Return From the Inferno (4 page)

"Do you have the blow, man?" Bone asked back.

The Fourth Reich officer turned and nodded to his second in command. This man in turn signaled the driver of a jeep waiting nearby. The vehicle lurched ahead, circled underneath the jumbo jet and came to a stop near the second F-105. The air pirates accompanied the Fourth Reich major around to the back of the jeep, where three suitcases had been placed.

The major snapped the buckles off the first of the suitcases and opened it.

Inside was 75 pounds of pure cocaine.

Bone dipped his finger into the sea of white powder, tasted it and pronounced it good.

The second suitcase was opened. It contained 98 pounds of pure heroin. Bone picked up a pinch and put it into his right nostril. He sniffed, sneezed and then gave a thumbs-up signal.

The third suitcase was snapped open. Inside were ten football-size chunks of crack. For this test, the pirate named Itchy stepped forward. Using an enormous Bowie knife, he cut off a small piece, put it between his filthy teeth and gave it a crunch.

"Aces up," he assured Bone. "Fine as wine." Bone immediately raised his hand over his head and

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snapped his fingers. Instantly, the two large cargo doors installed on the 747's port side creaked open.

Inside were two hundred and eleven very frightened girls, ranging in age from young teens to early twenties. They were all wearing ill fitting T-shirts and baggy pants. Each one had their hands bound together.

"Well?" The air pirate Bone asked, turning back to the Fourth Reich major wearing a snide smile, "Can we do business?"

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Fitz woke up to the sound of someone screaming.

He rolled out of his bunk, falling to the dirty floor. Beside him, gleaming in the dull light of dawn, was an empty bottle of bad wine. Next to that, scattered on the floor, were the notes of his fledgling sabotage plan.

He was horrified. It had happened again: he'd started working on the plan, got drunk, passed out, leaving himself foolishly exposed. If the NS had found his place in this condition, they would have shot him on the spot, or more likely, slowly, painfully crucified him.

"Help! Please help us!"

Fitz was suddenly going in three directions at once. He was gathering up the two dozen or so notes of his plan, stuffing the empty wine bottle under his bunk and grabbing his clerical collar-all at the same time. Outside he knew the Wabash River was up and raging-the fog and spray were all over his cracked and stained windows.

"Help us. . ."

He burst out of the door and saw two people-an old man and a young woman-floundering in swift moving waters near the opposite side of the river.

"Hang on!" he yelled to them, running to the small building which held the controls to the drawbridge. "Hang on!"

He punched the bridge release valve and was relieved that the thing worked on the first try for a change. Slowly the

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battered drawbridge clanked its way down, landing on the opposite side with a mechanical thud.

Armed with a thick coil of rope and two life preservers up and ready, Fitz was running across the rickety fifty-foot span even before it had secured itself on the other side. He tossed one of the life preservers into the water, nearly beaning the old guy in the process. The man was struggling to hold on to the young girl, but her slight frame made her particularly vulnerable to the rushing waters. The old man managed to grab the life preserver, but in doing so, lost his grip on the young girl. It was at this moment that Fitz knew that the rope and life rings wouldn't do it this time. Hungover and still groggy from the night before, he climbed up onto the bridge railing and plunged into the rapid chilly waters-clothes, collar, and all.

The two potential victims were about twenty feet from the shoreline at this point. Fitz hit the water with a mighty splash about ten feet further out. He allowed the cold, violent current to sweep him into both of them, hooking the old man with one arm, and getting a firm hold on the young girl with the other. Together, they all rode the current. Fitz kicked his feet madly in an attempt to gradually steer them all toward the safety of the bank.

But the water's current was stronger than all three of them.

Several times Fitz found himself underwater, being dragged along the river's rocky bottom, all the while trying like hell to hang on to the pair without drowning in the process. It quickly became a losing battle. He was gagging on mouthfuls of water and gasping for breath. The girl was screaming, the old man was gurgling and Fitz could feel the strength drain out of him as the mighty river violently tossed them about.

Is how it ends? he thought in his last flash of life. A pilot all my life and I wind up drowning?

Now his lungs were filling with water. He was sinking fast. Everything was quickly going to black.

He closed his eyes and felt the world crash in on him. . . .

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The next thing he knew, he was carrying the two drowning people to shore.

More than a quarter of a mile away, a pair of NS sentries were watching the drama unfold from atop their watchtower.

"I don't believe this," one soldier said. "Did we really just see that?"

The other could hardly speak. "One second they were gone. But now . . ."

"Now, they're alive," the other soldier gasped. "But I don't know how."

"Was it a trick? Just for our benefit?"

"Impossible . . . yet."

The two guards felt a rising panic between them. Like most NS guardtower sentries, these two were forced to work-or at least stay awake-for eighteen hours at a time, six days a week. No surprise then that these men were drug abusers, amphetamine pep pills being their choice.

Were they now paying the price?

"We must we must report this," the second soldier said.

"How?" his partner asked. "What words could we possibly use?"

Shaken and confused, the two soldiers stared at each other and then back to where the incident had happened. They could see the man who'd jumped into the water helping the two near-drowned victims back across the bridge.

"It is the drugs," the first sentry declared. "We've used too many, too long .

. ."

"Yes," the other replied, his voice shrill with numb fear. "It was an hallucination. A trick of the eyes."

Right then, they made a solemn pact. Never again would they discuss with anyone that they had seen a man walk on the water.

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The celebration had lasted all through the night and now into the early morning.

It had begun as a rather stately gathering. The Fourth Reich had carried a passion for such things with them from Europe, and so they never missed an opportunity to create a formal affair. The excuse this time: the air pirates-Itchy, Bone and the crew of twenty from the jumbo jet-were to be feted at a welcoming dinner.

As soon as the initial business overtures were completed at the airport, the air pirates found themselves riding in a string of stretch limousines, roaring through the small quaint streets of Bummer Four. A full military escort of NS

motorcycle troops and scout cars led the way, sirens screaming.

The short parade ended at the Reich Palast-loosely, the "Empire Palace"-which was the ceremonial seat of the Bundeswehr Four government. Huge, ornate, and imposing, the white concrete building was the first structure built by the Fourth Reich after establishing Bummer Four. Modeled after the late 1930s'

Reichstag, the Reich Palast was by far the largest building within the thousands of square miles of the military district.

The ceremony was held inside the building's main dining room. A long white marble table had been set for the fifty participants, half being members of the Cherrybusters, the other half high officers of the Fourth Reich. At the head of

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the table was the perilously thin, ghostly pale man of sixty who was the supreme commander of the entire Bundeswehr Four, the one they called the Erste Herrscher, or First Governor. His face and mind bearing scars from a half dozen major wars, the First Governor was known far and wide as the most tyrannical of all conquered America's Fourth Reich military rulers. He frequently bragged about having no conscience, no shame, no fear. His life, he said, was of total service to the Fourth Reich. Nothing else mattered.

He read a long, rambling welcoming statement, one which arrogantly recapitulated his fairly substantial contribution in organizing and executing important elements of the Fourth Reich's secret invasion force. Then he lectured the air pirates on the benefits of living the fascist life. Finally he announced that he would soon be leaving for a trip. His destination was Fuhrerstadt, the city to the south that was once known as St. Louis and Football City, but that was now the capital city for all of Fourth Reich America. His purpose for the trip was to attend the wedding ceremony of the Amerikafuhrer, the top Nazi official in the occupied lands.

Once his speech was done, a lavish meal of broiled lamb, boiled cabbage and potatoes steamed in apple jelly was laid on. The wine flowed fast and furiously during the meal, and afterward, tankards of ale were brought on for the hosts and guests.

Crude and unschooled in the art of diplomacy, Bone and Itchy nevertheless knew a return gift was in order. They had a brief discussion and then Bone broke out one of the many two-pound bags of cocaine he'd just traded for. Tapping out two enormous lines of the nose candy, he offered his gold-plated coke spoon to the nearest Fourth Reich officer.

At first, the high-nose fascists were taken aback by the act. For many, the only benefit of cocaine was in its trade value. It was something only the lower forms of human life indulged in.

But then the First Governor, drunk on wine and ale, 35

stepped up to Bone's place at the table, leaned over and took a long noisy sniff of cocaine.

"Fein als wein," he declared, signaling that snorting the drug was politically correct-at least on this night.

The two-pound bag was gone in less than an hour.

It was around midnight when the First Governor called for the young girls.

There were thirty of them in all, selected for their beauty, their innocence and their vulnerability from the load of more than two hundred brought in by the Cherrybusters. Just where the air pirates had captured them, none of the Nazis knew or cared. The only thing that mattered was that each girl had what the Nazis called Erziehung eigenschaft-"breeding quality." The purpose for buying the two hundred young women was to eventually match them with the perfect breeding males, impregnate them, and start the new American Aryan race.

Still, this did not preclude other uses for them.

The girls were ushered in by heavily armed NS sentries and separated into small groups, based on their age. The last bit of decorum left in the drunken First Governor demanded that the outrageous procession begin with the eighteen year olds. They were forced to walk up to the First Governor, lift their T-shirt or lower their pants, depending on his whim, and then stand mute and still while he fondled each with the grace of a man checking the skin of a sow. Once they passed this first hurdle, they were shoved down along the table, to be grabbed and groped by the other intoxicated guests. While this was going on, a second clutch of frightened girls, these below eighteen, was brought in.

The party evolved into an orgy just after the first rays of the sunrise filtered into the dining hall. It all began when Itchy passed a small canteen to the First Governor, indicating that he should sip from it. Inside was the mysterious, hallucinogenic drink known as myx. Originating with the Norse invaders who had unwittingly laid open the American East Coast for conquest by the Fourth Reich, the presence of the myx gave the gathering an almost mystical quality.

Only a few select members of the First Governor's inner circle were allowed a sip of the precious nectar, to the envy of those left out. Soon those who had imbibed became uncontrollable with lust. The lewd period of simply fondling the teenage girls quickly ended as the myx began to take effect on the dozen or so who had ingested it. Within seconds, they had set upon the young women and commenced to engage in every vile act imaginable; all to the utter astonishment and drunken delight of the rest of the guests.

Even the nefarious Bone and Itchy were amazed at the outburst of lewd behavior by the seemingly proper Fourth Reich officers.

"These guys are crazy," Itchy whispered to Bone as they watched the opiate, salacious display. "We better watch what we feed them next time."

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It was the first time in years, but he was on, his knees, reaching underneath his bed, and praying that there was just one more bottle of bad homemade wine hidden back there.

Sitting across the room from him were the two people he'd rescued from the murderous river. Shivering, wet, confused, they were staring at him-simply awestruck that they were still alive.

The truth was, Fitz had no idea what had happened out in the raging Wabash.

One moment they were all drowning. The next, he was carrying them ashore. It had been as simple-and as frightening-as that.

"Who are you?" the young girl asked him for the tenth time.

"I'm nobody," Fitz replied, pulling out two empty wine bottles. "I'm just the person who runs the bridge."

"But you are a priest," the old man said.

"That makes no difference here," Fitz told them, finally giving up on the search for any vino under his bed.

He pulled three heavy army blankets out from underneath the bunk and passed two of them to the old man and the young girl. They quickly wrapped each other in the coarse covers and huddled as best they could to get warm.

"Where were you coming from?" Fitz asked them, wrapping a blanket around his own shivering body and then putting on a tea kettle to boil.

"We're lost," the old man croaked. "Neither of us can remember where the hell we've been. Where we're from. Or how the hell we got here. I thought we lived in the desert. But it's just been too crazy ..."