Overkill

by Ted Bell

  “Has Miss Peek called for her breakfast yet?”

  “No, sir. She usually calls at six thirty.”

  “Hmm. Fifteen minutes. When she does, please tell her that I’m having breakfast in my office and would like her to join me.”

  “Of course, sir. And what would you like to order this morning?”

  “Coffee, black, for two. In the silver urn. Cheese omelet with baked ham, Brie, and shaved truffles on top. And, uh, a Diet Coke for me, please.”

  “Very good, sir. Shall we say in twenty minutes?”

  “Perfect.”

  He hung up, sat back, and put his feet on the desk, gazing at the sterling silver swastika. It put him in mind of another man who’d had big plans to invade the tiny country of Switzerland: Adolf Hitler. Joe and Beauregard had done endless research, studying Operation Tannenbaum, the German war plans for their pending invasion. An invasion that was over before it commenced. Upon reflection, Joe had to concede that between der Führer and him, there were few similarities.

  Herr Hitler had had the Wehrmacht, the most powerful military machine on the face of the earth. Joe had Colonel Beauregard and his mercenaries. Hitler had the Luftwaffe and Hermann Göring, winner of the Blue Max and founder of the Gestapo. Joe had Beau. Hitler had Rommel. Joe had Shit Smith. Hitler had Eva Braun. Joe had—well, Joe had Emma Peek, so when it came to snatch, he’d gotten the best of Adolf there at least, and—

  “There you are, Joe, you naughty, naughty boy!”

  Joe was snapped out of his troublesome reverie by the appearance of the golden-haired Lady Di at his door.

  Or at least a dead ringer for her.

  “Good morning!” Joe said, leaping to his feet and going to her. Emma Peek looked adorable in a short skirt and a tight-fitting, plunging V-neck pink sweater. Hugging her to him was always such a treat. Because of his height, when he held her close, his face was automatically enveloped between her glorious perfumed bosoms. Sheer heaven. He wanted to die in there.

  “Am I naughty, Miss Peek?” he asked her, briefly coming up for air to give her a kiss.

  “You certainly have been, young man.”

  “What was my transgression?”

  “Well, for starters, you couldn’t get it up last night. And then when I awoke this morning, I had big plans for you, mister. But you were gone from my bed without so much as saying good night. What time did you leave me? And more important, why? Do you not, after all this flirtation, find me attractive? It was my perception that you were quite hot to trot. Superheated, in fact.”

  “God, no, I’m crazy about you, baby. Couldn’t concentrate, that’s all. Worried about things, as you know. I went down to combat ops to see if they had any idea where Beauregard was. He was supposed to call me last night. Then I went to the hangar level, to check on the squadrons’ readiness . . .”

  “And?”

  “Good, thank god. Half of the fighter jets are already in the tunnels and ready to be catapulted out into thin air. The other half are waiting down at the hangar level in the high-speed elevators. I feel like I’ve done all I can do for now, but then I wonder. Do you think I’m utterly mad to have taken all this on? I sometimes do.”

  “Perhaps a little, Joe. But if we can get out of this nightmare without getting killed, we’re going to emerge with countless millions in gold. You can buy me a villa at Cap d’Antibes and a glorious town house on the Rue Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris. And a pied-à-terre in Beverly Hills. Oh, and maybe a pretty little white jet and a big fat yacht thrown into the mix for good measure. Happily ever after!”

  “Thanks for reminding me, honey. Makes me feel a lot better.”

  “We’ll all feel a whole lot better when we hear from that fucking lunatic Colonel Beauregard. Let’s call him now. See where the hell he is.”

  “May I serve you breakfast, sir?” a pretty little thing in a white cap and matching white apron asked him.

  He nodded yes and then plunged his head back into Emma’s bosom.

  If only he could hide here inside her soap-scented warmth forever . . .

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Somewhere in Europe

  You could feel her coming. Before you saw her, before you even heard her, you felt her presence. The wind trembled before her and the earth shook in her wake. Tonight, even as dark clouds scudded across the face of the pale moon, the birds and busy creatures of the forest went suddenly still and silent.

  The gleaming twin rails began to hum and then to sing . . . she was gathering speed. Careful! She’s getting closer . . . slicing through the dark heart of Europe like a speeding knife. Her destination, Zurich, in the tiny Alpine country considered for centuries to be Fortress Switzerland.

  The Arrow flies. See her four great funnels belching brilliant showers of flaming sparks up into the black penumbra of the frigid night? Look now, before she enters the yawning maw of the looming tunnel and plunges ahead, diving deep into the winter-white Alps . . .

  The Black Arrow.

  The oldest, grandest, and most illustrious survivor of them all, the historic Trans-Siberian Railway trains. Under new ownership, the Black Arrow had, since leaving the Grand Maket Rossiya railway museum at Odessa, traveled through eight time zones. Fifty railway passenger cars, boxcars, and freight cars in all: sleeping and dining cars for the troops; freight cars for food, water, and vodka, and for the Mini Tiger tanks and the light artillery and, finally, automatic weapons for Colonel Beauregard’s troops.

  The whole length of the train, gleaming black with gold trim, and festooned with scarlet bunting, trailed behind the brutish machine at the head, had fifteen boilers putting out nearly 18,000 horsepower. This, then, was Goliath, as the famous locomotive was known in the history books, a rolling monument to the lore of the rail, mechanized art in iron and steel, an enduring tribute to Russian locomotive might, the fastest, most powerful locomotive ever. She was Beau’s pride and joy. He’d located Goliath at a lapsed museum, he’d negotiated her purchase on behalf of Putin, and at the KGB’s Siberian headquarters, he’d overseen the conversion to military rail transport.

  And then he sat down to figure out just how the hell he was going to get the Black Arrow from Russia and into Switzerland.

  He was a master of military logistics after all. If anyone could solve this puzzle, he was that person. He sat up late that night with a bottle of Beluga Gold Strike and his old Mount Blanc pen, scrawling down ideas as fast as he could throw them into the fire. And then, like he’d known it would, came an idea so good it made him want to get up and dance about like Baryshnikov!

  Yes. He would rename his train! He would call it, what, the Black Arrow, of course. Yes! And he would disguise it. And create a plausible event around historical locomotives that the Black Arrow could star in. He would stage something in Zurich! A plausible event, something believable to all the border patrols he’d have to get through. And he’d call his festival The Great Railway Centennial. That just might work, he’d thought, and then he went to work.

  Flags and pennants on every car announcing the Centennial. Flyers depicting the Black Arrow in all its glory. Beneath the polished bronze headlamp on the front of the smokebox, he would mount a large silver five-point Russian star flanked by two large crimson banners that read:

  Celebrating 100 Years of Railway History!

  THE BLACK ARROW

  CENTENNIAL

  And so The Black Arrow commenced its epic race across Europe, taking dead aim at the heart—Switzerland!

  The colonel’s butt hurt. Try sitting on a steel chair with no cushion for a few days. He spent his nights with a bottle of ZYR vodka (100 points!) in his sleeping car just aft of the coal car. His days were spent in one of the two dining cars, grabbing chow and playing cards with his newly minted mercenary troops.

  Or, right here up front in the locomotive with the engineer, a gargoyle of a man and his new best friend, Vasily. Vasily had let him drive the train a lot when they had first left Russia. Helped him pass the hours
until he even tired of helming the the Black Arrow’s badass locomotive called Goliath.

  Also with Beau on this starry evening in March was his handpicked adjutant, a young former Swiss Mountain Division lieutenant named Hans Blitzen. Blitzen, a military translator, had been recruited to aid the colonel in his work to make the Black Arrow’s race across Europe go as smoothly as possible.

  The Centennial cover story for this rapid-fire insertion of troops, tanks, and artillery into the historically neutral heart of Europe was eventually a joint creation of Beauregard and Blitzen. Putin himself had described the idea as genius, a word Beauregard never tired of hearing as applied to him.

  The trickiest parts, he well knew, were the border crossings. Sometimes the border guards saw the fluttering pennants waving on the Black Arrow and just waved you on through. Sometimes you got the officious petit bureaucrat far more concerned with procedural correctness than necessary. That’s when his decision to hire Lieutenant Blitzen paid off.

  The man had also been the highest-ranking logistics officer in the Swiss army’s Mountain Infantry Battalion 29. He knew all the details about the customs and border patrol documentation needed for inter-European railway operations. He’d spent a week with KGB forgers in the documents section getting all of the Black Arrow’s official papers in order.

  And now there was only one more border to cross. The final one, at Basel, Switzerland. It would be the toughest, both men knew. Customs as well as immigration officers were going to ask a lot of questions and demand a lot of paperwork. But the colonel had a lot of confidence in Blitzen and wasn’t overly worried about getting the train across the Rhine.

  “Border in nine minutes,” Vasily said.

  “Well, Lieutenant, I reckon it’s showtime,” Beau said.

  Blitzen snapped to attention. “Yes, sir! As I’ve told you both many times, when they demand the paperwork, you and Vasily need to say as little as possible, sir. No matter what they say or ask you for, you just defer to me. With a simple nod of the head.”

  “Won’t they think it’s strange, the two of us riding up front in the locomotive?”

  “A little. But we both have powerfully credible documents as high-ranking officials of the Black Arrow Centennial Committee. We can do whatever we want. They’ll want to see Vasily’s paperwork first. That’s always the way. I gave him everything he’ll need to produce, including a passenger manifest, and a bill of lading for the food and water aboard.”

  The speeding black train slowed coming around a wide bend in the fast-flowing river. The large white cement building that housed customs and immigration officers loomed up ahead, looking like an oversized bunker on Normandy beach. The large Swiss flag, red with a white cross in the center, was still flying above the rooftop, lit by floodlights below. Lieutenant Blitzen surveilled the scene with his high-power binoculars.

  “Slower, Vasily,” Blitzen said. “Slower. Shit. They’re already lowering the crossing gate . . .”

  “What does that mean?” Beau said.

  “I’m not sure yet. I need to get a closer look at them. Okay, Vasily, you need to stop the train well short of the gate for them to board . . . We may need to get up a head of steam in a hurry.”

  The fat little ginger-haired engineer hauled back on the throttle, first halving the amount of steam pressure, then slowly reducing it to zero pressure on the big brass gauges above their heads.

  The huge brakes squealed and clouds of steam billowed out from beneath the locomotive as two men emerged from the building and quickly descended the steps leading down to the tracks. Both were wearing uniforms of pale blue and highly polished black leather boots up to their knees. The colonel and Blitzen tried to read them as they neared the locomotive. They looked as if they took their positions at the border very seriously. Very erect, no readable expressions on their faces.

  Lieutenant Blitzen opened the cabin door and smiled as the two officials came to a halt on the platform.

  “Good evening, mein Herr,” he said in German to the ranking officer. He stepped back and allowed them to board the train. “Wilkommen.”

  “Papers,” the older officer said stiffly, regarding the engineer with mild curiosity.

  “Jawohl, mein Herr,” Vasily said in easy, practiced German, and handed the Centennial binder with all of his forged information to the officer.

  The younger man smiled at Hans Blitzen and held out his hand for the documents. He scrutinized every word, it seemed, and he was in no hurry.

  “This is a ceremonial train?” he asked the lieutenant. “Not commercial?” Blitzen smiled.

  “It is, sir. A 100 Year Centennial celebration. A gathering in Zurich of famous trains from all over Europe. You may have heard of it? No. Ah, well. Have a look at this flyer, it gives you all the information about the festival. We will be the first to arrive, I made sure of that.”

  “So your final destination is Zurich Hauptbahnhof?”

  “It is indeed.”

  “Well, all your paperwork seems to be in order. But I’m afraid I have some bad news. Due to an accident, there may be a line closure at Frankenkirch. Line replacement crews are now on their way. Your train will need to stop and be fully inspected there. Mandatory, mein herr!”

  “When will they arrive? The inspectors?” Blitzen asked, trying to mask his anger.

  “Assume sometime around five a.m.”

  “This is an extremely fast train, sir,” he said. “We’ll be well past Frankenkirch and at Zurich Hauptbahnhof by that time.”

  “You don’t seem to understand. We have no way of knowing when the line will be closed in both directions. You are required to stop at Frankenkirch for inspection. I will call and alert the inspectors about your arrival and perhaps they can expedite the process so that—”

  “No need for that,” Colonel Beauregard said, suddenly revealing the small automatic pistol in his hand. He aimed it at the older officer’s head and said, “You see, you’re coming with us, my friend. We cannot afford to be late for our rendezvous in Zurich. My colleague here is going to handcuff you both to that steam pipe over your heads. If either of you resist, you’ll be shot. I’m assuming you understand English.”

  “You cannot be serious,” the older officer said with a smile.

  “Oh, I’m deadly serious, I assure you. I eat men like you for breakfast. Now do as he says, or I shall kill you both right here and now and throw your corpses into the Rhine when we cross the bridge. Either way, doesn’t matter to me. Get on your radio and tell them to raise the crossing gates. Do it now!”

  “Do as he says,” the immigration officer told his young colleague. “This is an outrage.”

  “It is, isn’t it? But war is war, my friend, and all is fair.”

  “War? What war?”

  “Your war, I’m afraid. The coming invasion of Switzerland. This train is the opening salvo. You are eyewitnesses to history, gentlemen. My congratulations!”

  “Vasily, full head of steam,” Blitzen said. “We want the train to blow right through those barriers at full throttle. Send a radio signal that she’s coming . . . the Black Arrow.”

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  Zurich

  The Black Arrow gathered speed as it rocketed down the polished Swiss rails, racing ever closer to the postcard-pretty town of Frankenkirch. Beau grinned a private grin at his next thought: the customs officials would not exactly be awaiting them with open arms.

  But, so what? With Goliath’s enormous power and speed leading the charge, they would blow right through the border and cross the Rhine! He had his top-secret orders in a red leather envelope from Putin, with instructions that it was not to be opened until he was safely inside the Swiss borders. He’d planned to open it right after all the drama to come at Frankenkirch.

  His heart had lifted in anticipation of the amount of detail in the plans the envelope surely contained. Russian sat shots of the high pass in the Alps, a place he’d come to refer to as the Vegas Strip. Drawings and elevatio
ns of the three vault installations along the Strip. Where the machine-gun emplacements were. Where the artillery was, where bridges and tunnels were mined . . . and how. In short, a treasure trove for a wily tactician!

  Down to the thickness and combinations to massive steel vault doors themselves!

  In the steam-shower heat inside Goliath’s cab, tension weighed like a warm fog. The two prisoners of war were driving Beau crazy. Wouldn’t effing shut the eff up. He finally spied a roll of black duct tape hanging beneath the instrument panel.

  “See that tape, Hans, up there?” he asked Blitzen. “Hanging below the pressure gauges?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Cut two strips and tape their goddamn mouths shut. If they resist, shoot these two assholes. I’m sick to death of them. First two casualties in the war, that’s all. Hear that, boys?” he said, smiling at them and waving his pistol about. “You’re gonna be the first! Hot damn. You’re going straight to number one!”

  Beau, chuckling to himself, leaned forward, military binocs raised to his eyes, and stared up the tracks, studying the situation ahead. His new pal, Vasily, had told him that, at their current speed, eighty miles an hour, it would take the half-mile-long train a mile to stop.

  “We’re not going to stop, Vasily. How many times do I have to tell you that? Can you go any faster, for god’s sake?”

  Vasily looked at him as if he was insane and shook his head no.

  Suddenly a blurry white form on the track up ahead, still some distance away, resolved itself into a blunt reality.

  “Vasily, is that the Frankenkirch station?”

  “Yes, sir. I beg you to reconsider your plan. It could easily result in disaster. We will all be killed.”

  “Vasily, if I see that throttle eased even a billionth of an inch, I will put a bullet in the back of your head and drive this train to Zurich all by myself. Do you understand me?”