Final impact aot-3

by John Birmingham

  The few people on the street were hurrying to get out of their way. Even onlookers on the far side scurried into doorways or made for whatever cover they could find. Gunfire had been a constant and growing background noise throughout Paris for days, but the Place Pigalle had apparently been spared any overt violence until now.

  Then a volley of small-arms fire broke out, cutting down Alain and Pietr as they swung into the alleyway. Pietr, a big man, a white Russian йmigrй, disappeared as momentum carried him forward and out of view, but Alain spun like a child’s top and crashed to the ground, his light blue shirt pockmarked with bullet holes and discolored with spreading bloodstains. Harry stopped without thinking and turned, training the muzzle of his weapon back up the street. The German who’d been bartering outside the hotel was standing at the open door of the Kubelwagen, his arms full of heavy-looking white sacks. He was too far away for Harry to make out the expression on his face, but he assumed it was one of surprise. The SAS officer keyed up a three-round burst on the 24’s selector and linked its laser designator to the targeting chip in his sunglasses.

  The German seemed to leap toward him with dizzying swiftness as the Ray-Bans’ nano-optics refocused. Now he could see the man’s face as though it were just a few feet away. Three small red dots moved in tight, jumpy circles on his chest, just above the sacks. Harry squeezed the trigger and sent three ceramic bullets downrange. The 24 employed a multitube barrel arrangement, with three separate muzzles opening at the mouth of the gun. All three projectiles thus impacted at the same time. They were flechette rounds, engineered to penetrate the target mass and unfold themselves inside, like small tumbleweeds composed of razor wire.

  Half of the man’s upper torso disintegrated as the kinetic energy flipped him back into the open-topped car.

  Harry spun back and ran toward the alleyway. A window with a top-down view of the contested alley appeared in the lower quadrant of his visual field as the voice of the Trident’s sysop spoke in his earpiece.

  “Nine hostiles confirmed, Colonel Windsor. Four have entered the building. Five remain outside to guard the exit.”

  Flashing red triangles marked the position of the Germans in the pop-up window. Two had hunkered down behind a sandbag barricade, in front of which lay a dead man and woman in civilian clothes. Another had taken up position inside a doorway to the building. The last two hugged the wall just around the dogleg corner of the alleyway. They were probably the ones who had killed the Resistance fighters.

  Just in front of him Veronique sprinted across the mouth of the back street and pressed herself up against the corner of the building on the other side. A couple of bullets whistled past as she did so. Ronsard and Anjela held position at the corresponding corner on his side. They were all waiting on him, knowing that he could call on any number of views from the Big Eye drone humming far above.

  Harry slipped off the Ray-Bans, passing them to Ronsard so he could have a quick look at the drone feed. The Frenchman, who’d trained with the system in Scotland even though he was never likely to have access to his own Combat Optics, nodded and took a look. Then he handed them off to Claudel, who seemed to take a few moments to understand what she was looking at, but she quickly worked it out.

  Harry used the brief interlude to remove a strip of ammunition from his handgun, replacing it with another from the breast pocket of the rather threadbare civilian jacket he was wearing. The regiment still had a reasonable supply of reloads for the 24s, having hoarded their own stocks and having benefited from the generosity of Captain Halabi, who’d turned over the contents of the Trident’s armory to them. He took the glasses back and fitted them again just as Veronique banged off a few rounds from her antique pistol to keep the Boche in their place.

  A clatter of concentrated small-arms fire came from within the building, followed by a hollow boom that shook the whole place and dislodged a sprinkling of masonry dust. His earpiece crackled into life again.

  “Major General Brasch requests immediate extraction, Colonel.”

  “All right, all right, tell him to keep his fucking pants on,” Harry muttered, more to himself than to the operator back on the stealth destroyer. “Ronsard, give me a couple of seconds’ covering fire, then pull right back,” he ordered.

  The Frenchman opened up, and the others followed suit, even though none had a clear shot: the flat hollow booms of Veronique’s Webley; the thinner, much less substantial cap-fire of Claudel’s little handgun; and the snarling bark of Ronsard letting rip the short full-auto bursts of another VLe 24.

  Harry selected the barrel he’d just reloaded. As the French fighters pivoted away, he calmly stepped up to the corner, raised the weapon in a two-handed grip, and squeezed off half a strip of micronic grenades. They punched out with a slightly softer report than the penetrators he’d fired earlier, exiting the gun with a much lower muzzle velocity. Six of the electronically fired area-clearance rounds smacked into the brick wall at the far end of the alleyway, ricocheted off, and detonated in the middle of the passageway around the dogleg.

  The high-explosive lozenges triggered with a roar that surprised the civilians. It sounded as though a barrage of mortar rounds had gone off. Glass shattered up and down the street. Thick clouds of dust came billowing out of the alleyway, and Harry took off again, leading them all in at a sprint. He and Ronsard fetched up at the corner first.

  Disembodied limbs and torn, bloodied clothing littered the ground. Harry checked the top-down display in his Ray-Bans. Four of the red triangles had gone out. One was flashing, but he could see through the smoke that it tagged a man who was trying to crawl away, using only one arm. His legs and most of his other arm remained behind. Anjela Claudel put a single shot into the back of his head.

  “Gestapo scum,” she said. “He should have suffered, but…”

  A Gallic shrug.

  Harry pressed himself up against the wall, which was painted with a sticky organic gruel of flesh and blood. A machine pistol, probably a Schmeisser, started up inside, hammering away in short, irregular bursts. The popgun reply of a small pistol could barely be heard over it.

  Harry pulled out his flexipad. “Trident, can you get a point-to-point linkup with Brasch?”

  “Aye, Colonel. Just a moment. There. Channel three. Audio only.”

  Harry held up the flexipad like an old-style cell phone. “Brasch. Major General Brasch. Can you hear me? Can you respond? It’s Colonel Windsor of the Special Air Service. We’re here to extract you.”

  The German replied in clear, if accented English. He sounded remarkably calm. “Your Highness, a rare privilege. I can talk and shoot, but not well together. I am at the end of the hall on the third floor. I have killed at least two of them with a small directional mine. But two remain and I am outgunned.”

  “Can you see both?”

  “No, just one. The other is probably watching his back. So you must be careful.”

  Now, there’s a statement of the bleeding obvious, Harry thought.

  The Trident’s sysop broke in on their channel. “Colonel Windsor, we have two other hostile teams closing on your location by foot. The nearest is on the Avenue de Villiers, an estimated ten minutes away. A second team has changed direction and is moving toward you along the Rue du Faubourg St.-Martin. They will arrive in approximately fifteen minutes.”

  Bugger.

  Harry quickly explained the situation to his comrades as the gun battle continued inside.

  “Veronique and I will slow down the fascists on de Villiers,” Anjela Claudel said when he’d finished. “There is a cafй there, a favorite of the Communists. We will get help.”

  There was no arguing with them. The two women simply spun away and took off.

  “Right,” Harry said. “By the book then, Captain Ronsard.”

  The Frenchman nodded. Harry spoke into the flexipad again.

  “Herr General? We’re coming in. Move back from your door and take whatever cover you can.”

  On the
count of three they burst into the building.

  Brasch fired off all but two of the bullets left in his clip. He would save those for the Gestapo if they came through the door. Having already upended the heaviest piece of furniture in the room across the doorway-an old, hardwood freestanding closet-he leapt into the small stronghold he’d made in one corner using a small vanity, a cheap writing table, and a stained, poorly sprung mattress. As he dived through the air, his ears were assaulted by an incredible cacophony, ripping bursts of automatic gunfire-much louder and fiercer than the MP40s the secret policemen had been firing at him-splintering wood, and cracking bricks, duller percussive thuds and enormous, bowel-shaking explosions. It was like Belgorod all over again.

  Before driving into the unknown building and up three flights of stairs, Harry and Ronsard stripped in penetrators and area clearance. The small entrance hall was a slaughterhouse.

  Brasch had rigged up some sort of claymore-type mine and triggered it as the Gestapo had entered. The first two men had taken the full force of the blast and nearly disintegrated. Their remains were embedded in the pitted, ruined hallway walls. The two commandos came in hot, hosing down a narrow arc in front of them with short bursts of tungsten penetrators. Designed to slice through monobonded plate armor, but meeting only plaster, brickwork, and wooden floorboards, they passed through like very small, hyperaccelerated wrecking balls, chewing the old brothel to pieces.

  Pounding footsteps on the next landing warned them of somebody’s approach. Harry fired a full strip of penetrators into the ceiling, tracing a line along the axis of the corridor on the floor above them. He was rewarded with a strangled shriek, followed by a tremendous thump.

  They took the stairs three at a time, their legs working like pistons. Ronsard made the next level first, firing a precautionary three-round burst to clear their way. He needn’t have bothered. The German lay in a crumpled heap of black leather trench coat.

  “Clearance,” Harry called, and Ronsard ducked as the prince pumped two high-explosive rounds up through a gaping hole in the ceiling. Both men hunched over as the pellets triggered with a deafening clap of thunder. Half the ceiling seemed to collapse, and with it came the body of another German.

  Hopefully not Brasch.

  Harry trained his gun on the body as it crashed to the floor, landing atop a pile of fallen wreckage like a sack of concrete. It didn’t move.

  “Major General Brasch,” he called out. “It’s Colonel Windsor. I think we’re clear.”

  He heard grunts and the scrape of something heavy being shifted on the floor above. After a moment the German appeared, peering down through the gaping hole. He was dressed in civilian clothes, but wearing a holster into which he slipped his Luger.

  “Your Highness, I hope.”

  “And Captain Ronsard of the Free French Army,” Harry said. “Can you get down, General? Best we don’t stuff around too long here. Some more of your former comrades are keen to catch up with you.”

  In the small pop-up window, Harry could see a gunfight just starting over on the Avenue de Villiers. It looked like a very disorganized affair. Claudel had not had time to set up a proper ambush. She seemed to have found three men to help her, but they were outgunned by the Gestapo, or SS, or whatever they were. The prince’s chivalrous nature urged him to tear over there and lend a hand, but a decade and a half of military training won through. The women had effectively offered to sacrifice themselves for the mission, and that meant getting Brasch safely away.

  “Trident,” he said into the flexipad as Ronsard helped the German clamber down through the ruined ceiling. “I need a route out of here right now.”

  “Already laid in, Colonel,” the sysop replied. “Feeding nav data through now. You’ll be heading south, toward the Champs-Elsyйes. The second team of hostiles is still three blocks away, but they are moving quickly. Best you get a move on.”

  A large blue arrow appeared in the heads-up display, although it was a little premature since they were still inside. It pointed at a wall.

  Brasch jumped the last, short distance and landed on the pile of plaster and shattered woodwork.

  “Right then,” Harry said. “Let’s scarper.”

  D-DAY + 33. 5 JUNE 1944. 1454 HOURS.

  BERLIN.

  It would be time to leave this particular bunker soon. It wasn’t wise to linger in any one place too long. The Allies’ ability to peer deep into the Reich was almost preternatural, and the Reichsfuhrer-SS had no desire to be turned into “pink mist,” as the Emergence types said.

  He was waiting on a report from Paris, after which he would return to Bunker 13 for a few hours to check on the fuhrer’s progress before moving to another secure facility for the night. They had all been living like this for too long. It was demeaning, the way the Reich’s ruling elite had been reduced to scuttling about like petty criminals. Himmler removed his glasses and used a clean handkerchief to wipe the lenses. There was something about the recycled air in this subterranean hideout that seemed to affect them. He forever had to polish the things if he wanted to see clearly.

  Not that there was anything worth seeing, or reading, in the pile of documents covering his desk. It seemed apparent now that Major General Brasch had betrayed them. What a foul, bitter irony given the number of innocent men who’d no doubt died in the purges following the Emergence. Himmler did not regret having taken the sternest measures to root out defeatists and conspirators within their midst. So high were the stakes, it was better that ten innocent men die than one genuine traitor go free. And the men he had killed to correct the false record of his own last days in the other world-well, they, too, had died for the Fatherland.

  Given the saboteurs and recidivists discovered all too late within the crew of the Dessaix, it was to be expected that the most abominable lies would have been planted about him. He would never have worked to undermine the fuhrer. Why, the very idea of it! But of course, he had to remain above suspicion if he was to carry on his work.

  A bitter, bitter paradox. Those researchers had done their job, and been punished for it.

  Brasch, meanwhile, had sold out his birthright and had been rewarded with promotions, luxuries, and that most rare and precious of indulgences, trust. Himmler wasn’t a man given to violent passions, but as he read the reports, he was entirely unable to still the tremors that stole over his whole body as he tried to contain his rage.

  As second in command of the Ministry of Advanced Armaments Research and an active participant in its predecessor organizations, Brasch had enjoyed an intimate knowledge and understanding of the country’s most important weapons programs-both their strengths and their weaknesses. Now those secrets had been lost to the Allies, and there would be no recovering, not with the Bolshevik horde now descending upon them from the east.

  And not with the fuhrer incapacitated as he was.

  Yet another dolorous report came from the SS medical officers assigned to Hitler’s case. They now theorized that he had suffered an apoplexy that might permanently cripple him. The news was being kept from everyone except Himmler, while he waited to see if the fuhrer recovered, and planned for the possibility that he might not.

  His assistant knocked quietly at the door. “It is here, Herr Reichsfuhrer. The cryptographic section has just finished decoding the message.”

  Himmler took the folded piece of paper and dismissed the young officer. They’d had this transmission for three-quarters of an hour already, but because of the Trident’s code-breaking computers, all of the most important signals had to be sent using onetime pads. It significantly slowed down exactly those communications that most needed to be sent quickly.

  His heart pounding, he unfolded the note and read the first line.

  BRASCH HAS ESCAPED.

  If it were possible, his hands shook even more violently. A spell of dizziness came over him, and he found it impossible to focus on the rest of the message. Not that it mattered. The details were unimportant. What mattered… />
  “Herr Reichsfuhrer.”

  Himmler looked up, his head spinning.

  His assistant was back, and he was ashen-faced. For a moment the SS leader expected him to announce that the fuhrer had died. But he didn’t.

  His news was much worse.

  20

  D-DAY + 33. 5 JUNE 1944. 1521 HOURS.

  POLISH AIRSPACE.

  The flight was entering its sixth hour when the message came through from Moscow. There was a few minutes’ delay while the radio operator broke open the sealed envelope containing the one-use code pad and translated the orders.

  Proceed to primary target.

  A simple message, with the power to change the world.

  Kapitan Semyon Gadalov eased the big jet bomber around on its new heading. A flick of the intercom switch, a brief series of orders, and the technicians began to arm the device down in the bomb bay. Suddenly Gadalov wasn’t just flying an airplane, he was wielding the most terrible weapon ever invented.

  The Carpathian Mountains crawled past to the south-an illusion caused by distance and altitude. They were traveling very quickly-more than a thousand kilometers per hour. It was astonishing, given that just two years ago Gadalov had been flying an Il-4 with about a third of the speed. No matter how many times he went up-and admittedly the Tupolev had only been cleared to fly three months ago-he never failed to be awed by the power of her Mikulin turbojets, the great span of her swept-back wings, or the feeling that he could fly forever. She was a precious jewel, one of only three such craft built so far. Exactly how precious was shown by the fighter escort she commanded. Two full squadrons of new MiG-15s had joined up with her just north of Kiev.