SecondWorld

51

Despite the distance from the George Washington to United States airspace over southern Texas being a 6,600-mile, five-and-a-half-hour flight, there was no time to rest. While Miller and Vesely discussed various aspects of their not-so-perfect plan, the pilots arranged for refueling flights en route. Miller kept expecting to be attacked as they reached out to every air base on the way, but they were left alone. Perhaps they flew unhindered because two F/A-18 Hornets and two F-22 Raptors would be a losing fight for anyone not flying similar aircraft, but Miller didn’t think so. With Huber’s five-day time limit just twenty-four hours away, the remaining Nazi elements embedded in the military would be seeking shelter.

They passed over Texas in what felt like just minutes, the whole state sliding beneath them as a beige blur. Three hundred miles from their target, the two F/A-18 Hornets reduced speed and dropped down to one hundred feet, hugging the ground. While it would be hard to escape any radar systems protecting Los Alamos forever, they could get lost in the ground clutter—buildings, trees, hills, and mountains—for as long as possible. The two F-22s, with their transponders switched off, were invisible to detection and remained at a higher altitude.

As Pale Horse guided the jet across the terrain, Miller took the second megadose of ibuprofen and acetaminophen. His immobilized body had grown stiff, and would ache like a bastard when he started moving again. Even more when the fighting started. He followed the pain relievers with six sticks of caffeine gum. The stimulant would wake him up, but also rush the pain medication into his system. It was far from a perfect solution—like duct tape on a submarine leak—but if it kept him going for the next few hours, it might be enough.

“Pale Horse, this is Red Horse. Over.”

“I read you, Red Horse. Over.”

“Are you guys seeing this?”

Miller heard a tinge of nervousness in the man’s voice. Red Horse, whose real name Miller never learned, struck him as the strong, silent type. Followed orders. Flew with precision. And was absolutely deadly behind the controls of the world’s most sophisticated fighter jet.

So what’s making him afraid? Miller wondered.

Tick.

The sound was barely audible.

But it repeated.

Tick.

Tick, tick, tick.

Miller looked out the window. The ground flew past in a blur of desert sand, trees, cacti, and boulders. They followed the twists and turns of a dry riverbed, allowing them to travel well under the radar. Everything was a blur, though.

Tick, tick, tick.

He looked up, wondering if he might see the F-22s, but saw nothing.

Or did he?

As his eyes adjusted to the distance, his view of the deep blue—almost purple—New Mexico sky appeared hazy.

Static-filled.

“Survivor,” came Vesely’s voice. “I think Huber’s prediction was off by a day.”

Tcktcktcktcktck.

Miller gaped in silence as his mind struggled to comprehend the unthinkable. The sky was filled with red flakes. Oxidized iron. The process of purging oxygen from the Earth’s lower atmosphere had begun. Their twenty-four-hour window had just been reduced to hours. It would take time for all of the oxygen to be used up, though many people would be poisoned beyond recovery long before that. If they didn’t find a way to stop the cosmic attack in the next few hours, it would already be too late.

The red flakes triggered several memories for Miller. Surfacing at the Aquarius life support buoy and taking his first breath of blood-flavored, oxygenless air. The tiger shark. The pink-covered streets of Key Largo. Miami. Arwen. The gang. It all felt like a lifetime ago. So much had happened in the past few days.

Another memory came back, slapping him out of his reverie. He’d told the president, “If you haven’t heard from me, and red flakes start falling from the sky, track my phone’s location and drop a nuke on it.” That time had come.

Hopefully the president would realize that his current Mach 1 speed meant he was still fighting and would delay a strike for as long as possible, but he couldn’t bank on it. He’d tried calling the president several times already, but never found a signal. He wasn’t sure he’d find one in the middle of New Mexico, either, but had to try.

“Any cities ahead?” Miller asked Pale Horse.

“Passing by Santa Fe in a few minutes. We’ll reach the LZ ten minutes after that.”

“Are you there, Survivor?” Vesely asked.

Miller held the phone up, watching for a bar to appear. “Going to make a phone call. See if we can avoid being nuked for a few more hours.”

“Is good idea,” Vesely said.

A bar appeared. Then two. Then three. Miller knew they would leave the cell tower’s range just as quick as they’d entered it. He hit the Call button, heard just a single ring, and then—shit—voicemail.

Are you serious? Miller thought, but then realized the president was most likely already underground.

Beep.

“Bensson, it’s Miller. If you get this, hold off on that nuke for as long as you can. In case I don’t make it there, the target is Dulce Base in New Mexico. That’s the stronghold. That’s where I’m headed. If you can, get a message to Arwen for me. Tell her—”

Beep, beep, beep.

Signal lost.

Miller was about to let loose with a string of curses, but Red Horse interrupted.

“We have incoming. Six bandits—F-16 Falcons. Closing fast from the north. ETA five minutes.”

Five minutes. They would be intercepted before reaching Los Alamos. If they could survive the next ten, the plan might still work, but being shot down over the New Mexico desert would put a rather large wrinkle in things.

“Can we outrun them?” Miller asked.

“F-16 is light and fast. Our top speed is Mach one point eight. Falcon is Mach two.”

“Do we have any advantage?” Miller asked.

“Just one,” Pale Horse replied. “Better pilots.”

“Don’t forget us,” said Black Horse, the second F-22 Raptor pilot.

“Yeah, yeah,” Pale Horse said. “White Horse, stay on my six. Let’s cut the grass and hit the gas.”

“Copy that,” White Horse said.

The ease with which the four pilots coordinated made Miller relax. They had the element of surprise with two F-22s, and their goal was only seven minutes out now. All they had to do was make it there. What happened to the planes after that didn’t matter.

Miller felt the anti-G suit he wore expand on his body as the jet rocketed toward a violent encounter. Bladders within the suit expanded as the G-forces increased, keeping his blood from rushing away from his brain. Without it, he and the pilot would have fallen unconscious.

They were so close to the ground now that Miller felt sure they’d be leaving trails of kicked-up dust behind them.

“I have visual,” Black Horse said. “Coming your way. Over.”

“They’re not locking missiles?” Miller said.

“They’ll swing around behind us for a better lock. Head on, this close to the ground, it’s nearly impossible to get a— Holy shit!”

Miller’s world spun upside down and righted itself so quickly he wasn’t sure what had happened, but he’d swallowed his gum. He had a brief memory of seeing another plane, headed in the opposite direction, but nothing more.

“Sons a bitches tried to ram us!” Pale Horse said. “White Horse, you still with us? Over.”

“On your six,” White Horse said. “Black Horse, would you mind showing these kamikaze assholes how to fight? Over.”

“Shit!” It was Red Horse. “Bogey on our six! Black Horse is down! Black Horse is down! Missile lock! Deploying countermeasures!”

Static.

“How did they take down an F-22?” Miller asked, fighting his rising fears.

“Snuck up behind him.”

“What can sneak up on an F-22?”

“Another F-22.”

“White Horse, this is Pale Horse. Open it up. Let’s give ’em a run for their money.”

“Copy that,” White Horse said.

Miller’s anti-G suit grew tighter as Pale Horse pushed the F/A-18 to its top speed, just fifty feet from the ground.

“We’ll be there in four minutes,” Pale Horse said to Miller. “Be ready.”

A loud beeping filled the cabin.

“Missile lock,” Pale Horse said. “Here we go.”

Miller was expecting a rapid turn or ascent, but when Pale Horse pointed the plane down, just fifty feet from the ground, Miller knew he had half a second before being pancaked on the New Mexico desert.

52

A valley opened up in front of the Hornet and swallowed it whole. Stone walls flashed past on either side. Pale Horse guided the plane through the wide twists and turns at ridiculous speeds.

An explosion from behind shook the plane.

Vesely.

“You still with us, Cowboy?” Miller said.

Vesely’s reply was shouted, but not with fear, with excitement. “Is like Star Wars Death Star trench run!”

“The explosion was one of the bandits,” White Horse said, his voice cool and collected. “Clipped the top of the valley trying to follow us in.”

A sharp turn squeezed Miller’s body as the anti-G-suit bladders expanded. He looked to the left and saw the valley floor not far below. The plane righted and Miller’s head spun. Anti-G suit or not, this flight was taking a toll on his body. The military’s ground forces, including the SEALs, tended to give pilots a hard time. Had all sorts of unsavory names for them. The impression was that they flew above all the action, all the danger, but Miller realized that wasn’t necessarily true. This was intense on the body and mind in a way he hadn’t experienced before.

An explosion rocked the valley wall ahead of them. Boulders and debris shot out.

The anti-G suit nearly crushed him this time as Pale Horse hit the brakes. White Horse pulled up and roared over them, spinning as he cleared the falling debris. The maneuver was an act of aerial acrobatics that looked well rehearsed, but Miller knew had more to do with training. Pale Horse pulled up over the debris, and then punched forward again, closing the distance between the two planes.

With White Horse in the lead, Miller could see just how close they were coming to the valley walls. As a child, Miller often closed his eyes at scary movies and a part of him wanted to do that now. But if he were going to die, it would be with his eyes open.

He looked to the side and saw the top of the valley wall. “We’re going up?”

“Valley ends up ahead,” Pale Horse said. “We’re going to be exposed for about thirty seconds before entering the next valley that will take us to the DZ.”

The DZ was the drop zone, and “drop” was a nice word for what they were going to attempt.

As soon as they left the valley behind, warning lights flashed and alarms blared.

“Missile lock,” Pale Horse said. “Hold on to you—”

The alarms went silent.

“I got your backs, boys!” Red Horse shouted. “Just needed to swat a fly first.”

“Glad to hear it,” White Horse said from the lead plane.

“You still have four bandits on your six. Over.”

“Keep them occupied for another minute,” Pale Horse said. “Then bug out. Over.”

“What?” Miller said.

“We can use them,” Pale Horse said.

“Copy that,” Red Horse said. “But if it’s okay with you, I’m just going to hang back until you’re on the ground and then shoot the shit out of them. Over.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Miller saw White Horse dive into the ground and disappear from sight, so he was prepared for the motion, but the feeling of falling fast still unnerved him. He’d flown a lot. Jumped out of planes. Off of buildings. Never mind experiencing aerial combat onboard Air Force One, but after this dogfight, he was going to swear off fighter jets.

They entered the valley moving slower than the last. With Red Horse making the bandits’ life a misery of missile locks, they had less to worry about. That is, if you didn’t count the narrow valley walls squeezing them on either side. Happily, this valley was nearly a straight shot toward the DZ.

“Thirty seconds,” Pale Horse said.

Miller tensed. He knew what was coming. And he knew it would hurt.

A bridge appeared in the distance. He recognized the shape. Los Alamos National Laboratory lay on the left side of the gorge. The rest of the city to the right. The only way in was to cross what had been dubbed the Omega Bridge—a 106-foot tall, 422-foot long steel arch bridge that connected one side of Los Alamos Valley to the other.

The valley widened, exposing them to attack.

“Red Horse, let them off the leash,” Pale Horse said. “Over.”

“Copy that,” Red Horse replied. “Good luck and happy hunting. Out.”

Alarms sounded a moment later.

“Lock,” Pale Horse said.

The bridge loomed ahead. It was empty.

“Missiles away.”

Missiles. Plural. The enemy was unloading.

Warning beeps sounded. Beep, beep, beep.

“Here we go,” Pale Horse said.

White Horse passed under the Omega Bridge a split second before Pale Horse followed.

Beepbeepbeepbeep.

Both planes pulled up.

Spun sideways.

And exploded.

Miller felt the heat of the explosion, but it lasted only a fraction of a second. He felt a pressure beyond anything he had experienced while flying in the plane. The anti-G suit tried to compensate, but Miller’s vision began to fade. A split second before the missiles had struck the jets, Miller, Vesely, White Horse, and Pale Horse ejected. The rocket-propelled ejection seats launched from the cockpits like missiles, carrying them two hundred feet in the blink of an eye.

The twin explosions of the Hornets, along with several missiles striking and decimating the Omega Bridge, hid their escape from the bandits, which rocketed past a moment later.

The ejection seat jolted Miller hard as the parachute deployed. His vision returned in full a moment later. He saw the ground approaching fast. They’d ejected at an angle that launched the seats up and out of the valley. When the chutes deployed, they were only three hundred feet above the ground. Miller braced himself, but the impact didn’t play out exactly how he expected. He slowed suddenly, and then swung in an arc before crashing into the side of the tree. The seat absorbed most of the impact, but his damaged body begged for mercy.

Miller waited for the seat to stop moving, clutched his gear, and unbuckled from the seat. He fell just a few feet, but his legs ached at the effort after being confined in the F/A-18 for six hours.

The roar of jets brought his eyes up to the sky, which had turned purple because of the falling red flakes. He saw two F-16s turning around in a wide arc. He had no doubt they’d do a flyby in search of survivors. But then both planes began flying erratically. A missile cut through the sky and turned one of the planes into a fireball.

Red Horse. The F-22 Raptor gave chase to the second, but was pursued by two more bandits. A missile launched. Small explosions burst behind Red Horse, then the F-22 rose at a sharp angle. The missile exploded well behind the jet, which continued up and over until righting itself behind all three bandits. More missiles fired.

A hand on Miller’s shoulder spun him around.

He drew his sound-suppressed Sig Sauer P226 handgun and aimed it at Vesely’s head.

Vesely grinned. “Not bad, Survivor. I feared you’d been injured.”

Miller lowered the weapon. “Never better.”

“White Horse did not make it,” Vesely said. “Shrapnel from explosion. Where is Pale Horse?”

Pale Horse cleared his throat, bringing their eyes up. He was stuck in a tree, dangling six feet from the ground, but facedown. If he unbuckled he’d fall hard. Miller and Vesely braced the man. He unbuckled and they slowed his fall, both men grunting as the weight strained three stitched gunshot wounds.

Hidden in a stand of short pines, the three men peeled off their anti-G suits. Each wore black tactical suits with supply belts holding holstered handguns, extra ammo, and small, fifteen-minute pony bottles, just in case. Miller opened a case of disassembled weapons and quickly slapped them together, handing an UMP submachine gun to Vesely and Pale Horse. Each carried silenced handguns with spare ammo for both weapons.

Miller took a deep breath. His chest ached, but he didn’t notice. His mind recoiled when the air tasted like blood. Time to get inside, he thought.

“Ready?” Miller asked.

Vesely opened a duffel bag Miller hadn’t seen him bring. He nearly laughed when he saw the man’s cowboy hat and twin .38s emerge. He strapped the weapons to his waist and donned the Stetson.

“Now am ready.”

They left the trees behind and walked out onto a large parking lot. A full parking lot. But there were no people in sight.

Los Alamos National Laboratory was comprised of more than fifty buildings, but one stood out from the rest. In fact, there was nothing like it for hundreds of miles. The seven-story, 275,000-square-foot National Security Sciences Building (NSSB) towered above everything else in the area. And its design was no less impressive. The building’s all-glass front face curved like it had been cut away from a much larger circle. The sides of the building dropped down in a series of one-story steps where it merged with an all-glass square lobby area, a large circular auditorium, and a long stretch of terra-cotta wall that contrasted nicely with the blue-tinted windows covering the rest of the building.

While he and Vesely had never been to the NSSB before, the building had been constructed in 2005, which was when the rumors of the underground rail began to surface from workers who’d been hastily laid off. No one ever investigated their claims. Until today, Miller thought.

He started through the parking lot, weaving his way through the endless sea of vehicles. The first cars to arrive had parked in the designated spaces, but as more and more cars and trucks arrived, the vehicles parked in the roads between the rows of early birds. The vehicles slowed their approach, but the organized parking job created long alleys through which to move.

Halfway to the National Security Sciences Building a shrill buzzer sounded and froze the trio in their tracks.

“Sounds like a halftime basketball buzzer,” Pale Horse said.

Miller shushed the man and listened. A distinctive whirring sound reached his ears. It approached from the right. Pale Horse was right in a sense, the game was changing. Miller was about to order the men to run when the thing shot into the thin, car-lined alley.

“Faster than Antarctic variety,” Vesely said as they all stared at the now-motionless robotic weapon. It looked essentially the same as the robo-Bettys they’d encountered before, but instead of a flat disk at the center, it was a semicircle. The thing looked like a bona fide UFO on wheels.

“What’s it doing?” Pale Horse asked.

“Nothing good,” Miller said. “Time to go.”

As Miller turned to run the other direction, a second robot rolled to a stop, thirty feet in front of him. These things were being coordinated. But by whom? Or what? “We’re boxed in!”

The two robo-Bettys zipped toward them in unison.

“Over the cars!” Miller shouted. The three men leapt over the nearest vehicles—a new compact car and an old pickup.

The whirring grew closer still. The robo-Bettys could drive beneath the vehicles! Miller jumped from the hood of the compact car onto the back of a big black SUV, and threw himself on top. A moment later, the compact car exploded from beneath. The impact flung him onto the hood of the SUV, knocking the wind out of him.

The pickup truck exploded a moment later. Vesely, who had reached the front of the next car, was spared the majority of the impact. Pale Horse was sent flying and landed in the gap between vehicles.

Miller rolled off the hood and saw Vesely picking Pale Horse up. “Everyone okay?”

“Fine,” Pale Horse said.

Vesely gave him a thumbs-up.

“They’re not Bouncing Bettys anymore,” Miller said.

“Too many hiding places,” Vesely said. “Ineffective.”

The problem was, the weapons had been adapted so that they could turn the vehicles into giant shrapnel bombs. If any of them had been closer to that car when it exploded, they would have been shredded. A second explosion made them all duck. “Gas tank!” Miller said.

They were surrounded by bombs, just waiting for a fuse. When he stood, Miller saw the pickup truck engulfed in flames. The blaze would soon spread to the surrounding cars, which could also explode.

The sound of several more approaching mobile bombs sent Miller into action. He climbed to the roof of the next car and searched the parking lot. The small things whizzed between and under cars as they converged toward the three men. “Stay on top of the cars, and don’t stop moving!”

Miller led the charge. They needed to cover one hundred yards over the roofs of nearly fifty cars. What could have taken fourteen seconds on flat ground would take more than a minute leaping from roof to roof. The bombs closed the distance quickly. The first exploded a little prematurely, four cars behind Vesely, who brought up the rear. The red hatchback flipped into the air. The explosion stumbled Vesely, but didn’t knock him over.

Miller glanced back to make sure the man was okay, but when he saw Vesely, the man was stabbing his finger ahead. Miller spun forward and found one of the robotic bombs tearing toward the Cadillac upon which he stood. There was no time to leap away, so he raised his sound-suppressed UMP, took aim, and squeezed off a tight three-round spread. The first two rounds found pavement. The third hit the red light dead on. The small engine fell silent and the vehicle rolled forward. It came to a stop against the wheel of the Caddy, and didn’t explode.

A car behind Vesely exploded, and this time the impact sent him sailing. He crashed onto the roof of the next car. Pale Horse jumped back to help him up.

“Aim for the light!” Miller shouted. He wasn’t sure what it was, but thought it was some kind of sensor, probably tracking body heat. And now that it was blind, the thing couldn’t see him, and thus, didn’t detonate when it came within range. It was his best guess, anyway.

As Vesely was pulled into a sitting position, he whipped out his pistol and squeezed off a single round. The bullet streaked past three cars, sailed past the red light sensor on the front, and struck the domed disk in the middle.

The explosion knocked Pale Horse and Vesely down. Though it was farther away, the force of the blast wasn’t dulled by a vehicle. Miller ran back and yanked both men up. There were still five of the little bastards on the way.

“I said aim for the sensor,” Miller said to Vesely.

Vesely shook his head, clearing it. “Aim can’t be perfect every time.”

“Thought you were gunslinger?” Miller said.

He took aim in the direction of a distant whir and fired twice. When Miller peeked around the man, he saw two disabled robo-bombs, fifty feet away.

Before Vesely could gloat, several more whirring engines grew louder. The sound came from the direction of the National Security Sciences Building. Miller realized the vehicles were approaching from beneath the cars. They’d only be visible for a fraction of a second as they passed through the open space between cars. “Go back!”

The trio jumped back over the next line of cars. As Miller slid over the hood of a black Corvette, he rolled onto the ground and quickly saw a single red light approaching in the shadow of a car just twenty feet away. He pulled the trigger four times before the red light winked out. It was replaced by two more, coming in fast.

Miller jumped up, scrambled over an old Chevy station wagon. He dove from the back of the wagon, sailing over the cab of a Ford F150. The station wagon exploded a moment later, its front end lifting off the ground. As Miller moved to the back of the F150, the wagon’s gas tank exploded. The jolt knocked Miller from the back of the truck. He couldn’t see the last of the robo-bombs through the smoke, but he could hear it closing in. He turned left and bolted down the alley between cars.

The robo-bomb entered the alley just seconds later and accelerated. Miller had just seconds before the thing slid up behind him and blew him to pieces. He fired several rounds over his shoulder as he ran, but none found the mark.

“Survivor!” Vesely shouted.

Miller turned forward. Vesely stood over the alley, each foot on a car to either side. He lifted his gun, aiming toward Miller’s head.

Miller dove forward, rolling beneath Vesely as he pulled the trigger.

The loud report of the .38 Super drowned out the sound of the robo-bomb’s engine, but Miller knew Vesely’s aim had been true when the thing rolled to a stop against his leg.

Miller bent down to look at the robot and several things happened at once.

A breeze kicked up just over his head.

The car next to him imploded.

And he heard a very loud, rapid buzz that sounded an awful lot like a minigun.

53

Contrary to how it sounds, the minigun is anything but small. The heavy machine gun’s six rotating barrels can fire up to six thousand high-caliber rounds per minute. And judging by the sound of it, Miller thought that there were actually two miniguns firing in tandem. A glance at the ruined car confirmed it. Twin streaks of destroyed metal ran from back to front. If Miller hadn’t ducked to look at the robot, he’d be missing the top half of his body.

“Down!” he shouted as he dove to the pavement and slid beneath a truck. Vesely dove beneath the truck with him. Miller searched the area for any small red lights and found Pale Horse beneath a vehicle two rows over.

A loud pulsating electric hum filled the air. It sounded like the Beehive, but crackled with energy. The hum grew louder, passing above them.

“Is Bell,” Vesely whispered, pointing up.

The thing was airborne.

Movement to the side caught Miller’s attention. He turned as Pale Horse rolled from one car to the next. The hum grew louder for a moment and then the two miniguns opened up on the pavement where Pale Horse had just been.

“Don’t move!” Miller said.

While the little robo-bombs seemed to be attracted to body heat, zeroing in on the source before exploding, whatever patrolled the air above them responded to motion.

While the thing wouldn’t climb under the cars looking for them, they couldn’t move.

Unless, Miller thought, it can’t see us.

The air was already thick with red flakes and smoke from a number of burning vehicles, but the wind was blowing in the wrong direction. What they needed was a fire in the other direction.

Miller shifted back toward the alley.

“Survivor,” Vesely whispered loudly. “What are you doing?”

But Miller didn’t respond. The hum was off to the side and Miller didn’t think the thing would have a good line of sight. At the edge of the vehicle, he peeked out and glanced at the now red sky. Nothing. He rolled out from beneath the truck, grabbed the robo-bomb, and rolled back. The maneuver took just two seconds, but had somehow attracted the sentinel’s attention. It hummed loudly as it closed in.

Miller moved back under the truck and slid up next to Vesely. “I’m going to take this a few cars down and—”

“Give to me,” Vesely said, reaching for the robot. “I build things. Electronics. Will start motor.”

Miller let him take the device. The Cowboy seemed to understand his plan.

Using a knife, Vesely removed four screws from the bottom of the robot. He removed the black cover from the outer ring. The internal design was fairly straightforward, like an oddly shaped remote-control car. “Still functional,” Vesely said. “Just lacks input to tell it ‘move forward.’”

Vesely found the throttle and pushed it forward. The little wheels spun quickly as the engine whirred. He pushed the throttle all the way forward and pinned it in place using one of the free screws. The two men lay side by side, looking down a line of cars that stretched a hundred feet. Vesely lined the robo-bomb up as straight as possible.

Miller rolled to the back side of the truck. “Go!”

Vesely let the robot go and it zipped away, moving quickly beneath the line of cars. The hum grew louder as the hovering sentinel tracked the robo-bomb’s movement.

Miller rolled out from beneath the truck and got his first look at what was firing the miniguns. The black, vaguely bell-shaped craft hovered thirty feet above the parking lot. A bright light glowed at the bottom, flickering in time with the loud crackles. A minigun had been attached to either side. Miller was happy to see the weapons tracking the robo-bomb as it appeared and disappeared between each car it passed.

The guns opened fire, tearing into the line of cars as it chased the fast-moving robot.

Miller ran the other way.

Behind him, Miller heard what sounded like a war. The guns never stopped firing. Spent shell casings rained down from the craft, rattling against pavement and metal. There was a loud whuff as one, or more, of the vehicles ignited. And then, there was an explosion. Miller recognized the sound as the robo-bomb detonating. The sentinel had destroyed one of its own.

Miller stopped, bent down, grabbed what he needed, and sprinted back the way he came. The chaos that greeted him was far better than he’d hoped for. At least four cars were on fire and billowing thick black smoke into the air—smoke that was being pulled in his direction. In fact, his plan had worked so well that he could no longer see the minigun-wielding Bell. But he could hear it, hovering in the smoke, no doubt trying to make sense of its surroundings.

Miller reached the spot where Vesely lay hiding and continued past.

Smoke rolled over him and he held his breath. The hot grime stung his eyes, which began to tear. But he kept searching the haze for his enemy. He found the dull glow moving toward him just a moment later. He stopped, took aim at the light, and waited.

A gust of wind cleared the air around the Bell and Miller tossed his explosive payload like a discus player. The sightless, but still explosive robo-bomb sailed through the air.

Off target.

But Miller didn’t need to strike the hovering Bell, he only needed it to see the robot. A moment later it did. As the disk-shaped bomb closed to within ten feet of the Bell, both miniguns opened fire.

Miller dove beneath a car.

The bomb exploded, sending a wave of hot air over Miller.

But there was no secondary explosion. Or the sound of the Bell falling from the sky. Just the hum of the thing. But the hum was different. Instead of pulsating, it was now intermittent. The sound began to fade.

Miller came out from hiding and watched the wounded machine come down at an angle. The bright light at its base flickered. Every time the light went out, the device lost altitude. A loud crash rolled over the parking lot as the Bell slammed into, and through, the front of the NSSB. Glass shattered and exploded inward.

Vesely and Pale Horse ran up to Miller.

“Holy geez,” Pale Horse said. “What the hell was that?”

“Is Bell,” Vesely said.

“Long story,” Miller added, and ran toward the building. He wanted to be inside before any other automated security joined the party. They reached the ruined front end of the building. There was a wide hole where the Bell crashed through. “Open sesame,” Miller said, and stepped inside.

The trio entered the large, open lobby one at a time, weapons at the ready. Only Miller had training with breaching and clearing a building, but Vesely and Pale Horse had apparently seen enough movies to be competent. Or they were just following Miller’s lead as he swept his weapon back and forth, looking for targets. Convinced they were alone for the moment, Miller said, “Clear,” and relaxed his stance.

The place looked like a tornado had moved through. The once chic lobby, decorated with tall, living plants and modern art sculptures, was coated in a layer of human detritus. Food wrappers, empty bottles, strewn papers, lost luggage, even a tipped-over moped. Not to mention a smoldering Bell. Miller steered clear of the Bell and worked his way toward the back of the lobby.

“Now what?” Vesely asked.

“Now,” Miller said, pointing to a trail of trash leading down a hallway, “we follow the bread crumbs.”

The trail of debris led to a now-abandoned security check point—metal detectors for people and luggage. A second security station held rows of computer monitors connected to what looked like rows of miniature centrifuges. There were several large red trash bins marked with biohazard symbols. Each and every one was overfull with used needles. “What the hell?” Miller whispered.

Vesely pointed to the centrifuges. “DNA testing. For purity.”

“Unbelievable,” Miller said before moving on.

The floor behind the security checks had been torn up. Shattered wood and ripped-up linoleum tiles sat stacked beyond the hole. Miller slid between the metal detectors in case they were still active, and approached the hole. A staircase shot straight down several stories.

“They’ve been walking right over it for years,” Pale Horse said. “Where does it go?”

Vesely started down the stairs. “Down.”

The three men took the stairs as quickly and quietly as they could. Nearing the bottom, they slowed. The stairs ended in what looked like a subway station straight out of Nazi Germany. Red, white, and black propaganda posters lined the walls, proclaiming the superiority of the Aryan race, the rise of the Fourth Reich, and the messianic return of the Führer.

Miller stopped at the bottom of the staircase. He heard voices. He couldn’t risk looking without exposing himself, but he could hear two men. He leaned close to Vesely and Pale Horse and whispered, “Take me by the arms, like I’m injured. Drag me out. Lay on some more of that German.” He placed his hands behind his back, clutching the silenced handgun.

The two men understood the plan and placed their arms under his, hoisting him up between them. Miller hung his head down and let his feet drag as the two men pulled him out into the secret terminal.

“Who the hell are you?” asked a man’s voice.

“Help us,” Pale Horse said. “He’s been shot.”

“Are you here for the last shuttle? It’s the last one.” This was a woman’s voice.

“C’mon now,” Pale Horse said. “There are ten of you.”

Ten of them! Miller thought. Shit.

“Why do they have guns?” asked another woman.

“Ich werde verschlingen Ihre Kinder!” Vesely shouted.

“What did you say?” a man asked, but it sounded more like, “Vaht dis you say?” An honest-to-goodness German accent.

Busted.

He heard a weapon slide being racked, drew his silenced sidearm, aimed toward the sound, looked up, and fired twice. Pft! Pft!

A man in full World War II German regalia toppled to the floor, two neat finger-sized holes in his head.

Two more men dressed in blue security guard uniforms took aim, but were stumbling back from the action, caught off guard. Vesely and Pale Horse wasted no time drawing their weapons, but in the time it took Pale Horse to aim, Vesely had shot both men in the head with his UMP.

The nearly silent gunfight took three seconds and left seven petrified people in its wake. Judging by the similar facial features and variety of ages, Miller guessed this was a family. Three generations’ worth.

A baby cried.

Four generations.

The mother of the baby, a pretty blonde who couldn’t have been more than a few days over eighteen, said, “Please don’t shoot us!”

The family huddled in a corner. The grandparents stood at the front, ready to take a bullet for their brood.

A part of Miller that sought blood for blood wanted to take the baby, gun the rest down, and be done with it. These people had no problem allowing the rest of the human race to be wiped out.

But he couldn’t kill in cold blood. He saw an open door in the terminal’s white tile wall. He motioned to the door with his gun. “Get in.”

The family filed into the large storage closet.

“Please,” said the young mother. “Don’t leave us down here. The air—”

“If you don’t want to die,” Miller said through clenched teeth, “then you better start praying we can stop—”

The second oldest man—the baby’s grandfather—spit in Miller’s face and wound up to take a swing at him.

Miller punched the man in the gut, doubling him over, and then put him on the floor with a punch to the face. He wiped the spit off his cheek and said, “Lock them in.”

Pale Horse held the door shut while Vesely wedged a chair under the handle.

Miller’s heart thumped with anger. It took everything he had not to shoot that man. He walked toward the boarding ramp and heard an electric zap to his right. Light emerged from the tunnel first, followed by a sleek red subway car. The car was aerodynamic on both ends and the three sets of double doors were emblazoned with the SecondWorld symbol. It hovered over a pair of strange-looking tracks and was attached to a cable above it, that sparked as it moved. The car came to a stop and the doors opened. Miller saw the engineer glance over, looking for his fare, but instead finding three dead men.

The man’s eyes popped open, registered Miller’s approach. The doors began to shut, but Miller threw himself onto the car and shot the man twice in the back. Feeling no remorse for killing the man who was about to speed away with their ticket into Dulce, Miller dragged the body out of the train and laid it on the floor.

Miller stood over the four dead men. There was surprisingly little blood from the three shot in the head. The rounds had entered the skull, but not come out. Vesely and Pale Horse joined him.

“What are you doing?” Vesely asked, heading for the train. “We must go.”

“Hold on,” Miller said. “Let’s change our clothes first.”

Vesely looked down at the dead and gave a nod.

Five minutes later, they stood on the train. Vesely and Pale Horse were dressed as guards. He had debated with Vesely about him still wearing his cowboy hat and holstered .38s, but the man claimed victory after pointing out that they were in the southwest, where a Stetson combined with his perfected Southern drawl wouldn’t stand out. “If anything,” he claimed, “they will be admired.”

Miller wore the German’s uniform, which he realized after counting stars belonged to a general. He hoped the uniform’s intimidation factor would keep people from inspecting his face too closely. It wouldn’t help to have “the Survivor” recognized.

He sat down behind the controls, which were simple enough. Vesely and Pale Horse stood behind him. Miller looked back and said, “I think this thing has harnesses for a reason.”

The two men looked at the side-facing rows of seats. Double-strap harnesses hung from each chair. The two men sat down and quickly buckled themselves.

“How fast can it go?” Pale Horse said, sounding doubtful. “It’s a train.”

Miller put his hand on the throttle. “We’re about to find out.”

He shoved the throttle all the way forward.

The train accelerated faster than any of the three thought possible. Faster than the F/A-18 Hornets. And without the anti-G suits keeping the blood in their heads, all three passed out and spent the first ten minutes of the twelve-minute, eighty-mile trip unconscious.

When Miller came to, it was to the sound of an alarm and a flashing display screen that read COLLISION WARNING.

Below that text was a distance counter, ticking down feet quickly. When he first saw it, the number was at five thousand feet—just under a mile. By the time he shook his head clear and looked again, it was down to two thousand feet.

Miller felt a rush of adrenaline surge into his body with the realization that he had only seconds to live.

54

Miller yanked the throttle all the way back. The car slowed, but continued forward. The distance counter continued to roll.

Seven hundred feet.

Miller looked for the brake, but couldn’t find it.

Five hundred feet.

Shit!

Three hundred feet.

The car suddenly dropped, struck the bottom of the magnetic track, and slid with an ear-piercing shriek.

One hundred and fifty feet.

The seat’s harness dug into Miller’s shoulder. His vision began to fade as the car rapidly slowed.

With a jolt, the pressure on his body eased. His vision returned. They’d stopped. To the right was a subway station nearly identical to the one they’d left—white tile walls and Nazi propaganda posters. If anyone staying here had any doubts upon entering, they’d be brainwashed by the time they left.

Miller unbuckled and turned around. Vesely sat frozen with his eyes wide. His hand was raised and clutching a metal cable. A sign above the cable read EMERGENCY BRAKE.

Vesely had saved their lives.

“What happened?” Pale Horse asked as he freed himself from the harness.

“Is maglev train,” Vesely said. “Magnets hold train above track. It hovers. No friction.”

Pale Horse rubbed his neck. The rapid acceleration had yanked his head hard to the side. “That’s why we were moving like a bat outta Hell?”

Vesely answered with a nod. “Emergency brake cut power to magnets. Train fell. Friction stopped us.”

“Did more than that,” Miller said, smelling smoke. He walked to the doors and had to force them open with his hands. Two men in red uniforms approached quickly. One held a fire extinguisher. Before they arrived, Miller stepped out of the car and did his best to look pissed. Vesely and Pale Horse followed.

“What happened?” asked one of the men, while the other blasted the smoking base of the subway car with the fire extinguisher.

“This piece of shit malfunctioned,” Pale Horse said.

Vesely backed up the claim. “I had to use the emergency brake.”

“That’s not possible, I—”

Miller drew his sound-supressed sidearm and shot the man in the forehead. The silent cough of the weapon was drowned out by the hiss of the fire extinguisher. The man putting out the fire had no idea his partner had been killed.

Miller quickly scanned the area. A large door that looked like it had been taken from a bank vault was the only exit. It was currently closed. A security panel to the right had a numbered keypad and palm reader.

“How will we get through?” Vesely whispered.

The door opened from the other side. Three more men dressed in red coveralls and carrying an assortment of toolboxes entered the terminal.

They saw the dead man right away, but before they could retreat, Miller and Vesely shot all three. The door tried to close, but stopped against the body of a man who’d fallen in the doorway. The heavy motorized door persisted, squeezing the man’s body. Pale Horse ran for the door, but before he could reach it, the door started moving again, and this time, didn’t stop until it was securely closed.

Blood poured from the lower half of the man’s severed body, pooling around the door.

“Oh my God, what happened!” shouted the man with the fire extinguisher.

He ran to the severed legs, dropping the extinguisher. “What happened!” he shouted again, and looked to Miller. That’s when he saw his dead partner and Miller’s gun aimed at his face.

The man’s hands shot up, which Miller took as a good sign. He wanted to live.

“What’s your name?” Miller asked. He walked toward the man, keeping the gun leveled at his head the whole time.

The man cringed and tilted his head away from Miller. “Ch-Charlie!”

“Charlie,” Miller said, his voice calm. “Would you mind opening this door for me?”

“Coming here wasn’t my idea,” Charlie said. “It’s my wife. She was going to take my daughter without me. I had to come. Had to play along.”

“Charlie,” Miller said, putting a little vitriol in his voice. “If you open the door, I promise I won’t shoot you.”

“Or k-kill me?”

Charlie was quick.

“Or kill you.”

Charlie nodded his head and shuffled his way around the pool of blood, stopping once he reached the security controls.

“What’s the number sequence?” Miller asked.

“Three, seven, seven, six, two, zero, pound,” Charlie replied, and then punched in the numbers. When he was done, the hand scanner lit up.

“Is that number code just for you?” Miller asked.

“For everyone in maintenance,” Charlie said. “The handprint checks against maintenance IDs. We can go anywhere but Security.”

“If the handprint isn’t in the maintenance database?” Pale Horse asked.

“I—I don’t know,” Charlie said. “Oh my God, you’re not going to cut off my hand, are you?”

The handprint screen turned from blue to green. The door unlocked and swung open.

“No, Charlie,” Miller said. “We’re not.” Then he clubbed the man in the back of the head, knocking him unconscious. He quickly bound the man’s hands and feet with plastic zip-tie cuffs and left him on the floor. He wouldn’t be sounding any alarms.

Careful not to step in the blood, the three men entered the space beyond. Using the two dead men like logs in a river, they leapt over the vast pool of blood left by the top half of the severed man’s body.

The door closed behind them. They were in a small, sealed-off, stark white room. A glass door on the far side was labeled AIR LOCK in reverse. A momentary increase in pressure popped Miller’s ears. The glass door slid open.

A stark white hallway led straight ahead, lit from above by rows of bright white LED lights. More framed propaganda lined the walls. Miller could imagine that just a short while ago this hallway was filled with Aryan refuges seeking shelter from the oxygen purge that would bring about their utopian SecondWorld. But the hallway was spotless. No trace of human presence remained. Somebody runs a tight ship, he thought.

At the end of the one-hundred-foot-long hallway, it opened into a fifty-foot-wide waiting area. The trio stopped, facing a line of ten elevator doors. Benches and small tables lined the walls. Stacks of pamphlets sat on the tables. The posters on the walls were informational, rather than propaganda, featuring pictures of the facility’s insides, which looked more like a five-star hotel than a secret underground Nazi base.

A large brass sign over the elevator doors read ARCHE 001.

“Arche?” Miller said.

“German for ‘ark,’” Vesely explained.

“As in Noah’s Ark?” Pale Horse asked.

“I think so,” Vesely said, then pointed to the right-side wall. “Look.”

A wall-sized diagram revealed the facility’s basic layout. A spiraling atrium made up the structure’s core; thirty stories down, each level tapering down toward the bottom. Doors lined the spiraling ramp, which was labeled “General Population Quarters.” A large room at the bottom was vaguely labeled “Security and Control.” The message was clear: you don’t need to be here.

Pale Horse pointed to a yellow arrow with text inside that read “You Are Here.” It showed the long hallway and the railcar terminal behind them. “I think they had a mall designer put this thing together.”

Above the terminal were several other large chambers that branched out and away from the central core, but some were colored yellow, some green, and some red. It’s all color-coded, Miller thought, like the crews on an aircraft carrier. Miller found a color guide at the bottom that revealed each section’s purpose.

Brown—Military

Green—Garden & Seed

Yellow—Menagerie

Red—Maintenance

Blue—Security

White—General Population

Using the color code as a guide, Miller found two different hangar bays, one near the surface, which looked like it could service planes like the F-16s they encountered. But the other descended straight down into the ground and opened up into a large cylindrical chamber.

Vesely noted Miller’s attention on the oddly-shaped hangar. “For foo fighters,” he said. “For Bell.”

Miller understood. They had flying craft that could take off vertically without a runway. He shook his head. The sci-fi bullshit was a little too much to swallow sometimes. He didn’t doubt its existence anymore. He just wished the UFOs actually belonged to a benevolent alien species.

It was all very interesting, but Miller already knew where they needed to go, Security and Control. If there was some way to stop the ongoing worldwide attack from this location, it would be there. He was about to lay out his simple plan when he heard the clacking of fingers on a computer keyboard.

Vesely stood at one of three keyboards mounted to the wall beneath the large diagram.

“What are you doing?” Miller asked.

“Is like bookstore interface. Type in name. Find room.”

Miller looked over his shoulder and saw the name “Elizabeth Adler” typed in. He reached out to stop Vesely, just in case the system was monitored, but the man hit the Enter key too fast.

Nothing happened. And no alarms sounded.

Vesely deleted the name and typed in “Roger Brodeur.”

Same result.

“What was Brodeur’s real name?” Vesely asked.

“Eichmann. Lance Eichmann.”

Vesely typed in the name and hit Enter. A door near the bottom of the spiral glowed brown and revealed the text: Level 4. Room 37.

Miller wanted nothing more than to swoop in and rescue Adler, but the mission had to come first. “There isn’t time,” he said.

Vesely looked at him with a single raised eyebrow. “I am not being sentimental, Survivor. She has been here longer. She would have come in through hangar. And as granddaughter of a man and woman without whom none of this would have been possible, it is likely she may have been presented to those who might remember them fondly.” He pointed at the brown Security and Control area. “Perhaps Kammler himself.”

The idea of not finding Adler never sat well with him so he quickly agreed with Vesely’s assessment and said, “Level four, room thirty-seven it is. If she’s not there we’ll kick down the Security and Control doors. Sound like a plan?”

“Works for me,” Pale Horse said.

“Is good,” Vesely added.

Miller pushed the elevator call button. A pair of doors to his right opened immediately. All three jumped back. The elevator was not empty.

A single red eye stared at them, glowing eight inches above the floor. Miller recognized the design as being similar to those in Antarctica—a robo-Betty. The engine whirred as the thing turned toward Vesely. The red light pulsed for a moment and then turned green.

“What’s it doing?” Pale Horse asked.

“Can’t be facial recognition,” Miller said.

It turned toward Pale Horse and began flashing red again.

“Is testing DNA,” Vesely said with urgency. “Genetics. For purity!”

The light turned green and the device rotated toward Miller. “You’re sure?” he asked.

“U.S. Homeland Security has them,” Vesely urged. “Were going to be in airports!”

Miller couldn’t risk him being wrong. He didn’t know if this thing functioned like the ones outside, but he had to take the risk. He drew his pistol and shot the thing’s red eye out. For a moment, nothing happened. But then the disk at the center began to spin. Ding, the doors began to close. The disk launched into the air and fired its projectiles, but the three men were unharmed. They heard the spray of metal balls ricocheting off the metal insides of the elevator, but not one made it out.

Miller hit the elevator’s call button and the doors opened again. A hundred metal balls the size of small marbles covered the floor. “Okay. They scan DNA and don’t respond well to being shot. Good to know.” He didn’t see a second payload and began sweeping the metal balls out of the elevator with his foot.

“I think it had scanned you already,” Vesely said. “The delay is probably from analyzing. Homeland units take one hour to analyze.”

“How could these be so much faster?” Pale Horse asked, helping Miller with the cleanup.

“Because they’re only looking for one thing,” Miller said. “Racial purity. Looks like half-Jews don’t pass the test.”

After cleaning out the metal balls and the remains of the robo-Betty, they entered the elevator. Miller hit the button for level four. The doors closed and the elevator dropped. Thirty seconds and five floors later, the doors opened to another long, white hallway.

Vesely and Pale Horse led the way this time to give the impression that they were escorting Miller. The general’s uniform was a good disguise, but if too many people looked at his face, someone was bound to recognize him. He lowered his cap, putting his eyes in shadow, and walked with a rigid step, doing his best to ooze malevolence. If people were afraid to look him in the eyes, this might just work.

When they reached the end of the hallway, Vesely and Pale Horse stopped so fast that Miller bumped into them. All three stumbled out of the hallway. Miller quickly looked for witnesses—he might have to smack the two men around if anyone witnessed their bungling—but saw no one. Then he looked beyond the pair and saw what had stopped them in their tracks. He stepped forward slowly, placed his hands on the railing, and looked up with widening eyes.

55

No one said a word. They just stood there looking up, gripping the white metal railing that followed the spiraling ramp down three levels and up thirty-one levels. It was the up that held their attention.

The diagram hadn’t done the structure justice. It was like standing in the middle of a skyscraper and looking up through its core, all the way to the ceiling. Almost everything was white, like one big sterile laboratory. And the place glowed with radiance—like the noonday sun on newly fallen snow. The light came from what had to be millions of bright, and energy-saving, LED lights.

But it was the ceiling, or rather what hung from it, that held their attention the longest. Two red flags, each five stories tall, hung from the ceiling. Both were crimson with large white circles in the center. One held a black swastika in the center of the circle, the other a large black SecondWorld symbol.

As Miller’s shock wore off, his other senses filtered in. The air felt cool and dry, and smelled of ozone—the atmosphere was being conditioned. No oxygenless air down here. His ears perked up. He heard voices. Hundreds of them. Thousands. He searched the levels above and below level four and saw people everywhere, talking, laughing, swapping stories. Their voices echoed throughout the chamber. Miller looked down and saw a large open atrium complete with what looked like a marble floor and fountain. People walked and talked, sat by the fountain with snacking kids. But the people weren’t alone.

“The place is like a giant fucking fun-town mall,” Pale Horse said.

Miller saw several robo-Bettys navigating through the sea of humanity. He couldn’t count how many as the throng moved and shifted, but there were a lot. And as the Bettys passed people, their lights flashed between red and green.

“They’re constantly scanning the people for racial purity,” Miller said, pointing out the Bettys.

“Perhaps increasing standards,” Vesely offered. “Or looking for stowaways.” He looked at Miller. “Like you.”

Miller agreed with a nod. He would have to avoid the DNA-detecting robo-Bettys.

He turned toward a group of laughing people. While this was an underground bunker, it was also luxurious. These people were on vacation while the rest of the world suffered. He gripped the railing hard, fighting to control his rising anger, and then remembered why they were on level four.

Adler.

Room thirty-seven.

“Let’s go,” he said, and started down the curving ramp. The first door he passed was forty-two. He counted out ahead and figured the door to Brodeur’s room was halfway around the circle. Three men, one dressed in blue and two in brown, stood in front of an open door between them and their destination.

As he neared the men, Miller realized he was now in front of Vesely and Pale Horse. His face would be hard to hide. He looked to the right, out over the spiraling core, and ignored the men. They, however, did not ignore him.

“Afternoon, sir,” the man in blue said.

Miller ignored him, but glanced at the three men. They weren’t looking at his face. They were looking at his weapons—a sound-suppressed Sig Sauer and an UMP submachine gun. Both were modern weapons used by American Special Forces. Miller remembered that all of the Germans he had fought thus far carried vintage World War II weapons. It must be a source of pride. A badge of honor that set them apart from their modern counterparts. Miller looked at the brownshirts’ weapons. Mauser C96s. Old-school German handguns. The man in blue carried a newer Heckler & Koch HK4 pistol.

“You see something purty out there?” the man in the blue shirt said.

When Miller passed the man without acknowledging his existence, he lost his patience. “Hey, I’m talking to you.”

“Wer sind Sie?” one of the German brownshirts said, then more angrily, “Wie ist Ihr Name?”

Miller spun, drew his silenced handgun, and fired four times, hitting both brownshirts in the chest. Both men spilled back into the room without making a sound. Vesely took out the blueshirt just as quickly, but caught him as he fell forward into the walkway. Vesely quickly pulled the man’s body into the room while Miller and Pale Horse moved the brownshirts farther inside.

The room looked like a small studio apartment. The walls were a warm brown, not white like everything else, and were lit by a series of sconces. Framed posters of outdoor scenes hung from the walls. A bed sat in the corner, across from a small kitchenette with an eat-in bar. There was a couch. A wall-mounted flat-screen TV. Even a fish tank.

The only door in the place opened up. A woman dressed in a white silk nightgown stepped out of a small bathroom. “Okay, boys, I—” She looked up and saw them, then fell over dead with a hole in her forehead.

Miller lowered the weapon. “Let’s move.”

They closed the door behind them, made sure it locked, and continued down the ramp. A man in blue exited from room forty, gave them a nod, and turned to the left, heading in the same direction. As he rounded the bend, a robo-Betty paused as he walked past. The blinking red light turned green. Then it headed for Miller.

Vesely got in front of Miller as they reached room thirty-seven. The robo-Betty approached quickly.

“Keep watch,” Miller said.

“Won’t that be kind of conspicuous?” Pale Horse said.

Miller motioned to all the people standing around on the ramps, just having conversations. “You’re two white men, dressed as guards, having a conversation. No one will notice you. And you’ve already passed—” He pointed at the Betty, just ten feet away. “—that thing’s DNA purity test.”

Miller tried the door handle and found it unlocked. He opened the door, slid inside, and closed it behind him just as the Betty arrived and began scanning Vesely. The room was nearly identical to the one now holding four dead bodies, with one exception—a blond woman with a bob haircut, petite body, and curvy hips lay on the bed, facing the far wall. Was she asleep?

Miller approached slowly, weapon at the ready. He rounded the bed, gave the open bathroom a glance to make sure they were alone, and then looked at the woman’s face.

Adler! They had dyed her hair blond again.

He lowered the weapon, walked to the side of the bed, and put his hand on her shoulder. He opened his mouth to say her name, but never got the chance.

Her hand reached up, snatched his wrist, and pulled him down. A flash of metal caught Miller’s eye as she brought her free hand up and thrust a knife toward his eye.

Miller felt the serrated blade tug at the skin next to his eye and slice through a few layers, but his reflexes saved him as he ducked to the side. The attack didn’t stop there, though. Adler spun on her back and kicked him hard in the gut. Miller fell back, the wind knocked out of him, and struggled for air.

“Adler,” he said, but his voice was raspy and unrecognizable.

The woman lunged, knife raised.

Miller had no choice but to defend himself. He caught Adler’s arm and gave it a twist. She shouted in pain, dropping the knife, but began pummeling at him with her free hand.

He kicked out her legs, sprawling her onto the floor. She fell on top of one of his legs, so he wrapped the other around her, locked them together, and squeezed. While she punched his legs, he managed to push himself up and say, “Can you please stop trying to kill me for a second.”

Adler’s head whipped toward him, eyes wide with shock.

He let her go and she dove on him again, this time crushing him with a hug. She held on to him for several seconds, squeezing him hard, until he asked, “Have they hurt you?”

She let go of him and sat back. “Aside from plotting genocide, they’ve been perfect gentlemen.” She looked him in the eyes. “I thought you were dead.”

He stood, straightened his uniform, and picked up his cap. “Came close.”

“Vesely?”

“He’s on the other side of the door, keeping watch.”

She looked relieved. “How did you get in?”

“Not important right now.” He took her by the shoulders. “What is important is that you tell me absolutely everything you know about this facility, its security, how to get into the Security and Control center and shut down the Bells.”

“How much longer do we have?” she asked.

She doesn’t know, he thought.

She noticed the urgency in his eyes. “What?”

“It’s already started.”

She sat down on the bed. “Oh my God.”

“We have hours,” he said. “Maybe less.”

She said nothing.

“Elizabeth, I need you to tell me everything you know.” He crouched down in front of her. “Right now.”

She looked at him, as though dazed, and then snapped out of it. Her eyes widened. “I think I know how to stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Everything,” she said. “The attacks. The Bells.” She turned toward the end table.

Miller looked and there on the table sat the brown leather journal of the first Elizabeth Adler.

56

The first thing Miller felt upon seeing the journal was suspicion. He stood up and took a step back, looking at Adler with fresh eyes. She was dressed in white—the color designated for the general population, but instead of the plain coveralls that he’d seen other people wearing, she wore a flowing white skirt with white lace trim at the bottom. Her shirt, which hugged her lithe torso, had long sleeves that ended in flowery lace cuffs that covered her hands. Her skin looked soft and radiant, like she’d been to a spa, and her hair—not only had the black dye been removed, but Adler’s crude haircut had been cleaned up. Compared to the other people in the Arche 001, she looked like a princess.

With the sting of Brodeur’s betrayal still fresh, Miller gripped his weapon a little tighter and asked, “How did the journal get here?” He couldn’t remember the last place he’d actually seen it. New Hampshire? She kept it in her oversized purse, and he certainly hadn’t seen that, since when? Poland. She had it in Poland.

She noted his rigid body language and the skepticism in his voice. She looked hurt by it, but answered, “I kept it with me. When we flew from the George Bush to the George Washington. And then to the Antarctic base. Tucked into my waist.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.

“I didn’t think it mattered. I didn’t keep it because I thought it would help, I kept it because I was hoping to find something in it that would vindicate my family. That my bloodline is responsible for global genocide sickens me.”

Miller thought about it. Based on what he knew about Adler, it made sense. But still, he’d been convinced about Brodeur, too. And her clothes… the way she’d just been lying in bed while the world outside choked to death. It didn’t sit well with him.

Adler noted his attention on her clothing. “He made me dress like this.”

“Who?”

“Eichmann—Brodeur. I put up a fight before we left Antarctica. Almost got away.” She pulled back the hair behind her ear, revealing a sewed-up gash, still swollen and red. “The clothing is part of his program to ‘tame’ me. Dressing me like a woman will make me act like one, he said.”

The wound on the back of Adler’s head erased his doubts. “Sorry,” he said. “For doubting you.” It was a quick apology, but there was no time for anything more. He motioned toward the journal before she could acknowledge or accept his apology. “What did you find?”

Adler picked up the journal and flipped past the pages of handwritten German. She stopped at the math. “There are several different equations in the journal, each labeled by the theory being tested. Anti-gravity. Magnetic force. Field expansion. Oxidization of iron. Ten in total. And despite my best efforts I’ve never been able to understand one of them. Just when I think something is going to make sense, the following page turns it all into mathematical gibberish.”

She turned to the first page of math, written on a left-side page. “This is the first equation. For anti-gravity.”

Miller saw a confusing jumble of numbers and symbols that looked more like an ancient language than math. But on the next page, at the top, he saw a single word.

Energie.

“Energy?” Miller said.

“The second equation,” Adler confirmed with a nod. “But the first is incomplete. It never made sense to me.” She flipped through the following pages, revealing two more of the equations, each starting on the left-hand page. “None of them make sense. Unless…” She flipped back to the first page of the energy equation and pulled it out. Rather than turning the page, she slid it over so that the two right-side pages sat next to each other.

Miller instantly saw how the pages fit together, some lines and numbers continuing from one to the next. “She hid the equation.”

“And mixed them up so they would make no sense,” Adler said. “I think it was her way of making sure the equations couldn’t be understood by the wrong people.”

“How did you figure it out?”

“I was thinking about my grandmother, trying to understand her thought process. I remembered a game she used to play with me—a kind of mathematical hopscotch. The numbers in the answer determined where I had to jump, but the track always ended with two separate paths, left and right. I had to pick one and hop it to the end. Ten squares. I always thought it was a strange way to end the game, but I loved making her happy. The first time we played I chose left, and lost. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘When the path is confusing and the numbers all wrong, follow only the right side.’ For the longest time I thought it was a morality lesson, about being on the side of right—the good side. It’s part of why I became an agent—liaison. But the game had nothing to do with right and wrong and everything to do with this book.”

“She wanted you to figure it out,” Miller said.

“I think so.”

“And did you?”

“Some of the equations are still beyond me, though I think I could make sense of them if I had the time. But only one of them is important.”

“Follow only the right side,” Miller said. “Energy.”

“Exactly,” Adler said. “The equation proves the feasibility of the Bell’s power source, a ‘zero point energy’ device developed for the Reich by Hans Coler. My grandmother refers to it as the Coil in her notes. The equation runs for twenty straight right-side pages and despite its length is fairly straightforward, though I suspect it is a simplified version of the original. At the end of the equation is an addendum. Ten additional pages that I suspect my grandmother never gave the Nazis.”

Miller felt like a kid with his first lottery ticket, waiting to see if his numbers would turn up. He cracked his knuckles and licked his lips.

“The Coil generates a never-ending supply of power. Perpetual energy. But it is sensitive to rapid fluctuations. It takes a very specific charge to get the device going, and once it does, the charge must remain within a certain range or it will generate more energy than it needs, or can store in its batteries. It is a very delicate balance. Once it is operating, the Coil supplies its own energy, but produces more than it consumes. The excess energy is contained in batteries, which I’m guessing is what powers the Bell’s magnetic force, the energy field, and anti-gravity systems.”

“Why run off batteries when there is an energy source that can’t be depleted?” Miller asked.

“When too much energy is put into the Coil, it feeds more energy into itself. It begins to generate more energy than it can contain, and feeds even more to itself. The more it generates, the faster it generates. Power feeding power.”

“Until it reaches critical mass,” Miller guessed.

She confirmed it with a nod.

“And then, ka-boom?”

“Big ka-boom.”

“How big?”

Adler shrugged. “That’s not in the journal. But if the Bells are in orbit, and the world is doomed anyway, I think it’s worth the risk.”

She’s right, Miller thought. Even if the Bells detonated with the force of nuclear warheads, they couldn’t do any damage to the surface while in Earth’s orbit. “So what’s our plan, kick down the doors to Control and Security, find access to the system controlling the Bells, and give them a little extra juice?”

“That is what I was thinking,” Adler said.

Despite the odds being stacked against such a thing succeeding, with the fate of the world in the balance, there was no choice but to try. The thought led to a question. “Were you going to try this on your own?”

“Security is too tight. I was waiting,” she said. “For help.”

“You thought I was dead,” Miller said.

“I just…” She sighed. “If I tried on my own, I’d probably be dead already and then no one would ever know how to stop it. I wasn’t waiting for you. I was waiting for anyone.”

Miller chastised himself for giving her a hard time. She had clearly been desperate to apply her knowledge, but could do nothing on her own. She was strong, and a good shot, but she’d be on her own against an army. And while four people against an army wasn’t much better, Miller had at least been trained to be a one-man army if necessary. “You said security is tight. You’ve been down there?”

“When we first arrived,” she said. “He presented me to Kammler like I was a big fish he’d caught.”

“Kammler is here?”

“And the missing cryogenic chambers. From what I could see, there are just as many unopened chambers here as there were opened in Antarctica. I think the thawing process isn’t quite perfected yet—Kammler had some burn marks on his face I don’t remember from the photos I’ve seen of him. They must be waiting until after SecondWorld arrives to thaw out the rest.”

Miller thought about the name he’d read on the computer screen in Antarctica. The thought of that man returning to the world was an injustice he could not ignore. Nor could he deal with it now. “Tell me about the security. What do we have to go through?”

“There are four armed guards. Brownshirt Nazis. The blueshirts—U.S. citizens from a variety of law-enforcement agencies—police the general population. As do the robotic devices. They scan DNA, by the way.”

“I know,” Miller replied. “Found out the hard way.”

“The door to Security and Control has a hand scanner,” Adler said. “And a code number and a retinal scanner, and—”

“I get it,” Miller said. “We’re not getting through.”

Two quick knocks came from the door.

Adler tensed.

Miller walked to the door, weapon ready to shoot whoever might be on the other side. He opened it, saw Vesely, Pale Horse, and an unconscious third man dressed in red propped up between them like they were three chums. He opened the door and let them in, closing the door behind them.

“What happened?” Miller asked. “Who is he?”

“Is maintenance staff. Pale Horse broke his neck,” Vesely said, pointing to the man’s shirt. “I have idea. Well, Charlie’s idea.”

“Actually,” Miller said, “so do I— Wait… Charlie’s idea?”

57

After hearing Vesely’s plan, which was risky as hell, but perhaps their best chance of success, Miller added his idea to the mix. The combined plan was bold and messy, but if it worked, the enemy wouldn’t know what hit them.

Ten minutes later, they were ready. Miller put the general’s shirt back on, covering the fresh bandage on his arm. He threw on the coat next and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. The sight of himself dressed in Nazi regalia was disconcerting, though not nearly as much as the dead maintenance man lying in the tub. The man was just as dead as before, but was now stripped to his underwear, covered in his own blood, and missing a hand.

He left the bathroom and found the others ready to go. Vesely was now dressed in red, and had the maintenance man’s satchel over his shoulder. He still wore his two guns and Stetson despite Miller’s protest. A cowboy to the end. The satchel, which had been full of tools, now held a severed hand—Charlie’s idea.

Vesely shook Miller’s hand. “Good luck, Survivor.”

“You, too, Cowboy.”

After tilting his hat toward the other two, he opened the door, looked both ways, and then slipped out into the hallway, heading up.

Miller wasn’t sure he’d see Vesely again. They were about to embark on suicide missions. That both of them would survive seemed unlikely. Still, they’d come this far, so he decided to hold on to the hope that he’d see the quirky Czech cowboy again.

Miller turned to Adler and Pale Horse. “You two ready?”

Adler held out her hand. She had changed into a brown uniform that was a few sizes too big. The rolled-up sleeves and pant legs looked a little off, but she looked far less conspicuous. With her loose-fitting clothes and her hair tucked up inside a brown cap, she could almost pass for a man—a very short and pretty man. “Have a gun for me?”

Pale Horse handed her his sound-suppressed Sig Sauer along with three spare clips. “I seem to be a slow draw with this,” he said, and then patted his UMP submachine gun. “Besides, I think I’ll have more use for this in the next few minutes.”

Miller confirmed the man’s thought with a nod and headed for the door. He looked to Adler. “Ready?”

She stepped around him and opened the door. With seriousness Miller hadn’t yet seen, she said, “Let’s go,” and stepped into the hallway. Miller and Pale Horse followed.

A quick check revealed no one nearby and no robo-Bettys. They approached the railing and looked down. The atrium at the bottom of the complex looked like a galleria at Christmastime. The sea of voices. The bustling bodies. The sound of the fountain. There was an energy to the place. An excitement. Miller saw coins in the fountain and wondered if he would find George Washington printed on them, or Adolf Hitler.

He could see a hallway entrance across the way. Above the doorway was a sign that read SECURITY AND CONTROL. According to Adler, the vaultlike door was at the end of that hallway. With all the security, they would never get the door open from this end, so Miller came up with a plan that would get them to open the door from the other side.

Miller reached into his pocket and took out the plastic Ziploc bag in which he had kept his painkillers. Now it was full of still-warm liquid—his blood. He poked several holes in the plastic with his knife, then sliced it down the middle for good measure. “Stand back,” he said to Adler and Pale Horse. Better if they didn’t get the blood, containing his DNA, on them—like everyone below them was about to.

He gripped the corner of the bag and sent it flying out over the atrium with a flick of his wrist. The bag spun out over the open space like a Frisbee, spraying his blood in every direction.

The first reaction came fast, but was confused. A woman below yelped and said, “What was that?”

A chorus of voices soon joined the woman, none too fearful until one person said, “Is that blood?”

Another replied. “It is!”

And then it happened. An alarm.

Miller peeked over the railing. The crowd below was frozen in place, some looking up, trying to figure out where the blood had come from. He could see specks of it covering their faces. But that’s not why they weren’t moving.

A single robo-Betty at the center of the group was flashing red. An electronic voice spoke from it, “Anomalous DNA detected. Please remain still until security arrives to assist you.”

Miller realized that if he hadn’t shot the robo-Betty in the elevator, he might have gotten the same message. But at the same time, it might have alerted security to his presence. This turn of events threw a rather large monkey wrench in his plans.

Another alarm sounded. Then another. Ten more followed. All of the robo-Bettys in the atrium had detected his blood and sounded the alarm. But none of them were activating, and probably wouldn’t unless… someone disobeyed. That’s why the crowd had frozen. If they ran, the Bettys would activate. These people had been trained well. Too well.

A loud pinging noise drew his attention up. High above, where the flags were attached to the ceiling, were sparks. When the first five-story-tall flag fell, Miller knew what had happened. Vesely had seen their predicament and fired on the flags. The giant flags would send people scattering, or set off the Bettys themselves upon reaching the floor. The second flag fell moments later.

“Go!” Miller said, and began running down the spiraling ramp. No one was paying any attention to them.

As they rounded the second floor, the flags fell past.

“Run!” Miller shouted. “The flags will set them off!”

That’s all it took. The people below realized he was right.

And ran.

The Bettys sprang into action, even as more of the killer devices arrived on the scene, alarms sounding. Screams rose up from the atrium as a thousand metal balls blasted through the air, cutting down at least fifty people. Miller felt a moment of regret for the people. They weren’t soldiers. But they were complicit to genocide, so his regret didn’t last long.

As Miller rounded the ramp to the ground floor, he noticed a robo-Betty up ahead. He slowed and let Pale Horse and Adler catch up. “Grab that thing,” he said to Pale Horse. “Don’t let it see the blood, or me.”

Pale Horse ran ahead and picked up the device. It scanned him as he held it, the light turning green. Then the wheels just spun as it tried to move on. Pale Horse kept the sensor turned toward the ceiling as Miller passed and said, “Let’s go.”

They rounded the ramp onto the atrium floor and were greeted by a war zone. At least a hundred people lay dead and dying, many of them wearing blue and brown. A few survivors clung to the far walls, afraid to move. A single robo-Betty sat at the edge of the atrium, flashing its red light at a corpse and ordering it not to move.

Miller led Pale Horse and Adler across the opposite side of the atrium and headed for the hallway to Security and Control. As he approached the hall, he saw that his plan had succeeded. The four security personnel that had been guarding the large vaultlike door had rushed toward the atrium when the first alarms had sounded. Three of them lay dead. A fourth, farther down the sloped hallway, was injured. Miller took aim and shot the man as he walked past. The man would have died from his injuries, so it was a mercy, but Miller also didn’t want the man shooting them in the back when he saw what came next.

Miller stopped his advance next to the security station, which reminded him of a bookstore help desk, thirty feet from the vault door. C’mon, he thought, open.

And then it did. Security was responding to what they must believe was some kind of malfunction. A terrible accident.

As the door slid silently open, Miller turned to Pale Horse and the robo-Betty. “Point it at me!”

Pale Horse complied without pause. The red light on the front of the machine began to blink as it scanned and analyzed Miller’s DNA. Knowing full well what the end result would be, Miller smashed the sensor with the butt of his gun, took the device from Pale Horse, and tossed it toward the opening door. He ducked behind the security station with Adler and Pale Horse.

The robo-Betty stopped in front of the door just as it revealed ten guards—ten very surprised guards.

The Betty bounced into the air and fired its payload. The men, who stood at point-blank range, were cut down before any of them could scream. As metal beads rolled up the ramp, Miller jumped from his hiding spot and sprinted toward the now-closing door.

He reached it with time to spare. He stepped into the dimly lit hallway on the other side of the door. Adler and Pale Horse followed him. The hallway grew darker still as the big door closed over several guards’ bodies behind them with a crunchy squish. Miller ignored the sound and motioned the team forward. “Almost there.”

58

The hallway was dimly lit by two rows of LED lights running the length of the hall where the walls met the floor. Miller holstered his handgun and readied his UMP, sliding the rack. “Straight ahead, I assume?”

Adler stepped up next to him, handgun gripped like a pro. “This hallway was bright when Brodeur brought me through. There’s a set of double doors at the end. No security. Just doors. They open to a large chamber, like we saw in Antarctica, but there’s nothing natural about this. It’s a smooth dome. There’s a control center in the middle, but it’s at least four times the size of the one in Antarctica. Security is based to the right of the control area, past rows of storage arranged like a warehouse.”

“A warehouse?” It struck Miller strange that they would keep things stored in the space designated for security and control.

“I think it is older equipment. Relics from the war. Maybe art. Gold. Souvenirs. I am not entirely sure, but it is all crated.”

“Like the warehouse in Indiana Jones?” Pale Horse said.

“Ja. But not as big. Security is past the warehouse area, through a pair of double doors that are locked. Cryogenics is to the left via an open tunnel. Same as Antarctica.”

Miller slid up to the double doors and peeked through the windows. The space was just as Adler described it. A large octagonal control center lit in bright white filled the center of the large space. A massive viewscreen hung above it all, displaying a mix of active screen captures from the computers below as well as a mix of video feeds. Miller squinted, trying to make out the images, but distance and glare worked against him. Polished walkways outlined by white lines cut through the place, and reflected the bright lights. The ceiling of smooth concrete arched up over the hanging lights, its peak at the center concealed in darkness high above. A maze of large shipping containers, crates, and oversized canisters blocked his view of Security to the right, but he trusted it was there. He counted twenty soldiers wielding World War II–era weapons, which helped level the playing field a little bit. But there were also at least forty other, nonmilitary people dressed in lab coats or white coveralls. Most of them sat at the computers, no doubt monitoring the purification of the human race.

He pointed to Pale Horse. “We’ll go in first. Everyone is a target, but start with the brownshirts. They’ll be the ones shooting back.” He turned to Adler. “Once things get chaotic, come in and make your way to the computers. We’ll give you as long as we can.”

“I will get it done.”

Miller once again wondered where Adler’s confidence came from. He remembered how quickly she’d accessed the computer in Antarctica. With Brodeur’s traitorous revelation and Miller’s nearly melting, and then freezing, he hadn’t given it much thought. She’d said it was a “Linux-based system,” but who the hell used Linux? Certainly not Interpol. Most people hadn’t even heard of the operating system. But the woman was a whiz with a computer, and a gun. And she could understand complex math. She’d claimed to not comprehend some of the other equations, but Miller didn’t believe that anymore. Once she figured out the page confusion, the rest had fallen into place, and she’d understood the math without tearing out the pages and lining them up as she had done for him.

Focus, Miller, he told himself. She’s on your side. For now. Sort it out later.

“Ready?” he asked Pale Horse.

“Let’s do it.”

Miller pushed through the double doors, raising his weapon. He picked out five targets, each a little farther away than the other. By the time the fifth registered what happened to the first, they’d all be dead. Then he’d have fifteen soldiers left to deal with, minus any Pale Horse shot, plus however many were behind the locked double doors to Security. Miller’s finger squeezed the trigger.

A gunshot rang out so loud and so close that it threw off Miller’s aim and made his ears ring. Miller spun around, searching for a target.

He found it at the center of Brodeur’s head.

The man’s arm was raised. Smoke drifted from the barrel of a handgun. He turned to Miller and flashed him a smile. “Hello, Survivor.”

Miller was about to pull the trigger when he saw Adler struggling and a gun to her head. The face of the man holding her made his hands shake: the executive assistant director of the NCIS, Fred Murdock. His friend. He was dressed in a standard brown uniform, but smiled in the same superior way as Brodeur. Miller glared at the man for a moment, but then saw movement to his right and glanced in that direction. The movement came from a twitching foot.

Pale Horse’s twitching foot.

Miller looked at the man. Blood covered his chest, flowing from a wound over his heart. His eyes were already glassy. Pale Horse was dead. Just like that.

The two men shared an exchange in German and then laughed.

Miller backed up, assessing the situation. Adler had a gun to her head. He could hear the footfalls of soldiers approaching him from behind. More soldiers filed in behind Brodeur and Murdock.

“I have to admit, Miller,” Murdock said, “I always knew you were good, but making it here. Even I’m impressed. But as much as I’d like to pat you on the back and say good job for old times’ sake, I think I’ll just put a bullet through that Jew-boy half-breed head of yours.”

The two men laughed again.

“He’s seeing red,” Brodeur said. “Better put the boy down.” He turned his weapon from Pale Horse to Miller.

Seeing red.

Red.

Red!

An image of Vesely dressed in red coveralls flashed through his mind.

Miller lowered his UMP and held out an open palm. “You win,” he said, placing the weapon on the floor. He slowly drew his pistol and placed it on the floor next to the submachine gun. Miller hated giving up his weapons. It went against all of his training. But he needed time. He raised his hands and stood up.

“Sorry,” Brodeur said, “I’m going to kill you and then spend the next year breaking this one’s will.” He motioned to Adler with his head. “I think she’ll come around after our first child.” He looked to Adler. “Won’t you?”

She struggled, but Murdock held her tight.

Miller could tell he was being goaded into action. They wanted him to lose his cool, to seal his own fate. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. “If I’m dead, who are you going to torture? Or experiment on? Just admit it, Brodeur. I’ve seen the way you look at me. You’d miss me.”

When Murdock, who was notorious for his gay jokes, burst out laughing, Brodeur’s face turned red and angry.

Miller realized he might have gone too far.

Brodeur looked down the sight of his weapon.

The hammer tilted back as Brodeur slowly pulled the trigger.

“Wait,” said a voice behind Miller. The man’s voice was cold and demanded authority.

Brodeur held his fire, the hammer half cocked.

“He is right,” the voice said. “This one has earned a slow death. Make it… agonizing.”

Miller turned slowly and came face-to-face with Hans Kammler. The man looked just like he did in the few photos there were of him, but the scarring Adler mentioned marred his skin. He wore a tall general’s cap featuring an open-winged eagle perched upon a swastika. Aside from the number of pins, his uniform matched Miller’s.

“The uniform you wear belonged to General Karl Friedrich, a friend of mine.” Kammler circled Miller. “He survived the war. Spent a lifetime frozen in a cryogenic chamber. He rejoined us just ten days ago. Do you know how that makes me feel?”

Miller saw that Kammler was inspecting him from head to toe, the way a slaughterhouse worker might inspect a cow. If Vesely didn’t come through, he couldn’t imagine the kinds of things this man might do to him before killing him. Hell, they could keep him alive and torture him for years if they wanted to.

Miller decided he couldn’t possibly make the situation any worse, and said, “If the rest of your men fight like Friedrich, then I shouldn’t have any problem taking care of the rest of you with my bare hands.”

Kammler looked him in the eyes. It was like looking into the eyes of a great white shark. But Miller held his gaze and waited for a punch. It never came. Kammler continued to circle him.

“Did you take pleasure in killing those people?” Kammler asked, motioning to the hallway. Miller thought of the people in the atrium. He didn’t take pleasure in their deaths. But he didn’t feel guilty about it, either.

Kammler took his silence as a yes. “You are more like us than you admit. I doubt you would shed a single tear if every person in this facility were killed.”

“That’s exactly what’s going to happen,” Miller said, his temper flaring.

Kammler smiled. “As I thought. There are nearly three thousand adults living here.”

Miller shrugged, but then registered the man’s words. Three thousand adults. He’d been expertly baited and trapped.

“There are also five hundred children, seventy-five of them under two years of age. Surely, you would spare them?”

Miller gritted his teeth, remembering the girl he’d failed to save all those years ago. He’d nearly given his life to save hers. Children were innocents. They didn’t deserve to die. But in war, sometimes the wrong people died, hopefully so more people could live. In this case it was a no-brainer. The children living here had to die so that billions could live. Their parents sealed their fates when they decided to take part in genocide; the burden of the children’s deaths belonged to them. But he didn’t answer. He wouldn’t give Kammler the satisfaction.

“Bring them,” Kammler said, walking toward the control center.

Miller was pushed forward at gunpoint. He followed Kammler, who stopped when the full array of viewscreens could be seen.

Kammler opened his arms up to the screens, which showed a variety of live video feeds from around the world. A large, ten-foot screen showed the skyline of London masked by a red haze. The smaller screens to either side of the large screen showed several other cities around the world, all cloaked by red flakes falling from the sky. “Behold the birth of SecondWorld,” Kammler said with a grin. “It is beautiful. Purifying blood from the sky.”

Miller stayed silent.

“What we are doing is no different than what you would like to do here. You would exterminate every last one of us. Because we are your enemy. But this will not happen, do you know why?”

Silence.

“Because we are stronger. We are smarter.” Kammler’s strident voice became thoughtful. “We are… pure.”

Miller stayed silent, but Adler couldn’t. “Germany lost the Second World War.”

Kammler grinned. “Did we?” He let the question hang in the air for a moment. Brodeur and Murdock shared a laugh.

“We discovered the iron cloud that made this possible long before the ‘end’ of the war. After calculating when the iron cloud would arrive, we began work on several projects that resulted in this.” He motioned to the screens. “Germany did not lose the war, we merely pretended to.”

Miller’s jaw dropped a little. “Millions died.”

“A convincing ruse. We fought to the end. The Führer killed himself.” Kammler chuckled. “And the United States somehow ended up with thousands of Nazi scientists.”

“You sent our people to their deaths,” Adler said.

Kammler grinned at Adler. “So much like your grandmother. Surely you must understand the sacrifice now?” Kammler said. “We traded our country for the world.” Kammler looked at his watch. “Thirty minutes from now, the air will become poisonous. A few hours later, there will be no oxygen. And in several months, when the oxygen in the lower atmosphere is replenished, the world will be purified and the Fourth Reich will rise. We have waited seventy years for this day.”

Kammler turned to Miller. “Still nothing to say?”

Miller just stared at the man, willing Vesely to come through soon.

“Where does he live?” Kammler asked.

“Washington,” Brodeur replied.

Kammler barked an order toward the group of men seated at the control center. None of the men even glanced up. They were either very disciplined or used to being shouted at. An image of the Washington, D.C., skyline appeared on the large viewscreen. The Capitol building and Washington Monument were all in the shot, but were hard to see through the red haze.

“This is your home,” Kammler said, noting Miller’s lack of reaction. He shrugged, growing bored of his game.

“Don’t forget the girl,” Brodeur said. “Pitiful little thing. She worshiped you. Thought you would save her. Thought you would—”

Miller moved like lightning, striking Brodeur’s face with a backhand that sent him sprawling.

Kammler was equally quick. The punch came hard and fast. Miller shouted in pain, dropped down on one knee, and clutched his arm. With a single blow, Kammler had managed to strike both bullet wounds. How the hell did he know? Miller realized he must have been holding the arm differently. He’d done well ignoring the pain, but his body still reacted to it.

Murdock was chuckling again. The laugh concealed a second sound that Miller only heard because he’d been listening for it. Been praying for it.

The large vents overhead were no longer blowing air into the chamber.

They were sucking air out.

Kammler took hold of Miller’s face with one hand and pointed a gun at him with the other. Miller fumed with anger. “There you are,” Kammler said. “Defiant. Angry. Amusing. You will be a gift—”

Miller glared at Kammler.

“—for Mein Führer.”

Kammler shoved Miller’s face away, stepped back, and wiped his hand with a kerchief.

Miller grunted as he got to his feet. He held his arm, which had begun to bleed. The pain nauseated him. Exhaustion consumed him. He drew in a deep breath. Then another. And another. Then he stood tall and said, “I’ll be sure to say hello to him for you.”

Kammler squinted at Miller, disturbed by his sudden confidence. “And how do you suppose you will do that?”

“Well, for starters, I’m going to kill these two,” Miller said, nodding to Murdock and Brodeur, who was back on his feet. “Then I’m going to beat the shit out of you, bare-handed, and then I’m going to walk in there—” Miller pointed to the open hallway that led to the cryogenic room. He could see several of the gleaming metal chambers from where he stood. “—thaw out your goofy-looking boss, rip that mustache off his face, say hello from you, and then shoot him in the forehead.”

Miller took several more deep breaths as Kammler walked around him.

Kammler stopped by Brodeur and held out his hand. Brodeur handed him his gun.

“No!” Adler shouted. She realized what was about to happen at the same moment Miller did.

But he didn’t shout out.

Didn’t beg for mercy.

He looked down the barrel of the gun and took a deep breath.

Kammler fired.

59

Miller fell on his side, clutching his leg and shouting through gritted teeth. Kammler had shot his left thigh, the bullet coming to a stop halfway through the meat. To make things worse, Miller had fallen on his injured arm, sending a cyclone of pain through his body. The bullet wound wouldn’t kill him, but it wasn’t meant to. He was a dog and Kammler had just swatted his nose.

As the initial pain subsided, Miller heard the men laughing. He was a Jew surrounded by thirty SS Nazi killers. He had three bullet wounds, blinding pain, and felt a level of exhaustion beyond anything experienced during the SEALs’ Hell Week.

But he knew something that Kammler didn’t.

Something that, in his weakened state, he found very funny.

When he joined in the laughter, the Nazis fell silent.

They stared at him, no doubt wondering if he had lost his mind.

Miller’s lungs began to burn as he laughed.

He looked at the guards surrounding them, their faces etched with confusion, and knew they felt it, too. He laughed harder.

One of the larger men stumbled, holding his head. His muscular body required more oxygen to function and he felt the effects first. The other men watched the big man fall to one knee, and then crumple to the floor, wheezing for air.

The sound of the man’s wheezing sparked realization.

Kammler quickly ordered fifteen of the men to follow him. They ran for the doors to Security. Brodeur ordered Murdock to stay, and followed after the others.

Murdock’s face slowly turned a deeper shade of red, but his weapon stayed trained on Adler’s head and his hate-filled eyes remained on Miller. One of the other four remaining men collapsed. Murdock glanced at him, a momentary fear springing into his eyes.

Miller’s chest felt like it would explode, but he held his breath without fear. He’d faced, and beaten, this fate several times already and he’d be damned if it would claim him now, especially when it was Vesely’s doing.

“Give the bastards a taste of their own medicine,” he’d said. He’d concluded the facility would be airtight, with its own air supply. The Cowboy did it, Miller thought. He’d not only found a way to shut the air off, but was quickly siphoning the air from the entire facility. Everyone inside would die.

Miller had enjoyed the irony of the plan. Not so much now that he was experiencing it firsthand, but that would change in a moment.

He looked at Adler. She’d known to hold her breath, but even though she looked better off than Murdock, her body would eventually take a breath on reflex and when no oxygen reached her lungs, she would drown in the open air.

Just like the rest of the world if you don’t move! Miller’s subconscious shouted at him. According to Kammler, he had just twenty-five minutes before the air outside became so thick with iron that the world’s population would be poisoned and die gruelingly three days from now when the heavy metal settled deeper into their organs. If that happened, a quick death by suffocation would be a mercy.

Murdock blinked, fighting unconsciousness.

Two more of the soldiers fell. The fourth went to his hands and knees.

Miller mimicked the man’s position, but instead of falling down, he was getting up. A jolt of pain ran up the left side of his body, immobilizing him. With his right hand, he reached back to his belt, opened a pocket, and pulled out a small vacuum-sealed pack. He lowered himself down, giving the impression that he was succumbing to the lack of air—which he would soon do if Murdock managed to stay upright and conscious much longer. With one hand he tore open the wrapper, plucked off the small rubber stopper on the end, and stuck himself in the leg.

A wave of morphine warmth spread from his leg up into his torso and out through his limbs, washing the pain away. Even the burning in his lungs faded. He felt weightless. Time slowed. And once again, he laughed.

This time when he looked back up at Murdock, the man looked terrified by Miller’s laughter. He looked ready to burst and his weapon was no longer aimed directly at Adler’s head.

Miller shifted his gaze to Adler. Her face was bright red. Her eyes wide with fear.

It was time to act.

Miller dove forward, snatched up his silenced Sig Sauer, rolled to his feet, and aimed the weapon at Murdock’s head. The man looked stunned. He tried to move his weapon toward Miller, but his hand and arm shook violently. Anger filled his face a moment before Miller’s bullet froze the expression.

Adler fell forward, catching herself on her hands. Her chest heaved, as she took in breaths of oxygenless air. Miller knew unconsciousness would claim her soon. He knelt down next to her, removed the small pony bottle from his supply belt, unfolded the collapsible mask, opened the air valve, and placed it over her nose and mouth.

She breathed deep, gasping each breath. Miller felt relieved when he realized she’d make it.

But then a pain gripped him so intensely that he felt it through the morphine. Air! The morphine had made him forget he couldn’t breathe, either. As blackness crept into the periphery of his vision and little specks of color danced before him, he lunged to Pale Horse’s body, found his pony bottle, fumbled to open it—and then dropped it.

His chest ached. His hands shook as he searched for the bottle, his eyes no longer functioning.

As the last bit of consciousness faded, he felt something press against his face. Adler’s voice followed. “Breathe!”

He did.

The first breath felt something like the way he imagined the experience of childbirth—agony mixed with elation.

Ten breaths later, his senses returned. After another ten, the morphine began to work again. He stood and pulled the pony bottle’s elastic band over his head, holding it in place. “We’ve got about fourteen minutes left in these things, and just a few minutes more to stop that,” he said to Adler, pointing at the video screens. “Let’s get this done.”

She nodded, still breathing too heavy to reply, and headed for the large octagonal control center. A sea of white-clad bodies littered the floor, but Miller hardly noticed them. Instead, he looked up at a huge array of displays the size of a movie screen. Each one showed a city. He recognized several of the skylines. London. Paris. Moscow. Los Angeles. New York. Sydney. Washington, D.C. Red flakes fell from the sky in each image. In some, smoke rose to greet it as a panicked world lashed out. The screen at the bottom right caught his attention last. Vatican City. But it wasn’t the gleaming domes, now hued pink, that held his attention. It was the crowd filling St. Peter’s Square. Thousands had gathered. On their hands and knees. Praying.

And whether they knew it or not, they were praying for his success.

Feeling a sense of purpose bordering on divine calling that was one part true inspiration and one part morphine, Miller shoved a lab coat–clad man out of his seat. Adler sat down at the computer station, which was already up and running, no password required.

“Can you do it?” Miller asked.

“It is the same system,” Adler said. “But I’ll need a minute to find my way around.”

The monitor next to them exploded in a shower of sparks. Miller glanced over the top of the control center and saw at least twenty rebreather-wearing SS soldiers led by Brodeur filing out of the doors to Security on the other side of the vast warehouse area. Most of the men were armed, as usual, with World War II rifles and machine guns, which Miller’s UMP would put to shame in a one-on-one situation, but the SS could send a wall of bullets his way that would be hard to avoid. Even worse, the two men at the front of the pack wore body armor and masks like the guards in Antarctica, but the men looked tougher, bigger, like the armor was mechanized. When the two men each raised very large strange-looking weapons at Miller, he had no doubt.

“Stay out of sight!” Miller said to Adler and then dived to the side. He heard a sound like an acoustic guitar string being snapped against the wooden frame as the weapons fired, but saw no effect. No computers destroyed. No ricochet. Had they misfired?

Miller got to his feet and found that he’d dived right out into the open. The morphine that dulled his pain also made his decision-making abilities questionable. The two mechanized men adjusted their aim. Miller grabbed Murdock’s body and picked him up, hoping that whatever kind of rounds the strange guns fired would be stopped.

The weapons twanged again. Miller felt no impact, but Murdock’s body seemed to be growing lighter. Miller looked down and saw multicolored goop draining from Murdock’s pant legs! He dropped the body and it turned to soup on the floor. Those guns had the same effect on the human body as the Bell!

With no immediate cover, Miller thought, This one’s for you, Pale Horse. Time to spray and pray.

Miller ran and pulled the UMP’s trigger. He drew a quick line across the SS men as they were about to unload on the control center. When the last round left the UMP’s muzzle and the magazine ran dry, five of the soldiers lay on the ground, dead and dying. But a body count wasn’t Miller’s goal. He was hoping for chaos. And he got it.

While some of the SS men unloaded on his position, most ducked for cover, including Brodeur, who had unfortunately survived his initial volley. They hid behind the tall stacks arranged on either side of the large space—walls of wooden crates filled with who knows what. There were plenty of places for the enemy to take cover.

The two big men tracked Miller as he ran toward the warehouse area. He heard two loud twangs as they fired, but his body didn’t turn to mush, so he assumed they’d missed.

He dove into an alley lined with crates on either side. The rows of wooden crates stamped with swastikas and SecondWorld symbols reminded Miller of a surreal Home Depot. But the maze of crates worked to his advantage; he could engage the enemy a few at a time. He laughed as his hastily laid plan came together, and realized the morphine was making him slaphappy. Of course, he could live with slaphappy if it didn’t affect his aim, a concern he put to the test by rising from his position and squeezing off two three-round bursts.

Two men dropped. Several more ducked for cover.

The return fire was loud and included two loud twangs. The wood around him shattered, but he wasn’t hit.

Aim is still good, he thought, then dashed out from behind the control center and dove behind a very large crate. This thing is big enough to hold a car, Miller thought. When Miller saw a red stamp that read simply G4, he knew he was right. Hitler’s preferred vehicle had been the six-wheeled 1939 Mercedes-Benz G4. He’d read about the vehicle once when a collector auctioned three, which had belonged to Hitler, for three million dollars each. Only eight had ever been built. Looks like we know where the other five went, Miller thought.

Two brave soldiers ran toward the control center. Miller gunned them down before they arrived. He crept around the big crate and slid through a gap, into the next aisle. He peeked down the aisle lined with crates. The left end was clear, but to the right he saw two men crouched, searching for a target. A morphine giggle slipped from his mouth. The two men spun toward him, but he let loose a barrage that cut the men down before a single shot was fired his way. At least my reflexes haven’t slowed, Miller thought as he slid out of his hiding place and ran toward the next aisle.

He paused at the end, peeking around the corner. All clear. As he moved around the end of the aisle, a shadow—from behind him—shifted on the floor.

He spun and fired.

The bullet had no effect on the heavily armored, mechanized Nazi. Miller could only see the man’s eyes, but could see by the squint that he was smiling.

Miller leapt to the side.

Twang!

Rebounding off a crate, Miller opened fire on the man, aiming for his head. The barrage stumbled the man back, but the suit he wore must have had a built-in gyroscope, because he remained upright.

Twang! The man fired blind and missed. But he also swung his big, metal-covered fist out and struck the UMP from Miller’s hands.

Miller drew his knife and dove at the man, getting in close where he couldn’t be shot. He stabbed the knife into the body armor, but it stopped against solid metal after penetrating an inch of bullet-resistant padding. These suits were definitely an upgrade from the Antarctic variety.

The big metal arm wrapped around Miller and squeezed him tight. Pain flared from the wounds in his arm. He shouted and wriggled. He couldn’t break free. But he could still fight, and every suit of armor had a weak spot. He’d been able to strangle the guard in Antarctica. Maybe they hadn’t fully armored the neck, which was clearly flexible. Miller withdrew his knife and slammed it into the mech’s neck.

The blade slid in.

All the way to the hilt.

He could barely hear the man’s gurgle through the suit, but he could see the startled expression in his eyes, which quickly became lifeless. The man’s arm fell slack, but the body didn’t fall over. It stood still, kept upright by design. Miller glanced at the weapon. It was attached to the suit, but was operated like any other handheld weapon, a finger on a trigger.

Gunfire pinged off the suit. Two brownshirt soldiers ran at him, side by side, firing wildly. If they’d stopped to take aim, they might have struck him, but Miller wasn’t about to complain. He yanked up the dead man’s arm, aimed the weapon toward the two men, slid his finger over the dead man’s, and pulled the trigger.

Twang!

The two men turned to liquid as they ran. By the time their bodies hit the floor they were little more than multicolored puddles. The slop slid across the smooth floor and stopped just a foot from Miller’s body. He took a deep breath and was thankful the pony bottle mask kept him from smelling the liquefied men.

The loud clomp of mechanized feet approached from the left. Miller spun toward the sound as the second mech exited the neighboring aisle. Miller ducked and spun around the back side of the dead man’s suit. Twang! The suit blocked the shot.

The sound of the weapon firing was followed by a high-pitched whine, like a camera flash recharging. That’s why these guys aren’t just melting everything in sight, Miller realized. They have to recharge after each shot! Miller grabbed the dead man’s arm and shoved it toward the other mech. He found the trigger and pulled it. Twang!

Miller watched the other man’s eyes widen for a split second and then explode into liquid. Bubbles rose up and the melting man’s body slipped lower into the suit.

“Miller!” It was Adler. “It’s not working!”

Miller picked up his UMP, but it was ruined, so he left it behind, drew his sidearm, and started back toward Adler and the control center. That’s when he heard the crackling hum that sounded an awful lot like the robotic sentinel they’d faced in the parking lot. And it was right behind him.

60

Miller flung himself to the left, ducking down the last aisle just as twin twangs sounded out behind him. Were there two more men in suits? He didn’t think so. He couldn’t hear any heavy feet behind him, just the crackling hum of some kind of bell device. When the sound grew suddenly louder, he knew that whatever it was had entered the aisle. He looked over his shoulder and nearly tripped.

The thing was huge.

At first, Miller thought he was looking at something organic. It had four metallic limbs—tentacles really—each at least fifteen feet long. They reached out and pulled the thing along, moving quickly. For a moment, he thought the limbs were holding it up, but that couldn’t be true, because they never really touched anything. They just wriggled hyperactively, moving only to avoid direct contact with the physical environment. The thing was floating.

The body was shaped like an eagle’s head sans the curved beak. The base glowed with flickering energy as some kind of bell device kept it aloft. But it was the two weapons mounted on either side of the thing that held Miller’s attention. They were identical to the flesh-melting weapons the two mechanized men had carried. Of course, the two miniguns mounted to the bottom were pretty intimidating, too, but they weren’t firing, or even spinning up. Miller’s first impression was that he faced an automated drone like the thing outside the NSSB, but then he saw a pane of red-tinted glass at the core. Through the glass he saw a face. Kammler’s. The man looked amused. Miller fired three shots, but the rounds just ricocheted off the thick, curved glass. Kammler laughed, his voice amplified through a speaker.

“What do you think?” Kammler asked. “We have thousands of them ready to search the country for survivors.”

Miller knew the man was trying to make him think about talking when he should be running. It was a clue that the man was about to fire. Miller had fifteen feet before he reached the end of the aisle, where who knew how many soldiers waited for him. And he was boxed in on either side. He made the only maneuver he could—spun around and ran straight at Kammler.

Both weapons twanged loudly. But missed.

Miller noticed the miniguns had yet to power up and wondered why Kammler wasn’t using them. Were they not loaded? Then he realized the answer. The strange weapons melted flesh, but not other elements. If Kammler’s shots struck the relics stored here, they wouldn’t do any damage. But the miniguns, those would wreak havoc.

“They don’t seem very accurate,” Miller taunted, but then had to dive to the side as one of the flailing limbs snapped down toward him. He caught a glimpse of the barbed tip as it took a chunk out of the polished stone floor. It looked like it had been designed to punch through a man, but then not come out, not cleanly anyway.

Kammler’s voice echoed in his mind. We have thousands of them ready to search the country for survivors. They were designed to quickly pick off or tear to shreds any survivors they came across.

Including the Survivor.

Miller ducked to the side as a second arm sprang toward his head. It cut a slice in his cheek, punctured the G4 box behind Miller, and stuck tight. Another arm shot out and missed, striking the box as well.

Kammler let out a frustrated grunt.

He’s new to this, Miller thought. He might know how to use the machine, but he’s not very good at it. Why would he be? Generals never get their hands dirty.

Miller was slammed from behind as Kammler retracted the tentacles and yanked the wooden panel off of the large crate. For a moment, the heavy slab of wood covered his body, and if Kammler had been thinking, he could have easily crushed Miller beneath it. Instead, the weight lifted as Kammler tried to free the limbs. As the wooden panel rose up and away, Miller caught sight of Hitler’s big, black, solid metal, six-wheeled Mercedes G4, designed to tour battle zones and protect the Führer. The thing was a tank. Without a gun. But still a tank.

Miller dove across the aisle, yanked open the car’s passenger’s side door, and jumped in. He slid across the seat to the driver’s side and found the key in the ignition. He hoped that the car had only recently been crated, perhaps transported from Antarctica with the rest of this stuff, and turned the key.

The power came on, but the engine just coughed and died. He tried again. Nothing. Then he remembered. No oxygen!

“Like a fox in a hole,” Kammler said. “No place to go.”

But he didn’t strike, either. The car must be important. Miller shoved open the driver’s side door. It clunked against the wooden box, but there was just enough room for him to squeeze out. He got down and slid himself beneath the car, quickly finding the large gas tank. He rapped on it with his fist. The tank was full.

“I can wait,” Kammler said. “In minutes, the world’s fate will be sealed and your failed heroics will entertain the Führer when he returns.”

Miller drew his knife and stabbed it into the side of the tank. Twin streams of fuel poured out and flowed slowly toward the open end of the crate. He pushed himself back to the other side of the car and stood. Moving in the tight space was difficult, but Miller made his way around to the back of the car as the smell of gasoline wafted into the air.

Kammler wouldn’t smell the fuel, but he would see it once the puddle emerged from beneath he car, which it would in just a moment.

Standing at the rear of the car, Miller saw the fuel peek out and made his move. He jumped out of the box, hoping that Kammler would have his weapons trained on the car doors. But he didn’t wait to see if he was right; he dove forward into a roll, just as the weapons twanged, and missed. Again. Kammler cursed in German, his composure melting away.

Miller knew he had just a few moments before the weapons recharged, and this time, he ran away. Toward the end of the aisle. The crackling hum grew louder as Kammler gave chase, but came to a quick stop as Miller turned around to face him, handgun aimed at the gas.

Kammler laughed again. “Your people never knew when to keep running,” the man said.

“And you never know when to shut up and pull the trigger.” Miller adjusted his aim down and to the right. He squeezed off three quick rounds. A flare of orange light followed the third shot, and then a massive explosion as the gas tank ignited. The powerful blast knocked Miller off his feet and smashed Kammler’s machine into the metal frame of the next warehouse stack.

Miller pushed himself up and took a breath. His chest ached. The pony bottle had been knocked from his face. He found it dangling around his neck and pulled it back on.

There was a loud grinding of metal and a crackling hum as Kammler’s machine righted itself and yanked its arms free from the large warehouse shelves. The explosion had been powerful, but not powerful enough, and the flames died immediately for the same reason the car wouldn’t start. The twin weapons lowered toward Miller. There would be no banter this time. No delay.

But Kammler never got to pull the trigger. The three-story-tall warehouse shelf above the car buckled and dumped its contents. Miller didn’t know what the crates held, but when they landed atop Kammler, they struck like a runaway truck. Kammler, and the robotic suit, slammed to the floor as more heavy crates toppled down. Miller doubted the man was dead, but there wasn’t time for that anyway.

Not wanting to expose himself to more gunfire, Miller found a gap in the crates of the shelving unit between him and the control center. He slid through and found Adler waving him over. “I cannot get in! The programs running the satellites are protected. The settings are locked.”

She tapped on the keyboard, trying something else. “Scheiße!”

Miller entered the control center and ran to her side. On the screen he saw a display that showed the status of several satellites. Bars rose and fell, monitoring various systems, none of which Miller could discern since everything was in German. “What is all this?”

“The system is monitoring the satellites, adjusting power, altitude, everything from here. But it’s locked. I can’t boost the power.” Adler slammed her fist down on the keyboard.

Computers were not Miller’s forte, but thinking clearly under pressure was. “What would happen if the satellites were no longer being controlled?”

“In theory, without their energy intake being controlled, they would take in more energy than they could handle. Different method. Same result. They might also just shut down. But I can’t do that either,” Adler said. “Everything to do with the satellites is locked. I’d need a password.”

“But you can access other functions?”

“Yeah, everything else, but—”

“Fork bomb,” Miller said.

Adler’s eyes went wide. She mouthed the word “fork bomb” and then her fingers became a blur over the keyboard, but the windows he saw on the screen looked nothing like the command prompt he saw in Antarctica.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Have something to do first.”

“What? There isn’t—”

“Done,” she said. The command prompt opened and Miller saw the fork bomb code scroll onto the screen.

$ :(){:|:&};:

She hit Enter and then said, “We need to get out of here. Now!”

“We should make sure it works,” Miller said. “If they get here, they could—”

“They’re never going to get the chance,” Adler shouted. “Listen!”

Miller focused on his hearing. There were boots. Voices—muffled behind rebreathers. Weapons being cocked. The occasional gunshot seeking them out. And he heard crates being shoved aside from the aisle where Kammler had been buried. But behind it all, there was something else.

Something persistent.

And rising.

A buzz.

Like a beehive.

61

Miller’s head snapped up. A much more modern-looking Bell hung from the ceiling. It was at least half the size of the one in Antarctica. Adler had managed to activate the fail-safe device—what was no doubt meant to be used if the facility was overrun by a hostile force—using Brodeur’s own tactic against him.

“Take off your weapon’s sound suppressor,” Miller said as he twisted his off. “Let’s make as much noise as we can.”

Adler removed her silencer. “If we’re going to get out of here, we need to leave now.”

“We’re not leaving,” Miller said.

“What!”

He pointed to the set of double doors that led to the vault door. “You better believe that’s locked down. There’s no way out.”

Adler looked at the floor. “Then it ends here.”

“Actually,” Miller said with a morphine smile, “I was thinking it could end in there.” He pointed to the cryogenic chamber. The short hall connecting the two spaces was open. “The cavern in Antarctica was one big open space, so I don’t think they had much choice. But this place is man-made. It will be shielded. I’d bet my life on it.”

“You are,” she said.

Miller gave a laugh, forced away his smile, and said, “Sorry. Morphine. Ready?”

She nodded.

Miller peeked over the partition and saw an army. A hundred men at least.

Bullets zinged over his head as he ducked.

Adler saw his wide eyes. “That bad?”

“Don’t look. Just point your gun in back as you run and you’re bound to hit someone. Don’t stop shooting until you run out of bullets.”

Adler braced herself, ready to make a suicidal sprint over two hundred feet of open space.

Miller looked back at Adler and a flicker of light behind her caught his attention. The computer screens—all of them, including the big display—went black. The fork bomb had worked, but would the satellites overload? And would it be soon enough? There was no way to know, unless they lived. “Go!” Miller shouted, breaking out into a limpy sprint with Adler on his heels.

The pair started firing right away, which gave them a few seconds to build speed while the enemy flinched. At his best, Miller could finish a hundred-yard dash in just over twelve seconds, two longer than the world record. Injured and hopped up on morphine, he figured it would take twenty.

Five seconds into his run, Miller ejected his spent clip and slapped in another. The enemy opened fire.

Adler shouted in pain, but stayed on her feet and kept firing.

Miller dove into a roll, allowing Adler to pass him, and came up facing the enemy. The control center in the middle of the room had helped block a lot of the fire, but the SS men were running around it now, shooting wildly as they ran. Miller focused, fired several times, and took out the two lead men. But the rest didn’t slow. They had numbers and cultlike conviction on their side.

He caught sight of Brodeur, just three men back, shouting for his men to press forward. He lined up the shot, but never took it. A round struck his side, tearing skin and muscle before ricocheting off a rib, which broke.

Miller fell back with a shout.

Brodeur ordered his men to fire.

Adler appeared by Miller’s side, yanking him to his feet.

The SS shooters took aim, tracking their targets more easily while not giving chase.

Miller stumbled, tripping up Adler. They both fell into the hallway joining the control center with the cryogenics chamber.

Bullets flew over their heads, kill shots had they not fallen.

A spike of adrenaline cleared Miller’s morphine-dulled mind and while he gained a surge of energy, he also felt his pain more acutely. He roared in pain as he jumped up, took hold of Adler, and dove into the cryogenics chamber. He scrambled to the side as bullets pinged off the floor.

Out of sight for the moment, Miller took two deep breaths. His lungs burned. All of the exertion had drained his pony bottle’s air five minutes faster than advertised.

He took it off and tossed it aside.

Adler handed him hers, and he took two deep breaths from it before handing it back. He looked down at the woman. She’d taken two rounds, one on the side of her waist and the other on her left trapezius. Both were close to being kill shots, but they were survivable wounds. If treated.

Running feet followed a war cry from the control center. Miller chanced a look. The SS soldiers ran for the hallway door, charging like men on an ancient battlefield, Brodeur at their lead.

Miller ducked back as bullets began to fly.

They were done.

He dropped his weapon.

Raised his eyes, like he could see the sky through the hundreds of feet of stone, and said a quick prayer for Arwen.

That’s when he saw the door.

A large steel blast door hung above the hallway entrance.

Just above Miller’s head was a red button labeled NOTFALL in German. He wasn’t sure what it meant, but the button’s function was clear. He struggled to reach it as the sound of running boots echoed through the short hallway.

Miller lunged up and slapped the button.

The door descended.

The fastest of the Nazis dove under the falling door.

Adler shot him five times.

The second fastest made it halfway through before the door slammed down, cutting him in half.

The dull thud of human fists followed.

Miller stood and helped Adler up.

The thick blast door had a long, thin window. He walked to it and saw a sea of angry faces. Brodeur stood at the center of them, seething. The man shouted something, but Miller couldn’t hear him. He pointed at his ear and mouthed, “I can’t hear you.”

Brodeur just stared at him with the eyes of a predator; the eyes of a man who knew he would eventually get through this blast door and destroy his enemy.

But Miller knew better.

Though the cryogenics chamber was silent, save for the hum of the life-support systems, he knew the control center would be buzzing with the sound of a thousand bees. He pointed to his ear, and mouthed, “What’s that sound?”

Brodeur cocked his head slightly, then started shouting and fired two rounds in the ceiling. The pounding on the door ceased. The men surrounding him stopped moving. With a flash of recognition, the color drained from Brodeur’s face. He started to shout an order, but it was already too late.

Brodeur itched at his skin as it suddenly reddened.

The men around him began to flail and fall.

Brodeur took a step back, aimed his weapon at Miller through the window, and pulled the trigger, over and over.

The gunshots sounded like distant fireworks to Miller. The glass was several inches thick. He didn’t even flinch.

Brodeur pounded on the window with his fist. The blow left a white smear behind. Brodeur noticed it and looked at his hand. The skin hung loose over his bones as the liquefied meat inside slid down into his arm and pooled at his elbow. The look of horror on his face became disfigured as his muscles, blood, cartilage, and sinews separated into their elemental parts. His face drooped, and then fell away, leaving a blood-covered skull with eyes and bits of stringy flesh dripping down the sides. The eyes stared back at Miller’s, burning with rage. A moment later, the two orbs deflated and fell away. Brodeur’s liquid brain slid out of the eye sockets a moment before his body crashed to the floor, forming a large pool of human sludge along with a hundred other soldiers and the fifty white-clothed men who had already asphyxiated.

Miller fell away from the door and sat down.

Adler joined him. “We should move away from the door,” she said. “Just in case.”

Miller groaned and managed to pull himself away from the growing pool of blood surrounding the one and a half soldiers who made it into the room, but could go no farther. He lay back and closed his eyes. The morphine was wearing off. He was bleeding from, well, everywhere. He had killed his enemy, but it seemed they had done him in, too. It would just take a little longer.

But it was a good death.

Or was it?

“Did you do it?” he asked.

“Do what?”

“Save the world?”

Adler shrugged, leaned on his chest, and closed her eyes as they both slipped into unconsciousness.

62

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Arwen looked out the window. The view was distorted through the translucent oxygen tent, but she could see the red flakes well enough. The first flake had fallen two hours ago, and the man on the news said—between sobs—that soon, the people who were exposed to the air would suffer from iron poisoning. They would feel sick. Then better. And then sick again before dying.

But they wouldn’t even last that long. Not this time. The rate of oxidization was much faster than in Miami or Tokyo or Tel Aviv. Within the hour, the air would feel as thin as it was at the top of Mount Everest. An hour after that, only those with air supplies would survive. But with the red storm now projected to last a week—no one knew how long the effects would last beyond that—it was doubtful that many people, if any, would survive.

Arwen knew from experience that she could last days in her oxygen tent, but the idea of being alone that long only to die alone didn’t sit well with her.

She lifted up the oxygen tent and slid out of bed. Her wounds hurt a little less now, helped out some by the medication she’d been given. But she hadn’t seen a nurse in hours. Not since the first red flake fell. The medication would wear off soon.

She eyed the pony bottle Miller left for her. Part of her wanted to take it, load up a cart of oxygen tanks, and make for the hills like Miller would. But there was nowhere to hide.

An inch of red covered everything outside the window. She looked at the ground and saw some people standing in it, facing death head on.

When she saw smoke rising in the distance, she realized that not everyone was facing the end of the world so peacefully. Some people would probably die long before the air ran out. Some people were probably already dead.

As she feared Miller to be.

He wouldn’t have given up. And if there were red flakes falling from the sky, it meant he was dead.

Tears welled in her eyes, blurring her vision.

So when a distant sparkle of light caught her attention, she couldn’t tell what she’d seen.

As the newscaster’s voice suddenly grew high-pitched, Arwen wiped her eyes dry and looked in the direction the light had come from.

Up.

Then it repeated. A blue explosion of light pulsed in the sky. It reminded her of a swimming jellyfish, bursting out and then pulling in. But then it was gone again.

A moment later it repeated, but near the horizon.

Then again, above her.

And again, and again.

Soon the sky was filled with soft blue explosions.

It was beautiful.

But not nearly as beautiful as the blue sky that slowly emerged from the purple.

The newscaster was shouting now. Dancing. Hugging and kissing a camera crew.

Arwen placed her hand against the glass as the news cut to people and places all around the world. Singing and dancing filled the streets, including the one below her window.

Arwen looked up and saw a single red flake slip through the sky. It struck her window and stuck for a moment before a gust of wind carried it away.

The last red flake had fallen.

63

Miller wasn’t sure how long he’d been unconscious, but figured it had been several hours judging by how stiff his body felt. The flow of blood from his wounds had slowed, if not stopped. Adler lay next to him in a similar state.

He reached out and grazed her cheek with his hand. The movement caused him excruciating pain, but when her eyes flicked open and looked at him, it was worth it.

“Just to confirm,” he said. “We did save the world, right?”

She grinned weakly. “I think so.”

“You think so?”

“I was trained never to confirm something I haven’t seen with my own eyes.”

“Hey,” Miller said. “I just realized something.” He took a deep breath. “I’m breathing.”

Adler gave a nod. “I think the air came back on around the same time I activated the Bell. Brodeur wasn’t wearing a mask when he… melted.”

“Neither was I,” Miller said. “I guess seeing a man melt distracted me.”

“It happens,” Adler said with a grin.

“So,” Miller said. “Who trained you?”

“What?”

“You said you were trained to never confirm something you hadn’t seen with your own eyes. Earlier you mistakenly referred to yourself as an agent, rather than a liaison. You shoot as well as I do. So who trained you? And don’t feed me any Interpol bullshit. I’ve earned the truth.”

“My name really is Elizabeth Adler,” she said. “As is my grandmother’s, and that really is her journal. And I had no idea Gerlach was my grandfather. All that was true.”

“But,” Miller urged.

A loud clunk from the door made both of them jump. Gears within the wall ground. The door slid up with a groan.

Miller searched for his weapon, but couldn’t find it.

Shouted German commands echoed from the hallway.

Adler shouted back.

Ten men dressed in black entered. All white. Speaking German. Armed for war.

With modern weapons.

Miller tensed. He wouldn’t go down without a fight.

“Relax,” Adler said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “They are with me.” She flashed a smile and said, “Elizabeth Adler, Special Agent with GSG-9.”

GSG-9! The Grenzschutzgruppe 9 was Germany’s elite counterterrorism force.

“I was working at Interpol. Undercover. Everything I told you was true.”

“You just left out some details.”

She looked about to apologize, but Miller held up his hand. “Don’t worry about it. I’m not a fan of being lied to, even by omission. But I understand the reason.”

One of the men approached Adler, said something to her, and handed her her grandmother’s journal.

Miller eyed the book and understood at once. “Seriously?”

Adler reached into the spine and pulled out a long thin tracking device.

“You weren’t waiting for me,” Miller said. “You were waiting for them.”

She confirmed it with a nod and said, “But I was glad it was you.”

“Good,” he said. “Because they were late.” Miller pushed himself onto his elbows. “You guys were late!”

The GSG-9 team ignored him as they set up a pair of stretchers. Then the men parted as Vesely entered the chamber. The Cowboy saw Adler and Miller lying on the floor, but alive, and gave a loud “Yeehaw!”

“Cowboy, you made it,” Miller said with a smile.

“I told you. I am gunslinger.” Vesely knelt down next to Miller and pointed to a hole in his hat. “They ruined my hat, though.”

Miller took Vesely’s hand and squeezed it. “We owe you our lives.”

“You can thank me later,” Vesely said, as a stretcher was slid up next to Miller.

“Vesely,” Miller said. “Do you know? Have you—”

“GSG turned computers on in next room. Screens show cities around the world,” Vesely said. “Blue sky.”

Miller felt a weight lift, both from the fight being over, and because someone was lifting him up.

Vesely turned to the GSG medic. “There is hospital here. Tenth floor.”

Miller took Vesely’s arm. “Wait.”

“What is it, Survivor?”

“There’s something I need to do, first.”