Return From the Inferno (28 page)

Thorgils stared up at him, his eyes wide and bulging with terror.

"You are not alive!" he spit out, blood inexplicably running from his nose and mouth. "You are from Hell!"

Hunter slammed the man's head twice against Hitler's left nostril.

"You crazy son of a bitch!" he screamed directly into Thorgils's ear. "Where the hell is she?"

At that moment, a particularly vivid explosion of streaming fire shot across the work yard. Instinctively, Hunter rolled once and put a barrage of tracers right into the source of the flame, knowing that a Skull fire team lurked behind it. The accurate fusillade eliminated the Skulls operating the flamethrower, but it was a split second too late. For no sooner had Hunter pulled his trigger when he realized that instead of getting away, Thorgils had jumped up and dashed right into the heart of the spewing fire. His garment instantly ablaze, it seemed like the man's body exploded with a flash. A second later he was totally engulfed in flame.

Shielding his eyes from the glare and horror not ten feet away, Hunter was startled to see Thorgils was gesturing to him through the flames. Time suddenly stood still. It seemed like the Horseman was laughing and crying and shouting something, all in the same horrible moment.

But what was the dying man trying to say?

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Hunter jumped up and moved as close as he could to the burning man. Then he heard the words. Screamed above the crackling of the death flames and the clattering of gunfire, they were the last words Thorgils ever spoke.

"We brought her home. . ."

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The first rays of dawn found a long column of NS troop trucks, APCs, scout cars and tanks moving swiftly south along the highway known as the Sieger Bahn-the Victory Road.

The former US interstate highway cut through the heart of central Illinois and ran the most direct route from Bundeswehr Four to Fuhrerstadt. At this moment, ninety percent of the Bundeswehr Four Home Garrison-nearly an entire mechanized division-was rushing down the roadway toward the capital of Fourth Reich America. Though not officially briefed on the situation, most of the troops in the column had heard rumors that several hours before Fuhrerstadt had been the scene of a shocking raid by the United Americans. Official reports were sketchy though and even the division's top officers were still in the dark. All they really knew was that the Home Garrison was being called on to bolster up the already formidable defense forces around the Nazi capital.

As they sped past the halfway point in their journey, the Home Garrison troops began to see some disturbing signs of serious trouble. The main air defense radar system hub, located at a place called Goebbelstadt, was in smoking ruins. Its trio of large tracking and communication dishes reduced to three smoldering masses. The destruction of this key facility meant the entire heart of the Fourth Reich's air defense system was now blind. Observing the damage from their

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speeding troop trucks, the soldiers knew that such accurate hits could only have come from a barrage of smart bombs, specifically anti-radiation missiles designed to home in on radar signals. But such sophisticated items were rare in Fourth Reich America. Until today.

Farther down the highway they passed by two power stations that had been recently destroyed and a small oil cracking plant that was still ablaze.

Several times they saw contrails passing high overhead, moving west to east, not north to south, indicating that they might not be Fourth Reich aircraft.

And more than once many of the troops thought they'd spotted large helicopters way off in the distance, heading north.

Obviously, something big was afoot and the closer the Home Garrison got to their destination, the more incidence of recent bombings they saw. A small airfield destroyed. A military police barracks demolished. A truck staging area flattened and burning. But oddly none of the bridges between the Bundeswehr Four troops and their destination had been bombed.

This served only to further convince the NS troopers that whatever was going on, they were probably headed in the wrong direction.

Hunter checked his Harrier's weapons available read-out screen and found he had one HARM smart bomb, one two-hundred-fifty-pound fragmentation bomb and six hundred fifty rounds of cannon ammo remaining.

"I hope it is enough," he thought.

The handful of hours since the prison break had been among the most hectic of his lifetime. An ultimate, highspeed roller coaster ride of air strikes, strafing runs and AAA suppression. From several high altitude aerial refuelings courtesy of Free Canadian KC-135 tankers to the just completed, dirt scraping, below-radar cannon attack on the Fourth Reich 236

truck farm. Hunter had called on all of his expertise as a pilot to get him through in one piece. He'd already expended three HARM anti-radiation missiles, two frags, a five-hundred-pound iron bomb and two hundred cannon shells in blasting selected sites along the highway leading from Bundeswehr Four to Fuhrerstadt. And yet the most difficult part of the mission still lay ahead.

But through it all, his mind kept drifting back to the horror in the prison courtyard. He could not erase the image from his mind of the burning figure of Thorgils, beckoning him from the inferno, calling out to him, mouthing words that were not yet clear in Hunter's mind.

The difference between ghosts and men, he'd mused grimly, was that men still had to think.

He checked his fuel and then his operations clock. A very crucial milestone lay ahead, and he was encouraged that he was still on schedule.

Despite his foot travels deep inside Fourth Reich America over the past few months, Hunter had never been to the city which served as the capital for the Bummer Four.

But now, flying low over the absolutely flat, dry fields of what used to be called Indiana, he at last could see the faint outline of the strategically significant city on his northern horizon.

He took a deep gulp of oxygen and tapped the American flag he always kept in the breast pocket of his flight suit.

With all the luck it had brought him before, he hoped it would not fail him now.

It was Assistant Chief Medical officer of Bundeswehr Four Aerodrome who heard the strange airplane first.

He was walking toward the control tower at the huge air base when he detected a sound that seemed oddly dissonant to him. A trained violinist back in Europe, the doctor prided himself on his excellent sense of hearing. What he was picking up now was not at all like the throaty roars of Tornadoes and Viggens that he was used to hearing at the base. This one was more high-pitched and thin, almost eerily resonant above the normal racket of the air base.

He looked around in all directions for the source of the unfamiliar noise, but could find nothing out of the ordinary. Not untypical for so early in the morning, things seemed to be moving half speed around the sprawling air base.

As usual, there were several dozen Fourth Reich Luftwaffe jets lined up on the tarmac with a small army of mechanics servicing them. As usual, some of these airplanes were in various stage of pre-flight. Four were taxiing out toward the main runways, in anticipation of take-off; four were rolling to their hardstands after having just landed from local patrol.

But something was wrong. The doctor could not only feel it, he could hear it.

He knew of the massive and unexpected movement of most of Bundeswehr's Home Garrison toward Fuhrerstadt earlier that morning. But not being in the official high command loop, he had no idea why the division was suddenly rushed south. Like many people at the base, he just assumed it was a readiness exercise, or perhaps a maneuver called in anticipation of the Amerikafurer's upcoming wedding ceremony. Whatever the reason, the base was now running on a skeleton crew, which made him one of its senior officers. Accordingly, he was on his way to the control tower to start his tour as that facility's officer of the watch.

But now the strange noise was growing louder, and competing with the roaring engines of the eight Luftwaffe planes in transit. Within seconds, the whine was so high-pitched, it began to buzz like an electric drill inside his ultrasensitive eardrums.

That was when he saw it.

It was coming in so low that he thought it was going to crash. He didn't think it was a Luftwaffe airplane-he knew

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the profiles of the Tornadoes and Viggens and Jaguars. No, this was a much smaller plane, painted all black and flying no more than twenty-five feet off the ground. It was coming right at him, out of the cornfields to the east, heading for the main airplane parking area.

Suddenly the airplane's nose erupted in flame and smoke. In an instant, the four Viggens preparing to take off on patrol were ripped apart with an incredibly accurate burst of cannon fire.

As the medical officer stared with mouth ajar, the airplane banked hard to the left. It was at this moment that the Nazi physician realized it was actually an AV-8F Harrier jump jet. That accounted for the strange high-pitched whine his ears had detected moments earlier. Now he watched in horror as the airplane's pilot released a large white missile from underneath his right wing. The missile shot forward at tremendous speed and less than two seconds later slammed into the Aerodrome's massive air control radar complex. The Harrier flew right through the resulting explosion, pulling straight up on its tail and looping high and around again.

This maneuver gave the medical officer enough time to snap out of it and get his feet moving. He ran up the control tower's external stairway, screaming at the top of his lungs for the base to go on red alert. But it was too late. The jump jet had already banked around to the right and was riddling the top of the control tower with a ferocious cannon barrage.

The medical officer soon found his feet acting on their own, turning him around and forcing him to run back down the stairway, a rain of broken glass and hot metal chasing him as he retreated.

He stumbled to the bottom of the steps to see the rampaging jump jet had turned again and was headed straight for the base's communications building.

Just like in slow motion, the medical officer watched as the large black bomb dropped from the airplane's left wing and slammed into the comm shack no more than fifty feet away.

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The explosion was so loud and powerfully concussive that it lifted the medical officer up off his feet and slammed him against the wall of a hangar twenty feet away. He crumpled instantly, feeling like he'd just taken a five-hundred-pound punch in stomach. When he caught his breath, he was able to focus his eyes enough to see the Harrier flash over the air base once again and then quickly depart to the east from where it came.

In all, the devastating attack had lasted less than a minute.

Biting his tongue so he wouldn't go into a state of shock, the medical officer checked himself for any serious injuries. He had multiple cuts on his arms and legs, and a large contusion on his back. Nothing seemed life threatening.

However, there was something seriously wrong with him.

Just as the silhouette of the jet passed over the eastern horizon, the man knew what had happened. The base was in flames, and secondary explosions were going off everywhere. Soldiers and mechanics were running about, shouting at each other. Several jets not caught in the barrage were gunning their engines, not to take off but to taxi to their concrete emplacements in anticipation of another attack.

But despite this cacophony of sounds, the medical officer could hear nothing but the last of that low, squeaky whine.

He began to panic as it dawned on him what was wrong. As a result of the last explosion, he had become suddenly and totally deaf.

Crouched and crying in a doorway of the partially destroyed hangar, the Nazi medical officer watched the Bundeswehr Four Aerodrome dissolve into a state of silent, utter chaos.

He knew the base had little in the way of anti-aircraft defenses. The appropriations people in Fuhrerstadt had decided long before that a facility so close to the center of the Fourth Reich's American empire wouldn't need many SAM batteries or AAA guns simply because they felt there was no way a potential enemy could get past the Reich's supposedly 240

solid wall of AA defenses lining its ill-gotten borders.

Now tortured by the endless whistling in his ears, the medical officer realized the enormous blunder in that decision. For off in the distance, coming in over the same flat cornfields, he saw a sight that needed no accompanying noise to strike fear into his heart. The sky, from horizon to horizon, was filled with helicopters.

In his disoriented state, he strangely began to count them. First he saw a dozen. Then twenty. Then thirty. Then even more. They were large, two rotor machines, painted all black and wearing no markings.

"Where in hell did they come from?" he asked aloud.

Off to his right he saw several more helicopters enter the field of view. He felt a momentary pang of hope as he realized that these choppers-six Blackhawks and about ten Hueys-belonged to the Bundeswehr Four defense force.

Immediately the copters turned toward the oncoming flying army, nose guns blazing. Suddenly, the air over the far runway was abuzz with twisting, turning helicopters.

But then the accursed jump jet reappeared, its cannons firing ferociously. As a strange, whirring blade dogfight was joined, the majority of the other enemy helicopters neatly flew around the air battle and continued on toward the base. Within a half minute, the first of these helicopters began landing, and disgorging black uniformed soldiers in Kevlar helmets, the distinctive garb of the United Americans. These airborne soldiers quickly fanned out and engaged the pitifully small groups of defending Fourth Reich troops.

What the hell was going on here? the medical officer asked himself. Had the Americans actually pulled a feint of some kind down in Fuhrerstadt, causing the Fourth Reich high command to panic and send the Bundeswehr Four Home Garrison to reinforce the Nazi capital? If so, then the Americans were now attacking the Fourth Reich in their most weakened spot-Bummer Four.