by Brian Parker
“We've got to go home and get some supplies,” James replied. “We may be able to get some help if we go south. What do you think?”
The thought of the tunnels was terrifying, but it did make sense to go home and get clothing and food for their attempted escape. There were probably thousands of people trying the same thing, so food would be scarce. “Alright. How are we going to manage the escalators?”
The look that passed across his face told her that he clearly hadn't thought about going down into the Metro tunnels and coming back up. “I'll manage somehow,” he finally mustered the courage to say. “I made it down ten flights of stairs at the office. I can do this.”
She stared hard at him for a moment. What if he couldn't manage it and she had to leave him by himself to go to the apartment? She knew she could do it, but she didn't want to. James was extremely vulnerable in his present state. Any number of things could happen to him. She didn't let herself think about the dangers for a pregnant woman alone in the dark with three kids.
“Alright,” she told the patient cab driver. “Take us to the Rosslyn Metro Station.”
*****
08 July 2025
Fredericksburg, Virginia
“Vengeance Squadron, if we haven’t had the opportunity to meet, my name is Major Schenk. I am your new commander. Oberstleutnant Griese is dead. The last American attack using high-altitude stealth bombers destroyed many düsenjägers that were refueling and killed their pilots and ground crews. These were heinous, sneak attacks by subhumans. We will avenge their deaths.”
Oberleutnant Berndt Fischer cheered with his squadron mates. He’d been flying a strafing mission at the Marine Corps base in Quantico this morning when word came over the radio of the attack. In all, the Luftwaffe had lost three-hundred and twelve düsenjägers in the bombing as opposed to the sixty or so that had been shot down in aerial combat since the beginning of the invasion.
It was a disaster and Generalfeldmarschall Mueller ordered the execution of Generalmajor Helmich, the commander of the Luftwaffe, for his incompetence at allowing so many düsenjägers to be parked together in one location.
“Even now, the hour of our revenge is at hand,” Major Schenk continued. “The Americans are moving tanks from the airport in Richmond toward Washington. Our mission is to destroy the column before they have an opportunity to threaten the Heer on the ground.”
Vengeance Squadron’s new commander spent the next several minutes outlining the mission plan. The squadron’s forty remaining düsenjägers were to fly south, following Interstate 95, the major north-south highway which ran the entire length of the American eastern coast, until they found the tanks and other armored vehicles. Then, they would destroy them where they sat. It was expected to be an easy run since the Luftwaffe enjoyed air superiority and the Americans didn’t have any type of mobile surface to air missiles capable of shooting down a düsenjäger.
“It is time to go,” Major Schenk ordered. “Go to your aircraft and prepare for launch.”
Berndt saluted and jogged to where Düsenjäger 519 sat parked in the back of a field two hundred meters from any other craft. He was covered in a thin sheen of sweat by the time he finally made it to his aircraft. They’d learned their lesson about leaving the planes too close together and it wouldn’t happen again.
He climbed the small rope ladder that they used when the düsenjägers were parked horizontally instead of upright on the transport vessel—not that returning to the ship he’d sailed on from Antarctica was an option. Shortly after Vengeance Squadron had taken off, a missile fired from the naval base at Norfolk sank the boat.
Kriegsmarine officers were still baffled as to how the Americans successfully targeted the shrouded vessel.
Berndt stowed the ladder in the cockpit behind his seat and closed the canopy, securing it with both manual and electromagnetic locks. He followed his handwritten checklist for the startup procedure and checked in on the radio. Within minutes, everyone had answered the commander and they took off.
He experienced a brief moment of weightlessness as the düsenjäger transitioned from sitting on the ground, to hovering and then moving forward. His craft shot up to the collection area over the office supply store where Vengeance Squadron had set up its headquarters. Once everyone was assembled, they flew almost due south for sixty-three kilometers. That’s when he saw his first American tank.
The armored vehicle traveled alone on the side road, not in a long column of vehicles as their intelligence had briefed. As soon as Berndt saw it, the vehicle pivoted and crashed into the wood line along the road.
“Scheisse!” he cursed and slowed his düsenjäger’s speed so he could open fire with his guns. How had it known to evade so quickly? the pilot wondered. It was as if they’d been expecting the squadron to attack.
The rounds from his machine guns chewed up the trees, but he was unsure if the armor-piercing rounds even reached the tank since it was hidden in the trees.
“Vengeance Leader,” he grunted into his radio. “This is Vengeance Nineteen.”
“Yes?” the major replied.
“I have engaged one enemy tank.”
“What do you mean by engaged? Why is it not destroyed?”
“They were expecting us and went into the trees.”
“The Americans are fools. They weren’t expecting us. Their radar is incapable of detecting our aircraft.”
Berndt gritted his teeth. He knew what he’d seen, the tank had been moving at an extremely slow rate of speed, possibly even stopped, he wasn’t sure, and the moment they saw him, they went deep into the woods. They’d been watching the sky.
“Vengeance Squadron, come help Oberleutnant Fischer find his lost tank,” the squadron leader ordered.
Several düsenjägers appeared in his periphery vision, slowly circling the area where he’d been firing. The feeling of unease grew stronger in his gut. Something was wrong. The Luftwaffe’s strength was in their speed and maneuverability. They were doing nothing, hovering over the tops of trees.
A bright flash to his left made him flinch, jerking the aircraft to the right and ramming into the side of a düsenjäger that had drifted too close. Warning claxons began to sound as the hull integrity had been damaged. He fought for control of the craft, but it refused to obey his commands and the ground rushed toward him.
Berndt’s düsenjäger crashed into the pavement of the side road near where he’d originally seen the tank. His head slammed into the dash, cutting open his forehead and smashing his nose. Blood poured freely from his wounds as the muted sounds of battle reached his ears.
He twisted painfully in his harness to look over his shoulder toward the sky where his squadron had been. They were nowhere in sight. Several dark plumes of smoke drifted skyward from various places, but there was no indication whether they were from Vengeance Squadron or something else.
Then he saw them. Two helicopters rose from behind the cover of road signs—billboards if he remembered the term correctly. Their rakish appearance seemed sinister and twisted compared to the smooth lines of the düsenjägers. The helicopters fired missiles northward before sinking once more behind their concealment.
Berndt tried to use his radio to warn his squadron mates that the Americans were firing from behind the billboards, but his communication system didn’t work. He banged his hand in frustration on the dash and disengaged the locks holding the canopy closed. The aircraft was in danger of catching fire, so he had to get clear of it.
He pushed the canopy aside and it crashed to the ground, shattering the glass. The small rope ladder went over the side and he grasped his pack by the handle. Inside was some food and water as well as ammunition for his pistol and a small blanket. He’d need it all if he was going to evade back to the German lines.
The pilot put his foot on the top step and began to climb down. When his eyes were level with the cockpit, he noticed the yellowed piece of paper with his startup procedure written on it and climbed back up
two steps so he could reach inside. He grabbed the paper and hurried down the ladder.
He looked around to determine where his best hiding spot would be. Across the highway, American soldiers worked feverishly to reload some type of shoulder-fired weapon. His heart sank as the man holding it sighted in quickly on a düsenjäger and fired. Even exposed as he was, he couldn’t tear himself away.
The missile emerged slowly from the end of the weapon and then shot off at an incredible speed. The pilot never saw it coming as the round impacted behind the cockpit, blasting a hole the size of a small automobile. The aircraft plummeted from the sky and exploded when it hit the ground.
Berndt cried out in grief. The trap the Americans had laid for them decimated his squadron. They’d baited the düsenjägers into slowing down to little more than a hover to search for the tank so their inferior weaponry could be used effectively against the aircraft. Without the advantage of speed, the Luftwaffe aircraft had been easy kills.
He wiped away the tears from his eyes, smearing blood and mucus across his face. He had to put distance between himself and the smoking düsenjäger. It was a beacon for enemy forces to find him once they began searching the wreckage for intelligence and technology. He sprinted underneath the trees, following a broken swath of branches and trampled bushes.
The sound of a large turbine engine roaring to life nearby startled him and a massive behemoth of armor began to move from deep in the woods. Somehow, he’d ended up on the path the tank had torn through the trees when he’d first spotted it.
“Of all the rotten luck,” Berndt muttered, cursing himself and his misfortune. He wished he’d received the infantry training like his friend Matthias, maybe then he wouldn’t have been stupid enough to follow a tank into the woods. He ducked behind a tree as the Abrams tank rumbled by. The overwhelming odor of sulfur made him gag.
The tank stopped several meters beyond his position and then reversed quickly, the engine’s exhaust blowing detritus into the air. He watched in horror as the turret rotated in his direction, the main gun snapping several small trees in its path until it pointed directly at him.
They’d seen him. How had they seen me from inside the tank? he questioned as he stared down the large barrel, only two meters from his face.
A hatch on the top of the vehicle opened up and a pair of eyes appeared. “Drop your weapon!” the man inside shouted.
Berndt had been taught enough English to survive in the unlikely event of a crash. So, while he understood the man’s words, the massive barrel pointed at his chest told him what he needed to do.
Slowly, so as not to alarm the gunner, he dropped his hand to his belt and unfastened it, dropping his weapon to the ground. He raised his hands above his head and waited.
He could hear the echo of voices coming from inside the tank. Finally, they reached a decision and a dark hand pushed the hatch completely open. An arm appeared, holding a pistol and then a helmet of some sort, followed by the body of a man.
Berndt was shocked to see the soldier’s dark skin, like that of an African. He hadn’t expected to see an African on American soil. What’s an African doing here? he wondered.
The soldier climbed out of the beast and trained his pistol on Berndt before jumping down to the ground. In his opposite hand, he carried what looked like a radio cable.
The African stopped less than a meter from Berndt and they stared at each other. This was the first time he’d seen one of them in person. It was fascinating.
“Put your hands behind your back,” the African ordered.
Berndt tried to say he didn’t understand, but the man cut him off. “Quit your jabbering, Nazi. Put your hands behind your back.”
The pilot shrugged in confusion. He didn’t know what the African wanted.
“Goddamn it,” the soldier muttered. “Quincy! Get out here and help me tie this dude up.”
To Berndt’s astonishment, another African emerged from the tank. Had the Americans formed an alliance with some African nation? It was an amazing discovery, one that his superiors would be interested in.
The second man walked up behind Berndt, causing him to believe he’d be shot in the back of the head to end his miserable existence. He’d die without ever knowing the body of a woman. Unlike Matthias, who’d made it his mission to have sex with as many girls as possible, Berndt had wasted his youth studying to be a pilot.
Even in the stifling Virginia temperatures, he felt the heat radiate off the African as he stepped in close. This is the end, Berndt thought.
To his surprise, the man grabbed his wrist, pulling his arm down behind his back, and then wrenching it up painfully. The cable he’d noticed earlier slipped over his hand and the soldier cinched it down tight. He reached up and pulled Berndt’s other hand down and tied his hands together behind his back.
I am being taken prisoner, he lamented. The savages had him now. They would torture him and eat his intestines while he watched.
FOURTEEN
08 July 2025
Bravo Flight, Near Lewistown, Montana
The pockmarked concrete façade of Bravo Flight Launch Facility showed signs of recent battle. The electrified chain link fence appeared to be intact, meaning the other fallschirmjäger platoon hadn’t breached it. They’d failed before they even started.
Gregory rotated his binoculars slowly, trying to ascertain how the platoon had been unsuccessful. Three days ago, and a hellish journey over vast fields of grass and dangerous rock-strewn hills, he’d received the last radio transmission from his fellow paratroopers. The highest ranking German remaining, an unteroffizier whose name he could not remember, stated that only five men remained uninjured and they were forced to break contact. They would travel west toward Yankee Flight where Gregory’s platoon was traveling east. They never heard from them again.
“Who, or what, were they fighting?” he mumbled, searching the area surround the facility.
“Sir?” Feldwebel Anders asked from his position beside him.
The lieutenant glanced over at his platoon sergeant. He held his own pair of small, foldable hunting binoculars. They weren’t as powerful as the military-issued binoculars that Gregory had, but were much clearer at closer distances.
“Do you see any indications of what the other fallschirmjägers fought?”
He pointed at a rocky outcrop a few hundred meters from their current position. “There are bloodstains on those rocks. I assume that is where they attacked from—it’s a good location.”
Gregory turned his binoculars toward the outcropping. He’d been focused on the Bravo Flight facility and not where the others had been. There did seem to be some rust-colored stains on the rocks and the soil was disturbed from soldiers’ boots. If that’s where they’d been, their bodies and gear had been removed.
“So if that’s where they were…” he trailed off as he saw a slight bit of movement beyond the outcrop. A small drone lifted skyward. “Hide!”
His men hunkered down in the rocks, throwing their tan and grey ponchos over themselves for cover. The high-pitched whine of a quadcopter’s engines echoed across the wide expanse of the valley as no other sounds disturbed the late afternoon stillness.
He tried to ascertain where the drone was, but he couldn’t see anything except the dirt under his nose. Sweat poured in great streams from his hair, down his cheeks and fell to the ground around his nose. His canteen was within reach, would the movement be identified by the drone flying high above the valley?
The dryness in his throat morphed into a tickle near the back of his tongue. He wanted to cough to clear it away, knowing that to do so would be tantamount to suicide. To distract his mind, he thought about the sensors the Americans could have on their drone. If they employed thermal imaging, his men were already discovered. The ponchos wouldn’t hide their body heat. However, if it was simply an audio and visual sensor, they may be fine—as long as no one made any noise.
The sound of the drone’s engines drifted further
away, changing tones as it went. He risked a quick glance and saw that the drone was sinking back to the earth where it had originated from.
He raised his binoculars slowly to avoid someone seeing a sudden movement and examined the point where the drone landed. A small door, camouflaged to be indistinguishable from the surrounding landscape, opened from the side of another rocky area. A soldier’s head emerged and he grabbed the drone, then the door closed and disappeared.
“Now we know how the Americans were able to find the other fallschirmjäger platoon,” Anders grunted in his ear.
“Yes—and the flanking position was probably how they were able to wipe them out. I wonder if there are other openings in the surrounding area or if that’s a small observation post.”
“There’s no telling, sir. I think we need to divide the platoon and cover that doorway before we attack.”
Gregory shifted to look at the launch facility once more. It didn’t appear to be much more than a concrete dome with a single door set on the side nearest him. A small collection of antennae and spinning radar panels completed everything he could see.
“What do you make of that one radar dish by itself?” the lieutenant asked his sergeant, pointing to a rectangular dish on the ground and pointed into the valley, not skyward as the others. “Why is it so far away from the others that are all clustered together?”
“It may give off a large signature or maybe it’s sensitive and the other equipment interferes with the system.”
“Could it be a weapon?”
Anders brought his binoculars up. After a moment, he said, “I don’t believe so. There’s been no intelligence that the Americans have beam weapons or anything beyond small lasers. The dish is likely segregated due to interference issues.”
If he was wrong, it could be a problem. “I want four men to attack the bunker. The rest of the platoon will attack the launch facility. I will stay here in these rocks to direct the battle. I need you to go with the main effort, Feldwebel.”