Return From the Inferno (27 page)

"Are you kidding?" Cook replied, freshening both their mugs with another shot of bourbon. "They were in here beating down my door to volunteer. They wouldn't miss this for the world."

Hunter held his mug up high in a toast to Cook and his men. By then he became very somber.

"How many of them have wives or families?"

Cook frowned. "You know who they are," he replied. "Warren Maas. Mark Snyder.

Scan Higgens. Clancy Miller. They're all attached in some way or other."

"And they're willing to give it all up-for this?"

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Cook began shaking his head slowly. "You know better than to ask that," he told Hunter.

Hunter nodded and rubbed his tired eyes.

"You're right," he said, draining his mug. "I guess I just don't want them to go through what I've been through."

Cook shook his head once again.

"Hey, Hawk," he said. "That's exactly why they want to do it."

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It was almost midnight, yet the young girl named Bridgett was still wide awake.

She was sitting at her window, staring out onto the bustling city of Fuhrerstadt. There was much activity on the streets tonight. Soldiers were everywhere, some speeding up and down the main boulevard in tanks or other armored vehicles. Others slowly walking the streets in heavily armed patrols of six or eight.

But despite the huge military presence, there was an undeniably festive aura around the city. The big wedding celebration would be held soon. The exact date was a top secret, and preparations for the event were moving ahead at a feverish pace. Grandstands were being built, flower beds and trees were being planted; everything was getting a good wash. It also appeared as if the entire city had been strung with lights-miles of bright whites, reds and yellows.

These long colorful strings ran like spiderwebs up and down buildings; across street corners and main thoroughfares; and up one side of the old Gateway Arch and down the other. All the bridges were blanketed with them, as were the docks and pierworks on either side of the Mississippi. Even the helicopters that constantly droned in and out of the city were wrapped in tiny multicolored lights.

It made for a magnificent, if bizarre, sight. Yet the young girl was not too interested in the illuminated pageantry at the moment.

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Instead, she was trying to remember her dreams.

The painting on the canvas before her was nearly finished. The snow covered mountain was all but complete, as were the intricately painted snow-tipped pine trees. She'd included a gloomy gray cloud bank on the left hand corner-it had been there the first night she had had the dream. In the background she'd put a large modern city; tall buildings mostly, near a waterfront. They were all in flames, yet the streetlights of the city were still on, as if nothing unusual was happening at all.

It seemed odd, but that was how it appeared in her dream.

The very top of the mountain was bare though and this was troubling her. Why would she feel compelled to go through all the psychic effort to paint her recurring dream if it simply depicted a snow peaked mountain in front of a burning city? There had to be something more to it than that. Her intuition was telling her so.

But now, as she stared out on the brightly lit city of Fuhrerstadt, she simply didn't have an idea what that something might be.

Dragon's Mouth Prison, five miles away

Thorgils, Prince of the Norse, bit down on the rancid piece of beef bone and tore off a mouthful of gristle.

One of the German shepherds nearby snapped at his greasy hands in an effort to dislodge the bone from them, but Thorgils quickly punched the dog on the snout.

"Get your own," he growled.

Despite everything that had happened in the past few days, Thorgils was once again a happy man. He was back inside his doghouse, back at his old job of tending the vicious Death Skull guard dogs. In return for his help in catching the United American officer named Jones, he'd been spared from a firing squad for his own escape attempt. Thorgils thought it a fair exchange. He was sure that Jones was dead by now, and hence not a threat to retaliate.

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More importantly, Thorgils had been able to resume his preaching to the inmates. His epistles had become a regular staple now as soon as the Skulls closed the prison for the night and he counted many of the two hundred fifty prisoners among his flock. Each evening they listened to his oft repeated passages about how they would all be carried up and away from the prison someday. And when they were, Thorgils would be their king.

He finished his disgusting, yet filling, meal with a slurp of dirty water from the dogs' large tin trough. A moment later he heard the distinctive clinking sound of the gates of the prison being locked by the Skulls on their leaving.

"Once again, my work begins," he said to the ten canines nearby.

He crawled out of the doghouse to find that an extra large crowd of inmates had gathered to wait for him. Several broke out into applause as soon as he appeared.

"Brothers," he said, making his way through the hundred or so men. "It is time for us to begin."

Thorgils was escorted to the small wooden box which served as his pulpit and he waited as the sixty or so bedraggled prisoners settled down in front of him.

"Our time is coming," he began as always. "Our time to ascend. I'd leave this place. Our time to fly. We should be ..."

"When?" one man at the back of the crowd interrupted him. "I don't know how much longer I can take this place."

"Soon," Thorgils assured him. "I have seen it, brothers. I have seen it sure as I see the moon and the sun. Soon. This I promise you."

"But this is what we've heard now for a long time," another voice spoke up.

"We've heard your promises, but nothing ever happens."

Thorgils stiffened for a moment. This was the first sign of dissension he'd heard from his flock.

"Patience, brothers," he told them. "Our fate is dictated by the stars. By the sun. By the gods!"

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"But you left us once," a third voice up front said. "How do we know you won't leave again for good?"

"I was forced to leave," Thorgils replied. His tone getting less beatific.

"And I came back for you, didn't I?"

"Only because the Skulls made you come back," a new voice called out. "You tried to escape."

"No!" Thorgils cried. He could feel he was losing the crowd. "I came back for you."

"Bullshit!" someone yelled. "We're sick of your promises. We want action! We want to get the hell out of here!"

The crowd's anger began rising to a fever pitch. Some men were standing and shaking their fists at the Norse prince. Others were throwing rocks. Thorgils began trembling. He wished he had some myx.

"It will be soon," he shouted over the cries.

"When?" came the angry chorus.

But suddenly Thorgils wasn't listening to them anymore. Instead, his ears were cocked toward a deep rumbling sound far off in the distance.

Within seconds, everyone inside the prison yard heard it too. Mechanical.

Frightening. Growing in intensity. It was getting so loud, so quickly; all of the dogs began barking at once.

"They are coming to kill us!" someone yelled in full panic. "Because of you!"

But again, Thorgils was not paying attention. His eyes were squinting, trying to make out something coming from the south. Trying to identify the source of the spine-tingling roar.

Then he saw them.

At first they looked like a galaxy of stars moving as one across the sky above the wall. But then, he connected the noise with the lights.

No more than a half mile away and five hundred feet high was a formation of at least fifty huge helicopters, all of them wrapped in hundreds of blinking white lights.

Less than a minute later, the Chinooks were dropping out of 229

the sky and landing in groups of twos and threes in the middle of the prison yard.

Black-uniformed men in dark Kevlar helmets were scampering out of the copters.

Some waving guns, others large flashlights. In addition to the strings of white lights wrapped around its fuselage, each helicopter had a large American flag painted on its side.

"We're Americans!" the airborne soldiers were yelling over the Chinooks'

shrieking engines and the howling, rotor-whipped winds. "We're here to rescue you!"

With that they began herding the stunned prisoners into their open cargo bays.

"C'mon, move!" the soldiers were yelling. "Move!"

As luck would have it, those prisoners not gathered before Thorgils's pulpit were the first to be loaded onto the big Chinooks. As soon as a helicopter was full with forty or fifty men, it would quickly ascend into the night sky. Then another would descend and take its place.

There were a few moments of confused astonishment before many of Thorgils's faithful realized what was happening. Then it hit them. This wasn't just a prison break. It was an airborne prison break. They were ascending!

"It's true!" many were now yelling at once, tearing their vocal cords to be heard over the scream of the engines. "It is our time to go!"

Some of the more lucid prisoners could see that an even larger operation was under way on the other side of the wall, in the prison yard where the hundreds of United American officers were being held. Chinooks were descending in packs of six and eights over there, picking up loads of skeletonlike prisoners and then taking off again like clockwork. All the while a second protective ring of Chinooks converted into gunships was circling around the daring nighttime operation. Some firing could be heard in the distance, and explosions were going on just outside the prison. But it was apparent that the Fourth Reich defenses had

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been caught completely off-guard by the raid.

Amidst the noise, confusion and blowing dust and smoke, Thorgils found himself walking through the prison yard, watching with absolute shock as his prophesy came true.

"Go, brothers!" he was calling to the men who were rushing past him now, ignoring him in their haste to climb aboard one of the big airships. "Go!

Ascend in the night!"

Suddenly a bright stream of gunfire ripped across the prison yard. Hitting the ground and looking up, Thorgils saw a squad of Death Skulls had gained the far wall and were raking the work yard with heavy automatic weapons fire. One of the Chinooks dedicated to fire suppression swooped low over these men and began returning the fire three-fold courtesy of their converted M-163 Vulcan cannons. From another wall, a Death Skulls squad had activated several flamethrowing devices. With one huge whoosh! the center of the work yard was awash in bright orange flame. Another Chinook gunship arrived and began pounding away at the Skull fire team with their rapid-fire cannons. Several waist gunners in the ascending rescue choppers also joined in.

Still above it all, Thorgils could hear yet another strange sound. It came in the form of a loud screeching, much more intense than the combined symphony of helicopter engines, the rapid-fire cannons, and the clattering of automatic weapons. He looked up; and through the whirring copter blades, exhaust, smoke, flame and clouds, he saw a Harrier jump jet coming down almost right on top of him.

"No . . ." Thorgils whispered. "This is impossible . . ."

The jump jet came out of the sky with a deathlike scream-through the flames and streaking tracers from the Death Skulls, kicking up the dust and dried blood shed from so many hours of slave labor.

The Norse prince watched in horror as the strange jet came down with a bump, no more than twenty-five feet away from him. Its canopy was opened even before the plane had touched the ground. Through the cloud of dust and exhaust, he saw a

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man emerge from the airplane, climb out on the wing, and jump to the ground.

The pilot was dressed in an all black flight suit and wearing a bizarre black helmet. He was carrying an M-16.

"The gods, no!" Thorgils cried out full-throated this time. "It can't be!"

At that moment the Norsemen realized he was looking at a ghost.

Hunter scanned the fiery confusion of the prison yard and quickly spotted Thorgils, dressed in his filthy long white gown.

The Norsemen seemed paralyzed as Hunter ran toward him. That was fine with Hunter. It would make it all the easier to subdue the whacked out Viking, haul him back into the Harrier, and carry him out of there. For capturing Thorgils had been a small, but important, part of this bigger plan all along.

But just as Hunter was about to reach out and grab the man by his scrawny neck, Thorgils suddenly sprang to life.

"You are not real!" he screamed at Hunter before turning and dashing away from the rescue helicopters. "You were supposed to be dead!"

Hunter had little choice but to pursue the crazed man. Shooting him was out of the question. He had to take him alive.

With his M-16 up and firing streams of tracer bullets at the Death Skulls up on the prison walls, Hunter chased the wildly screaming Thorgils across the fire scorched work yard; over the face and hands of the nearly completed Hitler statue, around the two slit trench latrines, and back toward the doghouse. Bullets were flying all around him. as was the occasional terrifying burst of flame from the Skull fire teams. All the while, Chinooks were coming and going amidst the harrowing confusion. Their crews were picking up prisoners and firing at the Skulls at the same time.

But above it all Hunter could hear the bone chilling yelps of 232

Thorgils, screaming nonsense as he fled in panic.

He finally ran up the side of a carved piece of stone that looked like a mustache and launched himself feet first at the fleeing Norsemen. He landed square on Thorgils's shoulders, knocking him head over heels into the brittle wooden stage he'd once used as a pulpit. Rolling out of the way of a Skull generated tongue of flame, Hunter yanked Thorgils into the temporary cover of a huge piece of stone which had been carved into the shape of Hitler's nose.

"Where is she!" he growled at the emaciated Norsemen. "Where did you leave her?"