Return from the Inferno

by Maloney, Mack;

  When the ship finally did sail up the river and past the city, the reception it received while not spontaneous, was nevertheless very tumultuous. The crowds of NS ceremonial soldiers cheered on cue and the dozens of gun salutes went off like clockwork. As the only real combat troops involved, the members of the Strom Wacht snapped to crisp attention and stayed that way. The military bands played, military choruses sang, and dozens of lowly transportation troops dropped rose petals on the ship as it passed below the specially constructed draw bridge just north of the city. All the while, a trio of Fourth Reich Blackhawk gunships circled overhead continuously, showering those below with tons of confetti on each piece of which was printed a microscopic recreation of the Fourth Reich’s swastika logo.

  It was a long, tortuous affair. And while the troops of the 3rd Strom Wacht liked a good Zeremonie as much as anyone, they were just as glad to see the damn ship pass safely under the new bridge and continue on its slow northwesterly direction up the river, trailed by a wake of muddy wash, drowning rose petals and soaked confetti.

  As a reward for their long day’s work, the commandant of the River Guard Battalion officially ordered ten kegs of Austrian lager delivered to the 3rd’s barracks. At the same time, the top officer unofficially ordered that 100 young girls left behind in the evacuation of the city be shuttled to the 3rd’s camp by midnight, this to provide his men with additional carnal pleasure.

  With the ceremony finally done and the Great Ship safely continuing up river, a sense of relief and accomplishment settled over the Baton Rouge headquarters of the Fourth Reich. So much so that it went widely unnoticed by the city’s NS commanders that the official radio message sent up to Fuhrerstadt reporting on the ship’s safe passage went totally unacknowledged.

  The beer arrived at the camp of the 3rd Strom Wacht shortly after sundown.

  The troops had gathered in their camp’s main recreation hall where the lager flew and plans were made to stage an elaborate auction as a way of parceling out the soon-to-be-arriving young girls. Only those Strom Wacht posted for guard duty on the new bridge span nearby and at the front gate of the camp would miss out on the night of drinking and wanton debauchery.

  It was one of the camp’s main gate guards who saw it first.

  Initially, it was just a slight movement, about 100 feet into the thick willow-tree forest which collared the 3rd’s camp on all four sides. The sullen guard, his mouth dry from want of lager, thought at first that he was seeing things. It looked like a long, dark, slender tube moving slowly past the tree branches off to his right. He heard no noise—not at first anyway. Just the slightest reflection of the full moon’s light off this strange, slow-moving cylindrical object.

  There were many swamps in the area, and the guard had seen firsthand what swamp gas could do. Lights sometimes bounced crazily off the ever-present methane mixture, while at other times it would accumulate so tightly in a small area as to suggest something solid in nature.

  But the guard knew this was not swamp gas. This thing was dark and moving slowly but steadily toward him. More out of curiosity than a sense of duty, the soldier left his post, went out the side gate and walked to the top of a grassy knoll which looked down into the woods. Raising his NightScope binoculars to his eyes and punching them up to full power, he was absolutely astonished to find himself looking down the turret barrel of a heavily-camouflaged Chieftain main battle tank.

  The curious guard was dead an instant later, his body literally blown apart by the opening volley of the impending night battle. The shell which took him smashed into the main guardhouse at the entrance to the Strom Wacht camp, vaporizing it along with three other guards. A second shot, fired by another Chieftain lurking nearby, slammed into the camp’s communication hut, instantly demolishing it and the gaggle of long range antennas and satellite dishes which had decorated its roof. A third shell fired an instant later landed squarely on the camp’s tiny fuel depot, causing an explosion so violent it broke nearly every window for two miles around.

  The succession of three quick accurate shots startled the drunken troops inside the rec hall, some of whom yelled at first that the noise was simply from leftover celebratory fireworks. Sober heads knew better, and within seconds, the camp’s klaxon was blaring everyone to battle quarters. The first soldiers to run outside the hall were astonished to see no fewer than five enormous Chieftains in the process of busting down the camp’s surrounding wire. Machinegun fire was washing all over the campground. The power blinked once then went out. Caught in the powerful beams of searchlights attached to the Chieftains’ turrets, the drunken, unarmed Nazi soldiers began falling by the dozens to the brutally accurate cannon fire.

  Within a minute’s time, more than half the battalion’s 800 men were dead.

  The sounds of the sudden explosions alerted the 25-man unit charged with guarding the new bridge about two kilometers away.

  Repeated calls over to the 3rd’s encampment found no reply, and the ever-increasing glow from the general direction of the camp gave rise to fears that some terrible accident had taken place, possibly involving the battalion’s weapons magazine.

  A 12-man squad was immediately dispatched to the scene, while calls went across the river to the Fourth Reich’s General Command HQ located in the middle of Baton Rouge itself.

  But when the dozen men arrived ten minutes later at the camp, they were confronted with a very perplexing, bizarre scene. The 3rd Battalion’s camp was simply no more. Every building was either destroyed or still burning. Not a man was left standing. Fires were raging out of control in every quarter and indeed the camp’s weapons storage bunker was in the midst of self-immolation.

  But these men also saw evidence of tank tracks and destruction that could only have come from heavy weapons. Yet there were no enemy tanks about. But even more mysterious, they found that the trees ringing the outside of the perimeter had been splashed with gallons of green luminescent paint forming a huge, glow-in-the-dark circle around the camp.

  Radioing this perplexing news back to their commanders, the entire military district around Baton Rouge went on a high state of alert. The ceremonial troops in the city for the passing of the Great Ship were now issued weapons and assigned to positions around the new bridge. Helicopters with powerful searchlights were sent aloft to patrol overhead. Searches of houses left empty by the mass evacuation were conducted.

  Yet nothing was found.

  Confused and in need of advice, the Fourth Reich Baton Rouge commander made an urgent call to Fuhrerstadt to report the situation. But while the message was received by the communications unit in the Reichstag itself, there was no immediate reply.

  Perplexed, the commander then radioed the headquarters of the huge New Orleans NS garrison, only to find that there was no communications link to that city at all.

  It was the members of the 465th Musik Korps who saw it first.

  Stationed on the approaches to the large, brand new drawbridge built specially for the Great Ship’s passage, they saw the red lights first, moving slowly toward them from downriver. Gradually the pinpricks of light grew in size and brightness and it was soon obvious they were attached to some kind of vessel.

  Normally the 3rd Battalion of Strom Wacht would have been charged with defense of the bridge, but with them completely destroyed, the task fell to these unprepared ceremonial troops.

  Predictably, their commanders immediately panicked. Radio calls went back and forth to Baton Rouge headquarters, and more semi-combat troops were dispatched. But by this time, the vessel was in full view of the musician-soldiers, many of which couldn’t believe their eyes. Bathed in intense searchlights from the bridge and the surrounding banks, the NS troops were astonished to see the enormous menacing outline of the battleship New Jersey.

  Armed with no more than AK-41 rifles and mortars, the woefully unprepared troops nevertheless opened fire on the looming battlewagon.

  But it was hopeless from the start. The ship was moving at 30 knots
: was firing all of its five-inch guns at once, ripping up the Musik Korps positions with deadly efficiency. Tank shells being lobbed by Chieftains installed on Barges #1 and #2 came down like rain on the hapless NS troops. The city’s solitary Blackhawk made the mistake of coming in low over the New Jersey, its pilots attempting to shoot out the battleship’s communications antenna array—it was quickly dispatched by two, well-placed SA-2 anti-aircraft missiles, the midair explosion lighting up the river battle even further.

  By this time, most of the Musik Korps troops had fled in panic, their officers not bothering to stop their flight.

  Less than five minutes after it first appeared around the bend in the river, the New Jersey with its line of heavily armed barges in tow passed underneath the new bridge and continued on up the Mississippi.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Laurelsburg, Mississippi

  THE MEN OF THE 71st NS Hubschrauber squadron awoke to find their large air base had been put on alert.

  An unusual pre-breakfast unit briefing was called, much to the whispered grumbling of the pilots who had worked long shifts the day before providing airborne escort for the Great Ship as it passed by their sector.

  The briefing began with a terse announcement by the base commander. He informed the 60 pilots of the helicopter gun-ship squadron that an entire Strom Wacht battalion had been wiped out the night before down in Baton Rouge, fifty-eight miles to the south. The cause of this catastrophe was under investigation.

  The reason the alert was called for the 71st base was twofold. First, the usual chopper patrols would be doubled all day, with special emphasis on looking for any evidence that might be deemed “terrorist actions.” The second reason: the 71st’s base commander was anticipating an order direct from Fuhrerstadt to conduct a surprise retaliatory strike against the civilians around Boca Raton. When that mission came down, he wanted his men to be ready.

  The pilots finally got their morning chow late, and then began the daily routine of getting their helicopters—Luftwaffe Blackhawks mostly—ready for the day. Although the base had 36 such choppers in all, the 71st utilized only about a quarter of the large airfield as its four long runways were more suited to landing large fixed-wing aircraft.

  The first two-ship mission lifted off twenty minutes after mess, and immediately turned toward the Mississippi River, just a mile to the east. Two more copters took off five minutes later, turning for their patrol sector north of the base; a third pair left shortly afterward to patrol the skies west of the base.

  No surprise then that the nightmare came out of the south.

  It began as a high-whistling whine which quickly turned into a low rumbling. The first thought of many at the base was that one of their copters was returning with mechanical trouble. But as soon as they got a clear sighting on the machine hurtling toward them from the treeline to the south, they knew they could not have been more mistaken.

  The Harrier came in over the base at high speed, just barely 50 feet off the ground. Attached to its underbelly was a JP233 bomblet cannister. No sooner had the jump jet appeared when this cannister began dispensing dozens of parachute-laden bomblets all over the Fourth Reich helicopter base.

  The first wave came floating down on a line of sixteen Blackhawks that were fueling up when the attack began. The combination of the deadly sub-munitions hitting the exposed fuel trucks created a series of massive explosions which incinerated everything within 200-foot radius. As the stunned mechanics and pilots who survived the sudden Hell scattered for cover, the Harrier banked sharply and came back over the huge airfield, sowing more bomblets along another string of idle choppers, systematically destroying every one of them.

  This done, the jump jet came to a screeching halt in midair. Lining up its nose with the base’s operations tower, it let loose with a direct, accurate barrage of cannon fire. The furious, unwavering fusillade literally decapitated the tower in a matter of seconds, shearing it off in one whole piece and sending it crashing in flames to the ground. The hovering Harrier then suddenly bolted forward and disappeared over the eastern treeline.

  At this point, two of the patroling Blackhawks returned to the base to find it in flames. Not quite knowing what they should do, they attempted to land near a line of burning repair hangars.

  Neither of them made it.

  The Harrier reappeared right over them, and in a stunning maneuver, first went into a hover and then into a lightning quick 180-degree turn, its underwing pod cannons spraying both copters with withering fire. One pilot tried to pull up and out of the deadly barrage, but in doing so, collided with the second copter whose pilot was heading in the opposite direction. The two aircraft exploded in midair, scattering pieces of flaming wreckage and deadly twirling blades all over the base.

  It was only now that the base’s anti-aircraft units were roused to action, many of them ordered at gunpoint by their officers to get out of their hiding places and do something. The base’s air defense system consisted of four Gepard Flakpanzers, each which boasted twin 35-mm gun turrets on top of a converted Leopard tank chassis. Deadly against conventional aircraft, these AA guns were laughably ineffective against the hummingbird-like jump jet. No sooner were they manned and operating when the Harrier attacked one after another with its now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t, hover-move-hover tactic. Even those Nazis cowering in their hiding places were amazed at the skill and speed with which the enemy pilot dispatched the four AA wagons and their crews. All four were destroyed inside a minute.

  By now the raging attack was just three minutes old. Yet all of the NS’s main structures were in flames, as were all of its helicopters and air defenses. Its control tower was destroyed and most of its fuel supply had gone up in smoke.

  Even those surviving Fourth Reich soldiers guessed that the air base’s runways would be next. But it was here that the Harrier pilot did a curious thing.

  Banking around once again, the jump jet came in low over the base’s longest runway. But instead of dropping another runway cratering device, it unleashed four small white wing-borne cannisters in a precise, yet staggered fashion. These cannisters smashed into the runway one after another with enviable precision, but they did not explode. They couldn’t—they contained no explosives. They were filled instead with green luminescent paint.

  Once the Harrier had finally left and the handful of survivors emerged to inspect the wholesale damage, they discovered that the four paint cannisters had splattered their contents onto the runway in the form of a huge, rough, but recognizable “W.”

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Redwood, Arkansas

  THE NICKNAME FOR THE place was Riesespeisenhaus—roughly, “the giant food house.”

  The huge, year-old facility built by the NS engineering corps on the west bank of the Mississippi was a combination food storage bank, weapons depot and railroad center. Rows of long, slender warehouses dominated the place—their rough unpainted wooden exteriors being very reminiscent of the death houses at Dachau and Buchenwald. Bordering the warehouses on three sides were hundreds of railroad tracklines, spokes and turnarounds. Located at the far western edge of the installation were hundreds of concrete bunkers which contained either weapons or ammunition. Surrounding the entire complex were dozens of heavily fortified guard towers.

  In addition to weapons dispersal, the place was the major food storage facility for the Fourth Reich’s southern tier of military districts. Some of the long warehouses were refrigerated and it was here that meat and dairy products were stored. Others featured glass roofs and sides and these served as climate-controlled vegetable greenhouses. Still others held hundreds of large wooden casks which contained roughly half the beer consumed by Fourth Reich troops in occupied America.

  The enormous facility operated with typical fascistic efficiency: full trains were leaving every minute of every hour of every day, lugging food, drink and weapons to Nazi troops both in the largest military concentrations in the middle of the conquered continent to t
he smallest, most remote outposts way out in the Colorado territory. Passing them were the empty trains returning to be loaded and sent out again.

  But no matter where the subsistence was going, it all had one thing in common: it was to be consumed only by Fourth Reich troops. By decree, the captive American population was denied any food not grown by other Americans, and less than one percent of Americans were allowed to be farmers.

  In this simple, efficient way, the conquerors were able to keep the vanquished continually on the brink of starvation.

  Five miles to the north of the Riesespeisenhaus was a long winding curve where the eastern most tier of track paralleled a bend in the Mississippi. Any trains using this route naturally had to slow down making the curve, so close it was to the bank of the Big Muddy.

  So it was with the 11:47 night express coming down from Fuhrerstadt. Approaching this last bend before reaching the straightaway on the outskirts of Riesespeisenhaus, the engineer of the 45-car train routinely slowed down to 20 mph.

  Feeling the attendant clanking and swaying, the engineer rounded the curve to find a Chieftain battle tank waiting right in the middle of the tracks for him.

  The engineer immediately yanked on his brake bar, pulling the empty set of cars to screeching, noisy halt. At first he thought the tank belonged to the local NS unit. But no sooner had the train come to a halt when the engineer and his assistant found themselves surrounded by two dozen heavily armed, black-uniformed soldiers. The only distinguishing mark on each man’s uniform was a patch over their left breast pocket that read: “JAWs.”

  “Get out,” one of these men ordered the train crew. “Schnell!”

  The two men complied and they were quickly bound and gagged. After they were set down next to the track bed, they watched with muffled amazement as the small army of men began quickly loading crates onto the empty box cars. It was obviously heavy work, but the 24 men accomplished the task in less than five minutes, loading a total of 300 crates onto the locomotive and the first six box cars.