Time Riders

CHAPTER 28

1941, Bavarian woods, Germany

Kramer watched Karl with admiration. The man was a professional soldier, had servedwith some of the world’s elite special forces and thereafter been a highly recommendedand highly paid mercenary. In the troubled world of 2066, there was plenty of work for menlike him.

Karl had been one of the first to be won over by Kramer’s dream of a better world.He’d spoken on Kramer’s behalf to other mercenaries he knew and trusted, men heknew who also longed for a better place, a better time.

The world they’d left behind was a place that was dying, choked by pollution, strangledby dwindling resources, a world horrendously over-populated and ultimately doomed.

Who wouldn’t want to leave that behind?

It had been easy for Karl to recruit two dozen men he could trust for this mission. Everysingle man he’d approached had been ready to jump at the chance of leaving thetwenty-first century for a chance to rewrite the twentieth century. And good men they were,all of them. Very experienced, very disciplined. They all spoke at least two languages,English being their shared language. Most of these men quietly stepping through the snowywoods with well-practised stealth were German, some were Dutch, a few were Norwegian, a coupleof them British.

But… only seventeen of them now. Kramer shook his head.

We lost seven men just getting here.

Suddenly up ahead Karl silently raised his hand and made a fist. The men understood thesignal and squatted down amid the snow-covered foliage. In their mottled white and greyArctic-camouflage tunics and waiting perfectly still, they were almost undetectable in thedark.

Karl turned round and beckoned Kramer forward. He crunched lightly across the snow andsquatted down beside him.

Karl pointed through the trees ahead. ‘Is that it, sir?’

Kramer craned his neck to get a better look. Up a winding track he could make out a couple ofsandbagged machine-gun posts either side of a gravel track and a sentry hut bathed in thelight of twin floodlights.

‘This is it, Karl.’ He smiled. ‘This is it! Hitler’s winterretreat!’

‘Der Kehlsteinhaus. The Eagle’s Nest. It does notappear that heavily guarded.’

‘It’s up this one road, perched on the side of a steep hill,’ said Kramer.‘The building itself is defended by several dozen of Hitler’s personal bodyguards,the LeibstandarteSS. A little further up the hillside, only a few hundred yardsaway, is an SS garrison housing four or five hundred of them.’ He turned to Karl.‘They will happily die to defend their leader. Your men will have to be very fast, Karl.The moment the first shot is fired, the alarm will be raised and the garrisonalerted.’

Karl looked back at his men, perfectly still in the snow, weapons ready and waiting for anorder. They were expertly trained and well equipped with modern weapons and nightscopes.

He smiled. ‘My men will get to him. Don’t worry.’

Kramer wished he shared the man’s confidence.

Just seventeen of them. If Karl’s men were unable tocomplete their objective before the regiment-strength SS garrison descended upon theFuhrer’s retreat, then it would be all over.

Seventeen against five hundred?

Even with the advantage of combat technology from 2066, he wondered for a moment if he wasasking too much of these men.