by Bobby Akart
Chapter Fourteen
Hurricane Archie
03 GMT 07/29/2030
Saffir-Simpson Scale: Wind 110 mph, Pressure 968 millibars, Category 2 Hurricane
Latitude 25.1 N, Longitude 95.8 W
One Hundred Miles East of Brownsville, Texas
Gulf of Mexico
“Well, hell,” Gunner calmly said into the comms. He didn’t think he was going to die. He’d faced worse. He’d cheated death on more occasions than he could count. Ejecting from a disintegrating test aircraft in the stratosphere hadn’t really frightened him. He had been in a weird headspace at the time, so the fall back to Earth was almost calming. Being chased by the remnants of a destroyed asteroid had been another matter. It was the lack of control that caused him to fear death was imminent. As his Starhopper came soaring through Earth’s atmosphere, he’d felt completely at the mercy of a higher power, one that would determine his fate.
Now, that same feeling had overtaken him. It was if the hand of God had reached through the eye wall of the hurricane and plucked him out of the sky. However, if he didn’t do something quick, he’d not only be carried away by the massive cyclone churning up the warm waters of the Gulf, but he was gonna land somewhere between the Victory and Brownsville a hundred miles away. Regardless of where he landed, it was gonna hurt like actual hell.
“Gunner! Gunner! Come in!”
Gunner’s eyes darted around inside his helmet as he saw the landing zone and Cam’s radar blip begin to move off his screen. The centrifugal force generated by the incredible power of the storm dragged him away. The accompanying low pressure within the eye wall threatened to crush his skull and his internal organs.
The air was thinning, making his breathing difficult. It was if he’d been hoisted many thousands of feet into the air, only his helmet telemetry read otherwise. He had to break the storm’s grip on his chute, and the only option was to cut the ties that bind, as they say.
At the speed he was being pulled by the hurricane, he was unable to engage the main parachute’s quick-release clip. Gunner reached for his right thigh, unzipped the leg pocket, and retrieved his Morakniv fixed blade from its sheath. Using the serrated edge, he worked to cut through the military-specification Type III paracord attached to his chute.
With the adrenaline coursing through his veins, he made it through the cords just as he was being pelted with the rain from the intense thunderstorms within the eye wall. Now he was free of its grip and was free-falling back to Earth.
Lightning raced down the eye wall just to his left, temporarily blinding Gunner as it sent the bright white flash of light through the night-vision lenses of his helmet. The combination of the bright light and his tumbling downward made him nauseous.
“Don’t puke, asshole,” he said aloud.
“Gunner? Where are you?”
Cam’s voice helped him get it together. “Slight problem. Off course.”
“No shit. You took off in the wrong direction.”
“Not by choice,” he said as he cranked the arch, a skydiving term referring to achieving the most stable body position during the descent. The shape of a banana resembles the ideal position whereby the skydiver pushes his pelvis forward while keeping his chin high. This allows for a stable free fall toward the target and prevents a head-over-heels, vomit-inducing ugly descent.
Having found a stable belly-to-earth position, Gunner easily reached terminal velocity of one hundred twenty miles per hour. He used the air-cooled feature of the Devtac helmet to steady his breathing. His pulse rate slowed as his body calmed itself. The atmospheric pressure in his head equalized, causing his ears to pop. The relief helped him focus on his telemetry.
Gunner used his right hand to search his chest rig for the main parachute’s risers. After he jettisoned his main parachute, he’d have to rely upon his reserve. He always looked at the reserve chute as a top-safety-rated minivan. It wasn’t as stylish as that Porsche, but it would save your life when hit by a Mack truck.
He found it, studied his telemetry and the radar. “There you are!” he shouted into the comms as both the Victory and Cam’s blips appeared in his helmet screen. He pulled the reserve static line, and his fall was immediately arrested. The next step was to take control of his steering lines to bring himself closer to the ship.
As he gained control and began his final drop to earth, he engaged Cam. “Our friend Archie tried to take me for a ride. I’m back on track.”
Her voice was calm. “I see you. I’m in the water a quarter mile away from the ship. The swales are twenty feet, but the wave pattern is fairly spread apart. That’s gonna change.”
Gunner instinctively glanced to the east in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the eye wall from the approaching side of the storm. All he could make out were the lightning strikes in the wall.
“Thousand feet,” Gunner began the countdown to the water’s surface. “Five hundred. Two-fifty. A hundred.”
His radio went silent. He plunged into the Gulf and dropped thirty feet below the surface. The reserve chute traveled with him. Now that the tension was relieved, he could easily disconnect the chute, and with the aid of the watertight pack attached to his back, he quickly shot to the surface.
He was immediately greeted by a swell that lifted him higher into the sky and then rolled past his body, dropping him back into the valley created by the next one.
“I’m good,” he announced.
Bear’s voice came over the comms for the first time. “You looked like you were flying drunk.”
“I almost puked,” Gunner said with a laugh.
Ghost joined the conversation. “Gunner, you’re approximately three miles off course. You’re gonna have to drop twenty feet below the surface to catch up to Cam. Ditch your pack and shoulder your weapon. The watertight, PVC-lined fabric of its case will protect it.”
“Roger that,” said Gunner. At first, he struggled with removing the pack, as the swales seemed to be coming more frequently the longer he treaded water. Once it was free, he was able to unpack its contents.
He put on the tactical chest rig designed for use by Navy SEALS. The waterproof pockets kept his magazines and ammunition dry. His sidearm was enclosed in a hard-plastic case attached to the front of his chest, which also was waterproof.
Gunner readied his Draeger LAR V underwater breathing apparatus. It was compact and streamlined. Most importantly, it provided him forty minutes of travel time at a depth of less than one atmosphere, or thirty feet.
He positioned his diver propulsion vehicle toward the blip on the radar representing Cam who was now a hundred yards off the starboard side of the Victory, Following his telemetry, he dropped to twenty feet below the inky surface waters. He squeezed the trigger on his DPV and slowly gained speed.
He was completely surrounded by darkness. The only illumination was directly in front of his eyes as the telemetry and radar tracked his progress. He was moving in the direction of the Victory at a steady eight-mile-per-hour pace. He constantly monitored his depth, direction, and time. They were now twenty minutes behind schedule, and by the time he rendezvoused with Cam, they’d be up against their boarding window before the worst of Hurricane Archie’s powerful winds on the right side of the eye wall hit.
Gunner broke the surface only a few feet from where Cam floated with the use of her backpack. “Miss me?”
“I got bored, so I popped open a beer,” she replied. Gunner couldn’t see her face, which was covered by her helmet, but he knew she was smiling.
“No drinking on the job, people,” said Ghost into the comms.
“Come on, dad,” groaned Cam playfully.
Jackal joined the conversation. “Guys, the storm has accelerated slightly. The eastern wall will be on you withing twenty minutes.”
Gunner took in a deep breath of salt air. “No rest for the weary. Cam, we’ll ride the DPVs as close as possible.”
“They’ve left the ship adrift,” said Cam. “The least these assho
les could do was turn the bow into the swells. Between the broadsides of the waves and the wind twisting the vessel, I bet there are a lot of people hugging the toilets on board.”
“Let’s roll,” said Gunner.
He and Cam started their DPVs and accelerated next to one another toward the Victory’s aft transom. Six minutes later, they were in sight of the ship when suddenly the exterior deck lights went dark.
“Thanks for that,” said Cam.
Gunner nodded. “Yeah, no shit. Switching to NVG.”
They floated in the water, scanning the ship for activity. Cam was the first to report what she saw.
“I see movement on the main level near the lifeboats.”
“Got it. A struggle. Three people.”
“Confirmed.”
“Let’s go.”
They allowed their DPVs to float away. The ship’s transom had two ladders clamped to the transom. With the ship rocking, they risked getting knocked unconscious as they attempted to board. Using their hands, they pushed against the starboard side of the hull and maneuvered themselves toward the rear.
Just as they reached the side of the transom, they heard a man shouting in Spanish and a woman screaming. Seconds later, her nude body flew over the edge of the ship and splashed into the water between Gunner and Cam. They frantically swam to save her. She was floating facedown in the angry waters of the Gulf. When Gunner turned her over, Cam was the first to see the dead woman’s slit throat.
Chapter Fifteen
Late August 1944
The Wolf’s Lair
Near Rastenburg, East Prussia (Present-day Poland)
Steel-reinforced concrete seemed to follow Hitler like a catchy tune swirling in a person’s mind. The Third Reich had mastered the art of bunker building. The Allied forces’ superior air forces were a constant threat to the Nazi leadership. Therefore, the ability to withstand surprise attacks from the skies was of tantamount importance. Almost all of der Führer’s various residences and headquarters, from Wolfsschlucht II in eastern France to Wehrwolf in Ukraine, were constructed to withstand intense bombing while still being able to function as the residence of Germany’s head of state.
The most famous of Hitler’s field headquarters was the complex of briefing rooms and blockhouses at his bunker near Rastenburg, the German word for Ketrzyn in present-day Poland. Wolfsschanze, or Wolf’s Lair, would become Hitler’s primary base of operations when away from Berlin, which became increasingly the case from the spring into the summer of 1944. Along with the Berghof, Hitler’s home in the Bavarian Alps, historians associated Hitler’s residences most often with the Wolf’s Lair.
It was built in a strategically well-chosen site in the fall of 1940. At the time, it was in the center of the Nazis’ planned occupation. The region in which it was located reminded Hitler of his beloved Bavaria—sparsely populated with a landscape of gently rolling hills and dense wooded environs. The Wolf’s Lair was remote, yet it was easily connected to roads and a railway linking to a mainline into Berlin. In addition, the complex was located on the west side of a vast network of lakes and rivers, which would certainly thwart any attack from the Soviet Red Army advancing from the east.
By July of 1944, the Wolf’s Lair was a village in and of itself. Tucked away from the locals, the infrastructure of the buildings, both above ground and below, was completely self-sufficient with its own electricity and water, sewer and heating plants, a communications center, medical facilities, cinema and soldiers’ quarters.
In the center of the complex was a heavily guarded series of bunkers that made up Hitler’s private quarters. The briefing rooms were state of the art for the period. The dining rooms and parlors were well decorated with artifacts secured by the Nazis during their conquests.
Despite the protections afforded him, Hitler had become increasingly paranoid of assassination attempts. Prior to the war, a dozen plots had either been thwarted or attempted. As the war commenced, both politicians and generals plotted to kill him on half a dozen occasions.
On July 20, 1944, mere days after Himmler and his group met at the Castle of Wewelsburg to discuss Project Tabun, a group of conspirators, who stood in opposition to Nazi policies and their territorial expansions, initiated a plan to assassinate Hitler within the Wolf’s Lair.
The attempt was carried out by Lieutenant Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, a young staff officer who’d been wounded in Rommel’s North African campaign. Known as Operation Valkyrie, Stauffenberg attended a military briefing in the Wolf’s Lair with a bomb in his briefcase.
As the briefing began, Stauffenberg excused himself to the bathroom where he opened his briefcase containing a detonator attached to the plastic explosives. Once the bomb was primed, he returned to the gathering and set the briefcase at his feet under the conference table barely a yard away from Hitler.
As planned, Stauffenberg received an important phone call and was called out of the room. After he left, another colonel standing between the briefcase and Hitler unwittingly pushed Stauffenberg’s briefcase out of the way behind the leg of the table. When the bomb was detonated, the furniture leg, and that of the colonel-turned-hero, deflected the bomb away from Hitler. The Führer sustained only minor injuries.
The attempted assassination only heightened Hitler’s paranoia, but it also served to elevate the importance of Himmler’s power. By August, after the repairs were made, Hitler’s security detail, now fully within Himmler’s purview, was greatly enhanced, including a whole new level of protection—food tasters.
Hitler had called his top generals to the Wolf’s Lair to discuss the course of the war and the defense of Berlin from General Patton’s advance known as the dash across France. It was a working dinner, but as had been the case in recent weeks, certain precautions were taken in advance.
Himmler stood against the wall next to the door leading to Hitler’s private quarters. The dining table was set, but the attendees were held in an outside waiting room. However, the seats would not remain unoccupied for long.
One by one, twelve women were escorted out of the kitchen doorway and into the room. They were brusquely ordered to sit at each of the place settings. Some of them had steeled their nerves, sitting up in their chairs with confidence and poise. Others were shaking, glancing around the room as if they were facing their execution. Perhaps they were. Only time would tell.
They were hungry. They’d not been fed in over twenty-four hours. This was by design. Himmler had ordered them to be ravenous. They could not nibble around the edges of their plates of pick at their food like birds on the street. They were expected to eat every bite and do so quickly.
Suddenly, the aroma of the cooked meal filled the room. Roasted red peppers and green beans drenched with butter adorned a plate that included peas, carrots, and steak. The plates were carried by twelve kitchen staffers, each of whom had a designated guest to serve. In unison, as if straight out of a scene in an English castle serving royalty, the staff set the plates in front of the women.
Nervously, they looked around the room, waiting for approval. Their mouths were agape and their nostrils flared. The women’s mouths watered as the best meal they’d had in many years was within reach of their hands.
Himmler could see the longing in their eyes. “Essen!”
Only a few of the women hesitated, anxiously waiting to observe the others take their first bites. This annoyed Himmler, who shouted at them once again, causing the entire contingent of testers and their kitchen-staff hosts to jump.
“Essen! Verdammt!”
A few of the women ate ravenously. If this was to be their last meal, they intended to finish it all before they died. It was, in fact, delicious. As they continued to eat, they became chatty with whoever sat next to them. As they all finished, their plates were removed, and they were served a bowl of apple cobbler. There was no hesitancy now. They had no shame. They devoured the dessert until several of them leaned back in their chairs, clasped their hands together on their n
ow distended bellies, and emitted a muted burp here and there.
Himmler studied them for the telltale signs of poison. The most common means, cyanide, took effect nearly immediately. It had been nearly ten minutes since the first bite, and now the women were enjoying the test a little too much. Once again annoyed but, more importantly, anxious to move on to the dinner meeting, he bellowed.
“Verlasse uns!” Leave us!
After the room was cleared and the place settings reset, the military leaders were escorted in. Each was assigned a seat based upon their rank and branch. As always, Himmler was seated to Hitler’s left, and Martin Bormann was to his right.
Throughout dinner, small talk was had, but as the dessert was served, Hitler was ready to discuss the war effort. The military leaders provided their guarded opinions, using carefully chosen words to avoid the ire of der Führer. During the after-dinner conversation, Himmler and Bormann whispered with their leader as their input was requested.
Prior to the gathering, Himmler had spoken with the Luftwaffe general who’d recently met with Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita in Calais, France. As part of a casual conversation regarding the imperial sword Yamashita presented to the Nazis, the general broached the subject of chemical weapons. He relayed to Hitler and the attendees the Japanese proposal to incorporate chemical weapons into their arsenal.
This didn’t go well. Hitler exploded in anger. He admonished the general for bringing the taboo subject to his dinner table in his home, the Wolf’s Lair.
Himmler quickly covered for his accomplice by relating the topic back to the sword and the loyalty of their Axis partner—Japan. Despite the changed mood, the conversation turned back to the ongoing war in Europe and the upcoming election in the United States. As Hitler opined that three-term incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt was weak and sickly and would likely lose to Thomas Dewey, Himmler resigned himself to the fact that the Führer would never agree to Project Tabun.
