Outlanders 14 hell risin.., p.4
Outlanders 14 Hell Rising, page 4
Grant heaved himself to his feet, hand on his forehead. "You stupe, trigger-happy bastard, you came closer to hitting us than him."
Kane and Brigid rose. Pain radiated out in waves from Kane's crotch, but the thick, quilted padding of his thermal suit had prevented the man's kick from incapacitating him.
Grant snatched the blaster away from Cotta. "Hey," the man protested. "What if I need that?"
"I'll be the one to make that determination," Grant rumbled. A welt swelled on his forehead, and he probed it gingerly. "Goddamn Nazi prick. Can't believe somebody that old is so fast."
With great effort, Kane managed to refrain from massaging his testicles. He swallowed down bile and declared, "He can't be a real Nazi. He's some fused-out maniac who thinks he is."
Brigid's lips compressed. "He's fused-out definitely, but I think he is a real Nazi. A high-ranking one at that."
"What do you mean?" Grant asked.
"An Otto Skorzeny was the creator of an elite commando force, trained in foreign languages, sophisticated weapons, various forms of combat and assassination techniques. It was Skorzeny who had the responsibility for smuggling stolen Nazi art treasures out of Germany at the end of the war.
"He was never convicted as a war criminal. Instead, he made himself useful to American intelligence, even though he was a fanatic Nazi who kept the faith until his alleged death in the mid-1970s."
"Alleged death?" Kane echoed doubtfully. "If this guy is the same Skorzeny, he would be nearly three hundred years old, right?"
"Right," she countered crisply. "And Lakesh is nearly 250."
Comprehension shone in Kane's eyes. "You mean Skorzeny is a freezie like Lakesh, preserved here in cryostasis?"
She nodded. "That's the most likely explanation. And it's possible he's not the only one."
"A nest of freeze-dried goose-steppers," Grant commented darkly. "Just what the world needs at this point."
He ran a frustrated hand over his heavy jaw. "I've said this before and I'll say it again—why does this shit always happen to us?"
Chapter 4
Before they left the office suite, Brigid slid open a file cabinet drawer and flipped through several sheaves of documents. Neither Kane, Grant nor Cotta lodged an objection to the delay. They were finally warming up and none of them was particularly anxious to pursue a deranged old German through the dark territory of the installation.
When she made a "hmm" sound of interest, Kane came to her side. "What have you found?"
"Information that basically confirms my initial assessment," she responded. "This place was built in 1944, the expansion of a smaller outpost established here in the late 1930s. It was overseen by die Spinne, the Spider, Skorzeny's own little branch of the SS."
Her finger moved down the dense columns of type, lips unconsciously moving as she read the language. "It was staffed primarily by Nazi scientists, most of them brought in after the war under the auspices of Operation Paper Clip."
"Paper Clip?" Grant repeated with a wry smile. "Not as dramatic sounding as the Spider."
"In some ways, it was worse," Brigid replied curtly. "It was a deceitful and sinister recruitment program organized by American intelligence. To keep Nazi scientists who had begun work on what became the Totality Concept from being tried as war criminals, they were given new identities and allowed to continue their work."
She closed the file folder and tossed it contemptuously back into the drawer. "This place was probably the last bastion of tried-and-true old-style Nazism left in the world before the nukecaust. The spider's web, so to speak."
Kane's lips compressed in a tight white line. "Then let's find the last old-style Nazi spider and squash his ass."
Beyond an open door on the Opposite side of the office was a metal spiral staircase, and they went up two complete windings before emerging onto another level. It was lit by naked bulbs in brackets bolted to the walls. Open doors led to various rooms and chambers. The four people entered a little galley with a gas stove and packed with concentrated foodstuffs, from powdered eggs to tea. Several of the shelves showed gaps, but still there appeared to be enough rations to last one man for many years.
All the furnishings were in remarkably clean order. A variety of mops, buckets and push brooms were kept in a closet. Kane couldn't help but smile at the incongruous image of Skorzeny in his SS uniform mopping floors and polishing furniture, humming "Deutschland Uber Alles" all the while.
Another chamber contained a huge collection of uniforms, weapons, division patches and medals dating back to the rise of the Third Reich. Grant examined a Mauser Kar 98K longblaster, working the bolt action. "It's clean and oiled."
Kane picked up a Walther P-38 pistol and squinted down its length. "So is this one."
"Not surprising," Brigid said. "Skorzeny has a lot of time on his hands to attend to this collection. I wouldn't be surprised to find out the Nazi flag we saw when we came in is the so-called Blood Banner."
"What's that?" asked Cotta.
"Hitler tried to take over Munich by force in 1923. A number of his followers were killed by the police, and Hitler kept the Nazi flag they carried, stained with the blood of his men who marched with him that day. Ever after, that banner was used to bless all other flags because it had been sanctified by the blood of Teutonic heroes."
Cotta's face twisted in an indefinable expression. "That's pretty crazy."
"No shit," rumbled Grant, replacing the rifle in the rack. "This kind of reminds me of Strongbow's military museum."
"Strongbow?" inquired Cotta. "That maniac you met over in England?"
"The very one," Kane answered. "Lord Strongbow, ruler of the Imperium Britannia. He and old Otto would have a lot in common."
If the room storing the memorabilia was a combination of arsenal and quartermaster's depot, the next chamber was like a museum or a miser's hoard. They saw large open crates filled with jewelry, from pearl necklaces to silver bracelets. Open chests contained the cash and coinage of many nations. Under a glass case, winking in the light, were great, faceted diamonds, some of them the size of hen's eggs.
Magnificent oil paintings leaned against the walls, and gold ingots were stacked in two waist-high walls, each one four feet long. All the bars bore bas-relief stamps, depicting stylized eagles perched atop wreaths. Swastikas were centered within the wreaths.
Brigid ran a finger over the ingots, murmuring dryly, "The mystery of what happened to the Third Reich's gold reserves, solved at last."
There were many marble and granite statues, ranging from beautiful life-size nudes to small, gem- encrusted likenesses of animals. Kane picked up one resembling a falcon crafted from solid gold, studded with rubies and sapphires. The base bore an inscribed legend in English: The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of.
All four people gaped around the chamber in awed, astounded silence. They knew they were looking upon more wealth than even the most privileged pre-darker realized existed in one place. Kane couldn't even hazard a guess at the accumulated value of the hoard without growing dizzy
Brigid broke the silence by saying, "Now we know how die Spinne financed this place...with the loot of conquered countries and plundered museums."
Grant gusted out a profanity. "Financed this place to do what? Not just as a hideout for war criminals."
"The Cerberus database had this facility footnoted as something of a consultation and research center for Overproject Excalibur." Brigid's voice was still pitched low. "Since Nazi scientists were the pioneers in eugenics, I suppose their findings and experiments were of some value to Excalibur, even if they didn't constitute an official subdivision."
They knew of at least three Excalibur subdivisions—the Genesis Project, Project Invictus and Scenario Joshua.
Kane replaced the falcon on a shelf. "Let's see what else we can find."
Back out in the corridor, they came across a pair of bunk rooms, each one containing a dozen narrow beds.
The footlockers chained to the frames held personal mementos and bric-a-brac. Several of them were jammed with cosmetics and women's hygiene products. A very large bathroom had five enclosed toilet stalls and five urinals, as well as a common shower area.
"Unisex facilities," Brigid noted. "I guess they already had experience quartering men and women together like cattle in the death camps."
"What happened to the men and women here?" Cotta asked. "If they're still around, shouldn't we have come across them by now?"
Brigid only shrugged.
They went back into the hall and entered a huge, luxuriously furnished bedroom. It would have done credit to a medieval king. The four-poster canopied bed was immense and could have easily held all four of them with room left over. An oaken high-backed chair looked like a throne. The floor was covered by an elaborately woven Persian carpet.
The walls were festooned with crossed battle-axes, swords and pikes. A full suit of knight's plate armor was mounted on a pedestal in a corner. There was even an en suite lavatory equipped with a sunken bath tub. Like the other chambers they had visited, the huge bedroom was in perfect, anal-retentive order.
On a mirrored dressing table, set in the center of a large lace doily, was a framed, hand-tinted photograph. It depicted two men posing stiffly in a sparsely decorated office. The taller of the pair wore the jet- black SS uniform, his clean-shaven, aquiline head held at an arrogant angle. His eyes were steel blue.
The smaller man wore a starched, pale brown uniform, very plain compared to the overdone garb of his companion. A lock of black hair curved in a comma over his forehead, and a small square mustache looked like a smudge of soot on his upper lip. The bottom of the picture bore handwritten words and a dated autograph. Brigid read it aloud. " `Auf Wiedersehen, Otto, Adolf Hitler, April 29, 1945.' This was signed and dated the day before Hitler's death."
Kane glanced around the bedroom, mentally comparing it to the cramped bunkroom. "Skorzeny really practiced the division between officer and enlisted men with a vengeance. A man after Baron Cobalt's heart."
Leaving the bedroom, they progressed down the corridor for only a dozen yards before it was blocked by a steel-sheathed and riveted door outfitted with a complicated-looking arrangement of levers and wheel locks. A transparent observation portal was set at eye level in the dark gray mass. A printed sign beside the metal-collared frame bore large words in red, and even a stylized human skull. The first word was very large and even Kane knew what it meant: Verboten!
Brigid translated the rest of the warning. " 'Biohazard Beyond This Point. Authorized Ahnenrbe Institute Personnel Only.' That pretty much cinches the primary function of this place."
"What's the Ahnenrbe Institute?" Cotta wanted to know, managing to pronounce the word as Brigid had.
"The Third Reich's version of Overproject Excalibur," she answered flatly "It oversaw the medical experiments on concentration-camp inmates and designed a breeding program for the German people. It was formed as a private scientific institution, then it was formally absorbed into the SS. The projects it was involved with earned its director, Wolfram Sievers, a hangman's noose."
The window revealed a wide, low-ceilinged room antiseptically white in color. A maze of sterile medical equipment glittered beneath the cold light shed by overhead fluorescent tubes. The big room appeared to be broodingly silent and lifeless.
Grant worked on the door. No high-tech or electronic locking systems were visible. He worked the levers, and there came the clacking sound of solenoids opening. As he spun the wheel, the door swung inward easily on oiled pivots.
Kane stepped in first, assuming the pointman's position, eyes and blaster barrel sweeping back and forth. He saw three closed doors set in the far wall. He, Brigid and Grant had visited similar laboratory setups before, so he wasn't mystified by the trestle tables bearing complicated glasswork, microscopes, fluoroscopes and oscilloscopes. He even recognized a hyperbaric pressure chamber.
"No surprises so far," he murmured.
"Except," Brigid said in the same subdued tone, "most of this equipment looks like it dates from the 1960s and 70s. Not like the stuff we saw in Dulce."
"What were they up to with it?" Cotta inquired.
She indicated a stainless-steel tank in a corner. The lid was open, revealing a honeycomb pattern of individual containers that had once held frozen human embryos. "What the Ahnenrbe Institute was always up to...trying to improve the breed."
Kane crossed the room swiftly, walking heel-to-toe as he always did in a potential killzone. At the first door, he tried the knob and it turned easily. When he opened it, a lighting system flashed on automatically. His hair lifted from the nape of his neck, and he felt his skin crawl. Although very clean and tidy, the big room beyond was a crypt. Ten complete wired- together skeletons hung from frameworks. On a long trestle table rested yellowed, grinning skulls, many of which bore deep cracks or were completely caved in.
He stepped into the room, followed by his companions. Cotta repressed a curse at the sight of all of the bones. Besides the skulls on the table, trays were laid out holding electronic components, odds and ends of small circuit boards, thread-thin antennae, and wires so small they were almost invisible.
Brigid poked at them, saying wryly, "I guess the microprocessor and silicon-chip revolution didn't reach as far as New Schwabenland."
Glancing down at a skull, Grant saw it was trepanned and inside the hole was a sleeve socket. "What the hell were they doing with this stuff?"
Brigid picked up a skull, revolving it between her hands, examining it with a critical eye. "Most of these skulls belong to an early type of Homo sapiens. Look at the supraorbital ridges."
Kane looked and saw the huge bar of brow bone and massive underslung jaw sporting chisel-like teeth. "Cavemen bones?"
"Earlier," she replied. "Protohumans, like Australopithecus."
Cotta was circling the room when he stopped and blurted, "Look at this!"
In a little niche was a pair of vertical, metal-framed vats. Within one, standing upright, was a very old corpse, a mummy. It floated in a dark amber fluid. The shriveled, gnarled limbs were covered in white, shaggy hair, and its dark eye sockets seemed to stare at them. It was very tall, the sagittal crest at the top of its skull topping nearly nine feet. Its withered facial features resembled those of an ape, but its hands and feet were more manlike than those of an simian.
In the other fluid-filled vat floated small, malformed figures, distorted imitations of the corpse. The sight awakened nausea in the stomachs of the four people. The figures were not so much malformed as half- formed. They bobbed in the preserving fluid like so many ghastly tadpoles. Most of them resembled hairless apes, but with tiny, vestigial limbs. Some of them had their intestines spreading around them from Y incisions cut into their small bodies.
Brigid, Kane and Grant had glimpsed similar horrors in the sublevel of the Dulce installation known as Nightmare Alley, so they weren't as filled with revulsion as they might have been.
Cotta, however, made a gagging sound and whirled away, covering his mouth with both hands.
"What the fuck is that thing?" Grant demanded, eyeing the mummified corpse. "Some kind of mutie they made here?"
"Maybe," Brigid said. "I don't think so. Maybe these skulls aren't fossils after all."
"What else could they be?" asked Kane.
A line of concentration appeared on Brigid's forehead. She glanced from the skull in her hands to the face of the mummy. "The Ahnenrbe had connections with certain religious orders in Tibet, like the Bon- po." She cast a questioning glance toward Kane. "Remember Gyatso?"
Kane's lips quirked in a mirthless half smile. "I'm not likely to forget that creepy little bastard."
They had encountered Gyatso at the same time their paths intersected with that of Grigori Zakat. Both men were fanatics, Zakat a Russian mystic, Gyastso’s a shaman of the old Bon-po religion that predated Buddhism in Tibet by nearly a thousand years. Spiritually, Gyatso and Zakat were the same—power mad and ruthless in their quest to harness the energies of the Chintamani Stone. Their shared quest had ended in their violent, richly deserved deaths.
"The Ahnenrbe undertook an expedition to Tibet in the late 1930s," Brigid continued, "supposedly to find proof that the Aryan race had conquered it in prehistory. The Bon-po religion and Nazi occultism had a lot of things in common, so the Germans were very well treated there."
"So?" asked Grant impatiently.
She gave him a slightly irritated look. "Rumor has it the Ahnenrbe was there to do a lot more than look at sacred writings and to examine artifacts. Maybe they were supplied with a yeti, or a family group of them."
"What's a yeti?" inquired Kane, interested in spite of himself. Brigid Baptiste wasn't quite the ambulatory encyclopedia she appeared to be, since most of her seemingly limitless supply of knowledge was due to her eidetic memory, but her apparent familiarity with an astounding variety of topics never failed to impress—and occasionally irritate—him.
