“Yeah, like the crematory,” Samuel shot back. “Are you suicidal? They’ll do some sick shit to you over there. Do you think they care if you survive or not? They don’t give two shits as long as they get their results. They might freeze you or dissect you or shoot you up with typhus — all while you’re nice and awake. Sounds like fun, huh?
“I’m going, Samuel,” Wayne stated flatly.
“Why’s it so important that you go and be part of a research thing?”
Wayne had a yearning to share his secret with Samuel and tell him the truth about what he planned on doing. He knew, however, that it would be best not to. Somebody might overhear what he said. There were people he still could not trust in Barracks 19. Prisoners, whom he suspected, would instantly turn on him and rat him out to Kammler as a “nutcase” or “mentally incompetent” for an extra meager cigarette ration. He sometimes wondered how much he should trust Samuel. “It just is. Please understand, Samuel.”
“Well, it’s been nice knowin’ ya.”
Wayne tossed and turned in his sleep. He was desperately trying to run. His feet were planted firmly on the ground. He fought to lift them, to raise them high and run. His leaden limbs became heavier the more he struggled. The need to run was overwhelming in its power.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The morning brought with it the rays of a strong sun beating down on the parched ground. For the first time since he had been in camp, Wayne heard the chirping of birds. He thought they sounded like blue jays; he felt a renewed optimism awaken in him.
Once at the plant, Wayne and the other research prisoners were loaded into a black transport vehicle, much like the vans shelters use to transport strays to the vet so they can be put down. It had steel bars that passed for windows on the two back doors and, since the vehicle was really just a tanked up trailer with no motor of its own, was hitched up to a military jeep.
Two SS men handcuffed the prisoners together in a chain gang. Immediately after shoving them into the back of the cramped transport vehicle, one of the SS men with a capped gold tooth, said loudly enough that the prisoners could hear, “If I was in their shoes, I would have hung myself.”
Another SS man snickered, “Same here. It would be quicker and less painful instead of what they’re about to go through.”
“Thank the Führer for animal research,” the man with the gold tooth added.
The jeep abruptly shifted into gear and drove off.
Linda had also volunteered to be part of the research group. At first Wayne considered that a bad sign. He did not need her getting in his way of him doing whatever it was that he had to do. But, as he mulled it over, he began to think that having an extra set of hands around might be useful. Wayne was on his way to Oberkoblenz and, he hoped, the gadolinium crystals. He knew that it wouldn’t be an easy road ahead, and that he would, in all likelihood, but putting himself in a do-or-die situation, but the important first step had been done.
Wayne looked at the sun rising and determined that they were headed north. All he was able to see through the sparkling steel bars on the back doors of the transport vehicle was the lonely two-lane road that they drove on and an occasional tree. Wayne wedged his way next to Linda, who was chained to a different group than he was. The prisoners had been told to remain silent, but Wayne nevertheless whispered in Linda’s ear, “I’m glad you’re here. Will you help me?”
Linda nodded, “I don’t want to miss out on whatever it is that you’re up to.”
“Believe me,” Wayne said. “I’m only doing what I have to. You may be putting yourself in danger. I have to get a hold of something and nothing’s going to stop me.”
“I don’t care.”
A prisoner, a sickly looking bald man who was part of Wayne’s chained together group, put his skinny finger to his lips and made a shush sound.
“Go to hell,” Wayne retorted. The wings of the butterflies in his gut fluttered more persistently as the trip wore on. In his mind, he let fifty different scenarios play out about how he would get to his prized crystals and what would happen when he did. All too often, they ended with a bullet being pumped into his body.
The Oberkoblenz Military Installation had been built in 1953 as a site to train and house army personnel. It had been one of many new bases built post-war in the newly acquired territories. Though Germany had won the War, it was still deemed necessary, by the Reich Department of Defense, that the German people have a massive military force behind them at all times.
Located amid the lush gentle rolling hills of what had been upstate New York, Oberkoblenz was a small city unto itself. Lofty steel reinforced fences proudly encircled the massive community of soldiers’ barracks, airplane hangers, defense research facilities, and training fields. Catwalks, evenly spaced out every two hundred yards, lined the enclosure of the compound. On them, machine-gunned armed Nazis prowled like wild cats, always keeping a watchful eye out for prey. At the main entrance gate, a small sign read: TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT. NO QUESTIONS ASKED.
The jeep towing its cargo of human guinea pigs halted at the base entrance. The guard stepped out of the checkpoint booth and reviewed the driver’s pass.
“Should I wait around?” the driver asked.
“No need to.” The guard entered a four-digit code into the computer in his booth, causing the main gate to slowly open.
“Good,” the driver stated.
As the jeep accelerated down the main camp road, Wayne could tell from his limited frame of view that he was indeed on a military base. He had once, as a young boy, visited an uncle who was a doctor stationed on an army base in North Carolina, and the sterile surroundings had looked almost identical to what he was able to see through the rear of the transport vehicle.
“This is it. This is really it,” Wayne mumbled to no one in particular. Wayne and the other prisoners were violently jerked forward when the transport van stopped short at its destination.
Less than a minute later, the back doors of the transport vehicle were unlocked and swung open by armed Nazi military guards. “Out,” one of them barked at the prisoners.
The prisoners debarked the vehicle and were unlocked from their shackles by the driver.
Wayne inquisitively surveyed his new surroundings. He was impressed by the magnitude of the building that lay before him. It appeared to be even more massive than the munitions plant he had been working in. It stood at least twenty stories high, towering above any of the other base dwellings in its vicinity and appeared large enough that it would be able to hold five football fields laying side by side, with room to spare. Wayne had a strong hunch that the building that stood before him was the main research and development center at Oberkoblenz and that the Gadolinium crystals were to be found somewhere inside. Under escort of two armed guards, the small group of prisoners was led into the huge structure.
Wayne gazed around the interior of the building and saw that it consisted of a vast open area in the center of it with the many floor hallways above circling the never-ending building floor, as if it was designed to be a fancy hotel giving the guests a birds-eye view of the lobby. Only instead it was one of the numerous locations where the Reich perfected their weapons of destruction. Weapons that would better maim and kill human beings. Wayne noticed what appeared to be, perched on the ground in the spacious center of the bottom floor, what seemed to be a stupendous weapon of some sort. Maybe a bomb, he thought. It looked to him as if it was in the process of being loaded onto a bomber aircraft, which took up a large amount of space next to it. Wayne was able to clearly make out the red swastika emblem on the airplane’s fuselage. A small army of men worked around the bomber and plane.