Countdown

by Jerry Ahern

  Again, however, she put herself in someone else’s shoes. The air exchanges would be located for maximum efficiency. Nazis had but one virtue, if any aspect of a Nazi could be called virtuous: Nazis were efficient in the extreme. The exchanges would be placed near areas of maximal need. Power-generating facilities, living areas, the aircraft takeoff and landing bays, etc. She began to study the areas she had defined as the landing bays once again.

  By ordering the computer to digitally increase pixelization, she was able to make additional educated guesses concerning the landing bays, their size, their structure, their maximum dimensions. Synth-fuel fumes were noxious-smelling, albeit essentially harmless, and would have to be evacuated before getting into the overall air system of the complex.

  Calling on the computer for maximum enhancement of the thermal signatures and utilizing a transparent film over the still-framed screen, she was able to construct rough maps of the takeoff and landing bays, deducing that there were three such installations, all located on the north face of the mountain designated on the map underlayment as L-9.

  L-9 might not be the central section of the complex, but was, indeed, the business end of the operation. Extrapolating figures based on her familiarity with submersible aircraft carriers, Emma Shaw arrived at a figure for the number of aircraft which the facility might successfully handle. Assuming typical Nazi/Eden V/STOL fighters, each landing bay could house and service one hundred and twenty such craft. The three bays, combined, would accommodate three hundred and sixty fighters. Allowing for squadron sizes and the like, Emma Shaw determined that roughly three hundred V/STOL-type fighter aircraft could be expected to be on hand.

  “Aw, shit,” she said aloud.

  The computer’s voice—nothing at all like that of her old automatic copilot, Gorgeous—announced, “The term ‘shit’ does not compute.”

  “Is that a fact?” She lit a cigarette, then started feeding her drawings into the computer program so that the drawings could be enhanced based upon everything which was known about Nazi/Eden airfields. With the help of the computer, fuel storage facilities, tower facilities, even pilot briefing rooms and waiting rooms could be filled in with a reasonable degree of accuracy based upon how such facilities had been laid out in the past.

  The Nazis were not only efficient and organized, they were also predictable. If an airfield layout worked well for them in the past, it would work again. Eden airfields, of which there were considerably more than Nazi ones, were laid out in the same fashion, because the Nazis, of course, were the ones who laid them out for their allies.

  While the computer crunched her data input, Emma Shaw began working out her escape route from the facility, should they survive long enough to reach that point. The Nazi/Eden fighter aircraft were fairly capable machines, but considerably less maneuverable than U.S. Navy fighter aircraft. So, she couldn’t hang around to get into a fight with any of the three hundred or so aircraft which might be on her tail the moment after she took off.

  She would have to get to maximum speed as quickly as possible and see as her only strategy the possibility of outrunning her pursuers.

  That was a poor plan, but the best she had. If the sky behind her filled with enemy aircraft or their missiles, she would be done for.

  And, so would John Rourke.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  On those rare occasions when he indulged in a nap, Deitrich Zimmer left explicit orders that he was not to be disturbed except in the event of an emergency. He knew better than to trust anything truly important to his son, Martin.

  So, when the buzzer beside his head sounded and Deitrich Zimmer opened his eyes, his first reaction was not anger at being disturbed but concern at what the emergency might be. He wiggled his toes within his socks, starting his circulation, then slowly moved his feet at the ankles, then began to raise his knees slightly as he spread his arms from his torso and moved them, flexing his fingers as well.

  This practice consumed only a few seconds, but he somehow felt better for it, more instantly clearheaded when he awakened.

  Zimmer sat up.

  The cover on the couch was, like the couch itself, black, as were the walls of the little sideroom to his office suite. The furnishings were sparse, the only light a single, green-shaded lamp beside the couch on a table otherwise devoid of anything except for a carafe of water and a glass. The water was changed every hour on the hour unless he was using the room for sleep. The idea behind its Spartan appearance was total lack of sensual stimulation, thus sleep-inducing.

  He fluffed his pillow, preparatory to using it again, flung the throw out across the couch so it would not become inordinately wrinkled—he was a neat man and always had been—and walked to the door. He did not lock it, ever. He opened the door now and squinted against the light as he grabbed his sweater from the solitary chair just inside the doorway. He flung the sweater around his shoulders as he closed the door and searched out the cause of his alarm.

  It was Rottenführer Hoffmann, his valet. Hoffmann stood at attention just inside the office doorway, about two meters away, at the far end of the vaulted chamber. “Yes, Hoffmann. What is it?”

  “Herr Doctor, forgive me for disturbing your rest. But, I was told to inform you that a helicopter approaches the citadel, the occupants claiming to be survivors of the SS Commando unit from the headquarters in Canada. They request permission to land.”

  “Who are these persons? Who is their officer?”

  “They are three officers, Herr Doctor. The Senior identifies himself as Obersturmbannführer Rudolph Gessler.”

  “Gessler,” Deitrich Zimmer mused aloud. “There is no Gessler who knows the location of the citadel.”

  “Forgive me, Herr Doctor, but I was told that the Obersturmbannführer related to communication central that the location of the citadel was learned from a captured American prisoner, whom they then killed.”

  “Hmm. That is plausible, but doubtful. Thank you, Hoffmann. That is all.”

  “Yes, Herr Doctor!”

  Hoffmann made a neat about-face, opened the door nearest him and exited the room. Deitrich Zimmer walked toward the desk, stood beside it for a moment, fingers splayed over it, taking deep breaths as he fully awakened. Three officers in a helicopter approaching the citadel on the basis of information taken from an American prisoner. Most unlikely. He smiled. It was too stupid a scenario for an intelligence operation. The officers were probably quite genuine.

  Still—

  Deitrich Zimmer raised the telephone receiver and told the computer, “Security.”

  In seconds, the voice of the security officer of the day responded.

  Zimmer said, “The helicopter in question should be allowed to land, the three officers aboard should have their papers checked, then after they have been allowed to refresh themselves, I wish them brought to me. They shall be accompanied by a security detachment wherever they go. Understood?”

  “Yes, Herr Doctor!”

  “That is all.” Deitrich Zimmer hung up the telephone receiver and took a cigarette from the gold box on his black marble-topped desk. He lit the cigarette with an electric lighter and exhaled smoke through his nostrils. He raised the receiver again, telling the computer, “Martin Zimmer.”

  Martin answered on the fifth ring. “Hello?”

  “You are aware, Martin, that a helicopter with three officers aboard it appoaches the citadel. I have given permission for it to land.”

  “It could be a trick, Father.”

  “Yes, it could. Then, we shall see what sort of trick, shall we? Shall we have some fun?”

  Martin responded, “I don’t understand.”

  “We have lives to spare, do we not?”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Natalia Tiemerovna settled herself into the copilot’s seat, then bent forward, catching up her hair at the nape of the neck and turning it around her fingers as she flipped the black SS foraging cap onto her head, her hair successfully stuffed beneath it. Since th
ere were no women allowed to serve in other than a menial capacity within the Nazi or Eden forces—women were political and social inferiors—it was necessary that, from a distance at least, she should appear to be male rather than female.

  “Ever think how easy we’ve got it, Natalia?” Emma Shaw asked, taking the pilot’s seat and fixing her somewhat shorter hair so that it, too, would be concealed by a foraging cap. “WE can dress however we want, really.”

  “I had never really thought of that. I suppose you’re right. If I wear pants, I’m practical. If a man wears a skirt, he’s strange.”

  “Unless he’s a Scotsman and he calls it a kilt. Three minutes before takeoff,” Emma Shaw announced, starting to flip switches on the control panel. “Run the check with me?”

  “Of course,” Natalia responded …

  Annie Rourke Rubenstein sat with the twelve Navy SEALs in the aft section of the Nazi gunship. Like her, they were all dressed in SS field uniforms, all armed with Nazi weapons, their own weapons concealed beneath their uniforms as were her own weapons.

  Several of the SEAL Team personnel were putting last minute touch-ups to the edges of their fighting knives, these as widely divergent as she could imagine. Some carried knives roughly shaped like her father’s Crain LS-X, only smaller. Others carried double-edged daggers.

  Unlike Natalia, Annie had never been much of a knife person. She carried two knives only, a Cold Steel Mini Tanto dating from Before the Night of the War and an Executive Edge Fazendeiro lock-blade folding knife, this also from Before the Night of the War. On those rare occasions when she could dress as she liked, the Fazendeiro was in her purse. Her father generally favored custom knives, but two of the three knives he carried were not custom knives at all, because in additon to the Crain LS-X knife, handmade for him by Texas knifemaker Jack Crain, he carried the little A. G. Russell Sting IA Black Chrome and a pen-shaped Executive Edge Grande.

  Her father had told her once, “Only a snob rejects something because it isn’t custom. If something is good it’s good; if it’s bad, it’s bad. It doesn’t matter who made it. The Gerber Paul carries, the Bali-Song Natalia uses, the little Executive Edge Grande I carry in my shirt pocket. The Cold Steel Mini Tanto I’ve just given you. A friend of mine named Glenn Barnes once gave me an Al Mar folding knife. You’ve seen me use it. Al Mar was one of the finest knifemakers ever, and his work was commercial, not custom. Anyway, remember that a gun can run out of ammo; a knife won’t, all right?”

  She missed her father, just thinking of him. If they succeeded in bringing him back from the brink of death, she would tell him how much she loved him. He knew it, of course, but she hadn’t said, “I love you Daddy” to him in a very long time.

  And, if her father survived, she had already decided that she would be as understanding as humanly possible when the time came for her father and mother to separate. Her mother, if the woman she had spoken with, hugged, was indeed her mother, would never forgive her father for something her father had not done—thanks to Deitrich Zimmer’s brainwashing techniques, which were beyond measure in their effectiveness. In an odd way, Deitrich Zimmer had solved a problem which had been in evidence ever since Before the Night of the War.

  Parents often thought that their children were at once deaf, dumb and blind, that their children did not notice the friction building between father and mother, husband and wife. From her earliest days, she had realized that Mommy and Daddy did not get along, that there was something wrong between them. By the time she was old enough to know what it was, they were into the survival situation the framework of which they had lived with in all of her adult life. And, there was nothing to be done about it.

  She had seen the way Natalia loved her father and her father loved Natalia and her father had, intentionally, engineered a situation in which Natalia would become Michael’s wife rather than his own. Even though his plans had not worked the way he had intended, eventually Natalia and Michael were thrown together and became lovers. Soon, when all of this was over or there was at least a moment left to them in which to be normal (whatever that was), Natalia and Michael would be married.

  But her father, had he not met Emma Shaw, would still have been alone. Once it became clear that Wolfgang Mann and her mother, Sarah Rourke, loved each other, her father could have done nothing else but step aside. Fortunately for him, there was Emma Shaw to go to. If her father did not survive, Annie would always be a friend to Emma Shaw, always treat her with the love and respect that she would have shown, had her father married her …

  Emma Shaw’s mind was always able to function on two different levels, and she imagined that everyone else’s mind was able to do the same. With one portion of her consciousness, she checked and double-checked the control panel, making certain that all was in order for the flight which would commence in under sixty seconds now. On another level, however, she reviewed other matters of importance.

  She refused to consider that John Rourke would die and she would become a widow before she had become a bride. She would never marry, should he die, because there could be no other man who would be anything like him.

  Instead, Emma Shaw considered what her life would be like if John Rourke lived. Technically, she would be Annie and Michael’s stepmother, Paul’s and eventually Natalia’s stepmother-in-law. “Weird,” Emma Shaw almost said aloud. Annie was becoming a good friend, as was Natalia.

  But, what about Sarah Rourke? Was it the real Sarah Rourke who believed those awful lies about John? What would things be like with her? Emma Shaw knew that she was the other woman, the evil seductress (hard to imagine herself seducing anyone) who had led the faithful husband astray. On one level, she felt it was about time, but on another level she felt guilty.

  But John deserved a life, and so did she. John deserved someone to come home to who would not constantly rail at him for who he was and what he was, but love him as he was. When the War ended, she would retire, leave the Navy if John lived, devote her full time to being wife and—She felt her cheeks flushing for the first time since she didn’t know when. Mother? Would John get her pregnant? Would she bear his children? What would they be like?

  She’d given up on the idea of motherhood years ago, but her biological clock was running just great and she could do it.

  “Do you think I’d make a good mother?” Fortunately, she’d pulled her microphone plug before asking Natalia, rather than announcing it over the entire ship.

  “Do you think I would?” Natalia countered.

  “Yeah! An interesting mother, but a good one, I think.”

  “I’d say the same about you,” Natalia told her. “Are we checked out?”

  “Yeah.” Emma Shaw plugged her microphone back in, announcing, “Make certain that all seat restraints are secure, this’ll be a bumpy ride once we’re over the Himalayas. All you SEAL Team guys, put away any sharp objects, huh? Hang on and pray.”

  “Pray?” Natalia asked her.

  “That we get this done and we get out with our skins. Yeah, pray. Okay?”

  “All right,” Natalia answered,

  “Increasing main rotor revolution.” She switched to the frequency which connected her with the ground control, a cargo lifter sitting in the middle of a snow-splotched sand dune where six centuries ago the city of Tehran had been. “This is X One Niner preparing for takeoff.”

  “We have you clear, X One Niner. Good luck and Godspeed.”

  “Religion is everywhere, isn’t it?” Natalia asked, seemingly rhetorically.

  “Amen, sister,” Emma Shaw said, smiling, then changing rotor pitch and starting lift-off. “There used to be a saying, about how there were no atheists in foxholes.”

  Natalia laughed. “I like what Shakespeare said even better. To thine own self be true and it follows as the night the day thou canst not then be false toward any man.’”

  “Touché. You think we’ll make it?”

  “The plan is so horribly bizarre that no miltary mind could even accept its bei
ng a plan. We are walking into a totally unfamiliar facility and we intend to kidnap someone—the clone of John—and then kill and destroy as much as possible while attempting to escape in relative safety. It is just insane enough that it might work, simply because Deitrich Zimmer would never expect such a thing. Maybe we should both pray.”

  They were airborne.

  Chapter Fifty

  Michael Rourke made a last-minute check of the two Beretta 92Fs under his SS officer’s field tunic. The pistols and a half dozen spare magazines were as hidden as he could get them and still have any sort of access. Because some of the Nazi field uniforms were made from a bullet-resistant material, the guns were loaded with cartridges incorporating armor-piercing bullets. His father recounted to him once how the antifirearms rights forces so prevalent during the last half of the twentieth century had manipulated the general public into believing that armor piercing rounds were “cop-killer bullets.” In an age when many professional criminals wore body armor as well, the description was hardly accurate, his father had said. However, John Rourke invariably refrained from using what he called “trick cartridges,” preferring instead to rely upon a proven-performance round and correct shot placement in order to accomplish the task at hand.

  Interrupting Michael’s thoughts, Paul announced, “We’re cleared by control. We’re going in.” He didn’t use the intraship frequency, merely speaking loudly enough to be heard over the mechanical noise. There was a chance, James Darkwood had pointed out, that the Nazis might be able to monitor intraship frequencies with long-range electronic surveillance devices.

  Ahead of them, Michael Rourke saw a granite doorway sliding away and a gleaming, red-lit hole appeared within the face of the mountain before them. This was it, and his father’s life depended upon the outcome. And, perhaps also his mother’s sanity. If the woman purporting to be Sarah Rourke really was Sarah Rourke and not her clone, the only person who would have a prayer of convincing her that the memories she recalled so vividly were implanted rather than real would be his father. And the chance for success was slight.