Return From the Inferno (20 page)

"I wish I could tell you," Frost replied, in his sturdy clipped Canadian accent. "But. . ."

"No talking!" the NS officer screamed in broken English.

"Fuck you!" Fitz defiantly screamed back. "You're filth!"

The NS officer's face went beet red. He made a brief motion toward his sidearm, but thought better of it. In the obsessive-compulsive Fourth Reich mentality, prisoners had to be executed the correct way, not by a rash act.

The NS officer blew a whistle and the sullen Death Skull soldier who'd been waiting at the end of the execution yard stepped forward and cocked his AK-47

rifle. It was by perverse protocol that the Skulls served as executioners within the walls of Dragon's Mouth.

Once the hooded soldier was in place, the NS officer unfurled a scroll and began reading from it.

"You have all been charged with crimes against the Fourth Reich," he began.

"Our tribunal has decided you are all guilty.

"For the man named Jones, you are charged with prison escape. For the man named Frost, you are charged with sabotage. For the man named Fitzgerald, you are charged with duplicity in the death of the exalted First Governor of Bundeswehr Four. The sentence for all three of you is death."

The NS officer paused to look up at the three of them. And then smiled cruelly.

164

"The sentence shall be carried out immediately!"

He turned to the Death Skull soldier and nodded. The Skull checked his rifle once again: adjusted his long Grim Reaper robe to give his arms free movement, then brought the weapon up to the aiming position.

"For America and Freedom!" Jones suddenly cried out.

"For Freedom!" Fitz and Frost defiantly replied.

The Skull turned the barrel of his weapon and pointed it directly at Fitz's heart. He would be the first to die.

"I hope it wasn't all in vain," he whispered. Then he closed his eyes.

A second later, he heard the shot.

There was no pain. No feeling of impact at all. Instead, Fitz could hear himself breathing, and his teeth were chattering slightly.

This is what it's like? he thought.

But then, in a split second after hearing the shot, he opened his eyes to find that he was still in the courtyard. He looked down at his body and saw no blood, no wounds.

He lifted his head to see the NS officer sprawled on the ground next to the Skull executioner.

"What the hell?" Fitz blurted out.

Five seconds of absolute confusion began. Seeing their officer crumple to the ground, the pair of NS men hesitated a moment, not quite understanding what was happening. Then they raised their guns and pointed them at the Skull.

But the hooded executioner was much too quick for them. In a lightning flash move, he had his AK-47 up and firing before either Nazi could pull his trigger. Like their officer, both these men toppled over dead.

Fitz looked at Jones and Frost whose facial expressions matched his in astonishment. A loud mechanical noise suddenly filled the courtyard. In an instant, all three saw a pair of helicopters descending toward them.

"What is going on?" Fitz cried out.

That was when the Skull took two steps toward them and 165

said: "There's been a change in plans, gentlemen. And now it's time to leave .

. ."

With that, he pulled back his hood. Fitz, Jones and Frost found themselves staring at the smiling face of Hawk Hunter.

166

Pan UNO

A Man of Air

The pair of long-range NS mountain VBL patrol cars came to a halt on top of a snowy, wild blown rise.

The storm raging around them was now close to blizzard proportions. Indeed, it had been snowing heavily when they left their forward base early that morning and had only increased in intensity throughout the wearying ten-hour drive.

Now, night was coming and the storm was growing fiercer. And they still had a long way to go.

Raising the turret lids against the blowing snow, the pair of vehicle commanders emerged halfway out of the vehicles and compared map coordinates.

"We have another ten kilometers before us," one officer yelled over the howling wind to the other. "And that's just to reach the bottom road."

"With this snow, it might take us two hours or more," the second officer shouted back. "And we are already hours behind schedule."

Both men turned and for a moment studied their intended destination, the snow-enshrouded eighty-seven-hundred-foot mountain that lay some fifteen miles away. Barely visible through the storm, it looked treacherous. Foreboding.

Ghostly.

"We must press on," the first NS officer insisted. "We must at least reach the bottom road."

"Agreed," the second officer called back.

169

With that, they both climbed back down into their vehicles, locking their turret lids as they did so. Then, with a puff of smoke and a roar of engine noise, the armored cars lurched forward and continued their odd journey.

Their task was more then just a routine scouting mission. This desolate, rugged, mountainous stretch of Colorado was close to a very important boundary. For it was near here that a line began which split the American continent in two for the powers of the Second Axis.

Per their nefarious pre-invasion agreement, everything east of these mountains belonged to the Fourth Reich forces. Everything west provided the spoils for the Asian forces. It was hardly a fifty-fifty split. More than sixty-five percent of the American landmass was under Fourth Reich control. But this was not surprising. The Fourth Reich forces had spearheaded roughly two thirds of the invasion effort, not to mention its engineering of the successful pre-invasion feint by the Horse forces and the acquisition of the nuclear-armed Fire Bats submarines.

So the remaining third of the continent was actually a generous portion for the Asian Forces. In fact, many in the high command of the Fourth Reich considered it too generous. Though they would say so only under their breath or in the company of the most trustworthy compatriots.

That was a battle to be fought at another time.

The mountain before the NS troops was one of the highest sentinels of this border. And though the Asian forces had not yet reached the territories beyond the dividing boundary, they were certainly theirs for the taking.

That the new name of the mountain was Loki did not sit well with the highly superstitious Fourth Reich soldiers. In the old Norse myths, Loki was a trickster god, and the series of brutal summer snowstorms that had been blanketing the region for the past few weeks seemed to indicate that he was in high form. Just about anything could happen if one fell under Loki's spell. To this end, both officers, as well as their

170

separate crews of three, were carrying a small twig of mistletoe in their uniform pocket. The famous kissing plant was also rumored to carry powers strong enough to pacify Loki's supernatural mischief.

The officers knew they might need it. A similar two-vehicle patrol had been dispatched to the area the previous week with orders to survey the top of the mountain as a possible site for one of the enormous Schrecklichkeit Kanones, the "frightfulness cannon." This patrol had reached the top of the mountain, and per its orders, reported back to the Fourth Reich forward base inside the old city of Denver, some thirty miles to the southeast. Then they vanished.

All attempts to contact the two armored cars were unsuccessful. An aerial re-con of the area around Loki also turned up nothing. It was as if the men and their vehicle had simply disappeared.

The two cars of this latest patrol were sent out to look for their lost comrades.

They knew that the missing patrol reached the summit of Loki using a rough but usable supply road that had been built years before. Their last report was made from the peak near the abandoned ski lodge which guarded the top. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary during this last radio transmission, though the reporting officer did mention that several of the troopers thought they'd heard the sounds of machinery churning away somewhere in the distance. Contact was broken soon after that and the patrol was never heard from again.

The search patrol had no idea what awaited them atop Loki. The very least they could expect was to find the missing armored cars, their engines empty of fuel, then-crews frozen to death. Or perhaps the patrol became separated and spent valuable time and fuel looking for one another. There was even a remote possibility that the lost patrol might have encountered a hostile force.

Scattered bands of United American guerrillas operated in the general area, plus Free Canadian Special Forces units had been known to sneak across the border and travel undercover for days just to launch lightning 171

raids against either Fourth Reich or Asian installations. These symbolic actions were designed to inform the Second Axis that they would always have an angry neighbor to their north.

Then there was always the possibility that the missing soldiers had fallen prey to the mean-spirited Loki. According to his myth, the gods once punished Loki by binding him with the entrails of his own son. This did not bestow an aura of benevolence upon the god. Quite the opposite. It made him even more ruthless. His victims had been paying for the ghastly bondage ever since.

The search patrol reached the bottom road of the mountain two and a half hours later.

The commanders conferred again and it was decided that with barely an hour of daylight left, they should attempt to gain the summit as quickly as possible.

This would mean lightening their cars as much as possible to make the trek up the mountain easier and faster. They ordered their crews to off-load any weighty, unneeded items-food packs, spare radios, half their ammunition, and any equipment that was redundant between the two vehicles.

When this was done, they restarted their engines and began the long climb up.

The road was potholed and dangerously narrow in some places. But thanks to the velocity of the storm which tended to deposit most of its precipitation in huge drifts parallel to the roadway, it was barely covered with snow. Still the journey up the mountain was as treacherous as it was slippery. The heavy tires of the VBL armored cars were just not made for climbing such an icy surface.

In the end, the cold, cautious climb would take nearly three hours.

The storm had subsided somewhat when the two cars reached the top of Loki.

172

The place looked like something out of a fantasy book. Everything at the summit-the old ski lodge, the rusting remains of the ski lift machinery, the rows of power poles, the strings of snow fences-was encased in a thick covering of ice. The roadway itself, now leveled out and straight at the summit, was actually underneath a long ribbon of ice. This forced both car commanders to stop, and order two crewmen to get out and let air out of their patrol car's rear tires,- a somewhat desperate attempt to get more traction from the power wheels.

After much skidding and sliding, the armored cars reached the entranceway to the lodge and turned up toward the huge, dilapidated building.

They were amazed to see a light burning inside.

Deploying about fifty feet from the entrance, the commanders left one man apiece with the patrol cars, and then ventured up to the front door of the place. They hardly had the propensity to knock. Instead they violently kicked down the large oak door.

They found themselves stumbling into a main hallway which was set up as a workshop. Carved wooden figures-toys, statues, puppets-were hanging everywhere. Two large logs were burning away hi a fireplace at the end of the hall. The smell of sawdust and burnt wood was in the air.

And sitting before a work table not too far from the roaring fire was a man.

He looked elderly, and was portly, balding, and sporting a great white beard.

He was dressed all in red, except for black boots and a short, green work apron. A long cornpipe was stuck between his teeth, a thin wisp of smoke escaping from its bowl.

The man barely looked up as the soldiers burst in.

"More visitors?" he chuckled, his substantial belly jiggling as he did so.

"What nonsense is this?!" one of the NS officers demanded. "Who are you and what are you doing up here?"

173

"I live here," the old man replied innocently, getting up from his workbench and carefully approaching the heavily armed troops. "I've lived up here for years."

"Do you realize that you are in violation of the rules as set down by the military commander of this territory?" the officer asked harshly. "Do you realize we could shoot you right now?"

"That's what the other soldiers told me," the old man replied evenly.

"You saw the others?" the first officer asked, taking two belligerent steps toward the man. "When?"

"A week ago," the man replied, his voice soft and cheery despite the circumstances. "I fed them. They stayed with me for hours. We got along wonderfully."

"Where are they now, old man?" the second officer demanded.

The man in red just shrugged. "They left," he said. "They told me they had to return to their base. But they promised to come back. I thought you were them at first."

The two officers were infuriated that the man would talk to them with so little respect. For the next five minutes they barraged him with questions pertaining to the missing patrol, sometimes screaming at him from less than a foot away. But through it all, the man in red never lost his composure. He simply repeated over and over that the patrol had come to the lodge, had questioned him, had taken a meal with him and then left on apparently friendly terms.

At the end of the badgering session, the officers could only glare at the man and then at each other. Neither knew what to do.

"Please, gentlemen," the man told them. "Come in and sit down. I have stew. I have hot coffee. Surely you can abide my hospitality."

"Shut up!" the first officer bellowed at the man. "We don't need your hospitality. We will take what we want without it."

With a single movement of his hand, he ordered his troopers into the area near the fire where they could get warm. The second officer returned to the front door and called for the two soldiers watching the cars to come inside. Soon all eight soldiers were gathered near the fireplace, waning their cold and tired bones.