So Kat told Hades how she’d found Grantham in 2045, and told him about their conversation. After she finished, Kat said, “I’m very sorry, Haddy, but when I had the perfect chance to kill Grantham, one of his children was smiling at me… I just didn’t have the heart to kill his father in front of him.”
Hades’ eyes widened. “Grantham has children? That’s interesting.”
“Adopted… Are you angry?”
“Angry? No, of course not. Why would I be angry? You made a front-line decision that probably saved me from a screamfest from God. I can just hear him now; you forced one of your servants to kill a man in front of one of his children? And you thought that was OK? Who gave you that kind of authority? I can only imagine how long the torment would go on for. No, I’m not mad at all. In fact, I owe you a favor for not following my orders to the letter.”
Kat’s anxiety washed away. Feeling better, she laughed. “Have I ever told you how much you bear a remarkable resemblance to a Hollywood film star.”
He gave her one of his Paul Newman smiles. “That’s a piece of afterlife trickery, Kat. I do it to put people at their ease.”
She glanced at Persephone. “Do you see Haddy as a… Hollywood film star?”
Persephone raised her eyebrows. “I don’t know, Kat. I’m not familiar with film stars, but he’s the most handsome man I’ve ever met. He’s better looking than his brothers.”
She gazed at Hades in wonderment. “You have brothers?”
“I do, but I got saddled with this job, which was why I married Persephone. I needed someone to keep me sane. Don’t I, darling?”
“Yes, dear. So, where are we with this? Kat’s worried about the detective agency.”
Hades nodded and chewed on his lips. “Hmm, the detective agency. I’ve been giving a lot of thought to that. We’ve never had a detective agency in Hell before. Now we have one in both worlds.” He brightened. “It’s quite a novelty… possibly very useful.”
“You’re happy with it? Even after we failed to bring Grantham in?”
He shook his head. “We can’t bring Grantham in until God says we can. It’s not the children’s fault that their father is supposed to be dead, which means we have a moral question mark. I’m not surprised God wants me to back off for a while. He’s probably trying to figure it out.”
He was silent for a moment, pouring himself another coffee. “So I’d like to explore another route. But we need to discuss it, and it could be a little complex.” He turned to Dore. “Jock, I’m not trying to exclude you from anything, especially after everything you’ve done, but I want to ask Kat something rather private. How would you like to take my Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300 for a spin? Sephy will show you where it is. I’m sure she’d love to go with you.”
Dore stared at him. “What’s a Bugatti Chiron?”
“It’s a four million dollar, 1,600hp sports car. It’s going to be made in 2020. One of my couriers brought it back from the future. You stole a Corvette when you were looking for Grantham. I’m sure you can handle it.”
Dore’s eyes looked as if they were about to pop their sockets. “If it’s anything like the Corvette, I’d love to take it for a spin. Thank you.”
“Be careful. The Corvette’s a snail by comparison.”
Kat watched Dore and Persephone make their way across the drive and around to the side of the house. What on earth was Hades going to ask her? There was nothing she couldn’t share with Dore. Or was Dore some kind of problem? Had Hades heard about his involvement with Giselle? Was that what this was about? Was he going to boot her friend off the team?
Pouring herself more coffee, she glanced at Hades. “Should I be worried about this?”
He seemed to think about the question. “Not yet. I have two things to discuss. The first one is the easiest. Perhaps we should discuss that first.”
“Whatever you think’s best.”
“OK. How much do you know about Andrew Zukerman?”
Kat blinked. “Never heard of him.”
“He lives in the future, 2027, to be exact. He’s the right-hand man of the president of Akhir, a small breakaway principality on the coast of Syria. The principality was formed in 2025, but it’s a very dangerous little country, and Zukerman, in particular, is extremely dangerous.”
“Is this relevant if it’s in the future?”
“I’m afraid it is.” He gazed at her for a moment. “Zukerman escaped from Hell two years ago using one of Grantham’s time machines.”
“He’s another Grantham?”
“Oh, he’s far worse than Grantham. Grantham’s an angel by comparison.” Again, he was silent for a moment. “I want you to kill him. He’s an evil man, and I can’t go into the future; otherwise, I’d send Persephone. God won’t interfere either… so the job’s yours.” He smiled. “Consider him a NAZI.”
Kat just listened as Hades continued.
“The best way to reach him is in London. He goes there quite frequently, under a cloak of secrecy, of course, but that’s the challenge. The idiot Brits are forced to protect him.”
Kat stared at him for a while, stunned that Hades had offered her such an enormous job.
“Your connection to MI6 will come in handy. Besides, after killing you, I believe MI6 owes you a favor. I don’t think they’ll say no… Dead people are always useful.”
After finishing discussing Kat and her team’s new mission, Hades’ tone turn more fatherly.
He sipped at his coffee. “You don’t know why Jock is here, do you?”
“I always figured he was here for the same reason I was… Killing people.”
Hades lit a cigar and said, “There is a bit of a difference between you two. You’ve already been told why you are here. I normally don’t discuss why residents are sent here, but I’m going to make an exception in this case. I think you really should know because of how close you will be working together.”
Taking another long puff on his cigar, Hades walked over to the bar and made himself and Kat a bourbon with ice. Handing Kat her drink, Hades continued. “Sergeant Major Dore didn’t go into one battle with intentions of killing anyone. Believe it or not, he went into battle to save lives. Jock was a leader of men… men he cared deeply for. Dore was a mean son of a bitch, constantly browbeating his men for the slightest infraction, as I am sure you noticed in the years you were together during the war.”
Kat raised her eyebrows and shrugged. “It was just part of Jocks charm…”
Hades took a sip of his drink. “He did it because he wanted his men to follow his orders without question. Dore only followed orders from his superiors that made logical sense and didn’t just piss the lives of his men away. When he did go into battle, he went in methodically, logically, and with a plan that would cost the least in lives. Then you came along. He fell in love with a crazy, insane, maniac, who would go into battle with nothing more than a knife just to see how many NAZIs she could gut. Dore switched his focus from saving platoons of men to a fulltime job saving one nutty redhead who wouldn’t listen to anyone. Dore is an amazing, honorable man.”
Kat shook her head. “I don’t understand. Those sound like good things.”
“That’s why I’m telling you all this… Sergeant Major Dore wasn’t sent to Hell… Jock was sent to Heaven.”
“What?” she gasped.
Hades cocked his head. “When he found out that you were in Hell, it broke his heart. He begged to be transferred. They did warn him it was a one-way trip with no coming back until reincarnation, but he was adamant. He wanted to be with you… It’s a rare request, but it does happen.”
“He transferred from Heaven to be with me? But that’s insane.”
Hades raised his eyebrows and massaged the back of his neck. “I just thought you needed to know.”
Kat was about to thank Hades when there was a roar of a high-performance engine, and the Bugatti slithered to a stop in a cloud of drifting dust. Dore certainly knew how to make a dramatic entrance.
She turned to Hades again. “You’re a good man, Haddy. How did you get saddled with being Satan?”
Hades gave her an enigmatic smile. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, Kat. It’s one of the mysteries of the universe, and God won’t allow me to. Just be glad we met, because you’re going to be in Hell… for a very, very, long time.”
Kat and Dore were on the flight back to New York when Kat finally summed up the courage to face Dore with the truth, but it wasn’t easy. He was still excited after driving the Bugatti and full of the joys of spring. The detective agency was assured, they would soon have a life on Earth, and he was on his way to see Giselle.
She’d thought long and hard about how to broach the subject. They were sitting next to each other, Dore was reading yesterday’s New York Times, and she was pretending to doze, but she was really thinking about what Dore had given up to be with her, how much he must love her to have done such a stupid thing. And the more she thought about it, the more her throat tightened. She finally opened her eyes and found him staring at her. It was too much. Tears welled in her eyes as she stared back at him.
He sat up straight. “Kat? What’s wrong? What’s the matter?”
“You bloody idiot,” she croaked. “What the fuck were you thinking? How could you have done such a goddamn stupid thing?”
Dore looked at her in alarm. “What thing? What have I done?”
Kat could no longer hold back. Bursting into tears, she tilted her head and sobbed against his chest. “Haddy told me what you did… why you’re here. Why in God’s name would you do such a thing? You gave up an eternity in Heaven to be with me?”
Dore wanted to tell her so many times, but could never seem to find the courage to do so. He was glad that the truth finally came out and patting her hand, Dore said, “aye, Lass. I’d rather spend an eternity in Hell with you, then one second in Heaven without. Lovers may come and go, but as the teenagers say, BFF…”
“Best friends forever, you dumb ass Scotsman!” Kat said sobbing, “I love you, Sergeant Major Dore.”
Dore struggling to push out from his quivering voice, the words he wanted to say for all the years he had known her, said, “aye Lass, I love you too.”
End Part Three.
Demon Detective Agency
Slaughter in the Desert
The Declassified History of World War II
The Adventures of Kat’s Commandos
PART THREE
There are three parts of Slaughter in the desert. Each part is included with each part of “Kat’s adventures in Hell” as a thank you for your purchase.
All pictures contained herein are public domain, courtesy of either the Imperial War Museum (UK) or the Bundesarchiv (Germany).
Cover art, sketches, and maps are provided courtesy of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either used fictitiously or are the fevered products of the author’s twisted imagination.
Table of Contents
Slaughter in the Desert
Part III
Coast of Sirte
Italian Forward Operating Base “Resolute”
Tripoli
Medina “Old City” District
Alexandria, Egypt
Acronyms/Slang/Terminology
Part III
Onward we stagger,
and if the tanks come,
may God help the tanks.
– Col. William O. Darby, U.S. Army Rangers
Coast of Sirte
30 kilometers east of Ras Lanuf
Kat closed her eyes and curled her outstretched hands threw the fluffy sand. The sun’s seductive rays wrapped her sore bones in a snug blanket, begging her to give in and drift off to dreamland. A lone seagull squawked a teasing lullaby over the lapping Mediterranean waves.
“Pucker up, everyone! This one looks hot.”
Kat shot up ramrod straight, her ponytail flopping onto the rim of her foxhole. Two firing holes over, Captain Steele rubbed his crow’s feet and adjusted the gain on his binoculars. She scrambled to shake the cobwebs out of her sunbaked mind and leveled her own set of binos towards the dust cloud on the horizon. The remnants of this ancient hillside Roman legionnaire fort made an excellent combat post. A ten-meter high sandy mound stretched for acres across the hilltop. The endless slabs of red granite strewn about from the collapsed walls offered plenty of shadows to evade aircraft. Kat twisted her head out of her foxhole and peered around a battle-scarred rampart blocking her view.
“Maybe we’ll have better luck… hey!”
Several bright flashes from a pocket mirror blinked four hundred yards southeast of their ambush site, just across the endless asphalt ribbon snaking through the open desert. Steele mumbled the primary ambush team’s Morse code count under his breath.
“This has to be them. Pass the word. Six 5-ton trucks, with two MG-armed half-tracks bringing up the rear and a pair of armored cars leading the way. The massive, eight-wheeler variety, so expect 20mm autocannons on board.”
Kat rapped her pink nails against the red sand. Every convoy they’d surveyed all day long rolled with at least twenty trucks and only one or two light escorts. They hadn’t seen a single armored vehicle either, much less two in one group.
“They’re early. The U-boat wasn’t even supposed to arrive until late tonight.”
Steele dropped his binos and twisted around to Major Trufflefoot’s firing port. “You’re the intelligence guy. How about you give us some?” Trufflefoot gripped his auto-rifle by the belt cover and rested his jaw on the bolt.
“Well, that ledger was always a tentative schedule. Must have been planned out weeks in advance, and you know nothing goes according to schedule in this Godforsaken desert. Plus, there’s the minor wrinkle that we did blow up the NAZI’s damn headquarters. It’s only natural they’d be slightly perturbed and in a rush to get some payback.”
Kat chewed her lip. “It still doesn’t add up. These guys have more than enough security to stand out from the pack, but not half as much as you’d expect for such a crucial op. The Gestapo always goes in for either sneak attacks or overwhelming force. This convoy just doesn’t fit their style.”
“Look, we only have the firepower to pull this trick off once.” Steele’s voice wavered, the first sign of indecisiveness she’d ever seen from the scarred warrior. “We could wait for a better target, but are you really prepared to risk letting those dirty bombs slip right past us?”
Dore flicked the arming knob on the little green box in his trench. He grinned as the green light flickered briefly before burning steady.
“Aye, time to piss or get off the pot. Just crossed the second marker. Ten seconds until they’re in the kill zone. We gonna light these sleekit bas’ards up or not?”
Even Trufflefoot’s hands moved as the intoxicating adrenaline of impending combat electrified the group. Steele hefted his handset and broke radio silence for the first time.
“Contact. Give ‘em the old two-step.”
The other firing position on the south side of the road clicked their mike twice in acknowledgment.
Kat gave the sharp bend in the highway one last scan. “They’re staying in the center of the road. Are you sure your little contraptions can still hit them from so far?”
Steele beamed at Dore and raised his own green box. “This isn’t the first time we’ve used Lt. Stewart’s custom mines. He’s the best damn demo expert this side of Hades… Now!”
They both twisted the dials on their detonators, closing the circuits.
A simple electrical charge raced down the buried wire towards the road. With Axis combat engineers sweeping this crucial highway and shoulders for explosives several times a day, traditional mines would have been a waste of time.
The signals branched out and lit up a battery of fake rocks planted fifty meters away from the road. Inside each of the ten papier mâché shells, rested an array of six steel tubes, all four centimeters in d
iameter, and pointed horizontally at slightly different angles towards the road. Milliseconds later, half a pound of plastic explosive in each tube erupted and spat out a simple concave copper plate… At six times the speed of sound.
Such extreme pressure warped the copper cones into extremely dense molten slugs, each lancing out with the kinetic energy of an armor-piercing 30mm cannon shell.
Two hundred meters due south of Kat, the front and rear of the convoy disintegrated in a vast plume of sandy black smoke.
“Jeee-sus! You all are some twisted blokes.” Sergeant Dore scanned the slaughter, as enchanted as a child at Christmas.
Before the haze even cleared, the southeastern fighting position hosed the swerving supply trucks down with concentrated machine gun fire. Two trucks made it a few feet off the road before their bleeding drivers and guards spilled out of their cabs and tried to crawl away. The remaining crews hit the brakes and took cover on the northwest side of their vehicles, bravely taking potshots at the ambushers, which wasn’t so easy with the blazing sun in their faces.
By that point, the swirling acrid clouds of sand and flaming oil cleared enough for the escorts to get in on the action. The handful still alive at any rate. Ironically, the unarmored half-tracks in the convoy’s rear fared the best. The copper slugs sliced right through their tracks without stopping. The slugs then splintered into thousands of white-hot shards when they penetrated the leading mini-tanks’ armor. Inside the armored cars, the shrapnel kept ricocheting around until there wasn’t any meat left to absorb it. At least half of the escorts in the half-tracks still had arms and legs. One of the half-tracks could still drive, making it all the more peculiar when the surviving rear security detail gathered their wounded and fled without firing a shot.
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