Return From the Inferno (19 page)

Frost was already crawling out of his fisherman's disguise and into the wet suit he'd carried along in his duffel bag. Fate had provided a convenient interruption.

"I see two," Pegg reported. "Now three. Four. Five... There's ten-no, wait, eleven of them. Eleven and a heavy tug."

Frost was checking his utility belt and then his mask. He took one last look at the line of sludge barges and then passed his NightScope binoculars and his Beretta to Pegg.

"Time to go," he said, inching his way into the shallow water at the base of the willow.

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"Good luck, boy!" Pegg crackled. "I'll be here when you get back."

Frost slipped into the water and immediately began swimming. It was about a mite out to the line of barges. And if he timed himself correctly, then his course would intersect with that of the center barge in the line of eleven with no problem at all.

The water was dirty, and not as warm as he would have thought. It made no difference. Ten years before, while attending university in Montreal, he was a champion swimmer, once winning the All-Canada Gold Leaf for freestyle. What was odd was that not many people these days knew of his athletic achievement of a decade before.

So as he methodically made his way out to the line of sludge barges, once again a nagging thought crossed his mind: How did the sequestered Wolf, a man he'd never met, know that he could make such a treacherous swim?

Twenty minutes later, Frost was climbing up the side of the sludge scow.

He'd made the swim with no problem, and had even landed on the barge of his choice, that being the middle hi the set of eleven, equidistant from the heavily guarded lead barge and the similarly dangerous tug.

Once he was up and over the side, he would have to work quickly. Even as a champion swimmer, he knew the longer he took, the farther he'd be away from dry land.

He really only had to accomplish two tasks. One was to get a sample of dredged silt and sludge. He did this by sun-ply taking a handful of the stuff and stuffing it inside a small but durable plastic bag he brought along. The sludge was reddish and with almost the consistency of clay. It also smelled awful.

His second task was to plant a location finder somewhere on the barge. This took a little more doing; finding the right spot was essential. Finally he decided to plant the device inside the gearbox for the scow's automatic lock/dislock mechanism, figuring that it wouldn't likely be found there, plus it might continue to operate after the contents of the barge were off-loaded.

The LF in place, he tied the plastic bag to his utility belt and then slipped back over the side of the scow. The whole thing had taken only four minutes.

With the currents now working with him it was only a fifteen-minute swim back to land. Most of that time was spent wondering why in hell Wolf wanted a bag full of mud.

Within an hour, Frost and Pegg were back on the foggy pier, the Free Canadians arms aching not so much from the swim, as from having to push Pegg and his overloaded wheelchair.

He couldn't complain though. Both men knew that maintaining Pegg's cover as a see-nothing, hear-nothing, say-nothing old buck was just as important as the odd mission they'd just accomplished. He was a very valuable asset. In fact, he'd been gathering very useful information for the American Underground since shortly after the two-pronged Second Axis invasion.

But just as in life in general, things frequently go wrong.

Frost heard them first. Voices and the sounds of boots running, coming from the far end of the pier.

"Damn! It's the Brownshirts," Pegg hissed in an urgent whisper. "I'd know the sounds of their hobnails anywhere."

Frost had his Beretta up and armed in a flash. It was way too late for them to hide-not unless Pegg abandoned his well-cultivated cover as a cripple.

Yet in an instant Frost knew they had no other choice.

"Leave the wheelchair," Frost told him. "Maybe we'll get lucky."

Pegg scampered out of the wheelchair, knocking it over in his haste to get his partially concealed double-barreled shotgun from a rear compartment.

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Thus armed, they both dove into the shadows. Not two seconds later, a band of six skinhead Brownshirts came running up the pier.

The Brownshirts were a quasi-military force trucked over from Europe by the Fourth Reich for the sole purpose of creating terror and havoc among the conquered American population. They weren't really soldiers. Sanctioned terrorists was a better description. They were the modern equivalent of the SA of Hitler's Germany. Back then, some SA units were so crudely brutal, they made the rival SS gangs look like Boy Scouts.

Even so, what Frost and Pegg next saw was incredibly repulsive.

The reason the Brownshirts were running was they had a prisoner with them. He was handcuffed and gagged and his face showed signs of a recent severe beating that rendered him unrecognizable. The Nazis had also tied a dog collar around his neck and were now forcing him to run behind them.

As it turned out, coming upon the overturned wheelchair caused the band of military sadists to stop for a moment. While their prisoner collapsed to the ground, the skinhead thugs had a quick discussion in German as to whom the wheelchair might belong. After all, their primary job in New Orleans, as in the rest of the major cities under Fourth Reich occupation, was to seize and punish curfew offenders.

The sight of the wheelchair gave them a small thrill. Perhaps they could brutalize a handicapped person tonight, too.

When the leader of the Brownshirts rapped off the order to three of his men to search the surrounding area for the owner of the wheelchair, Frost knew that action against the Nazi thugs was inevitable. He silently slipped the safety off his Beretta, at the same time watching Pegg as the man double-checked the load in his shotgun. They looked at each other and nodded. The gesture meant to do it as quickly as possible.

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The first three Brownshirts fanned out and began scanning the area immediately to the right of the hiding spot, leaving the other three to turn their attention back to then-leashed prisoner. They began kicking the man, who was now curled up tight on the pier deck, trying vainly to cover up the increasingly violent blows.

Frost tapped Pegg once and motioned first to his shotgun and then the trio of soldiers who were brutally stomping the man. Pegg got the message immediately.

He was to take out the stompers while Frost would handle the other three.

Pegg made a fist, and then counted off with his stubby fingers: one ... two .

.. three...

Frost's first shot caught the Brownshirt closest to him square in the neck.

His second bullet-fired at the thug about twenty feet to his right-pieced the man's jaw and exited out the base of his shoulder. The third Brownshirt had instinctively hit the pavement, but too late to avoid being hit by Frost's quick, three-shot barrage.

At the same moment, Pegg had leaped dramatically from the shadows and loosed a quick, one-two blast from his shotgun. The first load caught one of the skinheads square in the face, the deadly impact blowing him right off the pier. The second shot blew out his partner's stomach. The man clutched what was left of his guts and then crumpled to his knees.

Pegg himself went to all fours, and rolled to his left. Moving so slowly, it was as if he were caught in real-life slow motion. He managed to reload his shotgun during the tortoiselike maneuver, but not before the last remaining Brownshirt fired off a clip from his Mauser machine-pistol. Acting more, instinct than anything else. Frost leveled his pistol at this man and shot him through the heart.

It was all over hi no more than ten seconds. But that was enough time to attract attention, especially the blasts from Pegg's shotgun.

"Time to make ourselves scarce," Frost was saying. At the 159

same moment, he knew it was too late. He saw headlights and then heard the sirens. The noise of the gunfight had been loud enough to bring an NS armored scout car onto the pier.

Now he saw a line of tracers coming right at them; typical of Nicht Soldats to shoot first and ask questions later. Pegg was helping the torture victim-his face a bloody wreck-to his feet. But the man was so badly beaten, he couldn't walk, never mind run.

Frost was forced to make a tough, but necessary, instantaneous decision.

Reaching into his boot pocket he came out with the sludge sample and thrust it into Pegg's hands.

"Take this and him and get the hell out of here!" he yelled at the old sea captain.

The old man began to protest, but he knew the only other choice was for all three of them to be caught.

Without a word, Pegg stuffed the sludge sample down his pants, yanked the victim to his feet and half dragged him away, off the pier, down the bank and into the shallow water.

Seconds later he heard a tremendous gunfight break out. Using the noise of the gunblasts as cover, Pegg noisily carried the bloodied man out from under the pier and to an alley a block away.

It was then he heard the gunfire from the pier come to a sudden halt.

He stopped for a moment, his ear cocked to the wind. But he could only hear the shouts of the NS as they swarmed over the docks. He was certain Frost had died, just so he and the beating victim could escape.

"Another friend gone," Pegg moaned.

He dragged the man up the alley, finally finding an open hallway. Only then was he able to wipe away some of the blood covering the man's face.

"I have to leave you here," Pegg told him, the sight of his battered face causing his already nervous stomach to knot up.

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"Wait for a while and then try to make it to your home."

"You saved my life," the man gurgled, trying his best to clear the blood that was blinding him. "I was as good as dead."

Pegg didn't have time to accept compliments. He had to get out of the area as quickly as possible.

"Just return the favor some day," he said.

At that moment, the victim was able to clear most of the blood from his left eye, enough for him to see his rescuer for the first time.

"My God!" he screamed, his voice wild with astonishment. "Mister Pegg! It's you! You've been healed!"

Pegg lingered one last moment to look down at the man. In that time, he was able to ignore the many abrasions on the man's face and finally recognize him.

It was the young Dominican priest.

"Yes, Father," Pegg said hastily, not really knowing what else to say. "Thanks to you, I have been healed."

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The day dawned bright and hot over Fuhrerstadt.

The early morning heat had already dried what rainwater remained from a brief but violent thunderstorm the night before. Soon a steamy fog was rising from the dirty streets of the capital city of Fourth Reich America.

"A fine day," Mike Fitzgerald thought, watching the dawn from his small jail cell. "A fine day to die."

He knew he had less than an hour to live. He was anticipating the unlocking of his cell door at any minute. Then he'd be led out to a small courtyard located in the center of the prison, put up against a wall, and executed.

"Then at last, this madness will be over," he thought grimly.

He felt it was ironic that he would never know the exact details of the plan to make him out to be a messiah. The crucified mechanic, the old man and the young girl, the bombing victim from Gary, Indiana, and Frost-all of them operatives in some grand scheme that Fitz could only hope would be apparent to him once he passed into Eternity.

Even in these last hours, he hadn't come down with a bad case of religion. He was in the end just a soldier, and soldiers die. Still, he wondered what lay beyond. What would happen once the bullet pierced his heart? Would he see the brilliant and inviting white light at the end of the tunnel as 162

reported by people who'd had near death experiences? Would he be reunited with his long dead parents in the afterlife? Would he see long deceased comrades like old "Bull" Dozer? Or other United Americans who'd died since the Fourth Reich invasion?

Would he meet up with Hawk again?

Somehow the thought of them all sitting around on clouds and playing harps didn't quite fit. Few fit the profile of authentic angels. Perhaps some of them were in a much "warmer" place.

Ill know soon enough, he thought, taking his eyes from the window.

He steeled himself when he finally heard the key turning in the jail cell lock. The door swung open to reveal an NS officer and two soldiers.

Nothing was spoken, nothing had to be. Fitz simply rose from his bunk, brushed some of the dirt from his ragged prison uniform and walked straight and proud out of the cell to a position between the two NS troopers.

"If this is their world now," he thought, eyeing the NS men with absolute contempt, "then dying will only be an improvement."

They walked him down the long, dank corridor, up a set of darkened stairs, and finally into the small courtyard.

Here he got the surprise of a lifetime.

He'd just assumed that his execution was the only one planned for this day.

But he was wrong. Two other men were already lined up against the bullet marked wall, standing stiff but proud, braced for what was to come.

The surprise was that he knew both of them. One was General Dave Jones. The other was Frost.

Fitz felt an audible gasp spill from his lips. Jones was little more than a skeleton; Frost was bandaged from head to toe, as if he'd been in a shitkicker of a gunfight and somehow survived.

Their eyes all met, and there was the briefest of smiles all 163

round. Fitz felt a simultaneous pang of relief and sadness. It was a comfort that they were all going together, but it was disturbing that two fine men would be put to death too.

The NS men marched Fitz over to the wall and stood him next to the right of Jones.

"Good to see you again, Mike," Jones whispered to him. "I thought they'd got you a long time ago."

"I'm proud to die with you, General," Fitz replied, the intensity of the moment finally breaking down his guard. "And you, Frost. What ever happened back there that day, I hope I find out."