Toward the center of the camp.
Through the floodlights.
There had to be a better way, a more direct way, a route that would minimize her exposure to the potentially lethal glare.
Tracie had been staring out the side of the warehouse for hours, but now she focused her gaze not through the window, but rather on it, examining the hardware itself. There was more than enough ambient light to see that the window was old and cheap. Dirty. It had clearly been scavenged from a job site, or an abandoned building, maybe even a junkyard.
But the Phoenix camp was new. The lack of weathering of exposed, unpainted siding on the buildings made clear the construction had occurred within the last year or so, and the window in front of Tracie’s location hadn’t had the chance yet to become warped or sticky from moisture.
Her objective—the pair of blue-shuttered cottages—was situated directly across the access road from her present surveillance position. If she could move in a straight line, her exposure would be minimal.
She leaned in close to the window, squinting to see in the shadowy light. A brass locking mechanism was currently engaged, and Tracie thumbed it, releasing the lock.
Then she tested the window by pushing gently, smiling when it pivoted open. It was designed to open approximately eight inches to allow for airflow through the building, and came equipped with a rod built into the lower portion of the frame that could be swung outward and fastened to the casement to prevent the window from slamming shut.
Tracie ignored the rod. Instead, she tested the clearance by swinging the window as far as possible after first checking to ensure no guards were in the vicinity.
There was plenty of clearance for what she had in mind.
She eased the window closed again and waited.
***
November 19, 1987
2:15 a.m.
Phoenix Compound
Langenberg, Federal Republic of Germany
This time, when the nurse exited the larger building and crunched along the path leading to the cottages, Tracie was up and ready. She stood next to the window with one hand on the frame, waiting to push it open.
She watched closely as the nurse repeated what had by now become a familiar routine, knocking on the cottage door and entering a moment later when the guard swung it open.
As soon as the nurse disappeared inside, Tracie slipped the window open far enough to check all directions for a patrolling sentry. She cursed silently when she saw one in the distance. The man strolled slowly in front of the headquarters building, far enough away that there was little danger of him spotting the open warehouse window—and virtually no chance he would see Tracie behind it—but close enough that she could not yet risk trying what she had in mind.
And he was moving in her direction.
She eased the window closed and crouched below it, exposing just her forehead and eyes as she tracked the man’s progress, tapping her foot impatiently while she waited for him to pass. He crossed in front of the building the nurse had exited just moments ago—apparently the dormitory for the nursing staff, along with untold other staff members—and then turned left, duplicating the nurse’s path almost precisely.
The guard disappeared into the shadows, continuing south between the blue-shuttered cottages. He paid close attention to the exteriors of both buildings but continued walking.
Tracie waited sixty seconds for him to reverse course and reappear. When he didn’t, she added another thirty, just to be sure.
Still nothing.
She eased the window open and double-checked the area.
Deserted.
Now she moved decisively, all hesitation gone. She swung the window outward once again, but instead of fastening the rod to prop it open, she forced it wider and then sat on the sash. Lifted her feet and pivoted sideways until they were dangling outside. Then, while supporting the window with her hand to prevent it from swinging closed and banging into the frame, she dropped noiselessly to the ground.
She slipped the window back into place and breathed deeply. She was still in the shadows of the warehouse at the moment, but the next few seconds would literally spell the difference between life and death. She would be completely exposed crossing the access road, bathed in the glare of the floodlights, casting shadows in all directions.
In one sense she was fortunate. There were no guard towers surrounding the camp. But still, if anyone were to glance out a window in any of the cluster of buildings she would be approaching—or worse, if a patrolling guard should happen along—she would be easy prey, blinded by the lights and armed only with her pistol.
Tracie could feel the clock ticking. The longer she remained hidden in the shadows, the more she tempted fate.
She had to move. Now.
She checked all directions for sentries, paying special attention to the alleyway between the two cottages into which the guard had disappeared ninety seconds ago.
All was quiet. The compound was hunkered down, most of its residents asleep. Tracie took a deep breath and pushed away from the safety of the shadows. She began walking briskly across the dusty driveway, head up, projecting an air of confidence, like she had every right to be where she was.
Just another Nazi fanatic re-advancing the cause of the Third Reich.
The fiction wouldn’t help if she were to be spotted by someone up close. But if a sentry should happen to walk out the headquarters door, or enter the camp from the guardhouse at the front gate, perhaps she would blend in and avoid suspicion.
Although, given the time of night, she doubted it.
Heart racing, she forced herself to walk at a rapid but measured pace, expecting at any moment to hear a shouted challenge, or the sound of the gunshot that would catch her between the shoulder blades and drop her in the dirt.
The crossing seemed to take forever, but in reality it was over in a matter of seconds. Her shadow danced around her as she walked, the light striking her from multiple locations, and then it disappeared as she slipped into the shadows projected by the pair of blue-shuttered cottages.
The relief she felt from once again being mostly hidden from sight was palpable. It was also misleading. There was still the possibility that the guard she had watched walk between these two buildings would return. If he did, Tracie knew she would be almost totally helpless until she regained her night vision.
She willed herself to see, knowing it was silly but trying anyway. The thought of slinking farther back into the shadows was tempting, even if only for a couple of minutes. But Tracie knew she couldn’t afford to miss the sound of the cottage’s front door opening and then closing again when the nurse’s hourly visit ended, a scenario that should occur any minute now.
So she waited. She stood as still as possible against the side of the cottage, moving only her head, and even then almost imperceptibly, as she scanned back and forth for the patrolling guard or for any other sign of trouble.
Still quiet in the camp.
A minute passed, and then two, and she breathed marginally easier as her eyesight began to adjust to the low light in the shadows.
And then she heard it. The muffled sound of voices from inside the cottage, one girlish and flirty, the other masculine and amused. Both were muted, like teenagers making out on a couch while trying to keep from waking the girl’s sleeping parents. The voices grew marginally louder and then the door opened and the nurse stepped onto the front porch.
“Try to stay awake until my next visit,” the nurse said with a smile in her voice, and Tracie could picture her trailing a teasing finger across the guard’s lips.
“I’ll stay awake because I’ll be fantasizing about you,” came the reply. The man’s voice was subdued, quiet, almost a whisper.
“And what will we be doing in this fantasy?”
“You’ll find out when you come back next hour.”
“Ooh, sounds like fun.” The nurse giggled and then descended the steps. The front door closed quietly and the only so
und was the crunching of the young woman’s rubber-soled shoes on the gravel pathway.
Tracie waited until the nurse rounded the corner of the much larger building ahead, then she turned and skirted the front railing of the porch.
Climbed the steps.
Moved to the side of the door and knocked quietly.
25
November 19, 1987
2:20 a.m.
Phoenix Compound
Langenberg, Federal Republic of Germany
The door opened almost immediately. The guard hadn’t had time to settle back into his between-nurse-visit routine.
“What, did you miss me already?” he said, the smile on his face freezing in confusion as he saw someone other than the woman he was expecting. He opened his mouth to shout a warning while reaching for his weapon but he never had a chance.
Tracie’s right fist flashed out and she punched the guard in the throat. He staggered backward and the cry he had been about to unleash died out, replaced by the strangled sound of gagging and wheezing.
He snatched at the pistol holstered at his hip even as he struggled to breathe. Tracie grabbed his wrist and twisted it behind his back, using the guard’s own momentum against him. She spun him around and shoved his head against the far wall, and when it bounced off, she forced the stunned man to the floor.
Plucked his pistol from his holster.
Slammed its butt against the side of his skull, just behind the ear.
The guard’s eyes rolled up into his head and he went limp. Tracie slid the weapon across the room and out of arm’s reach.
She had to hurry. The man was unconscious but his brain would reboot quickly. He would awaken with a massive headache but could still be deadly to her as long as he could scream.
To her right was a plush chair, which the guard had obviously been sitting in while he passed the long duty hours. A small table stood next to the chair, upon which had been placed a reading lamp and a copy of Mein Kampfe, Adolph Hitler’s autobiography.
“Kiss-ass,” she muttered, reaching up and pulling the lamp off the table. She unplugged the power cord from the wall and wrapped it around her fist, then yanked hard. The electrical wires ripped away from their connections in the lamp’s base, and Tracie was left with approximately an eight-foot length of cord.
She reached around and removed her combat knife from its sheath at the small of her back. Cut the cord into three roughly equal sections and placed them on the floor before returning her knife to its sheath. The guard’s eyes had begun to flutter again and he moaned softly. She had to hurry.
Tracie pushed to her feet and crossed the room to the front window. The shade had been drawn, so no one outside the cottage could see in. Thank God for small favors.
A gingham valence hung over the window, giving the cottage’s interior the look of a cheap Italian restaurant. Who the hell did their decorating? she thought, and then reached up and lifted the curtain rod off its supports. She yanked the valence from the rod and dropped the rod to the floor, then hurried back to the guard. His eyes were open but unfocused, and as she came into his field of view they widened in panic and he tried to sit up.
“Uh-uh,” she said softly, leaning forward and placing her left forearm against his throat. She used her body weight as leverage, forcing his head back down to the floor and cutting off his air supply.
He began to thrash and she said, “Lie perfectly still and I’ll allow you to breathe, do you understand me?”
The man’s eye’s narrowed but he nodded grimly, and Tracie eased off the pressure slightly. The air whistled in and out of his throat and she said, “Make one move I don’t like and I’ll suffocate you. You will not get another warning.”
The guard nodded again. He didn’t seem to trust himself to try to talk. Maybe she had damaged his windpipe and he couldn’t talk.
Tracie didn’t know and didn’t care.
One thing she did know was that he was biding his time, waiting for an opening, for a chance to use his superior strength to gain the upper hand.
She needed to secure him. Now.
“Roll over onto your stomach,” she said. She reached back and plucked her combat knife from its sheath again. Displayed it inches from his eyes. Then she removed her forearm from his throat.
He looked from her knife to her eyes and then back again. He didn’t move.
“Roll over right this second or I gut you like a fish. Your choice,” she said. “One dead lunatic won’t bother me a bit.”
“Whatever you think you are doing, you will not get away with it,” the guard muttered through clenched teeth. Apparently his windpipe was just fine.
“Not your problem,” she answered. “I suggest you just worry about staying alive. Now, do as you’re told, or die.”
His lips compressed into a furious line and he began to turn onto his belly. Slowly. Tracie shoved him over and immobilized him with her knee as she pulled his hands behind his back. She picked one of the three lengths of electrical wire off the floor and began winding it around his wrists, forcing them tightly together.
Then she tied it off with a double knot and nodded. It wasn’t pretty but she didn’t need pretty. She needed effective.
With the guard now more or less immobilized, she lifted the gingham valance off the floor. It hadn’t been cleaned recently and a layer of dust coated the material. “Open up,” she said.
The guard’s eyes narrowed and he stared, pure hatred in his eyes.
“Have it your way,” Tracie said with a shrug. She picked up her pistol and lifted her arm as if to strike the guard in the skull again. Before she could begin the downward motion, his mouth popped open like a fish trying to breathe out of the water.
“Good choice,” she said, and then stuffed the dusty cotton inside the man’s mouth, forcing it in until it was nice and tight. She picked up the second length of wire and secured the improvised gag, then wound the ends around his head several times before tying them off as she had done with his wrists.
Finally, she repeated the procedure with the guard’s boots, securing his ankles tightly together.
He was now helpless.
But the clock continued to tick. Tracie knew the guard’s nurse-playmate would return within the hour, and there was a lot to do before that happened.
She stood and turned toward a closed door to her right. Her pulse quickened. This entire insane mission hinged upon her guess about what was behind this door being proven correct.
She reached for the knob and pushed the door open.
***
Tracie’s first thought was that Adolph Hitler was already dead. The body propped in the bed across the small room was clearly the Führer. That much was obvious, even ravaged as he was by age and disease.
But just as obvious was the fact that this man would be dead soon, if he wasn’t already. He was as helpless as a baby and would never be leading a revolution. Not literally, not symbolically, not in any way, shape or form. A blanket had been pulled up to his waist, and she thought she could almost see his ribs protruding through the light pajama top covering his chest and upper body. His skin looked waxy and paper-thin.
A stainless steel IV stand had been set up on the far side of the bed, and a bag of clear fluid dripped slowly through a plastic tube and into the old man’s arm. Another copy of Mein Kampf lay on the bedside table next to Hitler—as if a man in his condition would be able to read—but otherwise the room was nearly empty of furnishings. It was sterile and antiseptic and depressing.
A bare-bones light fixture screwed into the ceiling provided dim illumination, and Tracie squinted from just inside the doorway as she took in the scene. It was surreal. Her feet felt frozen to the floor and she found herself suddenly reluctant to approach the monster responsible for so much death and misery. That it had occurred decades ago was irrelevant; the result of this man’s actions was still real and horrifying.
An aura of darkness surrounded Adolph Hitler, of evil, even as he lay old and
dying. A part of her feared becoming infected, not by whatever disease might be killing him, but by his moral rot. His malevolence. The sensation was illogical but very real.
She stood motionless, concentrating her gaze on his upper body. After what felt like an eternity, she watched as his chest rose imperceptibly and then fell. The room was deathly silent and she realized she had been holding her breath.
Despite the need to get this over with quickly, despite the knowledge she remained surrounded on all sides by Nazi fanatics with deadly weapons and ill intent, despite the fact that a soldier lay trussed up just outside this door and she would be discovered the moment anyone entered the cottage, Tracie found it almost impossible to move.
To do what had to be done.
The moment stretched out, time becoming elastic. Over the course of her career she had seen and done things no human being could ever forget, but she knew this moment—standing alone in a room with one of the biggest butchers of the Twentieth Century—would remain seared into her brain like a cancerous growth, that from this day forward she would see Adolph Hitler in her nightmares forever.
Assuming she survived.
“God help me,” she whispered to no one, and she forced herself to cross the room.
And then she was next to the bed.
Hitler was dying. It was clear to Tracie he would be gone within days, maybe less. Maybe within hours. But she had her orders and was duty-bound to complete her mission or die trying.
And that was exactly what she would do.
The dying man’s eyes remained closed but she had the unshakeable feeling that he knew she was there. She imagined him opening those eyes, cold and dead and murderous, and lifting a hand from the side of the bed. The hand would be palsied and liver-spotted, but it would be strong, and it would clamp onto her wrist, and he would hold her down, and then he would smile through a mouth filled with rotted teeth, and he would pull a German Luger from under his blankets and he would—
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 87