Captive-in-Chief (38 page)

The Baldwins prepared themselves for a grand entrance. They had been given the five minutes’ heads-up. They would be part of the fanfare that would hail the new beginning for America. A lifelong Klansman, Vic had been only too happy to be chosen to be father to what would become a future leader of the country. His wife, impregnated with Nazi seed, was an honor that he had taken on and had ensured him and his family a security like no other.

His brother’s fortunes had ballooned because of Ed. The Leipzig Foundation had ensured Baldwin Enterprises had succeeded in almost all they had done. Ed was to be a future leader, his bloodline was undeniable and tracked back to Himmler himself. Ed Baldwin was Heinrich Himmler’s grandchild. Ed’s childhood had been spent between America and Argentina. Any holidays were spent where possible with his other family on the banks of that same lake a few miles to the north. Understanding the principles and doctrine that would drive his and his country’s future, and appreciating his past and the importance of his bloodline were fundamental.

Vic checked his son’s bowtie, retying it for the third time. It had to be perfect.

“Ready?”

“Absolutely,” said Ed. He opened the door to the corridor where a guard of honor that would escort them into the dining hall awaited.

“We’re waiting for the grand wizard to finish his speech, it’ll be a few minutes yet,” advised an usher that would lead them into the hall.

The rapturous applause below filtered up into the hallway. Elsa walked towards the door, breathing deeply, trying to contain her nerves.

“Evening, ma’am,” said the agent guarding the door.

“I’m here to escort the president down to dinner,” she said as casually as her nerves would allow. She was surprised at how nervous she was. She didn’t normally do nerves.

“Nobody told us you were coming.”

She shrugged. “Not my job. My job is to escort the president down to the dining hall.”

Elsa considered opening her clutch. Her throwing knives would end this one way or another very quickly.

The door opened behind the guards. Val Caldwell looked out. Elsa had never met her in person, only seen her in photos and on TV.

“Yes?”

“I’m here…”

“I can see you are, come in. Eric—sorry, the president is through there.” Val gestured to a bedroom off of the lounge.

“A bit overdressed for a doctor, aren’t you?” Val called as she walked into a kitchenette.

Elsa ignored her, too focused on who was behind the door. She opened it, and found President Eric Warner sitting by a dressing table, his head in his hands.

She closed the door behind her as he looked up, kicked off her heels, and lunged towards him. He looked across to his bed. His pistol was by his bedside table. He lunged but she had the drop on him.

”Ma’am, the doctor you called for the president’s headache is here,” announced the agent, opening the door to the lounge area and letting the doctor in.

Val shot out of the kitchenette, pulled open the door to the bedroom, and gasped in horror.

***

Clay was still in a trance as the grand wizard drew to a close. Another thunderous applause followed.

“What’s wrong?” Joe asked.

“Nothing,” Clay replied. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s like they’re proclaiming their new dawn, ignoring you even exist,” said Mike, confused as to what was happening.

“To them I don’t, I’m sure. There’s nowhere they don’t have someone willing to make the sacrifice to further their cause. As far as they’re concerned I’ll never be president again. I am a dead man walking. The minute any one of their supporters sees me they’ll kill me.”

“Not if we have anything to do with it,” Joe assured him.

“My friend, my dear friend, I’m not sure even a Joe Francis Kelly promise will get us out of this now.”

“What the hell has happened to you? Who was that grand wizard guy to do this to you?”

Thunderous applause broke out above them, quickly dying down when a gavel battered against the table above.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m proud to welcome the future of America. A future that will be safe in his hands for many, many years to come. A future that will see our ideals and power rise once again over mankind. It is thanks to your hard work, your belief in our ideals, that we have risen once again. Seventy years on from the depths of despair, our Fuhrer had a dream. He never let that dream die. It may have dulled but it never died. He cultivated that dream though us, his children, with total belief in our ability to deliver his dream. And today I give you—”

“A fucking nightmare!”

Joe recognized the voice. He turned, as did Mike, to where Clay had moments earlier been standing. He was as they both already knew, gone. A door to their right was open, revealing a staircase leading up to the ground floor. They both raced to the door, colliding with each other in their desperation to get to Clay.

Joe won and was almost at the top of the stairs when the first shot was fired.

Clay couldn’t listen any more. He crept to the door he assumed led upstairs and with the help of the droning voice from above managed to escape Joe’s and Mike’s security conscious reaches. He climbed the stairs and appeared next to a man with some type of equipment. He had no idea what he was doing but the look on the man’s face suggested he was most definitely not happy to see Clay.

Clay punched him once on the side of the head. It was a punch filled with so much anger and frustration the man was lucky it didn’t kill him. He fell to the floor very unconscious.

Clay looked out from behind the curtain that had obscured the technician and across the stage where the top table was situated. A group stood at the other side awaiting their introduction, a curtain obscuring them from the main body of the dining hall. He felt sick. The Baldwins were front and center, ready to accept their accolades. Beyond them was another group.

“Deliver his dream and today I give you…”

He couldn’t stomach it a second longer. The betrayal was complete. Clay had no idea how they had managed it. He stepped out onto the stage interrupting the speaker. “A fucking nightmare!” he said, staring into his wife’s eyes at the far end of the stage. Eric was by her side, a blonde woman excitedly clutching his arm.

Who were these people? He looked at the top table where the grand wizard sat staring at him, hatred in his eyes. Clay and his father-in-law had never really liked each other at the best of times.

Gasps filled the room until the first shot was fired and panic ensued.

Eric broke into a huge smile when they embraced in mid-air. He hadn’t been able to hold her like that for years. They had spent their childhood holidays together at Eric’s great grandfather’s house, the lake house a few miles away. Eric was, like his Aunt Val, a direct descendant of Hitler. He had been groomed from an early age for his ascendency to power. His charisma and ability to hold people in his rapture was, many believed, just like Hitler at the height of his power.

The lakeside retreat had become the training ground for the youth. All of the Lebensborn were monitored and controlled carefully. The indoctrination within their families was carefully monitored and strengthened at summer camps held each year within the grounds of Hitler’s secret retreat. Their summers were spent understanding the importance of their part to deliver a new Reich. Their individual dreams and ambitions had to be set aside for the greater cause. Like Chancellor John Carlyle, who dreamt of being a pilot, yet ultimately entered teaching to help deliver their new society when the time came.

With the help of the KKK providing fertile pure and American-born women for the Nazi seed to be propagated, the numbers, and with each generation their influence, grew as their children and their children’s children gained power and influence. Exactly as Hitler’s plan had called for. His dream was on the brink of reality. The men Hitler had escaped with carried more wealth than their plan would ever call for. Throughout the Nazis’ power, the looted gold and art that had had so many searching for the missing millions had been spent, invested in the conglomerates that would rebuild the world after the war. Tens of millions had become hundreds of millions, billions, and then hundreds of billions over the years, creating an organization with considerable power, all in the hands of Hitler’s son. Obviously no one knew his true identity other than those in the dining hall.

Elsa, or Elsa Leipzig, was Karl Leipzig’s daughter. It was as though she and Eric had been made for one another. They had been inseparable each summer. Exactly the same age and revered by other children, as only Hitler’s offspring were, they were seen as different from the other kids in the camp. It meant they spent their time together, time they very much enjoyed and looked forward to each year. They were related, and despite on paper Elsa being Eric’s aunt, the reality was very different. Karl and his sister had different mothers. The only blood they actually shared was Hitler’s - Eric’s great grandfather and Elsa’s grandfather. The joining of the two to make children in the future was not discouraged.

However, in order to win the election for lieutenant governor, it had been decided Eric needed a wife. A marriage of convenience had been arranged, a Latina wife garnered the Hispanic vote. It was never intended to last. Her pregnancy had been a mistake; the thought of Hitler’s seed breeding an Hispanic child was one none of them wished. Her life should have been taken in the attack at the governor’s mansion. The sympathy afterwards for Eric would have been overwhelming, but Elsa had failed. The guard had survived and would have been witness to her killing and Eric’s failure to save her. Instead, he had shown how capable he was. His selection as vice president had been masterminded brilliantly by Val, just enough hints and suggestions had planted the seed and with the impending elevation of the Baldwins, he really had no option.

Elsa had rid Eric of the burden of Maria, finally freeing them to be together. They’d take their time to announce it publicly, but privately among their own, they would have no concerns.

By the time Val opened the door, Eric had already disrobed Elsa. It had been many years since Val had seen what had been a young, pigtailed girl. The woman naked in her nephew’s arms was a very different proposition. Val had quickly reclosed the door.

“I take it you’re Elsa then?” she called through the door.

Ten minutes later, they were standing with huge grins on their faces waiting to be announced onto the top table. The shout from across the stage caught them all off guard. Eric was almost impressed at his Uncle Clay’s audacity. He reached for his pistol. It wasn’t there; then he remembered it was still on the bedside table.

A gunshot rang out. People began to run. Eric stayed where he was, Elsa by his side. Neither flinched or even considered running.

Ramona paced. She couldn’t believe there was nothing they could do. There had to be something they could do.
Something
. She racked her brain. There were thousands of soldiers around them. The vast majority were sure to be loyal to their president, they had to be. She looked at Amy tied up at the back of the aircraft, her gag still in place. Nobody wanted to hear anything the treasonous bitch had to say.

The helplessness wasn’t helping Ramona. She didn’t do helpless, she fixed things, she made things happen, she didn’t sit back and do helpless.

Ramona stalked to the back of the plane and ripped the gag from Amy’s mouth. A diatribe of hatred spewed out at Ramona, who was shocked at some of the words the angelic looking Amy was spouting. They were words she wouldn’t repeat, nor had heard for many years.

“They’re racists, you know. They’re cleansing the military of blacks, Hispanics. Give it a few more months and we’ll have an entirely white force,” Daryl concluded.

“Say what?” asked Ramona, her mind racing.

Daryl ran through what he had uncovered about the military and the FPS.

“Ramona gotta go now,” she announced, racing from the airplane.

“Something I said?” asked Daryl.

“No I think you’ll find it was her,” said Clara, motioning to Amy in the back.

Ramona found what she was looking for. It took her a while but finally she had her man.

“You can fly this thing?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Good. Now you get Ramona over to that island where the president is.”

“Ma’am, I’m sorry. That’s not possible, I don’t have clearance.”

“What’s your momma’s name?” she asked.

“Why’d you need my mother’s name?”

“So I know what to call her when I get the president to call and thank her for what you did for him.”

“You can get the president to call my mother?”

Ramona handed him her card and showed him her White House pass.

“Hold on,” she said, reaching out of the chopper and grabbing a soldier as he walked by. “You a Marine?”

“Army, Ma’am.”

“Many boys like you in your unit?”

“Like me?”

“Black, like him and me!”

“A few, Ma’am.”

“Good, you go round them up and bring them back here. Now don’t go telling any white boys what you’re doing, you hear me?”

The soldier looked at the pilot, he wore a captain’s uniform.

He nodded. “Do as she says.”

Five minutes later, he reappeared with eight men. “Get in, quick, we’re in a hurry,” Ramona barked. “When we land, any boys like you you find, you tell them to come with us! No white boys, you hear me? We stay clear of white boys.”

“Captain?” The soldier looked at the ranking officer.

He looked at Ramona.

“Son, this is so messed up even Ramona ain’t believing it’s happening but trust me, your president needs you more than you
will
ever and
can
probably ever know.”

“You heard the lady, our president needs us. That’s good enough for me!”

“Hooah!” came the cry from the rear.

“Well, get goin’!”

“You’re coming?”

“Are you gonna try stop me?”

By the time they reached the lodge they had swollen their number to twenty. Picking up soldiers and a couple of Special Forces on the way. Ramona made sure only those soldiers out of earshot of white soldiers were asked.

With the lodge ahead, she instructed them to load and lock.

“Lock and load, Ma’am,” a soldier corrected.

“Whatever,” she said.

Whether it was Ramona leading the group that freaked out the guard or just a large group of heavily armed black men walking towards a building almost entirely inhabited by KKK and Nazi racists, nobody would ever know. The moment he fired a warning shot all hell broke loose and the guard was the first of many fatalities. Ramona and her men had the cover of the darkness and the trees. The white guards protecting the lodge were standing like fools in the brightly lit open ground.