Return from the Inferno

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Return from the Inferno Page 29

by Maloney, Mack;


  Thousands of NS troops had been gathering in the area since early that morning. Their commanders had already heard what had happened down at the Myersburg bridge; they were determined not to let it happen at Cairo. So no troops were actually stationed on the bridge itself. Rather they were dug in deep on the east bank of the Mississippi, their lines stretching two full miles down from the span.

  These NS units—actually a light division consisting at approximately 4200 troops—were not infantrymen. Rather they were in the artillery business. Specifically they were the 11th Heavy Field Gun Division.

  Their main weapon was the S-23 180-mm heavy artillery piece, an enormous cannon capable of firing a 40-pound, rocket-assisted shell more than 30 miles at velocities approaching half the speed of sound.

  Common sense seemed to dictate that a shell fired from this gun with its barrel depressed all the way could inflict damage on the heavy-plated battleship which would be passing a mere quarter mile away.

  This assumption became mind-boggling when multiplied by the two hundred guns in the 11th Heavy Field Gun Division, and downright astronomical when the element that the guns could fire three times in thirty seconds was factored in.

  And once again, the plan was to stop the warship and its barges before they even reached the bridge.

  It was growing dark when word reached the 11th Division’s commanders that the warship was now a mere 12 miles away and steaming at 15 knots.

  Word was passed down the line to prepare the massive 180-mm guns for immediate firing. A blanket of silence descended on the two-mile line of Nazi cannoneers, broken only by the sharp clanks of gun breeches being locked into position. The artillery pieces were arrayed in such a way as to create a massive field of fire that would pin in on the ship. Each gun crew was told to prepare to fire three shells within the advertised half minute time frame, and an additional three only on orders from the individual gun captains.

  Privately the top officers in the 11th NS were confident that two shots from each gun would prove plenty in sinking the battleship.

  Like most low-level fighter attacks, the troops near the target never heard the jet coming.

  One moment the only noise rustling through the 11th NS positions was the gurgling of the river running on by; in the next, the air was filled with a horrible mechanical scream.

  The Harrier flashed by their positions at top speed, the exhaust from its engine actually creating a steamy turbulence on the river’s surface. It was flying that low.

  It was by them before any of the soldiers could react, sweeping from side to side before it streaked underneath the bridge and up into an ass-end climb.

  Coming back around, the Harrier actually slowed its speed down to 300 mph, flying at a louder, slightly higher altitude. The NS troops were ready for it this time, and they took the only action afforded to them: they blocked their ears. The 11th was not outfitted with any kind of anti-aircraft weapons, and by being thrown into action without its usual support units, it was now absolutely defenseless from the air.

  And that’s exactly what the pilot in the Harrier wanted to know.

  Hunter checked his clock and his fuel load and then put the Harrier into a second, straight-up climb.

  His dangerous yet essential tactic had worked; he was certain that the entrenched heavy gun unit was not equipped with AA guns. If they had been, one or two of them surely would have taken a shot at him by now.

  He pulled out of the climb at 7500 feet and turned north. Timing had been the key so far to his plan within a plan. He hoped it would not fail him now.

  A few seconds later, he had his answer.

  Off in the darkened horizon, he saw first one, then two sets of red blinking lights.

  A moment later, his radio crackled to life.

  “This is Maple Leaf Flight … do you read me? Over.”

  Hunter recognized the voice right away. It was General Jones.

  “Ten by ten, General,” Hunter replied. “You’re right on time.”

  Hunter had closed to within two miles of the red lights by now, close enough to see the outlines of the enormous C-5 Galaxy cargo planes coming toward him.

  “Everything is set on this end, General,” he called over to Jones who was piloting the lead C-5. “There’s a slight east to west gusting down there, but I think it’s too low to be concerned with …”

  “Roger, Hawk,” Jones came back. “This thing wouldn’t sway in a hurricane.”

  Hunter swooped down and under the C-5s, lining up about 500 feet below the second Galaxys right wing. With the precision of an air demonstration team, the three planes—the two flying behemoths and the small VTOL attack jet—turned as one, gliding into a 180-degree, slow descent. At the end of the maneuver, they leveled off at 1200 feet, just four miles down from the 11th Field Gun Divisions positions.

  Even though it had been his idea, Hunter wasn’t 100-percent sure that his arming of the huge C-5s was feasible. But because the airplane was the only one in the FC arsenal that could fly over Fourth Reich territory unopposed, he knew he would have to work with it within the parameters of his overall plan.

  The key was the gigantic cargo jet’s enormous wing span. Designed for heavy lift—the plane could carry more than 260,000 pounds of anything—the wings were both long, wide and durable. They weren’t adaptable for carrying heavy iron-bomb payload. They proved very adaptable, however, to carrying bomb dispenser canisters, similar to the one attached to the bottom of Hunter’s jump jet.

  But while the Harrier carried that single canister—capable of dropping more than 120 parachuted bomblets—the Galaxys had been adapted to carry 20 dispensers, each. That produced a staggering drop potential of 2400 bomblets, per airplane.

  The implications were very frightening.

  But Necessity was a mother after all, and desperate times usually spawn some pretty sound ideas. So Hunter had drawn up the plans months ago while sitting on his upstate mountain retreat and passed them on to the FC Air Force Special Operations Unit. A newly sprung Jones joined them soon afterward, and working together, they completed the adaptation just twenty four hours ago.

  The problem was, it had never been tested.

  Hunter went in first, sowing half of his 120 bomblets on the first half mile of NS cannons, the combined flare from the dozens of separate explosions giving Jones and the pilot of the other C-5 a bright visual target to key in on.

  Hunter’s parachuted barrage caused quick, extensive damage to the first two dozen heavy enemy guns. No sooner had he dropped them, when he gunned the Harrier for all it was worth in order to get the hell out of Jones’ barreling-in C-5. He saw the stream of bomblets spewing out from the first C-5’s wings and the only way to accurately describe it was as a blizzard. A blizzard of slowly descending HE bomblets, originally intended for hard duty like cracking runway asphalt, or denting some tanks.

  By the time the blizzard hit the ground, Jones had already pulled the big C-5 up and away to the west. What followed in its awesome wake was an almost indescribable storm of fire, smoke, destruction, death. Ordered to stay at their guns no matter what, hundreds of Nazi troops were slaughtered within mere seconds. Not only that, the two thousand sown bomblets created such a combined explosive impact, that a huge trench was instantly formed along the first mile of the 11th NS positions. Within seconds it cratered off and a mighty rush of water came flowing in from the temporarily diverted river.

  The second C-5 mimicked Jones’s run perfectly—with almost the identically horrible results. The second mile of huge guns and the hapless soldiers who manned them to the end was simply bombed into the earth. There was no reason for Hunter to swoop down and add what was left of his canister onto the target. There wasn’t even a reason for him to go down and take a closer look. It was quite clear from even 5000 feet that nothing was left of the 11th Heavy Field Gun Division.

  Its engines slipped from idle to the one half speed, the New Jersey and its grateful crew steamed past the site of the carnag
e and continued on under the tall railroad bridge, its eleven gun barges lined up perfectly in tow.

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  The Bridge at Cape Giraud

  IT WAS MIDNIGHT WHEN the officers in charge of the defense of the Cape Giraud Highway bridge got word about the massive United American carpet bombing down at Cairo.

  Though appalled at the carnage, and by the equally devastating defeat at Myersburg, the NS officers made a grim decision that they would not be caught in any hellish maelstrom delivered by either the UA’s naval fire or its air power.

  Theirs was a combined force—the first to meet the floating American fortress that was, at that minute, just 20 miles down river. It totaled 14,000 men. Half were hard-nosed Fuhrerstadt Home Guards, infantrymen who specialized in terrorizing the occupied countryside. The other half consisted of what was known as a Verbindung Kommando—a Combined Command. Its troops were equally adept at operating SAM systems to antitank weapons to river coastal defense. It was this last talent that set them apart from the rest of the Nazi troops trying to stop the New Jersey.

  For the first time, the warship would be faced with soldiers who were used to fighting on the water.

  The Kommando’s coastal defense teams used a simple weapon against large floating targets.

  They would load up rubber boats with as much high explosive as they could carry and by using wire-guided control for power and steering, would direct these floating bombs into their target.

  The added twist for the CD teams this night was their loading up of rubber boats filled not only with HE but also napalm cannisters specially triggered to explode up and out on contact with their target.

  The idea was that if the HE boats weren’t able to rip a hole in the side of the battleship, then the napalm boats would at least set the ship on fire.

  It was 0130 hours when the battlewagon was spotted, steaming at one-third speed up toward the Cape Giraud bridge.

  While the bridge itself was brightly lit and obviously bristling with troops of the Fuhrerstadt Home Guard, the Coastal Kommando units were hidden in the high weeds and bulrushes on the west side of the river. A total of 50 rubber boats were set to launch, half with HE, half with napalm exploders.

  As the huge silhouette of the battleship loomed toward them, the Kommandos started their small motors and got set to fuse their explosives.

  But immediately, it was apparent something was very wrong. The Kommando officers using NightScope glasses could clearly see the battleship, barely a mile and a half down the river. But it was alone. There were no barges in tow.

  It took a few moments for the implications of this discovery to sink in. If they didn’t know where the hell the barges where, then they didn’t know were all the tanks were either.

  They found out though, less than a minute later.

  The first squadron of Chieftain tanks hit the left flank of the Fuhrerstadt Home Guard so quickly, many of the NS troopers simply threw up their hands and surrendered.

  On the right flank, the second squad of Chieftains attacked the bridge defense command post and battled the hard-core but improperly armed Fuhrerstadt Home Guardsmen. It took fifteen minutes of intense fighting to subdue the more fanatical defenders, but the combined weight of the two-pronged tank attack was too much for them. Fighting toward the middle of the bridge, more than a few of the Nazi soldiers shot themselves rather than be taken prisoner or fall in battle. Many more simply took a death drop off the side of the tall bridge.

  Once the bridge was taken over by the UA tank crews, the battleship moved to within a mile of the span. Then with a deadly accurate combination of five-inch naval gun and tank fire, the slow, systematic decimation of the Coastal Kommando began. Ten shots would come from the tanks on the bridge, ten would come from the battleship. Just about every shell hit its mark—not by luck, guided there by Hunter, who was hovering a half mile directly above the Kommando positions, directly fired via his pod-adapted LANTIRN device—the acronym standing for “low altitude navigation targeting infrared, night.”

  It didn’t take long to wipe out the Kommando unit simply because they were caught up to their waists in dark muddy water, and surrounded by many pounds of HE and many gallons of napalm. Each shell that landed anywhere near them would set off at least two secondary explosions, and in some cases as many as eight or nine.

  Many of their charred bodies would wind up floating downstream for several hundred miles.

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Fuhrerstadt

  “YAZ” ROLLED OVER ON his dirty, oily bunk and let out a long, tired breath.

  This is not the kind of life my parents wanted me to lead, he thought. This is not the kind of life anyone’s parents would want their kid to lead …

  In a word, he’d been demoted. He was no longer a nonstop, living, walking, breathing sex object for the eternally demented desires of the unstable Elizabeth Sandlake and her equally screwy companion, Juanita. He was now back where he’d come from—in the tiny broom-closet-size room, located at the bottom ass-end of the Great Ship, cold, dirty, hungry and just waiting for some shit pipe to burst so he could slosh around in smelly waste water for a few hours.

  He tried to tell himself that it had been good while it lasted—how else to describe more sex in a matter of weeks than most people experience in a lifetime? But that was just the point—it had been strictly sex. No love. No caring. No sharing. Just raw, uninhibited, no-holds-barred intoxicated lust.

  God, how he missed it!

  The Great Ship had arrived in Fuhrerstadt earlier that morning. He didn’t have a porthole through which to view the grand entrance—but then he didn’t need one. Just by listening to the ships engines, to the scrambled Scandinavian PA announcements on-board, to the endless renditions of “Wedding in White,” as oompah-ed by the Great Ship’s pathetic little band—he could tell what was going on.

  Today the Witch was getting married.

  The last time he’d seen her was when her royal guards were hauling him out of the waterbed-equipped love chamber for the last time. Like any good bride-to-be, she’d insisted that they have sex while she was wearing her flowing white wedding gown, an oyster-induced performance which Juanita recorded via an ancient video camera.

  Once the pre-nuptial bonk! was completed, Elizabeth calmly rang for her guards and “Yaz” was unceremoniously dragged away. Down the elevator, through to the bowels of the ship, and thrown back in his little hole where she apparently thought he belonged.

  Thus ended his life as a stud.

  He tried to sleep, alone for a change, but found it impossible.

  The general hubbub of the ship, and the endless playing of band music—at least three were competing for attention somewhere on board—the crackling of fireworks and endless cannon salutes, all conspired against his even closing his eyes.

  But it was also a troubling thought which kept him awake: What would happen once the Witch and Little Hitler the Third, Once Removed, were married? Who would kill whom first? Did it make any difference? Either the Nazis would complete the rape of America, or Elizabeth and her wacky ideas of a new American Aristocracy would do the job for them.

  Whatever the outcome, he knew that the American people would be the ones to suffer. And there was little he could do about that.

  He’d finally closed his eyes and felt himself drifting off, when the noise of heavy footfalls on the slimy metal deck snapped him awake again.

  His tiny door was flung open and he found himself staring up into the unsmiling faces of two soldiers. Judging by the gaudy medal-happy black uniforms and the presence of a swastika on every button, he guessed correctly that they belonged to the Fourth Reich Armed Forces.

  “You are wanted on deck,” one said in a voice so bereft of human emotion, it chilled “Yaz” instantly to the bone.

  He felt tired, out of breath, out of energy, out of respect.

  “Who wants me on deck,” he challenged the soldiers. “And what the hell for?”


  The second soldier revealed a small bag he was carrying. He emptied its contents over “Yaz’s” head. It was a dress suit: a jacket, pants, shirt, tie and cummerbund.

  “What the hell is all this for?” he exclaimed.

  “Put it on,” the first soldier droned. “You are giving the bride away …”

  Ten minutes later, “Yaz” was escorted up to the main deck, and out to the area at the rear of the ship where the wedding was due to be held.

  It was the first time he’d been out in the fresh air in a while so he couldn’t help but take a few deep breaths and look around. The Great Ship was moored along the west side of the river, no more than a half mile from the famous though fading Gateway Arch. The crowds stretched from the dock all the way back into the city itself, but they appeared to be made up entirely of soldiers. There were no civilians to be seen and this surprised him. He knew the Nazis never missed a chance to manufacture a cheering crowd. But everyone he saw, with the exception of himself and the bride’s entourage, was wearing a military uniform.

  This was his first clue that everything was not right with this picture. Despite the band-playing and the proliferation of streamers and confetti, many of the soldiers on board and in the crowd nearby were obviously on duty. “Yaz” could see them grimly scanning the crowds, the nearby bridges and even the skies.

  He knew they just weren’t being cautious. He could tell they were expecting trouble. Soon. And this told him that all was not right in the bizarre goose-stepping fantasy world.

  “Yaz” straightened out his too-tight cummerbund and walked down the steps to where the wedding party had gathered. Elizabeth was there, looking undeniably beautiful in the long white gown he’d screwed her in just hours before. Juanita, wearing an off-pink gown which showed just about all of her expansive breasts, was standing next to her mistress, blubbering just like a good maid of honor should. The Captain of the Great Ship—a man “Yaz” came to think was as much a captive as he—was nervously tugging at his dress white uniform and fingering what looked to be a Bible with a broad swastika on its cover.

 

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