Shadows Will Fall (2 page)

Many of the interior iron bars and manacles were as old as the castle, but the new Nazi tenants didn't rely on any of those measures, even if their stay was to be temporary. If nothing else, the Germans were efficient. Where age had weakened iron bars, steel ones had been installed. The rusted old cage doors on each individual cell and all of the locks had been replaced by modern ones, freshly welded and anchored into the stone.

The SS guards roughly pushed each of the five—Rucker, Terah, Deitel, Filotoma, and Amria—into their individual cells. The cells were about eight feet wide and four deep. Deitel, Terah, and Rucker were on one side; Filotoma and Amria were across from them. They removed Amria's gag but placed her hands in special manacles. They were now encased from fingertip to elbow in solid steel and bound together at three points. She would not be doing any conjuring. The guards removed the manacles from the others.

The main door to the dungeon area was slammed shut behind the last guard, and the loud steel clacking of the locks being set followed.

No one spoke for a few minutes.

Deitel heard rapid breathing from somewhere. He looked to his left, through the thick crisscross of bars, and saw Terah leaning against the far wall of her cell where it connected to the cell in which they'd thrown Rucker. He was about to ask if she was okay when he heard her whispering something as quietly as she could. He couldn't see Rucker through the mesh of bars on the far side.

Terah had wedged her hand through the bars to Rucker's cell and was holding his hand. Rucker, it seemed, was trying to deal with the claustrophobia he'd been cursed with all his life.

Deitel couldn't say why, but he knew not to interrupt.

After a minute or so, he could no longer hear Rucker's rapid breathing.

The silence, though, was oppressive. Locked in an old, underground dungeon beneath an SS encampment in the castle of the legendary vampire lord, Draculae.

A day ago it would have sounded ludicrous.

But now it was all too real.

The light through the narrow windows waned. Defeat, like the growing darkness, enveloped Deitel.

Exhaustion took the doctor. He fell asleep on the cold, dirty, cell floor.

D
eitel didn't know how long he'd dozed—couldn't have been more than a half hour. He'd been awakened by someone saying something loud—he was too disoriented to discern what, though.

He sat upright but his head hung low. There was just enough moonlight now to see into the other cells. Terah and Filotoma were whispering.

Then he remembered what was happening.

It was all over.

Darkness would fall on the world as surely as it had this dungeon.

They had tried, but there was too much arrayed against them.

The Nazis had the Spear of Destiny.

The army of darkness was going to march across the world.

They'd lost.

He was so tired.

Then Rucker's voice cut through the dungeon.

“All right, people listen up—we've got work to do,” he said.

Deitel looked upward and saw Rucker's face. The moonlight flashed on his lopsided smile. Deitel's eyes widened and Rucker held his finger to his lips. The last thing Rucker had whispered to him marching to the dungeon was that once they were inside, don't talk, because their captors might be listening.

“Don't worry, Doc. While you were catching up on your zzz's, we made sure the krau—they haven't bugged us,” Rucker said. “Come on, there's work to do.”

“Work?” Amria hissed, disgusted. “We are in their jail. Surrounded by the Nazis. They have the spear. And it's all your fault.”

The mirth that had been missing from Rucker's tone for a while was back now, to the point that he seemed almost giddily jovial. “What? Nazis on every side?”

“Yes,” Amria said angrily.

“Outstanding. That simplifies things. That means they won't get away from us,” he said. “All right, folks, inventory time—Terah? What you got for me?”

“Three bobby pins,” she said, pulling them from her hair. She reached down to her safari boot and twisted the heel. Inside was a compartment with a small, folded penknife. The other heel revealed a coiled twenty-four inches of high-tensile wire. “And these.”

She saw the surprise on the doctor's face.

“Tools of the trade,” she said.

Amria sat with her back to the other cells and her arms crossed. But Deitel could see the curious look peeking through her anger.

Filotoma was pulling off his own belt. “A belt. Pretty long one. The
boche
did not find my flask—poor Nick's ex-wives couldn't either—so eight ounces of 180 proof,” he said. There was a gulp in the darkness. “I mean seven ounces.”

“Deitel? Well?” Rucker said.

“Um . . .” the doctor said, patting his pockets. “I have . . .” He fished around his jacket for anything else the captors hadn't taken. “—a pack of Bazooka Joe bubble gum that Chuy gave me.”

“Hang on to that,” Rucker said. “Everyone huddle in best we can.”

All of them except Amria leaned into the front of their cells. Amria wanted no part of it. In fact, when she turned her head and caught Rucker's gaze eye, there was a murderous glint in her eye.

The cross-check pattern of thick bars left four inch by four inch open squares through which they could see each other.

“What is he doing?” the doctor whispered to Terah.

“This isn't his first time in a prison. He was in three different
luftstalags
in the war, and one Algerian prison after,” she whispered back.

“Okay, what do we know? Terah?” Rucker said.

“There were two field cars and a staff car in the outer courtyard,” she said. “The staff car was parked facing in. It was riding high, so it's likely not refueled, and no use off the main road. The field cars were both parked facing out, as were two steam crawlers. So they're ready and fueled, but the steam crawlers would take a long time to get their boilers hot. One troop truck. Sitting heavy. So it probably just arrived and is not unloaded. The two field cars are our best choice on the ground, provided we stick to the main roads and trails.”

Deitel and Amria were, frankly, awed at this point. When had they reconnoitered the castle grounds? And in such detail? As they were marched through it?

“Right,” Rucker said. “I saw moorings for two large airships on the top of the southern wall. Neither present. Helium tanks and the usual ground support equipment. Large heavy-duty cargo net and some weather balloons. Outside the walls about three hundred feet on the approach side there's a short, inclined makeshift airfield with a Fiesler Fi-156 Stork monoplane. The thing has a light, sturdy frame and 240-hp engine that makes it good for short takeoff and landings on rough terrain like this. They had to have landed that thing going up the incline to stop it on such a short runway. We could maybe squeeze maybe three of us in there, but not all five. Takeoff would be problematic. If the wind and weight aren't right, we crash.”

Filotoma spoke up.

“They had standard wooden shipping crates stacked three high and ten deep, eight across, in the southwest corner of the inner courtyard. I make that . . .” He calculated the figures in his head effortlessly. “ . . . say twenty-three metric tons of material. Given all the higgledy-piggledy tech engines and generators I saw, figure at least provisions for two thousand people.”

Filotoma paused and thought for a moment. “But I didn't see a well head, and we're pretty high up, so make it just over a thousand men if the crates include potable water containers,” he corrected.

Deitel realized he shouldn't have been surprised a merchant of such wide interests could estimate cargo so instinctually.

“Right,” Rucker said. “What about those personnel? There were technicians and engineers in gray coveralls and goggles, all piecing together some kind of a monumental technological engine platform. Directed by scientists in white.”

Terah said, “They had standard storm troopers standing security points, and on rotating, overlapping patrols.”

“Which means they'd discover a missing guard within a few minutes,” Rucker said.

“But they're still wearing those stupid Senf masks on a field assignment,” Terah said.

“Meaning if we move fast,” Filotoma said, “we can change the places with them.”

Rucker looked at the Greek's ample belly and gave him a half smile.

“Okay,
you
can, then, skinny boy,” Filotoma said. “Not old, fat Nick.”

Terah said, “I also caught what looked like small detachments of storm troopers in camouflage smocks marching out of the castle.”

Rucker nodded. “Field patrols. Covering the countryside around the citadel. And I made four teams of snipers and spotters stationed on the spires, looking outward. They really don't want anyone wandering in here . . . or out.

“Everyone saw the yard exercisers, right?” he said. “Any thoughts on what that was about?”

Even Deitel had seen what looked like three full companies of soldiers doing calisthenics in the courtyard.

“I've never seen that kind of uniform,” Terah said.

Deitel remembered it now—they wore some kind of burgundy colored coverall with black trim. There was something else he'd noticed . . . something off.

“They were workers? Field engineers?” Filotoma offered.

“No,” Rucker said. “Their shoulder tabs and sleeve patches were Waffen-SS—a collection of noncoms, mostly. Why that many sergeants in a military company?” he asked.

Deitel had it.

“They were all well into their thirties and early forties, weren't they?”

Rucker thought about it and nodded. “Dead on, Doctor. Not exactly the usual cream of the crop, fresh-faced warriors the Waffen-SS likes to post to important missions. I don't know what it means, but they wouldn't bring close to a thousand middle-aged noncommissioned officers out here without a reason.”

“There's something else,” Deitel said. “I listened to the guards—storm troopers—when they escorted us. Word has spread among them, the SS rank and file here. They know who you are, Fox. You're wanted at the highest levels. Which means they know you're dangerous. You should have heard their voices. They've heard what you did to Skorzeny and Schädel. They're rattled.”

Rucker nodded. “Maybe we can use that.”

Rucker was now giving out assignments exactly as he had as a POW during the war. They were prisoners of a secret war now.

“Okay, Terah—you're on security. Nick? Scrounging. And let's start brainstorming. Kurt?”

“Sir?” Deitel found himself saying.

“You're medical. Naturally. Check everyone you can. Keep track of when we get food and water. Place like this, you'll want to watch for infections and bites first. Even a scrape can turn deadly in no time. Do whatever you can with what little we have. Get Nick's flask and safeguard it. Keep wounds clean. We don't know how long we'll be here.”

“Right,” the doctor said.

Rucker and Filotoma started coming up with escape plans, arguing through the cell doors over various ideas. Deitel directed Terah through a self-examination of every cut, scrape, and bruise. He portioned out just enough of Nick's 180 proof to clean a few open scrapes.

“You goddamned fools,” Amria said from her cell—equal parts anger and mocking.

“How so?” Terah asked.

“You're all so confident, making your plans,” she said. “Fate laughs at the plans of men.”

“No, making plans is what lends us confidence,” Terah said. “And fate didn't count on one thing.”

“What is that?” Amria asked.

“The Nazis may have the perfect jail here, under rock and stone and a six-hundred-year-old castle. They have numbers and they have the spear. But they made a terrible mistake.”

“What do you mean?” Deitel asked.

“They put something in here that you never, ever want to put in a dungeon like this,” Terah said. “Not if you want to keep people in. Not if you don't want to lose.”

Amria looked around their cells at the detritus, bones, debris, and rusted chains. Deitel did, too, seeking a weapon of some kind.

“What is it?” Amria asked finally, her anger no less apparent.

Terah directed their gaze across at Rucker. When he felt their eyes on him, he looked up and gave them a wave, a thumbs-up, and a one-sided grin.

“Him,” she said.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Poenari Citadel

Wallachia Region

F
irst they came for Rucker, Deitel, and Terah. The Germans knew those three had been tracking the Spear of Destiny from the beginning. They would eventually get around to interrogating Nicholas Filotoma and the Gypsy girl who wouldn't even say her name, but those two were considered secondary. In fact, questioning any of them at this point was merely protocol.

After all, they now had the Spear of Destiny and the means to use it to its full potential. Himmler's brainchild—Project Gefallener—was finally coming to its point of execution. The dynamics of world power would change overnight.

Project Gefallener would give the Reich a new army of invincible soldiers—fallen heroes—to make that dream a reality. The Death's Head Legion—one thousand aging volunteers from the Waffen-SS who had fathered for the Reich three children and who had served faithfully—would be the vanguard of this new, unstoppable force. Of course, the volunteers did not know the procedure they were to undergo or its implications. They simply thought they would be transformed into a new breed of Aryan supersoldiers.

Tomorrow night, at the apex of the full moon, Dr. Übel would transform this legion.

But for now, the Nazis wanted some last questions answered and disposed of properly—information and criminals alike.

So they would question the prisoners and be done with them.

The commander of the task force occupying Poenari castle, SS Major Joachim Hoffstetter,
untercommandant
of the Waffen-SS, enjoyed the trappings of the citadel. Despite decay and neglect, the castle was secure and sophisticated. The countryside was marvelously beautiful, if rugged and severe. Hoffstetter felt like the Reichsführer of this future province of the Nazi Reich.

He rather liked that idea.

Hoffstetter chose the grand hall of the master's tower for the formal “interview” of the three prisoners.

He wanted this matter disposed of quickly. He knew more than a few tricks that might speed things along, giving him a psychological dominance of the prisoners. The table and chairs at which his committee would sit were raised above the chairs for the prisoners. They would be brought out in chains and barefoot, adding to their sense of exposure and helplessness.

Good, fragrant food, iced water, and hot coffee would be placed on the committee table—a harsh and distracting temptation after the prisoners had spent the last thirty-six hours without food and with only brackish water to drink. The placement of flags and portraits of Hitler and Himmler would add a subtle, psychological sense of finality—as if the interrogators were in complete control of even this foreign space.

And then there was Colonel Uhrwerk, whose very presence and relentlessly perfect logic intimidated—chilled to the bone—even his superior officers. His metal mask betrayed no emotion, of course. The only sound he made came from the tick-tock of his clockwork parts.

A
t the appointed time, the committee gathered. Hoffstetter's uniform was immaculate, as were those of his guards. Colonel Uhrwerk sat motionless. Hauptman Kreuger was the model SS warrior-officer. Even the ever strange Dr. Übel, dressed in his ubiquitous, high-collar white lab smock with long black gloves and thick-lensed goggles, should serve the purpose of unnerving the prisoners. Bach played quietly on the phonograph.

The prisoners were marched in. They looked cleaner than Hoffstetter expected, but their heads hung low and their arms were listless against the manacles. The guards stood them in front of the committee table.

Hoffstetter would make them stand for three minutes in silence, and then proceed to read the facts from their Gestapo files, further reinforcing the sense that there was nothing he didn't already know about Rucker, Terah, and Deitel. He signaled for only two guards to remain at the back of the room—the prisoners would naturally take from it that the committee felt the three posed almost no threat.

The first thirty seconds ticked by. Hoffstetter checked his watch. Another two and a half minutes and he would—

“Right, then,” Rucker said loudly. The three prisoners all squared their shoulders and then stood in relaxed, confident stances. Deitel stood with his hands casually behind his neck, like a runner stopping to catch his wind. Terah crossed her arms. Rucker notched his thumbs into his belt loops, cowboy style.

At the table, Hoffstetter, Kreuger, and Dr. Übel looked back and forth at one another. Only Colonel Uhrwerk didn't react.

Rucker started pacing around—careful not to step too close to the table lest he raise the guard's alert.

“Your masters must not have a lot of love for you, knowing as they do the risks involved in this little experiment,” Rucker said. “You do know if you go through with this you're all going to die, right?”

Hoffstetter shuffled through his papers and tried to retake the initiative, but before he could get more than a word out, Rucker was walking about the room, talking.

“Now, even though you're only a major, you're the head honcho, right? I'm guessing by the way the masked man with the colonel's insignia . . .” Rucker nodded to Uhrwerk “Hello? Anyone in there? I'm guessing he's an observer or something.”

It was all happening too fast for Hoffstetter to get a word in edgewise. He sputtered. None of the subordinate officers at the table would speak before the major, according to protocol, so they were no help. Uhrwerk might not speak at all.

Since Rucker hadn't made any threatening move, the guards hadn't raised their weapons. The major knew if he signaled the guards now, Rucker would cement his hold on the upper hand—the major would be conceding he needed armed guards to take control of a conversation with manacled prisoners.

“But you—the little chrome dome in the lab coat—have you told them what they're really dealing with? The danger they're in?” Rucker asked. He turned to the other officers. “These mindless feeders he wants to create—”

Übel interrupted, “They are
draugrkommandos.
Intelligent, stabilized, reasoning, and immortal. Not mindless feeders.”

The committee members looked at Übel in surprise.

He'd just given the prisoners vital, secret information.

Deitel had taken a seat and put his feet up on one of the other chairs.

“Assuming Dr. Doomsday there maintains control of the introduction process and stabilizes the necrotic process,” he said, “you're still dealing with an infection and contagion variable seven times as aggressive as the common cold. Even if these things don't try to eat you, there's no telling how many ways the resulting virus will get passed to the second generation of the living.”

“You ought to listen to him,” Terah said, her manacled hands on one hip. “Disease and infection control is his specialty, unlike Dr. Demented there.”

“It could be they foul the water,” Deitel went on. “Could be airborne. The slightest cut on your hand. Maybe even a mere shaving nick. Within a day or so your heart stops beating. And then you can't move. Your body shuts down while you're alive. Can you imagine the pain? Walking about while suffering rigor mortis?”

“That's what you're in store for,” Rucker said. “You won't be able to control them. They'll turn on you, like as not, just as quick as they turn on your enemies. That's what we were trying to prevent. That's why we're here. That's all you'll get from us. Put that in your report to Berlin. Oh, excuse me, ‘Germania.' I presume the torture chamber is somewhere back near the dungeon cells—makes sense even for thirteenth century architects. We'll be on our way over there, if you want. You warm up the hot pokers and limber up your bullwhips.”

Terah and Deitel lined up behind Rucker and they marched across the expanse of the great hall toward the door. Deitel whistled the tune to “La Marseillaise
.”
Rucker and Terah sang the words to the Texas Freehold version, a gift from the French on the Freehold's fiftieth anniversary of independence.

Arise, people of the Lone Star land,

The test of your mettle has arrived.

When tyranny threatens Texas

We must ensure liberty survives.

The trumpet sounds the call to defense

And like those who rose before to make us free,

We shall meet every hardship

To assure the success of liberty.

To arms Texicans,

Arise, militia legions

March on, march on

Rise against the foe

And remember the Alamo.

The trio of prisoners stopped well before the main hall door, in plain sight of the guards in front of them. The guards looked to Hoffstetter with an expression that said, “What the hell do we do?”

Hoffstetter waved them out, to the torture chamber. He looked around the table. Colonel Uhrwerk was staring straight through him. Hoffstetter felt shame and anger.

“You lost control,” Dr. Übel said.

“No, Doctor,” Colonel Uhrwerk said. “The major never had control to begin with.”

The recorder, Bonhoeffer—the undercover Prometheus agent tasked with assisting Rucker and his team—wondered who exactly he needed to help save here.

“What the hell just happened?” Hauptman Kreuger asked.

For Bonhoeffer—Lysander's mole deep in the Black Circle—it took all of his training not to laugh.