“This way,” said Doughty with a poise and speed that awed Andros.
They emerged from the woods into the clearing that served as the camp’s amphitheater, the gorge to their right and the bridge up ahead. Then a low-flying Stuka let go of its payload. A flash of light was followed by the thunderous clap of an explosion. Flames gushed up in its wake, and charred pieces of wood rained down around Andros.
The bridge was gone, just like that, and with it, thought Andros, any chance of escape.
When Andros looked back to Doughty, he wasn’t there. Then, a moment later, he heard the voice calling him. “Andros…over here.”
It was Doughty, his face splattered with blood, dragging himself over with his arms, leaving a trail of blood behind him. His chest was one red mass. “You’ve got to make it out of here with that film,” he said, his speech garbled by the blood he was spitting up. “You’ve got to get to Sparta. There’s a taverna in the square called Theo’s. Ask for the Yankee Clipper…escape route to submarine…the barman knows…Tell…”
Then there was a flash of recognition. He opened his mouth to say something more but closed his eyes instead. His face plopped into the dirt.
Again the ground shook. Andros looked up to see a stampede of horses coming his way, andartes on their backs, three Stukas buzzing overhead, chasing them toward the abyss. Andros could barely move himself out of the way of the stampede, leaving Doughty’s body to be trampled beneath a hundred hooves.
Andros watched as one horse after the other leaped into the air, hovering over the gorge for a few seconds before plummeting out of sight. Andros was aware of screams and shouts, but they were strangely muted as he watched what seemed like a silent slow-motion dream. He couldn’t tell whether they were actually trying to make the impossible leap over the gorge or purposely killing themselves before the Germans got them. And yet a few of them almost made it, the front hooves of their horses barely scratching the other side, clawing madly before both horse and rider tumbled backward into the mouth of the insatiable abyss.
All Andros knew was that somehow he had to make it over.
It took another explosion to shake him to his senses. He snapped into action. Inching his way along the ground under the flying shrapnel, he made it to a fallen tree. There he found Doughty’s field glasses and crept toward the edge of the gorge to take a look.
The bridge was gone, blown to bits. And still the horses and andartes shot into view, jumping into the inferno like lemmings.
Andros put down the field glasses. There was no way to cross the gorge, and it was nine hundred feet to the rocky bottom. But the andartes were right, there was no other way of escape.
He spun around, frantically searching the chaos for another way out. He spotted a mare without a rider. She was a big one, probably the biggest he’d seen at the camp.
With each explosion, the mare ran in an opposite direction until the sound of fire was so close that she simply stopped in her tracks in terror. Andros grabbed her loose reins and, after two failed tries, mounted her. Somehow he would get out of here, he resolved, somehow. There had to be a way.
Andros was alone in the middle of the clearing, the dumbstruck mare turning in circles in the wide-open area even as the explosions began to close in. A great flash of light flickered across the sky, and a tremendous explosion shook the ground. The mare bucked as Andros looked up to see a great shadow falling upon him. He covered his face and heard a thud. When he lowered his arms, another fir tree that had stood before him was gone, just like the tree that had almost crushed him and Doughty.
Then something sharp clipped him in the leg, and Andros fell forward. He would have slipped off his saddle had he not clung to the mare’s mane. Pain shot up Andros’s spine. Where he had been hit, he couldn’t tell. All around him, the sounds and explosions were growing louder.
This was the end. The Baron had won. All was lost. He remembered the words of the archbishop at his father’s memorial service: “Into your hands I commit my spirit…”
And then there was silence. Choking on dust, the taste of oil in his mouth, Andros wiped the grime from his teary eyes. The Stukas were gone, and he was alone in the clearing, the smoke rising around him in black columns and the stench of scorched metal, oil, and flesh in the air.
Straight ahead, the gorge was clouded in ugly vapors that seemed to bubble up from the depths and roll across the clearing like dark death clouds. When the black fog lifted, the gaping chasm became clear in the light. Andros blinked, his eyes blurred again by the smoke, his mind blurred by the impossible hurdle before him.
He had little choice. The mane of the mare seemed to prickle with electricity, and the hair on the back of his neck lifted at the sound of the hum. The Stukas were closing in again.
He grabbed the reins and tried to get the horse to move, but she wouldn’t. He had lost all feeling in his legs, so he struck the mare’s rump as hard as he could with his fist. Again nothing.
With one last effort, he pulled his father’s dagger from its sheath and jabbed the horse’s rump. She shot off toward the black gorge, which glowed mysteriously beneath the dark shadows of the dust clouds on the surface. Andros pressed his head down against the mare’s mane as she picked up speed.
The horse and rider hurled themselves across the open gorge. Just when he expected them to plunge to the bottom, they seemed to float over the gorge. Andros heard the sharp clap of hooves beating against rocky soil. He glanced back to see the half-moon sliver of the gorge fall behind them like a reaper that had barely missed its prey.
Death behind him, darkness before him, the last thing Andros remembered was clinging to the horse as if she were life itself, hurtling into space.
PRESENT DAY
S am Deker’s body convulsed in the metal chair in the DARPA labs beneath the VA Hospital in Los Angeles. General Packard and Wanda Randolph looked on as a helpless Dr. Prestwick stopped the light-wave bombardment to Deker’s brain and the photosynthetic algae drip to his artery.
“I don’t understand,” Dr. Prestwick said. “I’m not doing anything now.”
Packard said, “The 34th Degree program, Doctor. Shut it down.”
“It is down!” Dr. Prestwick said. “Deker is doing this all by himself.”
Deker’s body arched in pain and then slumped in the chair, his head rolling back, lifeless.
“Dear God,” Randolph whispered. “You killed him.”
Dr. Prestwick said, “No, his vitals are fine. Look at the monitors. This is something else.”
“You mean a coma?” Randolph said, and started slapping Deker. “Wake up, Deker! Wake up! You gotta come back. Come back!”
Nothing seemed to work for the next two hours, and then they gave up trying.
“Now what, Doc?” Packard asked.
Dr. Prestwick said, “The monitors will automatically tell us when there is a change in Deker’s condition. We post a couple of nurses and wait for him to eventually wake up.”
“And if he doesn’t?” Randolph asked. “You’re not cutting up that poor boy’s brain.”
Dr. Prestwick looked at Packard, who looked at Deker. “If he’s so lost inside that he goes six months, we’ll reconvene to discuss next steps. But knowing Deker, he’ll find a way. He always does.”
1943
O n the island of Corfu, Commandant Georgio Buzzini was in his office on the second floor of the Palace of St. Michael and St. George when his aide Sergeant Racini returned from the airstrip to report that General Ludwig von Berg had arrived and was safe at the Achillion.
“Too bad,” said Buzzini, still smarting from his last run-in with von Berg. “Did he ask why I wasn’t there to greet him personally?”