“Soon, I’ll introduce our esteemed leader. But first, I would like to thank you, all of you, for your continued faith in our cause. It is only through your support we have accomplished so much. We have bided our time. We have been patient for sixty-five years and withstood ongoing worldwide condemnation and humiliation. Soon, very soon, the fatherland will rise again—take its place as the world’s dominant power.”
The audience cheered and applauded and continually sang out Blut und Ehre! Blut und Ehre! Blut und Ehre! until Leon gestured for them to quiet down.
“We’ve struck, not with guns or missiles or tanks, but where civilization is most vulnerable … its financial infrastructure. With nary a shot fired, we have invaded into the very core of our enemy and soon we will control every aspect of the world’s economy.”
Blut und Ehre! Blut und Ehre! Blut und Ehre!
“Now … there are these here—sent to destroy us … to keep from us what is so rightfully ours.”
Leon turned and looked at Pippa and Baltimore.
Blut und Ehre! Blut und Ehre! Blut und Ehre!
“We must send out a decisive message that we will not tolerate interference. With the execution of these covert operatives, we will convey a clear message to the United States and other nations, that Germany, our new and rejuvenated fatherland, will not be disempowered ever again. With that, I present you our esteemed Frau Fuhrer!”
The audience was back on their feet and clapping feverishly. Frau Fuhrer! Frau Fuhrer! Frau Fuhrer! Heidi Goertz walked onto the raised dais dressed in a black military jacket and skirt. She wore the same red, white, and black swastika band on her upper arm as her husband. Her blonde hair, as she typically wore it, was pulled back into a long braid that fell down her back. Perched atop her head was a German officer’s cap.
“Danke. Thank you. Danke. Thank you all. Blut und Ehre!”
The audience cheered, tears filling many an eye. Blut und Ehre!
Heidi looked at her watch and smiled. “Today is Sunday. Tomorrow, Monday morning, when the world’s markets reopen for trading, the WZZ, and all of Germany, will begin its final charge. As one goliath company after another falls, becomes the property of the WZZ, a new world order will emerge. Our job is still not complete. We must pound our adversaries into the ground. We must punish them. We must drink the very blood of our enemy! Let the ritual begin …”
Frau Fuhrer! Frau Fuhrer! Frau Fuhrer! Frau Fuhrer!
The audience stood and the room became quiet. Several men removed the four chairs and podium from the raised dais. A long wooden table, with two metal vats, was carried in and positioned in front of Pippa and Baltimore. Two men roughly grabbed Baltimore’s arms and he was pulled up on his feet. Two other men did the same to Pippa. A leather collar was fitted around her neck and fastened to the post.
Next she felt a prick on her forearm. Pippa’s mind was racing. She tried to resist, to pull away from the post and the hands holding her. She felt the sting as an IV needle was inserted into her arm. She screamed into the thick material covering her mouth. A long polyurethane tube hung from Pippa’s arm and drooped down into one of the metal vats. Pippa watched as the tube filled and turned red, blood freely flowing from her arm, down the tube, and into the awaiting vat. Pippa heard Baltimore yelling behind his gag. He, too, was filling a vat with blood.
Pippa watched as Heidi approached her. She’d removed her hat and military jacket, revealing a crisp white dress shirt. Inches from her face, Heidi spoke with a soft voice.
“I so wish this could have turned out differently. I had such hopes for us. Truth be told, I don’t have many close friends. So, so, disappointing.” Heidi leaned in and kissed Pippa on the cheek, and then touched her cheek with the back of her palm.
Heidi stood back and looked to the audience behind her. Jackets had been removed. Hats and caps removed. Everyone stood quietly and waited. Heidi moved to the far side of the table, and stood before the first metal vat—Pippa’s vat. The bottom of the container was now completely covered in thick red blood. Pippa knew the average woman held a little over three liters of blood. How much blood can I lose before I die?
The audience was moving, forming a line behind their leader, Frau Fuhrer. Heidi took one more look in Pippa’s direction and then leaned over the vat. Using hands cupped together, as one would when getting a drink from a stream, she dipped them into the warm red liquid and brought them up to her lips. She sipped and swallowed. She wiped the blood onto her face and down across her crisp white shirt. Blut und Ehre! Heidi moved on down the table and repeated the same movements with Baltimore’s blood. Blut und Ehre! Leon’s turn followed, and then other high-ranking Neo-Nazi officers. Eventually, the first ones from the audience stepped onto the platform and stood at the table.
Feeling light-headed, Pippa looked out at the hundreds of guests quietly waiting their turn. She wondered if there would be enough blood to go around. She realized that if she turned her body ever so slightly and she raised her head against her bindings, she was just able to peer into the metal vat. Already so much blood.
The movement had had another effect, as well. It pulled and put tension on the long polyurethane tube. Pippa felt the pain in her arm as the I.V. needle pulled against her skin this way and that. Was it loosening? Could she pull the needle free before she bled out?
She then thought of Rob; she hadn’t told him—she needed to tell him—how much she loved him.
Chapter 47
By the time I jumped down to the next balcony below, I was finding it difficult to stand—and, unfortunately, I was still two floors up. My mental interactions with Heimi had been so intense and focused, well beyond anything I’d attempted before. That steely concentration depleted all my vitality, strength, and natural recuperative ability—something I’d have to keep in mind for the future. The problem at hand was worsening too: withdrawal symptoms. There simply was no way I could jump down to the next balcony. I’d have to break into the room next to me.
I used my ring to unlock the French doors and shuffled into the suite. Empty. It was another office space, smaller and less appointed than Leon’s. I staggered across the office to the other entrance. I opened the door several inches and peered out. The hallway was clear—no one around. Out in the hallway, I pushed myself forward. My arms and legs had begun to spasm, something new added to my deteriorating condition. I found a stairway and, one slow step at a time, descended to the ground floor.
I knew where I was. This was the great room, where we’d first entered into the castle. I slowly stepped around a corner and came face to face with a guard dressed in a Nazi uniform. Looking as surprised as I was, he started to raise his AK47. But he was a fraction of a second too slow. I already had Lance’s pistol in my hand and pointed at his face. “Lass die Waffe fallen,” Drop the gun, I said.
He let the gun fall to the floor. “Sie sollten sich selbst aufgeben. Jeder ist für Sie suchen.”
He told me to give myself up—everyone was looking for me.
Shakily, I brought the pistol up to his nose, “Das wird nicht passieren. Wo ist die Frau, die ich mit angekommen?” That’s not going to happen. Where is the woman I arrived with?
He stared into the muzzle of Lance’s gun for several more seconds, then said, “Die Montagehalle.” The assembly hall.
I told him to take a step backwards and turn around. I retrieved his AK47. “Gehen. Zeigen Sie mir.” Walk. Show me.
We both hesitated when loud alarms blared from every direction. Then came the sound of multiple helicopters, hovering above the courtyard outside. It seemed the cavalry had arrived.
“Bleiben Sie in Bewegung!” Keep moving, I needed to get to Pippa—not stop for anyone, even the good guys.
It took every bit of my quickly fading energy to walk forward and continue holding up what had become an excruciatingly heavy weapon. It took five minutes to descend more stairs and reach the assembly hall. I was now dragging my left leg behind me in a pathetic attempt to keep moving.
Upon first look, with the exception of hundreds of chairs, the assembly hall appeared empty. Then I saw them, strapped to posts at the front of the room.
I screamed at the guard, “Bindet sie los!” Untie them!
As I came closer I saw Baltimore was alive, his eyes tracking me. In little more than a whisper, he asked, “Get the code? Destroy the server?”
“Yes.” But all my attention was on Pippa. Her skin was blue-gray and she wasn’t moving. The Neo-Nazi guard released her bindings and lowered her to the floor. I yelled at him to help Baltimore.
I saw a trickle of blood on her forearm and a now-disconnected IV needle, hanging loosely down to the floor. I sat close to her and placed her head gently on my lap. Her skin was cold and lifeless. Her chest was still and unmoving. She was dead.
My vision blurred as tears filled my eyes. I felt anger rising in me like a cyclone. None of this was worth her life. Nothing, ever, would be worth losing her.
“Six presses,” came a soft voice.
I turned to see Baltimore trying to make his way over to me. “Press one side of her ring six times. Quickly!”
I looked at him, uncomprehending. Baltimore crawled over to me and Pippa. He reached for her hand and found her ring. He pressed on one of its octagonal sides six times in rapid succession. There was a loud clap as a jolt of electricity coursed through Pippa’s body. She went rigid, then gasped for air. Her eyes opened.
Epilogue
I was done working for the U.S. government. Officially retired, I took a long sip of my iced tea, leaned back, and felt the pool’s cool water lapping against my legs.
After the events in Baden-Baden the previous month, I returned to Drako’s estate, now legally mine, in the rocky cliffs outside of Kingman, Arizona.
Cassie cheerfully greeted me as I walked through the front door as naturally as if I’d lived there for years. Truth be told, I had no idea what I was going to do with the place—or with my life, for that matter.
In the end it had been the ring’s heart-defibrillating capability that not only saved Pippa’s life—but my own. Both Pippa and Baltimore had found a way to pull their I.V. needles from their arms—though both had bled out to dangerous, near fatal, levels.
Baltimore never understood why anyone, namely me, supposedly of a sound mind, would purposely go and shock themselves with seven hundred volts. But he didn’t need to know. I hadn’t tapped in during that fraction of a second jolt, per se, but it gained me another few minutes of life. As the three of us waited in that Neo-Nazi assembly hall—each of us knocking at death’s door, it was none other than Pippa’s Great Aunt Ingrid’s boyfriend, William Genz, who’d found us. He was our inside man, within the German Verfassungsschutz.
Even now, as I float in the pool, working on my tan, I wonder: was it worth it? Sure, we’d stopped the Spatz program and acquired the code. But Heidi and Leon Goertz were in the wind, somewhere. Once the alarms started blaring, mere minutes before I had come upon Pippa and Baltimore, the whole kit and caboodle of them fled through subterranean tunnels and escaped.
The German Verfassungsschutz forces had been alerted, I suspect, by Baltimore … Maybe, once he was certain I’d accomplished what we’d come there to do, he used his ring … I’m not really sure. When they stormed the castle they found it pretty much emptied—with the exception of Pippa, Baltimore, and me, and a few badly mistreated prisoners … and oh, yes, the guy dressed up as a Nazi soldier. Horris, under U.S. government provided protection and medical assistance, along with Baltimore, was escorted back to Washington, D.C.
The truth was, I’d only accomplished half my mission. The WZZ, albeit significantly disrupted, was still out there—somewhere. I had a score to settle with Leon and Heidi Goertz, but that wasn’t going to happen today, or tomorrow, and probably not the day after that, either. But happen it would.
I watched the heat rise in distorted blurry waves off the desert floor in the distance. A lone hawk circled above, then dove out of sight below a rocky ridgeline. I thought about Pippa and how I’d almost lost her. I wasn’t going to let that happen again. I closed my eyes and recalled those last moments when I was certain she was dead.
I felt her vinyl float lazily bump into mine. She was lying on her tummy with her bikini top untied. She turned her face toward me and smiled. “Yikes, you might want to turn over—looking a bit pink there,” she said, splashing me and then pushing her float away from mine.
“Mr. Chandler,” Cassie interrupted.
I looked over to the edge of the pool. “Yes, Cassie?”
She held up a wireless phone. “Phone call.”
“Take a message.”
Cassie continued to hold out the phone. I knew what she was going to say before she said it. “You may want to take it; it’s the White House.”
Thank you for reading Mad Powers. To be notified of my next book’s release in this series, entitled Deadly Powers, email me at: [email protected]. Subject Line: Deadly Powers.
If you enjoyed this novel and would like to see this series continue, please leave a review on Amazon.com. It’s very much appreciated.
Books by Mark Wayne McGinnis:
Scrapyard Ship
(Scrapyard Ship series, Book 1)
HAB 12
(Scrapyard Ship series, Book 2)
Space Vengeance
(Scrapyard Ship series, Book 3)
Realms of Time
(Scrapyard Ship series, Book 4)
Mad Powers
(A Tapped In Novel, Parts 1, 2, 3)
Acknowledgments
First of all I'd like to thank my wonderful wife, Kim, and my mother (again) for the support and encouragement to write these books. Out of all the books I've written, this is the most thoroughly edited, so thank you to my amazing editors, Lura Lee Genz , Rachel Weaver, Marta Tan and Mia Manns-the many hours invested are so very much appreciated. Thank you Mia for all the research and going above and beyond the call of duty. Much appreciation goes to Brad Leppla for his technical firearms review. Thank you L.J. Ganser for your audiobook support on past and future books (and friendship). Thank you Erin Arik for your amazing cover art with two of my books. Thank you to Lura and James Fischer for your continued support, it really means a lot to me. Thank you to Chris Derrick for the help with formatting the print version and making everything look so professional. I'd also like to thank the many subject matter experts and others who supported, contributed, and reviewed this book, I'd also like to thank the fans who enjoyed the initial novella, Tapped In, and pushed me to finish the complete book, Mad Powers. I read every one of your emails and enjoy your comments.
Copyright © 2014 by Mark Wayne McGinnis All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Edited by:
Lura Lee Genz
Mia Manns
Rachel Weaver
Marta Tan
Avenstar Productions
ISBN: 978-0-9903314-4-5
filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share
Mad Powers (Tapped In) Page 23
