By the Blood of Heroes (29 page)

Jack stepped over to Richthofen and they exchanged a few words.

“Come on, get out of the way . . .” Manning said, beneath his breath.

Thinking Manning was speaking to him, Burke pulled off his goggles and glanced in that direction, only to find the other man lining up to take a shot at Richthofen!

“What are you doing?” Burke hissed at him.

“Killing that undead bastard,” Manning answered quietly. “Exactly what I was sent here to do. Do you want me to solve your problem too while I’m at it?”

“What?”

The big game hunter pulled his eye off the scope and looked over at him, his impatience plain on his face.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about! Now hurry up and make up your mind before we lose our chance!”

For just a moment, Burke considered letting Manning do just what he’d suggested: gunning down both men right where they stood. As options went it wasn’t such a bad one. The biggest threat to Allied air supremacy would be eliminated, they’d relieve the enemy of one of their best military minds, and they’d be protecting the president, and by extension the country, all in one fell swoop. For just a moment, it seemed the perfect way out. If he let Manning take that extra shot, he’d be saving his men from having to infiltrate the base and all the danger that went hand in hand with just such an operation. He expected several of them to be injured, possibly even killed, before the assault was over, and he could avoid all that with one simple shot. He wouldn’t even have to pull the trigger.

But then the moment passed, and Burke came to his senses.

“Put the gun down, Manning. We’re here to recon and that’s all.”

Manning ignored him and went on fumbling with the buttons and knobs on his strange-looking gun.

“I’m ordering you to put down that weapon, Manning.”

The other man let out a short laugh. “Sorry, Captain, but I’m not really in your chain of command, now am I?” he said, as he pulled back the hammer on the rifle. He put his eye up against the optical sight, getting ready to fire.

Burke didn’t hesitate. He snatched the Colt Firestarter from his belt and jammed the barrel into the side of Manning’s head.

The big game hunter went absolutely still.

“I said put the gun down. Now either do what I ordered you to do or so help me God . . .”

Very carefully, Manning lifted his finger away from the trigger of the rifle.

“Push it away from you,” Burke said, and then waited for the other man to do so before he took the Firestarter away from Manning’s head.

Below them, the staff car reached the house where the two men were waiting. Richthofen climbed into the backseat. Freeman followed. The car pulled away and disappeared deeper into the camp.

Burke let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

Manning waited another moment or two, then reached out and retrieved his rifle. Burke didn’t stop him. They eyed each other warily for a moment.

Manning broke the silence.

“If you’d pulled that trigger, you would have given us away.”

“True, but at least I wouldn’t have the death of my brother on my conscience either.”

“Might still come to that.”

Burke nodded. “Yes, it might. But we’ll deal with that if and when we come to it. For now, we stick to the plan.”

Manning sketched a quick, sarcastic salute, before heading back down the ridgeline, rifle in hand.

Burke followed.

Back at the rendezvous point, Burke relayed what they had seen, making no mention of the altercation between him and Manning, and was grateful that the other man let it rest as well. Burke sketched out a quick map and laid it on the hood of the truck where everyone could see.

The plan was simple. Using their stolen uniforms, the team would infiltrate the base, passing themselves off as German soldiers. If they stuck to the plan and didn’t engage anyone in conversation, they should be all right, as it was after dark and the uniforms would help them blend in.

“We’re going to enter through the main gate,” he said. “That will put us reasonably close to where we think Major Freeman is being held, either in this area over here,” he said, pointing to a group of buildings surrounding a larger one labeled Commandant’s Residence, “or with the rest of the prisoners here,” pointing to a section on the west side of the map that was labeled POWs.

“He’ll be guarded, but to what extent and by how many men is something we won’t know until we get in there.”

He looked around the circle, meeting their gazes, looking for any hesitation or doubt. They were about to try and scam their way in through the front gate of a major enemy base. Confidence was key; they needed to look and act like they belonged.

He needn’t have worried. All he saw were the confident expressions of men ready to do the job they had come here to do. What had started as a misfit bunch had coalesced into a team who knew they could depend upon one another, and that was something that could only be forged in the crucible of combat.

If anyone had a chance of pulling this off, they did.

Burke was proud of them.

He caught Charlie watching him and knew the sergeant was thinking the same thing.

“Remember, once we’re past the gates, you are to stay in the truck and avoid interaction with anyone unless ordered to do so. Our cover demands it.”

That last was especially important, given how little most of them knew of the German language. Any attempt at conversation would quickly reveal that they weren’t who they said they were, so their success or failure depended upon how long they could avoid calling attention to themselves.

“Once we secure Major Freeman, we’ll turn around and get out of there the same way we came in. If all goes well, we should be in and out again in twenty, twenty-five minutes tops.”

He was oversimplifying everything, as there were only about a million things that could go wrong, but at this point he was operating on nothing more than a wing and a prayer; the plan, however weak it might be, would have to do.

It worried him, though he made sure it didn’t show. Everything they knew about the camp ahead of them had come by way of the dispatch messenger they’d taken captive back at Stalag 113. The messenger could have been lying, for all any of them knew. If he led them astray, they were going to be in for a boatload of trouble.

Stop worrying, Burke,
he told himself.
You’ll be lucky to get past the front gate.

Forcing a smile to his face, he turned to the others and said, “Let’s do this.”

Chapter Thirty-eight

TESTING FACILITY 89

W
hile Burke and his men were pulling their vehicles off the road not far from the gates of the Verdun testing facility, inside those same gates Major Freeman was being driven to another meeting with Baron Richthofen. His minders took him to the base headquarters and escorted him into the Baron’s office.

Unlike the day before, when he’d been meticulously dressed in a carefully pressed uniform, complete with the Blue Max at his throat, today Richthofen was wearing a loose shirt, trousers, and a pair of leather flight boots. His attire suggested that he would be airborne soon, and Freeman felt a stab of jealousy. He did his best not to let it show on his face, however, as he knew that was precisely the reaction Richthofen was no doubt hoping for.

“Ah, Major,” Richthofen exclaimed when Freeman was ushered into the room. “Thank you for coming.”

Like I had a choice,
Freeman thought.

“You are being treated properly? Better than with that pig Schulheim, yes?”

Just about anything would have been better than the treatment he had received at the hands of the oberst—after all, the man had been eating his prisoners—but Freeman didn’t acknowledge that fact. It seemed clear that Richthofen was trying to establish himself as the good guy in the equation. So rather than telling him what he really thought, he said simply, “Yes. Thank you.”

“Good,” Richthofen replied, smiling. “We wouldn’t want your illustrious father to hear that we have been treating you in anything less than the gentlemanly manner that you deserve.”

Freeman had been expecting the truth of his heritage to come out ever since his capture, so he barely flinched at Richthofen’s remark. Not that it mattered, for Richthofen went on before Freeman could formulate a reply.

“Have no fear, Major. Your secret is safe with me. I only bring it up to show that we are not so different, you and me. Our fathers are both great men who have little time for anyone but themselves, isn’t that right?”

Freeman shrugged. He was not going to get into a conversation about his father with a man who should have been dead twice over. It was as simple as that.

Noting his reluctance, and no doubt satisfied that his point had been made, the German ace turned to another issue.

“Have you thought any further about the offer I made yesterday?”

Freeman cleared his throat. “With all due respect, Herr Richthofen, I cannot accept.”

Richthofen watched Freeman for several long seconds, then broke the silence by saying, “You do realize, do you not, that you cannot win? That sooner, rather than later, the
Sturmbataillons
will drive the rest of your forces all the way to the Atlantic? That my Flying Circus will rule the air and therefore control all movement on the ground? The empire is
destined
to win this conflict.”

Freeman shook his head. “Be that as it may, we will still fight you to the end.”

“Of course you will,” Richthofen replied with a sigh, “but that is precisely what I am talking about. You will fight and you will die, and in the end we will still be here. Where is the good in that?”

He paused, seemed about to say something further, but then jumped to his feet. “Come,” he said. “I see you need more than words to convince you.”

With Freeman at his heels, Richthofen left the commandant’s office, crossed to his staff car, and slid into the backseat. Freeman climbed in after him. The two men sat in silence while Richthofen’s driver took them across the camp to a series of buildings on the east side of camp. The driver pulled up in front of a long, low building set off a bit from the others. It was only when he got out and saw the armored locomotive parked behind the building that Freeman understood he was looking at a train station.

A train must have arrived earlier, for prisoners in gray jumpsuits were hard at work unloading the cargo when Richthofen and Freeman appeared around the far side of the platform. The thick smell of putrefying flesh wafted to him along the breeze, and Freeman had to keep himself from gagging. As they got closer, Freeman wasn’t surprised to see that the “freight” the train carried was the bodies of German soldiers, all human, killed in combat.

The corpses were still dressed in the uniforms they’d worn while alive, and Freeman could see from the unit patches on their blouses they had come from quite a few different units. Each corpse was taken off the train by prisoners wearing face masks and gloves, and then laid out next to each other, shoulder to shoulder, on the nearby platform. Even as Freeman watched, a trio of white lab-coated scientists moved among those that had already been unloaded, marking some of them with a quick slash of white chalk across the bottom of the corpses’ boots.

Richthofen spoke from behind him. “I have seen your corpse fires burning, all day and night, as you try to keep your countrymen from responding to the call of the gas. Tell me, Major, what is the biggest problem you and your Allies now face?”

Freeman didn’t respond. He didn’t need to; Richthofen was already answering the question for himself.

“Come now, Major. It’s no secret. Manpower. That’s what the Allies need more than anything else. Manpower. Each one that falls rises to fight against you. Soon you will run out of men to throw into battle. What will you do then?”

Richthofen paused to watch as the scientists loaded several of the corpses that hadn’t yet begun to rot onto a wheeled cart. When it was full, they pushed it along the platform toward the next closest building. Richthofen followed and Freeman had no choice but to do the same.

“We do not have that problem,” Richthofen said, continuing his earlier train of thought. “The Western Front. The Italian Front. The Russian Front. It does not matter where our brave soldiers fall. If they are intact, they are brought home, to facilities like this one, where we return them to functional status.”

Freeman couldn’t resist. “You mean turn them into mindless zombies, don’t you?”

Richthofen stopped and turned to face him. “Is that what you think? That all those who survive the resurrection process are mindless drones? No wonder you were not interested in my proposal yesterday!”

The scientists and their grisly cargo disappeared inside the doors of the building ahead of them. Richthofen glanced in their direction, looked back at Freeman, and apparently made up his mind.

“This way, Major. I think you will find this interesting.”

They passed through the doors and found themselves in a narrow corridor that seemed to stretch the length of the building. A thick black line was painted down the center.

“It’s probably best if you don’t let your feet stray from the path,” Richthofen said, then started walking forward.

For a moment Freeman considered turning around and heading out the door behind him as fast as he could go.
If he could make the fence line . . .

The idea passed as quickly as it had formed. He couldn’t outrun a bullet, and he had very little doubt that the sentries would fire on him the moment they thought he was escaping. If by some miracle he did make the fence without being shot down like a dog in the street, he wasn’t convinced that he could get over it. Days of injury and infection had taken their toll; his leg was feeling a hundred percent better, but that didn’t mean the rest of his body was in any kind of condition to make the attempt.

Forget running. It was best if he just held out and waited for the right chance to come along.

With a sigh, he followed Richthofen.

The corridor was only dimly lit, and his companion was already disappearing into the shadows ahead of him. Normally this wasn’t something that would have bothered Freeman, but for some reason the whole building had him on edge and so he hurried to catch up.

In the process, he didn’t notice that the walls on either side had given way to vertical iron bars, like those you find in a prison, nor that he had strayed from the centerline.

The only warning he had was the animalistic whine that came from his left as something moved in his peripheral vision. Years of reacting on instinct as enemy aircraft dove at his own from out of the clouds had him shifting away from whatever it was beside him even as he turned to look.

The shambler howled in dismay as its hands closed on empty air rather than around Freeman’s neck as planned. The creature was close enough that Freeman could see that its nose had rotted away, leaving a gaping hole in the middle of its face between two eyes that focused on him in ravenous hunger.

Freeman stepped back to the centerline, out of reach.

With his heart pounding from the close call, Freeman looked around, noting for the first time the prisonlike cells that lined either side of the hallway and the dozen or more shamblers that occupied each one. They all reacted the same way when they saw him, lumbering over to the bars and reaching their hands through them just as the first one had, howling and moaning with unholy need, setting off a cacophony that filled the narrow hall until Freeman was forced to put his hands over his ears and run ahead.

Richthofen didn’t say anything to him when he finally caught up, just led him a few feet farther down the hall until they came to a viewing window set into the wall.

The room on the other side of the glass contained a dozen or more tables, each complete with a set of leather straps attached to each side, and the cart full of corpses that had just come in from the train platform. Two men dressed in gray jumpsuits that identified them as prisoners of war were working inside the room, moving the recently selected bodies from the cart up onto the tables, taking care to strap each of them down securely before moving on to the next.

Given the previous conversation with Richthofen, it was obvious to Freeman that the men were getting the bodies ready for the resurrection process. Unlike the troops manning the trenches, he had never seen the dead actually rise, and he found himself leaning forward in anticipation of what was to come despite his abhorrence of the idea. He watched as the POWs finished strapping down the last body and then moved to leave through the door at the far end of the room.

He glanced at Richthofen. “What happens now?”

Richthofen didn’t seem to hear; he was watching those in the room with a focus that could only be described as predatory, and it drew Freeman’s attention back toward them. He immediately recognized the problem; the door had accidentally locked behind the POWs, and they were now pounding on it and yelling to be let out.

Their fear heightened his own anxiety. “Someone’s going to come help them, right?”

Richthofen didn’t respond.

The men turned, looking for another way out, and one of them saw that Freeman and Richthofen were watching through the glass. He ran over and put himself face-to-face with Freeman, his palms flat on the glass, as words in French began to tumble desperately from his lips. Freeman couldn’t understand the words, but there was no mistaking the sense of what he was saying. “Help us,” the man pleaded. “Get us out of here before it is too late!”

“Why isn’t anyone helping them?” Freeman asked, alarmed now. If the bodies inside that room came back as shamblers and managed to get loose, the two men would be torn apart by the newly resurrected dead within minutes of their awakening. “Let them out!”

But Richthofen shook his head. “It’s too late; the gas has already been released.” He pointed toward the ceiling.

Both he and the Frenchmen followed the Baron’s pointing finger until they spotted the brass nozzles that had descended several inches from their seats in recessed niches. A pale green gas began to jet from each nozzle, and soon the room began to fill with a rapidly expanding and billowing cloud.

The men trapped inside reacted in earnest, pounding on the window glass, screaming for help as the gas descended toward them.

Richthofen stared at them, his eyes alight with excitement.

Freeman tried to turn away, but Richthofen’s hand shot out and grabbed him around the back of the neck, squeezing with such tremendous strength that he was afraid the Baron might snap it in two.

“Watch!” Richthofen hissed in his ear. “It is not what you expect!”

The gas drifted down from the ceiling and enveloped the living and the dead alike. The two POWs fell to the floor, coughing and gagging as the gas sent its questing fingers down their throats and up their noses, worming its way inside their bodies to wreak its deadly changes. At the same time, the bodies on the tables began to twitch and shake, the gas sliding over flesh long since devoid of any signs of life and causing a chemical reaction like nothing nature had ever intended.

Perhaps most shocking, however, was the transformation that the POWs were undergoing. As the gas wrapped them in its cold embrace, the veins beneath their skin stood out in a twisting network of deep black lines that contrasted sharply with the greenish-gray cast that slowly took over their flesh. Freeman was watching them both closely and was certain he knew the exact moment that exposure to the gas killed them, just as he recognized when that mystic spark flashed back into their eyes as their new unlife took them into its unholy grip.

It was like watching two trains roaring down the tracks toward each other; you knew it would end terribly but you couldn’t look away, you had to watch to the very end . . .