Free Survivalist - 12 - The Rebellion by Jerry Ahern Page B

sound of a human voice speaking something that was not Russian and was likely German, though he had no way in which to tell. The Hero Colonel, Vladmir Karamatsov, spoke the German language. So did a few of those who had taken the sleep with him.
    The Stechkin Mk 7 clenched tight in his gloved right fist, he moved ahead, signaling his lieutenant to accompany him.
    The voice was clearer now as he parted the foliage ahead of him—a child’s voice. And then a woman’s laughter. He dropped to his knees and moved forward beneath the cover of the foliage, the debris of the ground—rotted leaves— clinging to his field trousers.
    He crept forward, glancing once behind him to ascertain that his lieutenant was still there.
    He parted another of the low-to-the-ground broad-leafed plants—and he could see. A woman wearing a filmy-looking summer weight dress, blond hair restrained at the nape of her neck with a large bow. A child in khaki shorts and a short-sleeved shirt running and playing, throwing a red ball to the woman who on closer inspection seemed little more than a girl. The woman caught the ball, and threw it back to the child, almost bowling it across the manicured green of the grass. As the little boy caught the ball, the boy and the woman laughed, the woman rearranging her dress, then clapping her hands and calling something in a musical sounding voice to the little boy. The little boy threw the ball toward her again and she caught it.
    Antonovitch looked to his right: the guard tower, glass enclosed—air conditioned, he imagined.
    He would not risk a stray reflection from his field glasses, so he studied the tower with his naked eyes. Perhaps two men. One stood by the nearest window. The second appeared to be sitting—Antonovitch could barely
    make out the top of the head when there was movement.
    They were more watchers than guards, he realized.
    The other tower, to his left, was merely a speck against the horizon.
    But less far to his left, well back from the woman and the little boy with the red ball, rose the mountain. An exposed pinnacle of granite. Massive doors were at its base, the doors—brass, perhaps. He could not be sure. And two massive stone pillars rising, flanking the doors on either side, the pillars becoming huge torches, flames that were apparently natural gas burning from the top of each.
    He heard the laughter of the child again—and Antonovitch turned his attention back to the boy and the woman with him. As he did he saw a bronze bust the height of a pillar set in the middle of the garden. He recognized the face. It was unmistakably the face of Adolf Hitler.
    He forced himself to look away and to the mountain itself. It rose so high that its summit was all but obscured in wisps of white cloud. Perhaps a hundred feet above the doors were long parapets, and on these parapets he could see armed men moving in some sort of regular pattern. There would be fortifications at the top of the mountain— aerial reconnaissance. He thanked his own foresight that he had kept his reconnaissance far back and relied on electronic observation rather than visual. Anti-aircraft emplacements ringed the summit, the nature of the guns he did not know. It was suspected by heat source identification that the entire mountain and the green space which seemed carved from out of the jungle were ringed with surface-to-air missiles.
    His helicopters would stand no chance against the Nazi fortifications, regardless of the disposition of the Nazi troops who were now thousands of miles away from protecting their stronghold.
    Fighter bombers were the only thing—fighter bombers
    and a ground assault to penetrate the main entrance. If it were timed perfectly, it could work, he thought.
    He watched the pretty young woman and the child for a moment longer—they reminded him of things he could not afford to consider until the conquest of earth under the leadership of the Hero Colonel was completed.
    But he wanted to reach out to