Return from the Inferno

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Return from the Inferno Page 30

by Maloney, Mack;


  Everyone else crowded onto the deck looked worried, miserable, definitely on edge—and “Yaz” loved it. After all the time and effort and fascist hoopla of dredging the Mississippi—digging up the Mississippi, for God’s sake!—it was quite obvious that the enormous Nazi love fest was not turning out as everyone had planned.

  An English-speaking Nazi officer yanked “Yaz” over to the center of the wedding party and told him in an urgent whisper that all he had to do was stand there, next to Elizabeth and nod anytime the Captain asked him a question. If he screwed up, or tried to disrupt the ceremony in any way, he’d be shot. It was as simple as that.

  “Yaz” gave the man a sullen nod and then took his place next to and slightly behind Elizabeth, who was totally ignoring him.

  Now looking off to the south for the first time, “Yaz” was startled to see that a tall, covered object of some kind had been built about 500 feet from the dock. There were even more troops surrounding this thing, which “Yaz” guessed was at least 150-feet tall. It was wrapped in white cloth which was whipping in the breeze and making everyone jump when it crackled a little too loudly. A long series of ropes were attached to the top of the structure and it was obvious that it was about to be unveiled.

  Suddenly a PA system sprang to life, and the crowd of 10,000 or so was subjected to a loud blaring of staticky, feedback-plagued German. At the end of the long rambling announcement—little of which “Yaz” understood—the voice on the PA induced the crowd into a countdown.

  “Funf … vier … drei… zwei … eins … null!”

  The ropes surrounding the object were yanked and the white sheeting covering unraveled to reveal the enormous, incredibly tacky statue of Adolf Hitler.

  “Yaz” almost laughed out loud—an indiscretion that he was sure would have meant a bullet in his head. But he almost couldn’t help it. Far from being an objet d’art, the statue looked like something an eight-year-old kid had thrown it together during a slow afternoon. The head was much too small in proportion to the body; one side of the famous mustache was much too long for the other. The eyes were crossed, the nose looked like it was running, and the mouth was lop-sided in such a way it looked like the Fuhrer was wearing a clown’s frown.

  The uniform was carved into the stone like a bad suit, and the bottom of the statue, where the Fuhrer’s feet should have been wasn’t even completed. Instead, the steel reinforcement rods were wrapped in pinkish cloth, giving the impression that Adolf was wearing a pair of woman’s house slippers.

  The thing was so ghastly that the crowd barely cheered its unveiling, much to the embarrassment of the gathered Nazi officers.

  This is fucking great, “Yaz” thought, his long-tortured mind finally succumbing to some authentic glee. I just wish Hawk and the guys could have seen this …

  Two men in Fourth Reich uniforms appeared at the door leading out onto the bow, and suddenly everyone—including Elizabeth—snapped to attention. These two men—one small and professorial-looking, the other wide, red-faced and thugg-ish—were wearing the braids of Reich Marshalls. They appeared to be the ones responsible for running the wedding ceremony.

  With everyone snapped to on the deck, a third person walked out of the doorway. He was small, young, with girlishly blond hair. He was wearing a suit that was halfway between a dress uniform and a tuxedo. This was the Amerikafuhrer, and he was looking for all the world like he would rather be any other place but on the ship at the moment. Behind him, another young man was primping his master’s suit, brushing away the lint and dust, straightening out the shoulder pads, more like a mother-in-law-to-be would be doing to a bride. This was Lance, the official “dreser,” and the Amerikafuhrer’s best man.

  One of the Reich Marshalls read yet another proclamation in German, rushing through it so quickly, even the people who understood the language couldn’t understand it. “Yaz” saw this as yet another clue that the Nazis were expecting the sky to fall in on them at any moment.

  Finally, there was a flourish of bad horn playing, and the Amerikafuhrer was ushered down the short aisle and placed next to Elizabeth. She was smiling, and gushing and so much playing the part of a blushing bride that “Yaz” was newly appreciative of just how deep her insanity ran.

  Finally everything seemed set. The Captain indicated that the two ideological lovebirds should hold hands. Then he read a passage from his “Good” book that was as hasty and incomprehensible as the Reich Marshall’s earlier speech. This done, the Captain spewed some Scandinavian at “Yaz” and he dutifully nodded back. Juanita burst out into tears again as did Lance, the best man. Several Luftwaffe helicopters flew over in a pathetic attempt at a ceremonial aerial flyby and at last, the rings were called for.

  But then, just as the Amerikafuhrer was placing a large gold band around Elizabeth’s trembling ring finger, the crowd was subjected to a painfully-sharp screeching noise. The ceremony stopped dead in its tracks. Everyone was looking around for the source of the screeching, but nothing could be found—at first.

  Then “Yaz” noticed that many of the soldiers in the crowd surrounding the Great Ship were instinctively hitting the dirt.

  They knew the sound of incoming fire when they heard it.

  The first shell hit the top of the Hitler statue square on its runny nose.

  The impact of the one-ton HE shell completely blew away the Fuhrer’s head, creating an instant cumulus-type cloud of white smoke and dust.

  There was a stunned moment of silence as everyone in attendance tried to comprehend what had happened.

  Then a second screeching was heard—this one louder and coming in faster. This shell impacted at the base of the huge statue, blowing out the pink-slipper supports and instantly bringing the huge sculpture crashing to the ground. Hundreds of Fourth Reich soldiers were immediately crushed in the rain of tons of stone, and the Great Ship was rocking violently from side to side reacting to the concussion of the two quick massive explosions.

  That was all it took. A second later what was left of the crowd of 10,000 went into an immediate hysterical panic.

  Not two seconds later, “Yaz” was up and over the side of the Great Ship and swimming like mad for the far shore.

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  THE BATTLE FOR FUHRERSTADT lasted less than three hours.

  Not unexpectedly, many of the Fourth Reich troops surrendered as soon as the main assault force of Chieftain tanks rumbled up to the southern edge of the city. The New Jersey, having anchored itself ten miles down river to disgorge the gun barges, was now systematically pounding the city’s major military installations with its monstrous guns, laying waste to the heart of the Fourth Reich’s murderous empire. Dozens of the city’s command officers—including Zweite and Erste—took the coward’s way out by delivering bullets to their own heads, rather than risk capture by the small but advancing United American Army. Hundreds of foot soldiers followed suit, exposing one more symptom of the rotten system collapsing from within.

  Hunter was all over the skies for the final battle, sighting targets for the New Jersey’s big guns, positioning the squadrons of Chieftain tanks rumbling through the broken, burning city, and carrying out several attacks whenever any of the UA forces met up against some particularly fanatical resistance.

  All the while huge Free Canadian C-5s were landing at the. Fuhrerstadt airport—many, like Jones’s converted gunship—had been roaming the skies for the past handful of hours, hitting targets of opportunity with their multi-canister weapons dispensers. Guided by the bright luminescent “W” painted across its main runway, the C-5s had originally refueled at the former NS helicopter base down near Laurelsburg, Mississippi which Hunter had so expertly attacked earlier in the lightning-quick river campaign. Now their cargo bays were filled with troops—many of them United American officers and men formerly held at Dragon’s Mouth who had ridden out of Bundeswehr Four with everyone else on board the big cargo planes a full day before the Nazis knew what was going on. Now many had regai
ned their strength to the point that they came back to take part in the liberation of the city. It was befitting then that many of these men were charged with escorting the thousands of surrendering Nazi troops back to the hated Drache Mund prison, where they would now have the chance to switch the roles of prisoner and jailkeeper.

  Hunter had landed quickly at the airport, speaking briefly with Jones while his jump jet was getting refueled. There was one surprise that both were glad did not happen. They had not expected much in the way of Fourth Reich air opposition simply because the majority of the Luftwaffe planes had been disabled up at Bundeswehr Four. The others—those stationed at Fuhrerstadt and smaller bases surrounding the city—had simply vanished. Their pilots wanted no part of the battle once word had spread that the United America—and Hawk Hunter himself—were alive and kicking.

  The unpleasant surprise that never came was an air attack by the missing US Navy air wing that had so devastated the United Americans a year ago near the beaches of northern Florida. When Hunter originally attacked the aircraft carrier, the airplanes were not there. In fact, they never returned to the carrier after the Florida air raid—and no one knew where they were. Not even he.

  But he and Jones agreed that it was a problem to deal with later.

  For the moment, the battle for the capital of Nazi America had to finished.

  It was three in the afternoon by the time the UA forces had completely surrounded the Reichstag.

  The fighting had raged house-to-house for the past hour, determined UA troops battling the last of the ultra-fanatical Furherstadt Home Guards. The outcome was never really in question though, and as the sun began to dip in the sky, the last remaining Nazi soldiers holed-up inside the Reichstag found themselves looking out on hundreds of UA tanks and thousands of UA soldiers. So many of the Nazi troopers were shooting themselves and each other, it sounded like a gun battle within a gun battle.

  Hunter had set the Harrier down in a field two blocks from the Reichstag, and now, crouched in a bomb crater with Captain Jim Cook and the men from JAWs, he prepared for the final assault on the last Nazi stronghold.

  Coordinating their actions with the local UA commanders, Hunter, Cook and six other troopers quietly went through a small fence just east of the Reichstags main gate, and soon gained the side of the huge building itself. They were all but certain that the Amerikafuhrer himself was hiding inside. It was essential that he be taken alive, for only he could order all of his troops to surrender and thus end further bloodshed.

  Checking the ammo on their identical M-16s, Hunter and Cook went through a ground-floor window of the Reichstag and found themselves in the Amerikafuhrer’s personal kitchen. It was filled not with the finest cuisine, but with cases of old, but apparently well-preserved junk food of every imaginable type.

  “The kid must have quite a sweet tooth,” Hunter said, surveying the hundreds of boxes of cupcakes, cookies and candy. “His dentist could have been a millionaire.”

  “What dentist isn’t?” Cook replied.

  They moved slowly out of the kitchen and into a hallway. The place was absolutely silent—it was as if no one was home. Occasionally an explosion off in the distance would rattle the place, and inevitably it would be followed by a series of single gunshots—more Nazis taking the easy way out.

  They made their way to the front hallway of the place, and after meeting no opposition, simply unlocked the massive steel front doors and opened them. An advance unit of Football City Rangers was waiting outside. Hunter gave them the thumbs-up signal and the troopers began pouring into the place. It was quite a sight to see, and Hunter felt a tinge of pride in his chest. One last proviso in his plan within a plan was that the Reichstag be retaken by men from Football City. It seemed very appropriate in a way.

  Now that had been done. All that was left was to find the Amerikafuhrer.

  The young girl named Brigit had painted throughout the battle.

  Her ears were oblivious to all the noise outside the Reichstag, and she hadn’t bothered to look out the window since emerging from the extended myx dream hours before.

  Now her painting was very close to completion. She had seen it all in the strange, intoxicated dream—the missing pieces had come to her like some great religious revelation.

  It was an experience she would never forget.

  Dabbing her brush into a last puddle of blue, she made three quick strokes and then stood back from the easel.

  “My God,” she said. “I think it’s finally done.”

  It was done. As before, the painting showed the snowy mountaintop, the masses of angry gray clouds and the modern city near the lake burning in the background. But the last element she had added—the one that had come to her in the myx-induced dream—had turned the rather unusual scene into one fraught with mystery, at least for her.

  What she had added was the form of a jet fighter. It was delta-shaped, painted mostly in white with red tips on the wings and a blue streak down the center of the fuselage. She had no idea where the image of the futuristic airplane had come from—she’d never seen one like it before. But to her mind, it fit, teetering on the peak of the snowy mountain though it was.

  “I shall call it ‘A Future Discovery,’” she declared. “Do you like it?”

  She turned toward the young blond man cowering in the corner.

  “It’s very good,” the Amerikafuhrer said, his thin lips trembling. “I think my great, great, grand-uncle was a painter once …”

  A minute later, the door to the girl’s chamber exploded inward, courtesy of Hunter’s well-placed boot. He and Cook led a squad of seven Football City Rangers into the huge room.

  Everyone had their rifle up and ready, but there really was no cause to start shooting. The young girl had hidden away her painting, and now simply sat passively before her empty easel. The Amerikafuhrer was still cringing in the near corner.

  “Please don’t kill us,” the young man pleaded. “We’re just kids …”

  Hunter walked over to the Nazi leader and yanked him to his feet. He looked deep into his eyes, trying to find the reason behind the hate that this punk stood for. What came back surprised him: the Amerikafuhrer was right. He was just a kid. Barely old enough to drink, never mind control an empire.

  But age was no excuse. There were millions of kids younger than he who had more guts, more smarts, more human character than this poor excuse for a human being.

  “You better start growing up right now,” Hunter growled at him. “Because like it or not, you’ve just become a man.”

  Ten minutes later, all fighting in and around the Reichstag had stopped.

  The last of the defending Fourth Reich troops either surrendered or shot themselves. In the end it really didn’t make much difference anyway.

  Hunter, Jones, Cook and the rest of the UA and FC commanders had gathered in the Reichstag’s huge communications room. The other guys from JAWs had erected a temporary but powerful antenna on the roof of the Nazi headquarters, replacing the one that had been blown off in the early fighting. Now the Amerikafuhrer was sitting at the microphone, broadcasting out to All Fourth Reich installations on the American continent via the one-channel propaganda station known as Volksradio.

  His message was clear: all Fourth Reich troops were to lay down their arms and destroy them immediately. Then they were to wait until local American forces—be they militiamen, regular UA units, or even armed citizens—arrived to take control. The attack on the place called Riesespeisenhaus—“the giant food house”—insured that much of the southern-tier states would soon be under control of American citizens who would be able to get arms and much-needed food from the warehouses there. In the north, the Free Canadian army was moving in to take temporary control of the major cities. The transfer of power out in the isolated western states would take longer.

  As soon as the Amerikafuhrer was finished repeating the broadcast a tenth time, he was yanked out of his chair, shackled and led away. Plans called fo
r him to be thrown in with the thousands of other Fourth Reich prisoners at the Drache Mund to await trial.

  Once the Amerikafuhrer was gone, the radio was used to broadcast news of the Fourth Reich’s defeat up to Free Canada and other outlying UA units.

  Old pros at reclaiming their oft-embattled city, the Football City Rangers immediately established some sense of normalcy and calm after the stunning American victory. Their leader, a man named Louie St. Louie, was reported already on his way out of hiding to retake the reins of the city which he had built up into a highly successful if notorious postwar gambling mecca.

  “They’ll be filling the casinos in two month’s time, Hunter said to Jones after hearing that St. Louie was on his way home.

  That was when the bad news arrived.

  It came in the form of an urgent radio message from Cook’s guys. They’d broken into a secret room located in an isolated wing of the Reichstag. They’d found two people inside. One of them was demanding to talk to Hunter.

  He and Cook ran out of the communications office and reached the area in question within a minute. Cook’s main guys—Maas, Snyder, Higgens and Clancy—had sealed off the entire corridor, and were now in their flak jackets and heavy helmets.

  “There’s a dame in there who’s claiming she’s got her finger on a pretty big button,” Maas told Hunter. “She says she wants to talk to you or she’ll blow us all to Kingdom Come.”

  “And you believe her?” Hunter asked the JAWs commando.

  “Just take a look, Hawk,” Maas replied.

  Hunter walked slowly over to the room and carefully took a look inside.

  Stretched out on a long sofa, completely naked, was Elizabeth Sandlake. At her feet was a very unconscious Juanita Juarez, deep into a myx-coma.

  Elizabeth was fondling a small radiophone which Hunter immediately recognized as a CommStar sender/receiver. Proper use of this high-tech device meant instantaneous communication with just about any spot in the world, via a CommStar satellite.

 

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