The Omega Sanction - Andrew Scorah (best way to read ebooks txt) 📗

accidental discovery, during one test, after several power adjustments, a technician, who moved too close to the energy field generated by Die Glocke, vanished. When they reversed the process, he reappeared with a fantastic tale to be shared. He had been in a city with tall buildings the likes of which he had never seen before, and people garbed in unfamiliar clothes.

They set out to replicate the experiment, placing a team in the field this time. They had figured that what he saw was the future. The team was transported to the year 1974, upon their return they brought back the news that Germany lost the war.

The Fuhrer was apoplectic at the news delivered to him. He said this could not be permitted to happen. Kammler was tasked to carry on with the work with his ultimate solution weapon, and they would burn the planet before allowing defeat. His actual words were, ‘Time cannot stop the might of the Third Reich.’

The weapon in development was a form of phased MASER weapon. MASER is an acronym for, Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. The weapon was powered by six Die Glocke devices. The weapon had the capability of destroying the Earth’s atmosphere, or it could be reversed, and fired directly into the molten core of the planet, and rip the whole world apart.

Webb stared at Kammler when he had finished speaking.

“Was the device destroyed? Or are Staat correct in thinking it still exists? ” She asked.

“I have no idea if it still exists, I know where it is, or where it was when I made my journey from 1945.”

“And I suppose you're not going tell us, no matter what we do to you?”

“On the contrary, Miss Webb, I have no wish for the planet to be destroyed, or a continuation of the dreams of madmen.”

“I seem to remember you were one of those madmen,” Rogan said.

“I was, perhaps, I won’t use the cliche I was only following orders. I was doing the job I was given, with the resources presented to me. As terrible as that may seem to you. They were different times, I was different.”

He took off his glasses, and pulled a soft cloth from a pocket of his trousers to clean them. When he had finished, he put them back on, and looked at them.

“The device is in the Jonas Valley, deep in the old complex. Buried now, after the entrances were sealed.”

What he said next sent a chill down Rogan and Webbs spines.

“Once activated it cannot be shut off, it is after all a doomsday weapon, even if you are able to blow it up, the resulting energy release will take out half the planet.”

 

Reaching the top of a stone staircase, they came to a half open metal door. Bane's nose twitched at the smell that greeted them. Amidst the aromas of sulpher, burnt wood, and scorched earth was the cloying stench of death.

Behind him he heard Jennifer gag.

“Ugh, what’s that smell?”

“Death, ” Bane turned to face them, “Remember, this is a war zone, you’re gonna be seeing sights that will turn your stomach. You’re gonna have to put it out of your mind. Keep thinking on why we are here.”

Both the professor and Jennifer nodded. He had spoken for their benefit. Trotsky would know what they would see out in the streets of Berlin.

They went out into what was once a garden area, flanked on all sides by the Reich Chancellery. This quasi-cinematic monument to conspicuous power now looked tawdry in its bombed out, half-wrecked state. Yet it remained deeply sinister.

The boom and crack of artillery and tank fire, punctuated by screaming salvo's of katyushas shook the ground, and turning Berlin into the Reich's funeral pyre. For the moment, though, they were in luck, as the shells were landing nowhere near them.

Raised voices, speaking in German, could be heard from the building at the far side.

Bane knew they had to avoid contact at all costs. So he led his team into the rubble of what was possibly a greenhouse. Scrambling over the twisted pieces of metal, and concrete they emerged into an open area. Pock marked with shell holes, more twisted metal, and lumps of busted brick work. Tiergarten park was a large sprawl off to their left, across what in present times would be Ebertstrasse, but in 1945 was called Herman Goering Strasse. A road running on a roughly north-south line from the Brandenburg Gate to Potsdamer Platz in the centre of the city. On 31 July 1947, after World War II, the street was renamed back to Ebertstraße. From 1961 to 1989 the Berlin Wall ran along most of its length. Now it was unrecognisable because of the constant shelling from the encroaching Russian forces.

What they could see of the Tiergarten was also unrecognisable, stripped of most of its trees, and bombed back into the dark ages. Visibility was hindered by clouds of ash and smoke from explosions and burning buildings.

Keeping low, Bane and his little team made their way towards the road, weaving between the piles of rubble. A half destroyed pill-box appeared out of the smoke. Bane froze, and hunkered down. The others copied him.

Standing next to the ruin were six armed men, all in the black uniform of SS commandos.

Bane looked around for an alternate route past them. He was about to signal to the others to move back when one of the men spotted them. He said something to the others then they all looked over. Bane braced himself for the bullets he knew would soon be winging their way towards them. But then the strangest thing happened.

The men all dropped their weapons and put their hands in the air.

“Gott sei Dank, Amerikaner, wir kapitulieren!”

They were quickly surrounded by the SS men, who were shaking their hands and hugging them. Up close, Bane could see these were just boys. Barely out of their teens, and scared, their faces empty, signs of deep exhaustion in their eyes.

Bane realised that to these men they would look bizarre, and so they would mistake them for members of the present day American armed forces. In the closing days of the war, the battle for Berlin was fought out of fear of the Russians, not out of survival of the Reich, or because of orders from the Reich High Command. Stories were rife about what the Russians were doing to the Germans. Rape and wholesale slaughter was the order of the day. All as an act of revenge for German atrocities in Stalingrad. At the end, they wanted to surrender to American forces, rather than fall into the hands of the Russians. Also one of the wild rumours flying around was American forces had joined with the Germans to fight the Russians.

Bane looked at Trotsky, a tick in his jaw muscle and the way he was gripping his weapon revealed the mans tension.

“Stay calm, Trot,” he whispered to the man.

Jennifer and the professor had taken a step back from the crowd of SS men, their eyes wide with fear.

Bane spoke to them in German.

“We are an advance party, sent in to Berlin to meet with the Fuhrer.”

The man who had first spoken looked at Bane.

“You have just missed him, he’s being ferried out of Berlin, a rat leaving a sinking ship,” he spat on the ground.

It was clear these men no longer held any loyalty towards their leader.

“Which way did they go?”

The man pointed across the road.

“That way, there’s a makeshift runway set up at the other side of those trees.”

Bane looked in the indicated direction. They would need to be quick if they were to catch them before the plane took off.

He looked back at their spokesman.

“You men need to find somewhere to hide for now, and well away from the Reich Chancellery. Others will follow behind us. This will all be over soon.”

Part of him hated lying to them, and he also knew they would more than likely be dead in the next few hours. These were not the hardened SS troops, they were probably members of the Hitler Youth, more than likely someone recently put them in uniform, handed them a gun and told them to fight. They had a job to do though, so he could not afford to have such feelings.

The men looked crestfallen. They shook hands with them again before traipsing off. Merging with the fog of battle to become ghosts of the past.

Bane turned around to look towards the park. For a brief moment, a wind kicked up. It parted the smoky air before them. Time appeared to stand still as, for the first time they all got a view of the chaos before them. Stunted and blackened trees stretched away across the park. The ground is covered with shell holes, railway sleepers, pieces of wire and trenches. The German defenders had dug a network of defences all round the Reichstag.

In the distance, they could just see the pointing finger of the four tier Siegessäule, or victory statue. Built to commemorate the Prussian victory in the Danish-Prussian War, now it was a witness to the death of the thousand year Reich. Beyond they saw, before the fog closed in again, bombed and shattered buildings that seemed to stretch out forever. A devastated, Hieronymus Bosch landscape.

They were shaken from their individual thoughts by the whistle and boom of a shell exploding behind them.

“Run!”

Bane took off across the street. The others bringing up his rear. Shells were now exploding all around them. Lumps of concrete and other debris showered down. They hit the edge of the park, and Bane dived head first into a shell hole. The others slid in alongside him.

“Fuck, what now? ” Trotsky said.

“Keep our heads down, and hope it’ll soon pass,” Bane said.

He looked to Jennifer and the professor.

“How are you two holding up?”

As soon as he had said it, he thought what a stupid question. It was written all over both their faces, and in the glassy stare of their eyes.

Jennifer looked at him, white faced, her body trembling. She was hugging herself as if trying to hold in her fear and panic. Bane could tell she was on the brink of losing it. The professor, while in a similar condition, he seemed the calmer of the two.

“We’re gonna die, aren't we?” She stuttered.

Bane held her, somehow knowing she needed human contact.

“No, we’re going to get out of this, one way or another, I promise.”

He knew it was probably an empty promise, but also it was something she needed to hear. It seemed to work. She gave him a thin smile, and despite the hell all around them, she seemed to relax.

The shelling seemed to have ceased.

“C’mon let’s move.”

Bane scrambled up the side of the hole. Trotsky helped the professor before holding out his hand for Jennifer.

“Where do you think the plane is? ” Trotsky asked.

Before Bane could answer, they heard the sound of a twin prop engine firing up in the distance.

Bane took off. Once again, the others ran behind him.

The going was slow. They had to swerve around holes, and tree, and scramble over rubble.

As they neared the victory statue, which sat at a large intersection on the city axis that leads from the Berliner Stadtschloss, Berlin City Palace, through the Brandenburg Gate to the western parts of the city, they saw the road was the makeshift runway. A group of six black clad troops stood off to one side watching a four engined Junkers Ju 390 transport plane take to the air.

Bane realised they were already too late.

They hunkered down in the shadow of a bombed out building.

“That’s it we’re screwed,” Trotsky spat dust out of his mouth.

“Jonas Valley is about five hundred miles from Berlin,” the professor added, “There’s no way we can make it in time.”

“We have to get out of Berlin now, we still make our destination Jonas, and hope we make it before the allies blow the whole place up, otherwise we’re stuck here,” Bane said as