Return From the Inferno (2 page)

He never returned.

And now here was "Crunch," just about the last of the top officers of the United Americans still living and not in a POW camp, sitting on top of a barren hill. He was being chased by an enemy who wanted his country only because they were envious and not respectful of their own. And all he had left, really, was the contents of the dilapidated tractor-trailer truck.

It was a sad situation.

"How long do we have, sir?" the young soldier on watch suddenly asked him. He too was staring out to the west. "How long before they catch us?"

"Crunch" considered the frank, gloomy question for a moment.

"We've got the rest of our lives," he replied finally.

It wasn't until the next morning, when they gained the higher ground, that they saw the cause of the miraculous tidal wave had a very earthy explanation.

Off in the distance they could see the remains of a large irrigation dam which had burst, instantly flooding just about every dry riverbed in the area. By using long-range binoculars, they could see by the long streaks of black soot along its cracked sides that the dam had obviously been blown up, either by set explosives or a well-placed bomb.

But just who was responsible for destroying the dam and why was impossible for them to know.

Mike Fitzgerald yanked at his overly starched priest's collar and muttered a curse.

"Goddamn thing. Cutting off my windpipe, you are."

He was trudging down a very dusty road, the miserable summer's heat making his long, black wool priest's cassock seem twice as heavy and twice as hot.

"Next time you impersonate someone, check out the wardrobe first."

He'd been talking to himself a lot lately. Perhaps it was the first clue that this priestly charade was, in fact, driving him mad. Or maybe it was his body reacting to the fact that no whiskey had touched his lips in months. Or that he had not seen a grown woman in just as long, never mind touch one.

"A little of all three, I suppose."

His present location only made things worse. It was flat-flat as far as the eye could see. The only diversion in the landscape were some low hills to the south. Everything else was dry pastureland, withered cornstalks and acres of sallyweeds. It was a virtual hell for him, having grown up and thrived in noisy, boozy, wet, lusty urban landscapes.

About a mile down this straight, dusty, hot road was a place formerly known as Kathryn, Indiana. Located about twenty miles to the southeast of what used to be Lafayette, Indiana, the small typically Midwest American town had been renamed Bundeswehr Four. It was the capital of the Fourth Military District of 15

the Fourth Reich Occupying Forces, an area that encompassed all territory north up to the city of New Chicago, south to the former city of Terre Haute, east to the old, virtually abandoned state capital of Indianapolis and west to old Illinois Route 57.

"Bummer Four," Fitzgerald spit out, as the string of gun towers surrounding the small city came into view. "Maybe another Dachau someday."

A short, sharp peel of a siren startled Fitz out of his sullen thoughts. He swung around to find a column of Spahpanzer armed recon vehicles and Panhard VBL Scout Cars tearing down

the road.

He barely had time to jump out of the way as the first Spahpanzer roared by.

The soldier sitting in the turret spit at him, but Fitz neatly dodged the expectoration.

"You need a bath, priest!" the soldier yelled at him, laughing.

It was all Fitz could do to restrain himself from letting rip a stream of select expletives. But such an act would immediately blow his cover as a man of the cloth, a profession that most of these neo-Nazi invaders curiously found nonthreatening.

He stood in the road ditch as the column roared by, many of the soldiers cursing at him in German and flashing universally understood obscene hand signals. Fitz retaliated by continuously making the sign of the cross as stoically as possible, while keeping his nasty curses under his breath.

The VBL scout car at the end of the column screeched to a stop in front of him. An officer stared out the open door, taking a full measure of Fitz's priest garb.

"What are you doing out here?" the officer asked him in a harsh, heavy German accent. "Tending the flock, sir," Fitz replied in his best holyman's voice.

"Don't give me that!" the officer screamed. "Your bromides are not an excuse for being out of the perimeter!"

Fitz gently raised his hand to interrupt the officer.

"Excuse me, sir," he said, his voice fighting to stay calm. "I was tending the flock. The sheep, sir?"

The flustered officer turned to his driver and spat out a stream of German.

The driver demurely replied that one of the priest's duties was to care for the herd of sheep and goatsthat grazed in the pastureland several miles outside of town.

The officer's face went red in a second. He punched his driver on the shoulder, ordering him forward. As the driver put the scout car in gear, the officer turned back toward Fitz, spit at him and then roared off.

"Someday, you bastards," Fitz swore under his breath. "You'll all pay for this."

After walking for twenty more minutes, Fitz finally reached the edge of Bummer Four.

Here was Bundeswehfs reason for being: the massive air field constructed by the Fourth Reich soldiers in less than two months using thousands of slave laborers. It was also a symbol of why the Nazi invasion of the American continent had been so complete and over so quickly.

Unlike many of the enemies Fitz and his United American allies had fought during the years since the end of World War III and the subsequent fractionalization of America, the Second Axis realized that the true secret to military dominance was the critical application of air power. Past foes of United America-primarily the long gone Soviet-backed Circle Army, the pre-natal Panama Canal Nazis of the Twisted Cross and the White Supremacist armies of the repugnant Knights of the Burning Cross-had all used air power to certain degrees. But just like the United Americans themselves, the quality of that aerial force was borderline Grade B in most cases.

Fighter planes, attack bombers, recon craft and other instruments of true air power were always in chronic short supply in America, due mostly to the rather irrational disarmament agreements forged after the Third World War. Even at its height, the post-World War III United American Air Corps numbered less than 200 fighter/attack planes and the vast majority of these were elderly machines like F-4 Phantoms, F-101 Voodoos, A-4 Skyhawks, F-104 Starfighters and F-106 Delta Darts. What's more, the aircraft flown by the various air pirate gangs which roamed rather freely across the postwar American skies were even more ancient: F-100 Super Sabres, F-89 Scorpions, even some Korean War vintage F-86 Sabre jets. The bottom line was that many of these airplanes were decades older than the men flying them.

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But while the quality of most of the equipment on both sides was hardly state-of-the-art, it created a kind of balance of power. Simply put, if everyone was driving old stuff, then the playing field was even.

There was one exception though: the F-16XL once flown by Hawk Hunter. It was an airplane which far surpassed anything else flying at the time. But now it, like its famous pilot, were long

gone.

While secretly gathering their forces in Europe for the huge transatlantic attack on America, the Fourth Reich had stockpiled a modern air force larger than some belonging to major countries before World War III. They did this by two means. One, the timely acquisition of an entire carrier wing of pre-war aircraft, and two, the discovery of two hundred fighter aircraft that had been hidden away during the frenzy of disarmament which followed the cessation of hostilities of World War HI. In two bold strokes, the Fourth Reich assembled an air force of the most modern aircraft ever made: US Navy F-14 Tomcats, F/A-18 Hornets and A-6 Intruders; European Tornadoes, Jaguars, Mirages and Viggens; Soviet Floggers, Fitters and even some rare Su-24 Fencers.

All of this, plus an impressive array of in-flight refueling aircraft, backup cargo and logistics airplanes and a large fleet of helicopters of all types, made the Fourth Reich the premier air power on the planet. They were so rich in airplanes that just a few weeks before they transferred more than 50 units to their Second Axis's allies, the Asian Forces presently occupying the American West Coast. Granted, most of the units were elderly United American types captured during the lightning invasion.

Now as Fitz walked past the huge, recently completed airfield, he counted by habit the number of aircraft parked out on the runway. The tally came to 43, mostly Tornadoes and Jaguars, with an odd Mirage or Viggen about, but no US.

Navy craft. Still it was a formidable force sitting out on the freshly laid tarmac, not even counting the dozen or so airplanes that were always airborne and constantly patrolling above the Bundeswehr Four military district like murderous hawks looking for prey.

All in all, it was a sight that sickened him. Another reminder of just how firmly the country, that he and his friends and millions of people like them had fought so hard to preserve, was under the brutal Nazi heel.

"Maybe it's best that Hawk isn't alive to see this," he murmured sadly, resuming the ongoing conversation with himself. "And maybe I'm the fool for just hanging on."

It took another half hour for Fitz to reach his eventual destination, a little red schoolhouse on the far southern end of the city.

It looked like something out of a 1950s magazine pictorial, with its freshly painted white picket fence and tiny well-maintained flower garden intact. It was once a public elementary school. Now it was The Fourth Reich Reeducation Center #5781.

Fitz steamed every time he saw the meticulously hand-painted sign, imagining that the 5,780 other "reeducation centers" scattered across the divided, conquered country probably looked just as quaint. Just as perfect. Just as hideous.

"Propaganda swill holes," he mumbled, adjusting his clerical collar again. "I think I'd rather face a firing squad."

But his work here was important. He was certain of this. So it was necessary, for a few moments anyway, to buck up, take the deep breath, and prepare to act priestly.

He hurried up the white stone walk and through the front door where two heavily armed guards scrutinized his ID cards before letting him proceed.

Walking down the long dark corridor, he reached the familiar green door and went in.

"Good morning, Father Mackenzie!" came the chorus from the children in the classroom as soon as they saw him.

"Good morning, children," Fitz responded, giving them a quick and sloppy hand gesture that approximated the sign of the cross. "Is everyone well today?"

"Yes, we are . . ." came back the unified reply.

There were fifty-five of them in all-kids from four years old to seven.

Orphans mostly, they were brought to #5781 shortly after the invasion to be

"reeducated" in the ways of the European fascists. Four hours every morning, a constantly changing parade of Nazi political officers came to the school and filled the little heads with fascist garbage. The emphasis was on the life and times of Adolf Hitler, who was God Almighty for the Fourth Reich. For four hours in the afternoon, Fitz took over and taught them everything from English to math to science and spelling. It was by the strangest quirk of fate that Fitz had become their teacher. After he'd bribed his way out of a POW holding center up near Decatur and assumed the only disguise available to him at the time (he had hidden in an abandoned church for two weeks), his wanderings took him into New Chicago. There, he had barely escaped a curbside execution by some Fourth Reich soldiers who mistook him for a rabbi. Dragged to the local military police station, he employed his considerable verbalizing skills to convince the harsh officers that he was not only a priest, but a Jesuit priest, an educator, a molder of men's minds.

"Rabbis we kill outright," the officer had told him. "Priests and ministers, we allow to work themselves to death."

Fitz was shipped to Bummer Four the next day and assigned a variety of duties.

Tending the flock was one; teaching the kids

was another.

He'd been at it for four months now, and couldn't help but grow fond of each one of his students. He also felt enormously sorry for them. The Nazis were experts at twisting minds-the younger the better. It was part of the grand scheme to prepare these youngsters as the first generation of New American fascists, homegrown human machines built and oiled by the Fourth Reich.

Of course, Fitz was doing everything in his power to derail that outcome. And the kids, though young and somewhat disenfranchised, were smart enough to be willing accomplices. He never pushed them on it, but he knew that they realized their morning propagandizing was a crock. The sure sign came during his first week as their teacher. Announcing that it was art period, he slyly instructed them to draw pictures of the "world's worst villain," just to see what would happen. Almost every kid produced ghastly renditions of Hitler.

Some with knives sticking into his head; others with bullets being shot through his eyes; several with a hangman's noose around his neck. It was a violent reaction, for sure, especially for such young children. But it also spoke volumes about what they considered the truth.

From this spark, Fitz ran an everyday drawing period, always instructing them to draw the world's worst villain, or the man they hated the most. Invariably, they produced pictures of Hitler, or Bummer Four's top military governor, or their morning "re-20

education" teachers. After each art period, Fitz would collect the drawings and destroy them, making sure never to miss one. If he did, and the authorities found one, then he had no doubts that they would execute the child responsible and him. Probably on the spot.

"What do you want to do first today?" Fitz asked the children after he settled behind his creaky desk.