by Paul Kenyon
"All right," he said. "But I'm going in with you." He drew the big .45 at his hip.
"Do you have any plastique left?"
He patted a pouch at his belt. "Enough to do the job. And some grenades."
"Let's go then!"
They ran at a crouch toward the gaping hole that had been blown in the walls. The guard tower at that corner leaned at a crazy angle, dead men hanging over its side.
Inside the wall it was a hell of smoke and noise. Two uniformed men with rifles ran toward them. Penelope stitched them with the machine gun. They fell to the ground, legs twitching. There was a shot from behind them. Wharton whirled and blasted the face off the man who had fired it.
"This way," Penelope shouted.
The reactor dome loomed out of the mists. It looked like a giant concrete breast, one hundred feet high, the huge steel nipple of the coolant pump system at its peak.
She tossed the submachine gun to Wharton. "Cover me. Give me the plastique and your Spyder."
She hit the coolant housing with her first shot. The Spyder's explosive piton gripped the steel surface. Penelope shucked off Wharton's shirt and reeled herself up the slim line, the pouch of explosive slung over her shoulder.
A German with a machine pistol lurched out of the smoking ruins of the barracks. He gaped at the incredible figure climbing up the reactor dome — a beautiful woman wearing nothing but a black corset. Then he came to his senses and raised the machine pistol. The moment of hesitation cost him his life. Wharton caught him with a burst that cut him in half.
The Baroness was at the top now, ripping open the door to the steel housing. A stray bullet clanged off the metal. She ignored it.
Working with cool concentration, she molded the plastic explosive around the junction of the pipes, a steel crotch two feet in diameter. The backup system was another jumble of pipes at the other wall. She kneaded the plastic into the angle containing the safety valve. Wharton's pouch contained detonator caps and about a minute's worth of fuse. She pushed the caps into the doughy explosive and lit the ends of the fuses. Then she got the hell out.
She emerged into a hail of bullets. Down below, Wharton was standing off at least a dozen Germans.
Without pausing, she gripped the butt of the Spyder and released the clutch all the way. She slid dizzyingly down the enormous curve of the reactor dome, a hundred feet on her heels and bare bottom. She hit the ground with a shock and rolled over and over.
Wharton tossed her the machine gun while she was springing to her feet.
"Let's go!" she yelled.
They sprinted for the hole in the wall, bullets kicking up the muddy earth around their feet.
We'll never make it, she thought.
Then there was the dull thud of plastic explosive. Bare seconds later, there was an enormous deafening hiss as superheated steam spewed out of the break in the reactor dome.
There were frightened shouts behind them, and the shooting stopped. Penelope and Wharton flung themselves through the hole in the wall into the jungle night beyond.
"Keep running!" she shouted. "Get as much distance as you can."
Behind them, the reactor's uranium pellets, with nothing to cool them, heated up at the rate of 40 degrees a second. In two minutes it reached 5000 degrees. The steel floor of the reactor melted. Tons of molten radioactive metal dripped through and began to melt its way into the bowels of the earth.
By that time, Penelope and Wharton were a mile away, the wind safely leeward. She motioned Wharton to stop running.
He cocked his head. "No explosion?"
"No, just a cloud of radioactive gas. They're dead men back there. Or will be in a few days."
Including Tommy, she thought with a pang.
"That big glob of molten uranium won't explode?"
"It can't. It's diluted by too much molten steel. It'll stay hot for centuries — melting its way down through the earth."
"All the way to China, eh?" he grinned.
"Where's the rendezvous, Dan?"
"This way, Baroness."
Eric was already there, and the others began to drift in after a few minutes. Paul and Yvette came, hand in hand, festooned with ammunition belts and cannisters. Fiona slipped through the jungle after them, wearing loose coveralls, soot on her face, the flaming red hair tucked under a bandanna, her slender fingers gripping a long-barreled Remington XP-100 rifle-pistol fitted with a black-light scope.
Skytop came last, leading Inga by the hand. "Look what I found," he grinned.
"I skinned over that wall as soon as the first blast went off," she said. "Found a ladder in the dog kennel and scooted across while the commotion was going on."
"I wouldn't like to be back there right now," Paul said.
They all looked back toward the estate. Even from this distance, they could see the flames licking against the sky, casting a hellish glare on an enormous cloud of radioactive steam that blanketed the area.
"Where's Tommy?" Skytop said.
Penelope's face was an impassive mask, fit by the distant fires. "They had him under guard. He's still in that hell."
Wharton turned a mournful face toward her. "There's nothing we can do, Baroness."
"But he's locked up, helpless!"
"Who's helpless?" They all looked up. Sumo was standing there, his clothes torn, a big gash down the side of his face, a Schmeisser machine pistol in his hand. The last time Penelope had seen the Schmeisser, it was being held by Sumo's guard.
He gave them a gentle smile. "It was as easy as taking candy from a baby. This gun was too heavy for that old man. He should never have decided to hit me in the face with it." He touched the gash on his cheek. "Guns are for shooting people. I never could have done anything if he had used it to shoot with."
Penelope threw her arms around him and kissed him on the forehead. "I thought you were dead, Tommy darling."
"I just kept out of sight until the excitement started. Then I got out over the blind spot in the wall." He patted the Schmeisser. "Baroness, on the way out I ran into Strasser, the head computer man. He was on his way to the labs — I guess trying to save the tapes of his programs. I gave him a burst. Without him, with the tapes burned up, no one's ever going to make a fusion bomb with a laser trigger."
"Except our side, Tommy," Penelope said. There was no answer. "You did open Heidrig's safe again before you left, didn't you, darling?"
Sumo smiled awkwardly. "Yes, I opened it. Sneaked into Heidrig's bedroom while the household was scurrying around. But the diamond was gone."
"Gone?"
"Yes. I've got the films and measurements of the laser assembly." He patted a big bulge in his pants pocket. "Got them from my room first thing. But they're no good without the matrix diamond." He scowled. "That diamond was about the most important thing in Heidrig's crazy dream. What the hell could he have done with it?"
Penelope touched the black velvet band around her throat. Her fingers found the big blue-white diamond with the oddly cut facets.
"I think," she said slowly, "I'm wearing it."
Chapter 16
They all sat in the little jungle clearing, squinting against the bright sunlight, and watched Sumo perform his magic trick.
First he pried loose the two outer glasses of the Hasselblad lens. It was a multielement Zeiss UV lens, a stubby black-barreled cylinder.
"That lens cost me $2900," Skytop complained loudly. "I expect to put in a chit for it, Baroness."
Penelope ignored him. "Go on, Tommy," she said.
Sumo poured a clear, syrupy liquid into the hollow nest of polished glass. Penelope handed him the diamond. He took it and dropped it into the lens.
And it disappeared.
"The liquid is a silicone," he explained. "It has exactly the same index of refraction as a diamond. Put a diamond into it and the diamond becomes invisible. It was the Baroness's idea."
"Customs men look at cameras," Penelope said. "They even look inside them. But customs has never been kn
own to take a lens system apart to check on its components."
Sumo cemented the outer discs of glass back into place and handed the lens to Skytop. "Keep it with your equipment, Joe. Best bet is to screw it into the camera before we go through customs. They might poke around all your stuff, but the instinctive reaction will be to think of the lens as just another part of your camera."
"Are the microdots ready?" Penelope said.
Skytop lumbered to his feet and led her to the darkroom he had improvised from a tent. Inside was a crazy-looking assemblage of lenses and clamps.
"The resolution is beautiful, Baroness," he said. "Took me all night. I developed Sumo's pictures of the laser components — all seventy-two of them. Then took — reduced pictures of his prints. Then took reduced pictures of the reduced pictures. And so on. Here's what I got 'em down to."
He held out a little glass dish containing nine tiny black specks.
"Very good, Chief. Burn all the prints — Sumo's originals and all your intermediates."
"What do I do with the microdots?"
"Paste them into our passports. One dot in each passport. Spread the risk that way."
"Damned hard to find, even when you know they're there. Where do you want me to put them?"
She thought a moment. "First page. They can be the dot over the T in the word 'Height'."
He laughed. "Beautiful!"
"We're splitting up the group now. I don't want to attract too much attention till we get to Rio. You and I take one of the jeeps, drive to Brasilia. It's about 800 kilometers. We can take turns driving, be there this time tomorrow."
"What about the others?"
"They'll split into two groups. One takes a river steamer. They can pick up a bush flight from one of the airstrips along the river, get a direct flight to Rio. The others can go by way of Goiania."
"Okay. I'll start packing up."
The drive along the rutted jungle trail was almost pleasant, if you ignored the jolts and bounces. The swarming gnats and pium flies were left behind by their brisk thirty miles per hour. There were splashes of vivid color punctuating the jungle green: wild orchids and gaudy butterflies. Once they disturbed a fluttering cloud of tiny green parakeets, hundreds of them, no bigger than the butterflies.
Penelope relaxed and enjoyed the scenery. It was almost over. There was nothing left to do except get to Rome, where she would turn over the diamond and the microdots to one of John Farnsworth's couriers.
She began to doze.
And the jeep lurched to a stop. Skytop, with a muffled curse, reached for his gun.
There was the warning stutter of an automatic weapon. A burst whizzed over their heads. Skytop sensibly froze.
"What…" Penelope began, and then she saw what had stopped the jeep. The thick trunk of a hardwood tree lay across the trail.
Half a dozen armed men stepped out of the underbrush, surrounding the jeep. They wore the green uniforms of Heidrig's private army. They were all brawny, hard-faced elderly men who held themselves with military correctness. Penelope recognized Willi and Heinz.
Willi waved a Schmeisser machine pistol at them. "Down!" he ordered.
They got out. Penelope managed to slip the leads of the Borzois unobtrusively. The big white dogs continued to sit in the back of the jeep, not realizing that their chains were unfastened. They wagged their tails at the six Germans.
"Some guard dogs," Skytop grumbled.
"Silence!" Willi roared.
One of the dogs suddenly made the peculiar keening sound that Borzois make when they are asking permission to kill something. But it was only some small animal they had spotted in the forest. Forgetting that they were supposed to be tied, they bounded gracefully over the side of the jeep and flung themselves like lances into the underbrush.
One of the startled Germans fired a burst after them, too late.
"March!" Willi ordered.
A narrow side trail branched off from the road at the point where they'd been stopped. The Germans herded Penelope and Skytop down the overgrown path. One of them followed slowly with the luggage-crammed jeep.
Skytop managed to get close enough to her to whisper, "Notice anything odd about these guys?"
"What do you mean?"
"They look beat, gray-faced. And I don't think it's because they're old men."
"It's radiation sickness. They'll all be dead in a week."
"Too late to help us."
The butt of a gun smashed into the back of Skytop's head and sent him staggering. "Silence!" Heinz's voice said.
They broke into a small clearing that contained the Germans' own vehicle, a camouflage-painted half-track from Heidrig's motor pool. Two of the Germans trussed Penelope and Skytop hand and foot with thick rope, while Willi and Heinz covered them with Schmeissers. The other two men were already going through the luggage in the jeep, tearing everything apart.
"Gar nichts," one of the searchers finally said.
"The diamond," Willi said. "Where is it?"
"Go to hell," Skytop told him.
Willi hit him in the face with the barrel of the Schmeisser. Skytop spat out a bloody tooth.
"Perhaps you will be more cooperative," Willi said, turning to Penelope. "Where have you hidden the diamond?"
"Go to hell," Penelope said.
He hit her in the breast with the butt of the machine pistol. A wave of pain and nausea swept over her.
"You can still go to hell," she said between gritted teeth.
He raised the weapon again. A shout from the jeep stopped him.
"Ein Kamera mit ein Zoomobjektiv!" shouted one of the Germans searching the luggage. He was holding up Skytop's Hasselblad, the one with the doctored lens.
"Bringen Sie es mir," Willi ordered.
The man trotted over with the camera. Willi turned it over in his hands, studied the 105mm lens. A smile spread slowly over his face.
"Look at what we have here, Heinz," he said.
Heinz eyed it greedily. "I have always wanted a Hasselblad," he said shyly.
"It is yours, alte Kamerad," Willi said, proffering the camera. Heinz slung it over his shoulder.
"You'll never five to enjoy it, you bastard," Skytop said.
Heinz kicked him half-heartedly in the ribs. "I am sixty-two years old and expect to live another twenty years," he said, "and that is twenty years longer than you will live, Schweineschwanz."
The sun was low in the trees, and a presunset quiet was beginning to settle over the jungle, preparing for the din of a Brazilian night. Heinz and Willi had a drained, tired look. Willi squatted in front of Penelope, his ancient bones creaking.
"It is getting late," he yawned. "I don't feel so good — I don't know why. You will tell me where the diamond is. You will tell me sooner or later. If you tell me sooner, you will be a lot prettier when you die."
Penelope gave him a defiant look. "You can stuff it."
He slapped her, an open-handed blow that sent her head snapping back.
"I don't know how you did it, Baroness — if that's what you really are. Killed Herr Obergruppenführer Heidrig and Horst. Destroyed everything we have been working for. But there is still hope. The Fourth Reich is not yet finished. There are many, many old Kamerads in Brazil and elsewhere in the world. I know how to get in touch with them. They will listen to me. And when I tell them about Herr Heidrig's secret weapon and give them the diamond, we will begin again." He coughed, then recovered his voice. "Hitler is dead, and now you have killed his son. But we have had temporary setbacks before, in 1918 and 1945. The third time, we will not fail."
A chill passed through Penelope as she heard the mad fantasy. Willi misinterpreted her involuntary shudder, and grinned, showing yellow teeth.
"You are afraid, das ist gut."
Heinz squatted beside him, and they began fondling her trussed body, like butchers with a farm animal.
"Fine, healthy flesh, Heinz, nice and strong. She will last a long time, nicht wahr?" He ripped the front of
her blouse open and poked a hard thumb into her bra. "These will not look so pretty when they are full of cigarette burns, will they?" he chuckled. "And when you have a chance to use your little knife on them."
Heinz nodded happily. "Remember that Gypsy woman at Auschwitz? I carved her like a roast, and she never lost consciousness."
Willi's hand groped under her skirt. Penelope clenched her teeth. "Perhaps we are not so old that we cannot have some sport with the Baroness, eh Heinz?" he winked.
"Ja, ja! And then put something else inside her. Maybe a red-hot poker, as we did to the Judenfrau at Ravensbruck." He chuckled at the memory. "I thought she'd never stop screaming."
An animal bellow came from Skytop. "I promise you, you bastards, you're going to pay for this! I'm going to teach you what a Cherokee can do with a knife!"
Heinz reached out and gave the big Indian a casual swipe across the face with the long barrel of the Schmeisser. "Quiet, schwein!"
Willi was fondling her toes now. "Ah, what pretty little toes. How thoughtful of you to wear open sandals. It will make my work much easier when I cut them off with a bolt cutter."
Heinz poked Willi in the ribs. "Willi, do you know what I am thinking?"
"What, old friend?"
"It is late. We are tired. We should wait until morning before we begin. We might make a mistake and kill her too soon. If we save her until tomorrow, we can make her last the whole day."
"Maybe you're right." Willi got to his feet with a grunt. "I'm feeling a little ill. Ich habe überall Schmerzen."
"Me too. Ich futile mich fiebrig. We need sleep."
The Germans built a fire and set up camp for the night. Penelope could see the effects of radiation sickness in them as they worked. They stumbled about with difficulty, complaining about pains in their joints; Willi blamed it on the chilly night air. One of the guards ran behind a tree and vomited.
Unfortunately, she knew, they'd still be well enough for a few days to torture and kill her and Skytop. And if Heinz should realize that the stolen Hasselblad around his neck contained Heidrig's diamond, there was no question that they'd last long enough to get it into the hands of some fanatical higher-up in Brazil's German underground.