The Black Gate (23 page)

More equipment was blasted apart by another fusillade, as were the jars containing Kleist’s gruesome trophies.
 

A soul-ripping screech filled the lab, a sound so terrifying that the soldiers held their fire. Peering around the corner of a desk, Peter saw the mutilated body of the woman, Subject 98-7, freed from her glass prison, flopping on the floor like a fish. Before his disbelieving eyes, tissue from her amputated legs and arms began to grow, her body miraculously repairing itself.
 

Those few timeless seconds were shattered as the guards opened fire on her, peppering her with bullets, the gunshots overpowering her rage-filled wail. While the bullets pierced her flesh and shattered bone, her body healed both the old damage and the new at an astonishing rate. She fixed the guards with eye sockets that now held the ghostly shells, like soft egg whites, of regenerating eyeballs.

Peter coughed as an eye-watering mix of gun smoke, ammonia, and formaldehyde fumes coursed through the lab.
 

Formaldehyde
. Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew his lighter. Flicking the flame into life, he lobbed it over the desk behind which he was hiding toward the now-destroyed specimen display and the writhing immortal woman, who even now was trying to squirm toward her tormentors.

With a deep
whoosh
, that half of the lab erupted in flames as the formaldehyde caught fire. The woman’s wailing turned to an agonized scream, accompanied by surprised cries and curses from the soldiers.

Peter peeked above the cover of his desk and saw two flaming figures get to their feet and twirl about, screaming, as the other guards pulled back from the flames, now firing more in his direction than the woman on the floor, now wreathed in flames.
 

With one last longing look toward Mina’s cell, Peter retreated down one of the corridors that led from the hub of the burning laboratory into the maze of cells. He said a silent prayer for the poor wretched woman in the lab as her screams subsided into silence, the flames at last taking her life and, he hoped, granting peace to her tortured soul.

Moving as fast as he could, he made his way through the labyrinth. The prisoners had been stirred up by the excitement, and the air was filled not only with acrid smoke rolling outward from the lab, but the wails, cries, and grunts of the unearthly things behind the doors that he passed. The things that had once been human.

They all were making a deafening racket. All save one.

Peter came to a stop before the door to Ivan’s cell. It was deathly silent inside, and for just a moment Peter wondered if the creature hadn’t suffered an unexpected calamity. Looking through the slit, he found that the thing was peering right back at him, one of the orange-sized eyeballs pressed right up against the door.

“I need your help,” Peter said in English, having to shout above the din. He paused, unable to quite believe he was about to go through with this. But he had no other choice. “I need you to keep the guards occupied while I try to destroy the gate.”

The thing made no sign of acknowledgement, but stepped back to the rear of the cell, his massive feet crunching on the bones of his past meals. His fists clenched and unclenched in nervous rhythm.

With a silent prayer, Peter spun the wheel and pulled the door open a fraction before his courage crumbled and he turned and ran.
 

Behind him, the massive door slammed open so hard the reinforced metal hinges were torn from the concrete wall. With a roar that drowned out his fellow prisoners, Ivan stepped into the corridor.

Peter looked over his shoulder as the huge creature began to pound its way down the corridor after him. He hadn’t realized just how big it was. Ivan’s squat, gray scale-clad body filled the entire corridor.
 

Just as Peter turned back around, he collided headlong with a guard detachment that emerged from one of the spoke corridors. He bowled two men of the squad to the ground. Another pair grabbed Peter while the rest turned their weapons on him.

Ivan roared.

The men looked up at the approaching Titan and completely forgot about Peter.

The squad leader didn’t have to order his men to open fire. Peter threw himself to one side as the squad blasted away at the creature, who did not so much as flinch as the bullets struck his body. A few of the slugs found chinks in Ivan’s armor, but most of them just bounced off his armored hide and ricocheted off the concrete of the corridor.

Peter got to his feet and ran.
 

At last, he reached the vault door closing off the service tunnel that would take him to the second level. Punching in the combination that Baumann had used on the opposite door with shaking hands, he pounded on the unyielding metal as it slowly swung open. “Faster, damn you!”

As soon as it had opened enough to slip through, he stepped across to the far side and hit the controls to close the door behind him. As the thick metal slid home and the bolts engaged, the sounds of the battle on the far side fell silent. Here in the service tunnel, all Peter could hear was his own labored breathing, but he could still feel the vibrations through the concrete and steel.

He limped up the curving incline of the tunnel, which was lined with thousands of boxes of supplies, equipment, and spare parts. He stopped just before the tunnel entrance to the bottom of the ring chamber, right next to the doors for the massive freight elevator that brought cargo down from the loading area adjoining the rail tunnel a level above. Peeking around the corner, he saw that preparations for the next transit were underway. Baumann, wearing loose blue coveralls rather than his SS uniform, was on the command platform, while Hoth and the members of his operations team worked at their consoles. There was no sign of von Falkenstein.

Peter ducked back into the tunnel at the sound of running feet approaching. He tightened his grip on the rifle, but the footsteps came to a halt just on the other side of the entrance.
 

“
Ja
, I know!” A deep voice called. “I am checking now!”

Then the soldier was
there
, nearly nose to nose with Peter. He was roughly the same size as Peter and perhaps five years younger, with a face that would have been more at home on a twelve year old boy.
 

Peter slammed his right fist up under the soldier’s jaw before the younger man could shout a warning, driving the soldier’s teeth closed on his tongue. Blood spurted from between his lips as Peter grabbed the younger man’s combat harness and yanked him farther into the tunnel, out of sight of anyone in the main cavern.
 

The soldier quickly regained his senses and drew a knife from his belt, but never got a chance to use it. Peter slammed the butt of his rifle square into his face, smashing his nose and driving him to his knees. One more butt stroke and the soldier fell forward onto the floor, unconscious.
 

Peter snatched up the knife and quickly dragged him back behind some nearby crates. He knelt down and held the knife to the man’s throat. Then Peter remembered the old man and the girl he had killed in cold blood. He’d had no choice then, but he did now. He lowered the knife, then slammed his fist into the soldier’s face to make sure he didn’t recover any time soon.

A voice called from the cavern. “Heinz?”

Doing his best impression of the unconscious soldier’s voice, Peter shouted, “Give me a minute. I need to check one more thing.” He hoped that empty answer would suffice.

“Hurry up! We have to head down to Level Three!”

“Go ahead, I’ll be right behind you!”

With a muttered curse, whoever it was went away, and Peter breathed a sigh of relief.

He quickly stripped the soldier out of his uniform, then took off his own. He couldn’t take a step anywhere in his own uniform without being recognized, as there were only a handful of officers here and he was the second highest ranking after Baumann.

But in the Waffen-SS combat fatigues of an enlisted man, he could disappear in plain sight, if only for a short time. After all, nearly every soldier here was close to his height and weight, with blond hair and blue eyes, and the men of the security detachment and the recently arrived company that were to go through the gate weren’t well acquainted with one another. Confusion and uncertainty were his allies now.

The only problem was his limp. Leaning over, he took the knife and made a small jagged rip in the fabric of the pant leg on the outside of his right knee, big enough to see the skin but not so big as to reveal his brace. Then he smeared some of the blood from the soldier’s partly amputated tongue onto the skin and the fabric around the tear.
 

Nodding in satisfaction, he snatched up the soldier’s hat and crammed it on his head. Taking a deep breath, he headed out into the cavern, trying as best he could to keep out of direct sight of Baumann, who was in a heated conversation with Hoth on the command platform.
 

Peter had almost reached the elevator station on the lower level of the chamber when a voice barked from behind him. “What happened to you?”

Now wearing the rank of a lowly
Oberschütze
, or senior rifleman, Peter turned to face a burly
Scharführer
, a sergeant, who jabbed a thick finger toward Peter’s leg. Peter had seen the man before. He was one of the newly arrived supermen-to-be, but wasn’t the same man who had called out to Heinz earlier.

“My apologies,
Scharführer
.” Peter put on a sheepish expression. “I caught my leg on some improperly secured equipment in the tunnel. It’s nothing.”

The man scowled. “Idiot. The
Brigadeführer
is going to open the gate soon and he wants everyone who doesn’t have to be here down on Level Three containing that mess.”
 

Peter bobbed his head. “Yes,
Scharführer
.”
 

“Is anyone else behind you?”

“I don’t know,
Scharführer
. I was supposed to check the main doors in the tunnel. No one is in there.”
Aside from the soldier I beat senseless
, he didn’t add. “I’m not sure about the rest of the chamber.”
 

“I’ll do it myself,” the man said, disgusted. “Get down to Level Three and make yourself useful!”

“
Jawohl!
”
 

Peter got into the elevator as the
Scharführer
began to make the rounds of the lower half of the chamber. Peter could only hope that he wouldn’t bother checking the tunnel. Oddly, the man who normally operated the elevator was absent. Peter moved the controls to close the door and hit the button for Level One.
 

He tightened his grip on his weapon and held his breath as the indicator light chimed for the command level where Baumann was. A moment later, the light went out as the elevator continued its ascent, and Peter began to breathe again.

When the doors slid open on the living quarters level, the corridor was empty. He made his way at a limping trot toward von Falkenstein’s quarters. Rounding the last corner, he saw that two guards were posted at the entrance to the
Herr Professor’s
suite.

“You men!” He shouted. “Report to Level Three at once!”

The two soldiers looked at one another, then at Peter.
 

“I was hit,” Peter gestured at his leg, “and
the Brigadeführer
sent me here to relieve you. He needs every able-bodied man down there — Ivan’s loose!”

“Oh, no,” one of them muttered as they bolted past Peter, who took up a position of attention on one side of the door.

As soon as they disappeared from sight, Peter turned and opened the door to von Falkenstein’s suite. “
Herr Professor?
”

“Peter, is that you?”

“Yes, sir.” Peter came in and closed the door behind him.
 

Von Falkenstein got up from his desk where he’d been studying
The Black Gate
. “What are you doing here? I didn’t expect you to be my executioner. Baumann had promised to do the deed himself.”

“I’m not here to kill you,” Peter told him. “I came to set you free. Baumann is planning to go through the gate, and once he’s through, he’s planning to send his men through the gate quickly, in a group. I think you know very well how that’s likely to end.”

Von Falkenstein glanced back at the ancient book lying open on his desk.
 

Peter stepped closer to him. “You and I both know what happened with the gate the ancients built after they sent through too many people at once. That one was far larger than yours, and it took them quite some time to reach the point of no return. But sending a single individual through a gate this size was already a risk, wasn’t it?” Slowly, von Falkenstein nodded. “Just think what will happen when a full company of soldiers leaps through it in rapid succession.”
 

“I tried to warn him,” von Falkenstein said miserably. “Hoth and I both tried to tell him what could happen if he did not follow the protocols exactly. We have always carefully managed the risk by spacing out the transits. But that fool Kleist filled Baumann’s head with rubbish, and after I told him he would not be going through the gate…” He shrugged.
 

Peter reached out and gripped von Falkenstein’s arm. “He could unleash Armageddon if we don’t stop him. This isn’t an isolated island continent like Atlantis, and we have no doomsday failsafe weapon to protect the rest of the Reich, let alone the world, should things get out of hand.”

With a bitter laugh, Von Falkenstein shook off Peter’s hand. “There are only two of us. Baumann controls two companies of SS soldiers. What would you have me do?”

“Actually, there are three of us at the moment, and the third member of our party is currently helping to even the odds.” Von Falkenstein raised his eyebrows. “Ivan is loose on the third level.”

“
What?
” The older man recoiled. “You set him loose?” Peter nodded. “You’re more of a madman than Baumann!”

“Without that little diversion, I would be locked in one of Kleist’s cells and we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Peter said in a dry voice. “Besides, Baumann’s men subdued him once, they’ll do so again.”