Rolling upright, he squinted at the switched-on overhead lights, then locked eyes with the SS colonel. MacCready even managed a sarcastic grin. “Herr Tonic, I thought I asked for a nine A.M. wake-up call. Can’t be nine o’clock already?”
Wolff’s expression was blank. “You are a very funny man,” he said, as he stepped away from the cell. “A good friend of yours could have used some of your humor, when I spoke to him recently.”
MacCready was puzzled for a moment but then he looked over into the far cell. Lieutenant Scott was gone. If he’d ever been there. “That must have required some real effort, Herr Loss, taking on a guy who was starved and half out of his mind.”
Wolff shook his head, as if he were a teacher disappointed in a student (it was a look MacCready was really starting to hate). Then the German nodded toward the same SS goon who had apparently busted him up the day before. As the giant stepped forward, MacCready saw that he was holding something—a Russian submachine gun, PPSh. Even through the veneer of mud, he could see that this particular gun had been equipped with a camouflage sling more appropriate for the Arctic Circle than central Brazil. It was unmistakably the gun that Juliano had given him.
MacCready felt as if he had just taken a blow to the gut. Bob . . . Yanni.
Only now did the colonel smile, pausing to relish the moment. “No more jokes?” he asked, finally.
MacCready sagged against the wall of the cell, remaining silent.
“Well then, perhaps you will find my offer to you amusing,” Wolff said.
Only if it involves me sticking that machine gun up your ass before I pull the trigger, Mac thought. These fucking monsters killed them. Bob. Probably Yanni, too.
The colonel continued. “If you cooperate, that is, if you tell us everything about your mission, and what your people know about us . . . I can personally guarantee that your death will be swift.” Wolff held up his right hand, extending his index and middle fingers. “Scout’s honor, as they say in your country.”
MacCready managed a smirk and shook his head, allowing his gaze to settle on a cockroach that was making a mad dash across the floor outside his cell.
The colonel gestured toward the giant SS man. “My name is Wolff. You have already met Sergeant Schr?dinger, I think. Well, surprisingly he has come up with a rather imaginative laboratory procedure for cremating . . . medical waste. It concerns one of the missiles it was your misfortune to observe yesterday. The engineers tell me that it needs a bit of fine-tuning, although it performed quite well yesterday. Don’t you agree?”
MacCready continued to watch the insect, which was making a beeline for the sergeant’s boot. Bob and Yanni . . . dead.
“Now, imagine your body secured beneath a missile’s engine just before our next test.”
MacCready glanced up at the Nazi colonel. Are you even human?
Watching MacCready’s reaction carefully, Wolff leaned in closer. Then he whispered, as if to prevent Sergeant Schr?dinger from overhearing. “I’ve got to tell you, just between us, the method he has designed is completely inappropriate for disposing of live subjects. I saw this same experiment, once before, at the Hermann G?ring Institute. The rocket blew pieces of meat all over the launch basin.” He smiled at the memory. “It looked like red sauerkraut.”
MacCready shook his head, before gesturing for the colonel to come closer. The officer leaned in again, just a little; Mac whispered through the bars. “Does your mother know you’re involved in shit like this?”
Colonel Wolff drew back and turned away, his smile gone.
“I didn’t think so,” Mac called after him. Then he decided to keep going. “And I’ll bet you just can’t wait to tell me how much easier it’ll be if I do cooperate.”
Wolff spun around suddenly, laughing. “Do cooperate? That is if you do cooperate. If not, you’ll find that some of the locals are rather obsessed with determining how long it takes a man to die if his skin is peeled off a centimeter at a time.”
The colonel seemed to get lost in his own thought experiment. “An interesting question, no? From what I’ve seen I would estimate somewhere around—”
The sound of pistol shots stopped Wolff in midsentence. Two seconds later, Mac heard automatic weapons fire; but by then the colonel and his hulking bodyguard were already bolting toward the door.
By the time Wolff and Schr?dinger raced up the Nostromo’s wooden gangplank, a crowd had already gathered near the stern of the sub.
“—like deformed children but impossibly fast.” One of the men was telling a sergeant by the name of Vogt, who was looking even more arrogant and angry than usual.
“You shot up the boat because of—” Vogt snapped to attention.
“What has happened here?” Wolff demanded.
The sergeant began to speak. “Sir, Corporal Kessler says—”
The colonel’s hand came up. “I will hear from Corporal Kessler,” he said, calmly. “Those of you not involved in the incident may leave. Sergeant Vogt, you will remain.”