A pair of combat-boot-clad footfalls told Tracie the man had taken two hasty steps into the cottage and then frozen at the bizarre sight of his boss, Adolph Hitler Junior, apparently relaxing in a stuffed chair while his precious Phoenix training camp burned to the ground around him.
The shock would only last a second, though, and then the man would take in the sight of the blood-soaked nightshirt and Hitler’s sightless, staring eyes and reality would set in.
And Tracie would lose her only advantage.
She could not allow that to happen. She eased around the edge of the chair, gun first, and trained her weapon on the bodyguard. His eyes widened almost comically. He hadn’t thought to draw his weapon, obviously hadn’t believed his boss could be in any real danger inside a camp filled with loyalists, surrounded by an electrified fence and protected by sentries armed with automatic weapons.
He would now pay for that error in judgment. “Remove your pistol from its holster. Hold it by the handle with just your thumb and forefinger. Then drop it on the floor at your feet and kick it away.”
The man didn’t move. His mouth had dropped half-open and he looked as though he simply could not comprehend what was happening.
“Last chance,” Tracie said. “Do as I say or die.”
Very slowly, the guard unsnapped the black leather holster at his hip. He lifted his gun and held it to the side. The he dropped it onto the floor and offered up a half-hearted kick that moved the gun maybe a foot across the carpeted floor.
Maybe less.
She would have to keep a very close eye on this man.
“Now reach back and close the door.”
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
“The minute I close this door, you are going to shoot me, just as you shot the Führer. I will not make it easy for you to do so.”
Tracie snorted. “If I wanted you dead, you’d be bleeding out on the floor already. Today’s your lucky day, Fritz, because I want you alive. But I don’t need you alive. That’s a critical difference. So if you don’t close that door, right now, I’ll shoot you in the forehead where you stand.”
She could almost see the gears turning in the bodyguard’s head. Do I have time to scream for help?
After a moment he reached the appropriate conclusion. He felt behind his body with his right hand and gave the door a shove. It slammed closed and they were alone.
“Very good,” she said. “You’re not exactly a soccer star, are you?”
Confusion clouded his eyes. Good. If her hastily devised plan for escape was to stand any chance of working, she needed to keep this man confused and off-balance.
“That kick,” she said by way of explanation. “Any three-year-old could have moved the gun farther than you did. It’s almost as though you weren’t really trying.”
The guard’s eyes narrowed but he said nothing.
Tracie nodded to her left, toward the wall separating the sitting room from Hitler’s Junior’s bedroom. “Move over there and face the wall. Stand perfectly still or I’ll put a bullet in your brain.”
The bodyguard reluctantly did as instructed. He clearly thought he was about to die, Tracie’s assurances to the contrary notwithstanding, and that was to her advantage also.
He reached the wall and stopped, face inches from it.
“Now, spread your legs and lace your hands together on top of your head.”
“This is ridiculous.” The man twisted, making a sudden move toward Tracie, and she squeezed off a round, risking the sound of one more gunshot, banking on the hope that everyone with a weapon was at the south end of the camp fighting the fire. No one had come running after the gun battle with Hitler; maybe her luck would hold out for a few more minutes.
And, really, she had no choice. It was critical she keep the bodyguard under control.
The slug thudded into the wall next to the man and he jumped as if tagged with a live wire. Then he froze in mid-step. He turned reluctantly back toward the wall and spread his legs as instructed, then lifted his hands to the top of his head and stood perfectly still.
“Much better,” Tracie said, rising to her feet and stepping past the chair. “Move one centimeter in any direction and the next bullet goes into your head.” She was behind him in three steps and she quickly patted him down, searching for a backup gun or knife and finding nothing.
The verification that the man was unarmed did little to calm her nerves. Hitler had hidden a gun behind a potted plant and had nearly taken her out with it; there was no way of knowing how many other weapons might be stashed away in here.
And time was rapidly running out. Even if the latest gunshot had gone unnoticed by anyone outside, when neither Hitler nor the bodyguard returned to the scene of the fire in the next couple of minutes, more soldiers would begin to wonder what had happened to their boss. They would come to investigate and this time they would likely not come alone.
And Tracie would be trapped.
She had to be out of here before that happened.
“Here’s how this is going to go down,” she said. “Pay attention, because I don’t have time to say it twice.” She shoved her gun barrel against the back of the man’s head for emphasis and he flinched but said nothing.
“You’re going to pick up that phone over there next to your dead Führer. You are going to notify the front gate that you have to leave the camp to coordinate with fire rescue, which is on its way. Then we’re going to walk to one of the vehicles parked outside your headquarters. You’re going to drive out of here while I sit behind you with my weapon trained through the back of the seat on your spine. If you can’t get us out of the compound, I’ll pull the trigger and you will either be dead or wish you were.”
“That will never work,” the guard said contemptuously. “We would never ask for outside help with a fire or with anything else.”
“Then come up with something better. But make it believable or the next time you leave this room it’ll be zipped inside a body bag.”
“I could say the same of you.”
He was right. If he chose not to cooperate, Tracie could kill him but she would be no closer to escaping the camp.
“Your choice,” she said without hesitation. “Start walking toward that phone or I execute you right now and move on to Plan B.” If only I had one.
The man exhaled forcefully and then turned away from the wall, moving slowly, being careful not to do anything that could be interpreted as threatening. “You’ll never get out of here,” he said again, but he continued moving.
“You let me worry about that,” she said. “Just pick up the phone and give the performance of your life.”
He lifted the handset off the cradle. Tracie jabbed her gun into his ribs and said, “If you try to pass along any kind of signal to your buddies at the front gate, you know what’s going to happen, correct?”
He glared at her but remained silent.
“Good,” she said. “Make the call.”
The bodyguard stared for a moment longer and then dialed one number, lifting the handset to his ear.
After a brief pause, he spoke into the phone. “This is Statzer. Open the front gate, I must leave immediately.”
Muffled sound came through the earpiece. Tracie could hear the garbled words but could not decipher them.
She didn’t need to. It was obvious the sentry was protesting the absence of the proper protocol for someone leaving the camp.
“Don’t worry about it,” Statzer barked. “Just do as you are told. Do not force me to put the Führer on the line. He is very busy right now and you won’t like what happens to your future in this organization if I have to interrupt him.”
He listened a moment longer and then said, “That is not your problem. Just ensure the gate is open when I approach in my vehicle. I’ll be there in five minutes.” Tracie prodded him with her weapon. He jumped and glanced down at her, and she rotated the gun barrel in a hurry up gesture.
He returned his
attention to the telephone and said, “Make it three minutes.” Then he looked again at Tracie. She nodded and he replaced the receiver on the cradle.
“Very good,” she said. “Now let’s go.”
He spread his hands in confusion. “You expect to simply walk out the front door of the Führer’s quarters and not be seen?”
“That’s exactly what I expect, unless a bunch of your fellow Nazis come running to see what’s taking their messiah so long to arrive at the fire. Outside of the gate guards, everyone who matters—meaning everyone with a gun—is on the other side of the camp trying to keep this place from becoming nothing more than a smudge in the middle of the forest.”
The guard shook his head but didn’t protest further. It was obvious he expected Tracie to be accosted by a passing soldier the minute they walked out the door, but if it was her desire to die in a hail of bullets, he wasn’t about to stop her.
He moved across the room, Tracie a half-step behind, her gun pressed to the middle of his back. When they arrived at the front entrance, Hitler’s personal bodyguard snatched a key hanging off a peg in the wall, and then threw the door open and marched onto the porch. The authoritative clack-clack-clack of his boots provided a clear contrast to the distant shouts of panicked soldiers completely unprepared to fight a fire without someone telling them what to do and how to do it.
Tracie didn’t die in a hail of bullets.
No one was around to shoot her.
As far as she could tell, no one was even around to see her. The nurses she had observed watching the fire from the middle of the access road were long gone, and the area surrounding the two Hitler residence cabins was deserted.
Statzer cursed under his breath, his frustration obvious. He continued moving, though, crossing the porch and descending the stairs.
“Which car is yours?” Tracie said.
“None of them are mine,” he said. “They belong to Phoenix.”
“Don’t fuck with me. You know what I mean.”
“The key I grabbed belongs to the Führer’s personal vehicle.”
“Lead the way.”
The bodyguard stalked along the gravel path toward the Phoenix headquarters building. Gravel crunched underfoot and a light breeze fluttered Tracie’s hair around her face. The fresh air smelled sweet after the bitter, coppery stench of blood and death inside Hitler’s cabin.
Tracie removed her gun from Statzer’s backbone but didn’t dare holster it. He had turned on her once and she knew he was waiting for an opportunity to do so again. So she walked a step behind him with the weapon held in her right hand, pressed against her outer thigh. The distance between them would allow her enough time to raise the gun and squeeze off a shot if he reversed course and came at her.
She hoped.
A half-dozen vehicles sat empty in a small lot front of the headquarters building, all midsized Mercedes Benz sedans, all sporting similar anonymous-looking silver paint jobs. They had clearly been purchased or stolen with one goal in mind: to draw as little attention as possible on the rare occasions a Phoenix staff member left the relative safety of the Nazi compound and ventured into hostile territory.
Statzer approached the car closest them and unlocked the driver’s door. He began lowering himself into the seat and Tracie stepped behind him, forcing her body into the space between the open door and the car’s frame, determined to prevent him from slamming the door closed and trapping her outside.
She reached behind his left shoulder and unlocked the rear door.
Opened it and slipped inside.
Then she lowered herself to the floor behind the driver’s seat, wondering how clear the line of sight might be between the headquarters building and the guard shack. Undoubtedly the sentries were equipped with binoculars, and she was sure the first thing they had done following Statzer’s unusual phone call was to pick up their binoculars and train them on the interior of the camp. If they had seen her leave Hitler’s cabin and follow the Führer’s bodyguard into this car, in the middle of the night and with the compound burning to the ground, it would further lessen the already microscopic odds of her escaping alive.
But there was nothing she could do about any of that now. She had developed the best escape plan she could, and the only thing left to do was follow it through to its conclusion.
Whatever that might be.
“Now what?” Statzer said. The answer was blindingly obvious and Tracie knew he was stalling for time.
“Now you start the car and drive through the front gate. If it doesn’t open, you die. If anyone approaches from any direction, you die. And so on, and so forth. You know the drill. Get moving.”
The engine rumbled to life, and a moment later the bodyguard began backing out of the parking spot. He spun the wheel and hit the brakes.
Shifted into drive and accelerated out of the lot.
Turned toward the front gate.
Approached slowly and stopped.
And everything went to hell.
31
November 19, 1987
3:15 a.m.
Phoenix Compound
Langenberg, Federal Republic of Germany
“Move it,” Tracie said. “If the gate hasn’t opened yet, just hit the gas and ram it. Force your way through.”
No response.
“I said go!” she hissed.
Statzer said, “You will never get out of here alive.” His voice was resigned but calm, and Tracie realized what had happened just as the sound of approaching footfalls reached her ears. It was what she had feared from the moment she forced Statzer to call the sentries at the front gate. Some kind of code word was required any time they were ordered to open it, even when the order originated from a high-ranking Phoenix staff member.
And Statzer hadn’t used it.
Without that code word, the guards were instructed never to open the gate.
No matter what.
It was still closed, and would remain so. Statzer was willing to die for his cause. He had never planned on allowing Tracie to leave the Phoenix compound. In seconds, at least one armed sentry would reach the car, and the moment he spotted Tracie crouched on the rear floor, her fate would be sealed.
It probably already was.
But she wasn’t giving up without a fight. She moved instantly, relying on training and instinct and, hopefully, whatever was left of the element of surprise. She shoved herself off the floor and lifted her gun to eye-level while swinging it to the right. Squeezed the trigger once, concerned only with blowing out the rear window, knowing her odds of intentionally hitting anything through the glass were virtually nil.
The gun roared and fire belched from the end of the barrel and Tracie’s ears, which had only just begun to recover from the percussive blast of the shots fired inside Hitler’s cabin, started to ring and ache. The window shattered, turning milky white and spraying safety glass outward like a bomb had exploded inside the car.
She ignored the pain in her ears, ignored the distraction of the shattering glass, ignored everything except her desperate search for the approaching guard. She was dimly aware of Statzer beginning to turn toward her from the front seat. Hitler’s bodyguard had been immobilized for a moment by the blast of the gunshot but in a split-second he would be all over her.
She squeezed off a second shot designed to keep the approaching sentry on the defensive, and then without taking her attention off the outside of the car, bent her left arm and pistoned it in Statzer’s direction. The sickening crunch of bone-on-bone contact told her she had scored a direct hit, and if her ears hadn’t been ringing, she knew she would hear the sound of the Nazi’s nose shattering.
Blood spurted, arcing outward, and Statzer instinctively slapped his hands to his face. Probably no more than two seconds had passed since the car rolled to a stop in front of the security fence, but Tracie knew she was almost out of time.
She swung her gun hand across her body again, slamming the butt of the Glock into Statzer’s
face a second time, now feeling bones break in his fingers.
Hopefully the injuries would be enough to subdue Statzer for a little longer, because she was out of time and could no longer afford to be distracted by him. The gate guard had taken cover after Tracie’s two gunshots, but he recovered quickly, and now the shadow looming through the broken window told her he was there.
A slug blasted into the car, fired hurriedly and haphazardly by the rattled sentry. It buried itself into Statzer’s neck, and just like that, Tracie no longer had to worry about the driver. The sentry’s shot had been rushed and panicked and the guard had unwittingly helped Tracie out, maybe even saving her life.
For the moment.
She ducked low, using the vehicle’s steel frame to protect herself. Then she reached back and opened the rear door and rolled out of the car, dropping onto the dusty access road with a bone-jarring thud.
The same elbow that had just broken Statzer’s nose cracked painfully against the ground and Tracie gasped but never stopped moving. She reversed direction and rolled beneath the Nazi’s still-idling car.
Her right arm grazed the exhaust pipe, burning the skin, and she gasped again but kept rolling.
Positioned herself along the right side of the car between the front and rear tires.
Raised her weapon in both hands.
And spotted the gate guard’s combat boots. Tracie moved slightly farther to the right, exposing a bit more of herself but gaining a view of the man’s entire body.
He had only been a couple of feet away from the car when he fired his single shot into the interior, but he must have leapt instinctively backward after seeing Statzer’s body slumped over the steering wheel. He was maybe eight feet from the car now, but beginning to approach again, moving slowly, holding his pistol in front of his face and sweeping it from side to side.
He knew she had disappeared from the car, but not where she had gone. At any moment, her location would occur to him. It was the only place she could have gone after rolling out of the car, and were it not for the stress and surprise of the situation, he would already have realized it.
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 90