The Secret Files of Lucky Ford: Operation Arm Breaker, Part 14 of 17

With the horrors of Department Three closing in and their time running short, the officials must do everything they can to complete their bloody mission.

The Secret Files of Lucky Ford: Operation Arm Breaker is now available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, and as a DRM-free ebook.

This is Part 14 of Operation Arm Breaker. If you haven’t read Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, or 13 yet, check them out first.

Content Warnings: Death, Gore, Violence, Gun Violence, Mild Swearing, Nazis

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, JULY 14, 1943
SCHLOSS MITTELSÄULE, EBERKOPF
BADEN-ELSAß, NAZI GERMANY

The Nazi reinforcements were halfway across the bridge when the insistent ringing of an alarm clock sounded among the bloodied officials.

Abendroth’s gorilla huffed in agitation and the Vargulf began to growl.

Gerhardt shouted something in German, something angry.

“Bloody hell,” Grand swore. He knew what the dreadfully cheery sound meant.

“Find that,” Marius ordered.

The Vargulf zeroed in on Sinclair and yanked his pack off his shoulders. They did not bother to unbuckle it, instead they tore it open at the seams, spilling its contents everywhere. Among the ammo and gear, a trilling alarm clock tumbled to the marble. A Vargulf stomped on it, silencing it.

Between the rifle magazines and ration tins, the Pact-Breaker beacon tumbled to the side, mundane and forgotten.

Within seconds, a half-dozen other alarms started ringing. The officials glanced at one another. If the Russian delivery was on time, the packages were already en route. Three of the homing beacons were within ten yards of them, and the fourth in MacLeod's pack, among the gremlins. They were all about to experience a couple tons of super-sonic, bunker-busting Russian steel up close, and they were in the right company to do it. Lucky wouldn't mind watching these krauts go down with his own two eyes.

“What is this?” Abendroth snapped. Her gorilla shuffled around, huffing and punching the floor.

“What have you done?” Gerhardt wondered aloud. He spun around and glared at Lucky. “What is this?”

Lucky shrugged.

“Gerhardt...” Neff coughed.

“Lord in Heaven,” the Colonel gasped.

Somehow, the French sniper was alive. His ragged throat oozed blood between his clenched fingers. Gerhardt stalked to his side and took a knee, ignoring the red soaking into his pants.

“Tell me and you will live, Neff,” the Nazi promised. “This wound, it is nothing. Sparteführer Abendroth can repair you. You need not die on the floor.”

“Gerhardt...” Neff gurgled again. He let go of his neck, allowing his blood to pour from his throat. He held up his scarlet hand and showed the kneeling Nazi a ring dangling from his finger.

It was a grenade pin.

He clutched a gleaming silver grenade his other hand. Lucky patted his pockets down: Neff had taken Benjamin’s custom hand grenade when Lucky'd fallen on top of him.

“Schieße,” Gerhardt exhaled.

“Nique ta mere,” Neff cursed, then he coughed so hard a final crimson spurt erupted from his open throat. His eyes lost focus when he died, like he could see through the scorched, painted ceiling. His body went limp and settled onto the cracked marble tiles.

The grenade slipped from his slack fingers and plinked against the floor. Its spoon plinked free and clattered away.

Gerhardt tried to yell orders, but his Vargulf threw him aside, sending him sprawling. Three of the beasts threw themselves on top of the grenade. It exploded beneath them.

The muted blast sent red-hot slivers of silver-coated shrapnel tearing through the Vargulf. The chemicals coursing through them ignited, bursting outward in a cascade of searing white sparks.

Neff was gone, a smear of red beneath a howling inferno.

Grease surged through the cascading Vargulf embers, his every movement loosing a spray of his own fresh blood. He pummeled the closest beast so furiously that Lucky heard its spine snap over the explosion. The next two he snatched up by their scruffs and hurled end over end, slamming them through the cracked column that Marius had just descended. Gilded concrete crashed around them.

The other officials were up as well, fighting their last desperate melees. They knew death was the only alternative.

A volley of fire erupted from the advancing Nazis outside. They saw the blast, and the commotion. Bullets raked the open doorway, chipping marble and tearing into everyone standing in the open.

The Vargulf and Grease didn't notice, but Goldbrick grunted as a round found his arm, and Grand fell to the ground, blood fountaining from a hole in his chest. Lucky scrambled aside, putting the massive door frame between himself and the approaching Nazi reinforcements.

Gerhardt had avoided the blast and found his feet in an instant, a dozen yards from Lucky. He swatted at the flaming remains of his Vargulf that stuck to his uniform. His Mauser holster was unclasped and he grabbed at it with a shaking hand.

This time, Lucky was faster. He sprinted at Gerhardt, his empty carbine pulled back over his head like a wood ax. It came crashing down on the Mauser, knocking it out of Gerhardt’s hand as he sprayed a full-auto burst into the floor.

Cornered, Gerhardt was faster than Lucky in a fight, and stronger. He slipped inside Lucky's reach to drive a fist into Lucky's soft ribs. All the air in Lucky's lungs was replaced by an excruciating void. The carbine slipped from his hands. Lucky dropped to one knee as black edged into his vision.

Gerhardt's fists twisted into hammers. He reached down and flipped the steel helmet off Lucky's head. It clanged and bounced across the bloody floor.

“You will die like a child,” Gerhardt snarled. He launched a left jab that sent a black-silver flash through Lucky's brain. The sticky red in his eyes told him Grehardt had split his eyebrow wide open. Lucky watched Gerhardt reel back his right hand through the blur.

The Nazi smirked, and shot his fist forward again.

Lucky knew where Gerhardt's punch would land and he threw his hand up in a meager approximation of a block, flinching away from the hit. Instead of the black lightning bolt he expected to careen through through skull, he heard Gerhardt scream.

It was a scream of pain and shock. Lucky looked through the red haze to find Gerhardt's wrist locked in his left hand. Gerhardt's own hand was limp, his skin bulging and purpled between Lucky's stained green fingers. He could feel Gerhardt's crushed bones crack and shift in his grip.

Through it all, the sheriff's silver cross was intertwined through Lucky's grip, cutting into Gerhardt's skin like a garrote.

“What the hell?” Lucky wondered; aloud or silently, he do not know. He pushed himself off the floor, twisting Gerhardt's pulverized arm in his hand as he stood. The Nazi shrieked again and dropped to his knees to alleviate the pressure. Tears were welling in his bloodshot eyes.

“Hör auf, bitte hör auf,” he whimpered. Lucky drew his Colt and placed it against Gerhardt's forehead. Still, he couldn't pull the trigger.

Executing prisoners was the Nazis’ job, not his.

Gerhardt recognized the hesitation and unleashed another punch, sinking his fist into Lucky's ribs again, a wrecking ball against the shattered mass of bone floating in his chest. Lucky's grip on Gerhardt failed and Lucky stumbled away, landing on his ass in a pool of someone else's blood. The Nazi regained his feet, examining his wrist. It was bruised black and a swollen like a sausage. His fingers would not move.

“I have changed my mind: you will be no Vargulf, you will be no Brother,” Gerhardt hissed. “You will be supper.”

“Yeah,” Lucky gasped. “Well chew on this.”

Lucky put Gerhardt's god damn Nazi heart in his Colt's sights and pulled the trigger. Gerhardt smiled.

The pistol clicked empty.

Gerhardt bent over and picked up his own Mauser from the floor.

“I will lock you in a cage, Herr Ford. I will starve you. I will eat your friends while you watch. You will beg me for their meat. I am merciful, so I will give it to you.” he said. Carnage raged around him, but Lucky was his world.

Lucky glanced around, looking for a weapon. There was nothing in reach. The Nazi stood over him, ranting:

“When you are fattened on officials, I will beat you until tender and butcher you alive. I will feed you to my men. You will make us stronger. For we are the strong, and you are the weak. You are a resource to be consumed.”

“Talk, talk, talk,” Lucky muttered. The cannibal was grinning now, showing off his teeth. Gerhardt stepped toward Lucky, toeing the empty Colt away.

“I hope this boldness is reflected in your flavor,” Gerhardt hissed.

“I hope you choke,” Lucky snapped.

Gerhardt pinned Lucky's green hand under his boot. He crouched, bringing his rat bastard face inches from Lucky's own. Lucky could smell Gerhardt's sour breath as he pressed his Mauser barrel into Lucky ribs. A hurricane's worth of lightning strikes erupted through Lucky's brain.

“A shot to the spine should encourage docility,” the Nazi hissed.

A thunderous roar shook the room, and Gerhardt looked up. Lucky followed his gaze the see Abendroth flailing helplessly as her gorilla jumped up and down in a rage, slamming the floor with its fists. Gerhardt's attention wavered for an instant.

Lucky struck.

He went to his pocket to grab the only thing he had left: the Osteo-Bond syringe.

Lucky stabbed upward, desperate and aimless, driving the long needle into the distracted Nazi's neck and slamming the plunger all the way in. By the time Gerhardt’s realized what was happening, the gray glop had already piled into his throat. He fell backwards, gasping. His eyes went wide and sightless: the calcite cement had already congealed into a clay-thick mass.

Isaak Gerhardt kicked as he struggled for breath. He could not even gasp. His face went purple, and he clawed at his neck and collar with his few unbroken fingers. He would die.

Lucky watched in relief and horror. Despite his imminent demise, Gerhardt's bugging eyes focused on something behind Lucky and went even wider.

Lucky didn't look, he just rolled to his right in time to feel the gorilla stomp past. It shook the cracked floor as it ran. It was bleeding and its fur was smoking, and Abendroth was bouncing around on is back, smacking her keyboard in an attempt to counteract the ape's instinctual panic.

Gerhardt watched the rampaging freight train of a gorilla plow over him. The monster grabbed his head and slammed it into the ground. He would have screamed if he could. Gerhardt’s skull collapsed beneath the gorilla's paw, but the beast held onto him, dragging him along like a doll before tossing him aside. It smashed through two more Vargulf in between it and a side doorway, giving no sign of slowing down.

Abendroth and her creature disappeared from the hall and down a set of dark stairs, trailing the late Isaak Gerhardt’s blood and brains behind them.

The Colonel was on his feet before the chaos could subside. His gold-inlaid revolver was in one hand, his saber in the other.

Marius watched him advance.

The sparteführer dodged inches past the Colonel’s whistling blade, then ducked below the revolver barrel that was in his face. The Colonel fired anyway, blasting a bullet into the wall right next to Marius' head. The shot rang the Aryan’s bell, sending him tumbling to the floor with his hands clamped over his left ear. Blood trickled between his fingers.

“Sir, this ends,” the Colonel said, drawing back with his sword. Marius cowered just as another furious volley sounded from the troops crossing the bridge. The Colonel winced around as a round grazed his thigh, drawing a crimson line across his khaki riding pants and sending him stumbling back.

Marius cart-wheeled away as the Colonel reeled. He concluded his acrobatics with a flip, then pranced through the carnage with his bare feet, every step agile and perfectly-placed. He laughed as he wove through the Vargulf corpses, ducking under his men's advancing barrage.

“Come back here!” the Colonel shouted. He ignored his oozing wound and hefted his saber. He took off after the escaping sparteführer, heedless of the flurry of tracer bullets shredding the air.

“No!” Lucky yelled. He lunged and grabbed the Colonel's boot, tripping him. Black lightning shot through Lucky brain when he landed on his pulverized chest.

Tracers punched into the marble floor where the Colonel would have been, sending up sprays of sparks and stone. Past the flurry of lead, Marius had reached the opposite wall. He brushed some gore off his unitard and waved to the Colonel, then pulled downward on a golden sconce. A concealed door wheeled open and and Nazi was through it, disappearing into the dark depths of the chateau. The heavy stone slammed shut behind him.

“This castle won't save you,” the Colonel wheezed at Marius' back from the ground. He huffed and stared at the floor for a long few seconds, ignoring the approaching Nazis and their screaming bullets.

In a matter of seconds, they had lost both sparteführers. But still, the bombs were coming.

Grease fired his punt gun at Marius’ secret escape door. Its volcanic blast chipped a pathetic crater into the polished stone but did little more than make noise. The recoil staggered Grease more than it should have. A resilient Vargulf, this one sporting half a charred face, tackled him to the floor before he could recover.

Lucky lifted his rifle and took aim at the monster, but the I-soldier and Vargulf were dead even, more wrestling than fighting. Lucky couldn't get a shot without risking hitting Grease.

The Colonel limped over to the brawl and slashed with his bent saber, separating the Vargulf's head from its shoulders. Grease shoved the erupting corpse away and the old officer helped him lurch to his feet.

Cheddarwright pulled down on the same sconce the sparteführer had opened the door with, but it would not activate.

Someone grabbed Lucky’s shoulder. He jumped and wheeled around. If the De Lisle hadn’t clicked empty, he would have blasted Miller in the face.

“Two minutes!” Miller advised. He shoved Lucky ahead and fell in with the other officials who were already moving.

The column of advancing Nazis was most of the way across the bridge.

The officials stacked up on either side of the door, backs pressed against the hard concrete. Lucky was second in the stack, right behind the Colonel. The thick wall was shivering as Nazi rounds punched into it. A foot of cement and steel was all that kept the red-hot meat grinder of bullets from chewing them to pieces.

“Weapons up!” the Colonel shouted. He held out an open hand and shouted: “Lucky, thermite!”

Lucky had forgotten about the thermite grenade in his pack. He slipped a strap over his shoulder and dug through the bag, finding the canister in seconds, along with a rattling pill bottle. He took both out and tossed the grenade to the Colonel. A pained moan escaped Lucky's lips with the effort.

“Those caplets would help with the pain,” the Colonel advised. Lucky looked down at the brown bottle and the yellow pills inside. He popped the cap and grabbed two of them. They were large to swallow dry, but he managed it with a mouthful of coppery spit. He didn't feel anything; his feet didn't lift off the ground and his muscles didn't swell beneath his skin.

“That's a good lad,” the Colonel said. “Now watch this.”

He ripped the grenade's pin free and tossed it around the bullet-spattered doorjamb at the advancing krauts. The canister bounced off the steel bridge and plunked into the viscous lake water. It sank to the bottom before it burst.

A flash of orange in the blue unleashed a fountain of molten iron and acrid smoke that screamed as it boiled to the surface.

The lake itself came alive, its surface splitting and recoiling from the burning grenade. A crater opened in the surface all the way to the lake bed ten feet deep. The exposed mud within was thick with fresh kraut corpses that had been mashed into the muck. Their skin was shriveled and cracking, as if they had been left under a desert sun for weeks.

The lake water flowing and twisting like snakes made from molten glass. It rose up and away from the hissing thermite in the lake bed. Columns rose and towered over the bridge like swaying crystalline cobras. The advancing Nazis stopped in their tracks as the living waters reared up, wary after having having barely survived one attack by the ravenous lake.

“Miller, transponder!” the Colonel ordered. Miller tossed him the Russian beacon and he heaved it end over end into the water. It plunked down into the wet lake bed, its olive drab blending into the muck and corpses.

The unquiet water crashed down across the bridge, sweeping advancing Nazis into its murk. Their fire turned away from the door, but the lead they poured into the twisting tentacles only made them ripple.

Those Nazis that could run, did. Those that couldn’t were crushed and dragged away. A blue tentacle shot upward, spearing a flying car where it hovered. The crew didn’t have the time to decide whether to jump or to go down with it before the water enveloped them.

“Find that lift!” Goldbrick roared as he lurched out of cover. The Nazi reinforcements were neutralized, and the Russian bombs were coming. Blood spurted from the general's arm, but he ignored it. The flowing red from his nose had cascaded over his chin and both stains were meeting at his collar to spread crimson across his chest.

Cheddarwright and Sinclair were supporting Grand, pressing gauze over his chest even as red bloomed through it. The British ace sniffed the smoke and blood in the air, muttering as he went limp:

“Peppered bacon.”

Grease was mopping up, stomping on crippled Vargulf who didn't know when to quit. Even maimed, the monsters were dragging themselves across the floor at the officials. They only stopped when they were dead. Grease finished his bloody work, silencing the last half-charred mutant with his boot heel.

Bucket had Quint standing with the sergeant's remaining arm thrown over his shoulder. The maimed official was muttering, blind to the chaos. Bucket studied the cavernous hall, its conduits and soffits, as oblivious as the man he carried.

Grease ripped one of the charred crimson banners off the wall and wiped sour Vargulf brains off his shoe. Every Nazi left in their great hall was dead: burned, mutilated, or bloody beyond recognition. Lucky couldn't even figure out which was Gerhardt's crushed corpse, the bodies were so tangled together.

“It's over there, two o'clock,” Bucket shouted. He was pointing to the end of the long hall, around a corner into one of its immense wings.

“Miller and I have point!” the Colonel shouted. The pair was the most intact of all of them. Lucky's body screamed in protest as his ribs ground together. He found his firearms on the floor. The De Lisle carbine took the last of Benjamin's magazines. He threw its strap over his neck. It banged hard against his side but he clenched his jaw and took it.

Lucky's Colt took a needed clip as well, and he held its worn grip with both hands when he followed the Colonel and Miller around the corner.

Nazi medics ran as they approached; their wounded stayed. None begged. Miller fired his grease gun into any who made a move. His bullets turned men to meat. A mutilated Vargulf had dragged itself away from the fight, legless and trailing black fluids. Its hair was falling out and it was half-transformed back into the disgusting man beneath. The Colonel ended his defiant retreat with a dismissive silver slash across the throat. The Nazi died belching white flame.

“Colonel, here!” Miller shouted. There was a pair sliding doors tucked into a the concrete wall between paintings of Hitler and Himmler. A portrait of a bald, immensely fat man glowered down above both of them from a gilded frame. He wasn’t wearing a uniform like the two Nazis, but some kind of robe emblazoned with the pointed ‘Z’ emblem that had been hanging in the main hall.

Miller, usually eager to discuss every detail, ignored the man. He punched the call button on the wall and both doors slid open. A spartan freight elevator car waited inside, large enough to carry a Jeep. Lucky shoved the accordion gate open just as the first of their walking wounded made it around the corner.

Grease was leaving a bloody bootprint with every lurching step, but that didn't prevent him from carrying Cheddarwright with one arm and Grand with the other. The former ace pilot grimaced with every step, but held his tongue.

Bucket and Quint followed close, with Goldbrick limping after them, his hand clamped over his perforated arm. Sinclair brought up the rear, taking potshots through the gaping castle door. Outside, the living lake swelled and thrashed, and the terrified Nazis pulled back, so afraid of it that they forgot about the officials.

“Leave them!” Lucky shouted. Sinclair emptied his magazine and dashed over to the general, throwing an arm around Goldbrick and helping him make his way out of that dreadful place.

The whole squad crammed into the elevator car, with Lucky going in last. He wrenched the gate shut and locked it. Miller racked a lever and the car lurched and whined its way upward.

“What time to you have?” the Colonel asked. Lucky checked the scuffed Cartier watch he'd gotten from Emilia.

“Thirteen-oh-six,” he reported.

“Six minutes late,” Miller said.

“Damn Russians,” Goldbrick groaned. The elevator car breached the chateau's roof and they were in the air, dangling alongside the towering column. Lucky watched the elevator cables slither downward as the car rose, their tarnished metal fibers just inches away between him and the bedrock.

Lucky tried to stay low, though the elevator itself offered no protection. It was little more than an open cage with stale air and smoke whisking through it.

But there weren't any bullets snapping through the air, no snipers taking advantage on an easy target. Below was chaos: Hundreds of men had abandoned their pursuit and had turned to fighting the roaring fires that had spread to other buildings. Those that weren't putting them out were running: the living lake had left its bed. It pulsed and thrashed below, grasping at scattering krauts with shimmering tentacles, dragging itself across the stone floor after them.

Lucky could see everything from this vantage point: the spreading fires, the Brotherhood facility, the gremlin roost, the insectarium, dozens of other buildings packed with their own nightmares. A storm front of acrid smoke roiled across the bright blue ceiling. There was still av-gas burning in the collapsed hangar at the south end of the compound. An identical hangar loomed above him, getting closer by the second.

A deafening blast shook all of Eberkopf. The elevator car bounced, like a giant had yanked its cable like a yo-yo. The officials all fell, hard. Far out there, the gremlin roost had exploded. Concrete and re-bar rained down. A green horde poured out of the broken building, swarming over everything around. The firefighters tried to run, but they were swarmed over in seconds. From above, a single beam of light pierced the ceiling, a glowing needle that cut through the gray air. Smoke flowed out of it like an inverted black whirlpool.

“What is...” Grease started.

“Pact-breaker...” Grand moaned.

“It targeted MacLeod's transponder,” Bucket realized aloud.

Goldbrick pushed himself back to his feet in time to see a second shell punch through the ceiling and burst within the collapsed gremlin rookery. The elevator jerked again, putting the general right back on a knee.

Down there, walls floated through the air like silk scarves. At this distance, the explosion bloomed at half-speed, the bricks and bodies rising and falling no faster than autumn leaves on a breezy day. Cracks split wide across the bedrock floor

Lucky's heartbeat pounded in his ears, louder than the blasts.

“Damn, Russians,” Goldbrick whispered.

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Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin.