“Mein Fьhrer, the car is ready.”
Himmler acknowledged his bodyguard with a nod. It was a pity to be heading back to the bunker. He had spent so little time in the sun and fresh air during the last weeks that even a few minutes stolen in the open air were like a month at a spa. He replaced his hat, straightened his cuffs, and strode across the small garden to the armored Mercedes, wondering if he would ever return to this particular building.
D-DAY + 41. 13 JUNE 1944. 1546 HOURS (LOCAL TIME). IN FLIGHT.
Far beneath them to the south a convoy was tracking eastward, crawling across the Atlantic on the cusp of the horizon. Llewellyn gave them a cursory glance as the last of the jet fuel poured down the hose from the in-flight refueler. She tapped her copilot, Major Vallon Davies, on the arm.
“I think I forgot my wallet, Val,” she said. “Can you pay for this tank? I’ll get the next one.”
She heard Davies’s snort of laughter through the headset.
A chime sounded, alerting them to the end of the fuel transfer.
The drogue disengaged with a loud clunk, a few spots of JP-8 hitting the windscreen before disappearing. The tanker, a newly built analog of the old KC-135, banked away to top up the other two bombers in the flight. It was another custom-built system, designed especially for Strategic Air Command. In-fight refueling had become a common practice with all Western air forces, but converted DC-3s were the standard workhorse. The 135, known locally as a “Whale,” was smaller and less powerful than its uptime progenitor. And as best she knew there were only three of them in existence. But it was still a long way ahead of the nearest competition.
Llewellyn watched it maneuvering into place for its next customer.
“Okay, boys,” she announced through the intercom. “Let’s go make some history.”
D-DAY + 41. 13 JUNE 1944. 2150 HOURS (LOCAL TIME). HMS TRIDENT, NORTH SEA.
“Thanks for letting me watch this, Karen.”
Julia spoke in a low voice that carried no farther than the captain of the stealth destroyer, who was standing right next to her in the chilly blue cave of the ship’s Combat Information Center.
Halabi smiled, briefly. “General Patton is not the only one who understands the power of publicity.”
She took her eyes off the main display and turned them directly on Duffy.
“I would have let you come up here anyway, Jules. Old school tie and all that. But in fact I had orders from Downing Street. First, just to keep you on board, and then to make sure you got an A-reserve seat. I suppose the PM wants everyone to remember that England had her own role to play at the death.”
Julia nodded slowly. Quick movements sent spasms of pain down her neck into her back. She was safely strapped into a chair in the old satellite warfare bay. She wasn’t allowed to shoot any video images in the CIC, and anyway the SS death squad back in the Ardennes had taken her flexipad and Sonycam. So for now she’d gone back to basics, writing shorthand notes with pen and paper. Halabi had promised her access to Fleetnet later on to file a report.
It was hard to believe she was watching this happen.
The eight linked flat panels of the main display were still largely given over to theaterwide coverage of the European battlespace, which now reached as far east as the Ukraine. But one screen was devoted to tracking the progress of the B-52 flight out of New Mexico. That was a hell of a shock right there, the idea of those monsters climbing back into the air again. In a way it was almost reassuring. They were such a part of her life back up in twenty-one that it was like hearing of an old friend from the future who’d suddenly popped into existence in the next room. Granted, there were only six planes, and she wondered how many of them were carrying atomic weapons. Perhaps all of them, perhaps only one. That information had not yet been released. But it was great to know they were back. They’d saved her ass more than once back home, and now, who knew? Maybe they were going to save the world.
Not much was happening at the moment, however. Dozens of tags indicated the presence of long-range fighter escorts. Sabers, according to Halabi. They were scheduled to top up their tanks in forty minutes, the last time they’d refuel before reaching Germany.
Julia had already filled pages of her notebook with color detail of the ship, the crew, the mix of ’temps and uptimers who were standing watch over this epochal moment. Both she and Halabi had lived long enough in the next century to see two Western cities reduced to atomic slag heaps, but she found herself anxious and increasingly restless as the moment drew near in this reality.
“Any misgivings?” she asked Halabi.
“Are you going to quote me?”
“Only if you want me to.”
The captain of the Trident stared at the big screen for a moment. The business of war went on without pause. Sysops constantly scanned the threat bubble around the destroyer’s battle group. Intelligence officers analyzed the vast flow of data from ship sensors, drones, Nemesis arrays, and ’temp assets. Junior officers came and went, whispering urgent messages into the ears of their masters before carrying off replies whence they had come. On the battlespace display flashing black tags tracked the lead elements of the Soviet air assault into southern France, and the progress of Free French and U.S. armor rushing down to “link up” with them-in reality, to block them from any further encroachment. Many more data hacks crept over the western reaches of Germany as Patton and Montgomery raced each other toward Berlin. Three screens were entirely concerned with monitoring the stalled Russian advance on the Eastern Front, one of them showing new and ever more gruesome video coverage of the chemical warfare raging there.
It was all so horribly enthralling that Julia was a little surprised when Halabi spoke up again. She’d been lost in her own thoughts. She raised her pen inquiringly, and the commander of the Trident nodded.
“I have been fighting for nearly twenty years,” said Halabi. “And I have taken many lives. I have burned men alive in their aircraft. I have drowned them by sinking their boats and ships. Some I have crushed at the bottom of the sea. Others have been atomized by the weapons I fired at them. I never once hesitated to take their lives, whether they wore a uniform or not. If they intended harm toward my crew, my ship, or the realm we protect, their lives were forfeit…”
Julia had some trouble keeping up with her. It had been a long time since she’d been forced to take shorthand, and she wasn’t very comfortable in her bandages and strapping. Halabi seemed to sense her struggling and paused for a moment. Some of the men and women nearby were looking on, trying not to be too obvious about it, but failing. Karen Halabi waited until the reporter had stopped scribbling and then spoke again.
“Of course, not everyone I killed was armed. Not everyone had evil intentions. Some were innocents. And I can only imagine the ocean of blood on my hands. How many thousands have I killed by directing bombers onto their cities and towns? I have no idea. None at all. But the dead are many. And tonight, in a few hours, I will add to that toll. I regret that. When I allow myself to think about it, about babies burned in their mothers’ arms, about children irradiated and dying over the course of days and weeks, I feel physically ill. Tonight I will help to kill hundreds of thousands of people, old and young, innocent and guilty. I will not sort them, I will just kill them one and all. And I will regret that through all of my days. But it is my duty. War is an unmitigated evil, and so tonight I will do great evil. But I will do it hoping that something even worse is brought to an end because of it.”