The Brink Read online

  Otto tentatively moved toward the study, fearing the worst. He pushed the door and it creaked open.

  The scent of bitter almonds wafted out.

  Cyanide.

  Eva Braun lay contorted on the near end of the couch, mouth wide open and dead eyes staring at the ceiling.

  The door opened wider, and relief washed over him.

  Hitler sat hunched on the far end of the couch, still in uniform, his greasy dark hair slapped against his forehead, and he clutched a gold-plated pistol in his shaking hand. He raised his bloodshot eyes toward the doorway.

  Otto stepped toward him. “My F—”

  “Get out, Van Ness.”

  “Sir, I’ve got a plan to save you.”

  “You imbecile!” Hitler screamed. “Can’t you see it’s over?!”

  Hitler glanced at Eva, then down at his pistol. Otto hated seeing the once proud man look defeated, on the brink of taking his own life.

  It couldn’t end like this.

  History would judge Hitler a coward. And a man of his vision and strength . . .

  No. I won’t let it end like this. There’s still so much to do.

  “It’s not over yet. My Führer, below this bunker—right below our feet—is a cavern that extends under all of Berlin. There’s a secret entrance next door to a room of supplies, and a false wall where we can begin our escape.”

  “And then what? Hide underground like a cockroach? No, I will not.”

  “The caverns go deep and far. Kilometers. We’ll find a way out once we clear Berlin.”

  Hitler’s icy stare made Van Ness freeze. It had made many men freeze and often signaled their final moment. “Don’t you see it’s over?” he repeated. “We’ve been defeated.”

  “My Führer. As long as you’re alive, as long as I am by your side, the Third Reich—and your vision for the new world order—has not been defeated.”

  Hitler rotated the pistol in his hand. He was on the edge, that much was clear.

  “My Führer . . . do not allow your dream to die. Not here, not in this place. The Third Reich will rise again, rise from that cavern below, rise for future generations of our children and our children’s children.”

  Hitler slowly lowered the pistol just as another explosion rocked the bunker.

  “We need to act fast,” Otto said. “Follow me.”

  He strode back into the living room and thankfully the Führer’s footsteps followed. He thrust his shoulder against the bookcase. It scraped to the left, revealing a circular steel hatch. Once he had snapped open the fastening mechanism, he unlocked the door to the quarters and found a group of four soldiers.

  “The Führer is leaving,” Otto stated matter-of-factly. “The four of you are with us. Let’s go.”

  They didn’t even glance at the bodies on the floor and obeyed his command without question. As they stepped inside, they saw Hitler and executed perfect salutes.

  Only the most loyal were allowed to serve in the Führerbunker.

  Van Ness hauled open the hatch, grabbed a lantern from a ledge, fired it up, and climbed through the circular gap into the narrow shaft. The lantern’s glow brightened the carved rock walls on all sides. Otto descended, treading carefully. The wooden steps creaked beneath his boots.

  Hitler followed immediately behind. As they neared the bottom of the fifty-foot stairwell, the last soldier slammed the hatch shut, cutting out the artificial light. From here, they were on their own.

  Otto entered the tennis court–sized chamber and swept his lantern from left to right, bathing the walls in a warm orange hue. He breathed a sigh of relief. The place was exactly how he had left it. Boxes of dried food. A stack of twenty-liter containers holding water and fuel. Rifles. Grenades. Fake papers. Flashlights. Everything they required for this eventuality.

  The rest of the group entered the chamber.

  “There’s no time to waste,” Otto said. “Grab an entrenching tool. We need to break through the far wall into the cavern below.”

  They grabbed six collapsible spades and jogged to the far end of the chamber. One of the soldiers raised a spade over his head, preparing to strike. But instead, an ominous thud came from behind the wall.

  The plaster fractured.

  Hitler recoiled to the middle of the chamber, and the guards quickly dropped their tools and readied their weapons.

  Something crashed against the opposite side of the wall again. This time, much harder. Chunks of plaster broke free and skidded across the ground.

  “What the hell?” Otto said.

  “Is this a trap, Van Ness?” Hitler asked through clenched teeth. “You traitor!”

  Two soldiers turned to Van Ness and aimed their rifles toward him, while the other two covered the wall.

  In his fear, he was still proud of how perfect these warriors of the Fatherland were.

  But then another crash echoed around the chamber, and all the attention was back on the wall. Otto placed the lantern on the supply boxes. He drew his Luger and took up a firing position behind the steel containers. His heart hammered against his chest while he waited for the inevitable attack.

  Perhaps the Russians found the cavern and are attacking from the other side. Yet, how could they have found it so quickly?

  It made no sense.

  The chamber shuddered. A six-foot section of the wall collapsed inward. Otto aimed at the dark gap, ready to cut down the first Red Army soldier.

  A moment of silence followed.

  He tensed. Gunfire would soon swamp the chamber.

  But still no weapons discharged. No grenades rolled in. No blasts from a flamethrower turned the room into a broiler. Instead, a gentle, acrid breeze blew through the gap.

  What the hell is happening?

  A piercing shriek filled the air, like nothing he had ever heard before. The ungodly sound sent a shiver down Otto’s spine, and he was about to cover his ears when he bolted upright at what appeared before him.

  A massive figure burst into the chamber, bigger than any man he knew. A giant. He tried to track it in his sights, but it raced across the ground at an unbelievable speed and possessed a darkness that the oil lantern couldn’t possibly penetrate.

  Unlike Van Ness, the soldiers were elite and didn’t choke under pressure. They fired in unison as the figure closed in.

  Their muzzle flashes briefly lit the room.

  Otto, if possible, felt even more frozen at the sight.

  A black creature, with a long, serrated tail and talons on the ends of its four arms, towered over the soldiers. The shots to its body had little effect. It roared at them, exposing three rows of razor-sharp teeth, and lifted its tail to strike.

  A creature was all Otto could think about. There was no other word for it, just as there was no thought that could move him to action. His mind just kept screaming creature creaturecreature, and the horror of it glued him to the spot like nothing ever before.

  He had shivered while under fire in a crumbling house in Stalingrad. He had toured Auschwitz. He had seen the gas trucks. He had even survived the trenches of the Great War.

  Nothing compared to this.

  Hitler screamed, and he stumbled backward into boxes of rations.

  The creature’s tail whipped through the air and carved through the four soldiers like they weren’t even there, slicing their torsos clean in two. Body parts collapsed in a soggy heap. Blood spattered the stone in all directions.

  Otto fired at the creature’s scaly back.

  Nothing.

  He fired again.

  No effect.

  It was futile. Terrifying. Incomprehensible.

  The creature leaped forward and grabbed Hitler’s head. Its talons sunk into his face as it lifted him off the ground in an instant.

  The Führer screamed again. He looked so small in comparison to this predator of the deep. Insignificant, even, as blood was squeezed from his jaw.

  Otto repeatedly fired until the Luger’s magazine ran dry.

  The bullets continued to have no effect.

  The creature stood there, crushing Hitler’s head, harder and harder. One of his eyes popped out of its socket and hung against his cheek. Blood poured from his face and stained the ground beneath his dangling boots. His legs twitched in the air.

  “Van Ness!” Hitler cried out, his voice raspy.

  The creature leaned closer to the Führer’s face and perfectly mimicked the gravelly sound of Hitler’s voice.

  “Van Ness!”

  A moment later, Hitler’s skull collapsed under the pressure. The last words the most powerful man in the world had screamed were Otto’s name.

  They were also very likely the last words Van Ness would ever hear.

  Blood sprayed the ceiling. It dripped from the creature’s claws. The whole place now looked like a gruesome slaughterhouse.

  The creature threw Hitler’s limp body against the carved rock wall, then turned toward the supply boxes. Otto had imagined his death a thousand times. On the end of a rope. At the hands of a firing squad. In a burning building. Trapped in a tank.

  Never like this.

  He backed against the wall and reached into his holster for a fresh magazine.

  But something stopped the creature from advancing. It prowled in the shadows, staying out of his lantern’s glare. Snarling. Letting out guttural wheezes. Staring at him through its lifeless eyes, which were more intimidating than any Allied weapon.

  Another creature thrust itself through the gap in the wall, and, like the other, it wouldn’t come near him . . .

  No, not me. The light.

  Otto grabbed a flashlight from a supply box, switched it on, and focused the powerful beam on the creatures.

  Both roared—in pain?—before racing back into the dark cavern.
Van Ness let out a shuddering breath, his legs buckled in shock, and his back slid down the cool stone wall. They would surely come for him again.

  The flashlight could only last so long.

  Minutes ticked by and the creatures did not return. But the sound of hundreds—thousands—of distant shrieks from the cavern below betrayed their continued presence.

  An hour passed.

  Then two.

  He had nowhere to go. Escaping through the cavern below wasn’t an option. Going back into the bunker meant certain death as well.

  While he waited for events to dictate his destiny, a realization struck him: the world suddenly faced an enemy even more sinister than the Russians. And even as the thought frightened him, his ever-scheming mind led him to ask himself:

  How can I turn these creatures to my advantage . . . if I survive?

  Otto believed wholeheartedly in the Nazi vision of a homogeneous society, despite the world not yet being ready to take this next evolutionary step. The impure had fought against them, and it seemed—for now—they had halted the march of progress. But here, in this cavern, he had witnessed a new, powerful force. And if he could control that force . . .

  This discovery changed everything.

  And only he knew about it.

  He started looking around for a new way out, plans already forming in his brilliant, devious mind.

  I will find an escape. And the Third Reich will rise again.

  I will rise again.

  Chapter Three

  Present day

  Lightning split the dark Parisian sky.

  Albert Van Ness navigated his wheelchair toward a framed photograph of his father, Otto, on the office wall. He knew the world right now stood on the cusp of a great precipice, just like his father had always predicted. A moment that would define the ultimate survival of a species. Much like when a giant asteroid slammed into the Yucatán Peninsula sixty-five million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs, but this time the threat was coming from below, and it was coming for humanity.

  Van Ness stopped in front of the photograph of his father. Every detail stood out. A sharp SS uniform. An armband with the swastika. An iron cross hanging around his neck. Chest proudly puffed out. The creator of the Foundation for Human Advancement and a true visionary . . . though also a man who had not lived to witness his dream become a reality.

  It’s okay, Father. Your reality is about to happen.

  The creatures were evolving rapidly to tolerate higher levels of oxygen. Their rise to the surface was inevitable. The planet no longer had a choice.

  Van Ness had reasoned the day would come when the Foundation would need to take more direct control over governments, but he did not think it would be so soon. The events in New York had changed that.

  Thankfully, he had left nothing to chance.

  He glanced at the flat-screen monitor on the wall. The tiny red circles on the global map indicated the Foundation’s live operations. So many creatures’ nests, spread across the entire world. New ones had appeared on a monthly basis since the botched mission under the Hudson River. In fact, that damned city appeared to have acted as a catalyst. Australia, India, Thailand, Oman, Argentina. Under major cities, capitals. The locations had an eerie coordination about them as they sprung up around the globe, like the creatures were preparing for war. He wondered if they had realized the time had come for a death match, where there could be only one winner.

  Maybe.

  His eyes narrowed when he focused on the United States of America.

  It had several live nests growing, and one in particular—under San Francisco—was potentially what he had always been looking for. It was vast, according to initial reports, perhaps twice the size of the one below New York City. Van Ness had long suspected that he would know the true nature of the creatures only once his team had discovered their main lair—if there was one. He had a feeling this one in the Bay Area was it.

  But there was still so much to learn about them.

  They were an intelligent species—more so than humans—yet their purpose and motivations remained unclear in his mind. He wanted to investigate, but the new administration in America was a hindrance to finding out if San Francisco really was “creature ground zero.” There was only one way to find out, and that meant he needed unlimited resources for the upcoming fight. With time running out for humanity, he couldn’t afford to wait any longer.

  The governments of the world no longer mattered except for their ability to give him what was necessary to save—and advance—the human cause.

  “Shield mode,” Van Ness snapped.

  The office’s voice activation system responded with an affirmative beep. Then the wall-to-ceiling window, twenty stories above the Parc du Champ de Mars, changed from transparent to gunmetal gray.

  Darkness momentarily swamped the room before the overhead spotlights blazed down to restore the light. None of the array of international spooks who watched him from various vantage points on the city skyline needed to see this quiet moment of reflection.

  The calm before the storm, he thought.

  Van Ness reached across the table and poured himself a finger of Jameson. The smooth, sweet whiskey warmed the back of his throat, and he exhaled in satisfaction. It wasn’t the most expensive bottle in his office—there were a few rare Scotches and a Pappy twenty-three-year-old in the sideboard—but the taste of this particular drink always brought back memories. Whiskey was his father’s favorite, and they had shared a bottle of Jameson forty-five years ago in a villa on the Amalfi Coast after destroying a small nest beneath Naples.

  He smiled to himself, picturing their heated political debates on the deck overlooking the sparkling Mediterranean. They were best friends as well as father and son, and even during times of levity, they had strategized.

  Sadness momentarily engulfed him.

  All of those years Otto had spent building the organization. Grooming Albert to take over. Teaching him the Foundation’s doctrine. And the old man wouldn’t be here to appreciate that their goals were about to be realized.

  Van Ness poured another glass and washed it around his mouth.

  This one’s for you, Father.

  It was cruel, really, watching such a powerful man wither away. Otto had spent four decades successfully fighting creatures and bringing most governments in line, only to be beaten by a disease. He remembered the old man staring up from his deathbed through bloodshot eyes, wincing in agony, muttering about revenge.

  His final words were “Don’t let our dream die,” before Albert had suffocated him with a pillow to end both of their suffering.

  Like father, like son.

  Van Ness had never completely bought into his father’s idea of revenge against the World War II Allies. It had always felt spite-fueled and counterproductive to the Foundation’s primary aim of protecting the world from the creatures. But as Van Ness grew older, and he learned the truth of how his mother had died, he clearly saw how his father was right about these supposed democratic nations. They were the real war criminals. It wasn’t just bitterness; it was a cold, hard fact. To save the world, certain countries had to be brought to their knees.

  I’ll finish them, starting with Washington and London.

  Van Ness checked his watch. He hated being late for meetings and his next was in five minutes. A couple of deep breaths brought him back to the cool, calm, and collected man his employees knew. He rotated his chair toward the mahogany bookcase and keyed in a code on his armrest.

  A door-shaped section of the bookcase eased out with a pneumatic hiss and rolled to the side, revealing a brightly lit corridor. The labs and rooms on either side lay in darkness, empty. This part of the operation had moved to the newest area of the Foundation’s complex. Hatching the master plan required extra protection, a safe space to deal with national leaders without fear of any reprisals.

  A fortress from which Van Ness could save the world.

  Van Ness drove forward.

  The wheels squeaked against the polished corridor, and the quiet purr from the chair’s engine echoed around the walls. He reached an elevator, got in, and hit the button to take him to the basement parking garage. The elevator smoothly descended through the center of the building, like the tip of a creature’s tail spearing through a person’s head and gliding effortlessly through their body. That had been the signature move his team had observed.