Leah studied Jack’s face for a moment. He couldn’t hide the fact that he agreed with her logic.
Before he had a chance to make up something encouraging to say, both armed mercenaries held their hands to their earpieces, plainly listening intently to orders as they raised their guns and brought them to bear on their prisoners.
This was it. Jack knew what was coming as he found himself staring into the business end of gun. After all, you didn’t aim a gun at someone you didn’t want to shoot. There wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it, trussed up like a Thanksgiving Turkey on a mess hall dining table.
Chapter 46
Skimming above the waves, the Tomahawk missile cruises at 500 miles per hour. Its target is locked but constant adjustments are being made by the Inertial Guidance and Terrain Contour Matching systems to account for wind speed and wave height to keep it on target and on schedule. Unerringly.
Inside the payload section is housed a titanium encased W80-2 nuclear warhead, ready to be armed for a tactical strike as it closes in on its target coordinates.
Countdown to impact: 3 hours
Chapter 47
“Move!” barked one of the guards. The man had a bullet-shaped head and almost no neck. He looked like he had better places to be, too, from the impatient look on his face. Jack knew exactly how he felt.
A pair of cutters appeared in the other man’s hands as he moved toward Jack.
“Try anything and I’ll put one in your girlfriend’s head,” he threatened, pointing his gun directly at Leah’s head.
Snip.
The plastic cuffs binding Jack’s ankles fell to the floor. At least he could walk, that was a good start.
“Move.” He prodded Jack in the ribs with his gun barrel.
“Where are you and bullet-head taking us? If you’re going to shoot us anyway, might as well do it here and save us the bother of moving.”
That earned Jack a crack in the snout with the butt of bullet-head’s H&K. He felt the warm blood smeared across his face from his bleeding nose and split lip. It was worth it. Jack made note of the fact that bullet-head riled easily. That might come in handy.
“Move,” the man ordered with his gun raised to smash Jack in the face again if he didn’t comply.
Jack slipped off the table and stood with the others. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll find out soon enough, now get moving,” the other guard poked the captain in the ribs with his gun, urging him toward the control room.
A large acorn shaped object sat on the dock alongside the U-Boat. The black plastic that shrouded the 9 foot tall cargo clung tightly enough for the underlying shape to be unmistakable.
“Well fuck me sideways,” Jack whispered to himself as they were herded past the veiled bell shape. “That’s what they sent me here to snatch.” Pity they didn’t send a few more men, he thought to himself.
All six of them were shepherded onto the low concrete wet-dock to which the German U-Boat was tied.
Jack saw Sam standing on the deck of the U-Boat, near the open torpedo loading hatch. One eye was swollen and he looked spent but other than that he appeared unharmed as he moved over to join them. As he jumped from the deck to the dock, Jack noticed that his hands too had been cuffed, his sheer size and strength had painted him as a threat.
“This isn’t good, Jack,” he said quietly so only Jack could hear him. “I’ve heard them talking. These wackjobs are fucking Nazis. Can you believe that?” he hissed.
“Actually, now you mention it, that kind of makes perfect sense in a weird way.” Jack nodded slowly as his covert op wheels began to turn and he started to put things together. The accents, the weapons, the U-Boat, the U-Boat captain’s log, that bell thing. Not to mention their time travel discussion.
“It’s worse than that, Bluey. Way worse than that.” Jack shook his head solemnly.
“What do we do?” Sam pleaded for guidance.
“If this is all heading to where I think it is, we have to save the world, Bluey. We don’t have any choice. It’s up to us to save the world.”
Chapter 48
“Hey, bullet-head, how about doing something about these cuffs? I’m gonna get gangrene like this.” Jack held up his swollen, discolored hands for the man to see.
Bullet-head came at him, his face a mask of anger and brutality, buttstock raised to strike. Jack bent at the knees, shifted his weight slightly and launched himself low and hard at the bullet-headed prick. With an oomph the man collapsed on the deck the wind knocked out of him by a well-placed shoulder to the solar plexus.
The second guard came in fast, gun up and shoved Jack out of the way. But Jack didn’t budge and the guard ended up locked in a tackle until finally Jack moved back to Sam’s position and let the two guards regroup.
“I ought to put a bullet in you right now for that little stunt… but I won’t.” The tight lipped smile on his face told Jack that something far worse than a bullet in the brain was on the cards.
“That worked really well. Thanks Jack, we’re so much better off now,” Sam sassed.
Jack opened his hands surreptitiously, revealing the cutters the guard used to snip his ankle restraints a short while ago.
Sam’s brows arched. “I think we’re gonna need more than a pair of pliers to get out of this one, MacGyver.”
“One thing at a time, Bluey. One thing at a time.”
“If we’re gonna end up dead in the next few hours, could you at least try calling me by my real name? My Mom made a real effort to choose it for me, the least you could do is try using it, just once in a while.”
“I thought you were an orphan? Didn’t some government pencil pusher pluck your name out of a hat or something?”
“Nice, Jack. That’s real nice. You ought to ask for a refund if we survive this.”
“What refund?” Jack quizzed.
“For that ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ seminar. Get your money back. It’s not work—”
A giant shadow cast over them.
Muller.
Jack didn’t even need to turn to see the hulk of a man. He could feel him.
“Enough talk,” Muller directed from behind them. His bulk blocked out much of the light from the Barracuda, casting a shadow that left Jack feeling unsettled. “You have the rest of your lives to chat among yourselves,” he sniggered. His peculiar accent unnerved Jack even more. He really didn’t like this guy.