Jeremy Robinson - SecondWorld

“Find Ensign Partin. Tell him I need two F-22 Raptors and two F/A-18s fueled and ready to leave the second this storm lets up.”

The man nodded and left.

Miller looked back to Vesely. “Go find our pilots. Bring them to me.”

“Is fun to see you in action, Survivor,” Vesely said with a grin, and then went in search of the pilots. Satisfied that the three men would follow his orders, Miller headed for the bridge, and when he got there, he cranked up the heat.

The storm let up three hours later, just as the black sky turned a dark hue of purple. The sun would rise slowly, peek over the horizon for a few hours, and then begin its slow descent. But Miller planned to be in an entirely different hemisphere by the time that happened.

His wounds had been expertly attended to. His body temperature had been brought back up. He’d received two IV fluid bags and a bag of blood to replace the amount he’d lost—it wasn’t a dangerous amount thanks to Vesely’s stitching, but his body would tire more quickly if it was fighting to restore his blood supply while he was in the field. The stitches were tight and dressed properly. He’d been given some heavy-hitting antibiotics to fight off any potential infections and took eight hundred milligrams of ibuprofen along with six hundred milligrams of acetaminophen for the pain. His stomach would be spared discomfort because he’d eaten a lot of food with the drugs, but his liver would be working overtime. He had the same dosage in his pocket and would take the drugs again before landing. But even with the high double dose, the pain would merely be dulled, and only for a few hours. After that, pain would consume his body.

After learning what Miller was up against, the medic had given him a small vacuum-sealed preloaded syringe of morphine. “It might make you a little loopy,” she’d said, “but it will keep you in the fight if the pain gets too bad.”

To stay awake he’d been given a pack of caffeine gum, which the medic wouldn’t normally recommend, given his condition, but knew he’d be going back into the fight with or without it, and she’d managed to talk him out of the strong caffeine pills. He’d burned through half of the gum already and cut himself off when the storm began slowing. He didn’t want to be fidgety while sitting in the backseat of an F/A-18. He could chew the rest when they got nearer to their destination—which had been the subject of debate for the past hour.

Miller wanted to kick in the front door, guns blazing. But Vesely had put the kibosh on that idea. Dulce was an underground base, mostly likely designed to survive a nuclear assault. A direct hit might do them in, but short of that, the base could very well be locked up tight—at the ground level, which was little more than a group of faux buildings anyway.

Vesely believed Los Alamos and its fabled underground high-speed rail to be the best entry route. With both facilities likely under the enemy’s control, he thought the rail would be up and running. They would go in quietly. Covert. No guns blazing. No doors kicked in. No trail of dead neo-Nazis. The plan did little to sate Miller’s anger at being duped by Brodeur, the kidnapping of Adler, and the murders of millions of people. But he ultimately agreed.

Miller went over the plan in his head one more time while the F/A-18’s canopy closed over him and the pilot. There was a lot of guesswork involved, despite the intel they’d gathered at the Antarctic base, but it was the best they could do. And since the skeleton crew of the George Washington had not yet discovered how their long-range communications were being jammed, they were on their own. An ex-Navy SEAL. A Czech conspiracy theorist/wanna-be cowboy. Two F/A-18s. Two F-22s. And four pilots. They were all that stood in the way of the rise of the Fourth Reich.

“Hey, Cowboy,” Miller said into his headset. They’d be using code names from here on out. Vesely named the pilots White Horse, Red Horse, Black Horse, and Pale Horse after the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The Pale Horse brought Death, and he sent his victims to Hades. Miller understood the analogy and appreciated it because the Pale Horse was his pilot, and it carried him. He was Death and had every intention of sending the men he killed to Hell.

“I’m here, Survivor,” Vesely said. He was in another F/A-18 waiting for Miller’s to take off.

“Just wanted to say I appreciate everything you’ve done,” Miller said. “Thought I should say it now in case one or both of us die.”

He heard Vesely laugh for a moment. “Two things, Survivor. One, you need to work on motivational speeches. Watch locker room speech from Any Given Sunday. Will help. Two, you are Death now. Riding on Pale Horse. Leave emotions on boat. It does not matter if I die. Only thing that matters is that our enemies die. That we stop the red sky. ‘When Lamb opened fourth seal, I heard voice of fourth living creature say, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over fourth of earth to kill by sword, famine, and plague, and by wild beasts of the earth.’ We are wild beasts, Survivor. We are sword. Plague. Is time to slay our enemies.”

Miller grinned, gave his pilot’s helmet a tap, and said, “You heard the man, Pale Horse; is time to go.”

Engines roared. Adrenaline pumped into Miller’s body as the F/A-18 rocketed across the George Washington ’s deck. G-forces pinned him to his seat as they tilted up toward the now blue sky and accelerated toward Mach 1.8. He heard Vesely cheer as his F/A-18 followed close behind. A moment later, the two F-22s followed.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were airborne.

Despite the distance from the George Washington to United States airspace over southern Texas being a 6,600-mile, five-and-a-half-hour flight, there was no time to rest. While Miller and Vesely discussed various aspects of their not-so-perfect plan, the pilots arranged for refueling flights en route. Miller kept expecting to be attacked as they reached out to every air base on the way, but they were left alone. Perhaps they flew unhindered because two F/A-18 Hornets and two F-22 Raptors would be a losing fight for anyone not flying similar aircraft, but Miller didn’t think so. With Huber’s five-day time limit just twenty-four hours away, the remaining Nazi elements embedded in the military would be seeking shelter.

They passed over Texas in what felt like just minutes, the whole state sliding beneath them as a beige blur. Three hundred miles from their target, the two F/A-18 Hornets reduced speed and dropped down to one hundred feet, hugging the ground. While it would be hard to escape any radar systems protecting Los Alamos forever, they could get lost in the ground clutter—buildings, trees, hills, and mountains—for as long as possible. The two F-22s, with their transponders switched off, were invisible to detection and remained at a higher altitude.

As Pale Horse guided the jet across the terrain, Miller took the second megadose of ibuprofen and acetaminophen. His immobilized body had grown stiff, and would ache like a bastard when he started moving again. Even more when the fighting started. He followed the pain relievers with six sticks of caffeine gum. The stimulant would wake him up, but also rush the pain medication into his system. It was far from a perfect solution—like duct tape on a submarine leak—but if it kept him going for the next few hours, it might be enough.