Portals in Time 1

by Michael Beals

  Trufflefoot stifled a sigh and nodded. “Jolly good, sir.”

  “Smashing! Take my jeep and crew. Sergeant Dore! Go with ‘em and make sure nothing gets cocked up.”

  Dore sniffed and unslung his captured MP40, the only souvenir he managed to bring back from Dunkirk. The sleek German machine pistol was far from standard armament. However, no one in the division had the nerve to take the hulking Scottish bulldog’s toy away.

  Sergeant Dore rose stiffly, courtesy of the shrapnel shards still in his right calf. “Corporal Capson, give Atkins a hand and make sure we’re ready to go.”

  The young machine gunner stopped picking at a zit on his chin and boomed with parade ground enthusiasm. “Roger, Sergeant! We’ll be ready to roll in 30 seconds! Won’t let you down.” He bounded off like a bunny while Dore rolled his eyes at Major Trufflefoot.

  “Christ, is there anything more annoying than a true patriot?”

  Trufflefoot fumbled around his desk for his spare magazines, trying to remember how many he’d been issued. “That’s pretty rich, coming from you. That leg could have bought you a first-class ticket back home, Sergeant. Nobody forced you to take over the General’s Security Detail. King and country right the down the line, eh?”

  Dore growled and tugged out his good luck charm, a custom leather belt dangling frag and incendiary grenades like so many Christmas ornaments. A feminine voice chirped behind them.

  “Major, don’t embarrass the Wolf Man. He’s just bored.” Kat snapped on her tactical belt and stuffed a notepad under her 9mm.

  “Just where do you think you’re going, Lassie? I’m not lugging around civilian tourists. And since when do you have a sidearm, anyway… Hey! I’m talking at ya!” Dore whistled at the woman’s back as she strutted out the tent flap and threw his hands up at the Major.

  “Back me up, sir.”

  Trufflefoot cleared his throat and waved his wristwatch, without ever glancing at it.

  “Oh, my. Look at the time. Please lead the way, Sergeant.”

  Night strikes with little warning in the desert. As fast as Kat’s jeep raced west, the fleeing sun slipped away even quicker. She zipped up her jacket, the frigid desert night embracing her with all the warmth of a

  NAZI’s heart. In the driver’s seat, Private Atkins leaned over the steering wheel and squished his nose against the fly-smeared windscreen. Over his shoulder, Corporal Capson hunched across his machine gun and whooped against the biting wind lashing his cracked lips.

  “Christ! Slow it down already. We don’t need to outrun any bullets. You’re going to impale us in a dune!”

  Atkins kept his eyes locked on the sliver of white leaking out of the taped-over headlights. As long as he never blinked, he could barely see six feet in front of the jeep.

  “Relax, mate. I’m pretty sure we’re still on the road. Might even be the right one!”

  “What! We’re lost?” Capson stomped from side to side while Atkins giggled.

  Sergeant Dore sat ramrod straight in the front passenger seat and scanned the cloudy sky. “Shut up, you two. Stay alert. Of course we’re on the main highway. It’s too bumpy to be open desert.”

  As the only civilian in the jeep without an assigned job, Kat spotted a cluster of very dark shadows far to their right. She crawled over Major Trufflefoot’s legs, resting on top of a spare fuel can, and patted Dore’s shoulder.

  “Two O’clock, half a click out.”

  Atkins hummed a raunchy tune and flew off the road on two wheels. Dore tossed his submachine gun from hand to hand as they closed in on the field hospital. “Aye. Those dozy cunts at least can follow light discipline. Why haven’t we been challenged yet? I’m going to rip the sentries a new asshole... Stop!”

  The jeep squealed to a dusty halt as a mound of sandbags flashed past on their left.

  “Back up!” While Atkins threw the jeep in reverse, Dore stood on his seat and shined a red lens flashlight at the guard shack. Tucked away in a small depression, the mini-fort was invisible until they were right on it, which cut both ways.

  A kid sauntered out from the sandbags, yawning deep. “That you, Sarge?”

  He froze and stared cross-eyed at Dore’s barrel, aiming right for the zits on his nose. There wasn’t much the soldier could do, what with his rifle on top of his sleeping bag six feet away.

  “Where in God’s name is ya Sergeant, Private!”

  “Uh, dunno. Sarge went on a patrol with the others. I wasn’t sleepin’, sir. Just stretching out…” The reservist squinted at all the strange stripes on Dore’s sleeve and the fancy Scottish Guardsman’s crest. He wavered between saluting and standing at parade rest, then settled on just smiling.

  “Quit grinning at me like an idiot! Git yer damn weapon before I shove this one up your…”

  Something rattled behind them. Dore spun around and leveled his weapon at a hunched-over geezer waving at him like a bartender.

  “Oye, you must be with HQ. You boys are early.” The elderly Sergeant said as he crested a nearby dune. Two boy scouts wearing daddy’s uniform trailed behind him. He hobbled up to the jeep, wheezing and massaging his knee. “I’s just makin’ the rounds and checking the perimeter. The doc’s expecting you... What’s the trouble, mate?”

  Dore took a deep breath and cussed to ten under his breath. All of the guards clustered together and fired up fags without bothering to shield their white light. None had even unslung their dirty weapons. Not that they could anyway with their hands shoved in their pockets. Dore shook and let out a subhuman roar.

  “My dear Sergeant—” Major Trufflefoot coughed politely.

  Dore waved him off. “Might want to look the other way, sir. Discipline is an NCO’s responsibility. Nothing for a gentleman to sully his hands with.” He jumped off the jeep and squared off with the befuddled NCO of the guard.

  Trufflefoot chuckled. “Of course, of course. Maybe one war at a time, eh? Perhaps you should drop us off at the aid station first and then come back to, uh, administer some wall-to-wall counseling?”

  “Piss up my kilt! Too right, sir.” Dore snatched the NCO guard leader by his sweat-streaked collar. “You, ya bas! I’ll be back in five minutes to square you away. In the meantime, how about you move your checkpoint closer to the target you’re supposed to be protecting? Maybe even establish an overwatch point that lets you see more than 10 meters around you! There could be a whole fuckin’ Kraut battalion out there, and you wouldn’t even notice until they cut your bratwurst off.”

  Sergeant Dore hopped in the jeep, still gnashing his teeth. Atkins grinned and hit the gas. “You know, they’re just Home Guard reservists, Sarge. No one ever taught them any better.”

  “Aye, but the War Dogs these STABs are going up against aren’t combat virgins. An ass-chewing from me beats the hell out of one from a machine gun. Major, when are we ever getting our battle-hardened boys back from Greece? Hitler’s sure taking North Africa seriously. When’s Whitehall going to wise up?”

  Trufflefoot stretched. “You think the General Staff tells me anything? I am but a mushroom, same as you. Kept in the dark and fed endless shit.”

  He flinched as someone ripped open a tent flap from the hulking shadow ahead, and white light cut open the darkness. A paunchy medic with a beard far out of regulation waved them inside.

  “Let’s go. Hey, where’s the General? That’s one of the only things he can say in English. Won’t talk to anyone if they don’t have stars on their shoulders. He thinks he can make a deal.”

  Major Trufflefoot stuck out his hand to give Kat a lift down. She dived out of the jeep without a sideways glance and flicked her head through the flap. The sweltering stench of disinfectant and gangrene roiled her stomach. A white-clad butcher on the far side of the station glanced up from his workbench and pointed a bloody saw at the third row of beds. He jerked a curtain shut and went back to his patient, a shrieking infantryman with a gag in his mouth and two beefy guys pinning him to the operating table.

 
Kat bared her teeth and focused on a cot-ridden young man in a gray uniform four beds down. He rolled his head her way and clapped his hands like an excited child. The Kraut babbled something in rapid German over all the fevered moaning around him.

  “Why isn’t he handcuffed?” Kat reached for her sidearm. The head medic came over and snorted. He rinsed his dark, stained hands in a bowl of water, then dunked them in another bowl of alcohol.

  “Nothing to worry about. The prisoner’s docile as a puppy. Likely has a concussion, plus he keeps complaining about back problems. We doped him up with plenty of morphine, just in case. Honestly, I’ve got a feeling he’s not exactly one of their prized lieutenants. He was so easy to capture. One of our patrols found him just lying there after a battle. His own team abandoned him without looking back.”

  Kat folded her thin arms. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. The General can’t make it. We’re with his personal intelligence section. Major Trufflefoot is actually running the intel shop now. Ich spreche auch Deutsch.” She dipped her brow as Truffelfoot walked in, never taking her eyes off the prisoner. “What would you like to ask, sir?”

  Trufflefoot cocked his head at the massive, recruiting poster-perfect Kommando. Despite his wounds, every strand of his blond hair was in perfect place. His bulging triceps twitched as he tracked Trufflefoot’s every move. The roar of Atkins cranking back up the jeep drowned the Major out as soon as he opened his mouth. He crossed his arms. The German prisoner reached inside his boot and tugged out a little needle. The wounded man jabbed the double-doze of pure amphetamine into his thigh and spoke first.

  In perfect, accentless English, “only a Major? Better than nothing.”

  He levitated out of the bed, eyes bright as a bell.

  “Jetzt!”

  The prisoner crushed the head medic’s larynx with one hand while snatching a scalpel from a nearby tray with the other.

  “Go!” Kat shoved Trufflefoot out the tent flap, only to slam him right into the ground.

  A few yards away, Sergeant Dore bellowed, “Frag out!” just as Atkins reversed the jeep and put it in forward gear. All three of them managed to bail out of the jeep a split second before a chain of grenade blasts lifted the night’s skirt around them.

  Dore rolled to his side and ignored the jeep’s remnants shrieking past his head. He blazed away with his MP40 at the kaleidoscope of muzzle flashes in every direction. “Capson! See if you can salvage the machine gun. Atkins, cover him. Don’t let them take the Major alive. Kill ‘em first if you have too!”

  Kat emptied her hand cannon over Dore’s shoulder. All twenty-odd muzzle flashes ringing the tent vanished. The only remaining light came from the torched jeep.

  The Sergeant slapped in a fresh magazine while high-crawling over to Kat. He got about two feet before Capson and Atkins stumbled out of the swirling dust and smoke.

  And marched over with their hands held high. A squad of Wehrmacht Commandos stalked after their catch without a sound.

  Dore shot Kat a wink and howled at the moon. He slid his submachine gun over to Kat and squatted on his knees.

  With a depinned hand grenade in each hand, he squinted at the shadows clustering around.

  “Don’t take it personal, but where you at, Major?”

  Kat dropped her pistol and snagged the MP40’s grip… it didn’t budge. She glared up at a jackboot flying out of nowhere and stomping on the barrel. The man kicked both weapons away and leered at her while training his rifle on Dore’s back.

  “Too late. Put zat down, or your men are dead.”

  Two more Germans hustled Major Trufflefoot off into the darkness, far out of Dore’s range. He could only grunt as a pair of Kommandos came over and took his toys. While they slapped tape over the grenade spoons as a makeshift safety, Kat straight-palmed the nearest Kraut, driving his nostrils up between his eyes.

  With the gasping, snorting man flailing around behind her, she had cover long enough to cross half the distance to Trufflefoot before the first round cracked by her ear.

  “Sorry, sir!”

  Major Trufflefoot grimaced over his shoulder, digging in his heels, slowing the Kommandos dragging him off for a brief instant. He twisted and locked eyes with Kat, as she swatted her arm at him and then tossed her hands up. Trufflefoot bared his neck, giving the glinting steel blade spinning his way a perfect target.

  With the razor-sharp tip a foot shy of his exposed jugular, the “wounded” German poster boy strutted out of the medic station. He batted the missile away with a quick swing of his captured rifle’s buttstock and whooped.

  “Cute, but you island monkeys aren’t the only ones that play cricket.”

  He barked in German at his men as they tied up the survivors. Edging closer to the six men guarding Kat alone, he gave her a once over from head to toe. “No, not a bad haul at all. What’s a pretty little Fräulein like you doing in a place like this?”

  Kat blushed and whispered something. The Oberleutnant pressed close, tracing his eyes over her heaving bosom. “What was that, my dear?”

  She gave him her widest doe eyes and leaned into his ear.

  He howled and collapsed as she bit off most of it. Kat fell over him as well, landing with her knee on his windpipe. She ground back and forth while batting her eyelashes at the rifle barrels flashing up to her head.

  “Oops.”

  Six safeties clicked off at the same instant an Officer bellowed.

  “Nein!”

  He switched to English and grinned at Kat. “She’s too valuable. We need to debrief this little minx first. Thoroughly.”

  The Captain closed the dead lieutenant’s eyes, while never taking his off of hers. His men stashed themselves and their large haul of walking prisoners inside several British trucks. After a few parting shots to dispatch those too wounded to move, the last Kommandos mounted up and raced west.

  All under cover of red crosses.

  Outskirts of Misrata, Libya

  280 miles west of Allied lines

  I can’t breathe anymore!”

  Corporal Capson shoved his head back against the canvas-wrapped side of the 5-ton truck. The tightly strapped cover didn’t budge a millimeter. With the whole truck bed sealed in the boiling midday desert sun, they might as well have been in one of those NAZI death camps the propaganda broadcasts always harped about.

  “Maybe ‘cause you’re sucking out all the oxygen with your bitchin’. Shut up and die with dignity, son.” Sergeant Dore wiped the sweat from his brow on the canvas and wheezed from the bench across the cramped cargo bed. No one breathed in and out of their nose anymore. Otherwise, they’d add more vomit to the rancid pool of bodily fluids on the floor.

  Major Trufflefoot kept a stiff upper lip and drew himself up, at least as far as he could before the rope around his neck tightened against the bench under his butt. He’d stopped sweating some time ago, not yet moving to the puking phase of heatstroke.

  “Oh, chin up. I suspect they didn’t go through so much trouble just to kill us slowly.” He licked his cracked lips as yet another British prisoner a few seats away lost consciousness and began convulsing. The captured medics, one locked down on each side of the man, cursed and squirmed at their restraints. Just like the first two that bought the farm earlier in the morning, the medics couldn’t do a damn thing to help.

  “Or at least not all of us.” Trufflefoot shook his head, fighting off the dizziness.

  Kat finally opened her eyes as the truck rattled to a halt. Two Germans, no longer sporting English uniforms, ripped open the truck’s flap. Over the rush of only hot air cooling the oven, they laughed at the stench inside. One of them tossed a five-gallon water jug in the lap of the nearest prisoner. The bloated corpse, bloating fast in the sun, popped. The retched gas had nowhere to go in the sealed truck. A dozen dehydrated survivors spewed out what little liquid they had left in their guts.

  Which only cracked the Germans up even more.

  “So raise your hand if you’re
dead.”

  For the first time in eight hours, Kat leaned forward and opened her mouth. “You need to cut some of us loose, unless you want to clean out all the dead bodies yourself. At least me. Nothing to worry about from a little girl. Oder, haben Sie angst?”

  The giggling Kommandos bawled harder. “Oh, Schatzi, we’ll cut you free soon enough… when we have a little privacy. That’s if the SS leaves anything...”

  He spit out blood and bone shards from his open mouth as his partner’s chest popped open. More high-explosive 20mm shells shredded the truck and a few more prisoners. Through the ripped cover, Kat caught sight of a Hawker Hurricane flashing feet overhead. Part of the outer canvas flickered in the wind. Even from up close, the sun-faded and windswept red cross sure resembled an Iron Cross.

  “Sanitar!” The German fired hopelessly as the sky hunters banked around for another pass. His medic never showed up, and instead rushed to the other flaming trucks in the convoy. The young Wehrmacht fighter dropped to his knees and did his best to stop his buddy’s endless bleeding.

  Kat strained at her leash and screeched in German. “It’s not a game. I’m a nurse. Let me go, and I’ll save him. It’s either that or watch him die! Clock’s ticking. He’s bleeding out!”

  The guard scanned hastily around. There wasn’t a living gray-suited soldier within sight. He slung his rifle and faced his half-dead POW’s. Grinding his teeth, he prepped a grenade in one hand and jumped in the truck.

  “If he lives, you can too. Anyone tries anything, and you’re all dead. Understand?” He wagged his blade in Kat’s face. She put on her meekest gaze and nodded solemnly as he cut the rope around her neck and hands. He kept his thumb in the pin of the grenade and held it over his head for all to see.