He waved a dismissive hand and laughed. ‘Relax, Oberleutnant… I don’t bite.You led the assault on the White House?’
‘Yes, my Fuhrer.’
‘Congratulations. A very well-done job.’
Hoffman’s chest swelled with pride.
‘So… I believe you have brought something to show me?’ said PaulKramer.
CHAPTER 42
1956, Washington DC
‘Where… w-where are we going?’ asked Liam.
The rear of the army truck dropped down, presenting them with a ramp. The German soldiersushered them up, waving their guns.
‘Re-education camp,’ said the suited man Liam and Bob had interrogated earlier inthe White House.
‘What?’
‘I heard that’s what happened to all the people in New York when the Germans tookit. That’s where everyone’s headed.’
‘Re-education camp?’
‘Prison camps, that’s what they really are… that’s where we’reheaded,’ the man sighed. ‘If we’re lucky.’
Liam turned to look at him. ‘Uh… what if we’re
‘They’ll just take us somewhere quiet and shoot us.’
Liam felt his mouth suddenly dry and his skin prickle. He looked across the heads of hisfellow prisoners, searching once more for any sign of Bob. If the support unit was going toactually
In the gathering dusk it was getting harder to pick anything out. But he thought he couldjust about detect the distinct outline of a particularly tall and muscular German soldier,standing perfectly still a hundred yards away, looking intently back at him.
‘Oh Jay-zus… come on, Bob! Get me the hell out of here!’ he whimpered underhis breath.
The man in the suit looked at him curiously. ‘Hey, kid. You and that big friend ofyours… you said some weird thing about the future back in the — ’
‘Yes,’ Liam replied distractedly, ‘I don’t suppose it matters now
A soldier barked irritably at Liam to get a move on up the ramp and into the truck, grabbinghis arm and pushing him roughly forward.
‘Do as they say,’ muttered the man beside Liam. ‘Be glad they didn’tjust shoot us all right here on the lawn.’
Liam stepped up and inside, finding a wooden bench in the darkness to sit down on. It wasdark enough, he hoped, to ensure the man wouldn’t see the twin tracks of tears rollingdown his dirt-smudged cheeks.
Bob watched the last of the prisoners climb aboard and the truck’s enginerattle to life, billowing out a cloud of exhaust fumes.
[Chance of success 0.5 %]
It made no practical sense to attempt a rescue of Liam O’Connor now. Even if his bodycould survive dozens of bullet wounds… Liam’s wouldn’t. He watched as thetruck rolled away across the lawn, through a fence and bounced across a pavement and on to thehard tarmac of a broad avenue.
The highest priority at this moment in time was for him to return to the future with whatlittle intelligence they had managed to gather. The missed-window protocolmeant the field office would try one last scheduled window amid the cedar trees in preciselytwenty-two hours.
Until then Bob calculated his best course of action was to find somewhere to lie low andundetected. More importantly, his body had sustained several bullet wounds around his torso.No critical organs had been damaged and the blood had clotted, preventing further loss, butthe wounds would need cleaning, disinfecting and dressing. His software informed him thatfailure to do so soon would result in an eighty-three per cent chance of a spreading bacterialinfection and eventual systemic failure of his organic body.
He would die… just like a human.
He walked away from the other soldiers, some of whom had begun to glance suspiciously at hisunfamiliar face. He strode swiftly across the grounds of the White House, passing unnoticedamid the flurry of activity going on — appearing in the gathering dusk as if he was justanother trooper given an important errand to perform with all haste.
CHAPTER 43
1956, command ship above Washington DC
Kramer turned round to look out of his sweeping observation windows down atWashington, a dark, still city. He had expected far stiffer resistance around the capital.Washington DC had fallen in just two days. The major battle had taken place just north of thesuburbs on the first day. The American tanks, the lightly armoured and cumbersome ShermanMkIIs, had been outmanoeuvred and out-gunned by their Blitz Raptor MkVIs from the very firstmoment; the Raptors’ agile hovercraft weapons platforms had made pitifully short work ofthem.
Their hastily assembled and dug-out defences, running east to west above the city, had beenso easily bypassed. The American battle line fell to pieces in the early hours of thismorning, the second day of the battle for Washington. When Kramer’s highly trainedFallschirmjager, equipped with gas-propellant landing packs and their recently upgradedpulse rifles, had dropped behind the Americans’ crumbling line, further panic anddisorder had soon spread among them.
Today had mostly been a mopping-up exercise.
The Americans had managed to muster together a few defensive clusters. His intelligence corpsinformed him a brigade-strength force of American marines was holding a strong position aroundone of the southern suburbs of the city, and there were pockets here andthere within Washington DC. But the Americans had not had enough time to set up anything morethan a shambolic line of battle-weary troops around the White House itself.
Kramer shook his head. President Eisenhower’s last stand had been pitiful andundignified. He’d hoped for a much more dramatic conclusion to the campaign. America hadsurrendered with a whimper instead of a bang.
The complete surprise with which they’d caught the Americans had left them scramblingfrom the very beginning. It had taken little more than eight weeks from the first massedamphibious assault on the beaches of New England… to today.
It was of course better for the civilians this way, better than a long drawn-out campaignstretching into the autumn and winter, with innocent people dying unnecessarily. He genuinelyfelt no ill will towards the people of America. In fact, his mother had been American — a woman born in Minneapolis — and he himself had once had an American passport. Hesmiled at the absurd complexity of things. His mother, Sally-Anne Gardiner, all-American girl,wasn’t due to be born for another forty-five years, wasn’t due to meet and marryhis father, Boris Kramer, for another sixty-five. And yet here was her son, leader of theGerman nation, the European states… and now also the United States.
Background details, of course, known only to the few men he trusted around him: Karl Haas andthe three other men who’d come through the time machine and survived to this day.Storming Hitler’s Bavarian retreat had proven costly. Just the five of them left by thetime Hitler ordered his men to stand down.
