by G T Almasi
I have escaped across the English Channel. The experience redefined “pukefest.”
The ambassador hoists himself out of his chair to retrieve a tourist’s map of Europe from his desk. He gives me the map while he sits down again. I move my coffee mug out of the way and spread the creased paper on the table. JFK takes a pen from his pocket and draws three circles on Western Europe.
“I’d say Fredericks and Talon will seek refuge in one of these locations.”
My partner and I lean over the marked-up diagram of Greater Germany. “Bastogne, Karlsruhe, and Dachau,” Patrick reads from west to east. He looks a question at Ambassador Kennedy.
JFK reclines into his rocker. “Carbon.” He rubs the skin under his chin, which makes me notice red lipstick on his neck. “The German cloning program has a lab in each of these towns. Karlsruhe’s is the largest.”
Brando tilts his head. “You think Fredericks will ask his Carbon friends for help?”
Kennedy nods. “More than just help; he needs diplomatic protection.”
I take a sip of coffee. “How can a bunch of scientists offer political asylum?”
“Because,” the ambassador says, “Carbon has been commandeered by the Gestapo.”
Patrick exhales sharply, flops into the sofa’s cushions, and stares at the ceiling with his mouth open. “Oh. My God.”
I must have heard Kennedy wrong. I rewind and replay his last sentence.
“Carbon has been commandeered by the Gestapo.”
Nope, I heard it right. An icy wash of lightning crackles between my shoulder blades. My coffee mug trembles. I place it on the floor. “How did that happen?”
While we sit frozen on his couch, the ambassador fills us in. After Raj, Grey, my partner, and I liquidated the Gestapo station in York last February, the head of the Reich’s secret police, Markus Wolf, readied a sequence of prepared actions. This sequence, called Protocol 8, is a plot to take over Germany. Wolf began seeding it years ago by discreetly deploying operatives to key government ministries, transportation hubs, and communication centers all across the Reich. Wolf held his finger on the trigger and waited for the moment to act.
That moment arrived four days ago, in the form of Jakob Fredericks. The secret police has informants in every government office in the world. The really important offices are graced with a whole mob of full-time Gestapo eavesdroppers. In England, for example, transcripts of every conversation in the governor’s office make it to Markus Wolf—especially conversations about how American agents initiated the Jewish Rising, wiped out a Gestapo station, and scorched all the earth between Brussels and Harfleur. This must have sounded like a surefire harbinger of Honecker’s impending ouster and Wolf’s best chance to elect himself Chief Executive Asshole.
Go directly to Protocol 8. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred Deutschmarks.
Carbon was lost lickety-schmidt because it was seized by the Staatszeiger jerkoffs guarding it. Gestapo sleeper agents then took control of police stations in every major city. The Reichspolizei—they’re like our FBI—were ordered to reclaim the urban police stations. When the Reichspolizei stormed the Gestapo positions, Wolf called in the German Air Force. Feds are tough, but even they can’t withstand a military airstrike.
“Whoa, wait a minute,” I interrupt. “Since when does the Luftwaffe answer to the secret police?”
“Since Wolf bribed their commander with fifty million marks stolen from Carbon.”
“Of course.” I rub my temples. “Okay. Sorry, sir. Please continue.”
JFK stands up and walks to his desk. “Carbon has the largest budget in the German bureaucracy.” Ambassador Kennedy rummages through a pile of paperwork. From it, he pulls a manila folder.
“We intercepted this KGB report a few months ago.” He grins ruefully. “It forms the basis for ninety percent of our knowledge of Protocol 8.”
According to the KGB dossier, Protocol 8 is a superb plan for taking over Europe. It wouldn’t work for the Russkies, or anyone else outside the Reich, because it’s the biggest, ballsiest inside job in history.
Wolf plans to conquer Greater Germany with its own money and military. He’s even recruited some of Europe’s most dangerous maniacs: the Red Army Faction terrorist organization, what’s left of the Purity League, and Germany’s pestilential band of Über-Buttmonkeys, the Nazis.
Somebody from this rogues’ gallery will be tapped to eliminate competitive domestic elements—for example, the German Navy High Command. The admirals have been outspoken critics of the Gestapo for thirty years. They aren’t expected to collaborate worth doodly-squat.
The Luftwaffe is another matter. Russian intelligence correctly forecast their support for Protocol 8. The seventy-seven-year-old commander, General Reinhard Heydrich, will do anything for money, and shares Markus Wolf’s love of acting like a rat-faced dickwad.
Kennedy refiles the KGB report and says, “General Heydrich’s deputy, Claus von Stauffenberg, has secretly made contact with CIA to indicate his preference for a Gestapo-free Europe.” JFK pulls out another file and returns to his rocking chair. “We need to take the Luftwaffe away from Markus Wolf. This Job Number will deny him an air arm by promoting von Stauffenberg to the top spot.” He gives us the folder.
The title reads “Operation Schimpansegleich.” I take a moment to translate this mess into “Chimpanzee-Like.” I guess another version could be “Ape-Man.” Sounds like someone back home thinks Heydrich is less than human.
The Schimpansegleich file’s contents include maps, photo-reconnaissance images, and page after page of details, but the fundamental direction could fit in a fortune cookie:
KILL HEYDRICH
This feels like a bit of a detour from Operation SCORPIO, but Patrick is obviously on board. So, fine. We’ll catch Fredericks even if it means walking over a trail of dead apes.
13
NEXT DAY, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 5:30 P.M. BST
THE IRISH SEA
The boat leaps from wave to wave like a hell-spawned porpoise. Each landing thunders through the deck and shakes me from toes to teeth. Patrick and I clutch a chrome-plated rail while Ambassador Kennedy grins into the sea spray schpritzing around the cockpit.
“Urgh, I’m gonna blow chunks!” I scream over the roaring engines.
My partner shows his concern for my well-being by moving upwind. When I scowl at him, he comms, “What? No point in me getting splattered, too.” My colorful response is swallowed by the hurtling sea.
Our first step for Operation Ape-Man is to cross the English Channel on the JFK Cannonball Express. The boat is an antique wooden motherfucker that Kennedy says he skippered during the War in the Pacific. The eighty-foot craft bristles with an incredible eighteen heavy-duty weapons mounts, all currently empty and tightly covered in clear plastic. Not seen, but definitely heard, are three howling jet engines Cap’n Kennedy installed in his Aquaman wet dream of a hot rod. The stern reads BINGA but I think he should call her Greased Frightening.
Patrick comms to the ambassador, “Sir, what’s the Binga’s top speed?”
Kennedy—like his brothers—is one of the few civilians with a commphone. He replies, “The fastest she’s gone since I put in the jets is a hundred and twenty knots.” Cap’n K takes a moment to adjust the Binga’s bearing, then continues. “A naval engineer I know said she could hit two hundred.”
Brando goggles incredulously. I yell, “Pretty quick!”
He nods, then turns to study the soaring boat’s deck, fittings, and personnel.
Kennedy’s crew, a trio of salty Irish sailors, effortlessly clamber around the heaving vessel. I spend some time wondering if JFK found them in a circus high-wire act before I pull my mind back to the next task—namely, inserting my partner and I onto the Continent.
In addition to being Germany’s air force, the Luftwaffe is
also her missile command, which represents one of the Reich’s biggest strategic military advantages. The krauts have led the world in rocket science since the 1940s and are the only pigdogs with the ability to drop a Big Suck anywhere on earth.
Their missiles lurk silently in silo farms all over Europe. One of these emplacements forms a circle around Antwerp, Belgium. A series of installations were built into the city’s derelict nineteenth-century fortress system. Our target, General Heydrich, is traveling through the Province of Belgium and will make a stop to inspect his collection of giant steel Schwanzen. Our mission is to intercept Heydrich and punch his ticket.
The boat cruises into a smooth patch of water and Kennedy literally hits the jets. The Binga lunges forward like a cat after a liver Frisbee. If we were in a car, we’d be burning rubber. The crew responds with a lusty cry.
As does my stomach, so I cast about for something to take my mind off my groaning guts.
I wonder where Fredericks and Talon are right now.
Patrick and I both think Kennedy is right that Shithead will seek out Carbon. Jakob has had a fruitfully illicit relationship with them for almost two decades. In ’63, he wangled the collected science of the German cloning program’s original phase, now known as Gen-1. Fredericks combined the Gen-1 data with the mountain of equipment he stole from America’s defunct Asexual Reproduction Initiative to establish the Lake House. I can’t imagine what promises his Carbon cronies extracted from him, but in ’72 they collected on the debt when Fredericks consigned my father to their clutches.
Now the traitorous mofo wants—we assume—to trade political asylum for information about the United States intelligence community. And Fredericks has puh-fuckin’-lenty of info. He would be the highest-ranking U.S. intelligence officer ever to cross over.
While we tear ass across the Irish Sea, Kennedy comms us his most recent sit-rep for Greater Germany. Things are not Great at all.
Protocol 8 is going strong. Seizing the Reich’s cloning program was a brilliant first move. Carbon is spread all over Greater Germany with its own army and communication network. It’s like a state within a state.
After the Luftwaffe smashed the Reichspolizei, Chancellor Honecker called on Germany’s ground-based military, the Wehrmacht, to rescue Germany from the Gestapo. But the army is big and slow, while the secret police are small and quick.
The Gestapo’s lightning-fast game plan is swiftly unraveling Honey’s administration. Wolf has exploited Carbon’s freestanding comm-grid to bypass Berlin’s belated attempts to isolate the Gestapo forces. This uninterruptible comm-channel grants his operations total synchronicity.
Things are moving so fast that reports from Berlin to the German General Staff are out of date before they’ve been decoded. Berlin’s inability to keep pace with the rapidly developing crisis has left many Wehrmacht field commanders trapped within their own sectors. Most of these officers established a stoutly defended perimeter and waited for coherent direction. Some of these sectors press against territory controlled by the Staatszeiger. These tense, bristling boundaries have already seen a few skirmishes.
We approach the port of Plymouth, on the southern coast of England. Kennedy has nurtured a lot of useful relationships in the Reich, including the harbormaster of every port west of the Rhine. He guides Binga to a long wooden pier. On it are a gas pump, stacks of crates, and a small crowd of skylarking roustabouts. The sailors on board Binga exchange good-natured curses with the boisterous hoolies waiting for us.
A few of the lugs on the dock start refueling our boat while the rest jump aboard and disappear into the hold below. They emerge laden with military-grade weapons—Binga’s teeth. Eight of her mounts receive a single machine gun, four of them get pairs of MGs, and four of them are graced with quads.
Brando watches the crewmen work. “Twenty-eight .50-caliber machine guns, two 20mm automatic cannons, and a 70mm mortar.” He tilts his head. “Dang, that’s three hundred rounds every second.”
I poke him in the ribs. “How much weight is that?”
He actually calculates this. “Seventy-five pounds of ammo.”
What a geek.
I poke him again. “Per second.”
“Per second, right. What’s so funny?”
JFK beckons to me. “Hey, Scah-let!”
I approach the cockpit. “Expecting trouble, Mr. Ambassador?”
“We are. The navy’s air arm is challenging the Luftwaffe over the Channel. We’re going to pass directly under them.”
I look east, and sure enough, a formation of aircraft has appeared. “Is that them?”
Kennedy follows my eyes. He picks up a gigantic pair of binoculars and peers at the group of planes. “Balls,” he mutters. “No, that’s something else.”
A siren wails from across the harbor. The pitch grows higher, then lower. Everyone in port scrambles around like krill dodging a humpback.
Kennedy bellows, “Beat to quarters!” His crew casts off and hustles to the guns. They all hook short straps from the mounts to their belts and pull back the slide handle to load a round into the breech.
“Scah-let,” Kennedy comms, “I’m a man short. Get on the quad at the stern.”
“Uh.” I glance at Patrick, who shrugs and raises his eyebrows. “Um, yes, sir!” I say.
The craft’s jet engines scream to life. Our boat races away from Plymouth like a torpedo. The sudden acceleration pulls me off balance. I fall and slide toward the back of the deck. My momentum is arrested by the weapon pylon bearing “my” quad-50. The post hits me in the stomach and knocks the wind out of me.
Fucking boats.
Brando, having thought to hold on to a grab-rail, stays on his feet. “Alix, you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I wheeze. I pull myself upright and hook my belt to the mount.
The V-formation of nine Luftwaffe medium bombers is directly overhead, at about ten thousand feet. Each plane is powered by two bulging jet engines.
The attacking Luftwaffe flight is greeted by a defensive hail of anti-aircraft fire from the gun and missile positions around Plymouth harbor. Pillars of red tracer fire, sudden flak bursts, and agile little rockets chase the planes across the sky. One bomber loses a wing, falls out of the formation, and crashes into the water. Another plane takes a direct hit in the bomb bay and blows apart in midair. The explosion showers its neighbor with burning wreckage. Both of that plane’s engines catch fire. The remaining six jets streak over the harbor and release their payloads. Stacks of dark bombs drill into the ground and erupt in orange-and-black pillars of smoke and fire. Shattered stonework, flaming vehicles, and mutilated bodies pour out of the roiling maelstrom. The third damaged plane slams into a docked navy cruiser. The fireball is so big I feel the heat on my face, even as we speed away from the site.
The six surviving aircraft complete a wide half circle and begin their return flight. The port area is wreathed in a dark cloud of smoke and dust. The planes receive no incoming fire as they pass back over Plymouth. The lead plane dips its nose to drop closer to the water’s surface. The other five jets follow and form up in single file.
The jets descend to less than a thousand feet and bear down on us like hawks.
Kennedy blares, “Open fi-yah!”
I pull the heavy trigger on my rack of four MGs. The rest of the crew follows suit. The recoil from her twenty-eight machine guns jiggles Binga like a belly dancer. My eardrums are nearly ruptured by the bedlam bellowing from our gun barrels.
The lead bomber unleashes its forward-facing machine guns. The sky is torn apart as our competing mobs of lead whip past each other.
Our five-hundred-pound fusillade devours the first aircraft like a pack of piranha ripping an alligator apart. The exploding jet engulfs the following bombers in a burning shower of steel. We discharge another volley, and another quarter-ton of ordnance streaks i
nto the sky. The second and third planes blow to pieces and drop like rocks. The three remaining aircraft peel off in different directions and claw for altitude, desperate to get away from Kennedy’s preposterously deadly gunship. The gunners on our 20mm cannon rip the tail off one enemy plane, and it spins into the ocean with a deep, booming splash. The last two jets ascend out of range.
“Cease fire!” Kennedy orders. Binga’s guns fall silent. Smoke pours from twenty-eight hot barrels. The sailors send up a cheer. JFK yells along with his crew. I unhook my belt and look for my partner. He’s sheltering near the cockpit.
“Gaw-damn!” I comm to him.
“Yeah.” My partner’s face is pale. “Welcome to the German Civil War.”
14
SAME EVENING, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 7:00 P.M. CEST
VLISSINGEN, ANTWERP, PROVINCE OF BELGIUM, GREATER GERMANY
That a modern society could collapse so quickly is perhaps the biggest surprise to hit Washington, D.C., since the IRS revised its tax code to specifically exclude prostitutes as dependents. Nobody in CIA, FBI, State, Justice, or the Pentagon believed our initial reports until they were confirmed by all the other American agents over here.
“Sheiss is fucked up, dude.”
Binga floats toward the sprawling dockworks of Antwerp harbor. A group of Kennedy’s men patch rows of bullet holes the German bombers stitched into the boat’s deck and hull. Another team tends to the miraculously few wounded. JFK throttles the engines back and we slowly toodle into a loony bin.
High above, Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe aircraft sew a swirling, deadly lace of contrails and smoke. From the city streets jagger sharp reports of small-arms fire, punctuated by the deeper bangs of grenades and mortars. Red tracer rounds slash into the sky like hyperactive lightning bugs. The tops of many buildings are hidden by smoke. Cries and screams bounce off the water from all sides.
Kennedy guides Binga to a long pier on the outermost dockyard’s north side, close to the harbor’s entrance so he can make a fast getaway.