Return From the Inferno (34 page)

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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.

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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 gunship 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

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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 canister. No sooner had the jump jet appeared when this canister 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 |

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Harrier then suddenly bolted forward and disappeared over the eastern treeline.

At this point, two of the patrolling 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 289

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 canisters in a precise, yet staggered fashion.

These canisters smashed into the runway one after another with enviably 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 canisters had splattered their contents onto the runway in the form of a huge, rough, but recognizable "W."

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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

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both in the largest military concentrations in the middle of the conquered continent to the 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 291

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.

The train crew's worst suspicions were confirmed when they saw one of the men gingerly set a fusing device onto the bottom crate of the ten piled aboard the locomotive. Then with one last check of their handiwork, the majority of the men climbed on board the tank. Three lingered behind long enough to release the locomotive's main brakes and set its throttle to high. Then they too jumped aboard the tank, clinging to its rear end as it rumbled back up the tracks and around the bend.

Horrified but helpless, the train crew watched as the 45 cars rolled by them, picking up more speed and momentum with every second. They tried fiercely to free themselves but it was no use-their plastic binds were just too tight.

Knowing there was little else they could do, both men rolled over and tumbled down the bank and into the shallow waters of the Mississippi.

The train full of explosives roared into the main spoke of the Riesespeisenhaus less than five minutes later.

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The Reich Marshall codenamed Zweite gazed out his office window at the activity near the old Gateway Arch, just two miles to his east.

The huge, riverside statue of Adolph Hitler was nearly complete. Heavy-lift helicopters were shuttling pieces from the Dragon's Mouth stone yard to the erection site with clockwork frequency. Hundreds of workmen-NS engineering corps troops mostly-were moving about to the tall, covered scaffolding surrounding the 150-foot statue at a feverish pace, attaching the necessary pieces as soon as they were lifted in place by the hovering copters.

Two miles to the west were the walls of Dragon's Mouth prison. He knew those statue pieces not completed at the time of the big prisoner breakout were now being worked on by other NS troops inside the prison work yard. In fact an entire division of combat-ready troops now occupied the Drache Mund. Instead of carrying rifles and other weapons, they were armed with hammers and chisels, doing the backbreaking labor that was once the life of, the skeletonlike, yet free POWs.

"How things change," Zweite sighed; He and Erste had just completed supervising the redecorating of their office. It was no longer triangular-rather the walls had been expanded to make it a perfect circle.

Zweite's desk now sat at the north end of this circle, Erste's at the 294

southern end. Nearly all evidence of their late, third partner, Dritte, was gone, including the bloodstains on the marble floor where he'd fallen.

The only items remaining that had once belonged to Dritte were his chair and his antique but working 9-mm Mauser machine pistol. After much discussion, Zweite successfully claimed the chair. Erste got the gun.

He'd been reading the latest communiqué from their agents in BBI when his attention was distracted to the statue's construction. The message had been simple enough: "UA agent still in residence in East Falkland. Long stay virtually certain. More weapons purchases likely."

What the communiqué told Zweite was that the UA were the most confident bunch of SOBs on Earth. They had already pulled off the large prison break, had occupied a major Fourth Reich district capital, had destroyed or disabled nine-tenths of the Luftwaffe assigned to the combined Fuhrerstadt Bundeswehr Four area, had somehow melted into the surrounding territory, had started another even stranger action way to the south, and they were still buying weapons? Zweite almost felt a tinge of admiration for the Americans-almost, but not quite. Because of who he was, and what he believed, he would never be able to distinguish the difference between arrogance and confidence.

To him, they were one and the same.

He turned away from the window and walked back to the war table where Erste was sitting, slumped over like a drunk in a bar.

"This waiting is killing me," Erste admitted. "Why did those American bastards have to complicate things so much?"

"You worry too much, my friend," Zweite told him without an ounce of sincerity. "Time is on our side. It's a simple matter of calculations: the Great Ship is faster than this American battleship-much faster. It will arrive here long before the Americans do-if they do. And the wedding is scheduled to take place a mere hour later. We will hold the celebration, 295