- 17 -
The dance washed over Banks in a wave of blackness and void, starless and bible-black at first, then slowly taking form as they drifted with the beat. Part of him was aware that he still stood inside a pentacle, on the floor of a golden saucer, hovering now above the broken fragments of a shattered dome.
But that part was insignificant compared to the vastness of the void, and the call of the dance. Banks wanted to fall into it, to let it take him off and into the deep dark, where there was nothing but the dance, and peace, forever.
I want this.
And with it came realization.
This is what I want. It’s what I have always wanted, in my heart. The fucker is still inside my head. And it wants something else.
He tasted salt water at his lips, and remembered how Carnacki had stood, alone in the dark, remembered where Churchill had found his ‘demon.’ He had a final epiphany.
“Wiggins,” he shouted into the dark. “Go left. Ten feet then head for the door.”
“Then what, Cap?” the private’s voice came from everywhere and nowhere, a boom like the voice of God in the dark.
“Then jump. Jump if you want to live.”
He felt the assisted boost of Wiggins’ thought that, along with his own, moved the saucer slightly to one side, away from the shattered roof of the dome.
“Jump, Private, that’s a fucking order,” Banks shouted, and, judging to luck, left the pentacle at a straight run, heading for what he hoped was the doorway.
*
He met Wiggins just as his vision cleared. They almost wedged each other into the doorway. The second it took them to disentangle themselves was almost the end of them both; the saucer started to accelerate, heading toward the sea.
Banks didn’t hesitate. He threw Wiggins out the open doorway, then jumped through after him.
The fall seemed to take forever.
- 18 -
He hit soft snow over hard ice, landing on his back, and was able to turn just in time to see the saucer hit the surface of the sea far out in the bay. It skipped like a flat stone, twice, before breaking apart with a screech of tearing metal that echoed around the cliffs.
At the last, as it sank a black shadow, wings unfurled, spread out across the surface, then slowly sank away. A fresh squall of wind and snow came in, passed over and when it cleared, there was nothing to see but the sea itself. The last thing to go was the far-off sound, monks chanting, not in the wind as Banks had thought, but from somewhere deep – deep, dark, and dancing in the abyssal swell, with the taste of salt water at their lips.
*
He was trying to pull Wiggins out of a snowdrift when the three remaining members of his squad came up the slope at a run. Wiggins’ eyes were fluttering – he had taken a blow to the head and wasn’t fully conscious, but there didn’t appear to be any broken bones.
Hynd reached them first.
“I don’t know what you did, Cap, but it fucking worked. There’s nothing left but dirty freezing water down there.”
Banks heard a new noise. He looked out over the sea again. The icebreaker was coming around the farthest point on the right side of the bay, and the distant whop of the heavy engines of a dinghy in the water echoed all around the cliffs.
“I sent the fucker where it wanted to go all along, ever since it was trapped on that Jerry sub all those years ago.”
“And where was that, Cap?”
“Home. I sent it home.”
*
They were all on the quay waiting by the time the dinghy came alongside. Wiggins, still semi-conscious, hung held upright between Hynd and McCally, and they moved quickly to get him into the dinghy as soon as it reached the dock. A bespectacled, bearded man that Banks took for the expert got out of the dinghy, took one look up at the shattered dome, and looked back at Banks in disgust.
“You call this sanitizing?”
“You’re fucking welcome,” Banks replied.
“That’s what the sarge’s wife says too,” Wiggins replied.
THE END
Read on for a free sample of Alt- Reich
Chapter One
Massachusetts, U.S.A.
2017
There’s a point in a man’s life - a woman’s, too - when they realise they’re going to die. Not a distant possibility, but a harsh reality that’s utterly inescapable. It doesn’t matter what you do, you are going to die.
Henry Brandon reached that point in his doctor’s office at three fifteen in the afternoon, Middlesex County, MA, as he stared at kid’s drawings on a wall cupboard in slanting autumn light. He wasn’t really listening to the doctor. He got the gist. He wasn’t stupid. Overweight, nudging fifty, unfit and unlikely to get any fitter...all of those. But not stupid.
He was on his way to heart attack county.
At forty-nine years old, it was around a decade after life became a temporary thing, but it was only then, in that crisp, clean room that Henry Brandon truly understood just how finite life was.
He stared at the drawings on the cupboard, didn’t listen, and thought about cholesterol and globules and wobbling things which shouldn’t rightly wobble.
There were three pictures, drawn on A4 paper. Must’ve been drawn by the doctor’s kids, he figured, because ordinary people didn’t keep stranger’s kid’s drawings in their office.
Below the drawings was a picture of the doctor and his family, probably, on a trip involving bikes and maybe a picnic. Fruit – strawberries, kiwis, dragon fruit. Weird things healthy people ate and doctors could afford.
Henry (never Hank, always Henry) had a fair pot belly, and scrawny arms and legs. He owed a nearly-dead flatbed truck, didn’t have a job any longer, used to have a wife who he’d managed to lose somewhere along the way, too. Three kids had all left home, the youngest twenty-five years old. She’d sent him a Christmas card, at least.
This year? Last year?
Henry couldn’t really remember, and it didn’t matter all that much. Pain and hurt are just as temporary as life.
What did he have left? Disabled, walking with two sticks because of a back that’d ache from now until he died.
“Cholesterol’s more than dangerously high, Henry. Anything up over 200 is not cool. You’re nudging 300.”
“What are you saying, doc? I’m done?”
“No, Hank. I’m saying you could be. Honestly? You will be...if you don’t do something. Eat a healthier diet. Move around more. Join a gym.”
“Gym?” Henry laughed.
He fell quiet for a moment and the doctor didn’t say anything, but waited while Henry stared back at the pictures on the wall. Happiness drawn in coloured pencils by the kids of the healthy, wealthy man who rode a bike worth more than Henry’s truck.
“I can’t move around much, doc. My truck’s just about closer to dying than me. I hope. Broke back, broke bank. Most expensive thing I got is my PC and most of that I jury-rigged with bits here, bits there. I got it so I didn’t have to go to the grocers, and by now I’m not so sure any of it’s what I bought in the first place. When I’m bored, or when the pain’s so bad I can’t move, I play. I get the games from the thrift store. TV got took last year. They didn’t want the damn truck. Believe that? Didn’t want the truck. I hid the PC in the shed with the pickles and the lawn mower. I’ve got Internet, but no cable, no satellite. I wash in cold water.”
The doctor, a pretty nice man, all in all, just listened. It didn’t really matter if Henry talked for another hour. He was a rare doctor. One who thought treating a patient wasn’t just about the ailment, but about the patient.
Henry wasn’t a proud man, either. He didn’t care if the doctor heard all about the state of his world. He didn’t care about an awful lot, right then, and if he was honest, it’d been a long time since he’d cared much about much.
“Fair enough, but you don’t need a gym, Henry. A couple of cans for weights. The floor, even. A pair of shoes. Go for a walk...” the doctor thought better of that,
‘well, move a couple of cans of peaches around. Eat a little less if you can’t afford to eat better. The money you save, spend on something else. Hell, get one of those VR headsets. Wave your arms around on the couch if you have to. Eat less, move more. It’s no more complicated than that, and doesn’t have to cost anything. In fact, it’ll cost you less. You’re not hugely overweight – it’s your diet which is the problem. Henry, I’ve been your doctor for a long time. All of this is optional, of course. I can give you something to lower the cholesterol, sure...but without making some changes?” The doctor shrugged, and held out his palms. Like, what are you going to do?
“I get it, doctor. I do.”
“A man’s life isn’t mine to change. But advice, Henry? You’re getting chest pains. Your weight’s making your back worse. You’re not moving and not working and I’m concerned about your mood. Choice is this, Henry – change something, or...”
Henry gave the man credit for not giving him a sympathetic smile along with the pep talk.
“OK.”
Henry stood.
“Think about it?”
“Already did,” said Henry, and shook the doctor’s hand.
“You like games, right?”
“Always,” said Henry, smiling. Wives, kids, dogs...they came and went. If he still had a PC, he had...escape.
“There are no reloads,” said the doctor. “Right?”
“Truth,” said Henry, and nodded his thanks as he closed the door behind him.
Chapter Two
Galway, Ireland
1970
Field Marshall Hunter sat with a heavy sigh at his desk. A green leather blotter covered most of the writing surface, the rest built of a dark, reddish wood. The whole thing was probably heavy enough to knock down a wall. A large drawer on the right held Scotch - Lagavulin – and two crystal glasses from Waterford. Good crystal wouldn’t be coming out of Waterford any longer. This was Eire – all that was left of it. Here, just south from Galway on the west coast, was the last Allied base left on the isle.
German boats filled the bay, and the Nazis owned this last European bastion against the insatiable Kaiserreich from Cork to Belfast, and from Dublin all the way to Hunter’s command, here, where a man could imagine if he squinted and strained his eyes as the sun set, he might see the Americas out over the ocean.
This is where Europe ends.
It was true...
This is not where we lose, though.
...and that was just as true.
He vowed to remember that as he met his very own bullet.
Hunter pulled the cork and filled his glass to the brim, his hand shaking as he did so. The scotch overflowed and spilled across the desk. He filled the second glass, too. Meeting your death, it seemed like the right thing to do – to offer your killer a drink. Killing a man while you look him in the eye wasn’t easy. It shouldn’t be.
Hunter waited, looking between his last drink and the door.
A gunshot rang out down the hall, then, a barrage.
Hunter prided himself on a good ear. MP 34. Manufactured by the Waffenfabrik Steyr. There were newer, better weapons out there, but like his American cousins were so fond of saying - why change it if it ain’t broke?
“Hmm...Something like that.”
The man who came to end the Field Marshall’s career, and life, smashed the door open with the heel of a black boot. The door wasn’t even locked.
How very uncouth.
But even when faced with rudeness, a gentleman should always remain a gentleman.
“Drink?” said Hunter, indicating the Scotch across from him on the desk.
“The plans,” said the man. His accent wasn’t German, or Austrian. Not even something Hunter could place as an Axis tone.
“I’m surprised. I thought you’d be more...German.”
French? Swiss? Hunter’s ear was great with guns, not so good with accents, but he placed it, finally, by ticking through some kind of library of warped vinyl in his mind.
“A mercenary? Good heavens,” said Hunter. “Afrikaner? That’s a turn up for the old books, isn’t it?”
The man, broad in the shoulder, but not heavy, was blonde with pale skin and deep set eyes. His eyes were placid. Hunter understood something as the Afrikaner shook his head – this man didn’t need a stiff drink to take a life.
“The plans, please, Field Marshall. Let’s not drag this out.”
“I always thought it would take a certain kind of class to share a drink with one’s killer. I must say, I’m having second thoughts.”
“We can get this done with no unnecessary mess.”
“Doesn’t matter at all,” said Hunter, and took a healthy dose of Lagavulin to wash the taste of the man in the doorway from his mouth. “The plans are long gone. Your arrival isn’t a surprise, man. Nazi boots and tanks stomping across the continent for thirty years? We did notice, you know.”
“And you won’t tell, will you?” said the man, his warm submachine gun pointing without so much as a tremor at Hunter’s chest.
“Under duress? Of course I would. But you believe me, don’t you? Because if I did know, or if the plans were sitting here in my drawer, I wouldn’t be sitting drinking Scotch, waiting for you to bloody well get on with it, would I?”
“Very reasonable. Very...British.”
Hunter took that as a compliment, whether intended or not.
“And Herr Professor Sauer whereabouts, Field Marshall? Same reply, I imagine?”
“But of course. My mercenary friend, this war won’t be won today. Maybe tomorrow it’ll be your turn to lose. You won Europe, you won Asia. But you haven’t won the world. You haven’t won if it’s not over, have you? How do you like those apples, eh?”
Hunter smiled and finished his drink. He didn’t lie. He really didn’t know where the plans, or Sauer, had gone. But then the Professor’s genius wasn’t a matter of where, but when.
“Shall we?” said Hunter.
The mercenary nodded.
“I get paid either way.”
With a squeeze of his calloused trigger-finger the mercenary blew Field Marshall Hunter away.
Alt-Reich is available from Amazon here!
Operation Antarctica Page 13
