Return From the Inferno (13 page)

Itchy watched, mesmerized, as the light suddenly turned to the east. Then in an explosion of flame and power, it rocketed away, passing over the dark horizon in a matter of seconds.

Itchy lay prone for the next hour. He was burned on his skin and head. His eyes ached, his ears were bleeding and his body was covered with oily exhaust soot.

But he was still alive.

And in that hour, only one question bounced around his mind: Why?

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Frost picked up the bottle of champagne and checked the date.

"Nineteen sixty-six," he said aloud, fingering the gold leaf raised Dom Perignon label. "A great year ... I think."

He stared hard at the neck of the bottle. His eyes like lasers inspecting the neatly twisted wire assembly holding the cork in place. Suddenly the wire began to unravel on its own. Then the cork began to move. Slowly, but effortlessly, it raised itself out of the bottle stem, until it finally ejected with a loud pop!

Frost snatched the near ballistic cork right out of midair and handed it to the lovely, skimpily dressed redhead woman on his left.

"A souvenir for you, my darling . . ."

Never letting her dreamy eyes stray from his, the woman took the damp end of the cork, put it between her lips, and began sucking on it suggestively.

"It's so wet," she purred. "And so hard. . ."

Frost shuddered with an erotic rush. He turned to the equally delectable woman on his right.

"Champagne, my dear?"

This second woman lifted her glass for Frost to fill. She took a sip of the bubbly, giggled a bit, and then rose slightly to whisper something in his ear.

"I shaved for you today," she cooed, running her hand up her lovely, milk white thigh. "And not just my legs. . ."

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Frost felt another tremor of lecherous delight. He poured himself a glass of champagne and turned his attention to the set of large jewel encrusted doors which dominated the far end of the spacious, harem-style room.

"Who are we expecting today, ladies?" he asked his playmates.

"Your all-time secret love," the brunette on his right told him. "The one you've been dreaming about having all these years?"

Now Frost was almost paralyzed with lust. He knew exactly who they were talking about.

"Really?" he asked in a gasp. "She is really here?"

"Yes, she is," the redhead told him, softly laying her hand mere inches away from his upper, inner thigh. "That is what you wanted, right?"

Frost could only nod his head by now. The hormones were flooding the glands in his body at such a rate, he thought he was going to explode.

"Call her in," he finally managed to say.

The brunette simply snapped her fingers and the two doors burst open. There was a puff of steam or smoke and somewhere in the background, violins began to play.

Frost saw the visitor's legs first. They were works of art, delicate slender ankles, perfectly curved thighs.

His eyes slowly moved up, following the contours of the lovely hourglass of hips, waist and chest. She was wearing a hockey shirt bearing the logo of the Montreal Canadians. It was ripped in strategically erotic places: He could just barely see the nipples of her lovely, small, pert breasts.

"My God," he whispered. All of his erogenous zones were pulsating madly, with no little help from the probing hands of his playmates. "Is... is it really her?"

At that moment the last of the smoke dissipated and he could now clearly see her face.

It was a vision of haunting beauty. Her long blonde hair was expertly tousled.

Big blue eyes, classically structured nose, wide pouting lips, ears that begged to be nibbled.

Frost could barely catch his breath by this time.

"Mon Dieu!" he cried, reverting to his second language. "It is you. You are here. You are alive .

The woman was suddenly right in front of him, one hand 109

softly touching his trembling cheek, the other directing his fingers to her nearly naked breasts. x "Yes, Major," Dominique said. "I am really here."

"Major. . . Major Frost . . ."

Frost bolted up from the bunk like he'd been shot from a cannon.

The young Scandinavian sailor standing at his bedside caught him and steadied him.

"Sorry, Major," he said in slightly tinged English. "I apologize if I startled you . . ."

Frost struggled to get his bearings. He was inside a small stateroom. Just a bunk, a sink, a foot locker and a small desk and chair. The wails were painted gray upon gray and a myriad of pipework crisscrossed the ceiling.

It took a few moments more, but then he realized where he was: on board the battleship, USS New Jersey.

"Are you okay, Major?" the sailor asked him.

Frost wiped an embarrassing bit of drool from his mouth.

"I'm fine," he said quickly. "Just a dream, that's all."

The sailor handed him a note.

"It's from the captain," he told Frost. "The choppers are warming up right now, sir. You have to be up on the launch deck in ten minutes."

Frost took the note and read it quickly. It confirmed the sailor's verbal report.

The sailor saluted and left, after which Frost virtually collapsed back down on the bunk and took a deep breath.

It had happened again: another highly charged erotic dream, caused by the residue of his intentional myx overdose. He was experiencing them almost every night since being transferred to the New Jersey. Each time it took him a few minutes to settle back down.

He'd been on the battleship for a total of ten days now, having traveled through the escape network, first accompanied by the Football City Special Forces man who'd rescued him from the graveyard, and then by two members of the American underground movement. He'd spent much of that time on board recuperating mentally and physically from his escape ordeal.

Of late he'd been getting a crash course on the ship's wide array of offensive and defensive weapons. The enormous battlewagon was currently plying the waters off the east coast of Panama, its sophisticated early warning radars and artificial fog making mechanisms insuring that no enemy eyes could see it.

But this was no meaningless cruise, as Frost soon found out.

The battleship was under the command of the masked man known to all simply as Wolf. Frost had known of the mysterious Wolf before coming to the battlewagon.

He'd been briefed on Wolfs brilliant naval action in support of the United American forces during the repelling of the Norse invasion of the Florida coast. The battleship and its massive 16-inch guns had destroyed no less than thirty of the Norse submarine troopships, damaging many, many more.

But now the New Jersey was serving as a flag ship for a very different kind of mission.

Despite his clouded mind and deteriorated physical condition, Frost had become aware of one indisputable fact during his first day on the ship. It had come in a personal message to him from Wolf which said, to wit, that despite small numbers, the forces of freedom were very quietly gathering on the periphery of the new, instant Nazi empire. Their intent was to strike a major blow against the occupying Fourth Reich fascists. One which would seriously disrupt, if not halt altogether, their rabid swallowing of America and its captive population.

But to do this correctly, Wolf had written, would mean a rallying of democracy s allies like never before. Covert actions had to be carried out. Weapons had to be purchased. Mercenaries had to be hired. And as many imprisoned UA officers had to be made free as humanly possible. This was why the elaborate and dangerous prisoner escape system had been set up. And this was why Frost had been brought to the New Jersey. He was to participate in nothing less than the first attempt to gain back a large piece of the imprisoned American continent from its treacherous Nazi overlords.

For a freedom loving individual like himself, it was like a dream come true.

But he also knew that it was an endeavor of monstrous proportions. One that would have been handled by the late Hawk Hunter in past years. Now, it was apparently up to those who survived the initial onslaught of the Fourth Reich to carry the banner against their tyranny and imperialism. And try to do it in the way the late Wingman would have done.

Wolf frankly communicated to Frost that he would be expecting him to take on some very dangerous missions before the Grand Strike was launched, ones that would be plainly life threatening.

Frost was more than willing to risk his life for such a cause and he would have told Wolf personally if he'd had the chance.

But he didn't. Wolf wasn't talking to anyone.

In fact, none of the crew had seen Wolf or talked to him' directly for a long time, even though he was aboard the ship.

Frost wasn't quite certain why Wolf had maintained this self-imposed isolation. He did know that the mysterious captain had been locked away inside his quarters for at least the last three months. Not seeing anyone, taking his monk's meals of bread, water and soup through an opening in his cabin door.

Still the enigmatically reclusive Wolf had issued a steady stream of messages to his staff, instructing them on even the most minute details of the emerging liberation plan.

This strange behavior was not lost on anyone aboard. The rumors of what was going on behind Wolfs sealed door ranged from a near maniacal need to be alone to plot the crucial strategy to a kind of creeping insanity. The guards posted outside the door reported hearing Wolf banging away on his computer keyboard at times, and indeed the man had sent steering and course change commands directly to the ship's bridge via his computer.

Much of the time, though, there was dead silence behind the door, interrupted only by traces of hushed conversations. It was this last report, and the fact that the guards swore the conversations were absolutely one-sided that had given rise to the story among the highly superstitious, mostly Scandinavian crew that their captain was in fact communing with a ghost.

Frost didn't believe in ghosts. At least he didn't think he did. And he was certainly in no position to question Wolfs odd behavior. He was an officer and it was his job to carry out his orders, and that was what he was prepared to do.

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One of them, carried down from Wolf himself the night before, involved the trip Frost was due to take that day. He was scheduled to chopper out with a squad of New Jersey commandos to a secret location, one known only to a handful of people in the world.

Wolfs message told Frost the trip was necessary for him to see for himself a crucial element in the emerging Big Strike plan. It would also allow the Free Canadian officer to see firsthand the clues in what Wolf described as a

"mystery within a mystery."

It was with these enigmatic thoughts bouncing off his already myx-bruised thought processors that Frost hastily climbed into the dark blue utilities suit worn by the New Jersey's newly-established, one-hundred-man commando unit, and checked his 9-mm Beretta pistol's ammo load.

At the same time he was trying with all his resolve not to think about why his most lustful myx dreams always seemed to involve the beautiful companion of his long-lost friend, Hawk Hunter.

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Chapter Twenty

The two Westland Lynx helicopters lifted off from the USS New Jersey and quickly turned west.

Frost was squeezed in between two massive commandos, both of whom displayed classically chiseled Scandinavian features. Like the seven other troopers inside the cramped passenger bay, the commandos were armed with M60 7.62 AP

machine guns, twin bandoleers of the appropriate ammunition and a sling full of hand grenades and flash bombs. Frost felt naked by comparison; his tiny automatic pistol looked puny when compared to the walking arsenal around him.

None of the commandos spoke fluent English. Norwegian seemed to be the language of choice. Not that it mattered. The combination of the Westland's powerful but noisy engines and the open bay doors made any kind of conversation impossible.

The pilot of the chopper was one man that did speak English. And as luck would have it, he was also an old friend. Bobby Crockett, one half of the famous Cobra Brothers attack helicopter team, had been flying helos for Wolf since the first days of the Fourth Reich invasion. His Cobra partner and brother-in-law, Jesse Tyler, had been missing since the first days of the German occupation.

Frost and Crockett had spoken many times since Frost's deployment to the battleship. They had gone through much together in the heyday of United America. Now both of them shared the grief of knowing that many of their close comrades in arms were either missing, imprisoned, or dead.

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So it was with genuine appreciation and mystification that Crockett heard about Frost's incredibly bizarre encounter with another old mutual friend, Mike Fitzgerald. In fact, Crockett insisted that Frost tell him the story many times over, just to make sure he'd gotten all of the weird details straight.

After imparting the story at least a half dozen times, Crockett admitted that he was as baffled as Frost as to what it all meant. A similar message to Wolf explaining the strange incident produced a similar reaction.

The pair of Lynx flew for about forty-five minutes over the clean green waters of the Caribbean. They passed over dozens of small islands, and intentionally flew around several more. Several times Frost spotted other aircraft, cargo planes mostly, flying off in the distance, heading west as he was heading east. As the Lynx pilots did nothing to avoid being spotted by these airplanes, Frost had to assume they were part of the growing anti-fascist coalition.

They'd just passed an hour in flight when Frost saw Crockett waving him into the Lynx's cockpit. It took the Free Canadian several minutes to unbuckle his safety straps and make his way over the mountain of commandos. But he finally reached the front part of the heavily armed, heavily loaded helo and crammed himself into the narrow space between the two pilots' seats.

"We're five minutes from touchdown," Crockett yelled to him. "I thought you'd want to see our destination from up front."