Death's Head Legion (7 page)

“He was telling the truth,” she said. “They have Professor Renault locked in the cargo vault along with some creepy circus freak in a white uniform and a gas mask. There are two goons outside the door. We need to hurry this up. And here's this.” She handed Rucker a four-ounce glass vial with a rubber stopper.

“Right.” To Skorzeny, he said, “Lieutenant, mind if I tape my hands? You know as well as I do hitting a man with a closed fist is a bad idea, and I can't fly too good with broken knuckles.”

Skorzeny was squatting low, his weight on his right leg, which was beneath him, and his other leg straight, foot pointing skyward and heel on the ground. He moved his arms in a circular motion, the blades of his hands rigid and ready to strike or block. Using only his right leg, he stood, his left leg still outstretched. Finally, he nodded his assent, and repeated the exercise, this time using his left leg. He set into a deep fighting stance and swept his rear leg up in front of him in a kick that followed the shape of a crescent.

“Be my guest. I find they interfere with my ability to perform tiger strikes and panther fists,” Skorzeny said. He was supremely confident in how this would go.

Rucker turned his back and opened the doctor's kit, using the medical tape to secure his knuckles and wrists.

“Did you hear that?” Deitel said. “Panther fists? Skorzeny's some kind of master of celestial fighting and an
überkommando.
Fox is a dead man unless he has some sort of comic strip superpower he hasn't told us about.”

Terah tilted her head. “Well, he did box a little for those couple of years he went to the University of Austin. He tried fencing for a semester, he told me. Oh, and he's a good tennis player.”

“I'm a great tennis player,” Rucker corrected.

“That involves hitting things,” Terah said, a knowing look in her eye.

“You're both insane,” Deitel said. “No, wait. That can't be. Clearly it is I who have gone insane. None of this can be really happening. That's the only logical answer.”

Terah put a finger up to Deitel's lips. “Hush. They're starting.”

Skorzeny and Rucker squared off. Skorzeny looked like he was carved from a piece of wood—all muscle and gristle, with more scars on his torso and arms to go with the one on his face. Rucker, meanwhile, had his share of scars, and while he lacked the German's bulk or height, he had a looser, rangier muscle build that allowed him greater flexibility and speed.

It all came down to this, Rucker thought. The future of the free world—of life on earth itself, possibly—came down to which man could beat the other down.

They circled one another, Skorzeny sliding in and out of aggressive, beautiful fighting stances—deep like a tiger, flowing like a snake, balanced like a crane. Rucker kept his hands up like a boxer, but with his left held out farther in the bare-knuckle style of old.

Skorzeny made the first move—a feint with his left leg, his open hands moving in like spinning blades, moving in for a strike at Rucker's throat. Deitel was biting his own fist. Terah seemed unnaturally relaxed. Rucker dodged right and jabbed with his left, barely tapping the German in the mouth and nose and grabbing at the man's face. Rucker's left side was unprotected. Skorzeny struck him with an open palm to the chin. Rucker didn't lose his footing, but his head spun.

Skorzeny was smiling. He wasn't fazed by anything.

Fine, Rucker thought. The hard way.

Rucker charged into Skorzeny before the bigger man knew what was happening. He snaked his left arm under Skorzeny's right and brought his hand over the right side of the German's face. Grappling is the shorter fighter's best strategy, and Rucker was employing the strategy well. Only he seemed intent on holding Skorzeny's arms pinned and his own left hand over Skorzeny's mouth, as if trying to gag him.

After a few seconds Skorzeny collapsed in a heap.

“What?” Deitel asked.

Terah snapped on rubber gloves and helped Rucker remove the wrapping from his left hand. She didn't want the ether soaking his wraps getting on her hands.

“What?” Deitel repeated.

Deitel examined Skorzeny, who was flat on his back. There wasn't even a bruise.

“What?” Deitel said.

Rucker grinned that infuriating grin.

“Diethyl ether,” Terah said.

“What?” Deitel said once more.

“What do you think this is, some sort of dime pulp fiction western with a duel at high noon?” Rucker said. “Old advice from Grandpa—never hit a man when you can outthink him. Besides, he would have taken my head off. So I gave him a dose of ether.”

He pulled his shirt and leather jacket back on, securing his shoulder holsters. “Don't just stand there gaping at me, Doc. Use some of that baling line to tie Skorzeny up real tight, then gag him and put him on that dolly. We have to lock him away with the rest once we get the professor. Let's move.”

Deitel watched Rucker checking the loads in his pistols, as Terah took Skorzeny's pistol and extra magazines.

 

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Section 712, deep underground

Wewelsburg Castle

Greater German Reich

E
ven before the events of the Great War had opened a doorway to a darker dimension, most people of the modern world knew of the existence of magic. The hard sciences tried to explain it away as relative forces and perhaps technologies that man had not yet understood. The religions of the world explained it away as proof of their faith in the supernatural. The alchemists and necromancers—the genuine ones admittedly few and far between, compared to the illusionists and charlatans—simply practiced their arts as they pleased or as they could; in tribal secret out of fear, or, more rarely, in public with hopes of profit and fame.

The world also knew that many of the monsters of ancient lore and modern folktale were true—or at least had a basis in reality. The chupacabras of the Chihuahua Outback, the Tree Folk of Laos, the small folk of Ireland, the Yetis of the Himalayas—all creatures as real yet also as frightening or wonderful as their legends. Since the days of Gilgamesh there were stories of the dead rising to feast on the living. The world knew that Mary Shelley's Gothic novel of a man-made man was really no novel at all. It knew flesh-eating ghuls once roamed the sand seas of Arabia in years gone by, as did the blood-drinkers of Eastern Europe of the Gothic age. People knew there were seas no sailor—no modern ship of war—dared sail or even speak of.

All real, but all—mostly all—out of sight.

But with the war, everything changed. What had stayed mainly in the shadows came forward. Magic and monsters had always been at the edge of man's perception, just out of sight, but enough in mind to make him wary of the dark. The scale of death and destruction in the war tore open a rift in what the theorists called another dimension, and what the necromancers called this plane of existence. The religionists called it what they always had: Hell. It was as if a new charge of dark energy had flowed into the world—igniting latent magical powers and reviving things long thought—and long hoped—extinct. Far worse, these dark energies flowing in from the Otherness, combined with the poisons and the pure hatred of the war, twisted and created new horrors. The Otherness – that anti-life force – had at its core a desire to destroy all that was in the world of man.

The Nazis, of course, saw this not as a problem, but as an opportunity. Chief among those who saw this rift in the world as a potential weapon was Dr. Übel, the brilliant transgenicist turned architect of the Black Sun's secret superweapons programs.

The young gorillion they called Jurg—a transgenic creature born of the genetic materials of both gorilla and lion—made hand motions that said,
The answer is seventy-two. Please, I want a banana now, Father.

Dr. Übel clapped his hands together giddily and laughed in delight.

“
Vunderbar!
It's absolutely wonderful!” he said. Then he signed,
Here is your banana, Jurg.

Dr. Übel's assistant, Otto—Jurg called him the Thin Man—was likewise impressed.

“Amazing, Doctor. And his math skills—he easily has attained the basic mathematics achievement level of a nine-year-old German student, or a thirteen-year-old American student,” Otto said. “And his vocabulary grows daily.”

“
Ja
, Otto, it's astounding. Our best work yet. With our transgenic modifications, Jurg has internalized a vocabulary of over twelve hundred words with just six month's instruction.”

Übel scratched the maned neck of the three-year-old adolescent simian-feline mutant. Jurg smiled a closed-lip, happy smile at her “father.”

“Of course,” Dr. Übel continued, “he still has trouble with abstracts and higher concepts. Watch.”

The doctor signed to the gorillion,
When you reach maturity I am going to surgically replace your limbs with clockwork mechanisms, Jurg.

Jurg simply smiled.

The doctor sighed. “You see? He's not even curious as to what I mean. Poor, incurious Jurg.”

The gorillion sneezed, spraying Übel directly in the face with green phlegm. The doctor removed his glasses to wipe them on his pocket square. Otto tried his level best, but he couldn't help that a small giggle escaped. He squelched it when he saw the angry look that flashed across the doctor's face. Then Übel smiled.

“It's okay, Otto,” he reassured the frightened lab assistant. “It's a big man who can laugh at himself.”

Otto let out a sigh. He had to stifle another laugh; the doctor was only five feet two inches tall.

A black-uniformed SS junior officer rushed into the laboratory. He gave a stiff-arm salute and the obligatory
“Sieg heil!”

“Dr. Übel! Reichsführer Himmler requests your presence in the General's Hall!” the young aide shouted. Übel had observed the aides all had a penchant for shouting.

“
Ach
—Project Gefallener, I should expect. They have, no doubt, approved my request to proceed in readying the fifth phase test. Excellent,” Dr. Übel said. “Officer, I will need you to stay and help get Jurg back to his cage.”

“Jawohl!”
the junior officer shouted.

Otto looked at Dr. Übel quizzically.

Übel signed to the gorillion,
Jurg, break the Thin Man's arms.

Just before he closed the door behind him and Otto began screaming, Dr. Übel said over his shoulder, “I am not a big man, Otto.”

General's Hall, North Tower

Wewelsburg Castle

A
s always, Reinhard Heydrich was at Himmler's side. He was so well trained, some joked quietly, Heydrich didn't even need a leash anymore. Those who didn't joke quietly, of course, tended to disappear.

Ironically, Heydrich welcomed underestimation. The man was brilliant beyond words; brilliant enough to know that even his young age was a handicap despite the fact he was twice the strategist, organizer, and Nazi that his master was. He could afford to bide his time, waiting in the shadows of the New Order to serve as its master for the next generation.

The regular members of the Black Sun sat at their positions, including Josef “Sepp” Deitrich, commandant of the Waffen-SS. Deitrich was one of the few actual military veterans among the many seated here, even though all wore resplendent military or paramilitary uniforms. He had more than a little contempt for those who wore a uniform now, when they hadn't during the war. Before the meeting began he was grousing rather loudly about the lack of cooperation between the industrial sector and his Waffen-SS.

Deitrich was a singular soldier and leader. In the Great War he had served as one of the first mechanized crawler and panzer commanders, where he'd lead a steam and diesel powered force of the first generation of land ships that broke through the British trenches at the Somme. After the war, he joined the
freikorps
militia, having had few other prospects in the economic depression that beset Germany. In 1920, after an ordinary bout of political street violence, he'd decided to switch sides and join the nascent National Socialist party. He was attracted to its promises of a revitalized, remilitarized Germany. With time, he eventually became an adherent to the Thule Society doctrines, and his embrace of its Aryan mysticism gave important credibility to the society in veteran military circles.

But that's not why he was an important leader in the New Order. He was a true believer in the whole doctrine: Aryan racial destiny, systematic socialism tempered by strict nationalism, and the brotherhood of blood loyalty. He believed in the blood and in the equal sharing of sacrifice and reward of all within the Reich—social justice for all Aryans who served the collective whole.

Deitrich initially served the National Socialist German Worker's Party as Hitler's chauffeur, but he soon proved his worth as a military man, Aryan scholar, and political strategist. Now, five years after the Nazi takeover, he was one of the two men who had created a whole new branch of the armed services for Germany—the elite Waffen-SS. It easily outnumbered the old German Army—the Heer—and was second to none in dedication to the New Order doctrine. Recruits were physically perfect and could prove their pure Aryan bloodline back over two hundred years. They were fanatically loyal to the Führer first, and to the SS second. They were the storm troopers of the New Order—it was the sound of their boots that would accompany the spread of National Socialism all over the world.

Deitrich's second in command, Major Hoffstetter, was likewise a Great War veteran, but as a clerk who served in a supply company. Hoffstetter and Heydrich were the architects of the
eisensatzgruppen
liquidation squads operating in the Russian Dead Zone to the east and the Damned Lands to the west. These were the regions where the sheer amount of slaughter, poison gases, firebombing, and dark energies released by the Great War had destroyed all life, except the broken and twisted things that nature never intended and that madmen dreamt of in nightmares. The Otherness that spilled out bore the monsters that now roamed the barrens to the east and west of Germany. More disturbing, it was speculated that the doorway might still lie open, and the life-hating Otherness was still coming into this world.

The
einsatzgruppen
units were tasked with cleansing the landscape of the mutations and
untermensch
—sub-humans—in those decaying fields. It was a useless endeavor. But the squads had first brought back the samples of creatures and artifacts that were the genesis of Project Gefallener. Since they couldn't clean up the hell unleashed on their borders, the Germans were damned well going to use it to their advantage. To that end they brought in scientists, alchemists, necromancers, transgenicists, and degreed madmen of all types to harness everything from the dark energies that emanated and radiated from the zones to the mutations that now lived there. Under Dr. Übel's leadership, they sought to weaponize the evil they found—in whatever form they could. A whole unit of older SS men, the Death's Head Legion—those deemed secretly more expendable, as they were past their physical prime and had already fathered children for the Reich—were brought in to serve as everything from test subjects to cannon fodder.

Though he'd never fought in a single battle, Hoffstetter was a uniquely cruel man not afraid to lead these cleansing operations against unarmed civilians. It was rumored he enjoyed hunting the few people and many things that roamed the Dead Zone. For him killing was sport—so long as the quarry couldn't shoot back.

While note taking was not allowed in the General's Hall, it was necessary that certain details might by necessity be taken down. Or conversely, a member might need exhibits to present to other members. Thus each member of the Black Sun had one junior SS officer as an aide-de-camp. They would not take notes but rather be responsible for remembering any detailed data necessary for a member. These junior officers were taken from among the top percentage of graduates from the SS officer's academy at Wewelsburg—and screened repeatedly for the highest security clearance.

Deitrich's aide-de-camp, Untersturmführer Hans Bonhoeffer, just nineteen and a volunteer from Breslau who came up in the Hitler Youth, provided Hoffstetter and Deitrich various charts and updates. He was a favorite of Deitrich's. The young, dark-haired officer was a virtual boy wonder—infallibly efficient at staff work as well as a highly competitive athlete and soldier in the field despite his shorter stature.

Colonel Uhrwerk sat motionless, as always, listening to the discussion while his cold, calculating intellect analyzed probabilities, tactics, statistics, strategies, and new data. That Uhrwerk neither subscribed to nor had faith in the mystical elements of Dr. Übel's work or the Thule propositions was irrelevant—he had seen evidence of the dark supernatural entities into which the doctor had tapped.

“We have a viable sample of the GR-68 source compound,” Himmler said.

“Herr Reichsführer,” Übel said, “what we have is not a sample of the GR-68 source, but rather a catalyzed sample drawn after cellular mutation and degeneration, introduced in suboptimal conditions for our desired outcome.”

Even Heydrich wasn't following exactly. Uhrwerk took the lead, first adjusting the speech modulator in his metal mask.

“Doctor, explain the complexity first and how it relates to your requirements,” he said.

Dr. Übel wiped his forehead with his pocket square.

“The process of the introduction of GR-68 is a five axis variable. It involves chemical, biological, radiological, alchemical, and paranormal processes. With the addition of each point of the axis, complexity increases by geometric progression.

“For example, take the most basic sixteenth century infantry musket,” he continued. “It was essentially a crude metal pipe stuffed with gunpowder and shot. It was a chemical device with the most primitive of mechanical aspects—almost a singular axis. Thus it was simple with base efficiency. Compare it to a modern bolt-action rifle—a true chemical/mechanical tool, much more complex than a first generation musket and requiring precision machine parts and exacting chemical formula. The rifle is far more efficient and offers a greater rate of fire and accuracy.

“The Maxim water-cooled machine gun of the Great War, in turn, is a chemical/mechanical/hydraulic device—many orders more complex than a bolt action rifle, far more complex to create and maintain, and far more efficient and effective. Likewise, the dragon-belcher is a simple chemical pressure device, while in turn the Grupps steam-railgun combines chemical, mechanical, alchemical, steam, magnetic, hydraulic, and other elements and is of several higher orders of complexity.”

Himmler nodded. He failed to see where this was going, but then the Reichsführer was a man who gave as much credence to astrology as astronomy, and more to phrenology than psychology.