Omega Sanction

Chapter One

The top of the castle wall looked like black teeth against the night sky, the space between the stone blocks where the soldiers of old had kept watch for approaching enemies. The castle was set on a small hill with a commanding view of the surrounding terrain for many miles. It had been built five centuries ago and rebuilt and added to many times over the intervening years.

The castle, around which the small German town of Bad Kinzen had grown, held a dark reputation. The people in the town rarely spoke of it openly. The SS had garrisoned a battalion in the castle during World War II, appreciating the high ground and the numerous stone rooms they could use to hold prisoners. In those rooms many Resistance fighters shipped from France had met their screaming deaths. In the rooms above the dungeon, young women had suffered their own shameful fate at the hands of the all-powerful SS. It was a subject rarely talked about among the elders in town except in whispers and after too much beer. The young didn't know the details, but they picked up the emotional drift and the castle held its own dark place in their minds.

Before the war, the Kinzen family had controlled the castle for generations and there had been whispers even then about what went on behind the massive stone walls. The Kinzen family had held a recessive gene that had come out every couple of generations and led to madness and perversion. Unfortunately, there was little that could be done about the madness, as the Kinzens were the wealthiest and most powerful family this side of Stuttgart. Before the rise of modern law, the Kinzens had held sway over the town and practiced their depredations against the citizenry inside the walls of the castle.

Going back even before the Kinzens, the castle, built in the late 1400s, had seen more than its share of death as the religious wars washed back and forth across Germany. A Protestant enclave had sought shelter behind its walls and held out for two years before Catholic forces under the emperor had starved them into surrendering. As they walked out under a white flag, every Protestant man, woman and child had been thrown into the moat and kept down there by spearpoint until all were dead. It was said at the end there was a pile of bodies with the strongest on top, above the foul water, and the last man to die took over a week, standing on top of an island of festering bodies, forced to drink the foul water even as his belly burst from hunger.

Such was the history of Bad Kinzen Castle until the Americans took it over at the end of World War II. It served first as the headquarters for the local military governor, then, as the Germans gained self-rule, it became the headquarters for various U.S. Army units, the last being a Pershing missile battalion. There were numerous other American units stationed around the town of Bad Kinzen, as the headquarters for the Seventh Corps and U.S. Army Europe were just down the road in Stuttgart.

With the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the drawdown in forces, Bad Kinzen took its own share of cutbacks in American troops. The Pershing missile unit was withdrawn and the castle was empty once more. The Americans wanted to turn the castle over to the German government, but the debt-ridden federal government, still reeling from the negative economic attachment of East Germany, preferred the rent rather than the maintenance burden of the castle, so for the past eight years it had remained nominally rented to the Americans even though it was no longer utilized.

The castle had deteriorated over the years it was left abandoned. The massive stone wall surrounding it was still intact, as it had been for hundreds of years, but the buildings on the inside were dilapidated and falling apart. The moat, the death place of hundreds, was now dry, and the drawbridge had long ago been replaced by a permanent concrete bridge leading over the ditch. The road went through the wall and into the large open courtyard. A fence had been put across the bridge to prevent entry, but it had taken less than a week for a hole to be torn in it. The facilities engineers from Seventh Corps repaired the fence every few months, but by the end of the next weekend another hole always appeared.

Despite the removal of the Pershing unit, there were still Americans near Bad Kinzen. The Seventh Corps was headquartered at Stuttgart, although many of the soldiers were currently deployed on peacekeeping missions to Bosnia and the Belorussia. The castle, off limits to Germans because it was in American hands — and perhaps as much because of its dark past — was a draw to the teenage children of those American soldiers and it was they who tore holes in the fence as quickly as it was repaired.

Too young to drink legally, hassled by Military Police on post and German Polizie off, the American teenagers went to Bad Kinzen Castle, where MPs never visited and the Polizie were forbidden to go. The teenagers partied and hung close to each other, strangers in a distant land, with parents who were gone more often than they were home. They only had each other and they clung to that.

In a battered Camaro, two of those displaced youngsters were currently driving through the winding streets of Bad Kinzen, heading toward the hill on which the castle stood. Kirsten Welch was sixteen, a junior at the American high school in Stuttgart and she had been to Bad Kinzen Castle dozens of times in the past, the last four times with Tommy Pilchen, a senior at the same school. But she had never been there on a weeknight and just the two of them. Always before it had been the weekend and at least a dozen other dependent kids that had convoyed to the castle.

But Tommy had said tonight was special when he'd asked her to go during lunch break at school. Kirsten knew what that meant. Tommy's father was PCSing, army lingo for permanent change of station, back to the States in a week, and that meant Tommy would be gone soon.

They'd been going together for three months and things had progressed to the point where she had made sure that Tommy had condoms in his pocket before they left Pattonville Housing Area earlier in the evening.

It was late November and it got dark and cold early. Her contribution to the trip was several blankets piled in the back seat of the car. A six-pack of beer was on top of the blankets, another prerequisite Kirsten insisted upon.

They parked next to a construction site at the base of the hill on which the castle stood. Tommy threw the blankets over his shoulder and they walked the switchbacks up to the bridge. Tommy held the fence while Kirsten squeezed through.

They had spoken little on the ride down. Kirsten knew Tommy was thinking about going back to the States and she was thinking about how much she was going to miss him. Having been a military brat all her sixteen years, Kirsten knew it was the nature of things that friendships were brief, as each family moved every three or four years. But Tommy was more than a friendship. He was her first boyfriend, and considerable emotion and time had gone into this in the past three months. She'd given him a special part of herself and now he was going to be leaving with it.

They walked across the bridge, and Kirsten halted just before the tunnel through the outer wall. She didn't like Bad Kinzen. The tunnel opening looked like a gaping mouth to her, with two portals above it set like eyes in the black rock. The wind blew and she hugged Tommy closer to her.

"I wish my mom was working tonight," she said.

Then they could have used her house, as they had many times in the past. Her father was a squad leader in one of the infantry battalions and he had been gone now for three months to Bosnia-Herzegovina on the U.S.'s seemingly never-ending peacekeeping effort in the Balkans. Her mom worked in the housing area Burger King on a rotating shift, but tonight she was home, curled in front of the TV watching the Armed Forces Network and steadily drinking enough so that she could pass out in an empty bed. Her only comment to Kirsten on her way out was to be home before one.

"Me too," Tommy said. He tugged her forward toward the tunnel. "But at least I got the car so we could come here."

As they walked into the tunnel, their sneakers squeaked on the rock floor and echoed off the walls that closed over their heads. Water dripped from the stone, making slimy puddles. Their pace picked up and then they were into the courtyard. Tommy led her toward a low building built up against the stone wall to their right. It had been the headquarters for the Pershing unit and was now littered with empty bottles, needles and used condoms. Some enterprising soul had even hauled a stained mattress up here, but Kirsten didn't like it, thus the blankets.

Tommy pushed open the door, which protested loudly on its rusted hinges. Kirsten scuttled by him into the dark interior. She quickly took the blankets, putting half on the floor, and wrapping one over her shoulders as she sat down. She was small under the rough wool, just under five-foot-two, and weighing slightly over a hundred pounds. She had short hair that she bleached blond and combed straight back with plenty of gel to keep it in place. A long earring dangled from her right ear, while a small gold ring adorned her nose.

She could see out a broken window into the courtyard as Tommy settled down beside her, pulling the blanket over his shoulders and pressing his body against her side.

"Here," Tommy said, handing her a can from the six-pack he had carried up along with the blankets. She took it and popped the top. Despite the chill, she drank fast. If she'd ever stopped to think about it, she would have realized she'd never had sex with Tommy sober. But that was just one of many things that Kirsten and most other sixteen-year-olds had never stopped to think about.

Tommy pulled out a sandwich bag and waved it. "I got some good stuff off Pete."

He began rolling a joint, much to Kirsten's irritation. She didn't like drugs, even just grass. Too many kids at school were walking around wasted all the time, not even knowing what class they were in, and she knew every one of them had started with grass before moving on to heavier stuff. And the heavy stuff brought with it other problems, like AIDs. Heroin was big at school and readily available off post, but the needles scared Kirsten to death. Tommy hadn't done that yet, at least as far as she knew. She didn't ask, but she always covertly checked his arms for any sign that he might have used a needle. She loved him, but she wasn't willing to die for her love.

Tommy lit the joint and took a deep drag. He offered it to her, but she declined by taking another deep gulp of her beer. He didn't push. They'd talked about it before, and tonight, with his departure looming in a week, it just wasn't worth talking about anymore. She felt a rush of sadness and pulled Tommy closer.

A shadow passing by the window caught the corner of her eye and she stiffened.

"Hey!" Tommy exclaimed, trying to dig her fingers out of his shoulder.

"Someone's out there," Kirsten whispered.

Tommy looked out the window. The courtyard was empty, lit by the glow of a half-moon. "I don't see anyone."

"I did," she insisted.

"Well, someone could be up here. You know, someone from school."

Kirsten shook her head. "I don't want to be here. Let's leave. Please."

She felt Tommy stiffen. "We just got here. We've got more beer and…"

His voice trailed off, but she knew the rest of the sentence. The condom in his pocket wasn't going home unopened if he could help it.

Something moved outside again. This time she was positive it was a man. "There!" she pointed.

Tommy forgot about the condom momentarily. "I see him."

The figure was medium height, a dark shadow in the courtyard, standing about forty feet away. A brief glow — the person had lit a cigarette — then darkness. It was a man, not one of their friends, Kirsten knew that, but she could discern no details. Average height, slender build, dressed in dark clothes.

His hands had glittered strangely in the brief glow of the lighter.

"Let's get out of here," she whispered once more.

"He'll see us. Maybe he's an MP," Tommy said.

"He's not an MP."

"How do you know?"

"He'd have a helmet on. A uniform."

"Maybe he's Polizie."

"He's not Polizie." Kirsten was certain. "If he was Polizie he'd be in here already. Besides, they don't come up here."

Kirsten felt the man already knew that she and Tommy were in here and he was waiting on them. She couldn't see his eyes, but suddenly, staring at him, she felt colder than she'd been all evening.

"Shit," Tommy muttered, standing up, the blanket falling off his shoulders. He played defensive tackle on the school team and topped out at six feet and a hundred and ninety pounds. The figure in the courtyard didn't scare him. "I'll see who it is."

"Stay here," Kirsten said, grabbing his hand.

Her plea only served to irritate Tommy. "First you want to leave, now you want to stay. Shit, Kirsten, we can't do anything with this guy standing around."

"Let's just wait till he leaves," she said.

"We don't have all night. I need to have the car back by midnight," Tommy said. He pulled his hand free with more force than was necessary and walked to the door. He stepped out and the door swung shut behind him.

Kirsten was frozen. She knew she should follow, but she couldn't move. She heard muffled voices, then silence. Footsteps approached the door. It swung open and her eyes fixed on the figure that was silhouetted in the frame. Smaller than Tommy. The glint of eyes staring at her froze her breath.

"Where's Tommy?"

The man smiled, even white teeth showing in the shadowed face. "Busy."

"Busy doing what?" Kirsten found control of her muscles and slowly got to her feet. She still held the blanket tight, arms crossed in front of her chest.

"Drugs." The voice was odd, without an accent, definitely not a German who had learned English. Maybe American, but she couldn't place it, and she had met people from all over the States in her travels. There was a faint southern tint, but it didn't seem right. There was also a quality to it as if the man had a cold and his nose was stuffed up.

"What do you mean?"

"It seems," the man said, now stepping into the room, "that your boyfriend would rather do cocaine out there than be in here with a pretty young woman like yourself."

Kirsten looked out into the courtyard, past him. In the part she could see there was no sign of Tommy. He wouldn't just leave her like this. She took a step backward. "What do you want?"

The man's smile hadn't abated. He held out a hand. "Would you like some?"

There was small vial in his palm. It glittered in the light, made of some expensive metal. Kirsten could now see that there were rings on each finger, numerous jewels reflecting the scant light.

"I don't do drugs."

The man pointed at her beer can and sniffed the air, where the odor of the joint was still noticeable. "Come, now." His hand was still out.

"I don't do drugs," she repeated. "I'm going now."

She started for the door, but the man didn't move and she stopped before making contact.

"No."

Kirsten felt the single word hit her harder than if he'd struck her with a fist. She backed up.

"I highly recommend what is in here." The man held the vial out to her.

"What do you want?"

"Simply for you to party with me."

"What do you want?"

"Would you like to go to a very nice party?" the man asked. "I have transportation to take us there. We will be back before dawn. It is a party the likes of which I am sure you have never seen. Very rich people. Very powerful people. A beautiful girl such as yourself, you would do well to meet such people. You have a special look. I like that."

"I don't want to party," Kirsten said, her voice less strong than she would have liked. But she could feel reality starting to slip away, as if she were watching what was going on in this dirty room like a bystander. It was beyond the realm of her reality.

"You were partying in here with that young man. Surely you can do better." He pulled a ring off and held it out. "Here. Take this as a token. There will be much more if you come with me."

"Tommy!" Kirsten yelled. She slapped at him and the ring bounced into the darkness of one of the corners of the room.

The man's smile was gone, his lips now a dark slash' "Do not yell. It is very impolite."

"I want to go!" Kirsten insisted. But she didn't move, because he didn't move.

He put the vial in his shirt pocket. He pulled out a pair of thick gloves and slid them on, over the rings on his fingers. His hand went to his waist and pulled out a knife. A long, strangely curved knife.

"Would you like to go to my party?" he asked in the same even voice. "Make your decision now."

"No," Kirsten whispered.

"You are very stupid," the man said. "You could have a very nice time. Others have."

"I want to go home."

"Last chance."

"I want to go home. Please."

"Drop the blanket."

Kirsten's fingers tightened on the rough wool.

"Drop the blanket and we will go into the courtyard and talk with your friend."

Kirsten forced herself to let go of the blanket.

The smile was back on his face. "Very good. Now come with me."

"I'm not going anywhere with you."

"Last chance," the man said. "Come with me."

Kirsten backed up. "No."

"Then we will do this another way. Either way, it will be done." The man's voice was irritated. "Take your clothes off."

"No," she said in a low voice.

"To this you have no choice," he said. "You will either take them off and live or I will kill you with them on. Do as I say and you will not be hurt."

Kirsten believed him, at least that he would kill her if she didn't strip. She stared at the blade, trying to see if there was blood on it, Tommy's blood, but it seemed to be clean, the blade clearly reflecting a sliver of moonlight.

The man took one step forward. "Now."

She hesitated and the blade flashed in front of her and she gasped as a line of fire ran down the left side of her face. She reached a hand up and pulled it away. It was covered in blood.

"Nothing major," the man said. "It will heal. Do as I say and we won't have to do that again."

Kirsten pulled her sweater off. She watched her own fingers unbuttoning her blouse, surprised in a distant sort of way how steady they were. Why weren't they shaking? she wondered. She could feel dampness on her cheek but no pain.

She was wearing a black bra, a decision she had made knowing that Tommy and her would be coming up here and how much he liked it and also how he could handle unhooking it in the front. Tommy had gotten very frustrated and embarrassed when he couldn't unhook one of her other ones, and his resulting anger, trying to cover for his real feelings, had ruined the evening. So she'd worn this one so the evening wouldn't be ruined.

She unhooked it. The cloth fell away, exposing her small, pointy breasts. The man had not moved again once she started undressing and there was no sign that he took any interest in her nakedness as she pulled her jeans down. She unbuckled her belt and unzipped her jeans, then pushed them down before pausing. She'd forgotten to take her sneakers off and her jeans were bunched at her feet.

"Go to the window," the man said.

She bent over to pull her sneakers off, but the man repeated his order.

"Go the window. Now!"

She shuffled over, arms crossed on her chest, until she was facing the window. She could feel goose bumps on her naked skin. She could see the entire courtyard now and she saw a dark lump on the ground about thirty feet away. Tommy! He wasn't moving.

"Put your hands on the windowsill."

She could tell from the voice that he was right behind her. She put her palms on the grimy wood.

She flinched as she felt the point of the knife touch the outside of her left hip.

"Back with your feet."

She shuffled her feet back until the knifepoint on her left buttock stopped her. Now she couldn't move, half bent over, her weight caught between her feet and her hands on the sill. She didn't know it, but it was the way police and counterterrorism experts were taught to search a suspect, putting them in a position where if they removed either hand from their forward support, they would fall over.

She heard some noises behind her. She knew she was going to be raped. Beyond that, her mind refused to go. She focused on Tommy's body lying on the stones. Was he dead?

Something looped over her head and she gasped. The man tightened her blouse down over her mouth. She felt the cloth with her tongue as he tied a knot on the back of her head. She panicked, sucking air in through her nose.

Then she felt a hand on her rear, holding her steady. She closed her eyes. Tommy and she had used this position before and she knew what to expect

Or so she thought. She gasped with pain as the man's cock rammed up against her anus. Tears flowed as he vigorously pushed in. Tommy had never done this and she felt as if she'd been skewered. Through her pain, one thought flashed: Did this man have AIDS?

She opened her eyes and blinked out the tears. Her heart jumped. She saw Tommy move. An arm stretching out then the body twitching and shaking.

The man behind her was slamming against her and she had to hold on with all her strength to avoid going down to her knees. She could feel the flat steel of his knife slapping against her right side with every stroke. The pain of his thrusts was terrible but also distant in a strange way.

Tommy was on his knees now, shaking his head. She could see darkness on his face. Blood. Tommy stood and peered about, getting his bearings. Kirsten tried to scream, but the sound was caught in her blouse and all that came forth was a mewling noise.

Tommy froze, his eyes locked into the window. Kirsten met his gaze and she knew he saw her. Saw what was happening to her and the blood on her own face. Tommy looked about, then picked up a piece of two-by-four and came striding forward.

Kirsten wanted to look over her shoulder and see if the man had spotted Tommy, but she dared not. There was no sign that he had, as his rhythm was getting faster, his breathing rough.

Tommy was ten feet away now. Five feet. She could see his face, the anger on it. The blood running down one side.

Then Tommy's head exploded, blood and brain bursting forth, splattering Kirsten with gore. Half of the head was gone as the body tumbled forward lifeless to lie right below her, outside the windowsill.

The man had begun coming as Tommy's body fell. The man slammed against Kirsten, pinning her against the windowsill, grunting in pleasure. She hardly noticed; what sanity she had left was focused entirely on Tommy's body. There had been no sound of a shot, but there was no doubt in her mind that that was what had happened. She looked up, across the courtyard, but could see nothing. It was like a movie, unreal. Tommy had fallen in slow motion. Even the pain in her rear was so far away now.

A voice — a man's voice — echoed in the courtyard, coming from the other side, calling out to the man behind her in a strange tongue, one she had never heard before.

She barely felt his hand reaching around her, his body pressed even more tightly against her back. The hand had the vial in it and the lid was off. He pressed it against her nostrils. With her mouth gagged, her next breath in sucked up the contents.

She felt the man step back from her, the cool evening air against her naked back. Then a spear of pain pierced her from the base of her skull to the small of her back. Her body snapped upright so quickly, bones cracked. She struggled for air, but her lungs wouldn't work. Her eyes bulged forward, blood seeping out around the edges. Her fingers grabbed at the dirty windowsill so hard her nails broke, leaving bloody streaks on the wood.

Kirsten's body convulsed forward, slamming her neck down onto the broken glass still in the window, her neck severed. She slumped forward, hanging over the sill. A small— unnaturally small — trickle of blood came out of the severed carotid artery, dripping down onto Tommy's body, the last thing her bulging eyes saw being the splintered bone and scrambled brains that had been part of her boyfriend's head.

The man had watched all this while zipping his pants up and putting his knife back in the sheath. He looked at the vial in his hand and carefully screwed the top on. Then he placed the vial back in his pocket. He removed the gloves and tossed them away. Reaching up, he pulled a set of filters out of his nostrils, placing them back in a case.

Using the jeans wadded between her legs, the man lifted Kirsten's legs and pushed her over the sill, her body falling onto Tommy's. He walked out the door.

He looked up into the shadows of the inner castle wall as the voice called out to him in the same foreign tongue. "It worked?"

The man pulled the zipper on his jacket tight against his throat, shivering from the chill German evening and the damp air. "Yes."

The owner of the voice appeared, a tall man, broad in the shoulders, a rifle in his hands, as he walked down the stone steps from the inside rampart. He twisted a screw just forward of the magazine well on the weapon and the barrel was released. He slipped the barrel inside his jacket, hanging it on a hook sewn into the material. The stock went on the other side.

He looked at the two bodies. "Not much blood," he noted.

"It acted quickly," the man with the rings said. "I think she was dead before she hit the glass."

"You're certain it worked?" the other man sounded irritated.

"It worked."

"You couldn't have just—" the other began, but the smaller man cut him off.

"It worked."

"All right." The second man glanced at an expensive watch. "The meet is scheduled in forty-five minutes. You cut it close."

"The meet," the first man spit. "I am tired of doing his dirty work. Why must we do his bidding?"

"Because he tells us to."

"One of these days…" The first man let the sentence trail off, incomplete.

The second man extracted a pistol from inside his large coat. He pulled the slide back, chambering a round, then handed it to the other.

"Why do I need this?"

"Because we are dealing with dangerous men now, not children." The man looked about. "I feel something." His eyes searched the dark ramparts. "Someone."

"Let us go, then."