by Bobby Akart
His eyes studied the other men in the room. He wondered if they were thinking about their own leader in the same terms that the Führer was assessing President Roosevelt. He allowed himself an imperceptible chuckle, and he couldn’t help but stifle a slight smile as he thought to himself:
I’m engaged in high treason against Mein Führer. Would anyone like to join me?
Chapter Sixteen
August 1944
11th U-boat Flotilla
Bunker Bruno
Bergen, Norway
Himmler loved everything about Norway—the landscape, the climate, and his perceived racial purity of its people. He was enamored with Norwegian women and even encouraged Nazis to take them as mistresses so they could create more good German soldiers.
Early in January of 1941, Himmler began to make the rounds across the newly constituted Nazi empire. His stop in Norway quickly turned from business to pleasure. Just like he encouraged his officers to cohabitate with their Norwegian mistresses, he kept several for himself in Oslo, Narvik, and Bergen. The result was an explosion in the birth rate of Nazi-fathered children in Norway that came to be known as Lebensborn, which literally meant fount of life.
The practice became widespread to the point the SS initiated a state-supported program to classify these children as racially pure and healthy based upon Nazi ideology. The mothers and their children were monitored and paid by the Nazis. They were provided far better living conditions than other Norwegians. Those who were the mistresses of the highest-ranking Nazis, like Himmler, were treated like royalty.
Himmler had a dual purpose for visiting Norway during this time. First, he wanted to spend time with each of his two mistresses with whom he’d fathered children. Both women, two sisters named Jorgensen, lived in Oslo and Narvik. They were introduced to Himmler during his first visit to Oslo in 1941, and he immediately took them as mistresses, providing them living accommodations in both major cities so he could visit them at will.
As a result of these visits, both women became pregnant near simultaneously and bore sons who were now three years old. And, as had happened before, Himmler impregnated them both within days of each other during a December visit in 1943. Both women were having healthy pregnancies and expected to give birth sometime in August or September.
After touching base with his mistresses and children, Himmler traveled to the 11th U-boat Flotilla base in Bergen for an important meeting with the commander of the Nazi submarine base. After Norway had been captured by the Germans in April 1940, military leaders saw the great potential for using Norwegian harbors as bases for U-boats operating in the North Sea, the Arctic, and later in the North Atlantic.
The small town was handpicked by Himmler in 1941 to establish a U-boat flotilla there. The city was nestled in between mountains and fjords, tucked away from Allied spy ships patrolling the North Sea. Its deep waters were ideal to submerge the U-boats deep beneath the surface before they entered the sea and the scrutiny of the enemy.
Himmler directed a U-boat bunker to be constructed in Bergen that initially included seven pens, three dry docks, and three wet docks. The seventh pen was used for fuel and weapon storage barges.
However, Himmler later expanded the base to include ship and U-boat building. Defenses were enhanced with anti-aircraft guns and housing units for soldiers. As a result of its strategic importance, it was often referred to during Hitler’s briefings as Bunker Bruno.
The German U-boat program was constantly advancing with technology. From the first prototype submarine vessels, known as Type I, through the most technologically advanced sub, the Elektroboot, Type XXI, Bergen housed all of them at some point in time.
For this meeting, Himmler was most interested in the advancements made in the Type IX U-boats as an oceangoing submarine for sustained operations far from their base. U.S. intelligence confirmed that Type IX boats were used along America’s coastlines in an attempt to disrupt the stream of troops and supplies headed for Europe. The Type IXB was the most successful version built and operated by the Reich. It’s estimated that during the war, the Type IXBs sank over one hundred thousand tons of Allied naval vessels and commercial cargo ships.
The newly constructed Type IXC was the subject of Himmler’s visit. Its increased range and superior surface speed made it the perfect candidate for what he had in mind. He proudly led an entourage toward the submarine pen where the newest Type IXC awaited his inspection.
Himmler marveled at the massive base. The huge concrete structures housed the Reich’s most impressive submarines, which stretched hundreds of feet long. In addition to the behemoths that awaited their deployment, offices, medical facilities, mess halls and storage buildings were interspersed throughout the pen. It was a giant drab gray concrete facility that, like Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair, was designed to protect its inhabitants, human and sub alike, from Allied aircraft raids.
Several young U-boat commanders awaited Himmler’s arrival. At just the precise moment, they snapped a salute to the Reichsführer and shouted in unison, “Heil Hitler!” Himmler returned the salute and ordered them to be at ease. Himmler spoke with each of them and then asked questions about the progress of the two Type IXs under construction.
“As you know, the last of the 9th U-boat Flotilla will be leaving Brest in early September. Bunker Bruno will assume maintenance and retrofitting of its remaining fleet. Are you prepared to place these existing submarines into service?”
“Yes, Reichsführer!” replied one particularly energetic young man. “In point of fact, we have one of their vessels in pen number five now. It is being modified to fit your exact specifications.”
Himmler sized up the young man. He was the epitome of the Hitler youth raised during the thirties. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Fit and tall in stature. With his chiseled jaw and serious demeanor, he was exactly the type of young man Himmler wanted in the SS.
“Which one?” asked Himmler as he stared around the base at the massive concrete pens. Three U-boats were backed into their spaces, surrounded by the sparks of welding equipment and workers.
“Reichsführer, if I may?” asked the young commander, handing Himmler his field glasses to get a better look. “In pen five, you will clearly see der lachende Schwertfisch. Her designation is U-1226.” The laughing swordfish was the unit symbol of the 9th Flotilla and remained on this particular U-boat.
Himmler smiled. In that moment, he knew he’d found the right U-boat and the right commander.
Chapter Seventeen
Aboard the Victory Casino Cruise Ship
One Hundred Miles East of Brownsville, Texas
Gulf of Mexico
Cam propelled herself out of the water first and onto the transom. She scampered to all fours like a cat, swiftly removing her suppressed Heckler & Koch MP7 from her shoulder, and immediately trained it on the deck above her. The cross between a machine gun and a carbine delivered plenty of stopping power with its .45-caliber rounds. Confident she hadn’t been seen, she unlatched the steel ladder bolted to the transom and swung it up and over the edge of the ship so Gunner could join her.
Gunner quickly crawled up the ladder and readied his weapon. Through his night-vision lens, he studied Cam’s body language. She was tensed, ready to spring on any target that revealed itself.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I will be,” she replied dryly. “Move.”
“Moving.”
Gunner made his way up the steep stairwell leading to the aft deck. Cam followed. Once Cam was on the deck, she dropped to a knee and panned the area for hostiles. Gunner saw the glowing cherry of a cigarette on the starboard side amidst overturned deck chairs and tables. He gestured to Cam, who nodded.
She moved toward the pirate, who was sitting back on a chair, sniffing the clothing of the woman he’d just killed. Through the night vision, his knife and an automatic weapon could be seen on the table behind him. His lack of awareness was the opening Cam needed.
Like a tiger approaching
its prey, she eased in behind him. She’d shouldered her MP7 and gripped her fixed-blade knife.
“Alive, Cam.” Gunner felt compelled to remind his partner. They had this pirate isolated, and they could extract intel from him before killing him. He knew Cam had smoke coming out of her ears, so he needed to restrain her somewhat.
She slipped in behind him, taking advantage of his distracted state, and delivered a crushing blow to the man’s neck with the steel grip of her knife. Lightning fast, her hand whipped back and forth, striking the man’s temples until he collapsed in a heap on the deck.
Gunner’s eyes grew wide. His partner was very good at neutralizing hostiles. He imagined her pulse rate was racing, so he gave her some room. He opted to watch her six while she went to work on the first of many pirates to eliminate.
She pinned the man to the deck and stuck her face just inches from his. Then, with her right hand shaking slightly from the death grip she had on her knife, she pointed the sharp end of the blade at his eyeball. She threatened him with the knife and demanded answers.
“Cuantos piratas?” How many pirates?
Gunner glanced back at the pirate’s expression. His eyes were wide with fear, but he wasn’t talking. Cam inched the blade closer.
“Respóndeme, cabrón!” she hissed. Answer me, bastard!
The man still hesitated, so Cam urged him along. She shifted the sharp tip of her knife ever so slightly away from his right eyeball and pierced the skin of his eyebrow just above the eye socket. The man groaned in pain as blood started to pour into his eye.
He attempted to free his arms, which Cam had pinned down with her legs. This simply made her angrier, so she repeated the puncture above the left eye, except with a little more force.
She repeated her demand. “Cuantos piratas?”
“Doce! Doce plus Abduwali!” he finally responded.
Gunner’s head snapped around. Twelve, just as Bear suspected, but one was undoubtedly the leader. He spoke into the comms.
“Abduwali. Did you copy that, Ghost?”
“Copy,” he responded.
“Let’s move it along, Cam,” suggested Gunner, a polite way of saying kill the guy.
“Roger that,” she growled as she slit the pirate’s throat with a deep, slow cut that caused his windpipe to gurgle with each inch the blade opened up.
Gunner shouldered his rifle and assisted Cam in throwing the pirate overboard. “That’s one,” he said through the comms.
Cam was feeling no fear, and she was more fluent in conversational Spanish than Gunner was, so he allowed her to lead the way. They’d studied the layout of the Victory while en route to Corpus Christi. The first level was crew cabins, engineering, and kitchen facilities. It was accessed by freight elevators at both ends of the ship. The second level, known as the first deck, contained the atrium where guests boarded. To the aft was the SportsBook lounge, and the restaurant was located at the bow. The third and fourth levels were devoted to gaming tables and slot machines.
Their plan was to avoid the first level and the second level, where the staterooms were located. Undoubtedly, the pirates had assigned several men to each, but Gunner wanted to avoid engaging in a firefight around civilians. Plus, unless they were able to eliminate their targets completely without detection, their being discovered would likely expose them to the guy running this piracy operation.
Cam led the way, using the external stairwells to make her way up each level of the ship. Gunner covered their back as the two worked in tandem to the second deck, when they heard voices coming from the bow. The men were talking loudly to one another in Spanish. Heel to toe, Cam approached the open-air seating area designed to accommodate smokers.
The wind was beginning to howl, and the boat rocked from the increased waved activity. The ship creaked and cracked as it was battered by the hurricane.
As Cam reached the corner, she suddenly moved backwards toward Gunner and bent her knees to lower her body. Gunner first swung his rifle to check their rear, and then he swung back around and dropped to a knee as well. The men stopped talking.
Gunner held his breath and aimed high. Cam aimed low. The barrel of the pirate’s AK-47 protruded around the corner before his body. As the pirate followed his gun’s lead, both Cam and Gunner’s weapons spit out two rounds each, killing the man instantly.
She sprang out of her crouch and charged the smoking area. Another pirate suddenly appeared and fired wildly in her direction. She sprayed his chest with bullets, sending him backpedaling until he crashed into the railing and fell over the side of the ship.
The quick burst he managed to get off might have ruined their element of surprise had Hurricane Archie not provided them some sound protection. Gunner and Cam took up positions on both access points to the designated smoking deck, but help for the dead pirates never materialized.
Now it was time to move inside the ship.
“That’s three KIA,” Gunner announced into the comms.
“Roger,” replied Ghost. “We believe we’ve identified the leader of this soiree as Abduwali Ali, a Somalian national wanted by Interpol and the Brits for his part in a mass murder during a piracy gone bad.”
“These hostiles are Mexican,” said Gunner. “Did this guy take a wrong turn somewhere?”
Jackal. “I’m checking with my old FBI contacts. He could be a hired gun by the drug cartels. Either Los Zetas or Sinaloa. When I was with the bureau, rumor had it some big money out of Argentina had funded the Los Zetas in their efforts to take back territory lost years ago to their rival cartels. Rumor was the money was legit on the surface but parlayed into ill-gotten gains.”
“Money laundering in reverse,” added Cam, who was still hyped up.
Gunner asked a logical question. “If this guy is a hired gun, can he be reasoned with?”
“Maybe once upon a time,” replied Ghost. “But not today. He appeared unhinged on his last transmission. He plans on killing one male and female passenger at the top of the hour.”
Gunner searched his helmet screen. He shook his head in disbelief.
“That’s nine minutes.”
Chapter Eighteen
September 7, 1944
Institute of Virology
Riems Island, Germany
Dr. Blome knew something out of the ordinary was about to happen when he’d been ordered the day before to cease all work and experimentation on the prisoners. He was told to expect visitors and that his facility needed to be safe and clean without exception.
The next morning, an unseasonably light snow had fallen. The accompanying gray skies and cold wind off the Baltic Sea cast the institute in a macabre, ghostly light. The sound of a ship’s air horn blasted off in the distance as the lighthouse situated on nearby Rügen Island rotated to warn of shallow waters.
Two SS officers entered Dr. Blome’s office and suggested he greet his guests at the boat launch. Generally, he was treated with respect by the brutal SS soldiers, but today they appeared to be on their worst, or best, depending on perspective, behavior.
Dr. Blome dutifully followed them to the boat launch and waited for his unknown guests. The first passengers were escorted off the Schnellboot, or S-boat. The fast attack craft was used often to transport Nazi officials into Norway in order to avoid air travel. They were perilously close to the United Kingdom, who’d stepped up their air patrols in the region.
Himmler was the first to emerge. Dr. Blome greeted two more passengers, whom he immediately recognized—Adolph Eichmann and Josef Mengele. He’d never met the two most dangerous Nazis in the Reich, but he was certainly familiar with their activities at Auschwitz and other torture camps.
The three greeted one another with the signature salute, where each of the men extended their right arm from their neck into the air with a straightened hand.
“Heil Hitler!” shouted Dr. Blome.
“Heil Hitler!” the visitors responded.
The four men made their way through an increasingly damp da
y in which rain mixed with snow. Riems Island was on the cusp of winter, and by mid-November, a blanket of snow would likely cover the ground until spring. Dr. Blome thought of spring, wondering if he’d live to see it. He led them inside and down a long tiled corridor filled with light. Every square inch of the institute was painted white to provide the illusion of cleanliness. It was anything but clean.
After some small talk, Himmler got right to the point.
“How many canisters have you ready for transport?”
“Eleven hundred, Reichsführer Himmler,” Dr. Blome quickly replied. “We are beyond the testing phase now. We have paused our other projects to manufacture more of the nerve agent for insertion into the—”
“Tell me about this poison,” interrupted Eichmann. If Mengele, a physician, was the Angel of Death, Eichmann was the person responsible for delivering the condemned individuals to Mengele. Like Himmler, Eichmann really didn’t care how the Jews were killed. He believed in swift extermination by whatever means. “How will they die?”
Dr. Blome was no saint, but Eichmann’s question turned his stomach. He had to be careful with his reaction and response. These were three of the deadliest, most sadistic killers in the Reich.
“Sarin is colorless, odorless, and has a high vapor pressure that allows us to use a wide variety of delivery methods. At room temperature, it is liquid. It can be converted into an aerosol spray. It can be frozen under extreme temperatures at approximately negative fifty-six degrees Celsius. And it can be absorbed into other solid substances, including sponge material, as requested by Reichsführer Himmler.”
“Have you been successful?” asked Himmler.
“Yes, Reichsführer. With the materials provided, we have successfully soaked the sponges and sealed them into the titanium canisters. When an individual sponge is placed into water, it will expand to ten times its initial size. Large volumes of sarin can be released into the water.”
