13

Meckler Castle Battle

Corporal Ramirez, a member of Val’s SEAL team, lay hidden below a white tarp outside and across from the castle’s runway, overlooking the helicopters and the sentries guarding them. The SEAL team had arrived at the site via a very difficult high-altitude parachute jump that landed the team close to the peak of the mountain. From there they’d scaled down the cliff face and taken cover on the far side of the runway.

“I have two tangos smoking cigarettes 10 meters from the helicopter to the south, and two more by the hangar door,” he said into his neck mike and waited for a reply. Ramirez shifted under the white camouflaged tarp, 50 meters northwest of the castle runway.

“Roger,” Monk replied, the team’s highest-ranking member and the direct link to headquarters.

Ramirez watched as the men by the helicopter began to jerk around like rag dolls, their arms flailing about.

“We have a situation.” Ramirez aimed his sniper rifle sight away from the fallen bodies and toward the two guards next to the hangar, who began to perform the same dance, but this time he could see the blood. “Monk, something is really fucked up here; all four of my targets are down.” Then he saw them. Eight men landed in front of the hangar door, followed by their gray-and-white parachutes. The men unhooked their parachutes as soon as they touched the ground and split into two-by-two formations. Ramirez called out their movements over the radio. “Are we expecting company?”

“I don’t know what’s going on. Intelligence says that we’re the only strike team. Can you identify the weapons?”

“Hold on.” Ramirez took out his 25 magnification binoculars and began to study the soldiers. “Monk, I count eight weapons, all urban assault rifles of some kind, two with scopes. They all look to be wearing biologic suits.”

“Roger. Keep a tally of their movements. I need to contact headquarters.” He switched frequencies. “Nest. Eagle.” Monk paused, waiting for a reply.

“Go, Eagle.”

“Hostiles. Eight. Took out sentries and securing landing zone.”

“Eagle, copy. Relaying.”

An Army second lieutenant from behind a 27-inch computer screen in a 20-by-20-foot situation room a few stories below the Pentagon ground floor, turned his head and spoke to General West. “Sir?”

“Orders still stand. Observe and report,” said General West.

West paced in front of the five flat-screen televisions on the wall as the second lieutenant gave the orders to Monk. The center screen showed a live satellite view of the castle from above. Within this view five green dots fluctuated in intensity, depicting the exact positions of the Eagle team members who’d parachuted in from 35,000 feet, and taken positions around the perimeter of the runway next to the castle.

The far left screen showed the infrared view of the center screen. West could see how Omega’s covert team had split into pairs. Three pair hit the helicopters, the remaining pair worked on the hangar door.

West looked down at his watch, and headed to his computer terminal at the back of the room. He sat down, punched in his code, and the screen split into four. Unbeknownst to the rest of the room, every action that was sent, taken, or seen was duplicated in another smaller situation room somewhere else inside the Pentagon; Omega’s control room.

West had connections to both rooms, and through his computer terminal was giving duplicate orders. So far everything was going as planned. West typed in a few more codes and the exact position of the Navy SEAL team was sent out to Omega’s mercenaries now entering the castle. The instructions were specific: Eliminate all personnel after recovery mission was complete.

Best-case scenario for West was to take the whole castle and make the events of the night disappear in the Pentagon archives. This would make Omega happy. Worst case was to hit a massive defensive force and have to retrieve as much information as possible before sending in the Army Rangers. The key to his secondary plan was to have his people out before the Rangers stepped in.

The current plan was still in effect. The rest of Omega’s covert team would land after the satellite, which West had access to, failed. From there, radio communications would be taken over by the Omega covert team, who now had all the Go codes. The SEALs would remain in place as observers until the covert team had accomplished the mission. Finally, either the covert team would take over the premises, then terminate the SEAL team, and/or if they ran into heavy resistance, would gather all the intelligence possible, destroy all the evidence (which included setting off an Electro Magnetic Pulse bomb which would destroy anything electric), then evacuate via helicopters, leaving the Rangers to pick up the mess.

West knew that failure to occupy and hold the castle was not in his favor. Omega would not look too kindly upon that, and would most likely terminate his own involvement with them via heart attack, car accident, or countless other ways to kill him without suspicion.

Omega had picked him for his forward thinking, though. That was what he was best at, always thinking 10 steps ahead of the rest. West stared at the blip on the far left screen on the wall depicting the flight path of all the aircraft in the air. Of particular interest to him was the Ranger’s C-130 on its way to the castle. This was his wild card, and if all hell broke loose he would bring them in.

It was all a waiting game now. The Omega mercenaries had strict orders for radio silence. Since Bluetooth communication had a limited 40-foot signal strength it was the preferred method of communication between them. This minimized any accidental discovery of their transmissions from an outside source. His real-time intelligence was the SEAL team members watching the castle from afar, and by luck, the transmissions they had with the personnel inside. West clicked on the lower screen to bring up the files of Val Vittoria and Max DuMonde.

He studied them once more, trying to see if he could pick out anything else from the two-dimensional descriptions on the computer screen in front of him. Val was a grunt by every sense of the word. He, like DuMonde, had started his Navy life at the Naval Academy, graduated, and headed to flight school. From there they’d split to fly different aircraft. Vittoria chose helicopters, which led him to the Osprey Program, and DuMonde jets, finishing up with the F-18 Super Hornet.

They’d done tours in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan before they’d unexpectedly joined the SEAL training program, and finished the training with high marks. DuMonde never entered the active teams because he was injured in a skydiving training accident; Vittoria had saved his life.

Both worked well together, and they had the ability to think through problems in high-stress situations. West thought about his contingency plan; the one that only he had knowledge of. So far it would be a 98-percent chance that he didn’t need to implement the Ranger strike force...so far.

He calculated the C-130’s estimated time of arrival over the castle and sent a coded message giving Omega’s team a new mission statement: to either take over the castle, or recover all the information and evacuate within two hours.

West leaned back in the leather chair, which creaked and stretched under his heavy, muscular body. He put his hands behind his neck and stretched as he looked over the screens on the wall. The game was on.

The concussion of the explosion threw Dean and Collins 15 feet from the secondary door in the subway train. Collins was the first to get up and survey the damage. The door he had dragged his friend through had closed seconds before Dean’s satchel charge had gone off. It had absorbed the deadly impact of the explosion, but sustained irreparable damage.

“Damn, I owe you another one!” Dean said as he stood up.

“That you do, sir.” Collins tried to look through the intact but shattered glass. He pressed his hand to a small crack in the door seal and noticed that the pressure was equal on both sides. “Sir, I think there’s air back in the tunnel; we can’t go this way, so let’s double back to Bill. God knows we need the firepower when we run into the SS again.”

“On the way out remind me to pick up the charge we left behind. I think we’re going to need it.”

“Will do.” Collins passed Dean, taking point as they stepped through the subway train toward the rear exit.

Dean looked in amazement at his surroundings. His boots crunched the new, powdery snow beneath him. “That wasn’t there before...” he said as they sneaked past a gigantic metal door that took up the full height of the tunnel. Inside, they could see soldiers and crew moving a crane toward the opening. “Keep going. Too many of them.”

They were now in search of the small room where they’d last seen Bill.

We should have seen it by now.... No, wait...there it is. Train must have moved while we were in it.

Dean was first to climb up the curved wall and once at the door, he looked through the window. The room seemed different. There was a small, upright, flat rectangle on the desk against the wall that had not been there before. Worse, Bill was nowhere to be seen.

“I think we passed the room. Bill’s not in this one and it just looks...different.” Dean looked above the door at the flashing green light, grabbed the door handle, and pulled. The door slid smoothly into the wall. They both stepped in, and turned their heads when they heard a rumbling coming from within the tunnel.

Dean and Collins both poked their heads out the door opening and watched in disbelief. “What the fuck is that?” Collins asked.

“They’re rotating in different directions.” Dean whispered to his friend, who was staring awestruck at the sight heading toward them.

The machine was huge, bigger and stranger than anything he had ever seen. It took up the full diameter of the tunnel.

“Christ, must be close to 10 stories high!” Collins said.

The strange part about it was its shape. The whole structure was smooth and aerodynamic, composed of seven rings, each smaller than the previous, turning in opposite directions from each other. The final and smallest ring contained hundreds of antennas radiating from its inner circumference. At the base of each antenna were cylindrical bowls, like dinner-plate-sized dimples on a golf ball.

Both men leaned back as the ringed structure passed by the door. Its metallic outer surface covered the opening.

Dean began to count. When he got to 20 the back end of the machine slid past. He stuck his head out the opening once more and took a long look at the machine as it retreated away.

“That thing must be at least 20 meters long.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I doubt this explosive charge will do much. We’ll just leave it to the Army boys to figure out. Let’s find Bill and Vic, ’cause we’re going to need to create as much confusion in this place as possible until the armored division gets here.” Dean looked at his watch. “Which should be any time soon.”

“What do you make of this?” Collins pointed at the flat, thin rectangular object on the desk.

“Don’t know.”

“That’s a strange typewriter.” Collins looked at the letters on the thin board, and then turned to see Dean open another smaller, sliding door opposite from the door they had entered.

“Never mind that,” Dean said.

Collins took one last look at the flat object and followed Dean into the tunnel beyond the door.

Dean had taken point within the small maintenance tunnel. They both maneuvered themselves around a jigsaw puzzle of pipes of all sizes and colors and stopped when they stepped into a spherical connecting cross tunnel. The tunnel radiated out into five paths.

“Collins. Take the left tunnel, follow the gray pipes, and I’ll keep to the red pipes. Walk it for five minutes, then come on back. If I’m not back in 10, come after me and I’ll do the same with you.”

“See you in 10.”

Dean turned and headed down his tunnel, listening to the surrounding sounds. He looked at his watch after some time. Five minutes.

Machine gun fire erupted farther down the tunnel. He was surprised at the rate of fire; it was almost twice as fast as the MP-40 German submachine gun. He reached up and unscrewed the light bulb above his head. Then he crouched down next to a concrete outcrop, checked that the clip in his grease gun was secure, and cocked his Schofield. There was a loud explosion, followed by a lone figure in the distance running toward him.

Dean kept his barrel down, being careful not to accidentally shoot Collins, who was also running around in the tunnels. The man down the narrow tunnel took cover inside a small slit in the wall 10 meters in front of him. Shortly after, more figures, clad in black, ran past the slit and toward Dean’s position. The lead figure stopped and crouched, raising a fist up into the air. He then raised one finger and pointed twice to Dean’s position. Another man stepped forward and threw a round ball at him.

Oh, shit!

Dean had nowhere to go, and the only protection was the small concrete outcropping. He watched as the grenade flew toward him, hit the edge of the outcropping, then bounced away as it fell onto the floor and rolled into a small drainage hole.

Of all the dumb luck.

The explosion was muffled, but sent concrete flying in all directions. Dean took a close look at himself to find that he was still intact, then aimed his grease gun through the dust cloud and sent out a burst of copper toward the enemy. In response, a hail of bullets began to pepper his cover at an extreme rate.

All of a sudden the firing just stopped.

Dean peeked down the tunnel through the thick dust, unable to see more than two feet in front of him. Then a shadow came out of the cloud, shooting once. The bullet ricocheted off the concrete pillar next to his head just as Dean swung out of his perch, but it was too late. The SS uniformed man knocked the machine gun out of his hands.

Dean jabbed his right hand up, knocking the gun from the SS man’s hand and sending it flying at the opposite wall. He took the split-second opening and threw an uppercut at the enemy’s jaw, but missed as the soldier ducked and weaved, in turn landing a hard kick in Dean’s stomach. Dean flew back, momentarily blacking out as the back of his head bounced off the hard concrete wall. Dean regained sight as he saw a fist coming straight at his nose, but it never made contact.

The fist remained in midair inches from Dean’s face. His focus turned from the bloody knuckles to the man’s face, which had cocked to the side in question. He took advantage of the unforeseen distraction and kicked the SS soldier in the groin, knocking the breath out of him. Dean quick-drew his 1875 Schofield, but the soldier swung both hands up in a cross pattern, made hard contact with Dean’s hand before he got a bead, and sent the Schofield flying away.

Now unarmed, Dean reached up to the K-bar knife on his chest and pulled down and out, and lunged forward. The soldier spun out to his left, grabbing his hand in the process. Now they were both back to back, but only for a split second. The soldier stepped out and turned Dean’s arm back toward his shoulder. Dean, in an effort to shake himself loose, leaped up into the air, using the pipes on the curved wall to gain footing, and pushed himself off the wall, somersaulted backward, and landed hard on his side. The soldier, still holding Dean’s wrist, twisted it, causing great pain, and forced Dean to turn onto his stomach and to simultaneously drop the knife.

Dean knew he had lost the fight and accepted defeat, but then he heard the familiar puff of a suppressed M3-A1. The soldier flew off his feet and onto his back as the .45 caliber copper bullet hit him straight in the chest. Dean lifted his head and saw Collins holding the smoking barrel of the grease gun.

“Never seen anybody fight like that before. I had to wait until he kicked your ass before I had a clean shot.”

“He didn’t kick my ass, I let him win,” Dean said as Collins helped him up off the ground.

“No... I did kick your ass,” Max mumbled.

Collins and Dean both jumped back as they saw the soldier squirm on the floor.

“You mind not pointing that cannon at me?” Max asked, taking a deep breath as he grabbed his chest. “You’re late.”

“Excuse me? Who are you?” Dean asked.

Collins kept his grease gun pointed at Max.

“What? Aren’t you guys with Val’s team?”

“No. Who the fuck is Val?” Dean had picked up his Schofield and now pointed it at Max.

What is up with the uniforms? “Wait a minute, that’s an M3-A1,” Max said as he looked over the grease gun. “And what the hell are you doing with that old Schofield?”

“Well, he knows his weapons. Are you American?”

“What kind of question is that? Of course I am, and so are you. What the fuck is going on?”

“You tell us! You’re the one with the SS uniform.”

“Oh, this thing—” He was about to answer but was cut off.

“You a spy?”

“What?”

“Who won the World Series in ’39?”

“Nineteen thirty-nine? How the fuck should I know?”

“That’s good enough for me.” Collins moved the suppressed barrel closer to Max’s head.

“No, wait.” Dean held his hand up. “You a U.S. soldier?”

“Yes, I’m a lieutenant commander, U.S. Navy.”

“What’s the Navy doing here?”

“Well, aren’t you guys Navy, as well?”

“No, Marines.”

“Jarheads?”

Dean smirked at the insult. “Son, what’s your name, rank, and serial number?”

“Lieutenant Commander Max DuMonde, U.S. Navy.” He rattled off his serial number.

“DuMonde?”

Collins and Dean looked at each other.

“Yes. Now who are you?” Max asked as he heard a noise coming down the tunnel. “Scratch that. Now that we are clear that we are fighting on the same side, can we get out of here before they send more fucking Nazis after us?”

Dean looked down the tunnel and back at the swollen face of the Navy officer. “Get up.”

Max stood up and rubbed his chest. “Man, that .45 really packs a punch.” Max pulled out the ceramic plate inside the bulletproof tactical vest and held it up.

“What are you wearing?”

“A vest,” Max said to Dean as if it were a stupid question.

“Got to get me one of those,” Collins said as he let his guard down.

Max turned around and walked away.

“Where you going?” Dean called after Max.

“Need guns and ammo, and a new plate.” Max bent down and picked up the .22, which had lodged itself between a yellow-and-gray pipe.

“Freeze! Drop the gun now!” Dean aimed the cocked Schofield at Max’s back. “No guns for you until I can verify who you are.”

Max aimed his .22 away from Dean and Collins and shot one of the squirming bodies on the floor. “If I wanted you dead, I would have killed you by now,” Max said as he removed the now empty clip from the .22 and replaced it with a fresh one. He pulled back on the action, reloaded the weapon, then slid it in between the uniform belt and his pants. “Now, Wild Bill, may I grab these guns? God knows we are going to need them to get out of this hell hole.”

“Wild Bill…now that was funny!” Collins laughed.

“Don’t do that again. I almost shot you.” Dean pointed the Schofield away from Max.

“Shoot me, don’t shoot me...either way we need each other to get the hell out of here, Marine.”

“Fine, but keep an eye on him, Collins.” Dean turned to look at Max. “And I’m a major.”

Max nodded. “How you guys doing on ammo? Oh, and that reminds me, who the fuck assigned you those old grease guns?”

“Old? These are the best we have for special operations.”

Max was confused. “This is going to sound kind of weird, but how did you guys end up here?”

“We parachuted in.”

Max handed Dean an MP5.

Dean looked the gun over. “What type of weapon is this?”

Max looked at Dean, then at Collins, then at their uniforms.

Oh…my…God.

Max could not hide his shocked expression. “You’ve never seen that type of submachine gun before, have you?” It was more a statement than a question.

“No, why? Should I have? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Let’s find a safer place, then I’ll explain it to you.” He looked at Collins. “What’s your name?”

“Collins, Master Sergeant Collins. Sir,” he said, drawing out the “sir.”

“Sergeant, you and the major here should don those vests.”

“Why, Commander?”

“It’ll be stupid if you don’t and take one in the chest...now that you’ve traveled so far,” Max mumbled the end of the sentence.

Dean and Collins agreed. They remove their packs and began to clumsily put the vests on. Max stepped in and helped them tighten the vests.

“It has to be tight. What you got in them packs?”

“Ammo, grenades, rations, first aid kit.”

Max thought it over. “Leave everything but the ammo, grenades, and one first aid kit. We need to be light, and if things go as planned, we should have some help on the way.”

“Well, the First Armored Division should be right around the bend.”

Max tried to ignore the comment, still in a state of disbelief. He looked past them. “Collins, where did you come from just now?”

“Down that tunnel,” he said and pointed with the barrel of his M3-A1. “I ran into some medical offices before I turned back.”

“Yeah, I know the place. We should be able to get to the warehouse levels from there.”

“How do you know the area?”

“That’s where Hermann…the general’s son, used me for a punching bag. They then dragged me past some barracks, a hospital, the holding cells and ended at the morgue. I thought I was a dead man. But it seems that Wehr’s ego saved me.”

“I was wondering what had happened to your face,” Dean said as he uncocked the Schofield, spun it once, and slid it back in the cross-draw holster.

Max checked out the fancy gun work and was a bit impressed. “Are you done playing with that toy?” he jabbed. Dean squinted at him. Max smiled. “Okay, then let’s head out.”

Collins stepped over and around the maze of pipes and after a couple hundred paces stopped in his tracks. He raised his fist and pointed to his ear. Max and Dean both heard it, as well—the painful screams of a man being tortured.

They moved until they could see the reverse side of the office’s ceiling tiles hanging from the concrete above them.

It was then that the man doing the screaming told off his torturer. “Go fuck yourself, you Aryan fuck!”

The humming sound of electricity was soon followed by the man’s scream.

“Val…” Max whispered. “I have to get to him,” he said to Dean.

Dean nodded and Max withdrew his .22 as he crawled in the direction of the electric humming. Max stopped and looked down through the crack in one of the ceiling tiles.

Val was strapped naked to a metal chair. Electrodes and wires had been stuck to his skin all around his groin area. Two men in black uniforms laughed as one of them shut off the electricity and spoke with a heavy English South African tone. “Where is your Kaffir lover friend?”

Val spit on his face. The humming increased once again and Val grunted through the pain and slumped once the electricity stopped. “Johan, would you like to give blacky here a tr—”

Johan was confused when his partner did not finish the sentence. The man stood there in mid-thought and then fell forward. Johan rushed to his side and was met with the same fate; a .22 copper bullet to the top of his head.

Max moved one of the square plaster ceiling tiles and dropped down onto the white tile floor of the medical room, careful not to slip on the blood. He motioned to Val to scream and opened the door. A guard stood outside in an empty hall facing away from him. Max aimed and shot the guard in the head. He caught the falling body and dragged it into the room, shut the door, and watched as Collins dropped down from the ceiling.

Max went up to Val, who smirked at him. “Take it easy when you pull out those electrodes, sailor.”

“I’m glad to see that you still have your sense of humor.”

“Yeah, so who are these guys?”

“Commander Val Vittoria meet Master Sergeant Collins and Major…”

“Dean DuMonde,” Dean said, finishing Max’s sentence.

Max froze at the sound of the name.

Collins had cut the duct tape around one of Val’s arms and began to cut the tape off the other arm when he saw Max step back and lean against the far wall.

“What is it, Commander?” Dean asked.

“Your name is DuMonde?” Val said. “You guys have the same oddball last name. What are the odds of that? Remove that camouflage paint from your face and you kinda look alike, as well.” Val slowly got up from the metal chair.

“Yeah.” Max shook his head, trying to get a grip of what was unfolding. “Major, I have a question. Now, just bear with me. Is your wife’s name Olive?”

“How the hell did you know that?” Dean asked, clearly surprised. “Have we ever met?” He thought about it. “No. Only other Max DuMonde I know is my brother,” he said quietly.

“No, we have never met. Hold on, let me get my bearings. Val, if you are here, where are Solange and Ditter?”

“Last time I saw them, they were in a holding cell.”

“By the morgue?”

“Yes.”

“Collins, help Val look around for some painkillers and bandages to patch us up.”

Collins started going through the drawers in the room as Val got dressed.

Max then turned to Dean. “Major, could you step over here for a moment?”

As Dean walked over to him at the other side of the long medical room, Max wondered how he was going to tell him the truth about his situation.

“What is it, Commander?”

“Max, Major. You can call me Max.”

“Okay, Max. What is it?”

“Bear with me. What day is it, Major?”

“April 30th.”

“And what year is it?” Max had to make sure this was really happening.

“What?”

“Just answer the question. What year is it?”

“Nineteen forty-five, of course. Why?”

How do I tell them? Max took a deep breath, “Sir, you and I have stumbled on one of the greatest inventions ever made. This place, everything that was built around us, was built for one purpose.”

“What purpose is that?”

“To see that the Third Reich’s master plan would never fail.”

“But it has failed. The Russians are inside Berlin; the Nazi forces are all but gone. There is nothing they can do to win, let alone turn the outcome of this war.”

“Yes. That is what we were all meant to believe. Until you and I found this.” Max spread out his arms.

“You mean that thing in the tunnel? What can that thing do to change the war?”

“It is not changing the war, it’s just moving it someplace else.”

“Someplace else? What are you talking about? Where?”

Max looked into his grandfather’s eyes. “The 21st century.”