By the Blood of Heroes (27 page)

Was that a hint of mockery he heard in Richthofen’s voice?

The German ace didn’t seem to notice Freeman’s sudden tension. He went on in the same matter-of-fact tone that he’d started with earlier. “It doesn’t have to be that way, you know.”

Freeman laughed. “Somehow I don’t see you giving me an aircraft and sending me on my merry way.”

Richthofen smiled, revealing the sudden flash of wet bone at his jawline. “On the contrary, Major, I’d be happy to do so.” He paused, then concluded, “Provided you were to join me.”

The American wasn’t certain he’d heard him correctly. “Excuse me?”

Richthofen leaned forward, and Freeman could see what he could only term an unholy light shining deep in the German officer’s eyes. “How many kills do you have now, Major? Seventy-four? Seventy-five?”

It was actually eighty-two, but he just shrugged and said, “Something like that, yes.”

“Ha! You are lying; I can tell. But no matter. A little modesty can be an asset for gentlemen like you and me,” Richthofen replied. “The truth of the matter is this. Whether it is seventy-five, eighty, or even one hundred kills, you are clearly the Allies’ top ace.”

Freeman didn’t try to argue. A fierce competition had sprung up in the early days of the war between fliers on both sides of the conflict. At first it had been a race first to see who could make five kills and become an ace, but as the war ground on and the better pilots lived to fight another day, it became a race for the top, to become the ace of aces, the ruler of the sky.

Richthofen had been clearly in the lead with eighty-nine kills when he’d been shot down that first time. That had been an incredible achievement, but what he’d done since was absolutely astonishing. In the last two years he’d bested twice as many pilots as he had in the four years prior to that, bringing his current total to 267, last Freeman knew. It could have gone even higher in the days Freeman was in captivity.

One of those “kills” was me,
Freeman thought.

Richthofen seemed to sense what he was thinking. “If you had not steered your plane into my own, there is a good possibility our encounter might have ended with you as the victor, rather than me.”

Freeman didn’t agree, but he politely inclined his head to acknowledge the implied compliment.

“We are the two best pilots on both sides of the conflict. Were you to join my Circus, there would be none who could oppose us! We would own the sky and could dictate whatever terms we wanted from the losers on the battlefield. Forget being a knight—you could be a duke, nay, a prince of the air!”

With you as king, of course,
Freeman thought in a slightly dazed fashion. Being asked to betray his country and join Richthofen was quite possibly the last thing Freeman had expected to hear. He was literally shocked into silence.

Richthofen went on. “I assure you, the
Auferstehung
process is a painless one, and it has been considerably refined since I underwent it as one of its first subjects, accidental as that incident might have been.”

The freiherr leaped to his feet, caught up in his own passionate rhetoric. “No longer will things like hunger or thirst plague you!” he said, pacing back and forth across the room. “No longer will your body be susceptible to the plights that can befall an ordinary man. You will be smarter, stronger, faster than you ever were before. None will be able to stand against us! The empire will be ours to command!”

Freeman knew at that moment that he was in the presence of a madman. The very notion that he would betray his country and join the man he had spent the last few years trying to send to his just reward was absolutely ludicrous, yet Richthofen obviously believed it might be possible or he wouldn’t have made the offer. That worried Freeman more than he wanted to let on, for if he turned Richthofen down, who knew how he would react?

Trying to buy some time during which he could figure a way out of the situation without getting shot on the spot, Freeman asked, “The Auferstehung process
?
What is that?”

The question seemed to bring Richthofen back to his senses. He stopped, shook his head as if to clear it, and looked hard at Freeman, as if checking to see if Freeman had noticed his irrational behavior.

Freeman made sure his expression did nothing to convey what he really thought:
coming back from the dead twice had certainly messed with the German ace’s mental stability and emotional health.

Apparently satisfied with what he saw, Richthofen relaxed. “I will explain the Auferstehung process tomorrow, when you’ve had a chance to rest. I’m sure what you’ve been through has been particularly draining. I will have Leutnant Adler escort you back to your quarters and see to it you are fed properly. We’ll talk again tomorrow.”

Just as quickly as it started, his audience with Richthofen was over. The German ace strode from the room without another word, only to be replaced several seconds later by his aide, Adler.

Soon thereafter, Freeman was returned to his quarters, as Richthofen called them, and locked inside to await whatever craziness tomorrow might bring.

As he listened to airplanes coming and going in the field outside, Freeman did his best to forget what Richthofen had said, but the words kept echoing inside his head.

Your flying days are over.

Your flying days are over.

Your flying days are over.

Chapter Thirty-four

VERDUN

O
nce Freeman was led from the sitting room, Richthofen returned. Gone was the sense of manic behavior that surrounded him only moments before, and in its place a cold, reptilian-like logic remained.

The truth was, his instability had all been an act. He wanted Freeman to underestimate him, so that when the time came, he’d be able to break the American flier without effort.

Richthofen was pouring himself a scotch from the decanter in the corner when he heard the door behind him open and then close again.

“Care for a drink, Docktor?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder at Eisenberg who stood in the room’s doorway.

“That would be excellent, Herr Richthofen.”

Richthofen handed the other man a glass full of the deep amber-red liquid and then picked up his own. With the requisite toast to the kaiser out of the way, he took a long pull on his drink, holding a folded piece of white cloth over the hole in the side of his jaw with his other hand while he did so, not wanting to waste any of the hundred-year-old liquor. He could barely taste it anymore, but he was determined to continue enjoying some of the activities common to his earlier life, and a good glass of scotch was one of them.

“You heard?” Richthofen asked, knowing the other man had been listening in on his exchange with Freeman.

“Of course. I thought your performance was quite remarkable, actually.”

Richthofen ignored the compliment; Eisenberg’s constant need to curry favor could be highly annoying, but right now Richthofen was too pleased with how the meeting had gone to care.

“What do you think? Will he survive the transformation process?” Richthofen asked.

“I believe so. He appears determined to survive regardless of what happens to him, which is an excellent sign that he’ll have the mental stamina necessary to come through with his mind intact. And thanks to Taschner, the infection in his leg is gone, giving him the physical toughness he’ll need to withstand the change as well.”

“Excellent,” Richthofen replied. He had plans for Freeman, important plans, and he preferred that the American ace come through the resurrection process with his sanity intact.

“Where are we in regard to Operation Stormcloud? Can we launch as anticipated?”

Eisenberg nodded. “We started production of the gas several weeks ago, when Taschner first let us know about the success rates he was seeing with the new compound. We completed the first batch at 1500 hours this afternoon.

“We’ll need thirty-six to forty-eight hours to properly load the canisters onto the
Megaera
and another five to six hours to prime the deployment system. After that, it will be entirely up to the pilot.”

Richthofen was pleased. The airship was ready to be loaded, and reports from the other facilities were equally positive. It looked like there was very little that could stop his forward momentum at this point. If he could turn Freeman to his cause, all the better, but one way or another, the Allies were about to learn what it meant to face the German juggernaut when it was led by one worthy of the role.

Then, when he had finished eliminating the empire’s enemy, he would turn his attention to the emperor himself. The Grand Council would be only too happy to replace that weak, insipid fool who currently occupied the palace with the man who had won this war quickly, decisively, and with a minimum of German casualties.

Feeling generous, Richthofen said, “I’m going to invite Taschner to join us for the launch. He deserves to understand the impact his contributions will have on the war effort. Besides, it will be good to finally meet the man.”

“As you wish, Herr Richthofen.”

Which, when you got right down to it,
Richthofen thought,
was what this was all about anyway. What he, Manfred von Richthofen, wanted. Nothing else really mattered.

Chapter Thirty-five

ON THE ROAD TO VERDUN

W
ith the help of a map found on the body of an oberleutnant at the scene of the ambush, Burke led the squad away from the farmhouse less than five minutes after the last shot had been fired. He was concerned that the truck fire would bring reinforcements, so he cut eastward through the forest rather than follow the contours of the road as he’d originally intended. He set an accelerated pace, worried as he was about what might happen to Freeman if word of the patrol’s destruction should reach the wrong ears. The men, too, seemed to understand the necessity; if they did not, they at least kept their complaints to themselves.

The forest was full of well-cleared trails and they made good time, covering several miles in short order. When they stopped for a break, Burke gathered the men together for a quick strategy session.

“We’re about two and a half miles from our objective. Without the intel from the partisan group, we don’t know what kind of defenses to expect at the camp, so from this point on we make as little noise as possible. If you need to communicate on the trail, use hand signals only. I want everyone to keep their eyes peeled as well. The last thing we want to do is walk into an enemy observation post.”

At the rate they’d been traveling, Burke anticipated that they would reach their objective, a thickly wooded area that overlooked the west side of camp, by late afternoon. They’d observe the target from that location and hopefully get an understanding of where Freeman was being kept. Once they knew that, they could decide on a specific plan to get him out.

The last section of their march proved uneventful. They made good time and reached the outer reaches of the camp right on time. But when they reached the tree line and looked out from cover at their objective, they received a major shock, leaving many of them staring openmouthed in surprise.

Stalag 113 was no more.

In its place was a battle-torn and fire-ravaged shell that had ceased functioning as a POW camp and was now nothing more than a silent witness to the catastrophe that had claimed it.

Several of the outlying buildings were nothing more than smoldering ruins from which smoke still drifted. Large holes had been torn in the fence line, and one of the guard towers looked like it had been smashed flat by a giant’s foot. For a moment Burke wondered why they hadn’t seen the smoke during their approach, then realized the thick tree cover had prevented them from doing so. Now they couldn’t miss it, just as they couldn’t miss the bodies littering the ground inside the compound.

Jack might be down there, dead or dying,
Burke thought and was surprised by the anxiety it caused. He hadn’t thought he had any feelings left for his half brother, especially not good ones.

With a wave of his hand, Burke led the squad forward.

They stopped just inside the broken front gates and surveyed the death and destruction before them. Bodies lay everywhere they looked. Some were dressed in the bluish-gray uniforms that were the hallmark of the kaiser’s army while others wore lighter gray coveralls with the letter K on their backs, an abbreviation Burke knew was used to reflect their status as prisoners of war. Strangely, the positions of the bodies made it clear that the two groups had died side by side manning the barricades against what appeared to be a third group.

Just who, or rather what, they’d been defending against became clear a few yards deeper in the camp as Burke and his squad stumbled over the corpse of their first shambler.

This one had been cut almost in half at the point just below its ribs. The upper half of its body lay at an angle to the lower half, connected by only a few ragged strands of tissue near the spinal column. The creature’s guts were spread out along the ground beside it. The shambler was dressed in a green jumpsuit, now stained dark with blood. Burke was about to step over it and move on when what he was seeing actually registered on the conscious side of his brain and brought him up short.

The shambler was dressed and not in the usual rags. No, this one was wearing a drab, olive-colored jumpsuit that clearly served as some kind of uniform and a new one at that.

Sonofabitch.

The realization forced him to look closer at the corpse, which caused several other differences to spring out at him.

Most shamblers he’d encountered were physically damaged from whatever violent act had taken their life before they were brought back as one of the walking dead. If they had been dead long enough, they might have even started to rot. This particular shambler looked physically intact. In fact, if you ignored the thick black veins visible beneath the creature’s skin and the fact that its torso had been all but cut cleanly in half, it actually looked, well, healthy.

That’s not right.

Burke squatted down next to it to get a closer look.

To his untrained eye, there seemed to be some evidence that the creature’s face had undergone physical changes during the resurrection process, not the least of which was a bony ridge running from the nose, up over the top of the head and down the back of the skull. Its fingers were elongated, and there was an extra joint on several of them. The fingernails had thickened and grown out by several inches, creating a natural weapon that, judging by the dried blood and scraps of flesh caught beneath them, had been useful in the fight that had taken the creature’s life.

“What is it, Captain?” Graves asked, noting his interest in the body.

As Burke glanced in the professor’s direction, the shambler at his feet opened its eyes and lunged for him from the waist up.

It took a split second for Burke to realize he’d never move fast enough to get out of the way, to see the shambler’s lips open revealing a mouth stuffed full of row after row of sharp-looking teeth, to hear Graves’s shout of surprise as if from miles away . . .

The top of the shambler’s head blew apart just before the sound of the rifle’s report reached Burke’s ears, and the creature flopped back down against the hard ground, dead once more.

His heart pounding, Burke looked up to find Jones lowering his rifle from his shoulder, a thin wisp of smoke drifting from the end of the barrel.

The two men eyed each other.

Then Graves broke the spell by passing between them as he threw himself down next to Burke in his eagerness to examine what was left of the shambler.

“Did you see that?!” he exclaimed, acting like a kid in a candy store. “It’s got fully articulated . . .”

Burke tuned out the rest. He climbed to his feet and found Charlie standing next to him, ready to help. That made him realize how shaken he was by the shambler’s attack; he hadn’t heard his sergeant approach.

“You all right?” Charlie asked.

“Yeah, I’m good,” he told him, then he raised his voice so the others in the squad could hear him. “Double-check any shambler carcass you come across. There’s plenty of ammo lying around, so don’t hesitate to put a bullet through every skull in order to be sure they are dead; we don’t want these things getting back up again when we’re not looking.”

They had no idea how many of the undead might still be moving on the base, so they stuck together, wanting the increased firepower they could bring to bear. Splitting into pairs might have made the work go faster, but it was a risk Burke was unwilling to accept. If one of their isolated teams ran into a pack of live shamblers, they’d be overwhelmed in seconds, just like the base’s original inhabitants. No, they’d stick together, even if it took all day to cover the base in its entirety.

They moved quickly but carefully, checking each corpse for signs of life by nudging it with the barrel of a rifle or the sole of a boot while a partner kept a bead on its skull with his own weapon. If it didn’t move, and it was human, they checked to be sure it wasn’t the corpse of Major Freeman and then searched it for anything useful—ammo, grenades, even cigarettes. Those they found were quickly confiscated and passed around.

Every building had to be searched to ensure that there weren’t any shamblers hiding in the shadows, so they developed a system to reduce the risk. Two men would wait on either side of the door, weapons ready, while a third would kick it in. The minute he did so the others would spin around the doorjamb and take out anything waiting inside. When the first room was cleared, they moved on to the next. It was time consuming, and the sheer tension of expecting a group of shamblers to come charging out of every doorway had their nerves on edge. Several times they were forced to put down an injured but still struggling shambler, but thankfully they didn’t encounter any uninjured ones roaming the grounds.

When they’d cleared all but the large, two-story building that appeared to be the base headquarters, Burke headed in that direction, hoping to find some answers. They still hadn’t found any evidence that Jack had ever been here and the idea that they had come all this way for nothing was not sitting well with him.