Time Riders

CHAPTER 43

1956, command ship above Washington DC

Kramer turned round to look out of his sweeping observation windows down atWashington, a dark, still city. He had expected far stiffer resistance around the capital.Washington DC had fallen in just two days. The major battle had taken place just north of thesuburbs on the first day. The American tanks, the lightly armoured and cumbersome ShermanMkIIs, had been outmanoeuvred and out-gunned by their Blitz Raptor MkVIs from the very firstmoment; the Raptors’ agile hovercraft weapons platforms had made pitifully short work ofthem.

Their hastily assembled and dug-out defences, running east to west above the city, had beenso easily bypassed. The American battle line fell to pieces in the early hours of thismorning, the second day of the battle for Washington. When Kramer’s highly trainedFallschirmjager, equipped with gas-propellant landing packs and their recently upgradedpulse rifles, had dropped behind the Americans’ crumbling line, further panic anddisorder had soon spread among them.

Today had mostly been a mopping-up exercise.

The Americans had managed to muster together a few defensive clusters. His intelligence corpsinformed him a brigade-strength force of American marines was holding a strong position aroundone of the southern suburbs of the city, and there were pockets here andthere within Washington DC. But the Americans had not had enough time to set up anything morethan a shambolic line of battle-weary troops around the White House itself.

Kramer shook his head. President Eisenhower’s last stand had been pitiful andundignified. He’d hoped for a much more dramatic conclusion to the campaign. America hadsurrendered with a whimper instead of a bang.

The complete surprise with which they’d caught the Americans had left them scramblingfrom the very beginning. It had taken little more than eight weeks from the first massedamphibious assault on the beaches of New England… to today.

It was of course better for the civilians this way, better than a long drawn-out campaignstretching into the autumn and winter, with innocent people dying unnecessarily. He genuinelyfelt no ill will towards the people of America. In fact, his mother had been American — a woman born in Minneapolis — and he himself had once had an American passport. Hesmiled at the absurd complexity of things. His mother, Sally-Anne Gardiner, all-American girl,wasn’t due to be born for another forty-five years, wasn’t due to meet and marryhis father, Boris Kramer, for another sixty-five. And yet here was her son, leader of theGerman nation, the European states… and now also the United States.

Such is the absurdity of time travel, Paul… eh?

Background details, of course, known only to the few men he trusted around him: Karl Haas andthe three other men who’d come through the time machine and survived to this day.Storming Hitler’s Bavarian retreat had proven costly. Just the five of them left by thetime Hitler ordered his men to stand down.

The people of Germany adored Kramer, their Fuhrer — the one who led them tovictory, the leader who’d replaced that confused anti-Semitic old fool, Adolf Hitler.They believed him to be German, they cared not that there was no record of his childhood, no record of a mother or a father, no trace of his existence in thisworld… until the spring of 1941. All they cared was that he had emerged from nowhere,like a guardian angel falling from heaven, and led them to victory. He’d united Europeunder one proud banner, not that idiotic symbol, the swastika, buta banner of his very own design, the uroboros — the serpent eating its own tale — a symbol of infinity.

What comes around… goes around.

Europe, and now America, had at last been united — the combined muscle he needed toeventually bring the rest of the world to heel.

And it was going to be a much better world. A world where no one starved. A world whosepopulation could be responsibly controlled to not exceed what this earth could feed. A worldwhose resources would be carefully used and not squandered by disgustingly rich andself-serving politicians. A world not poisoned by vehicle exhausts or coal fumes. A world notdying because mankind could not control its greed.

But more importantly…

It will be your world, Paul. All yours.

The quiet voice of his ambition made him stir uneasily.

You’ve conquered more than any leader in history.

Kramer knew he should be feeling elated, proud of what he’d achieved so far. But hewasn’t. And the reason for that was lying on the floor in front of him, brought up bythe oberleutnant and his two men: a hideously deformed thing thatonce might have been a young German soldier, but was now a twisted mix of two, maybe three,young men.

It lay in front of him in an unzipped body bag. Kramer had seen something like this only oncebefore, over a decade ago in the snowy woods of Obersalzberg. He remembered he’d nearlyvomited then, just as he felt like doing now.

Karl squatted down beside the body and inspected it closely. ‘Thiscould be the result of an incendiary weapon. The intense heatcould have fused these poor men together.’

Kramer nodded, tight-lipped, stroking his chin. It could well be that… or the result ofone of their pulse bombs, designed to pulverize soft tissue with its shock wave. His modernweapon designs had a habit of producing unpleasant-looking casualties like this.

Or it might be something else?

That voice again. He bid it be silent.

‘Yes, Karl… it’s a possibility.’