Berlin, 3:00 p.m. on April 30, 1945
The Red Army’s artillery shells whistled through smoke-filled sky and exploded around the shrapnel-scarred Reichstag building. The stench of cordite and death clogged the air. Colonel Otto Van Ness crouched by the side of the Führerbunker’s emergency exit in the chancellery garden, Luger pistol in hand, and peered at the shattered remains of his beautiful city.
The dream was over.
Otto removed his black peaked cap and wiped the sweat from his brow. He had risen from the bunker to witness the final twitches of the Third Reich’s corpse. He wanted it seared into his mind so he’d never forget how it all ended.
Some brave souls still fought on at the central zone’s defensive ring.
That was suicide.
Reports inside the bunker had stated Soviet troops were already fanning through Berlin’s streets in overwhelming numbers. The increasingly loud crackle of gunfire confirmed they’d be here in minutes—if that—ready to capture the Führer and subject him to a public show trial and execution.
One way or another, that wasn’t happening.
It was decision time.
Otto blanked out the sounds of his city in its death throes and focused on the Führer’s survival. Everyone talked about Göring, Himmler, and Goebbels, but Van Ness—perhaps because of his anonymity—was truly Hitler’s right-hand man. The voice from the shadows whispering advice to the Führer. It was Van Ness’ job to anticipate all possibilities and plan for the worst.
Which was exactly what this moment was.
And Van Ness was prepared. His escape plan centered around the Führerbunker, the deepest human-made subterranean complex in history. So deep, in fact, that his latest excavation had exposed a massive cavern, containing the dusty black claw of a prehistoric predator—perhaps from a mighty dinosaur that had once ruled the plains of Europe. It was an exciting find, but even more exciting was knowing those caves could lead Herr Hitler safely out of the city.
Otto had ordered workers to build a false wall to conceal the cavern and construct a set of stairs leading to the antechamber in the Führer’s bunker accommodations. Nobody beyond his closest team members knew it even existed . . . and he’d had most of those men sent to fight off the Russians in the streets of Berlin.
Suicide, he thought with a grim smile.
A shell burst to his right, close to the public parkland of the Tiergarten.
A blood-curdling scream rose above the cacophony of explosions and gunfire. Otto scanned the rubble-strewn road for the injured soldier. Something about a single person suffering cut through him deeper than the collective noise of total war. It was as if his cruelty could be tempered by individual pleas.
He hated the feeling of weakness.
A cool spring breeze cleared the acrid smoke.
Three members of the Hitler Youth lay dead, their bodies spread behind a howitzer in grisly twisted shapes. The sole survivor of the gun crew had lost a leg. Tears streamed down his blackened face and he reached out a quivering hand. The boy tried to raise himself. He coughed out a spray of blood.
Part of war is playing God with people’s lives, for better or for worse.
He hated this intimate reminder of the Third Reich’s failings. With a sneer, Otto aimed his gun and fired.
The boy’s brains spattered the howitzer’s barrel and he slumped against its wheel. The Fatherland had lost another son, added to the millions who had already sacrificed themselves in a noble yet failed cause.
Another explosion ripped through the air.
Closer.
Small fragments of debris rained down on him. The Russians were finding their range, and this death by a thousand cuts would soon be over.
Otto had seen enough. He needed to get the Führer out.
He also wanted to live.
Hitler sealed off in the bunker was like keeping a wasp in a jar. His anger would only increase with every piece of bad news, pushing him toward . . .
“No,” he growled.
Not suicide.
They had to get away and regroup. Argentina perhaps, or Chile.
Otto scrambled to his feet, dusted down his uniform, holstered his Luger, and headed through the entrance of the Führerbunker. This place was supposed to be his crowning glory, a haven for the upper echelons of the regime. Now they were trapped like rats in the bilge of a once great ship. His jackboots pounded the steps as he descended toward the main complex.
The nervous, sweat-stained faces of the soldiers told him they had come to the same grim conclusion: Berlin had finally fallen. From here, it was every man for himself, though no self-respecting German would disobey orders and flee. That was for the French and the Italians.
“Close the bulkhead doors,” Otto ordered.
An explosion boomed overhead, causing the lights to flicker. A few of the soldiers ducked and glanced toward the ceiling.
Otto shoved a junior officer and bellowed in his face. “Nothing is getting through four meters of concrete, you fool. Run to the upper bunker and order them to close the doors!”
Another set of stairs led deeper down. Otto strode along the corridor, past rooms on either side containing generators, telephone switchboards, and Eva Braun’s private quarters.
None of the senior officers met his glare while he advanced. The whole place stunk of despair. Their faces made it clear that they knew this place was nothing more than a mortuary waiting for its inhabitants to die. He shook his head as he passed the empty map room and reached the door leading to the Führer’s accommodations.
Hitler’s personal adjutant, Major Günsche, and his private valet, Lieutenant Colonel Linge, blocked his path.
“Out of my way,” Otto snapped.
Linge bowed his head. “It’s over.”
“What?”
“The Führer is about to pass from this life to the next.”
“You fools—get out of my way!”
Otto attempted to squeeze between them.
Günsche threw a stiff arm across his chest. “I cannot allow you to disturb his final moments. The Führer gave the order for no one to enter.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Yes, that’s a fact.”
Otto grabbed Günsche by the lapels and thrust his forehead toward the younger man’s nose. It connected with a satisfying thud.
Günsche slumped in his grip. Otto threw the moaning idiot against the wall, even as he took the man’s Luger from its holster. He turned toward Linge and raised the gun at the remaining gutless obstacle in his path.
“Nein—” Linge shouted.
The bullet tore through the valet’s throat. The officer crumbled to the ground.
He spun and shot Günsche in the head. Then he dropped the gun on the floor, slipped through the door, and locked it behind him.
The silence in the empty living room concerned him. Nobody sat in the luxurious chairs, and the painting of Frederick the Great had been ripped off the wall and stomped upon. However, the bookcase he had used to conceal the secret hatch remained in place.
Otto tentatively moved toward the study, fearing the worst. He pushed the door and it creaked open.
The scent of bitter almonds wafted out.
Cyanide.
Eva Braun lay contorted on the near end of the couch, mouth wide open and dead eyes staring at the ceiling.
The door opened wider, and relief washed over him.
Hitler sat hunched on the far end of the couch, still in uniform, his greasy dark hair slapped against his forehead, and he clutched a gold-plated pistol in his shaking hand. He raised his bloodshot eyes toward the doorway.
Otto stepped toward him. “My F—”
“Get out, Van Ness.”
“Sir, I’ve got a plan to save you.”
“You imbecile!” Hitler screamed. “Can’t you see it’s over?!”
Hitler glanced at Eva, then down at his pistol. Otto hated seeing the once proud man look defeated, on the brink of taking his own life.
It couldn’t end like this.
History would judge Hitler a coward. And a man of his vision and strength . . .
No. I won’t let it end like this. There’s still so much to do.
“It’s not over yet. My Führer, below this bunker—right below our feet—is a cavern that extends under all of Berlin. There’s a secret entrance next door to a room of supplies, and a false wall where we can begin our escape.”
“And then what? Hide underground like a cockroach? No, I will not.”
“The caverns go deep and far. Kilometers. We’ll find a way out once we clear Berlin.”
Hitler’s icy stare made Van Ness freeze. It had made many men freeze and often signaled their final moment. “Don’t you see it’s over?” he repeated. “We’ve been defeated.”
“My Führer. As long as you’re alive, as long as I am by your side, the Third Reich—and your vision for the new world order—has not been defeated.”
Hitler rotated the pistol in his hand. He was on the edge, that much was clear.
“My Führer . . . do not allow your dream to die. Not here, not in this place. The Third Reich will rise again, rise from that cavern below, rise for future generations of our children and our children’s children.”
Hitler slowly lowered the pistol just as another explosion rocked the bunker.
“We need to act fast,” Otto said. “Follow me.”
He strode back into the living room and thankfully the Führer’s footsteps followed. He thrust his shoulder against the bookcase. It scraped to the left, revealing a circular steel hatch. Once he had snapped open the fastening mechanism, he unlocked the door to the quarters and found a group of four soldiers.
“The Führer is leaving,” Otto stated matter-of-factly. “The four of you are with us. Let’s go.”
They didn’t even glance at the bodies on the floor and obeyed his command without question. As they stepped inside, they saw Hitler and executed perfect salutes.
Only the most loyal were allowed to serve in the Führerbunker.
Van Ness hauled open the hatch, grabbed a lantern from a ledge, fired it up, and climbed through the circular gap into the narrow shaft. The lantern’s glow brightened the carved rock walls on all sides. Otto descended, treading carefully. The wooden steps creaked beneath his boots.
Hitler followed immediately behind. As they neared the bottom of the fifty-foot stairwell, the last soldier slammed the hatch shut, cutting out the artificial light. From here, they were on their own.
Otto entered the tennis court–sized chamber and swept his lantern from left to right, bathing the walls in a warm orange hue. He breathed a sigh of relief. The place was exactly how he had left it. Boxes of dried food. A stack of twenty-liter containers holding water and fuel. Rifles. Grenades. Fake papers. Flashlights. Everything they required for this eventuality.
The rest of the group entered the chamber.
“There’s no time to waste,” Otto said. “Grab an entrenching tool. We need to break through the far wall into the cavern below.”
They grabbed six collapsible spades and jogged to the far end of the chamber. One of the soldiers raised a spade over his head, preparing to strike. But instead, an ominous thud came from behind the wall.
The plaster fractured.
Hitler recoiled to the middle of the chamber, and the guards quickly dropped their tools and readied their weapons.
Something crashed against the opposite side of the wall again. This time, much harder. Chunks of plaster broke free and skidded across the ground.
“What the hell?” Otto said.
“Is this a trap, Van Ness?” Hitler asked through clenched teeth. “You traitor!”
Two soldiers turned to Van Ness and aimed their rifles toward him, while the other two covered the wall.
In his fear, he was still proud of how perfect these warriors of the Fatherland were.
But then another crash echoed around the chamber, and all the attention was back on the wall. Otto placed the lantern on the supply boxes. He drew his Luger and took up a firing position behind the steel containers. His heart hammered against his chest while he waited for the inevitable attack.
Perhaps the Russians found the cavern and are attacking from the other side. Yet, how could they have found it so quickly?
It made no sense.
The chamber shuddered. A six-foot section of the wall collapsed inward. Otto aimed at the dark gap, ready to cut down the first Red Army soldier.
A moment of silence followed.
He tensed. Gunfire would soon swamp the chamber.
But still no weapons discharged. No grenades rolled in. No blasts from a flamethrower turned the room into a broiler. Instead, a gentle, acrid breeze blew through the gap.
What the hell is happening?
A piercing shriek filled the air, like nothing he had ever heard before. The ungodly sound sent a shiver down Otto’s spine, and he was about to cover his ears when he bolted upright at what appeared before him.
A massive figure burst into the chamber, bigger than any man he knew. A giant. He tried to track it in his sights, but it raced across the ground at an unbelievable speed and possessed a darkness that the oil lantern couldn’t possibly penetrate.
Unlike Van Ness, the soldiers were elite and didn’t choke under pressure. They fired in unison as the figure closed in.
Their muzzle flashes briefly lit the room.
Otto, if possible, felt even more frozen at the sight.
A black creature, with a long, serrated tail and talons on the ends of its four arms, towered over the soldiers. The shots to its body had little effect. It roared at them, exposing three rows of razor-sharp teeth, and lifted its tail to strike.
A creature was all Otto could think about. There was no other word for it, just as there was no thought that could move him to action. His mind just kept screaming creature creaturecreature, and the horror of it glued him to the spot like nothing ever before.
He had shivered while under fire in a crumbling house in Stalingrad. He had toured Auschwitz. He had seen the gas trucks. He had even survived the trenches of the Great War.
Nothing compared to this.
Hitler screamed, and he stumbled backward into boxes of rations.
The creature’s tail whipped through the air and carved through the four soldiers like they weren’t even there, slicing their torsos clean in two. Body parts collapsed in a soggy heap. Blood spattered the stone in all directions.
Otto fired at the creature’s scaly back.
Nothing.
He fired again.
No effect.
It was futile. Terrifying. Incomprehensible.
The creature leaped forward and grabbed Hitler’s head. Its talons sunk into his face as it lifted him off the ground in an instant.
The Führer screamed again. He looked so small in comparison to this predator of the deep. Insignificant, even, as blood was squeezed from his jaw.
Otto repeatedly fired until the Luger’s magazine ran dry.
The bullets continued to have no effect.
The creature stood there, crushing Hitler’s head, harder and harder. One of his eyes popped out of its socket and hung against his cheek. Blood poured from his face and stained the ground beneath his dangling boots. His legs twitched in the air.
“Van Ness!” Hitler cried out, his voice raspy.
The creature leaned closer to the Führer’s face and perfectly mimicked the gravelly sound of Hitler’s voice.
“Van Ness!”
A moment later, Hitler’s skull collapsed under the pressure. The last words the most powerful man in the world had screamed were Otto’s name.
They were also very likely the last words Van Ness would ever hear.
Blood sprayed the ceiling. It dripped from the creature’s claws. The whole place now looked like a gruesome slaughterhouse.
The creature threw Hitler’s limp body against the carved rock wall, then turned toward the supply boxes. Otto had imagined his death a thousand times. On the end of a rope. At the hands of a firing squad. In a burning building. Trapped in a tank.
Never like this.
He backed against the wall and reached into his holster for a fresh magazine.
But something stopped the creature from advancing. It prowled in the shadows, staying out of his lantern’s glare. Snarling. Letting out guttural wheezes. Staring at him through its lifeless eyes, which were more intimidating than any Allied weapon.
Another creature thrust itself through the gap in the wall, and, like the other, it wouldn’t come near him . . .
No, not me. The light.
Otto grabbed a flashlight from a supply box, switched it on, and focused the powerful beam on the creatures.
Both roared—in pain?—before racing back into the dark cavern. Van Ness let out a shuddering breath, his legs buckled in shock, and his back slid down the cool stone wall. They would surely come for him again.
The flashlight could only last so long.
Minutes ticked by and the creatures did not return. But the sound of hundreds—thousands—of distant shrieks from the cavern below betrayed their continued presence.
An hour passed.
Then two.
He had nowhere to go. Escaping through the cavern below wasn’t an option. Going back into the bunker meant certain death as well.
While he waited for events to dictate his destiny, a realization struck him: the world suddenly faced an enemy even more sinister than the Russians. And even as the thought frightened him, his ever-scheming mind led him to ask himself:
How can I turn these creatures to my advantage . . . if I survive?
Otto believed wholeheartedly in the Nazi vision of a homogeneous society, despite the world not yet being ready to take this next evolutionary step. The impure had fought against them, and it seemed—for now—they had halted the march of progress. But here, in this cavern, he had witnessed a new, powerful force. And if he could control that force . . .
This discovery changed everything.
And only he knew about it.
He started looking around for a new way out, plans already forming in his brilliant, devious mind.
I will find an escape. And the Third Reich will rise again.
I will rise again.