Her Majesty's Western Service

by Leo Champion

  “You owe Fleming a favor already.”

  “He must have misspoken. I owe him a hearing; that’s what the black chip means. I’ll talk to his people, which I’m doing now. I’m offering you a quite reasonable deal. Center place in an already-planned operation where I could just use a couple of experienced people to execute the meat of. Do you want to or not?”

  “I want to,” said Ahle immediately. “Hadn’t expected to mix pleasure with business.”

  “Hold on, Ahle,” said Perry.

  “No. This is the best deal we’re going to get from her.”

  “I’m said to be honorable,” said Lynch, a faint smile on her face.

  Documents. Documents could be replaced.

  Who would this woman in turn sell them to, though?

  What kind of secret plans would the Special Squadrons have, though? They were a mercenary unit whose job was regional counterinsurgency, an ongoing task you rarely needed specific major plans for. Something about the negotiations they were involved in, nothing too substantial. Important to the shady underground, not to anyone else. Blackmail, not treason...

  “You swear you’ll give me the location of 4-106. That you know it and you’ll give it.”

  “It’s in a certain canyon in Colorado, at present,” said Lynch. “I’ll give you a map when you give me the Squadrons’ plans.”

  “You’ll hand over the map first.”

  “We have a deal, Vice Commodore,” said Lynch. “You’ll head for Missouri tonight.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Interviewer: Your name and rank at the time of the action, please.

  Subject: Jason Cordova, mister. Commodore – they called me a colonel – of the Republic of Texas Air Force. I commanded my Armadillos.

  Interviewer: Who were the Armadillos?

  Subject: Cordova’s Armadillos, baby.

  Interviewer: Right. Who were they?

  Subject: Are they. We’re still around and kicking ass.

  Interviewer: Right. Who?

  Subject: My ship, the Lone Star. Jennifer Atkinson and the Squeeze. Bill Snider on his Scimitar of Silence. Paula Handley on The Vorpal. Shirley Meier on the Pith and Vinegar. Richard Evans on the Dread Wyvern and Peggey Rowland with her Five Speed.

  Interviewer: And what happened in the incident we’re referring to?

  Subject: First I’m going to have to give you an overview. We’d been on service to Texas for the last couple of years, and at the time they were balls-deep with Sonora in the territory the old USA called ‘New Mexico.’ They’d taken Santa Fe and General Houston was trying like hell to withdraw his Second Army from Alberquerque before it got encircled, too. The damn Sennies knew it and were pressing hard.

  Interviewer: So what were you facing?

  Subject: All the Tex ships had withdrawn, leaving just us. Expendable, they obviously figured. Mercenaries. So we had our seven and shit-else. The enemy had at least twenty line-class ships over Alberquerque, and a dozen more escort-classes.

  Interviewer: So what happened?

  Subject: You know perfectly well what happened. They made two films about it. We whipped `em but good. Four times our weight and we wiped `em out. Completely. Your troops didn’t have to surrender; they withdrew in good order and whupped some Sennie ass along the way.

  From an oral history interview, Clovis Media Center, 1960.

  Unitas and eight other men were in the airship’s cabin with them, a small, sleek private ship named the Marlyville Zephyr, that was right now speeding through the afternoon at two thousand feet over Louisiana. Bayous unfolded below them, but Ahle had more important concerns than the scenery.

  She was finally getting a crack at the Squadrons! She’d waited her entire adult life for this; it was what she’d hoped to do with 4-106, hit the bastards with real force, take out a measurable amount of their strength and ideally their top officer, the man who’d killed her family, Heinrich Himmler.

  Only a minor crack, but still!

  Perry was a lot less happy, but screw him. He seemed to dig that Lynch did have the whereabouts of 4-106 and would give it to him. His mission would be complete, sooner rather than later.

  That Lynch clearly considered this job too dangerous to trust to her own people – Unitas and his squad would be the diversionary element, not the main attack taking the main risk – was irrelevant to Perry. Air Service officers were promoted on brains and skill, not dumb courage – it was what made the Imperials so damn dangerous – but they didn’t lack courage either. And Perry was the driven kind; he’d rather die than lose honor.

  He’s already lost his honor, Ahle corrected herself. But he’ll die to regain it.

  The plan was simple. A couple of high-ranking SS emissaries were coming from Texas, heading for SS HQ in Colombus, Missouri. The SS had a base in Joplin, in the southeastern corner of Missouri, where the emissaries were right now, and they’d be going to the main headquarters in Kansas City.

  If past behavior was to be repeated, the SS emissaries would land in Joplin and ride from there in the ground vehicles they were more comfortable in. Heavy armored vehicles that a direct attack simply wouldn’t work on; that was what they were used to. The SS had an incredible amount of institutional knowledge at dealing with asymmetrically-fighting local insurgents, which they’d been doing for a solid third of a century now.

  But a high-ranking SS emissary – Lynch had told them that the principal was a full colonel in his early sixties – would not want to sleep in the field unless he had to. They wouldn’t want to drive through the night either; that was the best time for ambush from an ambushers’-survivability standpoint, since there was darkness to melt their way into.

  So it was almost certain that the colonel and his entourage would stay in Joplin until dawn, and only then move. That was an opening.

  Unitas and his squad would link up with local Klanners – who she’d always considered distasteful, and she could see from the look on Perry’s dark face that he hated the association for more than one reason – and attack. Meanwhile, she and Perry would paraglide in from an airship, get into the guest quarters, find the plans and escape into the other direction from the ambush.

  A simple plan, the good kind.

  Otto Skorzeny got out of the airship at Joplin, Missouri, or rather the base a safe couple of miles south of that town. The sight of the heavy armor was reassuring; three steam-tanks, hulking grey Tiger IIbs with their double five-inch rocket launchers. Light armor, too, a trio of eight-wheeled support carriers; light tanks with wheels and speed, to all intents and purposes. There should have been four, but he’d been informed that one was in the shop.

  Special operations had been the start of his career, in Poland and then the early years of the Special Squadrons; death from above, the airborne assault tactics that had been pioneered in the Great War and developed extensively since.

  But as he’d gotten older and – be realistic, Otto, he told himself – slower and heavier, he’d become rather fond of having a heavy tank to carry him around, not to mention having its two inches of frontal armor between himself and incoming fire.

  Of course, he told himself, returning the salutes of the men he passed as he headed toward the base’s guest quarters, we’re going to be facing a whole lot more than insurgent fire before this is done.

  He’d been back to homeland Prussia on sabbatical a few times, sabbatical for him meaning more fighting in different environments. He’d seen what a Polish nine-inch rocket could do to the armor on a Tiger II. For a lot of the Squadrons’ younger men, grunts who’d come from fractured Germania seeking fortunes, or at least a stable income and some land to confiscate for their own, it would be new. A lot of them wouldn’t survive the experience.

  He pushed those thoughts from his mind and turned to address the leader of his escort, a promising young first lieutenant named Schierbecker.

  “Your men can take quarters,” he said. “Schierbecker, speak with the base commander regarding security and rep
ort to me when done.”

  Schierbecker gave the arm-out, palm-forward salute the Squadrons used.

  “Jawohl, mein Oberst.”

  “English, please,” said Skorzeny. For the benefit of the Third Department man on Skorzeny’s heels, a man with the – acquired, as Skorzeny well knew, and this man had acquired it well – knack of making himself seem invisible from three feet away.

  “Yessir, Colonel.”

  “Thank you.”

  Joplin was a small base, home to one light and one heavy mobile platoon, plus an infantry detachment for local security. The base itself consisted of two buildings; the main quarters, a heavy three-storey building with a watch tower reaching into the sky, and an auxiliary building with garages below and the guest quarters above. Sitting in the open plains, it was all ringed with thick razor wire, heavy pillboxes at the corners and the main entrance. Not the best of security, not when the plans under Skorzeny’s arms – as he entered the best of the guest rooms, secured the valise and lay down on the room’s only other item of furniture, the bed – were so important.

  He wasn’t getting any younger. Neither was the commander, General Heinrich Himmler, or his deputy, Brigadier-General Sepp Dietrich, or any of the other top officers who’d been with the organization from its start. This plan was going to be their retirement; a final big operation for the top officers, with enough payment that they’d be able to retire in comfort to somewhere pleasant. Maybe South America, where they weren’t known.

  With that in mind, Himmler had sent half of one of the mobile reserve battalions down to meet them, traveling at night despite the danger; no small group of Klanners would be insane enough to attack two full armored companies traveling at night, and there wouldn’t be time for a large group to assemble. They were due for arrival a couple of hours before dawn.

  They were relatively unprotected now, but as of tomorrow morning they would be very, very well protected indeed.

  Skorzeny put his hands behind his head, lay back on the hard bed and tried to relax. This time tomorrow he and the plans would be safe in Columbia.

  Perry felt the gas gun, then handed it back. Produced his own, a much finer weapon, from the bag of goodies Fleming had given them.

  “I’ll take your magazines, though,” he said. Accepted four of them, clipped them onto his belt.

  “Do you want a little insurance?” Unitas offered him a .45. “Just in case things go badly wrong and they’re wearing masks or something?”

  “I have my own gun.”

  “I’ll take one of those submachineguns,” said Ahle. They were in the Marlyville Zephyr’s arms closet, a room hidden toward the tail of the airship’s rigid structure. A shaft ran through the roof of it, intermittently drawing back and forth as it controlled one of the steering vanes.

  “Here you are.”

  Ahle inspected the weapon, which had a short barrel perforated with penny-sized holes for air cooling, and a big forty-round drum magazine.

  “More ammo,” she said, ignoring Perry’s glare and slinging the gun over her shoulder. Around her neck – and Perry’s – hung black facemasks for use with the gas guns.

  “You are not going to kill Imperial allies,” said Perry. “That’s where I draw the line. Attacking with nonlethals is one thing. You’re not going to kill them.”

  “I’ll treat them just as they treated my family,” Ahle said. “Out of courtesy to you, I won’t kill them unless forced. If it’s them or me...”

  “If it’s them or you,” Perry began, but stopped. Obviously she wasn’t going to surrender. For that matter, neither was he, if you really came down to it.

  Ahle grinned at him.

  “Thought so. How long do we have?”

  Unitas pulled out his watch, a plain silver model. Checked it. “We drop in just under an hour, at midnight. Rendezvous with the Cyclo—” A look at Perry, who had made no secret that he hated working alongside the Klan – “with the leader of our local auxiliaries. This ship goes back up. Attack commences at four am, time when the human body’s normally most tired and they’re going to be the least effective. You guys drop from your gliders at the same time. Guide yourselves in and engage the man with the documents. We’ll keep up the distraction for as long as we can then withdraw to the north. You withdraw to the south and fire a flare to get picked up. Clear?”

  “Clear,” said Perry flatly.

  “Been waiting years to take a crack at these bastards,” said Ahle happily. “Whenever you guys are ready.”

  Nerves in Perry’s throat as the Zephyr sat above the clouds a mile up, two miles to the windward of the Joplin base. It was a light wind and a dark, overcast night; there’d hopefully be just enough light to make out their objective, which would be in the second building. Unitas had shown them a map; guest quarters were presumed to be above the garage, a low two-storey building.

  Perry hoped Lynch’s intelligence on this was as good as it seemed to be on everything else.

  He hoped it was as good on everything else as everyone seemed to think. What if they went through all of this – attacking allied mercenaries, for God’s sake! – only to find she’d been wrong or lying about 4-106?

  Think on the good side, he told himself. We’ve got a well-planned operation. Go in, grab whatever documents they have, spray anyone who gets in our way, and escape out the back. It’s not rocket science. Then come back, get the location of 4-106, retrieve my ship and fly back to Hugoton with honor. Sooner than I’d expected.

  “One minute,” said Ahle. They were in the ship’s cargo hold, strapped into the long detachable gliders.

  “Pilot says to tell you we’re still on station,” said a crewman.

  “Fifty seconds. You ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be.”

  No time to worry about what might go wrong. Hadn’t enough things gone wrong already?

  “Thirty seconds. Opening door,” said the ship’s crewman. He pulled a chain and the cargo hold’s wide door swung downwards with an oiled clank. Perry could see the shape of clouds moving, not too far below.

  I’ve done the cross-training. I know how to handle an assault glider.

  “Fifteen seconds,” said Ahle. Was that bloodthirsty idiot grinning?

  “Ten.”

  “Five.” Ahle dropped her watch back into the pocket of her jacket. Pulled the mask on. Perry was already wearing his.

  “Four,” came Ahle’s heavily-muffled voice through the mask. She adjusted it slightly.

  “Three. Two. One. Launch.”

  Ahle, then Perry, took a short run and then leapt out of the hold. For a moment the heavy wings were nothing but drag, as they fell, but then the edge of the hang-gliders caught the air and they were flying. Exposed under the raw aerodynamic wing of the glider, they swept through thick misty clouds and then down under them.

  Ahead and to their right, pinprick flashes and tiny cracks of gunfire. A klaxon wailed, faint from this distance but probably deafening up close. The dark compound looked much as it had on paper; the two large fences, surrounded by a ring of barbed wire and stolid pillboxes. Two searchlights came on, pointing north, sweeping. One of them went out mid-sweep.

  Ahle, eighty or so feet ahead of him, turned and gave Perry a thumbs-up. Angled her glider slightly to the left.

  Perry returned the thumbs-up and angled his glider the same way.

  The wind swept past them, the ground rushed below them, as they lost height. The sounds became more audible, gunfire gaining strength, the klaxon wailing further.

  From the locations of the muzzle-flashes, Perry could get an approximate idea of the direction the fighting was taking. The attackers were spread out in an approximate half-circle focused on the base’s front entrance; the SS was shooting back from pillboxes and their heavy main building. As Perry watched, the headlights and then the shapes of one, two, three of their tanks appeared, moving in single file toward the gate.

  Immediately below, two gouts of flame from something. Mortars, it s
eemed, as the shells crashed into the base. More fire opened up from that direction.

  Draw them out against the frontal attack. and then enfilade `em. The Klan were smarter than he’d given them credit for.

  Perhaps not too much smarter. The enfilade fire was only coming from one side, not the two that it could have come from. Perry felt relief despite himself; it was good to know that those race-hating bastards weren’t too competent.

  Down to within a few hundred yards, a couple of hundred yards up. The ground was racing past now, loose scrub and trees, and then they crossed into the two-hundred-yard perimiter the SS had swept clean around their base. Low grass, regularly cut. Stubs that might have been mines. Inside the base, men were still running, and the gunfire now was a din; incoming rifle rounds, outgoing machine guns stammering lengthily at every muzzle-flash.

  Perry aimed his glider at the roof and hoped, prayed. Unhooked his feet as they passed across the barbed-wire fence, feeling the glider tilt and slow. Ahle was already landing on the secondary building’s sloped wooden roof, shrugging off the glider.

  Perry joined her a moment later, his rubber-soled boots crashing into the roof. The glider wanted to go further, and he wrestled it to the ground. Pulled the nailgun from its upper strut and fired one, two, three, four, five, half a dozen nails into it, to keep it from tumbling to the ground and immediately warning people.

  A glance around. They were below the level of the main three-storey barracks building, but that was to their north and all their attention seemed to be focused that way, or to the enfilading fire from the northeast. The secondary building that they were on was south of that.

  Ahle already had her crowbar out, was working at the hatch set tightly in the door. Perry went over, gas gun raised, pointed it down at the hatch as Ahle got the bar placed and began to apply pressure.

  The door came open with a crack., and Perry stared straight into the face of an assault rifle. A flash of an instant; a bowl-helmeted SS man who must have heard Ahle at work, or had a bad feeling or something–