“Yes, sir.”
Renée and Race slammed into the boathouse wall together.
Only moments earlier, Uli had left them. He had headed off down the side of the massive boathouse in the direction of the crater and the northern cable bridge.
Renée peered around the wide garage door next to her.
The interior of the enormous boathouse was clear—in particular, the wide section of floor between the glass offices to her right and the mooring slots on her left.
Nothing stirred. There wasn’t a soul in sight.
She nodded to Race.
Ready?
Race acknowledged her signal by gripping his Glock a little more tightly.
Ready.
Then without a word Renée quickly ducked around the doorway, her G-11 held high, pressed against her shoulder.
Race made to follow her, but as he did so, another door behind him suddenly burst open and he dropped to the ground in an instant, taking cover behind an old oil barrel.
A young Nazi technician—dressed in a white lab coat and holding a radio awkwardly in his hand—rushed out through the newly opened door and hurried off down the path toward the refuse pit.
Race’s eyes went wide.
He was going to the refuse pit—where he would find one dead Nazi and nothing else.
“Shit,” Race said. “Uli . . .”
Decision time. He could go after the technician—and then do what? Kill him in cold blood? Despite all that he had done so far, Race wasn’t sure if he could actually do that, kill a man. On the other hand, he could warn Uli. Yes, that was better—much better.
And so at that moment, instead of following Renée into the boathouse, Race headed off down the side of the big warehouselike building, in the direction of the crater and Uli.
Uli came to the northern cable bridge.
It stretched away from him into the distance, swooping fearlessly over the vertiginous seven-hundred-foot drop, its steel-threaded handrails converging like a pair of railroad tracks disappearing into the distance, ending as tiny specks at the doorway to the control booth four hundred yards away.
“Unterscharführer,” a voice said suddenly from behind him.
Uli spun.
And found himself standing before Heinrich Anistaze himself.
“What are you doing?” Anistaze demanded.
“I was going to see if the Oberstgruppenführer and Doctor Weber required any assistance over in the control booth,” Uli answered, perhaps a little too quickly.
“Have you eliminated the two prisoners?”
“Yes, sir, I have.”
“Where is Dieter?” Anistaze asked.
“He, uh, had to go to the WC,” Uli lied.
At that exact same moment, the lab technician Anistaze had sent to the refuse pit arrived there.
He saw Dieter’s body immediately, lying face-down in the mud, blood and brains seeping out from the hole in the back of its head.
No Americans. No Uli, either.
The lab technician lifted his radio to his lips.
“Herr Oberstgruppenführer” the technician’s voice came in over Anistaze’s earpiece.
“Yes.”
Anistaze was still standing with Uli at the edge of the northern cable bridge. The four fingers of the Nazi commander’s left hand tapped silently on his pants leg as he listened to the voice on his earpiece.
“Dieter is dead, sir. I repeat, Dieter is dead. I can’t see the prisoners or Unterscharführer Kahr anywhere.”
“Thank you,” Anistaze said, staring at Uli. “Thank you very much.”
Anistaze’s cold black eyes bored into Uli’s. “Where are the prisoners, Unterscharführer?”
“I beg your pardon, Herr Oberstgruppenführer?”
“I said, where are the prisoners?”
It was then that Uli saw the Glock appear in Anistaze’s right hand.
Renée moved silently through the boathouse, gun up.
Race hadn’t come in behind her, and she wondered what had happened to him. But she couldn’t wait, she still had a job to do.
The boathouse was silent, still. The conveyor belt that rose up out of the tunnel to her right sat motionless. She saw no one standing in the office beyond it—
An engine turned over.
Renée spun.
And saw the rotor blades of the parked Bell Jet Ranger helicopter slowly sputter to life.
Then she saw the pilot—lying on his side on the floor of the cockpit, oblivious to her presence—carrying out some kind of repairs on the chopper.
Then suddenly with a shrill bzzzzz! the rotor blades of the helicopter snapped into overdrive and the deafening roar of their motion filled the enormous space of the boathouse. Renée almost jumped out of her skin.
If it hadn’t been for the roar of the rotors, however, she probably would have heard him sneak up on her.
But she didn’t.
For at that moment, as Renée moved toward the pilot and the chopper with her G-11 raised, something very heavy hit her on the back of her head, pitching her forward, sending her falling heavily to the ground.
“Herr Obergruppenführer,” Uli said as he stood at the edge of the massive crater, raising his hands. “What are you—”
Blam!
Anistaze’s Glock went off—a single shot that went thundering into Uli’s stomach. Uli doubled over at once, fell to the ground.
Anistaze stood over him, gun in hand. “So, Unterscharführer. Am I to assume that you are BKA scum too?”
Uli rolled around on the ground at the Nazi commander’s feet, clenching his teeth in agony.
“No answer,” Anistaze said. “Well, how about this, then? How about I blow off every finger on your right hand, one by one, until you tell me who you work for? And when I am done with that hand, I shall start on the other one.”
“Argh!” Uli grunted.
“Wrong answer,” Anistaze said, aiming his gun at Uli’s hand, squeezing the trigger.
The gun went off.
Just as William Race—bursting out from behind the nearby corner—crashed into Anistaze from the side, hitting him at speed, knocking the Glock from his hand.
But the two of them fell awkwardly, bouncing off one of the buttresses that held up the cable bridge. Anistaze’s right foot slipped over the edge of the crater and he threw out a hand that gripped Race’s arm like a vise and before Race even knew what was happening, both he and Anistaze were falling out over the edge of the mine.
Race and Anistaze fell down the wall of the crater.
Fortunately, the earthen walls of the mine weren’t perfectly vertical but rather were slanted at a very steep angle, maybe 75 degrees or so. As such, they still fell fast, but not straight down. Both men kicked up puffs of dirt as they slid wildly down the wall of the crater. They slid a full ninety feet before they both landed in a crashing heap on flat, solid ground.
In the boathouse, Renée hit the ground, too, and for a moment she saw stars.
She rolled onto her back just in time to see a length of piping held by the second Nazi lab technician come rushing down at her face! She rolled again and the pipe clanged against the floorboards inches away from her head.
She quickly somersaulted to her feet, looking for her weapon. Her G-11 lay on the ground four feet away, out of reach, dislodged by her fall after being smacked on the back of the head with the pipe.
The technician swung at her again.
Renée ducked and the pipe went swiping over her head, then she bobbed back up and punched the technician square in the face, sending him flying backward into a wall.
The technician’s back slammed into a control panel on the wall. He must have struck a button as he hit it, Renée guessed, because at that moment she heard an ominous clanking of machinery within the walls of the massive boat-house and suddenly—without warning—the big conveyor belt that ran down the length of the warehouse started moving.
Race and Anistaze jolted forward.
&
nbsp; Both men were still in something of a daze after their ninety-foot drop into the open-cut mine, and they were only just getting to their feet when suddenly the ground beneath them lurched forward.
Race tottered slightly, looked down at the ground beneath his feet.
It wasn’t solid ground at all. It was the low end of the conveyor belt—the same conveyor belt that reached the surface inside the boathouse.
Only now it was moving.
Upward.
Race spun—just in time to see Anistaze’s four-fingered left fist come flying at his face. The German commando’s blow hit its mark and Race dropped like a sack of potatoes onto the wide conveyor belt.
Anistaze stood over him and then, abruptly, the world went black.
At first Race didn’t know what had happened. Then he realized. He and Anistaze—positioned on the moving conveyor belt—had just been drawn into the long dark tunnel that led back up to the boathouse.
Up in the boathouse, Renée fought with the technician as the deafening roar of the Bell Jet Ranger’s rapidly-spinning rotor blades echoed throughout the cavernous interior space.
The tech swung at Renée with the pipe again just as she leapt backward and the blow missed, but as she moved, Renée saw that the pilot over in the helicopter had seen what was going on over by the conveyor belt and was now looking directly at her.
The pilot began to shimmy.out of his awkward position on the floor of the chopper—just as, at that exact same moment, the young technician who had gone to the refuse pit to search for Uli appeared in the doorway of the boathouse.
Renée saw them both. And then in one fluid motion, as she ducked underneath another blow from the first technician, she pulled two grenades from her belt—the grenades Uli had retrieved from the dead Nazi at the refuse pit—yanked out their pins, spun and hurled them across the boat-house together!
The two grenades skidded across the floor, fanned out at different angles—one heading for the helipad pontoon and the chopper, the other heading directly for the young technician standing at the doorway.
One, one thousand . . .
Two, one thousand . . .
Three, one thousand . . .
The tech in the doorway realized what the object bouncing toward him was a second too late. He tried to move at the last moment, but he wasn’t fast enough. The grenade exploded. So did he.
The second grenade bounced onto the helipad pontoon and came to rest directly underneath the sleek white Bell Jet Ranger. It detonated—abruptly, powerfully—shattering the chopper’s bubble in a nanosecond, killing the pilot on its floor instantly. The blast also blew the helicopter’s landing skids to hell, obliterating them, causing the whole chopper to drop four feet straight down and crash down onto the pontoon. It came to rest on its belly, its rotor blades still whipping around above it in a blur of speeding motion.
As they rose through the darkness, Race and Anistaze struggled.
Race fought hard—as hard as he physically could—throwing punches wildly, some hitting, most missing. But Anistaze was by far the better fighter, and soon he had Race flat on his back, pinned to the ground, vainly fending off his blows.
And then Anistaze drew a Bowie knife from a sheath down by his ankle. Even in the darkness of the steeply sloping tunnel, Race saw the long glistening blade as it came rushing down toward his face.
He caught Anistaze’s wrist with his hands, held the blade at bay, but the Nazi had all the leverage and the blade came closer and closer to his left eye—
—abruptly, harsh white light assaulted both of them and just as suddenly, the steep slope of the conveyor belt dropped level beneath them, causing both men to lose their balance and giving Race the chance to swipe Anistaze’s knife clear.
He looked quickly about himself.
He was inside the boathouse again.
Only now he was traveling horizontally on the conveyor belt, still pinned underneath Anistaze.
Unfortunately for both of them, however, the conveyor belt was now drawing them toward the rapidly spinning blades of the Bell Jet Ranger helicopter, which now—owing to the fact that it had lost its skids in the grenade blast—whipped around like a horizontal buzzsaw barely three feet above the moving conveyor belt!
The rotor blades were ten feet away. Spinning fast.
Nine feet.
Anistaze saw them too.
Eight feet.
Race saw Renée struggling with the technician over by the wall. The roar of the chopper’s blurring rotor blades thundered throughout the cavernous warehouse.
Seven feet.
And Anistaze decided on a horrifying new tactic. With tremendous strength, he yanked Race up by the lapels and held him out at arm’s length so that Race’s neck was level with the speeding blades of the helicopter.
Six feet.
Renée was still fighting with the first technician. In between blows she saw Race and Anistaze fighting on the conveyor belt, saw Anistaze lift the professor onto his knees and hold him out from his body.
Her eyes went wide with horror.
Anistaze was going to decapitate Race with the blades of the chopper!
Five feet.
And she saw the control panel on the wall. The panel that started and stopped the conveyor belt . . .
Four feet.
Race saw the rapidly spinning rotor blades behind him, saw what Anistaze was trying to do.
Three feet.
He tried to move, tried to fight. But it was no use. Anistaze was just too strong. Race looked into his assailant’s eyes and saw nothing but hate.
Two feet.
Certain death was approaching. Race yelled in desperation. “Arrggghhhh!r
One foot.
At that precise moment, Renée ducked another blow from the technician and swung in swiftly behind him, then she grabbed him roughly by the hair and banged his head hard against the control panel on the wall.
The conveyor belt stopped on a dime.
Race stopped too—the nape of his neck jolting to a halt an inch from the speeding blur of the helicopter’s rotating blades.
Anistaze’s face went blank in surprise.
What the fuck—?
Race took the opportunity and kneed the Nazi hard in the crotch.
Anistaze roared.
Just as Race grabbed him by the lapels!
“Smile, motherfucker,” Race said.
And then he dropped down onto the conveyor belt and rolled quickly backward, underneath the chopper’s blurring blades, using his newfound leverage to yank Anistaze forward, neck-first, right into the buzzsawlike blades of the helicopter!
The rotor blades of the chopper sliced through Anistaze’s neck like a chainsaw through butter, removing his head from his body in a smooth, frictionless cut
An explosion of blood splattered all over Race’s face as he lay on the conveyor belt, still holding onto Anistaze’s lapels.
Race quickly discarded the body—yecch!—and rolled himself off the conveyor belt.
He shook his head. He couldn’t quite believe what he had just done. He had just decapitated a man.
Whoa . . .
He looked up and saw Renée standing over by the control panel, standing astride the unconscious body of the Nazi technician. The tech had been knocked out cold by the blow she’d given him against the control panel.
Renée smiled at Race, gave him the thumbs-up.
For his part, Race just fell limp against the floor, exhausted.
No sooner had his head hit the ground, however, than Renée was at his side.
“Not yet, Professor,” she said, pulling him to his feet. “No resting yet. Come on, we have to stop Ehrhardt from detonating the Supernova.”
In the control booth high above the mine, the timer on the Supernova’s laptop screen continued to tick downward.
00:15:01
00:15:00
00:14:59
Ehrhardt keyed his radio. “Obergruppenführer?”
No res
ponse.
“Anistaze, where are you?”
Still nothing.
Ehrhardt turned to Fritz Weber. “Something’s wrong. Anistaze’s not answering. Initiate protective countermeasures around the device. Seal the control booth.”
“Yes, sir.”
Renée and Race dragged Uli into the glass-walled office overlooking the mine and laid him down on the floor.
A large digital timer on the wall ticked downward:
00:14:55
00:14:54
00:14:53
“Damn it,” Race said, “they started the countdown!” Renée immediately went to work on the gunshot wound to Uli’s stomach. As she did so, however, a fax machine on the far side of the office began to clatter loudly.
Race, now carrying a G-11 assault rifle, went over to it as a fax began to scroll out. It read:
FROM THE OFFICE OF
THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
----------------------------------
SECURE FACSIMILE TRANSMISSION
----------------------------------
ORIGINATING FAX NO: 1-202-555-6122
DESTINATION FAX NO: 51-3-454-9775
DATE: 5 JAN, 1999
TIME: 18:55:45 (LOCAL)
SENDER CODE: 004 (NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR)
MESSAGE IS AS FOLLOWS:
Having consulted with his advisers, and in keeping with his well-known views on terrorism, the President has instructed me to inform you that he WILL NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES pay to you any sum of money to restrain you from detonating any device you may have in your possession.
W. PHILIP UPANSKI
National Security Advisor
to the President of the United States
“Jesus,” Race breathed. “They’re not going to pay . . .”
Renée came over, looked at the fax. “God, look how forceful the wording is. They’re trying to call his bluff. They don’t think he’ll blow the Supernova.”
“Will he blow the Supernova?”
“Absolutely,” Uli said from the floor, causing Race and Renée to spin around.
Uli spoke through clenched teeth. “He talks constantly of it. He’s insane. He only wants one thing—his new world. And if he can’t have that, then he will simply destroy the existing one.”
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