My First Novel: Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Eighteen

Mike walked about three hundred feet down the hallway, nearly out of matches, when he was lucky to find some shelves stocked with office supplies. The reams of typing paper would make good kindling, but he’d need something more substantial to build a decent campfire. Of course, the wooden shelves would serve that purpose. For as long as they’d last.

In the darkness, his spirits rising, Mike dismantled the shelves, stacking them in a pattern he’d perfected during his years in the Boy Scouts. Next, he crumpled up wads of typing paper and stuffed them between every gap in the stack. When Mike was finally satisfied that his campfire would pass muster with his old scoutmaster — he struck a match. The blaze lit up the bunker nearly a hundred feet in every direction.

Mike’s momentary joy in the firelight was tempered by the thought of Dr. Huber coming back to find a campfire raging in his bunker. Then again, when that big iron door opened it made a hell of a lot of noise. If Mike heard that racket, he’d put out the flames and make it look like Allied bomb damage. Or something like that.

What else could he do?  

Now that he could catch his breath and relax for a moment, Mike allowed himself to feel how exhausted he was. He’d made the right decision. The odds were slim on chasing Huber through the streets of Berlin. Rather than trail his prey, Dr. Huber would have to come back to him. It was a good situation for a detective. Mike was certain he was right where he should be.

As he rested by the fire, he tried to imagine Huber’s frame of mind – and more importantly, Hitler’s. Mike knew that at this point in January of ‘45, Hitler and his regime were on the ropes. The Allies were driving east toward Germany. In four months, Berlin will finally fall to the Americans and Soviets. Nazi Germany will be defeated, and Hitler will die by suicide.

Unless something crazy happens to disrupt that history.

Competing thoughts ran through Mike’s mind. He could mark the passage of days by keeping track of that sliver of sunlight above the bunker door. He had to explore every inch of the bunker. He had to find the lights and turn them on — or at least the lights in the room where the portal was.

Where would he hide when the Nazis came back? Whatever Mike did — he had to sleep close to the bunker door or risk being surprised by Huber’s return.

He had to be ready. But ready to do what?

Mike wasn’t entirely sure what to do when Huber showed up with whatever top Nazis he might round up. He knew that Hitler had built his Fuhrerbunker beneath the streets of central Berlin. Probably not far from where Mike was hunkered down right now. That was likely where Hitler and his senior staff were housed at the moment, brainstorming ways to stop the Allied onslaught. With the Fuhrer still clinging to fantasies of victory, Dr. Huber would be walking into a desperate situation.

Mike wondered if Hitler was already aware of Huber’s time-travel plan. Did the Fatherland’s most brilliant scientist convince the Fuhrer that, if Berlin should fall, he could carry his mad dream of world conquest more than sixty years into the future? Would Hitler be willing to abandon his capital city beforethe Seigfried Line was broken? Would he run away before Berlin fell? And if the Fuhrer didagree to escape through the time portal, how many of his inner circle would join him? And how long would it take for Huber to round them all up?

Mike could only guess at the answers. He and his Marine buddies would have considered such questions to be way above their pay grade. But Mike had no superior officers calling the shots in this battle. There were no orders to follow other than his own.

He wouldn’t be able to settle on a plan of action until Huber returned. Not until he knew exactly who and what he was up against. But Mike was certain about one thing. He was hungry.

Mike had breakfast early that morning with Gloria, but it felt like days ago. Had it truly been just hours ago? Hopping back and forth through the decades was taking a toll on Mike’s sense of time and place. He was worn out, but he couldn’t afford to sleep. Not yet. There was too much to be done. And finding food was at the top of the list.

He threw a few more shelves on the fire and scanned both walls of the long hallway stretched out ahead of him. The hallway didn’t seem that long when he was chasing Huber and the bombs were bursting overhead. About forty feet from the fire, Mike could make out what looked like a row of floor-to-ceiling cabinets. Using a flaming shelf as a torch, he headed toward them. Four ten-foot-tall cabinets stood side by side. Together, they were about twenty feet in length.

Relax, Mike told himself. There might not be any food inside. Still, his heart sank when he found the first cabinet was filled with more office supplies: typing paper, file folders, envelopes. All perfectly combustible. If Mike was trapped in this goddamn bunker for weeks or months, he’d have plenty of fuel for his fires. But he wouldn’t last long enough to burn all that fuel if he didn’t have some fuel of his own.

The second cabinet held an ample supply of first aid kits and other emergency medical equipment. Again, very handy. If the next Allied bombing run dropped a 500-pounder through the roof, Mike might wind up in dire need of first aid. That is, if he survived the blast. A weary grin crept across his face. Being blown to smithereens would be better than slowly starving to death.

The third cabinet brought salvation.

Mike was delighted to find a healthy stockpile of food. The fourth cabinet was also a food pantry. Both cabinets were crammed with chow meant to stand the test of time: every kind of preserved and canned food, from vegetables to meats. Jars of pickled and dried fruits, cans of condensed milk, jugs of water, and bottles of wine, beer, and bourbon. This was clearly a bunker built to accommodate the needs and tastes of ranking officers and other high rollers. Mike wouldn’t starve. He could wait here for months. He hoped he wouldn’t have to.   

Mike didn’t care how any of this stuff tasted. None of it could be any worse than the K rations and canned Spam he’d eaten for months while fighting on one blasted Pacific island after another. Or that damned chocolate brick known as D rations: chock full of calories, but hard as a goddamn rock. Everything in these cabinets was edible. That was all he needed. So, he feasted.

If it took Dr. Huber a while to gather his Nazi pals, Mike would grow fat waiting for them.

After eating his fill and allowing himself a warm beer, his thoughts turned to the next task at hand: finding out how to turn on the lights and get back to the time portal. If he couldn’t get the lights back on, he’d have to keep using improvised torches. That would be a real medieval pain in the ass, he thought, as he walked down the long hallway, burning shelf in hand.

Mike was delighted to find an open door leading to a small men’s room. The urinal and toilet didn’t need electricity. They both flushed perfectly. Mike took advantage of his discovery. It had been a while. Relieved, he retraced the steps he took after exiting the portal and chasing after Dr. Huber.

He’d been through a time portal twice now. Both times he’d lost track of where he was while inside the portal. It was an indescribable feeling. He had no sense of being transported anywhere until he found himself suddenly outside the portal. In both cases he became aware of his new surroundings only after he got smacked in the face with some branches at Murphy’s Ranch — and found himself under bombardment in this bunker. He never thought to look back and see where he came from. He was looking ahead, focused on following Huber as closely as he could.  

Mike’s mind wandered. He couldn’t help thinking about what life would’ve been like if he didn’t follow Huber through the portal at Murphy’s Ranch. He and Gloria would’ve been married before too long. He’d have cleaned up his act, quit the private eye game, and become a solid citizen. A husband and father. Maybe he would’ve worked at Zack’s with Gloria and her mom. He could’ve tended bar and been the bouncer when needed. That way he and Gloria would always be together, and she wouldn’t have to worry about him working odd hours on dangerous cases.

The thought of working odd hours brought a wry smile. Now, Mike was working odd decades.

But what should he do when he found the portal? Should he destroy it before Huber got back? Should he leave Hitler to his eventual suicide four months from now? Or should he lie in wait and gun down all the lousy Nazis that showed up – then destroy the portal?

Of course, if Mike destroyed the time portal, he’d never get back to Gloria. He’d never know if she survived Horst’s bullet. He imagined traveling through the portal back to 1951 and marrying young Gloria. He fantasized about their wedding night – then shook himself. This wasn’t about him. It was about stopping a second American civil war.

Without an operational portal, he’d be just another lost soul trying to stay alive in war-torn Berlin. A guy whose German was piss poor, carrying an ID that made no sense in January of ‘45. He was in an impossible situation. And what about Huber’s “Plan B”? Did they have another portal somewhere in case the one in this bunker was destroyed? It seemed far-fetched. But what about this case wasn’t far-fetched?

It occurred to Mike that going back through this portal was his only shot to get out of this crazy mess. But how could he do it? How many passengers would Huber take into the portal with him? Would he have a new assistant to operate the damn thing? Would they station guards around it? And, if so, how many? Could he manage to secretly follow the Nazis into the portal — then kill them all after they came through at Cal Tech?

Given the two dead militia assholes Mike had left on Horst Mueller’s doorstep — and the trail of blood leading to Physics Lab #7 — what where the chances that Horst and his time portal were still in business? Was the lab now a crime scene, cordoned off and under police guard? Did Horst talk? Or did he kill himself like a loyal Nazi dead-ender before the cops busted through the door? Did he destroy his portal before it could fall into enemy hands? Would Horst have done that knowing it would leave Huber and Hitler with no way to escape the fall of Berlin – and inspire their glorious Nazi crusade in America?

Then again, Mike reminded himself that the Pasadena cops would have no way of knowing what Horst was up to in Physics Lab #7. After all, Horst was a local celebrity: a Nobel Prize winner. He was a big important man at Cal Tech. All those gizmos in his lab would be far beyond the comprehension of the cops arriving on the scene.

Horst might’ve explained his gunshot wound by pinning the blame on the same unknown assailant that had killed his two bodyguards. Hopefully, Mike’s bullet had passed through Horst’s shoulder and ballistics would be inconclusive. Maybe they hadn’t even found the bullet. In either case, the cops would ask Horst a lot of questions, but they’d have no reason to mess with Cal Tech’s expensive and obviously important laboratory equipment.  

As Mike walked down the hallway in search of the time portal, he remembered a conversation he had with Gloria just a few days ago. That night at Zack’s she said she knew why he went through the portal at Murphy’s Ranch. She said he did it because he wanted to solve the mystery. She was right. And she was still right. Mike was working one of the craziest cases in history. And as impossible as it appeared to be right now, he wanted to wrap this case up. Somehow.

As for his darling Gloria, Mike recalled a favorite line of Bogey’s from Casablanca. “I’m no good at being noble,” he told Ingrid Bergman, “But it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.” He and Gloria were just two people — but the sentiment was the same. Thinking too much about her wasn’t going to help him make the best decisions right now. In this lousy bunker, Mike had to lead with his head – and not his heart.

He walked down the hallway at least fifty yards before he reached the chamber that housed the time portal. His flaming shelf had burned dangerously close to his hand, so he scanned for something else to ignite. He spotted a wastebasket full of discarded paper and other trash, set fire to it, and used the light of those flames to get a better look at the room. Where were the light switches? If he couldn’t get the lights on soon, he’d be plunged back into darkness – more than a hundred yards away from the bunker door.

He’d be in sad shape if Horst suddenly returned.

The fire in the waste basket was almost out as Mike groped along a wall in the gathering gloom. His hands arrived at a series of switches. Six of them. He toggled them all back and forth to no effect. Had Huber overridden all the electricity in the bunker when he closed the door and left? It was yet another sinking moment. The odds against Mike were getting longer.

The light from Mike’s basket fire grew dim as he moved through the room as though on a night patrol. He tied to keep calm and focus on the next step, feeling carefully along every surface, not wanting to upset anything. All this stuff might be needed to get back to 2008.

Just before the basket fire died out, Mike’s hand landed on his salvation: an angle-headed flashlight just like the one he’d carried in the Marines. The flashlight’s beam was still strong enough that Mike could search the portal chamber thoroughly. Further exploration confirmed that Dr. Huber had, indeed, shut down the bunker’s electrical system. Mike went back to the office supply cabinet and stuffed as many flashlight batteries as he could into his pockets. Then he headed back down the hallway toward the bunker door. He tucked himself into a hiding place for some much-needed shut-eye, less than twenty feet from the door through which Huber had left – and through which he might return at any time.