The Founders Read online

  THE FOUNDERS

  A PROJECT GAUNTLET MISSION

  RICHARD TURNER

  Copyright 2018© Richard Turner

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the authors.

  Smashwords Edition

  Table of Contents

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  1

  May 12, 1945

  Canary Islands, Atlantic Ocean

  Captain Bulow looked out over the ink-black water of the Atlantic and checked his watch for the tenth time in the last few minutes. His contact was late. Bulow slammed his hand on the railing and swore. He took one last drag on his cigarette before tossing it over the side of his ship. A veteran of two wars, Bulow had spent his entire life at sea.

  At just over one hundred and seventy meters in length, the German supply ship, Katzbach, was one of several German naval vessels that had yet to surrender to the victorious Allied forces. On this night, her lights were off. She was a darkened silhouette floating on a still, black ocean. The light from a quarter moon shone through a break in the clouds and shimmered off the water.

  Bulow was about to return to the ship’s bridge when he heard something that reminded him of a whale breaching the surface. He grabbed his binoculars and looked out into the dark. Bulow grinned when the conning tower of a U-boat rose out of the depths. It could only be the vessel they were waiting to resupply.

  “All hands, stand to and prepare to offload our supplies!” called out Bulow.

  The quiet ship sprang to life as dozens of sailors ran to their duty stations. Thick, black smoke belched from the engines of the two cranes on the port side of the vessel as they were put to work. Supplies bundled up in nets were hurriedly attached to the cranes’ sturdy metal hooks and winched up in the air.

  On the side of the ship, a strong rope ladder uncoiled as it fell to the water’s edge. Bulow waited until the submarine was alongside his ship before he climbed down onto the hull of the U-boat. Bulow recognized the vessel as a type IXC, a large, ocean-going submarine that could operate far from its home base for extended periods of time. Bulow thought it odd that the vessel’s identification number, usually painted on the conning tower, had been scrubbed off.

  A man wearing a crumpled, white officer’s cap climbed down from the tower and strode toward Bulow. The officer wore a dirty, homemade sweater and had a scraggly, black beard on his narrow face. He didn’t look to be more than twenty-five years old.

  “Captain Bulow?” said the officer, offering his hand in greeting.

  “That’s correct,” replied Bulow, energetically shaking the younger man’s hand. He detected a hint of a foreign accent in the man’s voice but couldn’t put his finger on it. He looked around the submarine. “This is a fine-looking boat you have here. You know, I don’t believe I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting you before, Herr Captain?”

  “My name is of no consequence to you,” replied the officer, pulling his hand away. “In fact, it would do you and your men well to forget that we ever met.”

  A shiver ran down Bulow’s spine. In all his years at sea, this was the first time anyone had ever spoken to him so rudely.

  The young captain removed his cap and ran a hand through his greasy, unkempt hair. “My God, it’s good to be up on deck breathing in cool, clean air. Have you seen or heard anything from the Allied forces patrolling these waters?”

  “No,” said Bulow, feeling more uncomfortable the longer he was around the man. “We haven’t seen an Allied plane or ship in the past three days.”

  “That’s good, because they were as thick as fleas off the Azores. We had to skirt several American patrols to avoid being detected. In case you’re wondering, that’s why we’re late.”

  Bulow cleared his throat. “Herr Captain, have you heard the news?”

  “Is it about the Führer?”

  “Yes,” Bulow’s voice quivered. “He’s dead, and his successor, Grand Admiral Dönitz, surrendered all of Germany to the Allies only a few days ago. The war is over. I can’t believe it. We’ve lost, again.”

  “Hardly a surprise, but we’ve been submerged almost the whole way from Peenemünde to here. The war looked lost to me when the Red Army swarmed onto the base. We were lucky to escape when we did.”

  Bulow couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He clenched his fists by his sides. The U-boat captain didn’t seem to care that the man who had brought Germany out of the crippling depression and was going to lead them to a glorious, thousand-year Reich was dead. No wonder they had lost the war with men like that on their side.

  “How long will it take you to refuel and resupply my vessel?” asked the U-boat captain abruptly.

  “If your men are ready to receive the supplies, it shouldn’t take more than an hour.”

  “That’s too long. Speed it up. I want to be on my way forty minutes from now.”

  Bulow had about just enough of the man’s impertinence. “Listen here! I’m a veteran from the last war. I don’t know what makes you believe you have the right to boss me around. Keep in mind, Herr Captain, that I’m risking my neck out here just like you, and I’d appreciate some respect.”

  The young captain patted Bulow on the shoulder. “You’re right. I apologize. I can come across as a bit too aloof and pushy at times, but I can assure you everything that we are doing now is being done to ensure our great nation’s future.”

  “What future? While we speak our country is probably being carved up by the Allies. I can just imagine the atrocities the Bolsheviks are inflicting upon the poor women and children trapped in their zone. Even you have to agree that Germany has no future.”

  “Who said anything about Germany?” said the submarine commander. “Now, Captain Bulow, where are the passengers you were supposed to bring for me?”

  Bulow paused. “This matter makes me uncomfortable. Are you sure this is the right thing to do?”

  “Just do as you are ordered, Captain. Whether it is the right thing to do or not has already been decided.”

  The old mariner walked to the side of his ship and called out, “Send them down.” He fumed in silence while the twenty youths wearing black coveralls obediently climbed down the ladder and smartly formed up into two lines on the deck of the U-boat. They were all girls between sixteen and eighteen years of age.

  The submarine commander gave the youths a quick once-over before pulling one of
his men aside and ordering him to escort the teens below deck.

  Bulow shook his head as the youths scampered eagerly down into the cramped interior of the U-boat. He kept telling himself over and over that everything he did was for the good of his country. Deciding he had seen enough, Bulow turned and made his way to the aft section of the submarine to supervise the off-loading of the supplies. Thirty-eight minutes later, Bulow waited in line with his men to climb back onto his ship.

  The enigmatic U-boat captain placed a hand on his left arm and looked into the captain’s weathered face. “Herr Bulow, you and your men have exceeded my expectations, and for that I thank you.”

  “Our pleasure,” replied Bulow, eyeing the empty ladder.

  “Where to now?”

  “My orders dictate that I’m to surrender to the Allies in the Azores. I’d rather not, but we all have our orders to follow.”

  “That we do. Good luck, Captain.”

  “You too,” said Bulow. He clicked his heels together and gave the submarine captain the stiff-armed Nazi salute.

  The young officer smiled and brought his right hand to the brim of his cap. “Goodbye, Herr Bulow.”

  Bulow dropped his arm and scurried up the ladder. When his feet touched the deck, he let out a disgusted sigh. Once he had been interrogated by the Allies and repatriated back to Germany, he intended to track down the men from the top secret Odessa Group, who had sent him on this final mission of the war, and give them a piece of his mind. What galled him the most was the fact that the officer in charge of the U-boat wasn’t a true believer like he was. The man barely had any military pretensions. All Bulow wanted now was a couple of stiff drinks of schnapps to erase the arrogant youth from his mind. He made his way to the bridge and found his executive officer intently watching the U-boat as it sailed away from their ship.

  “How did things go, Captain?” asked the XO, a fat man with a thick, gray goatee on his round face.

  “Fine, I suppose,” replied Bulow. “We’ve done our last duty for the Fatherland. It’s time for us to set a course for the Azores.”

  “Very good, sir. When do you want to get underway?”

  “Our orders are to remain in place a full hour after the submarine has departed, just in case there are any Allied ships in the area. If they pick either vessel up on their radar and come to investigate, they’ll only find us and not the U-boat.”

  “A clever ploy,” noted the XO.

  “Yes, I thought so, too.”

  “Herr Captain, portside!” a deckhand called out, fear in his voice.

  Bulow picked up his binoculars, dashed outside, and looked out over the water. It took him a few seconds to find what had startled the sailor. His stomach dropped when he spotted the wake from four torpedoes as they sped toward his ship. Each projectile carried a two-hundred-and-eighty-kilogram explosive warhead. One alone was more than enough to sink the Katzbach. Bulow clenched his jaw. He and his crew had been set up. A heartbeat later, the first torpedo struck his ship’s fuel storage compartment, turning the vessel into a blazing inferno.

  2

  North Africa – Present day

  Like a thief in the night, a small, special-operations MH-6 helicopter flew over the rugged terrain of the Tibesti Mountain range. In the cockpit, the pilot and co-pilot watched the world speed past in various hues of green through their night-vision goggles. Flying nap of the earth, the pilot kept his craft just above the jagged rocks as they sped toward a prominent, rocky plateau just inside the Libyan border. Less than a minute later, the hill loomed large. Without slowing down, the pilot waited until the last possible second before pulling back on the cyclic stick and racing up over the top of the plateau. He rapidly decelerated and brought his helicopter down until the skids nearly touched the rock. From either side of the chopper, armed men leaped to the ground, dropped to one knee, and brought up his weapon. With a quick wave at the men, the pilot applied power to the engine and kept on moving forward. Within seconds, it was on its way back to the staging area in Chad.

  Captain David Grant watched the helicopter depart before checking his location on the GPS built into his watch. He, like his partner, Sergeant James Maclean, was wearing state-of-the-art NVGs affixed to the front of his Kevlar helmet. For protection, both men carried M4s with laser designators on the top rail of the carbines’ forestock and a pair of holstered 9mm Glock pistols, one on each leg. Their MultiCam uniforms helped them blend in with the local terrain.

  “Okay, the opening you are looking for should be about seventy meters in front of you.” Professor Jeremy Hayes’ voice came through both men’s earpieces. A small camera on the side of the soldiers’ helmets let Hayes and Elena Leon see what was going on in real time at the mission’s command center in Chad.

  Grant tapped Maclean on the shoulder. They sprinted toward the chasm and stopped just short of the hole so they could look inside.

  “Looks bloody deep and dark down there,” remarked Maclean, peering into the abyss.

  “Jeremy said satellite scans of the hole say it’s no more than thirty-five meters to the bottom,” said Grant as he snapped, shook, and dropped a couple of glowsticks into the cavern.

  “That’s correct, Captain. The last sweep by our satellite confirmed the depth,” said Hayes.

  Maclean removed the rope from his shoulder and laid it on the ground. “I hope he’s right, as I’d hate to come up a few meters short.”

  As quietly as they could, the two men secured the rope to the rock with a piton before throwing the rest down into the opening. Grant slipped his rappelling harness over his uniform and then fed the rope through a carabiner. He walked to the edge of the hole, turned around, and walked back until he was ready to begin his descent.

  “See you in a minute,” said Maclean.

  Grant nodded, bent his knees, and pushed off. He dropped into the abyss until he was two meters from the bottom then smoothly stopped his fall with his right hand. Grant dropped to the cavern floor and fed the rest of the rope through his carabiner before stepping back so Maclean could come down.

  The world inside the cave was dimly lit. Grant snapped a couple more glowsticks and tossed them as far as he could to help light up the cavern. Behind him, Maclean slid down the rope, landing neatly at the bottom. Once he’d detached himself from the rope, he removed a scanning device from his tactical vest.

  “Radiation levels are normal,” reported Maclean.

  “That’s always a good sign,” said Grant, checking the cave for thermal signatures. “Looks like we’re alone down here.”

  “Any sign of the device?”

  Grant shook his head. “It has to be near the opening, as our satellite was picking up readings from it until an hour before we deployed. Let’s spread out and search the cavern.”

  Both men slung their weapons, flipped up their NVGs, and switched on their flashlights. Animal bones littered the cave floor. Their remains crunched in a grisly fashion underfoot as the men looked for the missing drone.

  Grant’s flashlight beam lit up a metallic surface. “Jim, over here. I think I’ve found it.” Grant ran over and looked down at the soccer-ball-sized object. It looked to be in rough shape. Some of the outer surface looked burnt from where an air-to-air, heat-seeking missile had struck it.

  Maclean stopped next to his friend and shone his light over the drone. “Uh…Dave, I don’t think it’s out of commission.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look closely at the crispy bits of the probe. They look like they’re vibrating.”

  Grant got down on one knee to examine the ball. His friend was right. The damaged parts seemed to be moving ever so slightly. He decided to ask his colleagues back in Chad what they thought. “Folks, what do you make of this?”

  Hayes replied. “On our thermal-imaging screen, it looks like there are swarms of nanobots working just below the surface. It’s amazing! Elena and I think it’s trying to repair itself.”

  “Bloody hell,” muttered Ma
clean. “It’s not hazardous to us, is it?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” replied Elena. “It probably doesn’t even know you’re there.”

  “Okay, we’ve found it. Time to send in the extraction team, Colonel,” said Grant.

  “Roger that,” said Colonel Andrews, Project Gauntlet’s team leader. “ETA to your location is five minutes.”

  “Copy that, we’ll mark our position with a strobe,” responded Grant.

  “I’ll do it,” said Maclean, extracting an infrared strobe light from a pouch on his vest and tossing it directly under the opening. Invisible to the naked eye, the marker shone brightly to anyone wearing NVGs.

  Grant stood and checked the time. He smiled; they were five minutes ahead of schedule. The sound of an animal making its way over the field of bones sent a shiver down Grant’s back. After what had happened in Alaska, he had grown more than a bit paranoid about odd noises in the dark. He lowered his NVGs and tried to find the creature. Grant slowly turned around in a circle, squinting against the bright pools of light from the glowsticks. He was about to give up when a barely visible, ghost-like figure moved between a couple of tall rocks. The hair on the back of his neck stood straight up. He recalled a conversation he’d had with Jeremy Hayes about how a person in a stealth suit would appear.

  A red dot appeared out of the dark on Grant’s chest. He saw it and broke out in a cold sweat.

  “Gentlemen, raise your hands ever so slowly, and do not attempt to communicate with your headquarters, or you will be shot,” warned a man with a Slavic accent.

  Maclean swore loudly and lashed out, kicking a rock.

  Grant did as he was told, keeping his head as straight as possible, hoping that his comrades back in Chad would see what was going on though his helmet camera. A second later, his NVGs went dead.

  A hand reached out and flipped them up for him. Grant ground his teeth when he discovered that the man was dressed identically to those who had murdered his friends in Iraq and the Russian and American SOF operators in Georgia. A formfitting suit covered the man’s body. A darkened glass plate on his helmet hid the man’s face.