“Should we report in?” Emil asked.
Henri heard himself say, “No,” before he could properly think it over. He decided that the quick answer had been the correct one. “No, I want more information first.”
He didn’t tell his trusted number two why, but Henri wanted to see what else was hiding from him and the other loyal Sixth Seal foot soldiers first before calling in their discovery. Henri wanted to know what else Himmler and Dietrich Krause were working on. He knew of Black Sunset, but he hadn’t been privy to exactly what the project was. There had been rumors but nothing concrete. Given the men involved, it could have been anything, so he refused to waste his time thinking about it.
Henri looked down at his watch. “Give Kane’s team a little while longer to move deeper into the facility. Then we can move in and close the trap.”
“Commander?” The question had come from Luka. Henri faced him. “What is really in there?”
The young man’s question was a viable one. In truth, Henri didn’t know. While Ulrich had been quite forthcoming with information, he had still left out much. A large portion of what he’d heard sounded like lavish myths and propaganda, and he treated them as such.
So, he told the soldier the truth. “With any luck, the future.”
Chapter 40
Hammet
Hammet edged into the East Wing with his rifle up and its barrel-mounted light on. He wasn’t taking any chances now that he was alone. The KSK commando had been on edge since stepping foot into Himmler’s underworld. The prospect of being ambushed from above weighed heavily on him.
He wondered how many of his current and former military teammates were secretly members of the Sixth Seal. Hammet prayed that he didn’t run into any of them here. He already felt somewhat demoralized just by this place’s sheer existence — he had always wanted to believe that the conspiratorial types’ theories were just that: theories.
But it was very real.
“Oh my,” he said, stepping out into the next room.
It was packed with explosives of all shapes and sizes. Hammet wasn’t an expert in this type of armament, and he had no way of knowing whether they were safe. He decided to err on the side of caution, and he lowered his weapon and pulled out a flashlight and a pistol instead. He kept his sidearm aimed at the floor and swept his light over the room. The first thing he did was confirm that this wing also held what they figured was a hatch leading to something else.
But what?
What he did know was that the Sixth Seal had been developing some sort of bomber, but the one thing Hammet didn’t know — what he most wanted answered — was why. What had they truly been working toward? And why build bombers down here?
“Why here?” he asked himself. “Why Antarctica?”
This kind of production could have easily been done back in Germany or even in the United States or the USSR. Why had Himmler and Krause thought it necessary to build a hidden Antarctic facility only to use the place to make more of what they already had back home?
On the back wall of the East Wing, another elevator shaft stood. Hammet knew he needed to check the other levels for evidence that they had, in fact, been building bombers here, but ultimately, it wouldn’t matter. The room was outfitted, floor to ceiling, with bombs and the tools to make them.
Hammet headed for the lift, and once inside, he pressed the button for the floor directly above him. The toothy wheels kicked in and pulled him skyward. This elevator was in much worse shape than the one back in the South Wing. It shrieked the entire way up, making Hammet’s skin crawl.
The level he stepped out onto next housed the site of an old production line. Empty casings belonging to unfinished bombs had been set off to one side and left unfilled.
Hammet checked his watch. He still had plenty of time before he needed to rejoin the others.
He took the elevator up another level. This floor space looked like it held prototypes of… something. The left catwalk wasn’t a factory floor, however. Hammet defined it as a kind of war room.
He hurried around and stopped in front of a massive map of Earth. Red pins stuck out of nearly every major city around the world, including Berlin, Washington D.C., and Moscow. The Sixth Seal had no qualms about obliterating their own respective homelands.
“But you weren’t part of any homeland,” Hammet said. “You were your own entity — your own nation. You were your own people.”
The map marked the suggested targets of what would have been a devastating, planet-altering assault.
But how?
Hammet still believed that there was no way a group, even one as powerful and well-connected as the Sixth Seal had been, could pull off such a global attack. The logistics were simply too grand. Sure, maybe they could have destroyed a few cities, but not all the ones marked here. For them to even think this could work, Himmler and Krause must have had a wild card — an ace up their sleeve.
Hammet checked the time again. He’d spend the next few minutes trying to figure out exactly what that wild card was. He rushed back to the elevator and took it up to the next floor. When it clunked into place, Hammet’s face fell.
The entire circular level was packed, floor to ceiling, with shelves and tables holding firearms and ammunition. There was enough here to stock and supply an army — certainly more than enough for a small, clandestine group of soldiers.
The Sixth Seal had obviously planned to bomb the world’s most populated cities, at which point they would send in their ground troops to clean up the mess and take out any stragglers.
“This wasn’t just a single coordinated attack,” Hammet mumbled to himself, turning in a slow circle to take in the whole space. “Black Sunset was a planet-wide eradication of their enemies.”
Chapter 41
Yana
Yana’s search of the wing she was in — one that could only have been an aeronautics center — moved quicker than she had thought it would. A large amount of the papers she found were either in the Sixth Seal’s combined language or in Russian.
It seems that the Soviets were heavily involved in this particular field.
Still, what she did read didn’t shine light on what exactly was going on.
She turned and kicked a table leg in frustration. A stack of papers fell and scattered to the floor, revealing blueprints for a piece of an airplane’s engine. It was clearly part of an engine, though it all meant little to her.
It was the name of the aircraft that had caught her attention.
Though it was in German, she could still read it — thanks to the movie Poltergeist.
Geisterbomber.
Geist, she knew, meant ghost.
“Ghost bomber?” she whispered.
The stunned question launched the Russian into the other papers. She needed to know more about the Sixth Seal’s spectral aircraft.
Chapter 42
Zahra
Zahra exited the tunnel between the southern and western wings and stepped into what had obviously been a space dedicated to medical research and development. The commonality between aeronautics engineering and medical R&D was lost on Zahra. She had no idea how the two related to one another. The only project she knew about was Black Sunset, and even it, she knew very little about.
“Or,” she said, talking to herself, “they aren’t related at all.”