Captive-in-Chief (39 page)

Joe had Clay on the floor and was up with his M4 at the ready as Mike joined him. Dave followed seconds behind, his P90 sub machine gun at the ready.

Two men rushed towards Karl Leipzig. His close protection hadn’t been close enough. Joe and Mike both fired. The two body guards crashed to the floor.

“Give me a gun and get off of me!” shouted Clay. “You bastards aren’t having all the fun!”

Joe moved, allowing Clay up and tossed him a gun. Clay took aim. Another guard was trying to get to Leipzig. Clay took him down.

The four men worked as a perfect fire team. As targets arose, they shouted their intentions, identifying potential targets to each other. The guards in the hall had to worry about hitting their bosses. The four had no worries, they didn’t care who they shot in the hall. After what they had heard, they’d happily shoot every single person in there.

The gunfire outside intensified. The flow of people from the hall slowed dramatically when they discovered there was no way out. Someone was keeping the lodge contained.

Eric walked across the stage with a woman by his side. He was unarmed and had his hands out to prove it as he walked. Val was behind him, Charles Johnson, the president’s chief of staff didn’t follow, he turned and ran, hiding behind a curtain at the back of the stage.

“Don’t come any closer!” Joe warned when Eric reached halfway.

Mike and Dave were able to cover the rest of the hall. The majority of the guards were down.

“Or what? You’ll soot an unarmed man?”

“Yup,” said Joe. He pulled the trigger and Karl Leipzig crashed to the floor clutching his leg.

“What the hell?”

Joe saw the woman next to Eric move. He didn’t see what she had done but noticed a flash of movement. A yelp was his only notice that she had thrown a weapon when Sandy, who had reacted to her motion and had jumped in front of Joe and Clay, fell to floor. Joe didn’t look, he fired twice. The woman took both hits to the head. Eric fell next to her cradling her pulverized head.

“I’m covering you!” said Clay, allowing Joe to direct his attention to Sandy. Her eyes looked up at him, bright and alert. A small knife was buried in her rear end. The equivalent of a bullet in the ass. She was going to be fine.

Eric stood up, his hands drenched in blood from the love of his life. Joe stood to face him. Clay pushed him aside. “He’s mine.”

“You sure?”

Clay walked across the stage and squared up to Eric. Clay raised his pistol. Eric looked as though he was raising his hands to surrender. Clay pulled the trigger.

“Your bitch already tried that shit,” he said as Eric fell to the floor, the knife in his hand sliding across the floor to Val’s feet.

“Oh, please pick that up!” Clay challenged to the woman who had shattered his heart. She raised her hands very slowly.

“Charles, come out here before I shoot your sorry ass!” shouted Clay.

Ramona and her merry band of black soldiers burst into the dining hall having picked up Bobby and Alex on their way. They ordered everyone in the room to sit on the floor with their hands on their heads.

Ramona followed them in, looked up at the stage, and saw Clay holding a gun to Val.

“You have
got
to be shittin’ me! You white folks got some serious issues!”

Leipzig and the grand Wizard sang like canaries, certainly after ten minutes in a room with Joe. In reality, it probably only took two minutes, but Joe wasn’t going to let them off that easy. Just because they started talking didn’t mean he believed them. Another lesson from Uday. Joe had told him from the very first minute he had no idea when the ground offensive would start. He didn’t even know if there was going to be one. He had told the truth and Uday hadn’t believed him. Whether he wanted to or not was a different matter.

However, what Leipzig and the grand wizard divulged was the details of their master plan, which included the names, details, and skill sets of every member of their cause. Thousands of people across government—federal, state, and local, all at high levels and all with power and influence. The numbers were far fewer than expected. It was clear the positions were more critical than the numbers. The list of Secret Service agents likewise was less than expected but again, exceptionally well placed to ensure they had access to Clay at all times. In every area they had worked their way into the highest offices. It was an intricately detailed plan that had culminated in the week that would overthrow the government and change the landscape for their new dawn. They had codenamed it Blitzkrieg.

Clay had insisted he interrogate Val personally. His marriage had been a lie from the outset. She had known about Clara from his first meeting. She was Hitler’s granddaughter; her husband was watched. She had loved him when they first met, begged her father to allow him to be her husband, but that betrayal had consigned him to be used as her puppet. She’d advised him throughout his political career, assisting him in his choices for senior positions, placing their people where they wanted them. She smiled as she told him her final secret: Tess was his, Jack wasn’t. Jack was Lebensborn, pure Nazi. A tryst between herself and Ed Baldwin had produced what was a descendant of Hitler and Himmler. As it was, Tess was also a descendant of Hitler by virtue of Val’s heritage.

Clay left the room, his stomach wrenching at the vileness of the woman that had so roundly fooled him and he had loved with all his heart.

Nobody had heard her words, only him. Joe was there when he came out.

“She can never see our children again, ever. Her father and Ed Baldwin need to disappear.”

“What about the rest of them?”

“They wanted detention camps to detain citizens without charge. May as well let them enjoy their own doing. None of this can ever see the inside of a courtroom.”

“You think the courts will agree?”

“Oh, I know they will!” said Clay, knowing the chief justice would be more than happy to assist.

The funeral for the first lady, her father, and the vice president were held in private, a somber event held away from prying eyes. A tent was erected around the gravesites to protect the president and his children in their grief. Joe and his Force Recon Marines were the pallbearers. With only one actual body between the three coffins it was imperative nobody knew the truth, including the children. As far as they were concerned, their mother and grandfather really
had
died in a helicopter crash. In reality, they were housed in a highly secure facility where they would spend the rest of their lives in isolation. A number of implements to allow them to take their own lives were, at Clay’s insistence, always in their cells.

With no television, reading material, or anything to pass the time, it was not anticipated that Val, her father, or Ed Baldwin would last long. However, nobody wished to dirty their hands with their blood.

As they laid the empty coffins in the ground, Sandy limped over to Jack. Unsurprisingly, his mother’s death had hit him hardest. She laid her head on his lap. It was exactly what she would do for Joe. At times of his greatest pain she would make sure he knew she was there for him. Jack rested his hand on her head and his tears slowed a little. Although he didn’t smile, the frown that had lined his face eased slightly.

It had been almost three weeks since Joe’s last drink. He felt good. His nightmares were nowhere near what they used to be, he had friends back in his life, and most importantly, his best friend, a man he had always been honored to call his friend, was by his side.

When they left the graveyard, Joe walked by Clay’s side. Sandy was by Jack’s. She knew he needed her more than Joe did at that time.

“Do you mind if I do that thing now?”

Clay looked around. The country was back on the right track. He had already rewritten some of the laws they had forced him to change. The detention centers, certainly enough to house the Nazis for the rest of their lives, were staying. Everyone else had already been released. Sarah Myers, the FBI executive director had, with a special task force, rounded up almost ninety percent of Lebensborn, KKK, and Nazis. The rest were on the run and their days were numbered. The troop withdrawal had been halted, as had the illegal immigrant expulsion. The wall was still going up and Clay was going to do something about the illegals, just not so brutally. The gun laws and the war on drugs were areas he was going to mull over a little more.

“It really, in this day and age, isn’t necessary you know?”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“You know my chief of staff shouldn’t be deserting me in my greatest hour of need.”

“You know I really am not qualified for that role.”

“Can I trust you with my life and my family’s life?”

“Of course.”

“Then you’re qualified.”

“Ramona qualifies, and she’d be far better at it.”

“I’ve got another job in mind for her.” Clay smiled.

“So would you mind?”

“No. There’s a car waiting for you and the new 747’s just been delivered. You can be the first to try it out.”

Joe was already halfway to the car.

“How much was the bus ticket again?” Clay called after him.

“About a hundred bucks,” replied Joe.

“Jesus, we could wire it to her in one second. Do you know how much—”

Joe stopped and looked back to his friend with a grin. “It was a Joe Kelly promise.”

Hitler? What the...? I can hear some of you ask. When I started writing Captive-in-Chief, the perpetrators were always going be a Nazi/KKK collaboration, but I had no intention of involving Hitler in the mix. Argentina and surrounding countries did, without a doubt, harbor a number of senior Nazis after the war; of that there is no doubt and plenty of evidence. However, it was only whilst researching that I realized just how tenuous the evidence for Hitler’s demise in those final few days of the war actually is.

In Hitler we have the greatest villain to have ever walked our planet, a man responsible for tens of millions of deaths and destruction beyond comprehension. A man who we are told shot himself and his wife, and whose bodies were placed in a bomb crater, covered in petrol and burned. All this, of course, sounds perfectly feasible and understandable - he had lost the war and didn’t want to be captured, so he fell on his sword.

The problem begins when you begin to look at the evidence. There is no physical evidence. The body was allegedly removed by the Russians, yet Stalin claimed for years afterwards that Hitler escaped. The remains that were removed were recently analyzed. Hitler’s skull was found to be that of a woman in her forties! We have the eye witness statements of those who found him and Eva Braun. Nobody actually witnessed the suicide, they heard the shots and then discovered the bodies. So there were witnesses, you say. Yes, his closest aides and confidants, those he trusted above all others to share his bunker, aides and confidants who were the architects of the greatest propaganda campaign in the history of the world. They were the men and women who had helped convince a highly educated and intelligent nation that Jews were less than human and should be eradicated! These are men and women who would have given their lives for their Fuhrer. And let’s not forget Hitler had numerous doubles.

Hitler’s cowardly suicide was a convenient end to the war. With him dead, the world breathed a sigh of relief. It was over, the villain was dead. Six long hard, devastating and costly years were over with that one death. The world could move on, the allies could declare victory. The war was over. Of course it wasn’t just the Nazis that had a propaganda machine, everyone did. There were no losers in the acceptance of his death.

Hitler’s death was a death with no evidence other than the words of those people closest to him who believed vehemently in everything he stood for. How do we know the greatest villain in the world killed himself? Because the greatest villains in the world told us so. That is the extent of the evidence that Adolf Hitler, a man with numerous doubles, killed himself.

I’ll leave you with that thought and really do hope you enjoyed Captive-in-Chief.

Murray