The Secret Files of Lucky Ford: Operation Arm Breaker, Part 6 of 17

Lucky and the officials have been cornered. The Reich’s deadly assassins, the Waldgeist, have them in their sights. When just one of these sword-swinging harridans can decimate a entire company, what chance do they have against a whole phalanx of them?

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 6 of Operation Arm Breaker. If you haven’t read Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 yet, check them out first.

Content Warnings: Tobacco Use, Death, Gore, Violence, Animal Violence, Gun Violence, Mild Swearing, Nazis

WEDNESDAY MORNING, JULY 14, 1943
EAST OF SAULDORF
BADEN-ELSAß, NAZI GERMANY

Benjamin flung his stiletto when the Nazi assassins were at the height of their leaps. The Waldgeist he'd targeted was fast, and she whipped her burning sword around with a flick of the wrist, knocking the razor-edged knife out of the air. But Benjamin's aim was not to kill the German ninja, it was merely to distract her.

The split-second opening was enough to give Benjamin an advantage, and he took it, ducking below the Waldgeist's slash to bring his second blade up. The paddle-shaped smatchet chopped between the assassin's ribs like an ax, nearly splitting her chest cavity open. His fist slammed into her over and over like a sewing machine, leaving her dead on her feet or close to it. The second was on him in that instant.

Her blade came down like fiery lightning with a powerful slash that would have left Benjamin in two smoking pieces. The lieutenant knew she was coming and twisted around, using the smatchet he had buried in the first Waldgeist as a macabre handle to maneuver her into the sword’s path. The humming blade split her from shoulder to pelvis, finishing the job Benjamin had started. The bisected waldgeist's uniform caught fire and gurgling steam hissed from the wound.

The second Waldgeist had no time to follow up her attack before Benjamin snatched up her fallen comrade's sword. One horizontal slash parted the Nazi's head from her shoulders and sent it tumbling into an ash bank. The fluffy cinders swallowed it in a small gray puff. The stump of her neck burst into sputtering flame. Benjamin let both bodies fall to the ground.

Benjamin tossed aside the glowing sword and yanked his smatchet from the bisected body. He found his stiletto in the ash and flipped it up in the air, smiling. The blood that had spattered his face steamed. He stood before Yūrei, breathing hard.

“I was wrong. But you can still be third,” he growled at her. The Japanese killer stood perfectly still. Her gaze never wandered from Benjamin's face.

“Er gehört mir,” Yūrei said. Her Waldgeister relaxed, though none deactivated their glowing swords.

“That's right,” Benjamin snarled. “I'm all yours.”

Yūrei moved so fast her lithe black frame blurred into the ash. Her blade arced quicker than Lucky could see, but Benjamin was as good as he said. Sparks flew when Yūrei's black sword collided with his knives. He parried perfectly and came back with his own attack. They stabbed, slashed, and chopped at each other a hundred times in just a few seconds, but the two combatants were evenly matched; neither could land a single strike.

Benjamin unleashed one last flurry of slashes, then rolled back, tumbling over his head and landing on his feet a yard from Lucky. Yūrei leaped away as well, landing ten yards back, soft as a falling feather.

“Take these, they slow me down,” Benjamin told Lucky as he shrugged out of his carbine's harness and his grenade belt. Lucky tossed the belt and sling over his shoulder.

“What are you doing?” Lucky hissed.

“Drawing this out,” Benjamin answered. “The general, Grand, Miller, and the sasquatch will be here soon enough. 'Til they show, we're guaranteed dead. But if I got the chance to take out a kaiken of the Black Dragons before I die, I'm going to take it. Yūrei Mikiko is as bad as Gerhardt, it wasn't just propaganda. You see how she fights? Everything was true. If we die here just to kill her, that would be a victory. She's a priority target now, Ford.”

“So shoot her and run,” Lucky urged, repeating Benjamin's own advice. It seemed like a smart move; Yūrei had brought a sword to a gunfight. Benjamin chuckled, then clapped Lucky on the shoulder.

“That's what I told you to do, not me. Pop a few off at her and tell me how well that goes for you,” Benjamin said, before calling to Yūrei: “Ready?”

Yūrei Mikiko bowed low to Benjamin, straightened, and took her jet-black sword in both hands. The lieutenant did not return her bow. The leather grips of his knives creaked as his knuckles whitened. He and Yūrei stared at one another for a long moment, then they collided.

The pair fought with a ferocity and expertise Lucky had never witnessed before. Each slice and deflection, each twist and foot placement was chosen with practiced instinct. Though Yūrei's reach was greater than Benjamin's knives, his attacks were twice as frequent and wholly unpredictable.

More than once, one of Benjamin's blades sliced into Yūrei's black jumpsuit. Her sword was longer and heavier, but Benjamin always seemed to counter it at the last second, bouncing its razor edge off the body of one or both of his knives. As her sword clanged away, he'd press forward, stabbing and slashing with his slender stiletto, chopping with the smatchet. The final slash was too fast for Lucky to see, but the kaiken felt it. A thick line of blood blossomed along her waist.

Yūrei jumped back, hand clamped over a welling wound that ran from her left hip to her belly button. Crimson stained the pale skin beneath her black jumpsuit. She touched it, almost in disbelief, then held up her bloodied palm accusingly. Her shoulders rose and fell, fast at first, but calmed to statuesque within three breaths. She adjusted her porcelain mask, and when she removed her hand, a red print covered its gleaming white face. The woman's eyes were hard, darker and sharper than black diamonds. Her hair was in disarray, and falling ash stuck to her oozing wound.

“Einen moment, bitte,” she said. Benjamin tensed.

Yūrei undid laces binding her left wrist. A large bracelet fell to the ground with an audible thump. Then she repeated the act on her right. This one fell onto the first, hitting with a clang of solid metal. She removed a thick belt which dropped just as heavily, then an anklet from each leg. The woman must have been wearing fifty pounds of weight on her body.

Benjamin held up his blades, but once Yūrei was freed of her weights and dishonored by injury, the best he could do was to underestimate how quick she would strike.

She moved like a shadow, suddenly silent and weightless. Her blade hissed as it sliced the air. One swing knocked Benjamin's smatchet out of his hand. The ninja backflipped away and snatched the dagger from the air. She smirked and slipped it into her belt. She blurred into motion again, another slash smacking the stiletto from his grasp as well. This she caught and tucked into her boot. Benjamin nearly fell backward, suddenly disarmed.

Yūrei cocked her head as if smiling behind her bloody mask. She spun on her heel and left him where he stood, waltzing away in triumph. Her intentionally exposed back told Benjamin that she had no fear of him.

Benjamin's face drained of color. The sudden revelation of this woman's prowess chilled him to the bone.

The lieutenant's abruptly emptied right hand moved to his hip, and he drew his revolver and fired. It was a utilitarian gun, a Russian Nagant M1985 with a stubby suppressor. It held seven 7.62-millimeter rounds, and Benjamin loosed them all at Yūrei from less than ten yards away.

As quick as Benjamin fired, Yūrei spun to face him with her sword up. The first shot shattered against the flat of her blade, and then she was in motion, dodging and twisting around his next six rounds to close the distance. Her movements were serpentine, unpredictable, and when he was within her reach, her sword sang. The wind whistled across its edge, only interrupted for the fraction of an instant it passed through Benjamin's flesh.

The Nagant revolver fell the the ash, accompanied by four bloody, twitching fingers.

Benjamin was frozen in place. Yūrei materialized behind him. She stabbed her sword down, planting its tip in the earth so it stood on its own, quivering. Its bright edge gleamed crimson, deadly sharp even in the low light.

“They really can block bullets,” Benjamin gasped to himself. Yūrei waited silently behind him. He held up his mutilated hand, watching in disbelief as red pumped out. Finally, he sighed and asked her: “Is that it?”

“Beinahe,” she replied. With a sinister grace, Yūrei plucked the smatchet from her waistband and circled him. She spun the dagger on nimble, bloody fingers. Benjamin's eyes were locked onto her, glaring in a feral rage.

“Waldgeister,” she said calmly, “Alle von ihnen.”

Her Waldgeister advanced on Lucky as Yūrei pushed the smatchet between Benjamin's ribs, all the way to the hilt.

“No!” Lucky shouted. He raised his rifle, but one of her disciples was already on him. He scrambled away, her blade casting him in searing orange light. The remaining Waldgeister circled low, ready to pounce like sword-swinging panthers should Lucky escape their sister. The three trench sharks roared, pounding their tails against the ground.

‘Shoot, then run,’ Lucky remembered.

Everything was chaos. The Waldgeist that had singled Lucky out, forcing him away from Cheddarwright and Bastedo. Her comrades were hot on his heels.

Lucky unloaded his rifle at the whirling orange blade. None of the shots flew true, but the barrage forced her back, giving him room to breathe and take in the situation.

Benjamin coughed once and began to gasp. Red stained his lips. He swayed on his feet, then fell to his knees. His eyes moved back and forth frantically. His his face had gone pale and the torrent of crimson tumbling from his shorn fingers slowed to a morbid gurgle.

Yūrei yanked the smatchet from Benjamin's chest, letting more blood pour from the gaping wound. His eyes unfocused and he fell to his knees. The ninja pulled her sword from the ground and swept its keen edge around in a slice that she sheathed it in one smooth motion. Muscle and vertebrae posed little resistance to her swing.

Lieutenant Paul Benjamin's head tumbled into the ash.

The Waldgeist Lucky'd shot at shrieked at him, furious that he'd try to kill her. Lucky don't know if she dodged his every bullet or blocked them all as her inhuman leader had, but she was unbloodied as she advanced on him. His Garand was dry and he dropped it onto its sling to rip the Colt 1911 from his hip holster. The Waldgeist slipped beneath Lucky's aim and cut in close.

Lucky tripped backward over a root as she swung, taking him out of her reach. The point of her red-hot sword sheared through his shirt, setting it alight and raising a line of thick blisters across his stomach in an instant. The Waldgeist recovered from her whiff, but not quick enough. Lucky steadied the old Colt and drilled four rounds into her chest. She clutched her wounds and fell to the ground. Her sword fell with her, digging into the earth and boiling the soil.

The smell of so much spilled blood overwhelmed the trio of trench sharks. They roared and charged.

Six quick blasts sent Lucky rolling to his right. Bastedo had opened up on a stampeding shark. The monster was quick, dodging five of his rockets. The sixth left a deep crater in the creature's shoulder but did not slow it. It roared with alien rage and locked onto the reloading Frenchman. It was charging full speed, chomping and howling. Lucky jammed a fresh clip into his Garand, vainly thinking his bullets could do what Randall rockets could not.

An arrow hissed over Bastedo's shoulder and burst the shark's beady black eye. The creature lurched, stumbling. It landed in a heap, ten yards from Bastedo. It writhed and lashed as it regained its feet. The Frenchman struggled to load a fresh magazine into his carbine before the shark could reach him.

Lucky opened fire with his Garand. Rounds pinged off the beast's thick armor and sank into its thick skin but didn’t even distract it. It could only see the Frenchman and its thunderous charge shook the pines.

A Waldgeist tried to use the distraction to her advantage, but Bastedo had eyes in the back of his head. He swung his carbine around and racked its bolt to launch a mini-rocket from the hip. The woman practically laughed as she whipped her glowing sword in front of her to block the shot, only realizing her mistake as hot metal clashed with miniature warhead. The rocket's shaped charge detonated, spraying super-sonic molten copper and saw-blade shrapnel through the astonished Nazi. She was dead before she ignited.

The trench shark ignored the flaming corpse and kept coming.

“I got him!” Grease shouted from out in the haze. The I-soldier bulled into the fray, punt gun blazing. It roared like a naval cannon. A tornado of buckshot ripped through the brawl, hammering into sharkskin. One Waldgeist was caught in its blast, shredded on her feet. The trench shark roared and staggered, nearly collapsing under the barrage.

Grease grinned and lifted his massive gun, showing it off. His smile evaporated when a fountain of sparks erupted from his broad chest. A flurry of throwing stars and diamond-shaped knives were sticking from his flesh. They'd been stopped by his subcutaneous armor, its steel sparking with each impact but not letting a single blade bite deeper. Grease brushed them out of his chest, snarled, and he cracked open his punt gun, replacing the shell as he advanced on the masked assassins.

The wounded trench shark slammed into Grease's side before he could fire. The blow sent his punt gun flying. The monster's six legs scrabbled for purchased as it shoved Grease forward like a bull, jaws wide and ready to tear into him.

Finding his mitts suddenly empty, Grease slammed the shark's armored nose with the spiked knuckles on one hand and held off its razor-lined jaws with the other. His steel-hardened fist clanged with each hit. The wrestling titans raised a cloud of ash from the ground that swallowed them whole.

Cheddarwright was loosing arrow after arrow, faster than Lucky knew they could be fired. The Waldgeister were fast as well. They knocked her arrows aside or swerved around them, liquid in human form. A glowering assassin closed in on the determined archer, but Cheddarwright held her ground. The next arrow she loosed went straight for the advancing Nazi's face, only to be swatted away again. Instead, it burst, spraying the Waldgeist with foaming glue that covered her nose, mouth, and eyes. The Nazi fell to ground, kicking and clawing as the bubbling yellow mass swallowed her face.

The final pair of trench sharks crashed into the battle.

A checkered canister grenade tumbled through the air, sailing over Lucky's head into the sharks' path.

“Ears!” Miller shouted from somewhere behind. Lucky's instincts and training forced him to dive away from the blast without any time to second-guess it. He clamped his hands over his ears once he was on the ground.

The grenade burst six feet in front of the sharks. Its blast was not heat or shrapnel, but a thrumming wall of solid sound, loud and strong enough to push the air from Lucky's lungs and leave his covered ears ringing. The shock wave lifted the Waldgeister off their feet, planting them bodily in the dirt. It hit the two charging trench sharks with a terrible broadside. Sonic force rippled through the beasts' armor, down to their very cartilage. They fell to their steel-shelled bellies, wheezing.

The blast swept away the gray haze, if only for a moment. Grease winced, but continued pounding on the dazed shark. He hadn't been able to cover his ears during his brawl, but the shark must have taken it worse. It moaned in animal pain as Grease slammed its armored head into the dirt.

“Time to go!” Goldbrick yelled. He and Grand appeared next to Miller, and the three of them began blazing away with their sub-machine guns. Soft lead bounced off the fallen shark and whizzed past nearly-recovered Waldgeister. The general shouted again: “Move out!”

Grease shouted incoherently, still slamming his fist into the one-eyed shark's face, over and over. He couldn't let the shark go or it would tear him apart.

“Benolli, heads up!” Goldbrick shouted, he pulled the pin on another checkered canister and lobbed it to the beleaguered I-soldier. Grease wrenched the trench shark's head back, far enough for the grenade to disappear down its gullet. He kneed the beast in its soft, stitched gills and slammed its mouth shut, leaning on its thrashing head with all his weight.

Four more canisters flew overhead, heaved by Miller and Grand.

“Holy hell,” Lucky grunted.

The canister in the shark's mouth went off, ballooning the monster's head with concussive force and throwing Grease five yards back. Its skull expanded to twice its normal size, jellying its brain and forcing it between the joints in its armored shell. Salty viscous fluid sprayed Grease head to toe.

The next four canisters went off close enough to tandem that it seemed like one blast. The shock waves cleared the air of falling ash and swept it from the ground over a thirty-yard radius. One Waldgeist was close enough that her lungs burst in her chest and she died gasping. The rest were knocked away and left sprawled on the ground.

“Up, officials, up!” Goldbrick roared as the ringing in Lucky’s ears died down. “Snowman!”

On cue, Miller pulled another pair off canisters of his webbing. These were marked with black and white zig-zags: spinnennetz grenades. He pulled both pins and tossed the grenades into the midst of the dazed Waldgeister.

“Move, officials!” the general shouted. His wasn’t taking suggestions. Lucky lurched to his feet. Cheddarwright and Bastedo were already at Goldbrick's side. Grease shoved himself off the ground and bolted away from the grenades, scooping his punt gun as he ran. Miller and Grand stood at the ready, more grenades in hand.

The spinnennetz canisters popped, coating the Waldgeister and staggered sharks with miles of tangled, nigh-unbreakable spider silk.

“We only have minutes,” Miller warned. “Their Knochensäge swords are able to slice spinnennetz threads.”

“You heard the Snowman. Get a move on!” Goldbrick ordered.

Benjamin's still corpse was lying in dirt, just under those strands.

“But - !” Lucky stammered, only for the general to cut him off.

“No time, Ford,” Goldbrick said. As if on cue, ominous hums and orange glows appeared beyond the white snarl of spiderweb. Threads began snapping with guitar twangs as the surviving Waldgeister sawed at them.

Goldbrick took off at a run, and the officials followed.

WEDNESDAY MORNING, JULY 14, 1943
NORTH OF WALD
BADEN-ELSAß, NAZI GERMANY

Goldbrick set a furious pace, ducking through gray woods and dead fields, circling the long way toward their final destination.

Sharks roared behind them, relentless despite all of Goldbrick's desperate miles.

“Keep moving,” the general grunted. He sped up, despite his age and size. Everyone had been out of breath for the better part of an hour, but no one had slowed. Adrenaline pulsed hot in Lucky's veins.

They slogged through blackened streams and crashed through tangled woods. Brambles tore at Lucky's sweat-drenched uniform, tugging at his weapons and webbing. Benjamin's carbine did its best to drag him to the ground.

Every so often, Miller or Cheddarwright would peel off to lay traps. Between their haste and Grease's size, there was no hope to conceal their path. Instead, they made it untreadable. Every quarter mile or so, another trap would go down. Some were in their tracks, others parallel or in the trees. The Waldgeister were known to traverse woodlands by jumping branch to branch.

The first traps set were the remaining shark-vaporizing anti-tank mines that Grease carried. Then frag grenades, expertly tied to taut trip wires. Finally, when Goldbrick was sure they had enough explosives set out to delay the Waldgeister, he called them to a halt at the edge of a thick pine wood. Dry needles crackled beneath the layer of ash.

“Miller,” the general ordered. “Scorch the earth.”

Miller withdrew a dozen canister grenades from Grease's bottomless pack. These were painted with alternating orange and yellow stripes.

“Flashfog,” Bastedo explained to Lucky, like that answered anything. Bastedo lit a cigarette while they watched Miller unscrew each canister's ignition charge. Miller gave him a horrified glare. Bastedo snorted indignantly by way of a response, but ground the cigarette out on his forearm's fly paper patch all the same.

Miller gathered the flashfog canisters in his arms and disappeared into the ashfall. Goldbrick directed the other officials to set up a loose wedge. Grease waited on point, his shotgun loaded with an eleven-pound solid slug and his T33 Stinger waited locked and loaded, propped next to him on a fallen tree trunk. High in a leaning oak, Cheddarwright covered him with her eye-piercing longbow.

Bastedo held the left with his M13 Randall. His stubby carbine was hot, safety off, with a stack of fresh rocket magazines close at hand to keep the fire up. Grand would back him up with his M3 grease gun. Lead and rockets would greet anyone who tried to take their left flank.

Goldbrick and Lucky were on the right. Between the general's shotgun, Thompson, and pearl-gripped 1911, and Lucky's own Colt, Garand, and Benjamin's De Lisle carbine, the general was confident they had enough firepower to at least slow an attacking Waldgeist.

“I'm sorry about Lieutenant Benjamin,” Goldbrick finally said. “It is not easy to lose a man.”

“No, it is not,” Lucky said woodenly. Benjamin had not been a friend to Lucky, but they had fought against the same enemies. Lucky'd respected him as a man and as a soldier.

Until today, Lucky had not known Benjamin as anything other than a sneering paper-pusher with a wiry mustache and suspicious eyes. Now Lucky was carrying Benjamin's carbine, and had his silver grenade dangling off his chest. He'd seen the look on Benjamin's face the second the lieutenant realized he was done for. It wasn't fear, or desperation or anger: it was disappointment and awe. Lucky knew him better than he had ever thought he would, but but he had no clue why Benjamin had chosen to take on Yūrei.

“I understand you're new to the party, son,” Goldbrick grumbled. He chewed on the end of his cigar, but left it unlit. Even he was cautious around Miller's flashfog.

“Yes, sir,” Lucky muttered. “It's been about six days.”

“Hell, son, six days isn't anything to scoff at. Once upon a time, the whole world got cooked up from scratch in six days,” the general pointed out.

“Does that mean we rest tomorrow?” Lucky asked.

“Let's make sure the job’s done before we hang up our hats,” Goldbrick said. His knobby, oft-broken nose crinkled as he spoke. He asked: “That Gerhardt rumor, that true?”

“If the rumor is that I punched him out on a roof, then yes, sir,” Lucky replied.

“The rumor is that you popped him so hard his head caught on fire and the mark of Christ got branded into his puppy-dog face.”

“That's true, too, sir.”

“Glad you're on our team, then.” He pulled the cigar out of his mouth and tucked it behind a cauliflower ear. “That why they call you 'Lucky?'”

“I showed up with that one, sir,” Lucky said.

“Can I tell you something, just between us?” the general asked. He didn't wait for an answer. “I'm nervous out here. I haven't been nervous since my first match twenty-five years ago, and I don't like it. I may be less jumpy now than I was then, but it's still there. Less scared of the Nazis than I was of 'Quarryman' Jones. Is that crazy?”

“No, sir,” was all Lucky could think to say. “How'd you do?”

“That granite-hauling monstrosity beat me to a pulp,” Goldbrick recounted. “But I met my wife in the hospital.”

Goldbrick pondered on that for a second, then got back on track.

“I haven't been in the field in a while, not in battle,” he said. “Our bureau has been on the sidelines for the past two years, since we escaped the blitz. I've been coordinating partisan actions from behind a map with a radio instead of from a foxhole, holding a gun. Most of my men are embedded in France, Norway, or Poland. What we brought today is all of the available strength of our bureau. Do you understand what I am saying?”

“I don't think so, sir,” Lucky answered.

“If we miss this, there's no one who can try again,” Goldbrick said. He let out a long sigh. “We're it, son.”

“We made it through Vesuvius, sir. We can pull this off.”

“I hope you're right. Where are you from, Ford? It sounds like you've been saying 'sir' since you were six years old.”

“Indiana,” Lucky replied. “Sir.”

“Lay off it for a bit, we're in the same fox hole,” Goldbrick said. He smirked behind the sights of his Thompson. His gold teeth glinted in the low light. “You ever been to California?”

“No, sir,” Lucky said, then caught himself. “I mean no, I haven't. Never been further west than Gary.”

“Who is Gary? Ah, never mind. That rattles my cage. We sailed you halfway around the world, sent you to two continents in as many weeks, and you've never so much as seen the country you're fighting for.”

Lucky had no response for that.

“By the time I was your age, I'd gotten my face beat in up and down both coasts, and three times in Mexico. Travel's good for the soul, they say.”

“You miss anything back home?” Lucky asked.

“Just had my first grand-daughter, Marilyn,” Goldbrick said. “All I've seen of her is pictures. My son's only seen her once himself, Zoo Base keeps him busy. But once I clean all this mess up this side of the Atlantic, my first stop will be to bounce that baby girl on my knee.”

Goldbrick caught Lucky grinning like an idiot and turned the question around: “Anything great back in Indiana?”

“My family's gone, and so is my girl. My job would still be there, and that meant something, I guess. But I have a new job now,” Lucky answered.

“Man's got to know what he's protecting, Ford,” Goldbrick said sagely. “Think on it.”

“Yes, sir,” Lucky said.

“Is that Benjamin's heater?” Goldbrick asked, pointing at the De Lisle in Lucky's hands.

“Yes, sir,” Lucky answered.

“It's a good weapon,” Goldbrick told him. “The lieutenant saved a lot of lives with it.”

Benjamin's grip had worn a smooth groove into the carbine's oak fixtures. Lucky's hands naturally slipped into place.

“Eyes up,” Goldbrick hissed. He leaned into his Thompson's stock and drew a bead on an approaching figure.

“Black,” the shade called out. Lucky recognized the voice.

“Label,” Goldbrick shouted back. “How is the spread, Miller?”

“Maximum fog dispersal, sir,” Miller answered. He trotted out of the haze. His environment suit was chalky and gray with ash, and only one of the dozen canister grenades he'd taken with him was left on his bandolier.

“Would you like to do the honors?” Goldbrick asked him.

“It occurs to me that this would also be a sort of cremation, sir,” Miller said solemnly. “I would like to say a few words first.”

“Did the Waldgeister find our trail?” Goldbrick asked.

“Yes, sir,” Miller answered. “As we intended. They uncovered the mines and have slowed their pursuit. We have time.”

“Make it quick then light that fog,” Goldbrick ordered. He called out: “Officials.”

The seven officials gathered in a tight circle to hear Miller's quiet words.

“A moment of silence for Lieutenant Paul Gordon Benjamin, Official First Class, and Corbyn Farisi, Official First Class. Both were hard men: hard to fight, hard to know. Benjamin is survived by his wife, Polly, his mother, Mildred, and one brother, Lawrence. Farisi is survived by his wife, Zola Majambu, Official Second Class, and two daughters, Mayangi and Ayana. They were invaluable members of our bureau and the Office, and we are poorer for having lost them. May we stay vigilant, so their sacrifice will not be in vain.”

They stayed silent for a long while. Lucky had only known Farisi for a moment, but he had known him as an official. That meant that he was brave, selfless, determined, and skilled. A man worth mourning. Lucky found himself holding the sheriff's cross dangling from his neck, though no prayers were coming to mind. Goldbrick was the first to break the circle.

“Light it up, Miller,” he ordered.

“Light what up?” Grease asked.

“Everything,” Grand whispered. “We're sending this forest and every Nazi bint in it up a roiling cinnamon blaze.”

“Cinnamon?” Grease asked him.

“Watch,” was Grand's only reply.

“Fire in the hole!” Miller warned. He pulled the pin from the last yellow-and-orange canister, let the spoon fly, then heaved the flashfog grenade fifty yards in the direction he'd come from.

The canister grenade popped open when it hit the ground. A yellow gas sprayed out with a high-pitched whistle, coagulating into fluffy clouds that swallowed the forest. The compound coated the needles and trunks it came into contact with with a thin layer of yellow dust. After few seconds, the canister's fuse lit off an electric arc, sending up a flash as the entire forest rose into a golden fireball as far as Lucky could see.

Every speck of the clinging dust ignited as the flames tickled it, spreading to the dispersed contents of eleven other flashfog canisters in seconds. Acres went up in flame at once. Golden-orange light bathed the officials and a wall of radiant heat washed over them, physically pushing Lucky away as the fireball rose higher and higher into the sky.

“You see?” Grand said, smacking his lips as he presented the ravenous forest fire's conflagrant, undulating hue to Grease, “Cinnamon, steeped in a tumbler of whiskey.”

“Gather your gear, we're moving out,” Goldbrick ordered. He turned his back to the blaze, tightened the straps on his pack, and began marching north. Lucky kept Benjamin's De Lisle strapped across his chest, loaded and ready, and held his Garand to his shoulder. The gleaming silver grenade clanked against its olive green brethren on his webbing.

“Grease, you're bringing up the rear,” the general ordered. Grease nodded; he knew, just as the general did, that any surviving ninjas and sharks would be hot on their tail once they found a way around the forest fire, and they'd be bringing friends. Goldbrick needed his heaviest hitter covering their backs. “Lucky, you and Cheddarwright are with him. Bastedo and Miller, on point.”

Everyone knew their job and moved out, a winding, three-segmented worm trailing soldiers over a hundred yards. Grease followed, buckshot-stuffed punt gun held at his hip. His machine gun dangled from its sling around his neck. Cheddarwright stalked ahead alongside Lucky. She kept a barbed arrow nocked.

“That's going to weigh you down a bit, yank,” Cheddarwright whispered. Lucky looked down at Benjamin's De Lisle.

“I'm keeping all the bullets I can get,” Lucky replied.

“We have a long hike, and every ounce of lead counts if we have to leg it,” she said.

“I'll drop it if I got to,” Lucky assured her.

“Sentimentality is not worth your life,” Cheddarwright snapped. After a moment, though, she sighed and her edge broke: “I carry my mother's broach. A gaudy thing, but she loved it.”

“I have this,” Lucky said. he hooked a thumb under his dog tag chain and held the sheriff's silver cross up for her to see. “It was my dad's.”

“Is that what you used...” she started.

“That's it,” Lucky said.

“I thought it would be, well, larger,” she said sheepishly.

“Why's that?”

“MacLeod said you bashed Gerhardt over the head with it, knocked one of his eyes out,” she answered. Lucky looked confused, which made her smile. “Stories grow with each telling, I'm afraid. By the time you return home, you'll have laid one across Adolf's nose with a fist while possessed by the Devil himself.”

“I was hoping for things to go back to normal,” Lucky said after a moment. A flake of volcanic ash landed on his nose and he blew it away. “I guess that's not going to happen.”

“Some things will never be normal again, though it will be our duty to try. That's what some give everything for,” Cheddarwright said. “Did you know Lieutenant Benjamin well?”

“Just as a hardass. He didn't like or trust me.”

“He trusted you enough to fight by your side. That's is a sacred compact. But know that that carbine is not him. You carry what you need of him inside you. Leave the gun behind if it means your life; it doesn't mean anything else.”

Lucky didn't know how to respond. Cheddarwright seemed to him a woman who had coped with more loss than she cared to remember, and the De Lisle was heavy; its strap was digging into his neck. Before he could speak, Grease loped up from behind, his massive pack bristling with equipment, his grin bristling with teeth.

“Don't worry, Cheese, whatever he drops I can scoop up,” he bragged.

“Official Cheddarwright,” she corrected. Her warm smile had disappeared.

“Calm down, I'm just pulling your chain,” Grease chuckled, only to stop fast with Cheddarwright's finger jammed up to his nose. Sudden anger twisted her painted face.

“I have had about enough of that, Official Benolli,” she grated.

“I'm sorry, ma'am,” he squeaked.

“That's just how Grease talks,” Lucky offered. She grunted and lowered her finger.

“I did not get here by being any manner of 'calm,' so I don't care for that kind of rubbish,” she whispered. She shouldered past Lucky, taking her bowstring back between her fingers.

“I was trying to be friendly,” Grease muttered.

“I know,” Lucky told him. Cheddarwright had marched on, so Lucky was fairly certain she was out of earshot when he said: “Dames have as much fight in 'em as anyone else, but they haven't gotten an easy go of it.”

“They're letting her run around Europe, aren't they?” Grease asked.

“She doesn't carry a longbow instead of a gun for nothin',” Lucky replied. “I don't think anyone could've kept her out of this.”

“What's she going to do with that thing anyway?” Grease wondered. “I'd rather have a regular Joe by my side with a rifle than some broad with a chip on her shoulder trying to pull a Cupid on these krauts.”

“Keep your voice down,” Lucky hissed.

“I could hear a jerry a mile out,” Grease boasted.

“Not them,” Lucky snapped. He nodded at Cheddarwright's back.

“I can hear every word that lummox is saying,” she said with deadly calm. Cheddarwright didn't look back as she spoke. “Do you know who I am?”

Grease and Lucky looked at each other. Neither of them answered her. She continued despite their silence, sighing before she spoke:

“That makes me sound quite the tosser. Let me rephrase. Have any of my comrades said anything about me yet? They love telling their stories about me.”

“Their stories?” Lucky asked.

“I was something of a sensation for a time,” she replied. She turned a bit, peeking back over her cloaked shoulder. The biting frustration that had churned her features before had softened. “I never punched a vargulf, mind you, but I was never happier for any shot of mine to make it above the fold.”

“What happened?” Grease asked, suddenly enthralled. He threw the punt gun over his shoulder.

“I merely disobeyed orders,” she said, a coy smirk turning up the corner of her mouth. She flipped her braid over her shoulder and explained: “I shot an arrow.”

“And that was against orders?” Lucky asked. She was piquing his interest, and she knew it, so she ignored his question and told her tale.

“I volunteered in thirty-nine, just like everyone else. I thought my skills might be put to use on the front lines rather than in the Games. Recruiters disagreed, and instead had me shooting Reichsmarks out of the air and helmets off actors' heads to promote war savings. It was a circus.”

“You can shoot a coin out of the air?” Grease asked, dumbfounded.

“I'd do it now if I didn't need every arrow in my quiver to stick jerries. I trained for years, you know. The Grand National said I'd bring the archery medal home to England, but that was before the war. The Empire Games were canceled, and the War Office had me putting my life's work to use throwing dog-and-pony shows for slackjaws.”

“That don't sound like your cup of tea,” Grease offered.

“Of course not!” she snapped. “I stopped performing and the ministers transferred me to teach SOE trainees. Those ponces couldn't draw a string proper if their lives depended on it. Luckily the Blitz started.”

“Luckily?” Lucky said, almost spitting.

“Luckily for me. I demanded to be transferred across the Channel for commando work, but the minister told me I 'didn't have the bollocks for it.'” She was disgusted, but then she lightened up and said: “Now this is a part the chums like telling. Some say I broke the wanker's nose or knocked his teeth out. Sinclair will tell you I popped him right in the John Thomas to show him what good bollocks are. Whatever happened, I left, climbed on top of my bedroom dormer, and put an arrow through a Nazi that very night.”

“There were krauts at your house?” Grease asked.

“No, this skive was in a Stuka,” she replied.

“A Stuka?” Grease repeated, not getting it.

“You shot a fighter pilot out of the air with an arrow?” Lucky asked. That had to be impossible.

“Twasn't easy, mind you, but he was flying low, strafing, and pop! Right through his windscreen.”

“Applesauce!” Grease objected.

“I put a shaft through a charging trench shark's eye not an hour ago, how much larger is a man's head than that?” she wondered.

“Not much,” Grease answered. He didn't know what 'rhetorical' meant.

“Not much, indeed,” Cheddarwright agreed. “You'll trust my bow by the time this is over.”

“That eyeball shot was a hell of a trick, right past the frog's ear,” Grease admitted. He grinned at that. Lucky looked at the weird smirk both of them were now sharing.

“How'd you hit a pilot in the air?” Lucky asked, cutting off their odd banter.

“Oh, pilots are just like shooting any other man,” she replied. “You just have to afford them a bit more lead.”

“You are cooking with gas, Chee...,” Grease started, then cut himself off to course-correct: “...Official Cheddarwright.”

“And that's how the Office found you,” Lucky concluded.

“General Stephens was convalescing at the Library when he heard my radio interview. That same bloodied, toothless minister with the bruised bollocks wanted me back for propaganda after the Stuka went down. Stephens thought I could be more effective off the island, and by order of the King, the Office supersedes the SOE. Never have I seen a small man shrivel up so quick than when an American general shoved the royal seal under his nose.”

She laughed at the memory, and Grease chuckled along with her. Lucky let a small smile creep onto his face.

“But truly, ask any of the other Europe officials, they tell the story much better. Grand claims I put the shaft through the pilot's left eye, while Sinclair is adamant it was the right. MacLeod thinks I shot down the Black Baron himself from the top of Big Ben. I've heard Rothenberg tell people that I Errol Flynn'ed off the London Bridge with a swinging rope onto the top of a zeppelin. And Castaño's version has become my favorite, though even if I could ride a horse I certainly wouldn't do it starkers.”

“Starkers?” Grease murmured.

“Buck naked,” Lucky whispered.

“Starkers,” he replied, suddenly lost in thought.

“As if a married mother of two would ride to the top of Primrose Hill in her birthday suit during an air raid. I'd be arse over tit in a second,” she said, laughing at herself.

“Married?” Grease asked himself. The grin disappeared from his face and he glowered under his steel brow. Lucky sighed. Grease was still trying to be the ladies' man, even behind enemy lines.

“Our seventh anniversary is in September,” she replied, oblivious to the change in Grease's attitude. “He's worried of course, but I always tell him that our daughters are more of a handful than the Germans; it's me who should be worried about him.”

That got Grease smiling again. He stepped past Lucky to keep pace with Cheddarwright.

“I had four kid sisters and my parents ran a shoe store by themselves, so I was in charge most of the time. Girls are maniacs,” he told her. “Send him my best.”

“I shall,” she replied. “Any advice I might pass along?”

“Divide and conquer,” he said. “Otherwise they'll team up on him and he'll be tying French braids and having tea parties until he's blue in the face.”

“French braids, really?” Cheddarwright asked, laughing. She flipped her own auburn braid off her shoulder. Locks of hair had popped free and were sticking out in every direction.

“I can definitely do something with that,” Grease said. Lucky's mouth was hanging open. All Grease had ever told him about New York was broads, booze, and gangsters. Never about sisters, and never about tea.

“Would you mind terribly? I have to keep my hair out of my bowstring,” she said. Grease smiled, and the hulking I-soldier stowed his guns to free his hands and went to work unravelling the championship archer's hair to tie it into a French braid, whatever that might be.

Lucky fell back eight paces and let them gab, covering the rear through his iron sights. This Garand was already stained gray, but at least he still had it. Woody wouldn't stand for him losing another rifle.

The De Lisle was heavy, its thick, integrated suppressor gave it an odd balance, and its hardwood stock kept rubbing against the raw sword burn on Lucky's stomach. Cheddarwright was right: it might have been slowing him down.

Lucky sighed and rolled his shoulders. Stress and drained adrenaline had made his muscles as tight as a snare drum. His shoulder ached against its fresh stitches. Each step was harder than the one before it.

The carbine's sling chafed his neck.

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Copyright © 2023 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Dudu Torres.