The White Vixen

by David Tindell

  Even if Jürgen had been looking directly at her, his eyes would not have been able to follow the movement of her hand. Still, he had seen something, and was pulling his attention away from Bormann, and something happened, but before he could react he felt a sharp pain in his throat. Crying out, he reflexively squeezed the trigger of his Luger and the gun discharged with a flat crack. The sculpted bull on the mantelpiece exploded.

  Jo was moving before he pulled the trigger. She uncoiled from the chair and launched herself at the guard. She lashed out with her right foot in a knife kick, catching him on the wrist of his gun hand, smashing the delicate bones and sending the gun flying. Landing on her feet, she kept moving, spinning clockwise. Twirling on the ball of her left foot, Jo unleashed a turning side kick with all her force, catching Jürgen in the right ribcage. Her loud kiap yell almost drowned out the sound of ribs cracking and Jürgen’s own shriek of pain. The guard crashed back into the library doors, but they held, and he slumped to the floor.

  The guard was down but not out. He’d keep for a moment. She heard a roaring yell from behind her, and before she could move two brown-jacketed arms gripped her like a vise, pinning her upper arms to her side. “Fritz! Kommen sie hier! Macht schnell!” Bormann screamed. His strength was surprising, and he started to lift her. Jo knew she had to stay on the ground. She sucked in a deep breath and then exhaled sharply and bent forward, thrusting out her elbows to loosen his grip. She pistoned one elbow backward and then the other, connecting with Bormann’s abdomen. Did a rib crack? She heard him grunt and felt his hot breath on her neck. Sliding to the floor through his weakened arms, she pushed him backward with her shoulders, propped herself with her hands, and shot her legs overhead and backward, catching Bormann squarely in his massive chest.

  There were footsteps running down the hallway now, a man shouting. Bormann staggered back to the fireplace, his shoes crunching on the shards of the bull. He steadied himself with one hand by grabbing the mantle and holding on. Jo rolled to her feet and saw Jürgen’s pistol on the floor. She dove for it, and when she rolled to her feet again, the Luger was in her hand and pointed directly at Bormann.

  The Reichsleiter’s knees were buckling, and his face was a dark gray. He gasped for breath, one hand clutching the mantle, the other pounding at his chest, trying to tear open the jacket. His eyes bulged as he looked at her, then at the fallen guard, then at the photo of the soldiers. “My—heart—“ Jo fired once, twice, the rounds catching Bormann square in the chest.

  “Herr Reichsleiter!” Someone was pounding on the doors from the hallway. The door handle moved and one door tried to move inward, but Jürgen was in the way. There were more steps in the hallway, more shouting in German.

  Willy was pacing his bedroom when he heard the muffled sound of what had to be a gunshot, then shouting and a thudding crash. Instinctively he knew that the American was making a break for it. He went to his door, turned the knob—unlocked—and pulled the door open. The man standing guard outside was looking down the hallway toward the library, his face concerned, one hand on the holstered weapon at his hip. Willy slugged him in the stomach with everything he had, doubling the man up. Grabbing the Luger from the holster, Willy cracked the butt of the handle down on the back of the guard’s head and ran for the library.

  Fritz was pounding on the door, his gun in the other hand, yelling for the Reichsleiter. “Get away from the door!” Willy shouted. Fritz turned, brought up the Luger and squeezed off a shot just as Willy fired. He felt a searing pain in his leg as he watched Fritz spin around and fall to the floor, hit in the right shoulder.

  Willy’s leg burned like fire. He looked down and saw a ragged hole and rapidly spreading dark stain on his left thigh. He tried putting some weight on it, gasped from the pain, but concluded the bone wasn’t broken. Lurching against the library door, he pushed it open with difficulty.

  The Reichsleiter was slumping to the floor in front of the hearth, the American crouching a few feet away with a smoking Luger aimed at Bormann, then swinging quickly to take a bead on Willy. “Don’t shoot,” Willy said, panting.

  “Drop the gun,” Jo said.

  “I—I am on your side,” Willy said, tossing his Luger to the floor. “The Reichsleiter…”

  “He was having a heart attack. I helped it along.” Bormann’s chest heaved once, twice, then stilled. His eyes were still bulging open, mouth slack. Willy limped into the room, stepping over a white-faced Jürgen, who was clutching at his throat. Blood was seeping through his fingers, his eyes were rolling back, and then he took one rattling breath and lay motionless. A large pool of blood was underneath him.

  “Gott in Himmel,” Willy breathed. He had never seen a man die before, not even in the Army. He looked back at Jo. The American was carefully reaching down to Bormann’s neck, her other hand pointing the Luger at the Reichsleiter’s forehead. She felt for a pulse.

  “He’s dead,” she said, standing up. A glance at Jürgen told her she’d hit his carotid artery. She’d killed two men in the space of a minute or two. That would be something she’d have to deal with later. “How many more guards are there?”

  “At least three,” Willy said. “Someone will come soon to investigate.”

  She looked at his leg. “You’re hit,” she said. “We’ve got to get that bandaged or you’ll bleed to death.” Willy slumped into a chair, pressing down on the wound. The butler’s face appeared in the open doorway, peering around the closed door, eyes wide. “Are you Armando?” Jo asked in Spanish.

  “Si, señora,” the man said, his voice shaking as he took in the bodies on the floor. His eyes lingered on Bormann.

  “Get a first-aid kit,” Jo ordered. “If any more guards come to the house, tell them nothing’s wrong. Hurry!” The frightened butler disappeared down the hallway, shouting for one of the maids.

  “The guards will come here eventually,” Willy gasped, as Jo looked at the wound.

  “I know, but that’ll buy us some time,” she said. “Do you have a knife?”

  Willy shook his head. Sweat was beading on his forehead. The pain, surprisingly, had quieted down into a dull, persistent throb. “On the bookshelf, over there,” he said, gesturing with his head.

  A ceremonial SS dagger sat inside a case on one of the shelves. Jo pried the case open, unsheathed the weapon and used it to cut away part of Willy’s trouser leg, exposing the wound. She probed the underside of his thigh. “It didn’t go through,” she said. “The bullet’s still inside.”

  Willy nodded. Footsteps clattering in the hallway brought Jo’s weapon up, startling a middle-aged maid as she appeared in the doorway holding a white metal box with a red cross on the lid. “Thank you, señora,” Jo said, putting the Luger aside as she gestured for the maid to come in.

  Jo quickly field-dressed the wound as best as she could. “That’ll keep for a while,” she said, “but we have to get you to a hospital.”

  Willy shook his head. “Too risky,” he said. He had felt himself going into shock, but Jo’s treatment settled him down. “Bormann has men everywhere. We—we have to get out, somehow.”

  “I overheard him talking to someone on the phone, someone named Dieter,” she said. “Would that be your father?”

  “Probably. What did Bormann say?”

  “I only heard the end of it. ‘Code red, zero-two-hundred.’ He said he’d explain it to Dieter when he arrived.”

  Willy’s eyes widened. “My father is on the way here, then,” he said, “to monitor the attack. Bormann must have moved up the launch time.”

  “Moved it up?”

  The Argentine nodded as he struggled to stand. “It was to launch tomorrow night at ten p.m. If he said ‘zero-two-hundred’, that must mean he has moved it up to 0200 hours tomorrow morning.”

  “That explains why he wanted to send me to Buenos Aires a day early,” she said. “What about the ‘code red’?”

  Willy tried putting weight on the wounded leg. It held, but the pain pounded aga
inst him. He had to hold onto the back of the chair. “An alternate launch plan,” he said. “They will move the weapon to a secondary base and the plane will take off from there. Just one aircraft. The rest of the strike force will launch from the original base, as a decoy.”

  Jo looked at the clock on the wall. Nearly nine-thirty, less than seventeen hours before the attack. Somehow she had to get the information to CIA or SIS. She rapidly ran through the few contact procedures she’d been given in the event she’d have to leave Buenos Aires. Jo reached for the telephone but when she dialed O, she got another dial tone. “Only Bormann can make long distance calls from here,” Willy said. “He has a code number that has to be dialed first.”

  “Is there a British consulate in Bariloche? An American consulate?”

  Willy shook his head. “We can take a car across the border to Chile,” he said. “You can contact your people from there.”

  “How far to the border from here?”

  “At least an hour by car, I think, probably closer to two.”

  This time it was Jo who shook her head. “They’ll get us before we can cross. Is your jet still here?”

  “Yes, it is. We can order the pilot to take us anywhere.”

  “Too risky,” she said. “He could fly us right into a trap, or right into the ground.”

  “What, then? I’m certainly no pilot,” Willy said.

  “I am,” Jo said. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Rio Negro province, Argentina

  Monday, April 26th, 1982

  Jo Ann stepped out of the library, sweeping the hallway with the Luger. At the far end a man was walking quickly in her direction. She recognized him as the guard who’d been patrolling the grounds outside her window. “Stop there or I’ll shoot,” she said. The guard, caught by surprise, stopped in mid-stride and held up his hands. “Baumann, tie him up. Use his belt, and make sure to take his gun.” Willy hobbled down the hallway and quickly subdued the grim-faced man, pinning his wrists behind him with his narrow belt. He took the man’s Luger and put it in a pocket of his own jacket.

  “How many more of the Reichsleiter’s men are outside?” Willy asked him.

  “I will tell you nothing.”

  “Sure you will,” Jo said. She aimed the Luger and fired, hitting the floor inches from the man’s shoulder, sending up a spray of splinters. The man yelled in pain as two shards caught him in the side of his face. “Now, answer the man’s question.”

  “Just one more,” the man said, gasping. “He’s outside, at the motor pool. I told him I would come in to investigate the noise.”

  A trembling Armando was at the end of the hallway. “I am sorry, señora, but he insisted on coming—“

  “Never mind,” Jo said. “Go to the back door and call for help. That will bring the other guard.” As they followed the butler, Jo asked Willy, “What about the two men who came here with us?”

  “They are staying in guest quarters near the hangar, at the airstrip.”

  “Can they be trusted?”

  “They have worked for me for years. I’m sure of it.”

  “Well, I’m not,” Jo said with a wary look. “They stay here, along with the pilot and co-pilot.”

  “You can fly the Blitz?”

  “We’re about to find out, aren’t we?”

  The lone remaining guard was suspicious, brushing past Armando with gun drawn, but when he saw Baumann limping toward him and rushed to help, Jo got the drop on him from behind. In a few minutes she was at the wheel of a Mercedes they found in the garage. She slowed down when they were within a hundred meters of the hangar.

  “I don’t suppose this place has an armory of any kind,” Jo said.

  “Why? We are armed. It’s only a few minutes across the border into Chile. I presume that’s where you intend to go.”

  “Actually, no,” Jo said. “We’re heading east, to Buenos Aires, but in case we have to set down elsewhere, we might need to have something a little heavier than these Lugers.”

  “I don’t understand. We can be in Chilean airspace in minutes.”

  She glanced at him, leaving no doubt as to her determination. “I have to warn the British fleet somehow about the air strike. I don’t know what I’ll be dealing with if we go to Chile. If we head east, toward the Atlantic, I can get a message out over the jet’s radio. If you have a problem with that, now’s the time to say so.”

  Baumann swallowed hard. “No. We have to stop the strike.”

  “Good. Now, back to my question.”

  Willy waved toward a side door near the rear of the hangar. “I think there might be something in there that could help us.”

  Jo pulled the Mercedes to a stop near the door, which mercifully proved to be unlocked. Inside, a small room contained a variety of Soviet, European and American-made assault rifles, plus one surprised man, who recognized Baumann. “Herr Oberst, what is going on?” His eyes quickly shifted to the business end of Jo’s pistol.

  “Do not ask questions, Hans,” Willy said. “Keep your hands in the air, please.”

  A minute later, they came out with a pair of M-16s, three clips of ammunition apiece, and a bonus: a pair of Bundeswehr-issue field radios. Jo’s instinct told her to take them along, just in case. They left Hans on the floor of the armory, tied with his belt. It wouldn’t hold him too long, but by then they should be in the air.

  They walked another fifty meters to the side door of the main hangar, Baumann struggling with his throbbing leg. “We should’ve disabled the telephone line at the house,” Jo said, angry at herself.

  “It would make no difference,” Willy told her. “Bormann has a short-wave radio transceiver somewhere in the house. It’s what he would use to communicate in the event the phone lines were down.”

  “He thought of everything, didn’t he?”

  “Let us hope not.”

  They entered a side door unopposed. Inside the large hangar, Jo counted three aircraft, two small prop planes and the larger, sleek white jet. Two mechanics were working on an open side panel.

  “We have to get moving,” Jo said. “The servants will free those guards as soon as they see us take off.”

  “It is best to be assertive, then,” Willy said. He hobbled toward the mechanics, Jo following, her gun hidden behind her. “Say there! Is there something wrong?”

  “No, Herr Oberst,” one of the men said, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. “Just routine maintenance.”

  “She is ready to fly, then?”

  “Of course. We refueled the aircraft after you landed yesterday, per standard procedure.” The man saw Baumann’s bloodied pants leg. “What is going on?”

  “We’re taking the aircraft,” Jo said, pointing the Luger. “Stand aside. One of you, open the hangar door.”

  “What is the meaning of this, Herr Oberst?” the older mechanic said, eyes narrowing.

  “Do as the lady says.”

  The older man backed away, while the younger one scampered toward the hangar door controls. The door began to rumble open. Jo opened the forward passenger door on the port side of the jet and pulled the short stairway into position. She had a decision to make. “Do you still have a weapon?” she asked Willy.

  “Yes.”

  “Keep it trained on these guys. I have to get into the cockpit and prep the aircraft for takeoff. When I yell for you, get aboard and shut the door.” She looked at Baumann, trying to read his eyes. If she brought him inside with her, the mechanics could easily disable the jet. She had to trust him.

  “All right,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling his Luger.

  Jo climbed into the jet and made her way to the cockpit. Everything was where she figured it should be. She thanked the Air Force for making sure she put in her training hours every year to maintain her pilot’s certification. Most of her hours were aboard trainers, but her last trip had been an exhilarating two hours in the cockpit of an F-15 Eagle. The instruments of this Messerschmitt
were in a few different locations, but within a minute she had started the engines spooling up.

  She was going through the final pre-flight checklist when she heard a commotion outside, shouting voices over the whine of the engines, then the crack of a gunshot. Instinctively, Jo released the brakes and advanced the throttle, steering the aircraft toward the open doorway. The outer cabin door was still open, but if Baumann had been taken down, she had to get moving before anybody else got aboard. If she got far enough down the runway, she could unbuckle for a few seconds and close the door before takeoff.

  There was a thump behind her, the sound of the cabin door closing, and she turned in the seat, her Luger ready, to see Baumann staggering into the cockpit. “Are you all right?” Jo asked.

  “The pilot made an appearance,” he said. His face was white and bathed in sweat. “He demanded to know if we had filed a flight plan. I fired a round to let him know we were dispensing with official procedure.”

  “Did you hit him?”

  “No. The Reichsleiter’s hangar ceiling now has a new hole in it.”

  “Buckle your harness,” Jo said, applying more thrust. “This won’t be the smoothest takeoff in the world.”

  Jo found the windsock as they emerged from the hangar. The single runway ran north-south, and she noted the wind was out of the west, but not too stiff. Fortunately, the Blitz was handling like a dream. She would’ve preferred a slight headwind, but this would have to do. “Here we go,” she said, lining up the runway markings and pushing the thruster controls forward. The jet’s twin turbofan engines whined and the aircraft seemed to leap forward. Watching her speed indicator, Jo waited till they’d achieved the minimum and pulled back on the stick. The Blitz nimbly lifted off the pavement. “Retract the landing gear, please,” she told Baumann. “The red handle down there to your left.” Responding to the Argentine’s pull, the gear thumped into their wheel wells, and Jo felt the aircraft gain some trim. She began a slow turn to port as they climbed and used the compass to set a course due east. When the altimeter showed ten thousand feet and climbing, she finally allowed herself to relax a bit. With any luck at all, they could get close enough to transmit a message before the Argentines caught up with them.