Return From the Inferno (3 page)

"Drawing!" came the inevitable chorus.

Fitz smiled broadly. It was their little secret.

"OK," he said, "And what do you want to draw?"

"Villains!" came the reply, as the kids scrambled for their crayons and paper.

But just then, one of the older kids raised his hand.

"I'm sick of drawing villains," he said.

Fitz felt a sudden cold feeling swell in his stomach. What did this mean?

"What would you want to draw?" he asked the boy.

The kid thought for a moment and then replied. "I'd like to draw a hero. But I don't know any . . ."

"Do you know any heroes, Father?" another kid asked.

Fitz bit his lip. He had been anticipating such a moment. But should he take the next step? If he did, it would be a dangerous one, for both him and the children.

But he knew some things were worth the risk.

"OK," he said finally, getting up from behind the desk and taking a seat closer to the children. "Today, we'll talk about heroes."

"Do you know any?" one of the kids asked excitedly. "Have you met any in person?"

Fitz felt an embarrassing mist come to his eyes. "I've known a lot of heroes,"

he replied. "Great men who were always trying to keep this country free."

The kids were very excited by this time, though smart enough to keep their voices low in a conspiratorial way.

"Tell us about the greatest hero that you knew, Father," one of the youngest kids asked, nearly awestruck. "Tell us what he was like."

Fitz moved his chair even closer to the eager students.

"All right," he said slowly. "Let me tell you about a man named Hawk Hunter. .

."

21

The air was still and hot around Fitzgerald's billet, the only relief coming from the slight, cool mist rising off the river nearby.

His shelter was a tiny wooden and tin shack located next to a small drawbridge which spanned the narrow, fast flowing Wa-bash River. Like his priest's collar, this dilapidated hut came with the job-it was another one of his many tasks to perform as the span's bridgekeeper. Whenever anyone with proper ID

cards appeared on the far bank and wanted to cross, it was up to Fitz to lower the bridge. Of all his jobs, this one was by far the least taxing. The bridge was seldom used and was only open late at night or early in the morning while he was on duty. His traffic was made up mostly of Fourth Reich armored cars returning from long-range patrols, though on occasion, citizens would hail him from the far bank. Usually these people were on a pilgrimage to Bummer Four to pay their oppressive

taxes.

It had been a long day. It had begun with his morning shepherding duties and then the hot afternoon at the school, and then the ten-mile walk back from Bummer Four to this place. Through it all he hadn't eaten anything and had sipped barely a glass of water. Just like everything precious, food and water were severely rationed to Americans living under the Nazi domination. Most people ate just once a day.

Fitz had just finished his only meal-watery soup and stale 22

crackers-when he heard an all too familiar sound coming his way. The distinctive sputtering of the VBL armed scout car's engine echoed off the tin roof of the small shack. By timing the engine pops, Fitz could tell the Fourth Reich vehicle was a half mile away and approaching fast.

Scattered on the table next to him were the scribblings of a very rudimentary sabotage plan he'd been working on for months. On top of the papers was a nearly depleted bottle of homemade wine. To be caught with either would mean certain death. He rolled the wine bottle under his bunk and then quickly stuffed the documents into a secret chamber inside his large, homemade crucifix. Hanging the cross over his damp, oily bunk, he tilted it slightly to give it a neglected look. Then he refastened his clerical collar.

A minute later, the small scout car screeched to a halt in front of his billet. The knock at the door came a few seconds later.

Fitz opened the creaky door to find two Fourth Reich officers and two of the hated Nicht Soldats-Night Soldiers-glaring in at him. The officers had their pistols out and ready. The NS were armed with rifles and large nightsticks.

"Come with us, priest," one of the officers snarled at him in barely recognizable English. "You have work to do."

Fitz pretended to check the time.

"It's so late, my friends," he replied. "The best work is done in the day."

The younger of the two officers reached in, grabbed Fitz's collar and dragged him out of the hut, pushing him into the pair of soldiers.

"Convince him," the officer said matter-of-factly.

With this, one of the NS men whipped the back of Fitz's legs with his baton.

Fitz instantly collapsed to his knees, whereupon both soldiers began striking him across his back, shoulders and kidneys. He tried to get up, but a boot heel knocked him flat to the ground. Suddenly there was a growling face next to his ear.

"You work when we tell you to work-do you understand?"

Fitz inhaled a mouthful of dirty sand. In all his experiences 23

against various foes, he'd never hated an enemy as much as these men. He vowed that it would be to their detriment that he was full-blooded Irish, and therefore an expert in holding grudges. "I understand, my son," he spit out.

"I'll be glad to go with

you."

He was picked up by his battered legs and arms and thrown into the back of the VBL scout car. Soon they were speeding down the roadway toward Bummer Four.

The only sign of life inside the city's limits were the roving bands of mechanized NS who specialized in finding and summarily executing anyone breaking the strictly enforced dusk-to-dawn curfew.

Fitz could just barely see out of the scout car's rear window, but he could tell they were heading for the Bundeswehr Four Aerodrome. He could hear the constant, low rumbling of jet engines that always emanated from the airfield as the never ending aerial patrols took off and landed.

They roared through the Aerodrome's main gate, past the dozens of airplanes and out to its most isolated runway. The scout car came to a halt on a particularly dark edge of the base and Fitz exited the vehicle courtesy of an officer's boot. Once again falling to his knees, he found a shovel thrust into his

hands.

"Am I to dig my own grave?" he asked the senior officer.

The man laughed cruelly. "Not yet, priest..."

The second officer yanked Fitz up by his clerical collar and directed his line of sight to three tall telephone poles driven into the ground about fifteen feet away. The one in the middle had a large wood beam tied across its top. A human body was nailed to the beam.

The man's arms and legs were broken, and the wounds where the nails had been driven into his hands and feet were grotesque and bloated. A string of barbed wire had been pulled tight around his neck and crotch. He looked like he'd been hanging there for at least several hours, maybe even a day.

24

Fitz made a quick sign of the cross, and not entirely to keep in character.

The four soldiers burst out laughing.

"Look familiar?" the senior officer asked him.

Fitz tried to say something, but couldn't.

The second officer kicked him hard on the back and then pulled out his pistol.

"Start digging," he ordered.

Thirty minutes later, Fitz had carved out a shallow grave.

The officers had departed briefly, returning with two slave laborers from the base. With Fitz's help, these men went about the grisly duty of removing the battered victim from the cross, using a ladder, ropes and crowbar. Not wanting to witness the gruesome task firsthand, the four soldiers had walked about fifty feet away where they spent the time smoking cigarettes and talking.

Once the limp body was down, Fitz steeled himself and studied the man's face.

He was probably no more than thirty years old, with red hair, close cropped, and a hint of a beard. His hands were callused and dirty-not with soil but with grease. He was wearing tattered and burnt blue coveralls.

"He was not a prisoner, was he?" Fitz whispered to the workmen.

"No, he wasn't," one of the workmen replied under his breath.

"Was he an American?" Fitz asked them.

"Yes, he worked here, on the base," the other man hastily whispered. "He was on the crew of the helicopter repair unit."

Fitz was surprised. "Why would they do this to such a valuable man?"

"He was a saboteur," came the hushed reply. "They caught him putting water into the gas for their helicopters. One of their big ones crashed up north last week. They traced the contaminated fuel back to him."

Fitz looked down at the man. His face was covered with dirt and dried blood.

"So he was a hero," he whispered, thinking back to his art class with the kids earlier. "Another hero ..."

25

"They are in short supply these days," the first workman said.

They hushed as one of the Fourth Reich officers walked over.

"Are you not going to say a prayer, holyman?" he asked Fitz in thick, German accented English.

Fitz almost gagged. He'd buried more than a dozen people in the past few months. It was yet another one of his duties. But this was the first time he'd been asked to do a eulogy. In the past, the Nazi soldiers were loath to such religious necessities.

But now the workmen stopped and suddenly all eyes were on Fitz. He felt numb.

A man was about to be laid to rest and a false priest was praying over him.

It was no way to leave this world.

"Take care of his soul, Lord," Fitz finally murmured, making up the prayer as he went along. "Take care of all our

souls."

He looked at the victim's cracked and broken face; it was so dirty. Too dirty to be buried. Fitz took a canteen from one of the workers and pulled a rag from his pocket. Wetting the piece of cloth, he gingerly began to wipe the bloody grime from the man's face.

Suddenly the man's eyes opened.

The two workers yelped in unison and one fainted dead away. The Fourth Reich officer was frozen in place, hand grabbing his mouth, unable to move.

Fitz himself was absolutely stunned. It was as if the man had come back from the dead.

"Water. .." the man gasped weakly. "Please give me water. . ."

Fitz quickly poured some water into his shaking hand and fed it into the man's caked and cracked lips.

"Am I dead?" the victim wheezed.

Fitz could only shake his head no.

Alerted by the workers' cries, the remaining soldiers had run over by this time.

"This man is still alive," Fitz informed them. His tone was one of disgust for the fascist troopers. They couldn't even kill a man correctly.

26

The four soldiers were wide-eyed and trembling at the strange turn of events.

"This is impossible!" one of the officers said. "I was here. I saw him die!"

"As did I," the other officer declared.

There was a long moment of silence as Fitz directed more canteen water into the man's mouth.

"What shall we do?" one officer asked the other in thick German.

The first officer was furious. Like all of the Fourth Reich soldiers, he was a slave to the curse of Absolute Efficiency. If something was not done right, it called for an investigation, to correct the imperfection. As such, expediency was not his virtue. The thought of simply putting a bullet into the man's brain never crossed his mind.

"Bring him to the hospital, of course!" he shouted at the others.

Instantly, three other soldiers pushed Fitz and the workmen aside. They lifted the seriously injured man into the back of the scout car. Then without another word, they climbed aboard and roared away toward the Aerodrome infirmary.

27

Chanter Three

The 747 jumbo jet circled the Bundeswehr Four Aerodrome once before coming in for a less than textbook landing.

For anyone remembering what the gigantic but graceful airliner looked like before World War III, the sight of this jumbo was an assault on the senses.

Garishly painted in black and red, from the hundreds of square feet of flame decals on its wings right down to the enormous Flying Tiger-style, shark mouth painted on its nose, it managed to look both silly and demonic.

No sooner had the 747 set down when its two escort aircraft-a pair of ancient F-105 Thunderchiefs-landed behind it. They too were painted in almost obscenely showy colors: one was covered with black and Day-Glo orange checkerboard squares, the other was a swirl of X-rated tattoos. The Thuds rolled up next to the 747, and all three aircraft slowly taxied toward their appointed parking stations.

An edgy delegation of Fourth Reich officers was waiting for the trio of airplanes, surrounded by a company of heavily armed NS. They watched nervously as the jumbo jet screeched to a halt barely twenty feet in front of their review stand. Its huge, cartoonish mouth looming over them, as if to devour them whole.

The F-105 pilots popped their canopies and slowly disentangled themselves from their safety harnesses and life support systems. They emerged, both dressed in identical black leather flight suits, heavy flight boots and decal plastered helmets. Retrieving their AK-47 assault rifles from a special storage 28

space underneath the F-105's seat, the pilots climbed down from the airplane and walked around in front of the jumbo jet.

Several NS men instinctively raised their own rifles as the armed flyers approached, but their officers waved them away.

"They're not stupid," the senior Fourth Reich officer crackled in German.

"Let's make sure we're not either."

The two pilots yanked off their black helmets to reveal two long manes of gnarled, stringy hair, and scruffy beards to match.

"I'm Bone. He's Itchy," one of the pilots said by way of crude introduction.

"First Squadron, Cherrybusters."

"Luft Seerauber," one of the Fourth Reich officers whispered to another who didn't speak English. "Air pirates."

"Do you have the cargo, my friend?" the senior Nazi officer, major, asked the air pirate named Bone.