The Athena Project

PROLOGUE

SOMEWHERE ABOVE FRANCE

1944

The sound of suppressed gunfire in the narrow fuselage was drowned out by the roar of the slipstream coupled with the plane’s engines. The soldiers accompanying the crates of documents back to Berlin lay dead and dying, their uniforms soaked with blood. Twenty-two-year-old Jacqueline Marceau ejected the spent magazine from her MP40 and inserted a fresh one.

Keeping an eye trained on the cockpit door, she shackled her prisoner, then retrieved her parachute and struggled into it.

She pulled a cap over her head and tucked her long blond hair inside so it wouldn’t whip her face on the way down. Next came goggles and a pair of leather gloves. It might have been summertime on the ground, but at this altitude it was bitterly cold.

She gave her gear one final check and then helped her prisoner to his feet. “Time to move, Herr Stiegler.”

The SS officer tried to fight back, but Marceau was ready for him. She slammed her weapon into his groin and as he doubled over, wrapped a webbing harness around his torso.

Stepping behind him, Marceau grabbed his chin and yanked his head back, causing him to stand up straighter. As he did, she ran the two final straps between his legs and clipped them in to the back of the harness.

“I hope you’re not afraid of heights,” she quipped, shoving the man toward the Arado’s rear loading ramp.

Displeased with his pace, Marceau jabbed him in the kidney with the MP40 and told him, “Mach schnell!”

Stiegler tried to call out to the cockpit for help, but it was no use. Marceau gave him another punch with her weapon and drove him to the edge of the ramp.

The Arado 232 might have been the Luftwaffe’s general-purpose transport aircraft, but this one was armed like a Messerschmitt. The navigator operated a 13 mm machine gun in the nose, the radio operator a 20 mm gun in a rotating turret on the roof, and the loadmaster-now deceased-another 13 mm gun from above the cargo bay at the rear ramp. They’d be floating ducks until they hit the ground and were able to take cover. The best thing they could do was get out before anyone knew they were gone.

At the ramp, Marceau looked for the wiring that led to the cockpit and the indicator lamp that would light up as soon as she opened the hydraulically powered clamshell doors. She fished a diagram from her pocket and tried to zero in on the right wire to cut. That’s when Stiegler tried to overpower her once more.

Using his shoulder as a ram, he charged right into her, toppling her over backward. Marceau lost her grip on her weapon and threw her hands out, looking for something to grab as she fell. What she found was the cargo door release.

A red light began flashing as the doors started to open. Marceau was about to let a curse fly when the red light was obscured by something else-Stiegler’s head snapping forward right toward the bridge of her nose.

Marceau moved, but not fast enough. Stiegler’s head glanced off the side of hers, sending a searing bolt of pain through her skull. What was worse was that he was on top of her now. Nearly seven inches taller and almost twice her weight, he definitely had the advantage, even in manacles.

She tried to bring her knee up to get him in the groin again, but he had her legs and arms pinned. He knew he had won, and his lips began to curl into a smile. Marceau relaxed her body and turned her head away. The message could not have been any clearer. I give up.

Stiegler bent down, his mouth hovering inches away from her face, and she could smell the red wine he had been consuming before they took off from Paris. With the thick parachute between her and the floor, she felt like a turtle that had been flipped onto its back.

“You have been a very bad girl,” he began to whisper to her. That’s when she struck.

Whipping her head to the side, she grabbed as much of Stiegler’s right ear in her mouth as she could, bit down, and tore.

The SS officer screamed in pain and scrambled to get off the twenty-two-year-old.

Blood gushed from the side of his head, down his neck, and onto his coat. Marceau spat a portion of Stiegler’s ear out and leaped to her feet. As she did, she was greeted with a hail of bullets.

Hitting the deck, she rolled and recovered her weapon. Raising it to engage the threat, she saw that the copilot had emerged from the cockpit, most likely in response to the cargo doors having been engaged. He had emptied the magazine of his Luger and was hastily trying to insert a new one when Marceau put a tight group of rounds into his chest and he fell to the floor.

The navigator would be out next, followed by the radio operator. It was past time to bail out.

Rushing over to Stiegler, she clipped herself to the back of his harness and began dragging him toward the rear of the plane. When he tried to swing his head backward and connect with her face, she slammed her MP40 into what remained of his right ear.

The pain must have been intense. She felt the man’s knees buckle, and she almost lost her balance trying to keep him upright.

Dragging Stiegler back to the cargo doors, Marceau activated the ramp and watched as it slowly began to lower.

One of the dead soldiers at the rear of the plane had two stick grenades tucked inside his belt. With Stiegler still woozy from the blow, Marceau planted her feet, then carefully reached down and withdrew both grenades.

Hobbling back to the ramp with her captive, she could now see daylight behind the plane. It was maddening how long the ramp lowering process took. She couldn’t afford to wait any longer. Pushing Stiegler forward, she began walking him out onto it.

Once there, she gave the briefcase a final tug to make sure it was still firmly attached to his wrist. Ten seconds more and the ramp would be down far enough for them to jump. After that, all that mattered was that her primary chute open. With the auxiliary chute, or Belly Wart as it was known, sandwiched between them, there was no way it would deploy if she needed it. She’d have to cut him loose and let him fall to his death, which wasn’t an option.

As far as she knew, a “tandem” jump, as she had termed it, had never been done before, but her mission was to bring back both Stiegler and the briefcase he had chained to his wrist. It had been considered suicidal. In fact, no one in her organization actually believed it could be done. That had only made Marceau more determined to succeed.

With less than five seconds left, she inched Stiegler forward. It was then that she suddenly heard a shout from behind.

“Halt!”

Marceau spun her captive around just in time to see the navigator, armed with an MP40 like hers, bring his weapon up and fire.

Bullets ricocheted and punched holes along the fuselage. They also punched holes in Josef Stiegler.

Marceau felt him begin to slump forward. As strong as she was, there was no way she could hold him up and return fire.

The navigator advanced. He was using shorter, more controlled bursts. Almost all of the rounds were now hitting Stiegler. Marceau dragged him backward, only feet from the edge of the ramp.

Stiegler’s body went limp and the dead weight caused her to stumble. When she did, she caught not one, but two rounds through her right shoulder, and her weapon clattered to the deck. There was no time to pick it up.

Ignoring the pain, she wrapped her arm around Stiegler’s midsection and continued to drag him. How was she not at the end of the ramp already? How much farther could it be?

Stiegler’s legs finally gave out and his body folded in half. The only thing keeping him up was Marceau’s remaining strength, coupled with her intense force of will.

The navigator looked at Marceau and smiled. It was the same smile Stiegler had given her. Marceau smiled back as the man leveled his weapon, steadied his aim, and pulled the trigger.

Whether it was a lack of training, the noise from the engines, or the heat of combat, the navigator had failed to notice that his weapon was empty.

Raising the stick grenades, their base caps already unscrewed, Marceau put the priming cords between her teeth. The navigator’s smile instantly disappeared and the color drained from his face.

Jacqueline Marceau yanked both cords at once and tossed the navigator a wink as she threw the grenades over his head into the interior of the plane. She then stepped backward with Stiegler and leaped off the ramp.

As the Luftwaffe plane erupted into a billowing fireball, Marceau deployed her chute and steered herself and her captive toward a long, green valley dotted with a handful of cows and a small chalet.