SecondWorld (24 page)

“Bullshit,” Miller said. If someone like Vesely knew about the attack, someone in power would have figured it out, too. The Mustang’s engine cut off. The music fell silent. The driver got out of his car and said something, but Miller wasn’t paying attention.

“And yet you say they are ‘after’ me.
Probudit se.
Let me ask
you
a question. Why should I bother speaking to you? Hmm? I have been publishing everything I have uncovered about the Nazi secret programs for years. The Wunderwaffe. The Bell. The experiments. I have written letters. No one listens.”

“Hey! Who are you?” an angry voice interrupted. Miller glanced up and saw a burly man with a long beard approaching.

“Why should I believe you will be any different, Survivor?” Vesely asked.

“I know you stole Steve’s truck,” the bearded man said as he stopped just shy of the driver’s side door. His clenched fists and body language said he was ready for a fight. “Heard you even left the nuts behind. Now get the fuck out before I knock—”

Miller’s already worn patience snapped. He pulled the door handle and kicked the door open as hard as he could. The hard metal doorframe connected a solid blow with the man’s forehead. He sprawled back, rolling over the hood of his Mustang, and collapsed onto the parking lot.

Miller didn’t give the man another second of his time and seethed his anger into the phone. “You will listen to me because I just came from the home of Aldric Huber, who helped recruit the science team behind these attacks. Because I’ve killed more than fifteen of these Nazi assholes already. Because I have a direct line to the president of the United States. And because I’m the goddamn fucking Survivor.”

A moment of silence. “You met Huber?”

“Yes.”

“And he was forthcoming?”

“Until a sniper put two bullets in him.”

“
Hovno.
What did you learn?”

“That United States scientific superiority has Nazis to thank.”

Vesely responded with a sniff of a laugh that said, “Duh,” and followed it with, “Anything else?”

“Just your name from the sniper’s dead body.”

“Huber could have told you everything.…”

Miller would have strangled the man had he been present. “I
know.
”

“But,” Vesely said, “now you have the Cowboy.”

Miller heard three dull thuds in the background. “What was that?”

“Hold on,” Vesely said.

The banging came again. Miller recognized the sound as someone pounding on a door. “Vesely! Damnit!” With no reply, all he could do was listen.

He could hear the tinny voice of the drive-through attendant, the squeaky brakes of a car stopping at the road, and the sound of a baby crying from one of the other parked cars, but not a sound through the phone. A stream of curses ran through Miller’s mind. If they lost Vesely, he and Adler would just be two names on a hit list who posed no threat. Five days later, they’d be corpses along with most of the Earth’s oxygen-dependant life.

Miller pressed the phone hard against his ear when he heard footsteps and heavy breathing.

“Survivor,” Vesely said. “Are you there?”

“I’m here, Cowboy.”

“They are here.”

“Can you get out?”

“I am gunslinger.”

Miller appreciated the man’s confidence, but didn’t share it. The men he’d faced were well-trained professionals. The only reason he’d survived was because he was better. “We need to meet.”

“Agreed. One hour at—”

“I’m in the United States.”

“Can you get here?”

Miller considered this and said, “Yes. I can be there tomorrow.” The president could make it happen.

The banging on the door grew loud. They were kicking their way in.

“Wunderwaffe,” Vesely said quickly. “Page one forty-two!”

The door shattered.

Miller heard shouting.

Gunshots.

Then a dial tone.

Miller stared at the phone. Had Vesley been killed? He hated being one step behind, especially when every step forward resulted in someone dying.

The passenger’s door opened and a woman with short black hair and large sunglasses got in. Miller nearly pulled a pistol on the woman, but then she spoke.

“How do I look?” Adler said. “A good disguise?”

Miller took a deep breath and leaned his head back. “I damn near shot you.”

Adler looked at the phone in his hand. “Who were you speaking to?”

“I found Vesely. We’re going to meet him.”

“But that’s great,” she said. “Why do you look so upset?”

Miller handed the phone to Adler and started the engine. “Because he might be dead when we get there.”

34

“Four hours,” Miller said before hanging up the phone with President Bensson. Normally, he’d consider arranging a covert international flight in just four hours good time, but under the circumstances it felt like an eternity. Of course, with commercial flights grounded and the military full of homegrown Nazi spies, there were very few options on the table. The president’s solution would be hard to miss, but would nicely conceal the true purpose of the flight—to deliver him to a secret rendezvous with a Czech conspiracy theorist who might have information that could save the world.

Miller leaned back in his green metal chair. He looked at the clear blue sky and saw no hint of red. He allowed a slight grin to form on his face. In addition to providing a flight, Bensson had delivered some good news. Brodeur survived, thanks to a bulletproof vest Miller didn’t know the man was wearing. The impacts had knocked him unconscious and bruised his ribs, but he had suffered no serious injuries. That didn’t mean he’d be happy about being back on duty. Brodeur was one of the few men Miller currently trusted, and he’d requested that the FBI agent be on the flight when it arrived at the nearby Portsmouth International Airport at Pease—formerly known as the Pease Air Force Base until 1991 when the Strategic Air Command closed up shop. The base was still home to the Air National Guard and a variety of specialized military refueling aircraft, but the majority of the two-hundred-acre base had been converted for civilian use.

“One cheeseburger with Swiss, mushrooms, Thousand Island, and enough calories to kill you before the Nazis get a chance,” Adler said as she walked out of the seaside grill carrying two red baskets filled with sandwiches and fries. She put Miller’s burger down on the table and joined him. The restaurant stood on the bank of the Piscataqua River in Portsmouth, just ten minutes from Pease. “You realize you had a burger a half hour ago, yes?”

“Who knows when our next meal will come,” Miller said. “Calories equal energy.”

Adler smiled. “Like a seal storing blubber for the winter?”

“Actually,” Miller said, took a bite, and offered a food-muffled, “exactly.”

The pair dug into their food and ate quickly. When their sandwiches were gone and they turned to the fries, Adler restarted the conversation.

“Any luck with the president?”

Miller ate a French fry and nodded. “We’ll be airborne in four hours.”

Adler froze with a fry halfway to her mouth. “What? How?”

“You’ll find out when we get there.” Before Adler could object, Miller added, “Brodeur, the FBI agent from my apartment. He’s alive. He’ll be joining us.”

She placed the fry down and rested her head in her hands, as though she’d found out she hadn’t been convicted of a crime. “Thank God.”

Her reaction surprised Miller at first, but then he understood. “You’ve been blaming yourself for what happened?”

“If I hadn’t been there, things would have turned out differently.”

“Actually, you’re right,” he said.

She looked up at him.

“If you hadn’t been there, I would have been in the shower when they stormed the apartment. I would be dead.”

Adler sat back. “But Brodeur nearly died.”

“It’s likely he would have been shot either way.”

“But—”

Miller grew serious. He leaned forward, elbows on the red-painted picnic table. “Elizabeth. We are at war. We are outgunned, outnumbered, and have zero intel on the enemy. It is very likely more people are going to die. Including me. Including you. You need to be prepared for that. We are the last-ditch effort to stop this thing. If I die, you and Brodeur will take it to the end, even if it kills you both. If you die, I won’t stop to mourn your death until these people are stopped or I’m dead, too.”

Adler pushed her remaining food away and leaned back. She crossed her arms. “That’s cold.”

“Going to be a hell of a lot colder when six billion people are asphyxiating in five days.” He pushed her food back to her. “Finish it. Might be your last real meal.”

“Because I might be dead, you mean?”

Miller gave a nod. “And because as soon as we take off, we’re not going to stop moving until this thing is run down.”

He gave that a second to sink in. She sat forward and continued eating, although each bite was now forced. But the reality check would help keep her alive.

Miller turned his attention back to the iPhone. It was time to find out what was on page 142. He’d called the president first because he needed to set things in motion. But the pilots wouldn’t know where they were flying until Miller told them. And Miller wouldn’t know where that was until he reopened the digital copy of
Nazi Wunderwaffe and Secret Societies.

The opened the e-book and scrolled through pages. As he neared page 142 a chapter heading caught his attention. “The Bell.”

“What?” Adler asked.

“The Bell. It’s the title of the chapter Vesely sent us to.”

“Is it a church bell?”

Miller ignored her. Something about the words sounded familiar. Then he remembered. “This is it!”

“You found something?”

“The Bell. Before Huber died, he said, ‘The bell tolls.’ I thought he was talking about his death, but he could have been referring to this.”

Adler slid her chair around the table and they read it together.

The Bell was one of many code names for a secret project that the Nazis began in 1944. The sole goal of this
Wunderwaffe,
or “wonder weapon,” was mass destruction on a grand scale. The program grew in tandem to the nuclear arms development in Germany, but was considered a higher priority. While weapons like atom bombs, fuel air bombs, guided missiles, stealth planes, sound cannons, and a variety of other exotic weapons were classified as
Kriegswichtig,
or “important for the war,” the Bell had been deemed
Kriegsentscheidend,
which translates to “decisive for the war.”

The project was seen as a game changer. Something so important that only those integral to the project’s success were allowed to live to the war’s end. The pages mentioned several names Miller now recognized and explained the parts they played in the weapon’s development. Debus, Huber, Oberth, Gerlach—they were all there, including—

“Oh my God. My grandmother.”

Dr. Elizabeth Adler. University of Königsberg. Mathematician, unknown specialty.

Miller turned the page. Seeing her grandmother’s name listed among those Vesely had determined to be working on a project that might now be threatening all of humanity clearly weighed heavily on her, but easing her conscience could wait. He was more interested in what the Bell supposedly did and where they would be meeting Vesely.

An image on the next page showed a drawing of a bell-shaped object that was clearly not a bell, primarily because the bottom was not open. A block of text described the interior of the bell as two metallic cylinders that rotated in opposite directions. The cylinders were covered with mercury and attached to a hollowed-out core that held a purple liquid theorized to be composed of a thorium-beryllium-mercury compound designated Xerum-525.

Miller shook his head. It sounded like the same conspiracy theory bullshit that surrounded almost everything the military developed. He reminded himself that Vesely’s name sat just beneath his own on the hit list for a reason, and jumped back into the text.

Liquid nitrogen cooled the interior of the device, which stood at nine feet tall, five feet wide at its middle, and eight feet wide at its base. Vesely theorized that something called zero point energy, developed by Dr. Kurt Debus, provided over one million volts of current and powered the device. A quick peek ahead confirmed that an entire chapter had been dedicated to the subject. But Miller didn’t really care how the device was powered. He skimmed ahead until he came to a section that revealed the device’s effect on the human body.

He didn’t like what he read.

Just looking at the Bell from a distance required wearing special red goggles. A little closer and you’d enter the outer rim of some kind of energy field produced by the powered device. Just a few seconds of exposure would leave subjects with red, irritated skin resembling a sunburn. Closer still, the test subjects died due to radiation exposure. They died slowly and in agony. But the fates of those closest to the Bell seemed cruelest of all. The test subjects’ bodies turned to jelly from the inside out. The elements composing muscle, fat, blood, and other tissues separated. Bodies slid apart, as though melted.