William Dietrich - Blood of the Reich

“I’ll jam my mitten into the crack here to brace myself. I’ll be like a root in this cliff. Hold on to my pack and squeeze by.” There was another flicker and a faint sound of engine noise. The biplane again. “Hurry!”

One by one they crept around him, clutching his pack, trembling at the strain, and then continued sidling on the narrow trail, creeping toward where it widened to a shelf in what must be a valley. Muller, Kranz, Diels, Keyuri…

Eckells was last.

The Nazi cameraman was exhausted. The movie camera and tripod were awkward and unbalancing. He grabbed Raeder’s pack, began moving around, and hesitated, his limbs shaking from exhaustion. His gear was hauling him backward. A foot slipped, and he leaned out over the river.

“Franz, don’t stop! Move, move!”

Eckells began to flail.

“Franz, you’re pulling me loose! We’ll go into the river!”

The cameraman’s eyes widened as he panicked. He tried to make a sound, but nothing came out. All he could sense was the water below.

“Franz, you’re peeling me off the cliff! Let go!”

Eckells clung tighter. Raeder began to lose his own grip.

So the Untersturmfuhrer stomped on the cameraman’s instep, the pain causing Eckells to release his grip in surprise. His mouth formed an O of pain and shock.

Then he was falling.

There was a splash and Eckells was gone in an instant, a dark form flashing down the racing sluice of a river, sinking from the weight of his own pack. In less time than it took to drown he would reach the falls.

And then it was as if their companion had never existed at all.

Raeder slammed himself back into the protection of the cliff.

The others froze, horror-struck. All were in front of their leader now, staring back.

Raeder took a breath, cursing, and then ignored them. He slung off his pack, put it on the slippery ledge, and hauled out some explosive.

“Kurt!” Muller yelled in alarm. “What are you doing?”

The zoologist jammed dynamite into the crevice he’d just clung to. There was no way to wire a detonator. He fumbled for a lighter and lit a fuse. “Sending the American a message!” he called. “No army can follow!”

“Kurt, no!”

“Silence!” He began following the others, facing forward on the trail to make better speed, ignoring the torrent below as he tottered. The fuse was burning. “Go, go, if you don’t want us all to be blown off the cliff!”

“But how are we going to get back?” Diels shouted.

“By finding Shambhala and a new kind of power!” the German roared.

“You’re a madman!” Muller cried.

“And you’re dead if you don’t move!”

Keyuri put her hand on Muller’s arm. “It’s all right,” she whispered.

Muller stared at her. What did she mean?

“Soon it will all be over.”

She’s a witch, the geophysicist thought. We’re doomed.

They crept on as fast as they dared, trying to put distance between them and the explosive.

It went off like a clap of thunder, the shock wave nearly shaking them off. Rock blew out from their side of the canyon to crash against the other wall before falling into the river. Where the precipitous trail had been, where Eckells had fallen, there was now only a bite out of the rock.

They had no more pitons, no means of ascending glaciers, no route home.

The biplane passed by one more time, a flicker as it flew from rim to rim.

Raeder laughed, lifting his arm in Nazi salute to the sky. “Try to follow me now, Hood!”

His companions huddled. They had become Shambhalans.

Shambhala Valley, Tibet

October 3, 1938

I f Kurt Raeder hadn’t set off his explosion, Benjamin Hood might never have confirmed the Nazis were there. Beth Calloway had shouted that their fuel was getting low, that they must turn back if they were ever to return to Lhasa. She wasn’t about to abandon her precious Corsair by having it run out of gas in this desolation. But then there was a flash and smoke from what almost seemed inside the earth, and the Americans realized they’d guessed right. The Germans must be inside a narrow canyon, trying to reach the valley beyond. And the Nazis had seen them and were destroying something in reaction, Hood bet. The race was to its final sprint.

It was the end of a long, wearying day of flying from Lhasa.

When he’d met Calloway and her plane outside the summer palace grounds in the Tibetan capital, Hood was honest. This was a woman he’d last seen when they were making love, and now she’d been asked to fly him off the edge of the map.

“Do you know who we’re going after?” he asked. Not what, but who.

“Your old lover and your old enemy.” She said it matter-of-factly. The Tibetans had been candid.

“And this is okay with you?”

“Shut up and crank the propeller.”

“It’s dangerous.”

“So I double my fee. To buy more shoes.”

“Beth, I didn’t expect to go after Keyuri again.”

“But you hoped you would.”

“She’s not what this is about.”

“Yes she is.”

“When we get back, we’ll sort all this out.”

“If you get back. I’m flying this crate, and I’ll be judging which of the pair of you is lighter.” She smirked, menacingly.

He hunted for the right words. “Your plane is the only chance to catch the Nazis.”

“The only chance after giving them time to find what the Tibetans want them to find. Right? The Germans are playing the Tibetans, and the Tibetans are playing us, and you’re playing me. Everyone’s got a bet in this fiasco, Ben, so don’t worry about stamping out medals. Let’s just do what we have to.”

“What’s your bet?”

She shrugged. “That your nun is unlikely to be alive by the time we get to her. Or as sweet as you remember. Or available.”

“But if she is?”

“I’ll save as many of our hides as I can. It’s what I do.”

They took off, the altitude forcing them to snake through passes instead of hopping over mountains to fly direct. The biplane followed the trace of dirt roads below, Hood watching for the Germans but finding only what he expected, herds of goats and caravans of yaks and oxen. The trade traffic thinned as they flew north and west of the city, and then nearly ended altogether. They followed the main trunk road that led west, a thread of connection in a vast plateau wilderness, the wind so biting that Hood almost wrapped his head like a mummy with the silk scarf Reting had provided in trade. Calloway had a khata of her own. The fabric hid her expression. Behind her flying goggles, he couldn’t see her eyes.

“At some point they’ll have to turn for the Kunlun!” he shouted.

“Watch for sign.”

An hour later, he saw it. A lighter scrawl of dust on a tributary track suggested a place where dirt had been kicked up by more than animal hooves. He pointed and she banked, nodding at the line of tire tracks. They turned north. The biplane bucked in the cold air.

A hundred miles on, a glint of metal confirmed they were on the Germans’ trail. It was the British motorcar, overturned, wheels up, slid down a hill. An accident? They circled twice, looking for bodies or survivors, but saw none.

“I think it broke down!” Hood said over the roar of the engine.

Beth nodded.

They flew on.

Three hours more and they came to an enormous crack in the crust of the earth. A huge canyon sat athwart the path, and the truck and trailer were beside it. A rope stretched across the chasm. Again, no sign of life.

“Pray they left the gas,” Beth said.

This landing spot was even rougher than the one with the shoot-out, but there were no bandits this time. No Germans, either. Nobody at all, just the sighing wind of an emptiness even the Tibetans didn’t want. Beth topped off her tank with the German spare fuel while Hood got more by siphoning the German truck dry. She put three canisters in the biplane’s storage compartment while he hid the rest behind a rock. If they survived, this was the only way they’d get back.