“Hey, guys? Remember those Audis that blew our doors off a little while ago?”
“Yeah, why?” asked Cam in response.
“They’ve made a Bimmer sandwich out of us.”
Chapter Twenty
Twenty miles south of Jamel
Northern Germany
“This is our exit,” said Cam, who was helping Bear with directions. “Should we take it?”
Gunner had to think fast. The only reason they would pick up a tail was Brandt. He liked his chances on the back roads of this deserted part of Germany rather than on the high-speed autobahn, where a wreck might kill them.
“Take it, but don’t make it abrupt. Also, don’t follow the route to von Zwick’s farm. Just keep driving north toward Jamel. Let’s see how they react.”
As instructed, Bear flipped on his turn signal, a common practice by drivers on the autobahn, and eased over onto the exit ramp. Speeding drivers didn’t appreciate sudden, erratic lane changes.
“They both kept going,” he said with a puzzled look on his face. “I misread that.”
Gunner fiddled with the navigation screen on the BMW’s dashboard. He pointed to the road heading north toward Jamel before turning to get a look at the traffic behind them.
“Hit it, Bear.”
“It’s a farm road, Gunner. Two lane and full of tractors.”
“Blow and go, Bear. They have an exit up ahead and can shadow our route. Look.” He pointed toward the left. Across the open fields of this rural part of Germany was another two-lane road. Sparse traffic could be seen traveling in both directions.
“You’re the boss,” said Bear as he forced the pedal to the floorboard. The BMW lurched forward, and they were approaching a hundred miles per hour when they swung through the first set of S-curves.
Gunner turned sideways, as did Cam, to monitor the other road for similar activity.
“There!” Cam explained. “Just as you said. Do you see them?”
“Yeah,” replied Gunner. “They’re gonna get bogged down in a little town up ahead. Keep rollin’, Bear, all the way to Jamel. Von Zwick’s farm is on the north side near the Baltic.”
Ten minutes later, Bear slowed as they entered the town of Jamel. A mural had been painted on the side of a small garage, depicting an idealized Aryan family being hugged by the wings of a golden eagle. In Gothic script, commonly used by the Nazis of the Third Reich, the town declared their village to be free, social, and national.
Had it not been the twenty-first century, a visitor might easily recognize the deliberate attempt by the locals to show solidarity with the Reich. The small town was a collection of redbrick farmhouses surrounded by forest. Several nondescript buildings lined both sides of Forst Strasse, a pothole-filled road that led through the village.
Cam rolled down her window to breathe in the cool, fresh air. The outside temperature was under sixty degrees that afternoon. She took in the fresh air but scowled when she was greeted with a cacophony of barks and howls from the many Rottweilers chasing the car down the street.
“Not much of a welcoming committee, is it?” quipped Bear. He pointed ahead at a group of men who’d stopped talking to stare down the newcomers. All were covered in Nordic-style tattoos and had their heads shaved. One man wore a tee shirt proudly displaying a swastika emblazoned across the front.
“How can you not stereotype these guys?” asked Cam. “I mean, if you wanna start a political movement, albeit one based on hate, at least be stealth about it. A Nazi in a three-piece suit is far more dangerous than one with a swastika wifebeater tee shirt on.”
Gunner chuckled. Cam enjoyed telling it like it is.
She continued. “Looking around this crap town, you have to wonder if the feds got their intelligence wrong. These people can barely pay their bills much less do the things von Zwick has accused them of.”
“Slow down, Bear,” said Gunner. He pressed his face against the passenger window, looked up toward the rooftops of the block and brick buildings, and then shook his head. “Crafty devils.”
“Whadya mean?” asked Bear.
“Guys, look at the rooftops and then try to glimpse between the buildings. I know it’s hard because they’re so close—”
“I see them!” exclaimed Cam. “The satellite dishes. The fences separating the buildings are topped with concertina wire. They don’t want anyone to look behind the curtain, do they?”
“Exactly,” said Gunner. “They took a page out of Hollywood, didn’t they?”
“What are you two talking about?” asked Bear.
“This is all phony,” replied Cam. “It’s a façade to make people think they live in squalor. They’ve got advanced communications capabilities. Behind the buildings, I’ve seen military-style Humvees and Jeeps. There are even guys who look like they’re paramilitary or militia with uniforms just like the German military personnel we saw in Berlin.”
“This is their base of operations, and to the casual visitor, it looks like another poor rural community with nothing going for it,” began Gunner. “But, in reality, it’s the base of operations for an organization, the Nordkreuz, who committed seventeen thousand property crimes and another thousand acts of violence. They’ve been connected to more than a dozen political assassinations over the past couple of years.”
“Check this poster out,” said Bear as he approached the end of the town. There was a large poster tacked onto a storefront, featuring a family playing on the beach. “Can you translate, Gunner?”
“Stop the death of our people. The country needs German children.”
The last building on the road was Kreuger Demolition. The front of the building had a mural painted on it depicting white children taking part in a sack race while young men, heads shaven, beat military-style drums.
“Great. They like to play with explosives, too,” said Cam with a chuckle.
“In between sack races and the drum corps march,” added Bear. “Geez, this is