The Secret Files of Lucky Ford: Operation Arm Breaker, Part 8 of 17

The officials are cornered! Trapped between flying cars, trench sharks, ninja assassins, and Nazi commandos, Lucky Ford and his allies are being ground down to nothing. With too many officials dead already, their desperate attack on Department Three’s stronghold may be over before it even began.

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 8 of Operation Arm Breaker. If you haven’t read Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 yet, check them out first.

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

WEDNESDAY MORNING, JULY 14, 1943
ABOVE EBERKOPF
BADEN-ELSAß, NAZI GERMANY

Blood was in the air.

The trench sharks hissed and slapped their bladed tails against the ground. Lucky could feel the impacts shudder up through his boots.

Rafael Bastedo lay still.

“I am going to put an arrow in your bloody throat,” Cheddarwright swore. Skorzeny laughed in her face and strolled past her to examine Bastedo's body.

A knot twisted up in Lucky's stomach. His fists were so tight that he could feel his ground-down fingernails digging into his palms.

“Still he twitches,” Skorzeny observed as he poked Bastedo with his boot. “Perhaps the Frenchman had more in him after all. Sparteführer Volgers thought this paper armor you developed was ridiculous, but I see it has its uses.”

“Get your jackboot away from him, you bastard,” Goldbrick snarled.

“Well, we must hurry. Would you like me to kill you here, general, or to use you as bait to capture the elusive Colonel Halistone?”

“What's the rush?” Goldbrick asked.

“Dark clouds on the horizon, a storm is coming,” Skorzeny answered. A black line of airborne cinders had accumulated to the west, growing as he watched. He shouted to his men: “Sie machen sie in einer Linie. Sammeln Sie die Leiche.”

“Keep your heads,” Goldbrick ordered. Skorzeny stalked over to him.

“I would advise you to stay quiet, like a mouse, Herr General,” the Nazi snapped.

“Me and advice have a checkered history,” Goldbrick quipped. Skorzeny sucker-punched him, a solid crack to the face, but the general did not so much as rock back on his feet. He'd taken worse punches.

The kraut had managed to open a split in the general's lower lip. The sharks snapped their steel jaws together, excited at the sight of more blood.

Goldbrick just smiled, showing off the red running between the gold. He spit, then offered his own observation:

“That thunderhead's moving mighty fast.”

Skorzeny studied the gathering black cloud. It was twice as tall as it had been just a moment before. The pair of binoculars he retrieved from a pocket revealed nothing.

“Yūrei,” he said. The Japanese woman nodded, anticipating his request. She took the binoculars from his hand and tossed them to a waiting Waldgeist. The Nazi scaled the wall, scampering straight up its sheer face more like a squirrel than a woman.

“Es erhebt sich aus dem Boden,” she called down from the top.

“Aus dem Boden?” Skorzeny parroted, confused.

A low rumble washed over them all, audible even over the whine of the flying cars. The cloud was roiling and close, dark and furious, and it was rising up from the ground.

“That is no storm, Rochus,” Goldbrick said. It was his turn to hand out some advice: “Might be time to get inside. Your pets don't like this weather.”

Goldbrick was right: the trench sharks were restless. They were pacing side to side, watching the cloud grow. They continued slapping the ground with their tails, though it was from agitation rather than excitement. The little ones cowered beneath them, whining. The bog pair’s gurgling hisses lowered into ominous growls.

“Hand over your weapons,” Skorzeny shouted. His pale face was gaining some color. The officials looked to the general. He was nowhere close to giving up his Thompson or sawed-off. The cloud rumbled closer, and louder, moving in faster than weather had any right to. The Bartkauz leader hissed his order to troops who would listen to him: “Waldgeister, nehmen Sie ihre Waffen.”

The Waldgeist's blade scraped against Lucky's throat, shaving off days of stubble by accident.

“Gib mir jetzt deine Waffen,” she hissed in his ear. Her grip was an iron claw, relentlessly digging into Lucky's bicep.

“Kaiken Yūrei!” the Waldgeist atop the wall shouted, urgency in her voice. Lucky's captor's grip loosened, her blade slipped half-an-inch away from his neck. She twisted around to watch her mentor light up the sheer concrete without a word, seemingly running straight up. Yūrei crested the wall and snatched her binoculars to examine the growing cloud for herself. Its thunderous front couldn't have been more than a half-mile away, and it was closing. The roar that carried it grew louder by the second.

The rumble was reverberating through the ground. She dropped the spyglasses and leapt from the wall, dragging her dagger down its height to slow her descent.

“Innenseite!” Yūrei shouted. “Jetzt!”

“Was ist es?” Skorzeny demanded. A trench shark roared.

The Japanese killer fumbled for the words, her limited German failing her.

“Sattō!” she finally said, only able to come up with the word she was looking for in her native Japanese. Miller's eyes went wide when he heard her say it.

“Oh my,” he said.

“Was bedeutet das?” Skorzeny demanded. An even darker mass was now visible beneath the rising gray cloud. It was an undulating wave of thundering mass, exuding terror and fury.

“Aurochs!” Yūrei shouted.

“Ansturm,” Skorzeny realized.

“Stampede,” Miller translated.

Four thousand mutated cattle were bearing down on them, prehistoric monsters weighing in at three thousand pounds each. Their horns were six feet across, curved forward and wickedly-pointed to impale predators and rivals of an age long past.

Three juvenile trench sharks ran. Cheddarwright and Grease's captors threw them aside and chased after their sharks, screaming futile commands at their tails. Lucky's Waldgeist eased off by another inch, unsure of what to do in the face of the chaotic, violent death bearing down on her.

An M13 rocket sneezed through the air to collide with one of the flying cars. A second contrail connected with one of its engines, throwing it off kilter and sending it spinning into its companion. Both pilots scrambled to regain control but more blasts ripped through them. One gunner was vaporized outright by a miniature warhead, and his pilot was blinded by flames and blood.

Bastedo was standing, crimson from head to toe. His body was quivering, his sneeze gun smoking.

Muscles and veins bulged over the Frenchman's crimson body. He wheezed, forcing oxygen through his perforated lungs with terminal effort. The M13 suddenly weighed a ton in his hands and slipped out of his grip.

The flying car Bastedo had shot burst in flames, shattering as its fuel ignited. Metal shards and liquid fire rained upon the already-distressed trench sharks. The remaining ones, the bravest of the creatures, squealed in fear and took off after their brethren. The howling vehicles crashed down on either side of Bastedo, sending oily fireballs into the air.

He took one last shuddering breath before his heart gave out. He fell next to his smoking carbine, stone dead.

“Now you idiots!” Goldbrick yelled. He was standing over the Waldgeist who'd claimed his throat. She was out cold, her jaw twisted halfway around her head by one of the champ's patented KO’s. His Thompson roared, stitching through a trio of distracted Bartkäuze. The rest of them dashed back through the broken wall in search of cover.

Lucky dropped out of his captor's grip, scrambling for his Colt 1911 as he twisted and fell onto his back. The ninja hopped back, sheathing her dagger and drawing her glowing sword in one liquid movement.

He leveled the pistol at her chest. Her orange blade anticipated his aim, ready to smack aside his every shot. Instead, Lucky fired the De Lisle. It was flat against his belly, and its subsonic bullet passed half-an-inch over his knee before plugging the ninja in her thigh. She dropped, cursing in German, and Lucky ran for the field, firing the pistol over his shoulder.

Cheddarwright was sprinting next to him. Her Waldgeist was on one knee, hands clamped over a bleeding gut. Crimson stained the arrow in Cheddarwright's hand.

Miller's suit had a large slice through the collar, and frigid vapor hissed out between his fingers. He ran in silence, hands clamping the deep cut closed. His throat had been chopped wide open.

Grand was tossing grenade after grenade as he went. Sonic concussions, choking spiderwebs, roaring flames, and shredding shrapnel threw the Bartkäuze and Waldgeister back.

“Stop right there!” Skorzeny objected. His Luger rounds snapped within feet of Lucky, but he didn't slow. Goldbrick had a plan, and Lucky followed his lead.

The cacophony of the aurochs stampede was deafening. They were within a quarter-mile. Lucky could hear their individual snorts and bellows, he could feel each pounding hoof-fall reverberate in his chest. Still, a mechanical whine rose above the din.

“Evade!” Goldbrick shouted. Another flying car swooped in low, its hanging machine guns chattering. Lucky zagged to the left in time for bullets to tear up dirt beside him. He spit sod and kept running. Rounds skipped off Grease's armored flesh, getting the big man's attention.

“That's enough!” he roared. He brought the punt gun up and let loose a blast. Buckshot shredded the machine, two-hundred-seventy lead balls reducing the shrieking flying car to shattered struts. The Nazis were liquefied in their seats. Twisted metal scraps rained down.

“There's our in!” Goldbrick shouted. He vaulted over a crashed flying car, flying through flame, and pointed straight ahead: the underground hangar the vehicles had emerged from was wide open.

Behind them, Skorzeny had given up his pursuit. He was scrambling back to the gap in the wall, joining his troops. The aurochs were seconds away. He lifted a radio transceiver to his mouth, only to find it wrenched from his hand and pinned to its operator's chest with a yew arrow. He snarled something and drool spilled over his ruined lips onto his chest.

Goldbrick disappeared. He had jumped into the yawning underground hangar. It was a dozen yards across, a concrete circle cut into the waving grass, reaching below to unknown depths. Muzzle flashes strobed in that darkness. Lucky held his Garand close and leaned over the precipice.

“General!” he yelled. The roaring of aurochs bulls drowned out his cry.

Cheddarwright and Grand leapt past him into shadow. Miller tapped Lucky on the shoulder. His throat was still severed, but what he was pointing at said enough. The aurochs were upon them, raising a cloud of dirt and ash a hundred yards into the sky. Four thousand horns wider than Lucky was tall, adapted to disembowel whatever stood in their way, bearing down. Miller followed the other officials into the hole, going underground with his grease gun ready. More shots lit the darkness.

Grease skidded to a halt next to Lucky. The ground was shaking, rolling under the stampede. The aurochs were they could smell them. Yellow eyes stared, sweat frothed.

The fastest aurochs hit the crashed flying cars. The surviving pilots were mashed into the ground, bones breaking like glass. And then they were on Lucky.

“Staying for the show?” Grease asked. He grabbed a handful of Lucky's collar and jumped.

A wave of terrified cow flesh washed over the spot they had just stood. The cloud the aurochs raised blocked out the last bit of sunlight that had managed to pierce the gray sky.

Lucky and Grease fell fifteen feet, hitting hard concrete and rolling. Guns rattled and hot lead splashed around them.

WEDNESDAY MORNING, JULY 14, 1943
TURBINEWAGENHALLE SÜD, EBERKOPF
BADEN-ELSAß, NAZI GERMANY

Goldbrick was using a work bench for cover, popping up to lay down fire with his Thompson every few seconds. The hangar was enormous, large enough to hold two dozen flying cars and all their support gear and armaments. It was dark and deafening. The krauts had cut the overhead lights, and only the dull glow from the open ceiling hatch and a few green launch lights punctured the gloom. The pounding stampede shook its roof, turning the whole hangar into a kick drum.

“Six hostiles moving to my two!” Goldbrick shouted over it all. “They're trying to flank!”

An arrow whipped through the darkness, clothes-lining a scrambling Nazi. His squad left him where he fell and scrambled back into cover. They were dressed in goggles and scarves, pilots who'd been prepping to take flight before the aurochs had thundered through.

StG 44 assault rifles and MP 40 machine pistols roared. Lucky scrambled to the general's side and fired his Garand. The five remaining Nazis were taking cover behind a parked flying car; Lucky's thirty-ought-six rounds pinged pitifully off its thick engine block. They loosed another coordinated barrage, forcing him to the ground.

Miller and Grand were hunkered behind a motorized tram, stuck with their heads down as bullets splintered around them. Cheddarwright was somewhere in the shadows, pinned as well.

“Hey!” Grease yelled. He bullrushed out of the shadow, punt gun leveled. Bullets skipped off his chest and shoulders, just little annoyances to him. He shuted at the cowering Nazis: “Try this!”

His punt gun roared, launching a solid slug that folded their flying car in on itself like he’d hit a mailbox with a baseball bat. It rolled, crushing three Nazis too slow to dive out of the way. Grease stalked over to the surviving pair and stood over them, his six-foot-long shotgun smoking. He cracked the breach open and plucked out a spent green shell.

“Kapitulation?” he asked them. He turned and grinned, yelling to the officials: “'Surrender?' is the only thing I learned how to say in German.”

The surviving crewmen shouted and ran, throwing their weapons aside as they went. They slammed the hangar’s main hatch shut behind them, leaving the officials alone.

“How about that?” Grease asked, strutting back to the squad.

A full-grown bull aurochs plunged through the open ceiling and collided with him.

The beast weighed a ton-and-a-half and wiped him out like a runaway locomotive. His gear scattered. Hoof and horn struck metal and bone, but Grease was able to untangle himself from the thrashing animal after a few vicious seconds.

The aurochs huffed, circled Grease once, then trotted away into the shadows, irritated and bewildered but unharmed.

Grease gathered himself up. His nose had re-broken and several staples in his chest had torn out of his skin. Fresh blood joined the dry and clotted. His machine gun was wrecked, bent beyond useless by the rampaging bull. He looked around for the punt gun when another shadow fell over him.

“What the - !” he started as two more aurochs fell through the hatch. He dodged them, and the hardy, prehistoric cattle bounced off the concrete floor. They scrambled to their hooves and ran as fast as they could, careening off equipment and trampling anything in their way.

Grease watched them go. A slender shadow lighted silently behind him. He didn't notice Yūrei Mikiko until she had his wrist and elbow twisted into a strange lock.

“Hey!” Grease objected. Yūrei swept her body around, using the larger man like a gymnastics pole. Suddenly Grease was tumbling, his own weight propelling him face-first into the very car he had just flipped. His head impacted with a sickening clang. He went limp, either dazed or out cold.

The ninja drew her coal-black katana and searched the hangar for her next target. Her porcelain mask settled on General Stephens.

“That's enough out of you!” Goldbrick shouted. He charged at Yūrei, Thompson roaring off his shoulder.

A score of rifle barrels appeared in the hatch and opened fire. The Bartkäuze had regrouped. Bullets snapped near Lucky, forcing him back onto his stomach. When they couldn’t find any other targets, they rained bullets down on Grease. His armor held, but the skin and flesh above it shuddered and tore under the impacts.

Lucky twisted around the side of the workbench, but could only watch.

Yūrei flipped and dodged and twirled around Goldbrick’s wild Thompson burst, a blur of black silk and blacker steel. His magazine clicked empty, but still he came at her.

Goldbrick dropped his Thompson onto its sling and drew a Colt 1911. He lined up Yūrei center-mass and squeezed the trigger. Her ebony sword's razor edge reflected green as she swatted his bullet out of the air. The general stalked forward and fired off eight more shots. She deflected or dodged each slug, just as she had done to Benjamin. The Colt's slide locked back when he was just fifteen feet from her.

A girlish laugh echoed through the mask. She twirled her sword and heel-toed toward the general, hips swaying mockingly.

“Oh really?” he said.

Goldbrick released the Colt's magazine and let it fall. He reached for one of the fresh mags clipped to his belt with his free hand. Yūrei brought her blade up in anticipation. She was not afraid of bullets.

It was not an eight-round box magazine of forty-five-caliber bullets Goldbrick came up with, but the wide-bore twin barrels of his sawed-off shotgun. He leveled it at her then pulled the trigger, igniting both shells at once. Yūrei's sword clanged up and down from the half-dozen impacts she deflected.

The ninja spun her sword around, then looked down and to find crimson dampness spreading across her chest. She patted at the glistening stain. Her fingertips came away red.

The Bartkäuze barrage moved off Grease to target the general, but he was already on the move, bullets peppering his every step.

Yūrei swayed for an instant longer, then fell like an axed tree. Her porcelain mask shattered on the floor. Shards skittered across concrete. She stared at Lucky as she settled. She looked about forty years old, with a a spray of gray in her hair, and a serious scowl accented with deep smile lines. She reminded him of his mom.

Goldbrick was almost safe behind Lucky's workbench when Yūrei reared up from the ground. She drew back a glittering blade and snapped her arm forward, vomiting blood and dying as she did.

Lucky jumped to his feet and shoved Goldbrick out of the way, only to feel a heavy thump in his chest. Yūrei's knife was sticking straight out of him. He staggered in shock. Goldbrick hauled him to the floor.

“Why would go and do a thing like that?” Goldbrick demanded. “I ain't here to have people die for me.”

Lucky didn't have an answer. His chest was tight. The knife wobbled when he tried to breathe.

“Sorry, son,” Goldbrick said. He sighed, then propped Lucky up against the workbench. “We're about to get caught in a pincer between those bastards up top and the garrison in here whenever the airheads who skedaddled rally them. Now, pull that thing out of your stock and promise you won't be that stupid again.”

“What?” Lucky stammered. He looked down to see Benjamin's stiletto punched an inch into the oak butt stock of the De Lisle carbine. He'd kept the gun slung across his chest and it had caught the blade. Its silvered edge glowed in the low green light. Yūrei's aim had been true: if there had anything but hardened oak between Lucky and her, she'd have punched that blade right through his heart. He tugged the stiletto out of the wood and slipped it into his boot.

“Can't get sentimental now,” Goldbrick growled. He twisted around and looked for the rest of our squad.

“Miller!” he shouted, drawing even more Bartkäuze fire onto the battered work bench. Lucky ducked lower and Goldbrick yelled again: “Snowman!”

“Yes, general?” Miller replied. He was pressing creases out of the tape he’d wrapped around his neck. His throat had already stitched itself back shut beneath. He was pressed up next to a flying car, pinned by rifle fire about ten yards away.

“If we don't get out of this room, you plant that mortar beacon, hide it somewhere good,” Goldbrick ordered.

“There do not appear to be any structural elements present, sir,” Miller reported after a moment.

“I know that, but those shells are coming whether we live or die. If these animals take me down, I'd like to go knowing a few of them are going to have a bad day, too.”

“Yes, General Stephens,” Miller said. He slipped his pack off his shoulder and extracted the transmitter from within.

“Cheddar, I need to put out some that fire!” Goldbrick shouted. Her response was an arrow whizzing over the general's head. A Nazi caught it in the collarbone. He screamed and plunged through the open ceiling, landing bad on his head. He didn't move again. His comrades pulled back from the hatch, suddenly fearful.

“Get up, kid,” Goldbrick whispered to Grease, quiet as a prayer. Grease was stirring, though his back had been chewed to tatters by the cheap shots the krauts had rained on him while he was down.

The roar of pounding aurochs hooves died off, but the Bartkäuze's fire had increased. There were over twenty of them up there now, loosing whole magazines down onto the officials, popping up and ducking down like gophers to avoid Cheddarwright's arrows. A heavy machine gun opened up, its hearty staccato standing out above that of the puny rifles.

“That buzzsaw is going to cut us apart,” Goldbrick grunted through a clenched jaw.

The rifle fire slacked off, then ceased, but the big gun kept roaring. One by one, Bartkauz helmets had disappeared. When the last of them was gone, the machine gun cut off, leaving the hangar to decaying echoes.

Somewhere in the dark, one of the dazed aurochs brayed.

A thin rope, white and ethereal, unfurled and fell into the hangar. Its translucent fibers caught the low light and glowed. Goldbrick's eyes went wide. He slapped a new magazine into his Thompson and shouted:

“Guns up, officials!”

Grease jolted awake and rolled over, punt gun in his hands. A new head peeked over the edge of the hatch, and he pulled the trigger. The gun clicked empty, so Grease panicked and fumbled for a live shell. This head was not wearing a German stahlhelm, this helmet was taller, capped with a blunt point like a .38 bullet. Red hair poked out of the bottom.

“Black!” the man called out in a thick Scottish accent.

“Grease, stand down. Label!” Goldbrick shouted back. Grease clapped his shotgun shut and fell back, exhausted. Grand dashed to his side, first aid kit already open. The general called up to the man peering into the hangar. “You Scottish goon, I never thought I'd be this happy to hear that voice again.”

“Is that ye, general? S'blacker than the Earl o' Hell's waistcoat down there,” Loud MacLeod replied.

“Just us and the cows, for now,” Goldbrick answered. “Miller, hold onto that transmitter.”

“We're comin' to ye,” MacLeod called. “Hold ye fire.”

MacLeod scooted to the side to let the Colonel slide down the weird rope, landing lightly on a dead Bartkauz. Miller packed the mortar beacon back away.

“Nazis are easily startled, but they will be back, and in greater numbers,” Colonel Halistone said. His khaki safari gear was splashed with red, but he did not appear injured. He saw Lucky staring at the stains: “Official Farisi did not make it, I am afraid.”

“We heard on the radio, he went down fighting,” Goldbrick replied. “We have lost men as well.”

“Lieutenant Benjamin and Official Bastedo gave their lives to get us this far,” Miller reported. He was buttoning his pack shut over the transmitter. Confident the package was secure, he slipped it back onto his shoulders.

Neff came down the rope next, smoking a cigarette. He carried his massive weapon over shoulder, rivaling Grease's punt gun with its ridiculous size. He walked past Lucky and set the Boys anti-tank rifle on the bullet-battered workbench. He pulled a wire brush out of his pocket and began scrubbing its open breach.

“Bastedo dead? A shame,” the sniper muttered, so quiet that he thought no one heard.

“We don't have time for that,” Lucky snapped.

“One must always make time to care for those he loves,” Neff replied. He stuffed an oiled cloth down the six-foot-long barrel, cleaning out powdered lead and cordite.

“That's a gun right there,” Grease interrupted, muttering incoherently. Grand had him sitting up and was examining his shredded back.

“Boys anti-tank rifle, for when a kraut two kilometers away needs perforation,” Grand explained as he looked over the hamburger meat hanging from Grease's shoulders.

Grand took a deep breath to collect himself then began applying an aerosol antiseptic to the wounds. Everywhere the mist touched thickened, coagulating instantly. The blood had stopped dripping by the time he put the little spray bottle away. Still, Grease was far from out of the woods; Lucky could see meat and metal through the gummy tears. Grease popped open one of Pietrzak's pill bottles and downed three or four capsules. He caught Lucky staring.

“I've had worse!” Grease grumbled. He flexed his metal leg to prove his point. Behind him, Grand looked lost. Grease's back was a ruin. Skin dangled in strips, dark with gelatinous blood. Instead of wrapping his whole abdomen up again, the former pilot laid out a patch made of strips of gauze and taped it over Grease's back with Miller’s hurricane tape.

Bucket descended next. He'd lost his Tommy gun and had replaced it with a German StG 44. The gun was black steel and hardwood, with a sickle magazine packed with deadly 7.92-millimeter bullets. His left hand was bandaged into a mitten, blood leaking through the gauze.

“Just a scratch,” he said before Lucky could ask. He scanned the darkness around them, wary as an aurochs mooed somewhere past the last row of parked flying cars.

Hampton Sinclair hit the floor and stumbled. His whole face was wrapped up, with only his eyes, nostrils, and mouth open to the air. His ten gallon hat sat crooked on his head, its brim half-burned. Cheddarwright ran to his side and threw his arm over her shoulders.

“What happened?” she asked. She lead him to cover and sat him on the floor.

“That bloody bastard Skorzeny,” he grunted. “He spit all over me.”

“Oh my Lord,” she whispered.

“To think my Hollywood career has been ended by malfeuer upchuck,” Sinclair told her. He laughed weakly. “There is a bright side: he left me enough lips to whistle.”

“Easy there, slick, the lady's married,” Grease objected.

“I would hardly use these leading man lips to make something so pedestrian as a wolf-whistle,” Sinclair objected.

“That's where I know you from!” Lucky exclaimed. Sinclair had looked familiar to him, before, and Lucky'd finally placed him. “Spurs Harrison!”

“Just one among may, many other roles, yes,” Sinclair sighed. He let Cheddarwright sit him down on the battered workbench.

“You're Spurs Harrison!” Grease realized. He tried to hop up but Grand shoved him back down to continue working on his back. Grease settled in but kept talking: “Didn't a horse buck you off onto a cactus?”

“And into a trough!” Lucky said, laughing. Hampton Sinclair had played the Fightin' Texan's bumbling sidekick in The Fightin' Texan and the Alamo Mystery.

“I have been in three dozen feature films,” Sinclair said, indignant. “I was John Wayne's stuntman four times, and choreographed the train robbery in The Last Ride. I invented the wagon jump over the canyon in The Last Rides Again. I am a stuntman, not a clown.”

“How'd you get that dress on while riding a horse?” Grease asked. He hadn't heard a word Sinclair said.

“When he rode through the clotheslines?” Lucky said. He was just happy to keep Grease’s attention off what had happened to his back.

“Yeah, that's it!” Grease yelled. He was grinning wide, and Lucky's face was aching because of how hard he was smiling at the memory of that goofy talkie.

“If it wasn't for my experience in westerns, you'd all be in Nazi custody right now, you know,” Sinclair snapped. “Who do you think knew how to rile up a herd of cattle and send them stampeding in the right direction?”

“That was you?” Grease asked.

“When we retreated after the encounter with the Bartkäuze, the Colonel had us circle back and start trailing them. They led us to the trap they were waiting to spring on you lot. So I created a diversion to facilitate your escape,” Sinclair explained.

“Wow,” Lucky said. “Thank you.”

“Just some whistling and shooting, no praise necessary,” Sinclair assured them, but he beamed beneath his bandages nonetheless.

MacLeod slid down to the dangling rope next, his claymore sword drawn and crusted red.

“Drop 'er!” he called up. The white rope fell into a coil on the hangar floor. MacLeod gathered and coiled it. It seemed to glow a spectral green.

“Shut the hatch!” Quint Castaño shouted from the top. He gripped its lip with his chrome hand. It detached at the wrist, and unreeled with a long cable that lowered him into the hangar. When he touched down, he let go and its cable whizzed back into his forearm. His hand re-connected with a click.

“Hatch closing!” the Colonel confirmed. He pulled a lever on a console, and a thick metal door slid into place, blocking out their last glimpse of open sky.

“Seal it,” Goldbrick ordered. “Scrap the hover cars.”

“I ain't ever seem anything like these,” Bucket said. He ran a hand over one of the grounded craft. He peered into its rotors and examined its control panel.

“Thermite, please,” the Colonel chided.

“Yes, sir,” Bucket sighed. He placed a canister charge on the flying car's engine block, pulled its pin, and walked to the next craft in the row. Smoke and sparks fountained from the charge, drilling molten iron through the solid steel. Flames and glowing orange metal dripped through the concrete. A half-dozen more fountains bloomed in the darkness as Bucket moved down the line. The aurochs mooed in protest.

“Quint, the roof,” Goldbrick ordered.

“On it,” the sergeant replied. He raised his shining arm. A nozzle emerged from his shoulder and pivoted, following his aim. Thick yellow glop sprayed out in a stream, splattering into the gap where the two halves of the door met. The substance steamed, then cooled into gleaming metal. The nozzle retracted and he saw Lucky looking at the metallic glue. “Cold-weld. As good as the real thing, one tenth the time to set, six hundred times as expensive.”

“That door ain't a do’ no mo',” Bucket quipped.

“You're damn right, no Nazi's coming in there,” Quint replied. An aurochs snorted and clomped its hooves on the concrete. “Or anything else.”

“Getting out's off the table, too,” Grease reminded them.

“That's fine,” Goldbrick said. “Our job ain’t up there, it’s down here, in the dark.”

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Copyright © 2023 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

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