by Jerry Ahern
He backstepped, into the bathtub, wishing it were one of the old-style tubs he’d seen in period films—cast iron instead of fiberglass.
Back to the wall figuratively but not literally—he was on his knees inside the tub, crouched as low as he could—Shaw swapped magazines for his pistol to the last full spare. He made a quick reload on the second gun, spilling the five empties into the tub, ramming the speedloader against the Smith’s ejector star. Snatching the .45 from under his armpit where he’d stuck it, in the same instant he rolled the cylinder of the little revolver closed against his thigh.
The bad guys hit the doorway, the first one playing hero or just naturally foolish. Shaw let him have one from each gun, killing him with one in the chest and one in the neck.
The last three men wouldn’t be as careless. Shaw threw himself down as flat as he could into the tub, knowing what was coming: the three surviving men would spray their submachine guns through the open doorway.
There was a short burst, choked off as the sound of unsuppressed gunfire rang out from beyond the bathroom doorway.
“Eddie!”
Tim Shaw was up, stepping over the bathtub, advancing toward the doorway as he hugged his body flat to the wall opposite the sink.
The gunfire kept coming, as if there were a small war going on in his living room. One of the three ran past the doorway, blood spraying from a wound to his right thigh, his mouth open in a scream.
Tim Shaw fired in the same instant as a burst of unsuppressed fire came from the hallway.
The man had already been dying; now he was dead.
“Dad?”
“In the john, Eddie. Six down?”
“There were seven.”
And Tim Shaw suddenly realized he had to urinate. The nonalcoholic beer was like that with him. He dropped the little .38 into his pocket, upped the safety on the .45.
Shaw set the cocked and locked .45 auto on the flush tank, unzipped his fly and did what he had to do. He could hear his son’s voice from the hallway. ‘The seventh guy was waiting outside the door, just in case you made it that far. You all right?”
“Yeah, hey, peachy keen. Hey, remember what you and Emma said when I told you there was a tub in the guest bathroom?”
“No. What’d we say?”
“Said it was a bad idea. Good thing I don’t listen to you guys.” He shook, zipped, flushed and picked up his pistol. “Any of ’em alive?”
“Nope.”
“What they look like?” he asked, stepping past his son and into the hallway.
Before his son could answer him, one of the SWAT Team members bent over the nearest of the dead men and pulled the hood from his face. “If that guy’s a Nazi, I’m gonna be the next Miss Hawaii. Just hitters. Damn it!”
“Check ’em all,” Eddie ordered.
One by one, the six dead men were unmasked. Three of them were guys Tim Shaw had seen in lineups, and none of them had anything close to the classic Aryan look.
“He’s still out there, Eddie, whoever the fuck their leader is. Still out there. And this is either gonna bring him after me or send him to ground.”
“You nearly got—”
“Agh-I nearly got a beer, that’s all I nearly got. Get the news people over here. I want all the coverage we can get. This time, no screwin’ around. I’m gonna call their leader a coward, tell right on the air that he’s a chickenshit afraid to come after me. See what he’s made of.”
“Dad, what if he comes after you with a bomb or something?”
Tim Shaw stepped over one of the dead men as he walked into the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator door and took out a beer. “No bomb, Eddie. He’ll either make a run for it ’cause he knows he’s too hot or he’ll come after me himself, up close, real personal. And he’ll be smarter than these schmucks. It’s just gonna be him and me, Eddie.”
“Hey, no way!”
“Hey—remember who runs this fuckin’ TAG unit, huh? I’m gonna tell him it’s just gonna be him and me. Either way, we’re rid of him”
“What if he—”
“Heck, if he gets me then you get on the damn television and call him out. Long as this Nazi shit’s runnin’ around the islands, we got more civilian deaths to look forward to. You tell me what choice we got, huh?” Tim Shaw twisted the cap off his beer bottle and took a long pull.
Tim Shaw took another bottle from the refrigerator and handed it to his son. “Here, have a beer.” And he called out over his son’s shoulder, “Any of you guys want a beer, help yourselves.” His son was speaking out of love, and Tim Shaw knew that. But he was speaking out of duty. The only legitimate function of a police officer was to protect the citizens who paid his salary. None of the rest of it mattered at all.
Eddie took a swallow of beer, then said, “Where you gonna do this stupid shit?”
Tim Shaw laughed. “The OK Corral’s closed for repairs. I figure the mountains near Emma’s place. No civilians to get hurt. And I know those mountains. He doesn’t.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Michael had been back for almost five minutes. After embracing him, making certain that he was all right—her own behavior amazed her at times—Natalia set about reading the two printouts Michael had smuggled back.
Annie and the crew members were guarding the aircraft against what Natalia considered an almost inevitable attack.
The number of troops on hand at the Nazi headquarters complex was ridiculously meager compared to what any decent commander would have maintained. The material regarding the cloning of human beings and the recording and downloading of the mind was like something out of a nightmare. “What do you make of this? I mean, its existence in that computer? Was the computer just a terminal into a central system?”
“Not that I could tell. Looked to me like they were set up to modem data back and forth as required, but who the hell loads a field computer with top secret data anyway?”
She lit a cigarette. “They seem to want us to know the contents of these files, would you agree?”
“My thoughts exactly,” Michael answered, nodding. She heard him exhale, her eyes on the documents. “Deitrich Zimmer must have counted on one of us hitting the command tent. But, why? How did he know we’d do it?”
“What if he knew that Martin was dead. Zimmer specified the number of people who could accompany your father when he returned Martin for the deal. If Zimmer knew that Martin was dead, then he would be able to assume that because of the number he specified, the entire family would come along, even you, posing as Martin. You did that before, remember?”
“For what purpose?”
“Put the two files together, darling, and what do you have?”
“An invitation to go visit Nazi headquarters and greater urgency than ever before to get Mom and Wolfgang Mann away from him.”
“Exactly,” Natalia agreed. “And, if curiosity gets the better of us, we’ll all come. He will have the entire family in one place at one time.”
‘Still doesn’t make any sense. Why didn’t he just bomb the hell out of the cryogenic repository in New Germany and kill us while we slept?”
“I will have to coach you in your technical German,” she said, smiling. “It seems clear that the only way Dr. Zimmer’s little mind experiments can be performed is when the subject’s brain is active. When we were in the Sleep, our brainwave activity was at a reduced level. What if he wants what is in our heads? What about that? What do you think, Michael?”
“To what end, Natalia?”
She looked up from her reading. Michael was stretched out in one of the chairs, his long legs extending well past the table before him. “What if he sees a Rourke family that is alive and well, as of much more potential value to him than a Rourke family that is dead? What if he is almost daring us to come, by telling us his plan ahead of time, making his plan so irresistible that we cannot avoid walking right into it? I think Dr. Zimmer laid out this data as an invitation.”
“And we’ll accept, won�
��t we?” Michael asked.
No answer was necessary. Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna knew that they would . . .
The digital diode reader on the mission clock—there was one built into the receiver for the positioning device—showed ten minutes before the appointed hour for the attack by Commander Washington’s force, and ten minutes before the hour was the time John Rourke had set for the two-pronged penetration against the camp.
John Rourke tapped the man beside him on the shoulder and started forward on knees and elbows over the ice, toward the camp. The problem was that the perimeter security system looked too obvious, the manpower was obviously dangerously low for the enemy and the only thing that was missing was an engraved invitation . . .
The attack on the city within the mountain, at which Deitrich Zimmer now stared, would be costly.
The fools within it were not the ones who would exact the toll.
He would.
Zimmer looked away from the window and stood up, pacing along the fuselage toward the coffee urn at the rear of the craft. He preferred not to have servants attending him, as extraneous people often interrupted, however unintentionally, one’s thought processes. He poured a cup of coffee into a china cup set on a saucer, the cup and the saucer ordinary in color and design. Neither was he a man of excess. When there was the need to impress with power and influence, he was fully capable of summoning all the trappings. But he needed them not at all, and for himself preferred a more modest approach to life.
Zimmer sipped at his coffee. The urn’s contents were always kept at a drinkable temperature, because he drank his coffee rapidly. There was no need to waste time experimenting with the contents of one’s coffee cup just so that drink-ability could be ascertained.
His attack on the self-styled Aryans within the mountain would begin in moments, and then of course the Trans-Global Alliance forces would arrive on the scene, to harrass his forces, perhaps even to engage. But they did not know with what they would be dealing. While the bulk of his force would be inside the mountain, safe, the bulk of the Trans-Global Alliance forces would be exposed. They would regret that.
Meanwhile, John Rourke and his loyal associate would be about to attack the supposed headquarters complex. Zimmer had personally seen to it that Rouke could find it. Dr. Rourke’s entire family would be inside that complex.
And, if the primary plan failed, the woman—whom John Rourke would not be wholly convinced was the clone of his wife—Sarah Rourke was even convinced that she was a clone—would either kill him, which would be regrettable in a way, or she would be killed by him. In either event, Rourke was finished. Knowing Rourke as he did—they had been enemies for better than a century—Zimmer was as certain of John Rourke’s behavior as he was that the sun, if it rose, would rise in the east. After all, this could be the last second of eternity, although Zimmer seriously doubted it.
If Rourke survived, the minds of Rourke and his family would be his, to do with as he wished.
“Lovely,” Zimmer said aloud, then sipped again at his coffee.
The play was about to begin, the invitations all neatly answered, But, what the Rourkes and the Trans-Global Alliance did not suspect was that this was the beginning of the final act.
Chapter Twenty-Six
No one living had ever witnessed what Anton Gabler was about to precipitate. The prospect, when he considered it at any great length, caused him to become partially erect. Power, after all, was the ultimate aphrodisiac.
Purposely, even though he did not have to answer any biological need, he had gone to the restroom, his intent merely to be able to see his own face in this moment before he made history, remember the set of his features, be forever aware of the power he was about to exert.
Anton Gabler took the small brush from the right outside-pocket of his lab coat, worked back his short hair with it, getting the front—exactly cut only this morning—at the precise angle to set off his profile, rather than distract the viewer’s eye from it.
There should have been photographers and videographers ready and waiting, to record this. Instead, there was only the automatic video camera which constantly monitored all activity within the bunker.
The button—he had made certain of the color—was red. Red was the color of blood, and of the sun when it was dying in the night sky. Red signaled anger. In some cultures, Before the Night of the War, it had signaled happiness.
No anger consumed Anton Gabler, only passion. And the passion was not for death, but for immortality. He, of all the scientists under Deitrich Zimmer, was the Herr Doctor’s choice to lead the project, and the obvious choice to execute it in this final moment.
The Herr Doctor saw the potential in him; of that, Anton Gabler was certain.
Finished with his hair, he pocketed the brush, trying to decide whether or not he should avail himself of the opportunity to urinate. He decided against it. After all, the moment was approaching when he would hold his finger poised over the button. The historic moment was one he wished to savor.
Anton Gabler walked through the doorway, careful to check the door behind him, making certain that it was properly locked. This was his own private facility, and there was always the possibility that some jealous person might attempt to use it.
As director of the project, one had certain prereogatives, and with these came responsibility. In order for others, younger scientists, to strive to be their best, to attain his level of excellence, the example had to be set, the rigidity of how he looked down from the heights maintained, so that they would, in turn, aspire to these heights on their own.
Satisfied that the bathroom was locked, Anton Gabler walked carefully, evenly, along the corridor toward the double doors at its far end. Armed SS men stood on either side of the doorway, and even then it was necessary to be admitted by voiceprint and visual computer identification. This was good, because such power as he was about to wield could not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands.
Whenever he was not personally present, Gabler locked all access to the controls, to the master program. After all, not just anyone was allowed to detonate the first nuclear device to be used in six hundred and twenty-five years.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The buttstock of the M-16 tucked up tight to her cheek, Annie Rourke Rubenstein hissed from beneath the scarf covering her mouth, “Be ready. they’re coming.”
The three with her manned various weapons. The captain had a caseless assault rifle, but the copilot and the radioman/navigator crewed an energy cannon.
Michael and Natalia, outside the aircraft, had energy weapons and conventional assault rifles.
If Michael’s and Natalia’s supposition, based on the intelligence data Michael had gathered within the Nazi camp, were correct, this attack wouldn’t be much. But anytime enemy personnel were advancing toward her in vastly superior numbers she took it seriously.
Beside her sandbagged position—which would be of little use in the event of a direct hit from an energy weapon—lay the Detonics ScoreMaster. If she needed a handgun under these circumstances, it would only be because the enemy had closed on her position. Under such circumstances, her father had taught her to rely on nothing less than a .45 ACP or a .357 Magnum. The latter caliber was unavailable to her.
Annie had another worry, more serious than her own safety. If Deitrich Zimmer’s Nazi forces were attacking the aircraft, that signaled that all bets were off, and her father, John Rourke, and her husband, Paul Rubenstein, might be in even graver danger. There was no way to know. She took what little comfort she could from the fact that she had felt nothing, no sympathetic pain, or sense of imminent death, as she had always felt since awakening from the Sleep for the first time one hundred and twenty-five years ago. The doctor who had treated Natalia during her breakdown had discussed the phenomenon with her—Annie—and said that it was somehow intertwined with the fact that she had pubesced quite early after leaving the Sleep. In documented cases of psychic phenomena, as affecting women, t
here was usually a link to the onset of the menstrual cycle.
Annie didn’t know whether that was scientific silliness or valid, but that she could experience empathic response with those for whom she cared a great deal, was a fact of her life. For once, she was happy for it. No news was good news . . .
She disliked the new weapons as impersonal things. In the final analysis, battle should be face to face between enemies. The energy rifles both she and Michael would use in a matter of moments were built for an age of sloppy marksmanship. A good, solid hit wasn’t required, only that the living target be within the blast radius. That would, at least, produce debilitation. A solid hit would cause death.
With a cartridge arm, the determined man or woman, pumped on his own adrenaline, could survive a bullet to the heart long enough to take the life of his killer. Not now.
Natalia imagined that some of her discontent with the current technology stemmed from her background as a dancer, then in the martial arts. Guns were always useful, and weapons of honor when in the hands of men and women of honor, but there was nothing as reliable as the blade. The knife she had carried with her for well over six centuries was secured in the right outside pocket of her parka, the Bali-Song. If the enemy, who vastly outnumbered them, closed, it would come to that.
Without planning it, only realizing it after she’d done it, Natalia reached out and touched Michael’s gloved hand.
“What is it?” Michael asked.
“I love you,” Natalia responded.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
As President of the United States, Arthur Hook knew that he was considered not only his nation’s leader, but leader of the free world. The free world these days encompassed the nations of the Trans-Global Alliance. The enemy of the moment in humanity’s never-ending struggle was an old enemy, one never properly defeated the first time.