Blitzkrieg: Origins of the Prime: A Superhero Spy Thriller (12 page)

Axel sat at the bar staring down at the vodka martini in front of him. He lifted his glass and took a sip. It was good. He quickly drained the glass and placed it back on the bar. “Another, please,” he called to the bartender and a new martini soon appeared while the empty glass was swept away.

Just as Axel was taking a sip of the drink he felt a soft hand on his shoulder and turned to see a stunning woman in a blue dress staring at him. She had soft blond curls which laid gently upon her shoulders and her bright red lips curved into a smile as she spoke. “Hey there,” she said.

“Hi,” Axel replied with a confident smile.

“Buy me drink?” she asked coyly.

Axel looked her up and down, deciding that he would enjoy the company and was just about to answer that he would be happy to, when a voice on his other side answered for him. “I’m afraid he won’t be very good company tonight, love.” Axel turned to see Tom leaning against the bar lighting a cigarette.

Axel turned back to the woman whose lips had formed a pout. “Are you sure?” she asked him.

Axel sighed. He cut his eyes to Tom and then back to the woman. “I am afraid he may be right,” he said.

“Your loss,” the woman said with a shrug and then turned and walked away.

Axel watched her go, suddenly regretting his decision, and then turned back to Tom spreading his arms wide. “What the hell was that?” he asked. “Do you just hang around waiting in the shadows for me to have a chance with a beautiful woman so that you can pop out and spoil it?”

Tom chuckled, but otherwise ignored the question. Instead he snapped his fingers at the bartender. “Scotch and soda, please” he said. The bartender nodded. “And put it on my friend’s tab,” Tom smiled as he pointed to Axel.

Axel rolled his eyes. “Great, Tom. First you chase off the hottest thing in the bar and now I have to thank you by paying for your drink?”

Tom sat down on the stool beside Axel. “After I saved your tail in Cuba, it’s the least you could do,” he said lightheartedly.

“Saved
my
tail?” Axel asked with an incredulous smirk. “You and I have very different memories of the mission.”

Tom took a sip from his newly arrived scotch. “In any event, you’ll have a chance to return the favor in Siberia.”

“Yeah,” Axel replied as he sipped his martini.

“Look, Axel, I promised Ian that I’d talk to you,” he said.

“About what?” Axel asked.

“You know what,” Tom said firmly.

“I promise not to kill him,” Axel replied. “Not on purpose anyway.”

“Dammit, Axel!” Tom barked before leaning in and lowering his voice. “If you kill him, not only will you have hurt your country, the country that rescued you from this bastard and gave you and your brother a new shot at a good, meaningful life…” he paused and slid an arm around Axel’s shoulder in a fatherly manner. “You’ll also have let the service down. This is our big shot, Axel. If we blow this, we may not get another one. Ian says we need this guy alive. Please don’t let your petty desire for vengeance cloud your judgment.”

“You don’t understand what he…” Axel began, but Tom interrupted.

“Yes, I do understand, Axel. You think you had it rough? You should have seen the squalor of the concentration camps. You should have seen the dead bodies. I’m not even talking about the millions they shot and gassed. I’m talking about the ones they just left to die of starvation and disease. There was nowhere to even bury the bodies. Their friends and family had to just leave them lying in the mud.”

Axel turned to look at his friend and saw tears building in Tom’s eyes. “You should consider yourself lucky you did not have to live through that. Your brief existence under the Nazis was a damned picnic by comparison.”

“Well, I have no doubt that Arnulf was involved in that too,” Axel said.

“Oh, I’m sure he was,” Tom said. “He’s a bastard, no one is disputing that Axel, but what do you think the Soviets will do with the knowledge they gain from him? What did the Soviets do to the Poles, to your mother’s people?”

Axel gazed down into his glass. He knew what had happened. When he was old enough to understand he became almost obsessed with the Holocaust, the war, his family, his countrymen, everything. A child denied any knowledge of his background was determined to know everything he could about it. Though he had not experienced it personally, as he had with the Nazis, Axel was well aware of the horrors the Red Army had inflicted upon Poland.

“If we leave Arnulf in Russian hands, then you’re just giving these monsters another chance at world domination.” Tom straightened on the stool and turned back to the bar, taking a sip of his drink.

“You’re right,” Axel said after a long silence. “Whatever knowledge Arnulf has, we can’t let it fall into the hands of the commies.”

Tom turned and smiled at his friend, patting him on the back. “Now, the next question is whether Rolf can handle this. He showed great fortitude in Cuba, but facing the ghosts of his past is something different entirely. If he reacted like he did this afternoon to seeing a picture of Arnulf, how will he react when he sees the real man, live and in person? He’s liable to either pound Arnulf into the floor or run off screaming into the night, never to be seen again.”

Axel shrugged. “Only one way to know,” he said before throwing back his head and draining his martini. “Let’s go ask him.” With that, he set his empty glass on the bar and stood.

***

Axel sat on an ugly blue couch staring over the coffee table at his brother who sat cross-legged on the floor. Even sitting on the floor, Rolf’s head was level with Axel’s. “It’s your turn, Rolf,” Axel reminded him and Rolf smiled broadly before drawing a card with a number signifying the number of spaces he was allowed to move his game piece upon the game board of different colored squares.

Rolf counted out three spaces and then moved his blue piece up the board. “Your turn, Axel,” he smiled.

Tom sat on the couch beside Axel, watching them play. Bored, he stood. “I think I’ll step outside for a smoke,” he said.

“Alright,” Axel replied.

Rolf lived in a government facility known simply as “the Home.” It was originally built to house aging spies and others with sensitive information that the government would not want to be accidentally spilled by an aging mind. The staff had top secret clearance and, thus, if anything did slip out it would be mostly harmless.

Over the years, however, more and more younger people such as Rolf began to turn up. None of them with Rolf’s power of course—at least not to Axel’s knowledge—but with mental handicaps or diseases. Axel did not know who they were or where they came from as that information was sensitive.

Rolf and Axel had both lived at the Home most of their lives, but when he was old enough, Axel moved out. Rolf remained there though, as he was not considered mentally capable of caring for himself all of the time and Axel was not able to care for his brother by himself. The CSOS certainly did not want Rolf talking to some civilian caregiver about what he did when he went to work.

Due to the experimentation performed on Rolf by the Nazis, his mind never fully developed. Axel was told by doctors that his brother had the mental capacity of a twelve-year old. In normal situations Rolf would appear no different—mentally anyway—than other adults. That sometimes made it difficult for people to remember that he was really just a big kid. Following Rolf’s coolness under fire in Cuba, even Axel and Tom had more-or-less forgotten that Rolf could sometimes be fragile emotionally. The man that charged into a minefield and crushed Cuban military motorcycles while being pelted with gun fire was the same man that was frightened to tears by a mere photograph of a man.

Axel took a card from the top of the stack, glanced at the number and then moved his red game piece the appropriate number of spaces. “Your turn,” he smiled at Rolf. Rolf took another card. “Is everyone still treating you alright here?” Axel asked his brother.

Rolf nodded as he moved his game piece. “They’re nice.”

“The food’s alright?”

Rolf smiled at him. “Not as good as a burger and fries at the drive-in,” he smiled. It was a hint and Axel knew it.

“Maybe we can go get a burger later this week.”

Rolf smiled at him. “Okay Axel,” he said, happy Axel had picked up on the hint.

“Rolf, I wanted to talk to you about Arnulf,” Axel said, changing topics suddenly.

Rolf laid down his game piece and his eyes turned upward toward his brother. “I don’t like him,” Rolf said.

“I know. Neither do I. No one likes him Rolf, but it is very important for us to go and get him from the Russians.”

“And put him in jail?” Rolf asked.

Axel nodded with a smile. “Yes, Rolf, we’ll put him in jail.”

“Okay,” Rolf said with a shrug, clearly more interested in playing the game than chatting about Arnulf.

“Are you going to be alright?” Axel asked.

Rolf nodded. Axel reached over the coffee table and placed a hand on his brother’s massive shoulder. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

Rolf’s eyes raised from the game board to look at Axel. “Are you and Tom going to do it?” he asked.

“Yes,” Axel nodded.

“Then I’ll go, too. To protect you like last time.”

Axel smiled broadly. “Are you sure?”

Rolf nodded. “You need me to protect you, Axel. I love you and I won’t let anyone hurt you or Tom.”

Axel reached up and wiped a tear away from his eyes. “I know you won’t, buddy. I love you, too.”

Rolf smiled. “It’s your turn.”

Axel nodded and then drew a card and moved his game piece.

“You’re stuck!” Rolf laughed. “My turn.”

Axel smiled as his brother happily drew another card from the stack and moved his game piece. He would be alright. He had his moments just like everyone else, but sometimes they forgot Rolf had already been through quite a lot. He could handle it. He was strong. Axel would assure Tom that Rolf would be fine.

Chapter 11

Siberia, U.S.S.R

The puddle jumper flew low, barely clearing the tops of the trees in an effort to avoid detection by radar or otherwise. Dawn sat in the cockpit beside Tom who piloted the plane. Axel sat in the back with Rolf, who was crammed inside the small aircraft.

The plane had taken off from Alaska flying across the Bering Strait and into the frozen no-man’s land of northeastern Siberia. Using photographs provided by spy satellites, the CSOS had been able to pinpoint the location of the secret prison Sava had informed them housed Arnulf. They had also been able to locate a small stretch of open land that could serve as a runway for the small plane about two miles away from the prison.

The moon was large and bright in the night sky. That was great for flying as it made it easier to see, but was bad for avoiding detection. They just had to hope that no one was out there looking. The plane suddenly jerked upward and then fell back down, nearly clipping the treetops.

“Jesus, Tom!” Axel shouted from behind the pilot.

“It’s the wind,” Tom called back. “It’s gusting out here tonight.” As if to punctuate his point, the small craft jerked once again.

“What happens if we’re pushed down into those trees?” Dawn asked.

“We’ll die,” Tom said flatly without turning to look at her.

Dawn closed her eyes and said a silent prayer as the plane jerked again.

“I think I see where we’re supposed to land,” Tom said. Suddenly the trees opened up confirming it. Tom flew over the “runway”—a long opening of a flat field. He then circled back and began his descent. The plane vibrated as it flew through the turbulence before touching down. It landed hard and began to slide on the snow.

“Hold on!” Tom shouted and everyone braced for an impact that never came. Somehow Tom managed to stop the craft before it slammed into the trees. Tom turned the plane around so that it would have plenty of room for a take off as he realized they’d probably need to leave in a hurry. Finally, the plane rolled to a stop and Tom cut the engine. The others hurried out, relieved to be on the ground. Safe for the moment, at least.

Tom joined them and pulled a map and compass from the pocket of his thick, white coat. He found his bearings and then examined the map. “Based on the photographs, we need to go this way,” he said, pointing to the east. The others nodded. “Let’s move quickly and keep it quiet.” With that, he unslung the rifle from his shoulder and took point. Axel and Dawn followed with Rolf bringing up the rear.

They sludged through the snow for half an hour before they finally came to the edge of the trees. From their vantage point, they had a clear view of the prison. It looked more imposing than it did in the satellite photos with high, gray concrete walls ringed with a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire.

They knelt down in the snow. “Alright Dawn, it’s time to show us what you can do,” Tom said.

Dawn smiled and then pulled a folded piece of paper from the pocket in her white coat and unfolded it to reveal a photograph of Colonel Arnulf. Dawn stared at the paper.

After a couple of minutes Axel spoke. “What are you doing?”

“Shush,” Dawn said. Axel gave her a dirty look but complied. After a couple more minutes, Dawn looked up at the prison. “I’ve found him,” she said.

“Found him?” Axel asked.

“Are you sure?” Tom asked.

“Yes,” Dawn replied. “He is in a cell in the basement. Alone. There is a single guard in the hallway outside of his cell.”

“What about other guards?” Tom asked.

“A few disbursed here and there. There are two on the roof carrying rifles. There is a door up there. Probably the best entry point, like Sava suggested.”

“Alright, boys,” Tom smiled. “Go get him. I’ll be here to pick off anybody following you out.”

Axel turned to Dawn. “You had better be on the level about this. My brother and I are putting our lives on the line.”