Why? Why in the hell would they have taken them? But the answer was clear. His soldiers needed a contingency plan.
Hiram hopped back up the ladder, doing his best to disregard the excruciating pain that had settled all the way up to his knee and now seemed so insignificant.
Deborah rushed to his side as he collapsed on the ground beside his pack.
“Agnes has a hyperbaric nuclear weapon portal and a firing mechanism. I can only guess that she’s reinstalled the disc in Team Bravo’s weapon. And Barbara has the code to set it off.”
His stomach turned and saliva pooled in his mouth as the world around him twisted. “It was one of the big discs.” He took in a deep breath. “Six hundred kilotons. Fuck. Fifty times the size of the one used in Saarbrücken. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people could die if that weapon goes off.”
“Then get up!” Deborah put an arm around him and helped lift him to his feet. “We’ve got to stop them.”
0730 hours, Wednesday, August 19, 1942, Bost, Allier Department, Vichy France
The railbike sped west through the lowlands, past long stretches of idle farmland and a handful of small quiet towns. In the dark, Hiram and Deborah travelled unnoticed. As the sun came up, their odd vehicle caught the eyes of several farmers tending their fields and a petite old lady who sat at a small table in front of the burned-out husk of her home sipping from a delicate teacup.
They followed a well-travelled trail through the mountains west of Vichy. The city came into view an hour after Barbara and her rogue soldiers.
63
0730 hours, Wednesday, August 19, 1942, Bost, Allier Department, Vichy France
The hyperbaric nuclear weapon sat at the center of the warehouse floor. Barbara, Maxime, Agnes, Ida, Nathalie, and Isadore surrounded the metallic canister. They stared in silence as Barbara pulled up the weapon’s interface on the C2ID2.
“I’ll give you all a head start to get out of here,” Barbara said. “I don’t know what the radius of the blast will look like, so you need to get as far away from here as fast as you can.”
“You should come with us,” Ida said.
Barbara shook her head. “I need to stay here to make sure no one interferes.”
Maxime touched Barbara’s shoulder. “I’m staying too.”
“No Maxime. You can’t. You’ve got a family out there somewhere.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t. Not anymore.” Maxime looked down at the floor. “The rest of you need to get out of here now. Drive the bikes straight out of town. Put as much distance away from this place as possible.”
“When you see Hiram, tell him I’m sorry,” Barbara said to Agnes. “We need these people to suffer for what they’ve done.”
Agnes nodded. “We can all walk away. Pretend this never happened.”
“Like all the others?” Barbara took Maxime’s hand. “Our fellow Frenchmen watched this horror play out. Our political leaders joined hands with the Germans. They tried to convince us that if we just played along, it would all work out in the end.”
“I understand,” Agnes said. “We pray for your success.” Agnes and the others walked out of the warehouse, leaving Barbara and Maxime.
“What now?” Maxime asked as she circled the device at the center of the room.
Barbara climbed on to a stack of dusty wooden crates and sat with her legs dangling a few inches above the concrete floor. “We’ll give them some time to clear out and then we’ll activate the device.”
“And maybe I’ll get to hold my little girl again,” Maxime said under her breath.
Barbara wanted to sit back and enjoy the show, to feel the warmth of the explosion blanket her before taking out every living thing from here to who-knows-where. She would see the faces of those who had wronged her people when she crossed over into Olam Ha-Ba. Maybe then, just maybe, they would see how many lives had been extinguished by the hatred that had infected her homeland. And in that place, she prayed, war would cease to exist and the truly righteous would stand with honor a step◦– or two◦– above those who had turned their backs when France needed strength.
“How much longer?” Maxime said as she peered out one of the windows.
“Do you think ten minutes is enough?”
64
0734 hours, Wednesday, August 19, 1942, Bost, Allier Department, Vichy France
Charlotte’s directions led Deborah and Hiram to a warehouse on the east bank of the Allier River. Peering across the wide river through his high-powered binoculars, Hiram searched for signs of Barbara and the others. He had trained them too well and saw no sign of the railbikes or the women. “They could detonate the weapon at any moment.”
“Are you sure Barbara and Maxime have the weapon?” Deborah asked. “Charlotte said Team Bravo left the warehouse headed south. What if they took the device?”
“They’re moving too fast to be carrying anything that heavy,” he said.
“Hiram.” He waited for more, but she said nothing.
He turned to Deborah, her face white as she stared at the display. Her mouth moved as if trying to force words out. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I◦– I think Barbara activated the weapon.”
“What?” He took the C2ID2 display from Deborah. “It’s counting down! Six minutes, forty-nine seconds.” Without the PAL code now in Barbara’s hands, he couldn’t stop the countdown.
Hiram activated the portal in his backpack. He slid down the ladder, the impact on the floor of the pod bringing him to tears. He grabbed a small guided missile launcher and passed it up through the portal and went back for a parachute. He slung the RediChute over his shoulder and hopped up the ladder.
“Three minutes, thirty seconds,” Deborah said as he emerged.
He tossed the parachute on the ground and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Take the bike and head back east. Don’t stop for any reason, don’t turn around. Shoot anyone who tries to stop you. Go now!”
“I’m not going without you,” Deborah said. “From what you’ve told me about this weapon, I’ll never make it far enough in time. So, tell me what you are going to do so I can help.”
“I’m going to reset my pack to open an aerial portal directly above us. I can lock the missile on the C2ID2 signal. If I know Barbara, she’s not going too far from that weapon. We’ll knock out her C2ID2 and destroy the bomb too.
“You’re down to two minutes,” Deborah said.
“Go!” Hiram said.
“You can’t possibly orient and control the chute, program the missile, aim, and launch before the people on the ground start firing at you. I can help,” Deborah pleaded.
“You have to get out of here!” Hiram shouted.
“No! You need my help.”
He stared at her for a few seconds, waiting for another idea to pop into his head that might save her. He had no more time.