Timeless Embrace

By Bernard Cenney

Timeless Embrace is the gut-wrenching sequel to Timeless Soldier, and part five of the Sparrow’s Tears saga.
Lin Sparrow is a witch. That's what people say. In her dreams, Lin has a seer's ability to foretell the future from the ashes of the past. Lin does it with her mind - the Nazis did it with a machine.  Lin's marriage plans to Special Forces Captain James Ross are put on hold when they find themselves on a global hunt for the Nazi time machine known as Die Glocke.  Communist Red China has established a secret submarine base on North Abaco in the Bahamas. Its commander is a sadistic Admiral who is known as the Water Ghost. Ross and Lin once again form an alliance with Emanuel the enigmatic taxicab driver. Together, they follow a trail of lies, deceit, and murder that rises from the ruins of the Third Reich and reaches to the deepest darkest waters of the Caribbean. But is time travel really possible? Can Ross and Lin stop the Water Ghost from altering the past? Time will tell.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9781665510929

Bernard Cenney

Bernard Cenney retired from the United States Army as a Lt Colonel after more than twenty-eight years in uniform. He considers it a privilege to have served his country throughout numerous command and staff assignments the world over. He and his wife make Texas their home.

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© 2021 BERNARD CENNEY. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 12/22/2020

ISBN: 978-1-6655-1093-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-1094-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-1092-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020924869

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Cover photo courtesy: Teresa Cenney

Cover model: Teresa Cenney

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in

this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views

expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the

views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Novels By Bernard Cenney:

SPARROW’S TEARS

CLOSE YOUR EYES AND SEE

TIMELESS TERROR

TIMELESS SOLDIER

TIMELESS EMBRACE

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

This literary manuscript is entirely a work of fiction. Any similarity or resemblance to businesses, organizations, places, names, characters, real persons, incidents, or events is purely coincidental, unintentional, imaginary, or used in a fictitious manner.

IN MEMORIAM:

JAMES B. CENNEY

19 OCT 1989 – 11 OCT 2004

LOVED FOREVER

Send your tax deductible contributions to find a cure for children’s hypertrophic cardiomyopathy to:

www.childrenscardiomyopathy.org

Thank you.

Bernard Cenney

DEDICATION:

Special thanks go to my wife, Kongsri Cenney.

Over thirty-four years ago in Southeast Asia, Kongsri left her family, her country, and everything that was familiar to her in order to marry a young American Special Forces Captain. She took my hand and never looked back. We have supported each other in conflict and peace, hardship and success, sorrow and joy. Through it all she has loved me unconditionally and never left my side.

Bernard Cenney

Lt. Colonel (Retired)

United States Army

8 January 2021

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE: KECKSBURG 1965

PART ONE

1.     NIGHTMARES

2.     WHITE HOUSE

3.     EMANUEL

4.     WATER GHOST

5.     TASK AT HAND

PART TWO

6.     WITHERING HEIGHTS

7.     FLIGHT TO TEMPELHOF

8.     FRENCH ONION SOUP

9.     VENGEANCE IS MINE

10.   INTO THE BAHAMAS

PART THREE

11.   HIGH STAKES

12.   ENEMY ACTION

13.   DARK ENERGY

14.   SEA OF THE DAMNED

15.   FIFTY FATHOMS

16.   BEAUTIFUL CLOUDS

EPILOGUE: KECKSBURG 1965 — BEYOND TIME

PROLOGUE

For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again.

Bertolt Brecht

1898 – 1956

German Playwright

KECKSBURG 1965

It’s a cold night.

It’s a very cold night.

The soldier took one more look at the map and compass in his hands to verify.

Yes, he thought, this was the spot.

Beside him on the seat rested a Mauser-suppressed Wehrmacht-issued German Walther P-38 pistol. He picked it up and tucked it into the waistband of his pants.

Automatically, he reached for the handle and opened the door of the black Mercedes-Benz W110.

Stepping outside, he was pleasantly amused as large flakes of white glistening snow fell gently and swirled around him.

The flakes playfully encircled him, merging with the rest of the frosty winter wonderland at his feet.

The soldier was waiting.

He folded the map and put it and the compass into a cargo pocket of his long black overcoat.

The soldier was uncomfortable. He stomped his feet on the frozen ground to get his circulation going.

Mein Gott it’s cold, he thought to himself.

Reaching inside his overcoat, his hand mechanically extracted a lighter.

The soldier flipped open the top and flicked the thumbwheel downward. The welcoming spark ignited a wavering blue flame.

Holding the flame to the cigarette between his lips, the soldier cocked his head to the side and allowed himself the luxury of a long, slow draw.

He held the smoke in his lungs for a second, and then snapped the little top back down on the lighter.

Tilting his head skyward, the soldier hissed tobacco vapors out through his nostrils.

He fondly looked down at the small silver lighter in the palm of his callused hand.

The weathered lighter was emblazoned with the crest of his old unit, the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich.

Otto Skorzeny rubbed his thumb over the crest, smiling.

I have been colder.

Yes, he thought, the Eastern Front in ’41 was much colder.

Back then, he had been assigned to the 2nd SS Panzer Division during the Battle for Moscow.

That was incredibly cold!

Then there was the Siege of Stalingrad in ’42.

Mein Gott!

But Otto Skorzeny escaped Russia alive in December 1942 after receiving shrapnel wounds in the back of his head from Russian artillery.

Well, he mused, that was nothing a little aspirin and schnapps couldn’t cure.

He took another drag on his cigarette.

Now he was getting restless …

… cold and restless.

He had been determined to do whatever was necessary to fight on until the inevitable end. He had been determined … to survive the war.

The humiliating defeat of my country in the First World War created a devastating economic depression that millions of families … including my own … had to endure.

And then there was the unbelievable total defeat by the Allies in World War Two.

But hadn’t I been the Führer’s top commando?

Skorzeny remembered back to his past, back to when personal daring and audacity had been his operational trademarks as a Obersturmbannführer, a Lieutenant Colonel, in the Waffen-SS. He remembered how proud he had been to wear the Waffen-SS uniform decked out with all its regalia — Knight’s Cross Medal with Oak Leaves Cluster, the Iron Cross, and all the rest. He remembered his family. He remembered his wife and daughter.

All that is gone now.

All lost.

But now it is 1965.

The ninth of December 1965 to be precise.

He was in a heavily wooded mountaintop area, just outside Kecksburg Pennsylvania.

Kecksburg is a sparsely populated rural town, in Westmoreland County, located nonchalantly along Route 982. It’s a sleepy little unincorporated community in Mount Pleasant Township, with an elevation over 1200 feet. Kecksburg has a reputation for being a place where everybody minds their own business. This is where Skorzeny found himself, on this most desolate and isolated of nights.

He was waiting.

Waiting for Operation GRAY WOLF to begin.

Twenty years had passed since Operation OAK, when he had achieved his ruthless reputation by rescuing Mussolini from a mountain fortress. Then there was Operation LONG JUMP, a plan to assassinate Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill … the Big Three. Skorzeny would later vehemently deny that this one was ever even attempted. That was followed by more: Operation KNIGHT’S LEAP, ARMORED FIST, GRIFFIN, GREIF, and WERWOLF.

And then there was his escape from the Allied internment camp at Darmstadt in 1948 after three former SS men, disguised as US Army military police, simply walked him out. He hid out in Bavaria for eighteen months, organizing the WERWOLF Teams to provide cover support for the escape and evasion organization of former SS members, more operationally known by its abbreviation as ODESSA. It has been said that through ODESSA, Skorzeny assisted well over one thousand former Nazis to escape to freedom and thereby avoid the hangman’s noose. Soon thereafter he fled to Paris. From Paris he moved to Salzburg, and then to Spain. In Madrid, the Dictator Francisco Franco took an interest in him and provided sanctuary. But in two years, with Israeli Mossad hot on his trail, he moved again, this time to Egypt. Once there, he was formally given the job as military advisor to General Mohammed Naguib.

Some said the American CIA made this happen. Skorzeny would neither confirm nor deny.

He had recruited former SS and Wehrmacht men to help him train the Egyptian army in unconventional warfare and guerrilla operations. Egyptian President Gamal Nasser then sent him to Palestine to teach assassination techniques to a select cadre of Yasser Arafat’s men. Next, he was recruited and traveled to Argentina where he became the personal military advisor to President Juan Perón. His derring-do commando exploits were now relegated to the realm of legend.

At six-feet-four-inches tall, and with a seven-inch fencer’s dueling scar across the left-side of his face, the two-hundred-pound frame of Otto Skorzeny, though still menacingly formidable, was beginning to wear out at fifty-seven years of age. He had a slight paunch, and his knees and neck were in constant pain from advanced rheumatism. His light brown eyes still twinkled, with crow’s feet creeping from the corners. His eyebrows were dark, long, and wispy. His large ears looked like they had been smashed and flattened by the treads of a Russian tank. His full head of hair was now streaked with gray, and was still combed straight back. He had shaved his small aristocratic mustache years ago in an attempt to avoid detection by the Israeli Mossad and inquisitive journalists.

He remembered back to the closing days of the war, when the Führer had ordered him to secure certain documents and precious treasures of the Reich, in order to safeguard them against falling into the hands of the Allies.

Hitler believed in the scorched earth policy — the total destruction of Germany. Skorzeny believed in survival and tomorrow.

Some of the riches he purposely submerged at Lake Toplitz in the Salzkammergut district; surviving Nazi divers were tasked to recover them after the war. Other loot he secretly buried in the canyon walls of the Totes Gebirge Mountains.

One item he hid in a mountain mine shaft was the highly classified device known simply by its codename — Die Glocke.

The device was about the size of a sedan, only resembling a large bell. The German words Die Glocke translate to The Bell in English. In the race to beat the Allies from creating an atomic bomb, Die Glocke was a machine that was supposed to stabilize fissionable materials as a controllable energy source. The ultimate aim was to create atomic weapons. The secondary goal was to generate gyroscopically controlled atomic power to propel advanced aircraft designs. It was one of the Führer’s wonder weapons designed to guarantee total victory.

But that was a ruse.

The machine had another purpose.

Some said it involved sorcery.

Some said it involved looking at the past … and seeing into the future.

Some whispered that Die Glocke was a machine for traveling through time itself.

Utter nonsense, thought Skorzeny, back in 1945.

Witches and demons!

Broomsticks and spells!

Mumbo-jumbo!

I always thought the damn thing looked like a nose-cone for one of Von Braun’s rockets.

With a flick of his fingers, Skorzeny sent what was left of his cigarette flying off like a tiny sputtering meteorite, drilling its way into the sludge of a nearby snowbank.

Taking a quick glance skyward at the gently falling snow, Skorzeny lowered his head while hunching up his shoulders.

One people, one Germany, one Führer, remembered Otto Skorzeny ironically.

Hitler’s top commando looked at his Wehrmacht-issued Phenix wristwatch. Its luminous blade-type hands revealed to him that it was 2257 hours.

Should be any moment now, he thought.

He remembered back … back to when the Third Reich was aflame.

It’s been twenty years since General Hans Friedrich Kammler gave me the warning order. The warning order to be at this precise spot, at midnight, on the ninth of December 1965, in Kecksburg Pennsylvania.

Skorzeny thought back to when he had to safeguard three of the machines in Germany.

When the Third Reich was falling apart, Skorzeny had entrusted his friend, SS-Obersturmführer Wilhelm von Lugoff, to safeguard Die Glocke.

Die Glocke, he had learned much later, was actually designed to open a portal through time itself. It was a type