Tag Archives: history

Chapter Seventeen

Trying to enter the building Horst had just entered, Mike turned the door handle. It was locked. Of course, it was. Dr. Horst Mueller wasn’t an idiot.

Time was wasting. Mike looked to his right and saw a first story window about fifteen feet away. Beneath it was a large dumpster. It was a chance.

Climbing up onto the dumpster, Mike saw that the window was open a crack. If he could climb through that window without being detected, he could outflank anyone who might be guarding the front door. He needed some luck right now. America needed some luck.

He wedged his fingers into the space at the bottom of the window and pushed upward. The window moved, making a loud squeaking noise. If anyone but a fool was on guard, he’d surely come running toward that sound. But Mike had no choice but to shove the window open, crawl through it, draw his TEC-9 – and blast his way through to that goddamned portal if he must.

But nobody came into the room.

Mike glanced at his phone. The tracker showed Horst was somewhere to Mike’s left. At least that’s where his overcoat was. What floor Horst was on was impossible to know, but Mike knew which direction to go. He checked his TEC-9’s clip, just to be sure. Save for the one slug he put into Horst — Mike was loaded and ready for battle. But, if he got into a gunfight, he’d never be able to sneak up on Horst and Huber. The situation called for getting in close – and quiet.  

With his gun in his right hand, Mike reached with his left and drew his Marine commando knife from the sheath strapped to his shin. He’d drawn lots of blood with it in the Pacific. It was his good luck charm. He’d never left home without it.

Mike could see about twenty feet down the hallway to what looked like it might be the door that Horst would have staggered through. But he didn’t see any guards. That was odd. He figured Horst and Huber would have employed some kind of armed security — and surely their paramilitary pals would be more than happy to provide some muscle.

He couldn’t just rush in like some gung-ho Marine and hope things went his way. He had to know what he was up against. Looking down the hallway, a shadow darkened the wall, followed closely by a second shadow. Both shadows looked to be armed with long guns. The bastards had guards after all.

Moving silently and surely down the hallway, Mike knew he had the drop on these guys. But gunshots would alert Horst and Huber. Mike had to keep the element of surprise — observing the rules he learned on night raids in the jungle. Go in quietly. Get it done quietly. Get out quietly.

Mike saw the guards just seconds before he and the two shadows converged at the front door. He was bigger than either of them, but they were wearing body armor and carrying long guns. They didn’t look like grad students. They looked more like the militia nuts he saw at Murphy’s Ranch.

Flying bullets were random and chaotic. This was a time for what hardened commandos like Mike called wet work. Close-up, physical combat.

He took his commando knife from its sheath.

As the two guards walked past him, Mike bolted from his hiding place, swept in low behind them with his knife — and hamstrung both men. Before they could cry out, he slit their throats. Butchering them without an ounce of remorse. This wasn’t a police matter, or some sordid little case for a private dick. This was war.

But where were Horst and Huber? And how close were they to bringing Hitler and his pals into the future?

Mike moved with purpose in the direction from which the two unfortunate guards had come, his hip complaining loudly. Drops of blood on the white tile floor confirmed he was heading in the right direction. Luckily, the hallway led to just one windowless door. Horst and Huber were likely on the other side. As he got closer, he could hear the muffled sound of electrical buzzing and humming.

Mike’s plan was simple: open the door — surprise the two Nazi masterminds — and pump them both full of lead before they could cause any more misery. Then, he’d place an anonymous call to the cops and get back to Gloria.

Mike gripped the handle on the metal door, turning it as quietly as he could. Again, luck was with him. The door wasn’t locked. The wounded Horst must not be operating at one hundred percent. Whatever timetable he and Huber had for bringing Hitler and his regime into the future would’ve been moved up now that someone was hot on their trail. What if there were more guards on the other side of the door? No matter. Mike’s TEC-9 was on a hair trigger. More guards would only increase the body count.

Mike opened the door quietly and stepped inside — ready to blast away — but there were no armed militia boys to greet him. He crept into a small cloakroom outside a much larger room which bore the title “Physics Lab #7”. Mike could hear the agitated voices of Horst and Huber amid the hum of the time portal machinery.

He locked the door behind him, turning the knob and setting the deadbolt. He wasn’t going to let his prey escape. He crept up close to the laboratory door, listening in.

Speaking in their customary mix of German and English, Huber was telling Horst to shut up about the pain in his wounded shoulder and focus on the work at hand. He called Horst’s impulsive shooting of “some damned old woman” inexcusable. Mike didn’t like hearing anyone talk about Gloria like that, but Huber was right. Horst’s bloody trail would soon lead the cops to those two militia stiffs in the hallway – and right to Physics Lab #7. Mike figured they’d be here inside of a half hour at most.

Sure enough, Dr. Huber was rushing their ultimate plan into action right now.

Dr. Huber went over that plan one more time. Horst was to dial the portal back to January 1, 1945. Huber would emerge from the portal in Berlin and gather Hitler and his top henchmen. If the police started breaking into the lab after Huber is transported to the past, Horst was to destroy this Cal Tech portal. Huber and his Nazi cohort will then pass through the Berlin portal, emerge on today’s date in 2008, and implement plan B.  

Mike understood most of what they were saying. But plan B? The Berlin portal? This was a lot to take in all at once. Could he be hearing this right?

While the two scientists had their backs turned, Huber manipulating dials and Horst taking notes, Mike slipped through the doorway into the lab, ducking out of sight behind some Frankenstein-looking machinery. Should he just kill these creeps now? Destroy their crazy time machine? But what about this Berlin portal? Did Horst and Huber have associates in Germany ready to carry out their plan if for some reason they couldn’t? Plan C perhaps?

As he crouched down, hidden, TEC-9 at the ready, Mike wondered whether it would be a mistake to bump these guys off without truly wrapping up the case: without making sure there’s no way a time-traveling Hitler could escape the fate that history had already recorded? What effect would his miraculous survival and emergence in 2008 have on everything that’s happened in the world since he was supposed to have killed himself in the Fuhrerbunker?

Mike shook his head. These were big thoughts for a guy with less than two years of college.

Just as he did back at Murphy’s Ranch on December 12, 1951 – somehow only six days ago – Mike made a bold decision. He’d follow Huber into the portal. This time into the past. He’d do his best to make damn sure Hitler and his henchmen stayed dead. He wasn’t going to let Gloria take a bullet for nothing. He wasn’t going to let all those gun-toting, racist militia morons rally around the second coming of Hitler. Hell no.

Huber barked final instructions to Horst, who flipped a couple of switches in response. The portal’s machinery hummed at a higher pitch. Raising their hands in salute, the two conspirators exchanged an emotional “Seig Heil!”

Then, Dr. Huber strode into the portal for his trip back to January 1, 1945.

While Horst focused on his time machine’s control panel, Mike crawled unseen toward the portal. Just then, there was a loud banging and shouting at the door. The cops had already arrived! Horst turned his head toward the commotion, freezing for a moment as urgent voices demanded immediate entrance. With Horst momentarily distracted, Mike slipped into the portal.

Ignoring the clamor at the door, Horst turned his attention back to the portal’s controls. He threw one last switch, sending the portal’s occupants back 63 years in time.

As before, there were no sci-fi pyrotechnics inside the portal. Mike experienced no distinct line between present and past. He couldn’t see anything ahead of him. It was as though he was in a cloud. It was surreal. A waking dream.

Mike tried to push away thoughts of Gloria and whether she was going to be okay. He had to focus on staying alive long enough to stop unspeakable horrors from happening. Dr. Huber was somewhere up ahead of him, passing through the portal, moving toward a hideous rendezvous. An appointment with evil.

Suddenly, Mike could see clearly as he emerged from the portal, his adrenaline pumping. He was in the hallway of what appeared to be an underground bunker. Overhead he heard the high-pitched scream of a falling bomb – followed by a blast that shook the ceiling and nearly knock him off his feet. Concrete dust showered him. The smell of cordite was in the air.

Mike was back in the war.

Through the dusty haze and flickering electric light, he saw Huber just five yards ahead of him, getting up slowly from the floor, shaken by the blast. Huber gripped his knee, then began limping down the long hallway. The old scientist never looked back to see if he was being followed. Why would he? He had every reason to think he was alone. And even if he did look back, he wouldn’t see Mike in pursuit. Mike was good at this game.

Upon reaching the bunker’s large, heavy, cast-iron door, Huber sat down and rubbed his injured knee. Outside, the sounds of the air raid continued: the whistling of the falling bombs, the explosions, and the wailing of sirens. It looked like Huber was going to wait until the “all clear” signal sounded before leaving the bunker. It was a good call. It also gave Mike, hidden in the shadows about twenty feet away, a chance to catch his breath and assess the situation.

He had Huber in sight – and the game was on! But Mike had no tracking device on Huber, so he’d have to keep track of his target the normal way. Stalking Huber through the bombed-out streets of Berlin wasn’t going to be easy. For one thing Mike couldn’t trail anybody while dressed in clothes from 2008. He’d have to find something else to wear, perhaps from someone killed in the bombing. Civilian clothes? A uniform? Civies might give him more freedom of movement. If Mike was spotted on the street in uniform, some officer might give him orders he’d have to obey. Orders he wouldn’t completely understand.

Again, Mike wished he’d learned more German growing up.  

Identification was another problem. His California driver’s license, issued in 1948, was worse than useless. It was an absurdity. He’d need to steal an identity. Perhaps from the same corpse who provided his clothes?

Mike’s thoughts were interrupted when another bomb came whistling down, exploding somewhere above the bunker and showering him with another layer of concrete dust. The lights flickered. He was in wartime Berlin alright.

The Allies had been bombing Berlin since ‘43. Mike had read all about those daring daylight raids in The Stars & Stripes when he was at Pearl Harbor, ready to ship out to the South Pacific. It was good news at the time. By ‘45, the tempo of the raids picked up, and large parts of Berlin were reduced to rubble. That’s what was going on up above.

Mike also knew that four hundred miles away in Belgium’s Ardennes Forest, the Nazis’ last big offensive of the war was about to fail. By January 25^th – a little more than three weeks away — the Germans will lose the Battle of the Bulge, and retreat to fortifications along Germany’s western border. By April, the Allies will break through the Siegfried Line and close in on Berlin. Russian troops will be marching on the city from the east.

Time was running out for Hitler and his godawful regime. Dr. Huber hoped to throw them a lifeline that stretched into the future. But how did Huber and Horst manage to build a time portal in a Berlin bunker? And does that question even matter now?

Mike thought back to when he was eavesdropping on Horst and Huber at Murphy’s Ranch less than a week ago — back in ’51. Huber had given his protégé fifty-seven years to refine their time portal and build another one in Berlin. As nuts as that sounded to Mike at the time, it now made sense. Horst must have eventually advanced their Cal Tech portal to the point that he could travel back in time months or maybe even years before January of ‘45, ferrying the equipment he needed to build this secret portal in Berlin.

The “all clear” signal had yet to sound. Clearly, old Dr. Huber wasn’t going anywhere for a while, so Mike had a bit more time to think.

It’s possible Huber might’ve gotten permission to build his time portal from the Fuhrer himself. Why not? Hitler always tried to be ahead of the technological curve. He had a secret program to develop Wunderwaffe – high-tech wonder weapons like the supersonic V2 rocket, radio-controlled missiles, and an atomic bomb. If a certified scientific genius like Dr. Otto Huber presented an ambitious plan to build a time machine that would allow the Fuhrer and his top lieutenants to escape the fall of Germany, why not give him a shot?

At this point, Mike was ready to believe anything was possible.

But what would Mike do when the bunker door opened? This wasn’t like storming the beach with a platoon of Marines. Young as they were, Mike and his Leatherneck pals knew what they were going up against on those islands. They’d drilled and trained for it as a unit. They were supported by the navy’s big guns, blasting away at the enemy hidden in the tree line. They didn’t need any ID other than their dog tags — and they didn’t need to find new clothes…

The “all clear” siren began to wail.

For Mike, that siren was not an entirely welcome sound. He would soon be outside, facing lots of unknowns as he tried to stay close to Huber. He wondered if he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe he should have stayed with Gloria and made certain she was okay. But how could he and Gloria live happily ever after knowing that he’d allowed the worst person in history to travel through time and lead an army of gun-crazy, racist nuts in a new American civil war? The mass killings were already underway. The Bund Boys, Oath Takers, Aryan Patriots and the rest had started slaughtering those who weren’t like them: innocent folk who didn’t think, worship, or vote like them.

Adding actual Third Reich Nazis to that madhouse mix was unthinkable.     

Mike watched from the shadows as Dr. Huber got up slowly, still favoring his gimpy knee. He punched a few buttons on a console next to the door, which was held closed by a series of bars, bolts, and locks. He heard metal grinding against concrete as the massive door slowly opened. A widening shaft of sunlight came through the doorway, revealing a flight of stairs — and chilling blast of wintry air reminded Mike that he wasn’t in southern California anymore.

Suddenly, he had an epiphany. Dr. Huber didn’t know he was being followed. Had no idea who Mike was or what he looked like. That was Mike’s edge. He had to think and move fast. Race to the door, brush past Huber, sprint up the stairs, hide somewhere on the street — and wait for Huber to emerge from the bunker. Then again, wouldn’t that spook Huber? He didn’t even know whether Huber was armed. Mike had scant seconds to act.

Then, a thought flashed in his weary mind — and he caught himself. What the hell was he thinking? The time portal is in this bunker! Why would Mike ever leave it? That would be the dumbest thing he could possibly do. There was no need to track Huber back and forth on his rendezvous with Hitler and company. They’d all have to come back to this bunker – or there’d be no trip to the future. All Mike had to do was stay here and wait for Horst to return with them.

Mike stayed put as Huber stepped through the doorway into the sunlight — and the door closed behind him with a slam that echoed down the long halls of the bunker. The door’s closing turned out all the lights and triggered a mechanism by which the locks, bolts, and bars all slid back into place, sealing the door again.

Now, Mike had no choice. He was stuck in the bunker for the duration. He’d use the time to plan his reception party for the Nazi honchos. He felt for his good-luck knife strapped to his leg. Still there if he needed it. He checked the ammo in his TEC-9 and Horst’s Luger. There were forty-eight rounds left in the TEC-9 and seven in Horst’s Luger. The only bullet missing from the Luger was now in Gloria’s arm. His thoughts returned to Gloria. Was she okay? Was she alive?

Of course, she was alive. He couldn’t entertain any other thought.

Dog tired, Mike sat in the now-quiet darkness. He thought about the bombing raid: a moving blanket of destruction and death. It sounded like the bombers had made two runs over the area. Those flyboys, he figured, must not be all that threatened by what was left of Jerry’s air defenses. Goering’s vaunted Luftwaffe was short on fuel and losing planes and pilots it couldn’t replace. It was no longer capable of shielding the Fatherland. So, the U.S. Eighth Air Force was piling it on.

One month from now, fifteen-hundred American bombers would hit the center of Berlin in one of the largest bombing raids of the war. Mike didn’t want to be in town on that deadly day.

His stomach grumbled. It was way past lunch time.

An awful question chilled Mike’s blood. What if there wasn’t any food in here? If Huber didn’t come back for days – or weeks — how would he survive? Mike took a deep breath. Panic wasn’t going to help. He had to keep positive. Rather than stalking desperate Nazis through the smoldering ruins of Berlin, he’d hunt for food in the bunker.

He had reason to be optimistic. Bunkers like these were built for survival, right? What bomb shelter wouldn’t be stocked with lots of stuff to eat? But it was nearly pitch-black inside. There was now no light in the bunker aside from a thin line of sunlight above its closed iron door. That thin shaft of light didn’t travel very far into the interior. Mike had hundreds of feet of blackness to explore.

He reached into his pocket and found a matchbook. Knowing he had to use this limited resource wisely, he struck a match — which flared, shedding a faint light down a long hallway. The time portal was somewhere back there in the deepest, darkest shadows. But right now, time travel wasn’t top of mind. Mike needed light and warmth. He had to build a fire, then search for food. Starvation wouldn’t help him complete his mission.

With no idea when Herr Huber might return with the Nazi hierarchy in tow, Mike had to stay alive long enough to prevent the insanity of a Third Reich restoration in America. And hopefully, somehow, he could return to Gloria. All he needed was some light in the darkness — and as much good luck as he could possibly get.

Mike walked slowly down the hallway, lighting a new match every twenty-five feet until it burned his fingertips. Once he got a good look inside the bunker — he’d have a better grip on his situation.