Caine's Mutiny, page 31
part #4 of Caine Riordan Series
Carlisle Hansell, possibly the oldest of the men there, pursed his wrinkled lips. “If you are asking about the specific means of our conveyance, none of us know. We weren’t awake for that part of the process, or we can’t recall it.”
“Well, let’s back up a step, then. What is the last thing that you do remember, Commander?”
Hansell lost what little animation was on his face. “Depth charges off the bow. Hull shaking. Sprung a leak up near tube two. Then all the electricity went off. I figured we’d had a short or plant failure and were pretty much as good as dead. Last thing I remember.
“Surprised to wake up. Given some of my early years, I figured I’d been sent to hell. Woke up, found a Nazi with SS collar tabs staring down at me. Seemed to confirm my suspicion.”
Solsohn stared around the introspective faces. “Is everyone’s story pretty much a version of that?”
Zhigarev shook his head. “No. Some of us were given choice.”
“By whom?”
Hailey himself leaned forward. “If you’re hoping for a description of some little green men, I’m sorry to disappoint. I was shot up—pretty bad—in Salavan Province, Laos. I sent the rest of my team to the fall-back extraction site. We didn’t have more than an hour’s lead time over the NVA, and I doubted I’d live long enough to get shot again.”
Duncan’s jaw sagged slightly. “And they left you?”
Rich Hailey’s eyes became very, very patient. “Major, it probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but we were MACV-SOG. For officers and senior NCOs, part of the job description is that you don’t tie down your team and get them killed. But you don’t ruin their morale by eating a bullet, either. You go out fighting, buying them time. You owe them that. And it sets the necessary example for those who rise up in the ranks after you. In Laos, sometimes all you had was your faith in each other.”
Riordan nodded, let a second of silence pass. “So, you were contacted after the rest of your team left.”
“Yeah. Came out of the bush so fast I didn’t see him do it, and I’m not half bad in the bush, sir. Asked if I preferred living to dying. I told him that with my wounds, I was pretty sure that choice was out of anyone’s hands but God’s. He found that amusing, told me that his hands were not tied by God’s. I asked him where he was going to take me. He said he couldn’t tell me, but I would arrive there healthy—and that I had ten seconds to decide.” Hailey shrugged. “And here I am.”
“Was he a local?”
“Hell, no. Dressed like he was from back in the world…er, the U.S. We called it ‘the world,’ back when there was only one we knew about. I figured him for an Eastern European. Or maybe a Russian. I asked him about that as he started toward me with some gadget that looked like a watering can with a pistol grip. He just smiled and said he wasn’t from anywhere near Russia. Guess he was telling the truth.”
Pat Paulsen put his hands flat on the table. “Commodore, I will ask you to take my word for it when I say that with the exception of two groups, Rich’s story is consistent with those of the others who had contact with our abductors. Indeed, his is one of the most detailed accounts. I would prefer that you do not debrief the men individually.”
Duncan leaned forward, a hint of suspicion in his tone. “Why not?”
“Because, as you might gather from the captain’s account, a lot of our soldiers have very mixed emotions about what they now see as having cut a deal with the devil. They expected they were being given the opportunity to accept imprisonment instead of certain death.”
“That outcome seems a little implausible, wouldn’t you say?”
“I would not,” Shvartsman responded archly, each syllable crisp, controlled. “I was approached in similar manner. My men and I, we were wounded, isolated, no rescue possible. In such circumstances, you have no time for deep thought. You have ten seconds—it was same with all of us—to decide to live or not. You do not have time to assess if it is implausible. You have just enough time to choose to survive. We did. Perhaps others did not. If so, they are not here. They are in graves on Earth. Where some of our men now think they should have been.”
Riordan nodded. “Because of what you were brought here to do.”
“Da. You know expression, ‘dogs of war’? That is us, with Nazis holding leash. I have no love for snorks—what you call ‘Hkh’Rkh’—but I had no wish to kill them, either.” It seemed as though Shvartsman was ready to say more, but instead, he leaned back, his jaw suddenly retracted and tense, his cheek muscles clenched and bulging.
Riordan nodded his thanks, turned toward Paulsen. “Colonel, you said that when it comes to contact with your abductors, Captain Hailey’s story is the most detailed, but you added the caveat, ‘with the exception of two groups.’ Would I be correct to conjecture that those groups were the Germans and the Japanese?”
Paulsen frowned, like a father being compelled to confirm that one of his children is a murderer. “That is correct.”
“And what was different about their contact with the abductors?”
“They both indicated that they had slightly more detailed conversations. But only slightly.”
“Those details are potentially quite important, Colonel, so if you could please—”
Zhigarev’s face reddened suddenly. “As if chudovishniye fascists told us anything. From them we had orders or threats. Nothing else.”
Paulsen looked ready to intervene, but Caine leaned directly toward Zhigarev. “Colonel, I’m asking you to help us against an enemy that clearly chose Nazis—SS, no less—as the kennelmasters for their pack of enslaved war-dogs. So I’m not asking for these details out of idle curiosity; I’m looking for any scrap of information to fight an enemy who might still be watching, an enemy that saw Nazis as their natural allies. To put it another way, I’m asking for your help against a common foe.” He paused, held Zhigarev’s eyes. “Can I count on your help?”
Zhigarev, still trembling with rage, nodded sharply. “Da. Apologies. Nazis killed my family, then my men. First on one world, then another.” He rubbed his leg distractedly. “Is difficult to think clearly when I am remembering them. I am sorry, Commodore.”
Caine smiled, waved away the apology. “Nichevo, Colonel. We are all on the same side here.”
The Russian smiled, seemed pleased, as if until this moment he had harbored reservations about the two newcomers.
Steven Rodermund leaned forward. “Well, I probably had the most contact with the Nazi and Japanese command staffs. Some of their people spoke fair English, and my Dad’s side still spoke some German. Also, I guess I looked ‘Aryan’ enough for ’em.
“Didn’t mean they trusted me much, though. I was almost the only officer they allowed into this part of the cave network.”
Solsohn’s eyes widened. “So the machine-gun emplacements near the gate: they built them. To protect themselves in here.”
“Yeah, along with almost all the guns, ammo, food, and other consumables. And the well. They kept the Japanese with them, who they used as their chief technicians and scientists.”
“That must have been a hell of a language barrier.”
“Not so much,” Hansell put in. “The bigger of the two Japanese subs wasn’t an attack boat. It was a cargo carrier.”
“Cargo?” Riordan echoed.
“Yep. The I-52, one of their Type C-3 class subs. Mid ’44, she was sent to Europe to pick up some advanced Nazi hardware. Our sub-hunters caught her in the Bay of Biscay, sent her to the bottom. Or so we thought. Because of the technology transfer, she had a number of officers on board who were proficient in German and with appropriate science degrees. By the time we were awakened, they’d been set up as the Nazis’ brain trust.”
“You said you were ‘awakened.’ What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that they had us in some kind of hibernation. In machines.”
Ike Franklin leaned forward. “The commander is referring to cryogenic stasis.”
Riordan allowed his eyebrows to rise. “You sound familiar with the technology, Lieutenant.”
“Well, if you count science fiction movies, I sure was. And I was pretty much the only other person they regularly permitted in their little back-of-the-cave country club. They didn’t have any of their own physicians, and they didn’t trust the Russian docs. Besides, none of them knew squat about computers and it was pretty clear that the ‘ice-caskets’ were automated.”
“So you figured out how to open them?”
“Not exactly, but I figured out why they lost some of the first group that was reanimated, developed some basic protocols for the restoration process. I was familiar with cryogenics from surgical prolongation protocols being developed at the end of the twentieth century.”
“Thank you,” said Riordan, conscious of how carefully flat his voice had become. “It will be extremely helpful to inspect these cryogenic units before we return to Puller.”
Franklin glanced at Pat Paulsen, who nodded. “Of course, Commodore. Now, best we let Steve finish telling you about how things started.”
Rodermund shrugged. “Far as we can tell, the first of us were awakened at least four or five days after the Nazis had been roused. So we don’t know exactly what they did before then. As Ivan said, they didn’t fill us in on much.”
“So you don’t know if anyone contacted them after they came out of stasis.”
“No, but if they had, I think we would have heard about it. Their colonel, Kreuzer, liked to brag about how he had been approached by a member of the Zukunft Herrenvolk.”
“The who?” Duncan asked.
“The Future or Coming Master Race,” Riordan replied flatly.
Rodermund nodded. “Yep. Came to them outside of Stettin, Poland in March of 1945. According to Kreuzer, Soviet artillery was dropping all around them, T-34s rolling in behind the barrage. And in walks this tall, calm, mysterious stranger, out of nowhere, who sits down, asks for a glass of their schnapps and tells them that they were to have the honor of carrying forward the mission of achieving a true master race, one which would transcend the impending loss of the Third Reich. Quite a speech, with 152s dropping around their ears.”
Solsohn nodded. “And did they get a tour to go along with the speech?”
“You mean, a tour of whatever spaceship Mr. Master Race was tooling around in?” Steve sneered. “The Nazis didn’t like to talk about the conclusion of their little Nuremburg Rally on the Eastern Front. I expect because as soon as they agreed to go along for the ride, they got handled the same way as the rest of us: lights out, and then wake up here.”
Solsohn nodded. “Yes, but they were awakened first. So they must have known the condition of this facility, if there were any communiqués, what instructions had been left for them.”
“If so, they must have destroyed it after memorizing—or deciding to forget about—it. Because we looked for it once they were, uh, gone. Zip, zilch, goose-eggs: whatever they knew about the first few days here died with them. And before you ask, the Japanese didn’t know any more than the rest of us. And they were less communicative than the Germans.
“First thing most of us remember is waking up wrapped in blankets, with some of the Japanese or Nazis pushing water at us, along with the rules of life here on Oz: obey them or die. They meant it, too. Shot a few of the Russians on the spot, the moment they got any lip from them.”
“How many of them—the Germans and the Japanese—were there?”
The officers looked at each other for a few seconds. Zhigarev leaned back. “There were ninety-six fascists. We knew. We made careful count.”
“And there were exactly eighty-four Japanese,” Hansell answered. “Who were pretty upset at all the Americans that they found here.”
Riordan frowned. “Why so many Americans, do you think?”
Steve Rodermund shrugged. “Mostly because they had two sub crews’ worth of us, and when you rescue a submarine, it’s pretty much all or nothing. And I’m guessing that Vietnam was the perfect conflict for picking us up in ones and twos. Easy to go missing in that bush, and a lot of it was pretty far away from help or anything like the Geneva Convention. The other large groups, the Germans and the Russians, were grabbed up as whole units—squads, even platoons—from the Eastern Front.”
“Where thousands remain unaccounted for. Or did, when I was last there,” Shvartsman added. “Whoever gathered us knew where to find desperate men who would be presumed dead, and so, not missed.”
“Yes, it certainly seems that way,” Riordan agreed.
“It seems like they had a pretty good idea of conditions here, too,” Rodermund added with a bitter twist of his mouth. “Like Ike was quick to point out, it wasn’t just chance that this planet had air we could breathe, water we could drink, and food we could eat—well, after we filtered and prepared it properly.”
Rich Hailey tapped the table. “They knew more than that. They knew who we were going to be fighting against. I’m sure of it.”
Solsohn nodded. “Because of the weapons they provided.”
“Yup. Just take my group, for example: the Vietnam contingent. Standard weapon for us was the M16. Jammed like a sonuvabitch, sure, but there were tons of ’em, all over ’Nam. But what did they have here waiting in crates that had been coated in some kind of super-cosmolene? M14s. Chambered for .308: a much better round for punching through armor and taking down big targets. Like the snorks. Same with the rest of the rifles. All heavy caliber with maximum stopping power. The AK-47s are the lightest weapons they included. No carbines, almost no pistols, none of the dozens of submachine guns Ivan’s people had when they were taken.” Rich leaned away from the makeshift tabletop. “They—whoever they are or were—knew we were going to be hunting bear, so they equipped us for it. And only that.”
Which, Riordan thought while nodding blankly, all coalesced into a terrible near-certainty that the Ktor had been behind these abductions, all of which had been carried out during the period when they helped the Custodians keep an eye on Earth. But why bring these “lost soldiers” here? And why start collecting them for this mission—whatever it actually was—almost two centuries ago?
Solsohn was murmuring, almost to himself. “Gotta wonder how they got so much gear for you guys.”
“No mystery there,” Pat Paulsen said loudly. “You gentlemen may not be familiar with our slang, but in my day, we called the Army, and the U.S., the Land of the Big PX. In Vietnam, that meant we were a black marketeer’s dream. The amount of equipment—sometimes as big as tanks and APCs—that went missing or was mysteriously ‘lost in transit,’ is hard for most folks to believe. That’s where a third of our equipment came from. The balance was mostly grabbed from Liberty ships.”
Riordan vaguely remembered the term, but couldn’t recall its significance.
Hansell must have seen the puzzlement on his face. “World War Two transport ships. Made in America. Cranked out in record time for sending matériel overseas. Some were good, some were awful. Lots were lost, particularly to U-boats. I’m guessing whoever grabbed us grabbed at least one of them. That’s why so much of our equipment—particularly backpacks, spare clothing, helmets, radios, batteries—is American. And perfectly preserved, mind you. They must have done something extra special to the food, though. Should all have been rotten, but it looks like they froze it—really hard. Tastes like crap, but it’s still better than the local mush.” He and several others suppressed shudders.
Solsohn gestured deeper into the cave complex. “So is there a…a big refrigerator back here?”
Hansell shook his head. “Strange, but there isn’t. ’Course, the Germans had unpacked all the rations before they woke us up. Conducted an inventory to figure how long we had before we’d need to find local food.”
Riordan folded his hands. “So, you’ve got a ton of equipment, the Nazis are waking you up in what I presume are small, easily controlled groups, and if you want to live—and eat—you have to do what they say. What next?”
Rodermund picked up the tale. “Well, it was obvious we weren’t in Kansas, anymore—which is why we nicknamed this place ‘Oz.’”
Riordan shook his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand the reference.”
Rodermund looked like he’d bitten into a rotting lemon. “You don’t understand—? Well, Christ, I guess that’s gone, too. Wonder if I’ll recognize Earth at all, anymore.”
Riordan elected not to comment on the colonel’s melancholy musing. “Is ‘Oz’ another reference to a place of damnation, like calling the base ‘Dante’?”
Rodermund’s sour expression continued for a moment, then lightened. “Well, I suppose some folks would have considered Oz to be another kind of hell… But no: it’s a never-never land in a fairy story. Kid from Kansas gets whisked away to Oz—and like her, we realized right away that this was nothing like home. We had air and water and enough food to get by for a while, but no one had any idea where we really were, or how we’d gotten here. The Navy guys who remembered their celestial navigation were pretty sure they saw some of the same constellations, though.”
Solsohn glanced toward Hansell. “How’d you figure that?”
The commander’s leathery lips hardly seemed to move as he replied. “Different constellations’ positional relationships to each other. Once we found the stars in Orion’s belt, we looked for other nearby constellations. All present and accounted for. But they’re warped or bent. As might be the case if you were spatially displaced. By a few dozen light-years or so.”
