Return From the Inferno (23 page)

191

It was the only triangular shaped room in the Reichstag.

The unusual design had more to do with the egos of the three men who occupied the large office than any kind of design element. All three were Fourth Reich Field Marshall's of absolutely equal rank. As such they were the highest officials in Occupied America next to the Amerikafuhrer himself. The Marshall's were so far up the Fourth Reich's organizational ladder that they were nearly as insulated from their troops and staff as was the Top Nazi. They were so removed that even their names and identities were state secrets.

They were known then as Erste, Zweite and Dritte, literally "first," "second"

and "third"-top secret codenames that were derived for operational purposes from the men's ages and not their rank. Still even this was a sore spot among them. The boisterous, aggressive Zweite felt in all ways superior to the mild-mannered intellectual Erste and he didn't think he should be labeled with the less than grandiose code name of "second," just because he was two weeks and a day younger than his rival. By the same token, Dritte, the youngest, was a very accomplished, though slightly paranoid, ass kisser. He believed that his "interaction skills" with the Amerikafuhrer were so high, that Erste and Zweite were pretty much superfluous. Though he would never dare to tell them so to their faces. No surprise then that Erste thought the other two were dull and boorish.

There was one thing the three men agreed on. They believed they, and not the Amerikafuhrer, should be the ruling force in Fourth Reich America. After all, they were military men. The Amerikafuhrer had his position simply by quirk of birth, a curse of nepotism

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that went back decades. They had experienced combat, paying their dues in the blood of their men. The Amerikafuhrer had never even fire the gun. They knew how best to exploit the conquered lands. Their Leader was frankly more concerned with the direction of his sexual compass.

So as distrustful and mean spirited as they were to each other, they had in concert been plotting against the Amerikafuhrer for some time. It was they who had arranged to have the First Governor of Bundeswehr Four brought to Fuhrerstadt. Believing that if they succeeded hi poisoning or shooting ibe Amerikafuhrer, then the ruthless man from the Fourth Military District would make the ideal replacement puppet with which they could truly gain ultimate power. But then the First Governor went insane and was shot, kiboshing that intrigue. Now the trio of high Nazi officers was forced to their back-up plan, dealing with a person so notorious, even they, with all their power, feared her.

The person was the Witch Elizabeth Sandlake. And it was they who had arranged her marriage to the Amerikafuhrer.

Like the Norse before them, the three Marshall's knew that the real power in this new world lay in control of the nuclear-armed Fire Bats submarines.

Whoever had their finger on the mysterious subs' buttons could threaten anyone, friend or foe, with nearly instant nuclear annihilation.

At the moment, the Witch held that power. But they knew she wanted something more: to be crowned "Queen of America." As silly and preposterous as it sounded, the trio of Reich Marshall's was certain that if they satiated her insane megalomaniac desires by getting her married to the Amerikafuhrer, then they could slowly wrest control of the Fire Bats from her.

And then they could kill her and her new husband.

Arranging the unholy matrimony had been no problem. Through smooth, secret-pouch diplomacy, they'd convinced Elizabeth long before that the closest she would ever come to being "Queen of America" was to marry the Amerikafuhrer. For his part, the Amerikafuhrer sanctioned the bonding as a cover for his actual sexual orientation. While being far from unique among the Fourth Reich hierarchy, it nevertheless always posed a threat of deep embarrassment - especially back in the European Fatherland where such things simply weren't tolerated anymore.

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So it would be a marriage of convenience all around: the Witch would get what she wanted, the Amerikafuhrer would get what he wanted, and, after the newlyweds were done away with, Erste, Zweite and Dritte would get what they wanted.

There was only one factor standing in the way: what was left of the damnable United Americans.

The three Reich Marshall's had no illusions about the potential of the United Americans. All three had fought against them with Viktor hi the first Circle War, and later with the neo-Nazi Twisted Cross in Panama. They'd seen time and time again what the American "comic book" heroes could do. They knew that if anything, the Americans were even more dangerous when faced with depleted resources or impossible odds. They were also troubled by persistent, if secondhand, reports that small elements of the United American forces were gathering somewhere hi the Caribbean.

The recent rescue of the three United American officers right out of Dragon Mouth's execution yard was just one more very dangerous example of the Americans' boldness. Especially, since the dramatic rescue had all the dark elements that The Wingman himself was behind it.

No wonder then that the three Marshall's had quickly put a clamp on the whole affair. They'd ordered swift and secret executions for just about anyone at Dragon's Mouth who knew of the incident, forty-four people in all. They had even kept the truth from the Amerikafuhrer himself, deciding to tell him only when it suited then-purposes, and certainly not before.

They were wise to be so cautious. They knew if the whispers began inside the High Command, or among their troops, or even throughout the captive American population that the United Americans were still a force to be reckoned with, then it would be enough to throw their more long-range plans into disarray. It would be even worse if the rumor that the famous Wingman was still alive spread throughout the captive lands. If that happened, then the situation would most likely tumble completely out of control. The three Marshall's realized that dead or alive the name of Hawk Hunter alone was enough to incite rebellion and renewed patriotism in even the most dominated of souls.

In this case, both the man and the legend were equally powerful.

But now, all that could very well have changed. They felt that today 194

might actually hail the end of the United Americans' well-cultivated myth.

For today, they'd learned of their enemy's most secret plans.

This valuable information had come to them via the fascist and friendly government of Imperial Argentina. An airplane hired by the United Americans had crashed in bad weather off the coast of that country. A plane that may have been carrying two of the officers who'd been plucked from the executioner's gun earlier. Found inside the airplane was nothing less than a secret strategy of how the UA planned to disrupt the strong-arm rule of the Fourth Reich in America.

Even in their glowing hatred for the Americans, the three Marshall's had to admire the pluckiness of the recovered secret plans. In them, the UA revealed what every good military command should know. They recognized their limitations. Knowing that it would be impossible to defeat the enormous resources of the Fourth Reich, the UA was going to go for a small but highly symbolic action, one that quite literally could bring them back from the dead.

The plans spelled out, step by step, how the UA was to first purchase some heavy weapons, tanks mostly. Next they would purchase air transport, mostly hi the form of helicopters. Then they would raise a small but competent army, probably through recruiting mercenaries. Then, they would attack, occupy and hold a section of the Fourth Reich's conquered territory. The would declare this spit of land "New America" and then hang on in hopes of inciting the general population to rise up and throw off the yoke of their Nazi masters.

Even in a bitter bar-fought defeat, the United Americans would be considered the winners, and the population would be left smoldering, ready to flame up again at any tune in the future. Worse too, an all-out massacre of the Americans by the Fourth Reich might prompt Free Canada to step into the fray.

This was a troublesome aspect for the Fourth Reich as it would take major resources to battle the large army of the unfriendly neighbor to the north.

So the Americans had come up with an ingenious plan-but its best points were now moot. Because all good military operations needed one thing -surprise.

And that was now lost.

195

The short, bald, weary man wiped the last of the grease from his hands and slumped into the hard folding chair in the corner of the oil caked workshop.

"What I'd give for a taste of beer," he wondered, smacking his dry lips. "Or even a sip of wine."

He studied the disassembled airplane engine before him. It was an ancient Cyclone, a too big power plant that he was trying to convert for use in a Cessna Special Edition AE. It was proving an impossible task.

"Idiots," he muttered, turning a worn and cracked rubber gasket over in his hands. "Where is their efficiency these days?"

His name was Roy From Troy, and not many years before, he'd been one of the richest men in post-World War III America. Roy was a salesman. Before the war, he'd sold everything from aluminum siding to indoor/outdoor carpeting to Tupperware. After the war, and the wild days of the disputed armistice that followed, Roy From Troy began selling airplanes.

His timing had been perfect. The former-United States had just been carved up into a mishmash of territories, fiefdoms and so-called Free States. Each one quickly realized the need for defense, especially in the air. But under the harsh New Order "peace" terms, the majority of the world's military aircraft had been scrapped.

That was where Roy came in. Armed with a bag full of real silver and gold coins, and a loophole in the armistice agreement that you could fly a Boeing 747 through, he'd bought a large, abandoned

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tract of land in what was once known as Ohio. The land, sold as ten square miles of concrete, just happened to contain one of the US Air Force's

"airplane graveyards." Instead of dismantling the four hundred near antique military airplanes that came along with the property, Roy hired mechanics to make them flyable.

In a world starved for aircraft, Roy From Troy was suddenly the man with the Midas touch, Almost single-handedly, he outfitted every burgeoning air force in the eastern part of fractioned America. In the process, he became one of the richest men on the continent.

But all of that was long gone now-the money, the babes, the fine booze. Now he was reduced to a lowly grease monkey, a salesman trying to fit a massive airplane engine into a small airframe. The trouble was he didn't have the faintest idea what he was doing. The NS had just assumed that because he once sold airplanes that he knew how to fix them. They couldn't have been more wrong. When they found out that he'd avoided work in the granite quarry by misleading them about his knowledge of aeronautical mechanics, they would surely execute him.

"Fucking Nazis," he murmured for the hundredth time that day. 'They always ruin everything!"

Roy checked the time. It was almost midnight. He'd been ripping apart the engine for more than twenty-four hours now, and he was sure the ruse could not go on much longer.

It was enough to tempt him to crank up what was left of the sputtering engine and suck on the exhaust pipe until dead.

Just then he realized the dim light in the workshop got a little bit dimmer.

He looked up to see a shadow course its way across the far wall.

"Who's there?" he called out, shakily reaching for his only weapon, a large monkey wrench.

Suddenly the shadow took on a more definite form-tall, black, almost ghostly.

It was barely ten feet away from him now.

"What is this?" Roy cried out, not really wanting to know the answer. "Who the hell are you?"

He heard a slight mechanical sound as the figure walked forward.

"Is that a way to greet an old friend?" said the barely recognizable voice.

Roy felt his eyes go wide and his jaw suddenly drop.

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"Hunter?" he gasped. "It can't be ... you're supposed to be dead."

Hunter stepped forward into the light for the first time. "Then maybe I'm just a ghost," he told Roy.

198

"Yaz" was seasick.

He couldn't believe it. In the past ten years, he'd spent more time aboard ships than on land-US Navy submarines, Norse troopships and, for the past year, this converted cruiseliner. He had never gotten sick before.

Until today.

Now lying spread-eagled across the huge waterbed in the center of Elizabeth Sandlake's boudoir, he knew the cause of his nausea. It was all the intoxicants he'd ingested the night before. Elizabeth and Juanita had really gone off the beam in the past few days, using him as their nonstop sex toy.

Plying him with liquor and myx, they demanded that he perform for them and with them for incredibly long periods of time.

These marathon sessions had left "Yaz" a rather reluctant stud. He felt so used, that he swore if he ever got back to civilization - or whatever passed for civilization these days - he would never treat a woman like a sex object again.

Not unless she wanted to be.

So it was a hangover combined with the more than gentle rocking of the grand cruiseliner that had set his stomach gurgling into a seasickness which left him feeling one step from Death itself.

Juanita was sitting across from the huge bed, doing her nails. Although they had both explored each other's most intimate parts many times, they rarely talked whenever they were not thrashing about.

But today, as "Yaz" would learn, it would be different.

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"When she comes back, you'd better show some enthusiasm," the dark Spanish beauty told him, barely looking up from her industrial strength nail filing.

"This is a special day for her. You'd be wise to take notice."