So much history here, Wilkins thought. And yes, greatness. A great nation and a proud people. All hijacked by Hitler and his thugs and harnessed to totalitarianism and war. The waste of it all sickened him.
After they’d marched two kilometers across the park, Corporal Wright spotted the army research center through the trees. The building had been constructed on a little island on the Neuer Lake, now frozen by winter’s cold.
Chapman raised his binoculars to investigate. The facility appeared to be unguarded. He waved at Wilkins and communicated using hand signals.
The sergeant patted Wright’s back and gestured at him to follow. Together, the two men scurried to the barbed-wire fencing. Wilkins held the wire while Wright cut it. After folding it aside to make an entrance point, Wilkins dashed to the pillbox by the entrance while Wright covered with his Sten submachine-gun.
The pillbox was empty, the heavy steel door to the dome-shaped facility unlocked and kept ajar by snowdrift. Wilkins gave the all-clear signal.
Chapman led the team forward.
The research center’s top level appeared to be drab and utilitarian administrative space, complete with offices, filing room, and radio shack. Papers littered the floor, some of them burned; the people here had left in a hurry and tried to destroy the evidence as they did. The lieutenant casually tore a massive swastika-emblazoned banner from the wall and let it crumple at his feet.
The next level underground was research space, derelict machines and long tabletops splattered with broken class and chemicals letting up an acrid stench. The squad donned gas masks just in case and kept moving, observing everything but caring about nothing. Their objective, they knew, would be on the lowest level.
The team piled out onto the third level. There, they found bodies near a long table stacked with champagne flutes under a sign. The paras kept going, securing the level before returning to the room of the dead.
They were scientists, around twenty men and women in pristine white lab coats. They lay strewn on the floor as if dropped from a great height. Wilkins inspected one without touching her and found no visible cause of death.
Suicide, most likely. Or, he thought with alarm, maybe something else.
He glanced up at the sign, which read: “Die ganze Natur ist ein gewaltiges Ringen zwischen Kraft und Schwache, ein ewiger Sieg des Starken über den Schwachen.”
The whole of Nature is a mighty struggle between strength and weakness, an eternal victory of the strong over the weak.
“Poor buggers just dropped dead,” Davies said.
Wilkins jumped to his feet waving his gloved hand. He held a finger in front of his gas mask. Quiet!
The woman Wilkins had just inspected sat up, eyes closed and face contorted as if struggling to awake from a deep slumber. Her blond hair had frayed around its austere bun, giving her a helpless quality.
Chapman crouched in front of her. “Are you all right, miss?” he said in German.
“No pain, no progress,” she said sleepily.
“Get away from her, sir,” Wilkins warned.
Her eyes flashed open as she turned toward him. They were completely white.
“No pain,” the other scientists murmured. “No progress.”
They stirred, some straining to rise to all fours, continuing their lethargic chant.
“They’re infected, sir,” Wilkins said.
The lieutenant frowned. “Are you sure? They’re blind, not dead.”
“Sir!”
“We have to confirm. If they’re alive, they can give us information.”
A grizzled scientist wrapped his hands around Chapman’s ankle and bit into it.
“Christ!” The lieutenant kicked to free himself and inspected the bite, which had failed to penetrate the leather of his boot. Another close shave.
A scientist rose unsteadily to her feet and lurched grinning at Wilkins.
He didn’t wait for orders. He raised his rifle and fired.
The rest of the squad joined in, shooting the scientists in the head as they struggled to rise or crawled toward the soldiers.
The slaughter finished, the paras stood in a cloud of smoke. The gunfire still rang in their ears. Nobody spoke, too stunned by what just happened.
A speaker on the ceiling startled them with a loud screech. “Achtung, achtung.” The man’s calm, deep voice resonated throughout the level. “What is the disturbance?”
Chapman and Wilkins looked at each other.
“We heard shooting. Respond now.”
The lieutenant pulled off his gas mask and picked up the phone. “We’re on level three. Please send help.”
At his signal, the team took up firing positions near the stairwell.
Nothing.
Then: “We have orders not to leave our post. The door must remain secured.”
“Please, comrade!” Chapman said, doing an admirable job with his acting. “If you don’t come, we’ll all be killed and our research destroyed!”
“Nein,” the speaker blared.
“I order you to come!”
Nothing.
“In the name of the Führer!”
Nothing.
The lieutenant hung up the phone. “So here’s the situation. There’s still a military presence in the facility, possibly SS types. Likely, they’re at the bottom level and have barricaded themselves in with the serum. Wilkie?”
“I agree, sir.”
“If you’ve got a brilliant idea, I’d be all ears.”
“We may not be able to get inside to have a go at them. We don’t have time to starve them out. That leaves talking, sir.”
“Talking?”
“As in convince them to surrender.”
Chapman sighed. “A nice little chin wag with the SS. Right.” He picked up the phone, chewed his mustache a bit, and set it back down. “Any more brilliant ideas on how I should do that?”
Wilkins shrugged. “Tell them Germany surrendered?”
“Smashing,” the lieutenant said. “Attention any German military who can hear my voice: We are the 2nd Para Brigade with Her Majesty’s 1st Airborne Division and have arrived to secure this site. Your Führer unleashed a plague from this facility, which we believe originated here. Germany has since surrendered. The plague, however, is out of control. We ask you to surrender so that we can reduce unnecessary loss of life not only in Europe but in Germany itself.”
Good going, Wilkins thought. The lieutenant had told the truth and kept it short and simple, ending with an appeal the man’s humanity.
After a long silence, the speaker came to life again. “What is the Führer’s status?”
“Who am I speaking to?”
“Waffen-Schutzstaffel.”
SS. Scratch that appeal to the man’s humanity. He was a fanatic likely to follow his last orders to the death, no matter how ridiculous.
“What is the Führer’s status?”
Chapman winged it. “The Führer became infected himself. Surely, you’ve seen what happens to men when they’re infected. They go insane, they kill, they die, and then they go on killing. If you let us in, we’ll be able to cure him.”
The SS didn’t answer.
“Come on, man. You can save the Führer.”
“Hang up,” Wilkins said.
Chapman did. “What’s the ruckus, Wilkie? I’ve got this well in hand.”