important that we are the most arrogant and convincing SS commandos we can be. Remember,” she warned. “Forty-five seconds. Critical. Critical,” Natalia said again.

  The lock mechanism on the portside fuselage door was released and the door was open. A dozen SS commandos reinforced by six men wearing the insignia of SS/Luftwaffe police waited for them, guns at high port. They were all energy rifles, Emma Shaw noted.

  Her mind focused on the pistols beneath her uniform blouse, a brace of Lancer SIG 226 copies borrowed from the arms lockers of Darkwood Naval Air Station. To a person, each of their pistols was 9mm Parabellum rather than any of the modern caseless rounds or energy weapons.

  Six SEAL Team members stepped down onto the tarmac, their assault rifles—Nazi—slung in such a manner that using them would hopefully appear to be the last thing on any of their minds. Three of the men had theatrical blood on their faces and one of the men wore his left arm in a sling and was helped by another. Within the sling, he carried a pistol for his right hand and a knife for his left. She’d seen him checking the weapons in the instant before the door was slid open. Annie, Natalia and Emma Shaw jumped down, two more SEAL Team men flanking them, the last four behind them.

  The leader of the guard detail, a Hauptsturmführer with a nasty look in his bright blue eyes, was arguing with Lieutenant Christakos, the SEAL Team leader, wearing Hauptsturmführer’s rank as well. Emma Shaw knew next to nothing in German—a few phrases of profanity she had picked up—and couldn’t understand what was going on. But Natalia, who spoke German perfectly, seemed to be perfectly calm, her blue eyes fixed on the Hauptsturmführer.

  Natalia, also wearing officer’s rank, started away from the gunship, edging some of the men around her along with her.

  Two of the guards, enlisted men, moved to block Natalia’s path. Natalia’s right hand moved ever so subtly. There was a clicking noise, barely audible beneath the aircraft noises around them, and the nearest of the two men stood stock still, his eyes going rigid.

  Natalia walked past him quickly.

  The guard started to collapse.

  The second guard turned to look at him.

  Natalia quickened her pace, Annie falling in at her left, Emma at her right. Christakos punched the Hauptsturmführer in the face.

  Natalia wheeled around, the knife in her right hand still dripping blood as she sliced it across the carotid artery of a Nazi staff sergeant, or Scharführer, unfortunate enough to be standing within her reach.

  Knives flashed everywhere around Emma Shaw, Annie swinging her Nazi assault rifle forward on its sling, Emma Shaw doing the same now.

  Natalia kept walking, the rest of the personnel from the gunship falling in behind and on either side of her.

  The men who had greeted them at the gunship were all dead on the tarmac, but so far not a shot had been fired.

  Their grace period would only last for a few seconds longer, Emma Shaw realized, but the further away they got from the gunship and the closer to the control center, the better their chance.

  Natalia strode purposefully ahead, her knife disappeared from her right hand, instead a pistol there, another SIG-226, held almost casually along her right thigh. There was an identical pistol in her left hand, held the same way.

  An Untersturmführer approached them, shouting something.

  His eyes moved past them.

  He stared.

  Emma Shaw knew at what.

  And, she realized, so did Natalia.

  The Nazi officer began shouting at the top of his lungs.

  Natalia wasn’t close enough to use her knife. She raised the pistol in her left hand and shot him dead, one bullet between the eyes. Then she shouted, “Let’s go!”

  Annie swung her rifle into a hard assault position, spraying it into a knot of SS personnel beside the metal steps leading up into the control center, bringing four men down. A fifth man ran, killed by somebody before he made three steps. Emma Shaw had her own assault rifle to her shoulder, firing short bursts at everything that moved that she didn’t recognize as one of her own people. She wasn’t good enough to fire from the hip.

  She saw Natalia, out of the left corner of her peripheral vision, running for the control-center steps, Christakos and two other SEAL Team members with her. And Emma Shaw remembered Natalia’s admonition. She tapped Annie Rubenstein on the shoulder and the two of them started after Natalia.

  Natalia was halfway up the steps, a pistol in each hand. Two men wearing Luftwaffe insignia, energy rifles in their hands, appeared in the doorway.

  Before they could raise their weapons, Natalia’s pistols were on line, firing, spraying into their chests and throats. One man collapsed over the railing, the other tumbled back through the open doorway.

  Emma Shaw caught a flash of movement on her right side, swung the muzzle of her rifle toward it, the rifle not fully shouldered as she fired. An energy bolt struck the top rail, bluish white light flickering over the metal, as the man who’d just fired took the short burst and crumpled to his knees, then fell back.

  To the top of the steps, Natalia inside, Lieutenant Christakos with her, a cacophony of pistol fire as three men—air-traffic controllers, all of them armed with pistols—went down dead.

  Natalia, tearing the cap from her head, shaking loose her hair, ordered, “Lieutenant Christakos, get three of your men to hold this control center. Get the door open immediately before they kill power or we’ll never get out. And get the explosives set.” She was swapping magazines in her pistols as she spoke, stabbing the pistols into her belt, then grabbing up a Nazi pistol and an energy rifle, her assault rifle slung crossbody across her back.

  “Let’s go!”

  And Natalia was running down the steps, Annie right behind her, Emma Shaw at their heels.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  An alarm began sounding, at first from a great distance, but in under a second the alarm’s origin was lost, because alarms were sounding everywhere, there in the corridor fronting the biological research labs the alarm so loud as to be deafening.

  Paul Rubenstein shook his head to clear it as he followed James Darkwood at a steady, controlled pace toward the two armed guards flanking the doors leading into the laboratory.

  “Halt!”

  Both guards went to high port. Paul Rubenstein reflected that they had poor training. They should have gone to assault positions. There was nothing to discuss, really. Paul sidestepped left and ducked as he swung the suppressor-fitted Walther PPK/S from behind his back and on line with the nearer of the two men, the hammer thumbed back so the shot would be fired single action.

  The bullet struck the man who had ordered them to halt, hitting the thro
at near the Adam’s apple, the man’s body slamming back against the doorway.

  The second man was already going down, James Darkwood putting him there.

  Paul Rubenstein used the Walther’s safety as a hammer drop, then upped the safety into the off position again, shifting the pistol to his left hand, his right hand grasping for the pistol grip of one of the caseless Nazi assault rifles he carried. The energy weapons would be used only in a pinch, not nearly as effective because they were not nearly as precise in shot placement.

  Darkwood took the right side of the doorway, Paul Rubenstein the left side.

  Darkwood, keeping low, reached across to the door handle, gave it a twist and pushed. The door swung inward.

  Paul Rubenstein went through first.

  There were about a dozen technicians standing at work tables, dazed looks on their faces, the alarm sounding still, all eyes on the muzzle of Paul Rubenstein’s rifle.

  As Paul was about to summon up his best German to order them to raise their hands, Deitrich Zimmer and Martin Zimmer stepped from their midst.

  “Holy shit,” James Darkwood hissed.

  Paul Rubenstein was on one knee, his assault rifle to his shoulder, the Walther in his belt. Across the sights of the rifle, he stared at Deitrich Zimmer. “You speak English, Doctor, and so does Martin. We want one of the clones. Give us a clone of John Rourke and you might get out of this alive.”

  Deitrich Zimmer only laughed.

  Martin Zimmer said, “You will both die. As to the commando operation going on in Aircraft Bay One, the personnel involved are as good as dead. Surrender your weapons now.”

  “Eat me,” Darkwood responded cheerily.

  Paul Rubenstein slowly stood, the rifle still to his shoulder, the sights still on Deitrich Zimmer’s chest. The natural action of the rifle’s recoil would cause the muzzle to rise slightly as he fired, the bullets lacing upward along the chest and into the thorax, the throat, the head. “You’ll be dead, too, Doctor. I came for one of John Rourke’s clones. Take us to where you keep them.”