“Jawohl, Mein Führer,” the commander said.
Karl sat down in front of the console and opened the briefcase, perching it on the table beside him. Radio transmissions could be jammed — if the transmitters weren’t simply destroyed — but no one could do anything about the buried cables. The Americans had grown so good at intercepting and deciphering the Reich’s communications that almost anything sensitive was sent over the wire, instead of through the air. And the rebels — and their treacherous allies — wouldn’t be able to stop him from unleashing hell.
He sucked in his breath as he removed the small device and plugged it into the radio transmitter, then started to work his way through the paperwork. It was depressingly primitive, compared to some of the other systems he had used, but it was impossible to tamper with it. Or so he had been told. The authorisation code for each and every nuclear weapon in Germany East was included within the briefcase, with different codes for unlocking the warheads themselves and launching the missiles. And…
…And there was no way to know if all of the missiles would actually fly.
“Open the channel,” he ordered.
He cursed the rebels, savagely. His men thought they had unlocked all of the warheads — and the missiles — but they didn’t know. The only way to know would be to launch the missiles… and if it failed, the security devices would render the missiles useless. In hindsight, it had been a grievous mistake to allow the Reich Council sole control over the nuclear arsenal. But it had been the only way to prevent civil war.
Sorting through the papers, he found the plan for a two-fold nuclear offensive. The missiles would be launched at American cities, aimed at causing maximum carnage rather than destroying the American military machine. It was inefficient, he recalled from the briefings, but it would cripple the United States. The Reich might be mortally wounded, but it would take its enemy down too. And the tactical warheads would be hurled into Germany Prime.
The Americans may not destroy the rebels, he thought. But we will.
He allowed himself a moment to savour the thought as he produced the first set of coded signals. The rebels had no idea of the hell he was planning to unleash. But it was what they deserved. They’d betrayed him, they’d betrayed the Reich, they’d betrayed everything Adolf Hitler and his successors had done for the Volk. It was a shame he’d never get his chance to wring their necks personally, but it wasn’t necessary. All that mattered was taking his revenge.
And we might survive down here, he thought. We can recover control after the war.
“Get onto the radio,” Horst snapped. “Send the emergency code to the bombers.”
“Jawohl,” the operator said.
Horst cursed as he stared at the bunker doors. There was no hope, absolutely none, of getting through in time to make a difference. It was time for one last roll of the dice.
Gudrun shivered the moment she stepped through the door and into the main bunker complex. The cell hadn’t been particularly warm, but it was colder here, deep below the ground. She couldn’t help feeling horrifically exposed as Katherine led the way down the corridor, her nakedness bothering her for the first time in weeks. If they were caught, if they were shot, she had absolutely no protection. But then, that would have been true even if she was wearing an ugly uniform.
She clutched the pistol tightly, feeling her hands grow moist with sweat. Horst had taught her how to use it, but he’d never thought she’d have to fight her way through a bunker of stormtroopers. It sounded like something out a bad novel, perhaps one of the SS Adventures that Kurt had devoured as a young man. But she had no choice. She lifted her pistol as they rounded the corner and came face to face with two young men, both of whom stared at her in shock. Katherine shot them both down before they could say a word.
Gudrun swallowed, hard. She understood the logic, she understood the importance of not giving them time to sound the alert, but she still found it shocking. And yet, she knew there was no choice.
“This way,” Katherine muttered.
She led the way into a room and opened fire, picking off five men before they had a chance to react. Gudrun followed her in, pistol at the ready, but it was already too late. Five men were dead, the sixth was staring up at Katherine in disbelief and terror. They didn’t look like stormtroopers, Gudrun thought; they looked more like students. Who were they?
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Katherine said. She held a pistol to the young man’s head as she drew her knife from her belt, holding it against his crotch. “I need you to answer some questions. If you lie to me, I’ll turn you into a girl. Do you understand me?”
The man nodded, frantically.
“Good,” Katherine said. “Where is the Führer?”
“We have our orders,” Hauptmann Walther Johannesson said. “Prepare to deploy the bomb.”
He gritted his teeth as the bomber turned and headed east. Their training had assumed that they’d face massed antiaircraft fire as well as jet-powered interceptors, but so far Germany East hadn’t been able to muster any real resistance to their incursion. Getting to Germanica had been so easy that he’d honestly wondered if it was a trap of some kind. But it seemed otherwise…
“The bomb is ready,” his co-pilot said. “On three…”
Walther nodded, hastily tapping his arming code into the device when the co-pilot reached three. Down in the bomb bay, the weapons officer would be doing the same. It took three codes, entered within a minute of one another, to arm the weapon for detonation. And if they made a single mistake, the bomb wouldn’t detonate at all…
“Code accepted,” the co-pilot said. “Bomb away.”
Walther nodded, pushing the engines forward as hard as he could. They’d practiced outrunning the blast before, but no one had ever tried until the war. The world seemed to flare white as the bomb detonated, a massive shockwave striking the aircraft seconds later, the airframe groaning in protest as it struggled to cope. He fought desperately to maintain control, but the shockwave was too strong…
An instant later, the bomber started to break up and fall from the sky.
Karl Holliston felt the ground shake and glanced up, sharply.
It shouldn’t have happened. They were so far below the ground that nothing, not even a direct nuclear strike, should have affected the bunker. And yet he’d felt… something. Had the rebels invented a weapon that could break through the doors? Or had they purchased something from the Americans? Or…
The communicator failed. He poked it, puzzled, then looked at the technician. The young man scurried forward, fear written in every part of his bearing as he went to work. Karl glared at his back, silently willing him to work faster. He hadn’t even managed to get the first set of command strings out before the line had failed.
“Mein Führer,” the technician said. “The communicator is working, but there’s nothing on the far end.”
It took Karl a moment to process what he’d been told. There was an entire SS base on the far end, commanded and staffed by loyalists. The base couldn’t be gone. But he’d felt something… had the base been nuked? The rebels had nuclear weapons and they’d certainly proven themselves willing to use them. And how else could they take out the entire base before the nuclear codes were sent to their final destination?