The Secret Files of Lucky Ford: Operation Arm Breaker, Part 16 of 17

Their mission concluded, Lucky and the remaining officials have only one goal left: survive! The vengeful remnants of Department Three want their heads, and the weapons they bring to bear are both terrible and awesome.

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 16, the penultimate release of Operation Arm Breaker. If you haven’t read Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, or 15 yet, check them out first.

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

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, JULY 14, 1943
NORTH OF IMMENSTAAD
BADEN-ELSAß, NAZI GERMANY

The incoming Nazi hummingbirds did not care that they would get shredded by Sinclair and the Colonel in the next thirty seconds. They only cared that in the next ten seconds they’d be blowing Lucky and company out of the sky. Their mission was vengeance, so their own survival was secondary. They lined their MG 42’s up on their target. Their muzzles were glowing red hot.

When the flurry of explosions burst around them, Lucky almost thought it was him that was dying.

Both enemy hummingbirds flew into a squall of shrapnel, oblivious that they were under attack until it was too late. Dozens of serpentine rocket trails lanced up from the crumbling buildings below, ending in bursts of flak that disassembled men and machine in oil, blood, and fire.

The Nazi craft staggered to a halt in mid-air, seemingly held aloft only by the explosions breaking them like eggs.

As quickly as they began, the blasts ceased and strong winds washed the rocket trails away. The Nazis and their hummingbirds dropped in pieces onto charred, abandoned homes below, raising a column of dust and ash fifty feet tall. A blue light winked through the disturbed cloud from the ground, swinging back and forth in someone's waving hand.

“Rothenberg,” Goldbrick said, grinning. His eyes were bloodshot and his veins pounded in his temples. He was squeezing Lucky's shoulder so hard that his knuckles had gone white, but he was smiling; something had finally gone according to plan. Their comrade had done his part and rallied local ground support, the Hundred Deacons.

Bucket and Sinclair brought their hummingbirds around front of Lucky and Miller's and led them down low, flying along the ruined town’s former main street. Dark silhouettes watched them from windows and alleys, tracking their roaring path behind gun sights.

Lucky's hummingbird was choking now, and it was going to fall out despite the astounding number of dials and switches Miller hit to try to convince it to stay airborne. A steady stream of fluids splattered cobblestones behind it, while the spray of oil emanating from the bullet holes in the hood had turned into a geyser of acrid blue smoke.

One engine died, dropping them so suddenly that the undercarriage scraped against the street, kicking up rocks and sparks in a bright fountain before they caught air again.

“Mierda,” Quint swore, holding on for dear life. Their flying car was almost done.

The other hummingbirds pulled up and eased around to settle in an overgrown park.

Crews of cloaked men materialized from the tree line, watching silent as phantoms. Miller eased into middle of the group, his remaining engines popping and spitting smoke and flame. He hit the soft ground hard, bouncing Lucky off the dashboard one last time. Grand groaned in pain from the back.

The cloaked figures hummed quiet hymns as they worked. Rosary beads rattled with each movement; every one of the men had them hanging from his neck. They brought stretchers and loaded Cheddarwright and Grand onto them.

The humming broke with a start as Grease lurched out of his hummingbird. The blood-soaked giant looked around sheepishly, staring at the masked men around him.

“Er ist einer von uns,” someone said. That was all it took, and they got back to it. Quint, Grease, and the general refused to be loaded onto stretchers, despite their bloody states.

“Welcome to Immenstaad,” the man who’d spoken before called out, his voice familiar once he spoke English. Lieutenant Keshet Rothenberg stepped out of the crowd of partisans and threw his hood back.

“Bloody good work, my boy,” the Colonel said wearily as he clapped him on the back.

The Deacons brought camouflage nets over to cover the hummingbirds. Lucky stumbled out of his cockpit before they could wrap him up in the netting with it.

“The Deacons were eager to help,” Rothenberg reported. He was wearing the same hooded midnight blue cloak as the swarming German partisans, its breast embroidered in black with a cross inside a letter ‘C’ and its waist cinched with a thick black rope. Despite the Christian iconography, he had still worn his knit yarmulke cap under the hood.

“Can I hold your luftfaust?” Bucket asked one of the hooded Deacons. The man shook his head without speaking, revealing a wooden mask covering his face, carved with holy signs and images.

The weapon he kept away from Bucket was the size of a panzerfaust, a series of launch tubes bolted together so that they could light off an entire cloud of rockets at once. The weapon was inlaid with psalms and crosses in gleaming silver. It was what had shredded the enemy hummingbirds so effectively.

“C’mon pal, I just want to hold it,” Bucket pleaded.

“You can ask, but they will not speak to you,” Rothenberg answered for the Deacon. “Silence among unpledged persons is one of their vows. If you do not know so much as their voices, you cannot surrender that information when tortured.”

“Fair point,” Bucket said.

The Deacon hefted the luftfaust onto his shoulder and melted into the swarm of milling, humming partisans. Each of them carried their own rifle or submachine gun, similarly inscribed with symbols of their faith. Butt stocks had images of the virgin mother's face, sacred hearts adorned with flame had been painted on stick grenades, even ammo magazines had Bible verses etched into their sides.

“I think I know this tune,” Lucky muttered, vaguely recalling some hymn he'd heard in church as a kid.

“Not the way they sing it,” Miller told him. “The Deacons' interpretation of the King James Bible is rather... selective. To encourage their activities.”

“What's that got to do with this song?”

“Their version of the lyrics include many more references to bombings and extra-judicial executions than the original lyrics offered,” Miller explained.

“Oh,” was all Lucky could say. He eased away from the humming Deacons. Suddenly the intricate knots in their black cinctures no longer looked so ceremonial; those were measurements for nooses.

“How was your time among the Catholics?” Goldbrick asked Rothenberg. The general's face face was still red, but his cough had finally subsided, leaving his deep voice raspy and low, but still powerful.

“The best I have ever experienced in such a group,” Rothenberg replied.

“Because they don't talk,” Sinclair laughed, smiling with his eyes behind his bandages. A conspiratorial smirk spread on Rothenberg's face.

“That is not exactly what I said,” he chuckled, stroking his sandy beard. His smile disappeared when he looked over the few ragged officials who'd made it to Immenstaad. He asked carefully: “Is this... everyone?”

“Yes,” the Colonel confirmed. He needn't say more: Rothenberg knew their war, their odds, and their enemy. Even so, Neff, Farisi, Bastedo, Benjamin, and MacLeod's absences were jarring.

“The Deacons have a boat ready,” Rothenberg reported. He knew that they’d have time to mourn once they were all safe. “Grab your gear and follow me. There was radio chatter regarding your escape, we do not have time to waste.”

“This is a pretty efficient operation for a bunch of volunteers,” Bucket observed. One of the Deacons had re-wrapped his bloody hand.

“They have been planning and training since Kristallnacht,” Rothenberg explained. “They are finally prepared to take action on behalf of their faith.”

Lucky noticed the heat in Rothenberg's voice when he said 'finally.' His people had suffered horribly under the Nazis. He was clearly of the opinion that one who can make a difference and chooses not to is complicit in those acts. Lucky held the same beliefs. Perhaps if these Deacons had stood up sooner, the difference could have been made to countless of his fellow Jews and the Nazis’ other victims.

It sounded simple enough, but Lucky knew in his head it was not, despite what his heart told him. The Nazis committed atrocity with industrial scale and efficiency, and steamrolled anyone who objected. Those who had stood up against the Nazis for what was right had died, horribly and publicly, with unspeakable things done to them and their families first.

To be willing to risk that kind of sacrifice took a lot, no matter how good or brave one was. It would take nations’ worth of effort and industry to even slow the krauts. One man couldn’t be blamed for not stepping up, but millions could.

Hell, the United States had let Europe, Africa, and China get hammered for years before they stepped in, and then only because they’d gotten hit themselves. Even when they knew what horrors were happening, they still turned refugees away.

Lucky wasn't one to pass judgment on anyone, but these Deacons, like the States, had watched it all happen.

The Catholic priests who had founded the Deacons were long-dead. They had been executed alongside the Jews they had spoken up for, buried in the same mass graves. Their successors did not speak. They had determined to fulfill God's will and fight against those who would treat His people so callously. To that end, they had determined that they must use their enemy's tactics against them.

Violence to combat violence.

They had trained and built networks and collected weapons, but it took one last nudge to get them to follow through. That push came from Keshet Rothenberg, motivation that in turns shamed their inaction, praised their bravery, filled their coffers, and challenged their preparations. They had been ready to resist, they just needed an opportunity presented to them on a golden platter.

“Their boat is ready to take us across the lake at once,” Rothenberg told us. “Another cell is launching a diversionary attack on the SS barracks in Konstanz as we speak in the hope that this will draw the Nazi counter-attack.”

A robed Deacon appeared at Rothenberg's side. The hummingbirds had been hidden and the milling partisans had melted away into the razed buildings surrounding the park. The masked man nodded to Rothenberg.

“Time to move,” he reported.

Rothenberg followed the dark-robed ghosts through rubble and twisting streets, and the other officials stayed on his tail. Grease had popped the last of Doc P.'s pills and his bleeding had stopped. He was standing a little straighter and had the energy of a terrier puppy. With his renewed vigor, he had no problem carrying Grand, while Bucket and Sinclair each took one end of Cheddarwright's stretcher.

Department Three had cleared Immenstaad and burned it, just like every other community that bordered Eberkopf. The small homes were hollowed and blackened. Not a single pane of glass remained intact in the town. It had been fire-bombed from the air, rendering it uninhabitable and granting the July Arm the privacy they needed to conduct their awful experiments below ground. The town had become still and silent once more. Every one of the dozens of Deacons who'd seen to camouflaging the stolen hummingbirds was gone, leaving no trace of their existence.

The Deacon guide wove his way through rubble-strewn streets, ducked under collapsed archways and picked through the husks of homes and shops, skeletal and charred, until he stopped at a milk truck that had plowed into a decapitated light post. Its paint had roasted off when its tires burned, leaving only a scraped-out, rusted metal frame. The Deacon looked around for observers, then lifted its warped tailgate to reveal a deep spiderhole beneath. He slipped into the small opening and was gone. Rothenberg melted into the shadow after him.

Lucky followed them into the inky blackness, descending the rough wooden ladder he found within to drop into a wide tunnel that ran beneath the street. It was an ancient sewer system, reinforced and decontaminated. A film of pungent smoke roiled around the ceiling. A few candles lit the strange space.

Black warrens on either side of the tunnel opened up into branching crosscuts that rose to street level. Suspicious, anxious eyes watched the officials from within the gloom. Someone had painted a long prayer in an ancient language down the length of the brick wall.

“This is good as Greek to me,” Grease said. He had barely fit down the hole, and in the tunnel he had to bunch himself up to not wedge himself in. He turned to one set of eyes watching him and added: “Maybe write it in hieroglyphics next time.”

Miller was down the ladder next and recognized the words.

“Magnificat,” he said. “The Canticle of Mary.”

“It's not that great,” Grease grunted. Goldbrick passed Grand down to him. The Englishman was knocked all the way out and was as white as ghost. Grease cradled Grand like a giant sleeping baby, then sniffed the air, wondering: “Why is that smell so familiar?”

“Frankincense,” the Colonel told him. His pointed at a hanging incense burner with his saber, a brass globe pocked with smoking holes.

“A Roman Catholic thurible,” Miller identified. Grease scowled.

“Makes me think some old broad with a habit's waiting for me around the bend with a ruler,” he said.

Goldbrick came down next with the folded stretcher, then helped Sinclair and Bucket lower Cheddarwright.

“This whole town is accessible via their tunnels,” Rotherberg explained, grunting as he helped the general lay Cheddarwright on the waiting canvas.

“I'm not that heavy, you git,” Cheddarwright muttered. She was as pale as a ghost, but at least she was talking.

The rest of the officials descended in short order, and the Deacon led them further into the warren.

Gilded light flickered from side tunnels. The Deacons had machine guns and anti-tank cannons dug into the town at every intersection. Each spiderhole and disguised pillbox the officials could see was filigreed with draped velvet curtains and flickering candles in gold holders, each a shrine and an altar. Holy icons watched over the Deacons manning them, and long vellum scrolls riddled with Latin and illuminated text papered the walls within.

It took the officials twenty minutes to walk the tunnels' breadth and reach their southern edge. A false wall concealed the exit. The sunlight was shocking again, but it was the blue horizon that nearly bowled Lucky over. He had forgotten how vibrant the color could be. He'd drowned in a hell of gray and red and green; blue crashed through his senses like a freight train.

A gull glided low over the crumbling buildings. Its caw was shockingly loud in the dry, silent town.

Before them the water went on and on, an inland sea. Lucky could see the specters of mountains on the far side, impossibly tall and distant. If he had happened upon this strange coast alone, with ash clouds obscuring the mountains, he would have thought he'd reached the end of the world.

A small fishing boat was waiting, tied off at the end of a splintered dock. There were dozens of charred posts peeking just above the water around it: many more piers had once been there to service the collapsed warehouses and storefronts bordering the lake.

The ship waited impatiently, bobbing in the freshwater tide. It looked like it had good bones, but had been dirtied up for anyone who stumbled upon it. A casual glance would convince an observer that it wasn't anything more than floating wreckage, long abandoned. It reminded Lucky of the Selvaggio smuggler's ship that had rescued them before the Nazis had loosed Vesuvius on Naples.

Somewhere, far to the east, an air raid siren howled, harsh in the dry air. The Deacon on point skidded to a halt and broke one of his vows.

“Schieße,” he cursed behind his mask, his hand wrapped so tightly in his rosary that his fingers had gone white and purple as he whispered:

“Hrungnir.”

He took off for the dock at a full bolt before he could let another word slip.

“Hrungnir: a mythological giant originating in Norse folklore,” Miller explained before anyone asked him to. The siren continued in the moments of silence that followed. Somewhere in the town center, a battery of Deacon mortars thumped.

“He's got the right idea,” Goldbrick said, pointing after their sprinting guide. A vein throbbed in his forehead and a sheen of sweat covered his face, washing away the caked blood. A shiver ran through his body, before he laughed out loud, a guffaw that he silenced as quickly as he'd let it slip. “Time to move!”

The mortars fired again, at least half-a-dozen big tubes, followed by the sharp report of an anti-tank gun. A low rumble had cut in beneath the blaring siren, growing in volume by the second.

Grease, Bucket, and Sinclair hefted the wounded and took off at a trot toward the boat, as fast as they could go without risking their comrades. Lucky waited behind, carbine to his shoulder, keeping watch over the razed town.

Distant machine guns opened up, only to be cut off. Anti-tank cannons got off one or two shots before being subsumed by the rising dirge. A storm of pulverized concrete and churned earth was rising in a rolling thunderhead, consuming Immenstaad as its shattered skyline further dissolved. The sound had grown so loud that Lucky did not know whether the air raid siren had been destroyed or if it was still howling. The mortars fired another salvo, only for a plume of smoke to rise seconds later when their ammunition stocks cooked off.

Lucky slipped his finger onto his trigger as if a single rifle had any chance to slow against whatever was coming. That small act steadied him, at least.

The rising dirge was so loud it struck him like a physical force, pushing the feeling from his face and the air from his lungs. A low ringing sprouted on the edge of Lucky's comprehension. It was louder than a Russian bombshell exploding yards away from him.

The rest of the officials had gotten down the dock. Lucky slung the carbine across his back and gave up his covering position to run after them. Every pounding step shocked his torso, and he knew that behind the PEP pills' adrenal facade his ribs were grinding their own sheared edges to mush under the relentless punishment.

A tremor passed through the cobblestones beneath Lucky and a wave surged through the cerulean water, starting at the shore and growing as it moved out toward the center of the lake.

Lucky did not look back.

His first step sent the dockwood trembling under his boots, and in front of the him the boat was bouncing against its moorings. Blue water sparkled between the gnarled planks as he sped over them. The officials were throwing off the ship's lines. Some were firing their guns over Lucky's head at the looming thing behind him. They were all shouting, their voices washed out by the quaking wall of horrible noise that had become the whole world.

One last leap took Lucky over the widening gap between the dock and drifting boat. He landed flat on the deck, sending a shock through his liquefied torso so intense that his eyes stopped working.

The ship's engine kick to life deep in the hull and they pulled away from the broken town and the howling terror that was wiping away what was left of it.

Lucky sat up when the pain died down and his eyes came back into focus, taking in the blue waters once again, a growing band of safety. They were at least a quarter-mile out, gaining distance by the minute. Beyond that blue, a monster waited on the shore, roaring and gnashing at the water, breathing smoke, spitting fire.

“Hrungnir,” Lucky said to himself, no idea whether he was whispering or yelling.

The thing was built like a panzer crossed with an oil rig, a massive armored platform dozens of yards across and studded with turrets and gun emplacements. It was matte black, with only the red and white stains of powdered brick and cement marking its jagged prow. The monstrous vehicle had bulldozed the town, a rolling skyscraper that plowed through buildings and left a path of devastation behind. Department Three's swastika, painted glowing white and cyclopean against ebony steel, adorned Hrungnir's command tower, its eleven arms seeming to twist as Lucky watched.

A half-dozen fountains of flame erupted from its hull, washing orange over the shore. The wall of fire rose around Hrungnir. The officials could not go back. The flamethrowers cut off and vents around the vehicle's prow snapped open. A rolling fog of green gas billowed forth, creeping across the water with noxious questing fingers.

Despite Hrungnir's best efforts, its prey was escaping. The fishing boat had good bones and an over-powered motor, and it kicked up a plume of water as it raced away from the monstrous tank. Lucky could hear his own heartbeat again, and the moans, shock, plans, and prayers of his comrades.

The mechanical roar rose in pitch, and Hrungnir lifted off the ground, rising a dozen yards into the air as it kicked up a hurricane below. Three dozen engines directed jets downward, the air they pushed powerful enough to rip the roofs off buildings and strip trees bare. Each of its turbine engines was larger than the entire flying cars the officials had just abandoned. If the officials had stolen hummingbirds, this thing was a dragon.

Hrungnir's turrets shifted, rotating so its barrels centered on the distant boat. The Deacon at the helm gunned the throttle as Hrungnir's cannons flashed.

Red shattered the blue, and Lake Constance was above them.

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, JULY 14, 1943
SOUTH OF IMMENSTAAD
LAKE CONSTANCE, GERMAN-SWISS BORDER

Water crashed onto the small boat's rocking deck. Hrungnir's cannon shells had hit close, close enough to soak everyone on board. The torrent threw Lucky hard against the rail, nearly overboard.

The Deacon captain leaned into the throttle, riding down the back of the blast-churned waves and kicking up a geyser from the stern. The cannons roared again, but the shells flew wide.

“They can't zero in their sights when they're airborne!” Bucket yelled over the flying fortress' din.

“How would they do at close range?” Goldbrick asked.

“Shouldn't be a problem,” Bucket shouted back. “Why?”

Goldbrick started laughing hysterically. The veins in his neck were bulging through the skin and his uniform was soaked through with sweat and old blood. He pointed back to Immenstaad as he cackled.

Hrungnir lurched forward, off the shore. Its engines shrieked, sending gales of super-heated air downward from its three dozen turbines and raising fountains of steam and water. Yard-by-yard, the massive machine churned forward until it was only over the lake, hovering ten yards over the boiling maelstrom it created.

“Jesus Christ,” Grease said, drawing a glare from the Deacon and a guffaw from Goldbrick.

The general's jaw dropped open, giving everyone all a view of his metallic molars. His shoulders started bouncing up and down and he laughed so hard that he couldn't catch his breath. Everyone stared, confused and concerned. Goldbrick struggled to control himself, desperate to explain the joke.

“Jesus... 'cause... it... walks... on... water!” he finally wheezed.

Hrungnir surged forward. Its tracers tore lake water, but its target was out of range for the moment. It plowed through its crawling green fog, trailing toxic tendrils as it stormed ahead. Somehow, the skyscraper-sized tank was faster than the Deacons' overpowered boat.

The Deacon was shouting, vows be damned; prayers or curses, Lucky couldn't tell. He adjusted the throttle, banged on the panel next to the compass, and cut hard to the left and then the right.

Explosions rocked the hull again. The shells were zeroing in as Hrungnir bore down.

Lucky threw the carbine over his shoulder. It wouldn't do anything to the flying tank.

“What now?” he asked. Lucky knew damn well they had used the last of their heavy weapons to shatter the main column under Eberkopf.

“Mad Meg could have cored that apple,” Quint grunted. The single-shot naval gun MacLeod had used to fell the hangar before might have been large enough to hole the tank, but it was spent. They had nothing to hold off Hrungnir.

“Miller has everything in hand,” the Colonel assured them. He was wiping water off Grand's face. Grand's bandages were soaked through and blooming pink.

Sinclair checked his watch. The gauze on his face was wet and drooping, revealing the melted skin beneath.

“It has been thirty-five minutes since we reached Immenstaad,” he reported. Lucky ducked low as another shell struck so close that the water was still hot when it pelted the deck. Hrungnir's roar was growing again.

“Mirecourt's acknowledgment arrived shortly after I relayed the confirmation signal,” Miller confirmed. He patted a small radio transmitter on his belt.

“Let us hope their services are worth their price,” the Colonel said.

Hrungnir groaned louder. An immense door slid open, splitting the plate armor into a gaping maw. Six hummingbirds buzzed out, rushing forward faster even than their thunderous carrier.

“Our guns will work on them!” Lucky shouted. He got low behind the bucking side rail and stabilized the De Lisle carbine against it as best he could. He gave the first hummingbird a bit of a lead, then fired. The officials that could still shoot opened up with whatever they had. Lucky don't know whose bullet did the deed, but the flying car at the head of the pack withered under their fire.

The remaining hummingbirds gunned their engines and charged ahead, machine guns chattering. Bullets splintered the deck, and the Deacon slumped over the wheel, spasming, blood streaming from his perforated back. The boat yawed to the right, sending its passengers tumbling ass over elbows. The next pair of hummingbirds were coming in too hot to adjust their attack vectors and their bullets went wide to the left.

Grease was the first to recover, bringing his punt gun up and to fire a yellow beehive shell. The cloud of super-sonic BB's chewed through turbine blades like they were made of wax. A second hummingbird went cartwheeling into the lake, spiraling smoke and shrapnel as it punched through the blue.

Another barrage of fire bisected the small boat's cabin, hitting the choking Deacon again. His wooden mask clattered to the deck. Underneath he was a middle-aged man, mustached, bloodied, and terrified.

“On it!” Bucket shouted. He dashed into the cabin and laid the Deacon on the deck before taking the wheel in his hands. Sinclair grabbed a blanket and pressed it against the Deacon's awful wounds, trying the staunch the bleeding as the man cursed in German. The boat straightened out and they turned back south.

“Sergeant, you must stay on this bearing!” the Colonel shouted. He pulled a slip of paper out of his breast pocket and pressed it into the Bucket's hands. The sergeant studied the page then consulted the compass built into the boat's console. He wrestled the wheel to get them back on track.

The four remaining hummingbirds twisted around, coming in for another strafing run. Grease loaded a fresh shell, only to catch a salvo to his armored chest. The heavy rounds knocked him over so forcefully that the deck cracked beneath him.

Water was seeping in between the deck boards, mottled with the sheen of leaking oil. Bucket pushed the boat as hard as she would go. A soaked cigarette dangled limp from his lips, dripping brown while his steel dog tags and golden wedding band had popped free from his collar and were glinting in the meager sunlight. Shells crashed all around, casting shadows and throwing rainbows with equal abandon.

The hummingbirds whipped around, completing their wide circuit to line back up on their target. Before they could set their sights, they scattered. Some peeled off to the side, one hauled back then shot straight up, but the last hesitated.

A double-hulled blue silhouette ripped through the air, its cannons howling death. Bullets and shells tore into the slowest hummingbird, popping it like a ripe tomato. Men and machinery fell to the water, flame and smoke rose to the sky.

“Good heavens,” the Colonel exclaimed.

“It's the Angel!” Bucket whooped.

“Good… heavens!” Goldbrick guffawed.

The blue P-38-O Strike Lightning dove through the chaos and skimmed the water before pulling up and twisting around. A shock of blonde hair flew free in the bubble cockpit. It was Angel, shredding Nazis in her Brizzy Bunyip. Achilles Adrastos sat back-to-back with her, hauling on his trigger and loosing mini-rockets and tracer rounds from the rear turret at the spooked hummingbirds.

A phalanx of coal-black P-51 Mustangs thundered in close behind Angel. Their wing-mounted guns spat fire in unison, chasing down the last three hummingbirds. The formation flew low over the boat, showing off the skeletal wings stenciled on their undersides. The planes bore no flags, only kill counts.

“The Black Wings,” Miller explained. Each one of the mercenary fighter-bombers carried eight fifty-cal Browning machine guns in their wings and a pair of iron bombs under their bellies. They made short work of the hummingbirds and arced around to face down Hrungnir.

The roaring flying tank was catching up with the damaged boat.

Its cannons thumped again and again, sending up geysers with each shot. The Black Wings whipped around and formed up behind the Brizzy Bunyip then opened fire on Hrungnir. Their bullets pinged off its heavy armor, scarring the paint but doing little more. Angel leaned on her Lightning’s triggers, firing the heavy cannon built into her P-38-O’s nose. Twenty-millimeter shells hammered at the steel, pitting it and making the flying tank shudder under the assault. The giant noticed her tickling it.

Hrungnir’s guns bristled like a hedgehog’s spines, then erupted with fire. A wall of flak burst between it and the incoming fighters, forcing them to pull up and away at the last second. One of the Black Wings took the brunt of the attack, his Mustang crumbling underneath him as it dropped into a barrel roll. Flight surfaces peeled away as the fuselage spun. The canopy broke away and the pilot was thrown free. His mutilated body chased his plane across the water, skipping across the lake in pieces.

“We have to save him!” Goldbrick shouted, pointing at the red froth. He pulled himself up onto the rail, ready to dive overboard.

“We cannot turn back!” the Colonel shouted back.

“The Nazis can’t take him!” Goldbrick insisted. He lurched to his feet and threw himself over the rail. Grease snatched him by the collar before his boots could get wet and hauled him right back aboard. The general’s face was beet red and he turned on Grease like he was back in the ring. His powerful right hook took Grease in his already-broken steel-bridged nose, pulverizing the general's hand and sending the I-soldier reeling.

“The Nazis can't take him!” Goldbrick shouted again. The Colonel tried to grab him but the general lashed out with his good hand, pummeling Halistone in the face, dropping him with a deep split across his cheekbone.

“Its the irrsinnium - !” Miller tried to say, only for Goldbrick to land a crushing haymaker on his masked face, knocking him on his ass and further cracking his eye lenses.

Goldbrick had gotten a full blast of the crazy gas, Lucky realized. He was twitching now, uncontrollable spasms arcing through his body. Pretty soon he was be totally undone by the horrible chemicals. Once they had enough time to marinate his brain, he would go from frantic and violent to malicious and deadly.

The general turned his back to Lucky as he brought hands against Sinclair. Two quick jabs broke his second-in-command's nose, soaking the bandages and covering his melted face in red.

“Let me show you,” Goldbrick growled. Lucky dove at the general’s exposed back, catching him behind the knees with his full weight. It was like tackling a telephone pole. Goldbrick resisted, but official after official piled on, dragging the big man down until his knees gave out. Even with all of their weight and strength, he fought, catching Lucky over and over with boots and elbows. He was breaking free.

The crack of gunmetal on bone stilled him.

The officials on top of Lucky slid off, and once he was able to breathe again he saw the Colonel pressing a bandage against Goldbrick's split scalp. Blood stained the handle of one of Halistone's revolvers. Lucky collapsed against the ship’s rail. His chest was on fire from the inside-out.

“He’s alive?” Lucky asked between gasps for air.

“Yes,” the Colonel said. “We must secure him before he wakes.”

The Colonel and Sinclair bound Goldbrick’s hands and feet with his own wormline. Behind them, Hrungnir was distracted, but it still pressed forward.

Its machine guns and flak cannons were splitting the sky. The cartwheeling fighters above whirled around the flak and streams of tracers, desperately trying to knock out the tank's guns. Their bullets may as well have been carved from butter.

These attacks weren't working and Angel knew it.

Lucky pictured her intense blue eyes, the way she'd clench her jaw.

She hauled back on her stick, rising until she was a blue dot far above the dome of flak that Hrungnir was spitting out. Brizzy Bunyip twisted and spun and suddenly she was diving, cutting through the battered flight of Mustangs that had struggled to keep up with her daring maneuvers.

Angel's dive went vertical, offering the smallest possible target for Hrungnir’s gunners. Brizzy Bunyip slipped through the wall of flak and pulled up at the last instant, dropping a pair of insistent iron bombs straight onto the tank’s top, where the armor was always weakest.

The double explosion rocked Hrungnir, sending it lurching into the lake. Its engines screamed as it struggled against the concussion, its turbines choked with water. Mist and smoke enveloped the tank for a second, but its renewed roar cut through and it righted itself in seconds. Hrungnir charged ahead, belching flak, shells, bullets, and flame. The heavy bombs had not even warped its plating.

The Black Wings followed her flight path in a long string, dropping their payloads on the tank without result. The thunder and smoke washed off Hrungnir as cleanly as the spray of water it was kicking up.

“What’s that thing made of?” Grease wondered.

The tank was only a quarter-mile behind now, putting the little boat in easy range of its weapons, but its main cannons had gone silent. Every one of its turrets not firing skyward at Angel and the Black Wings was trained on its prey but holding fire. It was coming in for the close kill. It would roast the officials alive or choke them out with gas, or might simply run them down: this was the chance that these particular Nazis had to employ the method of killing that they found most entertaining.

“Its armor is too strong for conventional weapons,” the Colonel mused, nursing his bloody, purpling cheek.

“Hell, all weapons,” Grease grunted as the airplanes made another impotent strafing run. They'd used all of their bombs and hadn’t managed to slow Hrungnir down.

Lucky was watching Sinclair and the Colonel tie off the wormline around Goldbrick’s ankles when inspiration hit him.

“You hit a big man at the knees,” Lucky said. Grease's eyes went wide as he read Lucky's mind. He opened up his punt gun, plucked out the empty red shell and chucked it overboard, replacing it with a green slug. He clapped the it shut and stood. Even this far away, Hrungnir loomed over them like a carbon-steel landslide.

Grease tucked the cannon-sized shotgun under his arm and fired. The entire boat rocked with the recoil. The closest of Hrungnir’s engines, on its front-right corner, caved in and began shrieking, dragging metal on metal as it vomited sparks and flame. The massive slug couldn’t pierce the engine’s armor, but the dent it made was deep enough to foul the intricate turbine inside.

Hrungnir careened forward and stopped in place, shocked at the damage.

Bucket never let up on the throttle, putting a buffer between the boat and the oncoming monster. Exhaust boiled out of the flying tank and with a thundercrack an explosive charge amputated the crippled turbine, dropping it into the lake with a splash.

Hrungnir roared again, and it charged forward with renewed fury, gaining back its lost distance.

Angel and the Black Wings didn’t miss a beat. Their guns roared and within seconds, a half-dozen of the engines were burning, then ejected. Hrungnir’s anti-air defense intensified. Two more Black Wings caught flak, so close-range and high-caliber that not even their hardy P-51’s could withstand the barrage. Wings peeled free from plummeting fuselages and the pair were swallowed by the lake.

Hrungnir shuddered and slowed under the assault, but six K.O.'d engines out of three dozen were not enough to stop it.

“We’re almost there!” Bucket shouted from the helm. A line of green was growing on the southern horizon, between the phantom mountains and the edge of the lake. Switzerland.

Two more explosions tossed the boat on churned water, throwing hot waves across the deck. Lucky spit and sputtered, trying to clear his eyes. Hrungnir had given up on capturing them. It didn’t want to delight in roasting them alive or gassing them any more. No, it just wanted them dead.

The Black Wings, what was left of them, continued their strafing attacks on the flying tank’s engines. Two more turbines burst, but the shield of flak and bullets Hrungnir expelled was too much. Every one of the mercenary Mustangs was trailing smoke now, with daylight visible through holes punched in their wings. They pulled back, with each subsequent assault made from greater and greater range.

Angel’s twin-hulled Strike Lightning came in low from the east, barely skimming the surface of the lake. She was pushing her plane to its top speed, dragging smoke. A canister on the plane’s belly was belching a voluminous cloud of overcaster discharge that piled atop the water in a billowing black wall. She ran the tightening gauntlet between the struggling boat and the roaring flying tank, wholly obscuring its target.

Shells whistled through the obfuscation, but Bucket veered the ship starboard, throwing their aim. Their blasts barely misted Lucky's battered face.

“Land ho!” Bucket shouted, doing an awful pirate accent.

“Lucky, can you shoot?” the Colonel asked. Lucky nodded. “Take the bow and cover our approach. Grease, prepare to fire again from the stern.”

Lucky made his way around the bullet-splintered cabin and took a knee behind the bow rail. He grimaced with the boat’s every bounce and watched land materialize ahead through his carbine sights.

The shore was close. Trees, green despite the ash, lined the edge of the lake. They swayed in a gentle breeze, shaking off cold Vesuvian cinders like they were flower petals.

Three people were waiting at the water's edge, armed men.

“Colonel,” Lucky shouted over his shoulder. Halistone made his way to Lucky's side.

A small blonde man in a three-piece suit stood at the at the water's edge, careful to keep his loafers dry. He held a megaphone in one hand and had a leather briefcase handcuffed to the other. The two men flanking him were dressed like nutcrackers; billowing yellow, red, black, and blue outfits with scarlet-feathered silver helmets perched on their heads. Both held long, ax-headed spears. The incoming rumble of Hrungnir behind the wall of smoke did not seem to bother any of them.

The Colonel studied the waiting trio for a second, then said:

“They are here for us.”

Hrungnir's remaining engines roared and the flying tank burst through the wall of smoke, its turrets adjusting to find the small boat in their sights.

“So is that,” Lucky muttered.

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Copyright © 2024 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin.