Shadow Warrior: Destiny of a Mutant (28 page)

After they ate, they held hands as they walked into the nearby woods.

“Will, I have come to a decision,” she said.

“What have you decided?”

“I’ve decided that although I love you, I cannot go with you. I’m sorry. Everything you said. Everything I saw. It‘s just too much.” Tears fell from her eyes, and she turned away from Will. Tears fell from Will’s eyes as well.

Will went to her and held her in his arms.

“Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me. I will never forget our time together,” she said.

Will said nothing, he just held her tighter.
Unfortunately, you will forget some of it.

***

The next morning the entire family got up to see Will off. After a hearty breakfast, Elizabeth fixed Will a basket of bread, cheese and fruit to take with him on his journey. Will put the basket of food in a canvass sack that he then put on his back.

While they were eating breakfast, one of the servants had saddled a horse for Will to ride and left him tied up near the front of the house.

“I won’t be needing the horse, my brother. I think a walk will do me good.”

“But, it’s several miles to the docks in Ravenglass to board your ship, Will. What if I ride with you and then bring the horse back with me?”

“No, Edward. It is appreciated, but it will not be necessary. I shall enjoy the fresh air.”

“Have it your way then, my brother,” Edward said sadly.

Will hugged Elizabeth goodbye. “I’m sorry that it didn’t work out with Hanna,” she whispered in his ear.

“So am I. She decided that moving to Asia just wasn’t for her, especially when I travel so much,” Will said.

Before parting from Hanna the night before, Will had erased Hanna’s memories of his secret and their jaunt in his cruiser. With the help of one of his Altrusian devices, he gave her a post-hypnotic suggestion that would allow her to remember their time together, up to the point he revealed his secret, but with a different ending. She would believe that she had decided not to follow Will to Asia, partly because she wanted to have children, which Will could not have, and because he traveled so much.

Will then hugged everyone else goodbye and started off walking towards Ravenglass. With tears in their eyes, they waved a final farewell to Will.

As Will disappeared out of sight of the house, his niece and nephew had other plans.

“Emily, let’s follow Uncle Will as far as we can so we can tell him goodbye again. We‘ll run through the woods and then jump out and surprise him in a few minutes.”

“Yes. Let’s do that shall we? It will be fun.”

Emily and Miles then took off running through the woods, paralleling Will’s path through the woods.

After a few minutes, they had gotten ahead of Will and lay in wait in the wood line to surprise him. They only waited a few minutes until they saw Will coming down the path. They were just about to jump out when Will started looking around to see if anyone was near. The next thing they saw was Will morph into his Guardian uniform, leap into the air, and fly towards the sun! In a few seconds, he had flown completely out of sight.

Emily and Miles looked at each other and were both in shock.

“Di…did you see that, Emily?”

“Good Lord, Uncle Will just flew into the sky like an angel!”

“We’ve got to go back and tell Mother and Father!”

“Yes! Let’s go!”

Emily and Miles then started running as fast as they could back to the house. They arrived to find their parents had taken a walk, and only their grandmother was in the living room.

“Children, what is wrong?” asked their grandmother.

“Grandmother! It was Uncle Will! We saw him change into a black suit and fly up into the sky like an angel!” said Miles.

“Yes, like an angel!” echoed Emily.

Their grandmother looked a little taken aback by this news, but did not doubt what they had seen.

“Now children, I’m sure the light was playing tricks on your eyes. No one can fly like an angel, except for an angel of course.”

“Then Uncle Will must be an angel, because we know what we saw,” Miles insisted.

Their grandmother knew that if this story got repeated, it could mean bad things for their family. She thought for a minute, and then spoke again.

“Listen children, I have something important to tell you.”

Their grandmother lowered her voice conspiratorially, and motioned for the children to come closer to her so they could hear what she was going to say.

“Your Uncle Will is such a good man that God gave him the powers of an angel so he could help people. But, you cannot tell anyone about this - not even your parents. It has to be our little secret. If you ever told this to anyone else, bad people might try to hurt our family because they wouldn’t understand. And your uncle would lose his powers and not be able to help anyone else.”

Emily and Miles looked at each other in shock at their grandmother’s admission.

“You mean he really did fly away like we said?” asked Emily.

“Yes, my child. He did,” said their grandmother.

“Alright then. This shall be our little secret,” Miles said with a sly smile.

Their grandmother then gathered them in her arms and hugged them fiercely.

Goodbye, my son. May God bless and protect you, wherever you are
, she thought.

***

Within a few seconds Will had reached his ship, which was still in orbit fifty miles above the earth.

As he entered the cockpit, he entered the coordinates that would take him along the same path to Saturn, where he would then open another wormhole for his journey back to Altrusia.

Will took one long last look back at his home planet and the bright yellow sun that hung in the sky like a golden orb, and then sped off towards Saturn and his adopted home. Somehow he knew this would be the last time he would ever see his family alive again. He also hoped that Hanna would one day find happiness and forget about him.

The White House

Oval Office

1943 A.D.

The private line on the President’s desk rang, startling the president who was deep in thought.
What now?
he wondered.

“Yes?” he said as he answered the line. “Put him through please,” the president told his secretary.

As the president listened to the caller, he turned pale. At the end of the call, he said, “Thank you for letting me know, Admiral.”

As he hung up, he reached in his desk for a bottle of aspirin, popped two of them in his mouth and dry swallowed them. The news regarding the attack on the convoy by the German U-boat had disturbed him deeply.

He then reached for the same private line and when the White House operator picked up he said, “Get me General Bolte down at Fort Benning in Georgia, immediately!”

Fort Benning, Georgia

Will and his team had just finished their last jump of the day. Will was pleased with the progress the team had made in such a short time. As they landed and their chutes repacked themselves, a corporal in a Jeep came screaming up next to the hangar where Will and his team were getting their gear squared away.

The corporal got out of the Jeep and ran towards Will’s group.

“I’m looking for Colonel Clark,” said the 19 year old corporal.

“I’m Colonel Clark, Corporal.”

The corporal saluted. “I have a message for you, sir. Your eyes only, sir,” he said, handing Will a manila envelope with the words ‘TOP SECRET: EYES ONLY - COLONEL WILLIAM CLARK’ stamped across the front and back in large bold letters.

Will returned the salute, took the package and dismissed the corporal, who re-entered his Jeep and sped off of the tarmac. Will opened the envelope and read its contents. It was a message from the president telling him cryptically about the alien weapon being used against the Allied convoy in the North Sea, and that Will and his team would need to push up their timetable for deployment.

Damn, they had better ready for this.

“Gentlemen, I have some bad news.” Will told them about the attack on the convoy by the Nazi submarine. “I had hoped to give you gentlemen a day off and do our final briefing tomorrow, but it looks like we’ll be heading out sooner than expected for our mission. Let’s finish stowing this gear and head back to camp. After dinner we need to do our final briefing, and I have some additional gear to give you.”

Final Preparations

After dinner, the team met inside of Will’s tent. Against one of the tent walls several boxes were stacked two high with each of his men‘s names on them. Will instructed them to open the boxes and inspect the new gear. Inside were used German uniforms, with ranks from corporal to colonel. Included with each was a real German
Wehrpass
identification and individual service record card that identified them as part of an SS detachment.

“Memorize the names on those identification cards, gentlemen. We used your real dates of birth, height, weight, etcetera, to make it easier for you remember. Those of you with German first names will keep your names, but you will have different last names. Unfortunately Sergeant,” Will said addressing Serrano, “’Jaime Serrano,’ doesn’t sound very German, so you are now ‘Hans Gorman.’”

This elicited a round of smiles and a few chuckles.

“
Jawohl, Herr Standartenführer,”
said Serrano with a smile, while clicking his heels together and bowing his head slightly in Will‘s direction.

“So what’s the plan, sir?” asked Hauser.

Will went to the chalkboard he had in his tent and began to talk and illustrate as needed and referred to a map of the area around the
Eyrie
as well.

“The basic plan is fairly simple. We will parachute into Germany at a point approximately ten miles west of our destination. To save time, we will wear our German uniforms under our insulated jumpsuits. Once we land, we will have a German staff car and a transport truck at our disposal, which will be provided by the local Underground. It will be here at this point,” he said, pointing to a position the map.

“Brunner, Wakefield and Becker will travel to this point on the east side of the mountain,” Will said, indicating the point on the map he was referring to, “scale it and take out any sentries or snipers they encounter, and then make their way westward to the front entrance of the
Eyrie
. From there they will continue pushing forward until they link up with Schultz, who will be dropped off here,” he pointed to a third location, ”as we are approaching the road to the facility, and wait for us to pick them up.” Will then gave them the map coordinates as well.

“We will then drive to the secret location where they are keeping the aliens, and I will present their commanding officer with a letter signed by the
Führer
himself authorizing them to release the aliens into my custody. If all goes according to plan, we should be in and out with the aliens within an hour after arriving at the location. We will then pick up our four comrades and rendezvous with the plane to extract us at a clandestine airfield ten miles south of the town of Füssen.” Will pointed to a fourth location on the map.

“And if things go to shit, sir?” asked Hauser.

“Then we go to plan ‘B.’” said Will.

“What is plan ‘B,’ sir,” asked Schechter.

“I’ll let you know as soon as I come up with one,” said Will, without smiling.

“What happens if the Germans try to contact Berlin to see if we’re legit?” asked Hess.

“We’ll monitor their communications, and Schultz will intercept any calls out to Berlin. All incoming calls will be blocked while we are inside of the facility. Schultz will give them the verbal confirmation they need to release the prisoners to my custody.”

“Who are you going to tell them you are, sir?” asked Hammond.

“I will be
SS Obergruppenführer Wilhelm Hoffmeier,
the new commanding general in charge of the alien interrogations.”

“What about the alien spacecraft, Colonel?” asked Hauser. “I mean, doesn’t Washington want us to bring it back somehow?”

“Yes, Captain. You are correct…that is what Washington wants to happen.”

“But, how do they think we can pull that off, sir?”

“Let me worry about that, Captain.”

“Yes, sir.” Hauser didn’t question Will; he had learned his lesson about doing that.

“Also,” Will continued, “at some point we are going to destroy the facility where they are keeping the aliens as well. I have some special explosives that will take care of that when the time comes. That duty will fall to my two explosives experts, Hess and Hammond.”

After some final instructions, he went through a briefback with his men where they explained to him what their individual roles would be. Will then sent his men off to bed, except for Hess and Hammond. Will then brought out some plastic explosives, which he identified as C-2, a precursor to C-4, and spent the next several minutes showing them how to set the timer and detonators. Later, on board the plane, he would give them something a little more powerful that would be used to destroy the Nazi facility.

Afterwards he dismissed them, and then at hyper-speed, he stowed his gear and came up with his own plan ‘B.’