by Ahern, Jerry
Croenberg checked the glued-on mustache-it was secure-and replaced the glasses. The glasses, a mild prescription and not just ordinary window glass, gave him a headache, but were necessary. He wore prosthetics of course, as well, to aid in altering his appearance, and these were uncomfortable. It was a long airplane ride from New Moscow in the Ural Mountains to Honolulu, better than an hour. In the days prior to orbital insertion flight, hundreds of years ago, air travel must have been even more maddening because of the protracted times involved.
The prostheses which fattened his cheeks beneath the makeup made the real skin beneath itch; that and the prosthesis under his shirt and trousers, covering his abdomen, which further enhanced the image of being potbellied made him perspire.
But prosthetic fingerprints alone would not have been enough to get him through United States customs passing himself off as Boris Luvov, agricultural researcher from Russia. The faces of most major
figures in the SS were well-known, that of SS Gruppenfiihrer Ernst Croenberg particularly so. And everywhere in the nations of the Trans-Global Alliance, security personnel would be watching for him and the others of the kameraden, ready to arrest or kill on sight.
Croenberg left the restroom, returned to his seat and buckled in. The sky was clear and all he could see below the aircraft as it descended was the blue ofthe sky and the water. Soon, the islands themselves would be visible, the foam-crested surf lapping against perfect white sandy beaches.
Paradise-to some, but only for a little while longer.
“What can I get you?”
“Nothing.” He would get what he wanted himself, and that was to make this Inspector Tim Shaw pay dearly.
Wilhem Doring watched the television, sipped at the coffee from the cup Marie had given him.
The camera panned-in what seemed an almost sexual fascination with the wreckage of the second van-over the body-bagged men who had been its occupants. Then there was a cut, and a heavyset but fit-looking man in his fifties became the focus of attention. He wore a narrow-brimmed, high-crowned hat, the front of the brim turned down and the hat low over his eyes.
In the eyes, there was a look Doring had seen often, the look of the wolf.
This man was identified as Inspector Tim Shaw, head of the Honolulu Tac Team, who singlehandedly shot it out with the terrorists who attacked Sebastian’s Reef Country Day School. This one man had killed all the occupants of the van except one, whom he “subdued.”
This one-Doring bet that it was Fletcher, who had seemed the least dependable of the volunteers from the Islands - was expected to provide the police with valuable information concerning the occupants of the second van, who escaped after taking the life of Patrolman Linda Wallace.
They showed a picture of the woman, and Doring was frankly amazed that any woman, particularly one from an inferior race, could have driven as well as she did. Although she looked dark-skinned, she was probably quite mongrelized, Doring guessed, and that accounted for her skillfulness and daring.
“Can I get you more coffee, Willy?”
“No,” he replied.
19
The man whom James Darkwood had replaced at Plant 234— Wilbur Nash-was a quality control inspector, which made it all the easier for Darkwood to move about the plant without attracting undue attention. A quality control inspector went about inspecting for quality, and that meant looking over shoulders. There were, however, places within the plant that Nash, whom Darkwood impersonated, was not authorized to enter. Only the highest grades of security clearance were given admission there, and then only as required.
These were the places to which James Darkwood most earnesdy required access.
These were the chemical mixing rooms.
It was further to Darkwood’s advantage that he only needed to rely on the efficacy of the makeup with which he’d disguised his appearance up to a certain point, the makeup enabling him to make a near-perfect match to Wilbur Nash for the initial entry to the plant. After passing through a robing station barely fifty feet inside the plant entrance, all personnel here wore protective clothing which covered them from head to toe, this over their regular outer garments.
The tricky part, if James Darkwood survived that long, would be leaving the plant, because although the original facial similarity to Wilbur Nash was strong, they were nothing alike in body shape and Darkwood was taller. Again, he would be relying on the average person’s lack of recognition of detail. If he was expected to be Wilbur Nash, people would see him as Wilbur Nash, unless something occurred to cause them to view him differently.
If someone who knew Nash intimately saw James Darkwood, the game would be up.
But Darkwood’s immediate concern occupied most of his thoughts for now, and that was how to gain access to the chemical mixing rooms without raising some sort of alarm.
And, try as he might, he could think of no way of doing that. But access had to be gained. An entire Allied fighter group stood by, waiting for the data Darkwood could only learn by entering one of the mixing rooms. If biological agents were being produced there to be borne in chemical weapons, then Plant 234 had to be bombed out of existence. But, if they were not, the potential cost to the fighter group from Eden City’s state-of-the-art antiaircraft defenses could not be justified.
For more than a year, there had been cryptic suggestions in intelligence data that Eden scientists had discovered a way of combining chemical and biological warfare methodology in a way never before attempted. Bio warfare, historically, was inefficient in the airborne context, with the potential for either covering vast and unpredictable expanses on errant winds or settling almost immediately to the ground. Furthermore, in the modern era, it was fast and relatively easy to produce massive quantities of inoculant against a specific disease or combination of diseases.
The frightening potential, if Eden possessed the rumored technology, was that chemical carriers would support the biological agent, releasing it in timed doses; and, over this period of time, the chemical carrier would act upon the biological agent, mutating it in unpredictable variations which could not be inoculated against. Some of the chemical carriers were lighter than air, hence would remain airborne for a considerably longer period of time, while some were comprised of heavier elements and would immediately fall to earth, hence again the unpredictability.
Such a bio warfare attack could not effectively be fought, so it had to be countered before it was launched.
Yet the compound in which Plant 234 was set, was placed in the center of one of Eden City’s poorest and most populated areas. Precision hits would be required to prevent an attack on the plant from turning into a bloodbath of the innocent.
Throughout the first half of Wilbur Nash’s shift, James Darkwood went about the mechanics of Nash’s job, at the same time
trying to discern what bits and snatches of useful intelligence data he could, but his thoughts were chiefly focused on what he should do. By die time the lunch break came, he had made up his mind.
20
Almost everyone at the airport was armed, it seemed, the private citizens with handguns discreetly holstered at their sides or poorly disguised beneath shirts left out of the trousers, the security personnel with energy rifles slung under their arms and Lancer 9mm case-less pistols or the somewhat more cumbersome energy pistols in security holsters at their waists.
Croenberg despised the American society which flowed around him; when citizens were armed, they were impossible to control. Superior military force could subdue them in large numbers, of course-guns were no match for tanks and missiles and gunships-but as long as there were arms there would be underground resistance, attacking from within. All of the successful dictatorships of history had begun by disarming the citizenry; such action was an indisputable prerequisite to subjugation.
Croenberg walked on, eager to get away from the terminal, to make his rendezvous.
Over the last forty-eight hours, his own handpicked team of SS personnel had i
nfiltrated Hawaii singly or in pairs on a succession of commercial flights originating in Europe, twenty-four men in all. And the operation was totally sterile, unknown to the Wilhelm Doring unit which was doubdess responsible for the massacre at the school, about which he’d heard while watching televised newsbroad-casts from Hawaii; it was also independent of the larger, less specialized commando teams which had already penetrated or soon would penetrate the islands.
He called this specialized unit of twenty-four the Sigma Group.
The task for which he had quiedy and nastily assembled them was
vital to the success of National Socialism: “rescue” Martin Zimmer from Pearl Harbor Naval Base, then very qriedy kill him …
Emma Shaw locked the door as soon as she was inside. She always locked her door before bed, of course, whenever she stayed at her little house; but, frequentiy, the door was unlocked throughout the day and well into the night. She had never thought about it before.
She kept her purse with her instead of setting it down as she went about her house from room to room, making certain that no one lurked in a closet, or for that matter even hid under her bed.
By the time Emma Shaw was through and satisfied that her home was unoccupied except for herself, she felt at once satisfied and silly. Still carrying her purse with the gun in it slung from her shoulder, she went to the bedroom closet and got down the box in which she kept what she sought.
She raised the lid and looked inside, There were several objects wrapped in rags. She unwrapped the largest of them. Beneath the wrappings was a .45 automatic, a stainless steel Colt identical to the one her father carried, given to her, in fact, by her father.
Wrapped in a second bundle were three spare magazines. Still a third bundle contained three more. There were two plastic boxes of ammunition, containing one hundred rounds each.
The gun would need cleaning, lubrication. She hadn’t fired it, even touched it in more than a year. She could take it out back of the house and put a few rounds through it just to make certain she could still hit what she aimed at with the pistol.
With his talk of Nazi revenge, John Rourke had scared her silly.
21
There was the possibility he might be missed at lunch, that Wilbur Nash might habitually eat with a circle of friends, albeit Plant234 did not seem much like a friendly place. On the other hand, in a short while, all ordinaryplant routine would be disrupted: Then it wouldn’t matter.
The chemical mixing rooms were at the center of the Plant structure, the building itself taking up two entire square blocks of Eden City, the roadway going around the facility. The building’s shape, when seen in aerial photographs, was that of an impossibly large rectangle, flat-roofed and grey, like a depression in the ground on which the city itself was built, encircled on all sides by higher structures. To the north, those were the residential apartments where the higher-level employees such as Wilbur Nash lived; to the south those structures were dormitories where the factory labor slept, showered, ate. It could hardly be called living.
To the east were the loading docks and beyond those and a parking lot for trucks and cargo helicopters was the perimeter.
There was a fence nine feet high and surmounted by razor wire. This fence contained the entire facility, which occupied, including Plant 234, four square blocks. And to the west lay the metals shops, the plastics facilities and storage warehouses.
Plant 234, built on one level only, at its highest point was perhaps fourteen feet above the ground. Within the structure there were tunnels rather than corridors, allowing workers and higher-level personnel to move from one area of the plant to another without having the slightest idea what went on around them.
James Darkwood moved through one such tunnel now. There had
been a guard at the end of the tunnel, armed only with an alarm device, weaponless. James Darkwood, without a drug kit by means of whichhecouldhave rendered the man temporarily unconscious, was forced to kill the guard rather than risk having the fellow awaken and alert plant security.
Plant security personnel, dressed in voluminous black coveralls and black hooded facemasks, were indeed armed. Supervisory personnel, as Darkwood pretended to be, wore white, while laborers wore blue. Prisoners were rumored to be used here as test subjects. Darkwood absentiy wondered what color they wore.
Darkwood moved slowly along the tunnel toward Mixing Room Nine, hot, perspiring inside his protective clothing, smelling his own body odor; fear always smelled.
At the midpoint in the tunnel there was a ladder leading upward to a hatch, presumably set into the roof. Darkwood glanced behind him and ahead. There was no one in the tunnel, so he took the gamble. He climbed up the ladder, as carefully as he could, considering the dim ambient lighting, inspecting the hatch for any signs of linkage to an alarm system. As best he could determine, there was nothing.
Looking down first, he fixed his attention on the hatch, starting to wheel open the lock. The hatch, the tunnel itself, all served to remind him of a submarine. He shook off the thoughts, concentrating on his work.
After more than a full minute, he had the hatch unlocked. Once more inspecting both visually and by feel for signs of an alarm system and having the same happily negative results, James Darkwood very gentiy pushed upward on the hatch. It gave without resistance and with very little noise. He let the hatch lower into position.
Then Darkwood started down the ladder.
Back into the tunnel, James Darkwood walked on, toward Mixing Room Nine.
22
The City of Honolulu was like a glittering jewel, new and shining under the afternoon sun. There were private automobiles everywhere and the only personnel in military uniforms seemed obviously off duty. There was the occasional police car, the occasional remote video drone flying over the street to monitor for traffic accidents.
But, there was no security.
“You know,” Croenberg said to the man who drove him, a particularly reliable young Untersturmfuhrer, “considering that the Americans must know something of which Eden is about, I marvel that life merely goes on here.”
The Untersturmfiihrer-his name was Helmut Kraus-wheeled the electric car into a right turn off the boulevard along which they’d driven since leaving the airport and into a street with denser traffic. “Itislikethiseverywhere, Herr Gruppenfiihrer. We will crush them.”
“Yes, my young friend, but first the matter for which we have all come here needs taking care of, does it not? Eden’s leader and our inspiration must be freed from his jailers. Who knows what evil these Americans might plan for young Martin Zimmer at the moment we attack?”
“Yes, Herr Gruppenfiihrer, this is true.”
“You and your fellows have verified the details of the plan?”
“Yes, Herr Gruppenfiihrer. The proper uniforms are secured, the vehicles, all is in readiness. Even as we drive to the temporary headquarters, thejdentity papers are being remanufactured so they will be fresh, not yet reported as stolen. We will strike, Herr Gruppenfiihrer, tonight at the customary dinner hour for personnel of the Pearl Harbor base.”
“It is good,” Croenberg remarked …
Michael Rourke freed his arm almost immediately from the sling he’d had to wear when he left the hospital. The cut was already partially healed and there was very litde soreness. Fortunately, the knife he’d stopped was both clean and very sharp.
Natalia walked silently beside him as they reached the beach. He’d asked her to stop the car, parking along the shoulder so he could get out and stretch his legs. A strong wind blew in from the sea and, despite the heat of the sun, the air temperature seemed quite pleasant and cool. “Were you ever in Hawaii, Natalia?”
“What? Before The Night of The War? No. Never. It is very beautiful.”
“Yes. People used to refer to Hawaii as Paradise-I can see why. Boy, if Adam and Eve got kicked out of a place like this, told they could never return-” He didn’t finish the thought. Instead he took Natalia’s left
hand in his right and they walked across 1he sand. Natalia was barefoot, holding her sandals in her other hand.
“The sun feels good,” Natalia remarked. “I remember going to the Black Sea a lot with my uncle when I was a litde girl. I wish you could have known Uncle Ishmael, Michael. He was so kind and good and strong.”
“From what my father has said about your uncle, I think dad took a liking to him from the first.”
“He was a soldier, you know?” Natalia went on. “And he had his duty as a patriotic Russian, and he did it well. But he never lost sight of his humanity. That came first and he shaped his sense of duty around that.”
“I think he was a pretty good surrogate father, too,” Michael told her, letting go of her hand and putting his arm around her shoulders. Natalia leaned her head against his chest. “You were lucky to have him.”
“Michael?”
“Yes?”
“When this is all over, can we just go somewhere? Anywhere, even one of the out islands, but just the two of us?”
“Sure we can, sure,” Michael said to her, touching his lips to her hair. It was soft, and smelted like fresh flowers. He stopped walking and so did Natalia. He turned her around to face her. He raised her chin and looked her in the eye. “I love you. Want to marry me?”
“Uh-huh,” Natalia whispered, then just leaned her head against his chest again, her arms limp at her sides …
Tour drivin’ gives me the creeps,” Tim Shaw told his son, Ed.
“Why? You taught me how to drive when I was a kid! You always said I was a good driver.”
“No, ifsnotthe way you drive; it’s what happened to the last person who drove me. Pull up over here.”
Shaw’s son, Shaw’s own second-in-command in the Honolulu Tac Team, was the best police officer Tim Shaw had ever worked with. When Ed’s slot came open, Tim Shaw wrestled long and hard with putting him into it, however, because it would look like nepotism. For a while, after Ed was in the job and just getting settled, there had been some talk of that, a father putting his son into a better-paying more responsible position that would eventually lead to the son’s taking over the father’s job when the father someday retired.
