The Secret Files of Lucky Ford: Operation Arm Breaker, Part 9 of 17

Finally inside Eberkopf, Lucky Ford and the officials are confronted with the vast gulf between what they knew, and what they must fight to survive.

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

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

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

Bucket fired his StG 44 six times into Yūrei Mikiko's back in one raucous burst. The corpse shuddered.

“The Sturmgehwer's a hell of a gun,” he said.

“Why did you do that?” Lucky asked.

“I read a report that ninjas can stop their own heartbeats; I just wanted to make sure she was down for the count.” He spit a soaked cigarette at the body. “And I'm sure Benjamin wouldn't mind.”

“Good thinking, Hall,” Goldbrick grunted.

Bucket poked at the ragged corpse with his boot, pointing at something she was carrying, saying:

“Benjamin would've minded this, though.”

“Sergeant Hall, begin taking readings,” the Colonel ordered.

“Yes, sir,” Bucket replied. He shrugged out of his pack and pulled a palm-sized electronic device out and began fiddling with its dials. It lit up like a Christmas tree: green, yellow, red, and blue.

Lucky approached Yūrei's corpse to see what Bucket had been talking about. She had Benjamin's smatchet in her waistband. It didn’t seem right that she keep a trophy, even dead. He tugged it free and shoved it into his pack. Benjamin's stiletto was still snug in Lucky's boot.

“Anyone manage to put a bullet in Skorzeny?” Sinclair asked.

“I lost him in the stampede,” Lucky told him.

“He's a cockroach, don't think for a moment he got run down,” Sinclair replied. “He let the jerries cut his neck open and sew a bag of acid into his throat. He's tough, all the damn Skorzenys are.”

Lucky turned away from the grisly, leaking corpse and found several officials quietly huddled up, listening to Quint in quiet reverence.

“He let us run ahead, then threw a spinnennetz grenade between us,” he was telling Miller, Grand, and Cheddarwright.

“He would not let you turn back,” Miller said. His voice was quiet, and reverent.

“If you had, the whole lot of you would be lost,” Cheddarwright assured Quint.

“And so would we,” Grand added.

“Díos, you sound like the Colonel. No one can know that,” Quint snapped.

“Corbyn knew what he was doing and why,” Cheddarwright said. Quint shook his head in frustration.

“They would have gunned him down and used the rest of you as bait for us,” Grand told him. “Like they did to Bastedo.”

“Killed for nothing,” Neff grunted as he walked past. He threw his rifle over he shoulder and threw he stub of a cigarette on the floor.

“He died fighting for cabrónes like you!” Quint snapped.

“He was executed on a whim,” Neff replied. He turned around and looked at them. “This is who we fight; not soldiers, but murderers.”

“You're giving us lectures?” Lucky objected.

“What did the poulet tell you?” Neff growled.

“The same thing he told everyone,” Quint said, stepping in. “He had that story ready for anyone who ever mentioned your name.”

“He was mistaken,” the sniper whispered. His bald head was flushed red, his voice wavered.

“He was very convincing,” Cheddarwright said.

“I do not have to answer to a dead man's delusions,” Neff replied. He lit another cigarette and stalked away.

“Are you certain?” Lucky heard the Colonel ask Bucket. The pair were examining Bucket's handheld gadget, wandering the hangar while watching different bulbs light its face.

“This place is pumping more EMF's than RCA,” Bucket told him. “With all this noise there's no chance they'll notice our transmitters.”

“Then it is time to move, officials!” the Colonel called. “We will be moving out of the northern exit. No one take a step to the east, the entire entrance is trip-wired and cold-welded.”

“You heard him, people! We are going to clear this rat warren room by room, tunnel by tunnel, cave by chasm by hollow. We will find a structural element and plant out transmitters. Then we will do it again. Eggs and baskets,” Goldbrick said. Sinclair, the general's second-in-command, began barking orders:

“Grease, Miller, Quint, on point. They know we are here yet they haven't kicked in that door yet, which means they are waiting for us. Doors and corners, officials.”

“Got to come at them like terriers,” Goldbrick said. “It is going to be tight.”

They all nodded. Storming Eberkopf would be like invading an anthill.

“We are past being subtle, so don't be afraid to use your big guns,” Sinclair said. “Lucky, Neff, and MacLeod, stick close behind them. Grand, Colonel Halistone, General Stephens, back them up. Cheddarwright and I will cover the rear, setting traps and sealing doors. There will be no retreat.”

Sinclair loosened his Colt Peacemaker revolver in its holster and slung his SMLE rifle over his shoulder. The stuntman winked under his bandages, tipped his charred hat, then said:

“We are here for the bloody duration, mates.”

Something shook the whole hangar. Not an impact, not an explosion, but something powerful, and bone-deep.

“We do not want to be here when they get through,” Sinclair warned.

“I could take 'em,” Grease growled.

“I know you can, but the second that door opens…” Sinclair nodded to the eastern entrance on the far side of the hangar, “Six landmines are going off before the whole room gets set on fire,”

“Oh, yeah, let's go,” Grease agreed. He hiked his bag up on his numbed shoulders and leveled the punt gun.

“Remember, officials: fast but careful. We will clear this wretched hive one tunnel at a time,” the Colonel reminded them. Another rumble shook the hangar.

“It is about to get loud in here!” Goldbrick shouted. “Move out! Point team, do your job!”

Grease and Miller approached the the northern door, guns at the ready. It rolled open with a mechanical whine. Blue light flooded the hangar. Quint followed close, his chrome arm sprouting an insane array of weapons. The trio disappeared into the light.

“Second team, you’re up!” Sinclar shouted. Lucky was running before he knew what else he could be doing. MacLeod was on his left, sword sheathed and shortened BAR to his shoulder, while Neff was on his right with his absurd rifle locked and loaded.

“Sirs, after them!” Sinclair called. Lucky, Neff, and MacLeod charged through the open door, nearly skidding into their comrades' backs. The Colonel's, Goldbrick's, and Grand's footsteps rushed up behind theirs.

“Holy hell,” Grand said. They were all dumbfounded by the same sight.

The hangar did not open into some dank, bedrock tunnel. No, it opened onto a balcony.

Rather than a tight bunker, Eberkopf was an underground city. The hanger they’d dropped into capped a towering platform that stood hundreds of feet over the floor of a man-made cavern larger than anything Lucky'd ever seen. Normal buildings butted up next to it, like it was some skyscraper hogging the block.

Eberkopf itself was roughly football-shaped, with the officials at the southern point. The long ceiling, the sky, was ribbed powder blue concrete, smoothed and painted, arrayed with banks of flood lights and reflective dishes that lit the underground kingdom more reliably than any sun ever could.

The fall of Vesuvius meant little to the lords of Eberkopf.

Before them, barracks, factories, and warehouses built like bunkers were arrayed in blocks across the vastness like a Nazi fever dream. The brutalist structures were covered in firing positions and three-foot slabs of armor, all poured from polished, reinforced concrete.

It was a utilitarian city, built only for labor and war, but art in its own right. Every available surface and feature was festooned with fascist symbolism. Just as the crenelations and machine gun slits served a martial function, the sculptures, murals, and banners strengthened the perverse will of the SS men within Eberkopf.

The city was alive with activity. Men and women were everywhere, and every building was lit within and without. Half-tracks and motorcycles zipped up roads paved over the bedrock, and trench sharks, no larger than bugs from this height, patrolled with armed squads. Smoke stacks ran from the structures up to the surface, narrow umbilicals that seemed to drip from the ceiling like jellyfish tentacles, next to rigid inverted radio towers and radar dishes that dotted the whole facility in a grid pattern.

In the distance, Lucky could see three more hangars like the one they were occupying, laid out in the cardinal directions. Flying cars swarmed each like fruit flies.

Above it all, a half-dozen columns wider than the Empire State Building reached down from the ceiling, melding into the floor with foundations that ran thick, deep, and dark, fusing poured concrete and welded steel with hewn bedrock. Eberkopf was part of the Earth.

No one spoke for a full minute, overcome with awe at the things the Nazis had built. If such vision could have been focused for anything but racist evil, great things would have been possible. The Colonel was first to come up with words:

“It is astounding, however man's works compare little to those of the almighty,” he said.

“Yeah, great, well that's where my radio's going,” Grease said, pointing at the central column.

The main support of the whole subterranean city sat in the dead-center of the place. Its massive base was ringed with a looming structure, one built up with a gatehouse and towers, all crafted from thick concrete. It was the combination of a bunker and a chateau, and it compromised neither strength nor majesty in its architecture. Firing slits pitted every wall above doors wide enough to accommodate a panzer. Red and black banners hung from its walls, dozens of yards tall and emblazoned with fascistic bullshit.

“Lord,” MacLeod sighed. His mind must have been racing just like Lucky’s would: how would they take down a fortress in less than four hours?

Each official studied the central structure in silence. Its tall walls were spiked with crenelated spires, perfect defensive points for snipers and machine guns, while arrays of shining silver radar dishes sparkled across its face. A moat shimmered at its base, wide enough to be a sapphire lake, with a single narrow bridge slithering across its serene surface. The Nazi castle glowed with a brutal elegance. That is where the leaders of this obscene facility would be: at its gilded heart.

“Looks like our best bet,” Bucket agreed. “We get a pact-breaker to cut off that column at the roots and let the roof do the rest for us.”

“There must be a way to lower ourselves to the facility's floor,” the Colonel observed.

“This looks like elevator controls,” Bucket said. He examined a bank of levers and buttons. He grabbed the largest but couldn't get it to budge. “Damn it. Lucky, give me a hand.”

“Sure,” Lucky said. On 'three' they both pressed down on the lever with all their weight. The damn thing didn't move an inch. They gave up after a second try.

“Let me try,” Grease offered, rolling his augmented shoulders.

“I can do it,” Quint countered, flexing his diesel-powered arm.

“The damn thing's mechanically locked-down, you meat heads,” Bucket told them. “The krauts want us trapped up here like sitting ducks. Give me a few minutes, I can override this.”

Bucket slipped a screwdriver out of a holster on his belt and went to work unscrewing the console's front panel.

A distant rifle cracked, and a round pinged off the console's steel corner. They all ducked down.

“We’re gonna need results faster than that,” Goldbrick shouted.

“I'm working, I'm working,” Bucket grunted. A machine gun opened up below, smashing lead into the bottom of the balcony. It held against the bullets but shook like crazy.

Lucky risked a peek over the edge. A platoon of black-clad soldiers was shooting up at them from a barracks near the foot of the hangar tower. A pioneer officer pointed up at the officials from the barracks’ top window. His emplaced MG 42 fired on his mark. Its buzzsaw salvo forced Lucky back.

“What do you got?” Goldbrick demanded.

“Looks like twenty krauts, with a heavy gun and an officer calling the shots,” Lucky reported. Further away, a whole column of SS men was running down the road toward the tower, ants carrying sticks from that range, dragging an anti-tank gun behind them. “More coming, a mile out, pulling a PaK 88.”

“Any quicker ways down?” Grease asked. Lucky peeked again. While he watched, another squad scrambled out of the building and took cover at the tower’s base. They began placing heavy bundles against the tower's single, monolithic metal support, hurried but meticulous.

“They are planting charges down there,” Lucky told him.

“To be fair, that would be quickest,” Grease muttered.

“I know another way down, but I’ll need a couple things,” Bucket reported. “Still got that harpoon, lefty?”

Quint grunted and popped his chrome arm open. An eighteen-inch-long rod with a barbed spike emerged, needle-sharp and deadly.

“God, now I just need to get under the hood,” Bucket said, pointing to Quint's mechanical limb.

“Not a chance,” Quint snarled. He turned his right side away from the eager engineer. “What about the panel?”

Bucket whipped the Super Colt out of his holster and drilled a half-dozen .45 rounds into the console's hydraulic consoles innards. Wires sparked and tubes hissed.

“All that thing was gonna do was drop us in their laps or keep us trapped up here,” he explained.

“Your prudence in the field is a topic we will discuss later, Sergeant Hall,” the Colonel said. “But I trust your abilities. Get to work.”

“General?” Quint asked.

“You heard the Colonel, sergeant,” Goldbrick ordered. “Hall, you get us down and you make sure that arm is as good as you found it afterward.”

“Yes, sir,” Bucket said. He spun the screwdriver in his hand like a Wild West trick shot. A salvo of machine gun rounds pelted the platform. “Just buy me some time!”

Quint grumbled something and flexed his mechanical arm. The panels popped open on their own and Bucket's eyes went wide. The circuits and pistons inside the prosthetic were his world, and he dove right in.

Neff’s rifle roared, and somewhere a kraut must have been pulverized. His bullets were powerful enough to blow through a tank's armor; a Nazi would be reduced to scraps by them. Neff worked his bolt, lined up another shot, let out a breath, then killed another man.

“We need to hold them off, to force the sappers back,” the Colonel ordered. Neff fired again, this shot disassembling the screaming SS officer below. “Lieutenant, I want you to pin that artillery down. One shot from the eighty-eight and we're done for.”

Neff turned his attention to the distant cannon and fired. His fifty-cal round reached out like a lightning bolt and zapped one of the ten Nazis dragging the PaK, spraying his squad mates red.

They dropped the artillery piece and scattered. Neff loosed another round, shattering a concrete dragon's tooth and the cowering Nazi behind it.

“Target the sappers, I said!” the Colonel shouted. The officials leaned over the edge, braving incoming fire to unleash a storm of arrows, buckshot, and bullets down on the swarming Nazis.

The soldiers below pulled back or died, but two Nazis arrived for every one they forced back. Squads were rumbling up the street, dragging machine guns and panzerfausts, with packs of mannessers and roaring trench sharks in tow. The swirling clouds of flying cars began coalescing into spearheads, all pointed at the pinned officials.

The volume of incoming fire rose every second, forcing Lucky back. A blood-curdling howl rose up from below, sprouting goosebumps on his arms and giving him a sudden animal urge to run or die. The hangar shuddered as a Nazi rocket punched into it. The panzerfausts found their mark.

“Hurry up!” Grease shouted. He tossed the empty red shell over the guardrail and stuffed fresh ammo into the punt gun.

“I'm hurrying, sasquatch,” Bucket shouted back, elbow deep in the inner workings of Quint’s arm. “Loud, I need your wormline.”

MacLeod tossed a coil of his green rope to Bucket. He tried to fire off another rip from his BAR, but an enemy barrage thundered around him and forced him back. The krauts down there were getting brave.

“They're coming in hot!” Lucky shouted.

“So cool 'em down!” Bucket snapped. He yanked a tube out of Quint’s arm, spraying the both of them with hydraulic fluid.

“Watch it!” Quint barked.

“Yeah, yeah, Bucket muttered, attaching the tube to some other component.

“Grand, slingshot?” Goldbrick asked.

“Always,” Grand answered. He laid down his rifle and pulled an an aluminum fork out of a holster. He asked: “Who wants to donate some heat?”

The Colonel gave him two bright blue canister grenades, and Goldbrick handed over a trio of traditional pineapple bombs.

“Good snag,” Grand said.

“Blind ‘em with those overcasters then hit 'em in the gut with the frags,” Goldbrick said.

“Lucky, give a mate a hand here,” Grand said. He looped one of the blue canisters into the slingshot and drew it all the way back to his ear. He grunted: “You can yank that pin any time now.”

Lucky ripped the pin out of the canister's detonator. The weapon hissed and Grand popped over the edge of the balcony and launched it with a twang. Lucky heard yelling and a pop down below, but Grand already had the next overcaster pulled back. Lucky pulled the pin and Grand let it fly. There was more yelling and another pop.

“How's ye own medicine, ye buggers?” MacLeod yelled over the rail. Lucky risked a peek. A thick roiling fog, black as coal, covered the ground beneath the platform.

“Focus, Ford. Overcasters fog up the air real good, but they'll be prepared for that,” Grand snapped. He had one of Goldbrick's pineapples loaded. Lucky yanked the pin and Grand shot it into the heart of the cloud. Its explosion dispersed the fog just long enough to reveal scrambling SS soldiers and three of their shrapnel-shredded comrades before the unnatural mists rolled back in.

“Two more eggs to drop,” Grand called out.

“I'm almost there,” Bucket shouted back, annoyed. He was still hard at work on Quint's arm, going at it with multiple screwdrivers and even his combat knife. Quint looked furious, but he held still and kept his lip zipped.

Grand stretched the slingshot back, Lucky ripped the pin, and another explosion flared in the swirling black.

“Last one!” Grand shouted.

“Let her fly!” Bucket yelled back.

Grand and Lucky launched the last grenade, then stepped back. Neff fired again, snuffing out another artilleryman. Cheddarwright loosed another arrow.

Bucket stepped away from Quint. The sergeant raised his mechanical arm. It was jammed open, with the harpoon extending out of a wide-bore barrel. MacLeod's white rope was tied from the harpoon head to the balcony railing.

“The PaK is taking aim,” Neff warned. He fired his anti-tank rifle again, but only managed to crater the heavy concrete wall Nazis had hidden their cannon behind. A half-dozen of their splattered comrades stained the pavement where Neff's shots had found them.

“Sarge, aim for the closest roof and launch that pig-sticker,” Bucket said. Quint raised his mechanical arm, squeezed one eye shut to aim, and took a deep breath.

“Hurry,” Neff said.

“Shut your trap,” Quint muttered. He stuck out his tongue and bit it, then his arm thumped. The harpoon launched with a blast of condensed air, staggering Quint with unexpected recoil. It speared into the nearest building, a concrete block structure big as a football field a hundred feet down and a hundred away. MacLeod's pale green rope unraveled behind it, seemingly endless.

“Hell yeah!” Bucket whooped. He tugged on the long line, telling Quint: “Had the up your air cannon's pressure a little bit, I wasn't sure that harpoon would bite at this distance. Look at that! Hooked like a fish.”

Bucket pulled the rope taut and tied it off. He plucked at it with a smirk. It was so tight it twanged.

“Who wants first?” he asked.

“I have concerns,” Grease said before anyone could volunteer. He hefted his gear bag over his shoulder, hundreds of pounds of weapons adding to his already hulking frame.

“Do not worry, Private Benolli,” Miller assured him. “This is pure wormline.”

“So what?” Grease asked.

“It is braided from treated silk, spun by Doctor Evenstad's own brood of larvae,” Miller explained.

“So it'll hold me?” Grease ask uneasily.

“It is rated four over four thousand pounds,” Miller quoted from memory.

“Did I not say 'hurry?'” Neff shouted. In the distance, the PaK 88 roared. A shell screamed past to their right, going wide. It whined as it cut through the dry air. It hit the stone ceiling, blasting out an upside-down crater in a geyser of blue dust.

“Don't need to ask me twice,” Grease muttered. He swung his legs off the edge of the platform, hooked his bent T33 Stinger over the ethereal wormline, and dropped. He screamed like a girl as he slid down, zipping to the other building in seconds.

“Lucky, go, go, go!” Goldbrick shouted. Lucky didn't even think. He rushed forward, slid to the edge of the platform, threw his Garand over the rope, and pushed off.

“Tuck and roll!” Grand called behind him. The rope hummed as Lucky slid down it, dangling by his balanced rifle. Stale air rushed past his face. Bullets came so close he could hear their tiny snaps as they passed his ears. He held his breath and stared ahead; the building came at him hard and fast.

The wormline shook and he knew someone else was right on his heels. Lucky put his boots together, bent his knees, and hit the roof in a paratrooper roll.

Lucky sprawled onto his belly with his rifle ready. Shots zipped over his head. Cheddarwright was a green blur as she came in, with two more officials seconds behind her. In less than a minute, both squads were down and pressed flat to the roof.

Nazi bullets skipped off Grease's bandaged back and shoulders, but still he swung his shotgun around. There weren't any Nazis up there with them, not yet.

“Roof's clear!” Grease reported. He grunted as another round dinged off his shoulder. “Not for long though!”

He was right. Nazis shouted, only to be drowned out by monstrous howls. The krauts who'd come to eradicate them from the hangar were shifting positions to get better crossfire over their new refuge. They were fortifying their barracks, just over three hundred yards away. Snipers had begun taking pot shots, and machine gunners were kicking out windows to get the officials in their sights.

The hangar loomed over the barracks. Lucky could now see that it was not the top of a tower but instead perched on a building-sized piston. It wasn't the balcony that was an elevator, but the entire suspended hangar, larger than a baseball diamond. Its base was still enveloped in overcaster smoke, a roiling haze thicker than any gas Lucky'd ever seen. Enough of the stuff would be able to turn day into night.

Far away, the PaK 88 roared one more time. Its high-explosive shell screamed during the second it took to collide with the hangar and burst within. Flames roared out of its hatches as aviation fuel ignited. Liquid flame poured off their balcony like a burning waterfall.

“We stay up here, we're as dead as we'd have been up there,” Grand yelled.

“We need 'em looking at something else,” Grease called back.

“MacLeod!” Goldbrick shouted over the din. “We need Mad Meg!”

“We still have a long day ahead of us, sir!” the Scotsman called back.

“Take the shot and make it count. Pull a Paul Bunyan on that hangar!” Goldbrick ordered. MacLeod shrugged out of his pack and pulled a long tube out, five inches across and a foot-and-a-half long, matte-black and evil in its banality.

“Quint,” MacLeod grunted. The device was heavy and thunked against the concrete roof with the clang of gun metal. He twisted the open end of the tube and pulled, telescoping it out in segments, more than tripling its length. Quint belly-crawled to his side and helped him maneuver it into position. The pair laid their cheeks on the black barrel, squinting to make sure it was aligned with the blazing hangar.

“Got it,” Quint said. The cold-weld nozzle emerged from his shoulder again and he glued the tube to the roof. The mustard goop transmuted to metal in seconds. He smacked MacLeod on the back and shouted: “Fire ready!”

MacLeod screwed a firing cord into the tube's base as Quint scuttled away. He crawled backward until he was as far away from Mad Meg as the cord would let him go.

“Ears!” Goldbrick ordered, then rolled to face away from the tube and clamped his hands over the sides of his head. Every other officials followed suit.

“Fire in the ‘ole!” MacLeod shouted, then he yanked the cord.

Mad Meg roared and exploded, the tube bursting into a splayed daisy of hot metal. A shock wave washed over Lucky, its muzzle blast leaving his ears ringing.

The shell it had fired sliced into the burning hangar's huge piston like it was a green sapling. Where Mad Meg had been welded down, the concrete was shattered.

Even deafened, the shriek of failing steel clawed into Lucky's eardrums.

The massive piston holding the hangar aloft had been bit through as if by an ax, bleeding gouts of hydraulic fluid in waves large enough to wash away the frantic Nazis that had wandered out of the black fog below. The tower shuddered as its foundations failed, sending the whole thing teetering with that scream of shearing metal.

The structure fell slowly, gathering shadows over the fortified barracks and the distracted Nazis within. Those that looked up tried to leap from windows, those that didn't see it kept firing. Either way, it was falling too fast to do anything but pray.

The hangar punched down into the roof of the crowded barracks like a hammer through an egg. The bullets crackling over Lucky's head cut off in that instant. Concrete and kraut corpses tumbled through the air. Rubble crashed through the streets, and a wall of dust washed over the whole of the madness.

More aviation fuel exploded and toxic smoke bubbled up. Those few surviving soldiers staggered from the wreckage to blaring klaxons. They coughed and bled and forgot the officials as the blaze spread.

Grease was the first to stand. He walked over to the quivering steel flower that was Mad Meg's remains and nudged it with his boot. A deformed brass casing rolled free, the remains of a shell built to sink battleships. Grease chuckled, saying:

“Now that is a distraction.”

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

The rooftop door gave way on Grease's second kick. It was thicker than it looked, a sealed airlock more like a submarine hatch than anything else. It fell free and crashed to the bottom of a flight of steel stairs. Miller followed it down, grease gun at the ready.

A wave of fetid heat and a hungry drone boiled forth. Miller rushed back out the door right after it, skidding to a halt next to Lucky. He was shaking.

“No, not this building,” Miller gasped. He almost fell over his own boots in his panic. Every official took three steps back and leveled their guns at the open door.

“What is it?” the Colonel demanded. He had to yell over the buzzing noise that came through the door. “An ambush?”

“Worse,” Miller replied. “Bugs.”

Neff spat out his cigarette and lowered his massive rifle. He slung the big gun across his back and drew his little MAB D police-issue pistol, then walked through the open door. Cheddarwright and MacLeod followed, bowstring and sword drawn, respectively.

“Nordholm carnivorous roaches, Malay dog-hunting spiders, Nordholm exodus locusts, European honey bees, and who knows what other foul things,” Miller was explaining to the Colonel. The older officer shook his head and put a hand on his old friend's shoulder to help settle him down.

“Have you checked your seals?” the Colonel asked.

“I have,” Miller confirmed, though he patted himself down nonetheless.

“So you know nothing will enter your suit,” the Colonel replied.

“Sir, I beg to differ. A mature Nordholm roach has a bite force equivalent to standard-issue wire cutters,” Miller countered. He was rambling. “That is more than enough to breach the suit. It would be trapped in here with me for hours before I could extricate it.”

“Mister Miller, pull yourself together,” the Colonel snapped. The masked man regained his feet, carefully controlling his breathing. “It is only a few bugs.”

“An entire instectarium of German-engineered crawlies,” Miller muttered, just loud enough for Lucky to hear standing right next to him.

“What's that?” the Colonel wondered.

“I said: 'quite right, sir,'” Miller quipped. His eyes grew hard and narrow and he hefted his submachine gun. “Only a few bugs.”

Lucky followed Neff and Grand through the door and clambered down the metal stairs, his heavy boots pounding each step. A wide catwalk ran north-south through the length of the building, suspended high above sprawling glass enclosures below. Living oceans splashed the transparent walls, roiling and whipping with an intelligent malevolence. The buzzing was almost deafening.

“Locusts,” Neff grunted, pointing to the undulating green cloud in the enclosure beneath them. Lucky looked closer. That cloud, spinning like a whirlpool one moment before lashing against the thick glass like a storm surge the next, was made up of tens of millions of flapping iridescent wings that flashed under the harsh lights.

The next tank was filled with seething brown, a crawling coat of cockroaches skittering across the inside of the glass, hissing and clicking their flesh-rending mandibles.

Another building-sized tank pulsed with yellow-brown bees, and golden honey flowed from its base in four-inch-thick glass pipes.

“It that the spiders?” Lucky asked, pointing down the row at the last enclosure. Neff studied the tank over his shoulder. This one was silent, and motionless within. Webbing hung in sheets within its walls, white drapery crafted by the thousands of black arachnids crawling up and down its threads. Here and there were larger masses, bundled in the unbreakable twine and trussed up like hams. Yellowed bones poked through the silk.

“Yes,” was all the sniper had to say.

A panicked German voice called out from below:

“Eindringlinge!”

The hooded Nazi had just exited the spider enclosure at the head of a small group, a dozen yards below the catwalk. He was holding an empty leash in his hand. All of these krauts were dressed the same, fully covered in silver jumpsuits, carrying long silver hooks with silk-wrapped spools strapped to their backs. The officer who had yelled dropped his hook and leash and reached for the Luger holstered on his hip.

He flopped onto his back before he could draw the weapon, a quivering arrow in his chest.

The other Nazis scrambled and scattered, but they didn't stand a chance. The Colonel yelled a command in German to them, but they paid no heed.

Some ran for the rifle rack on the far wall, some for the door, and others for the alarm and the radio. None reached their destinations. Lucky needed no order; he squared up a twisting torso in sights, let his Garand crack twice, and the man fell. Neff's deafening rifle splattered another against gleaming glass. Bullets, buckshot, and arrows finished the rest.

“Bucket, cut this building off, make it hell for anybody who follows us in,” Goldbrick ordered. “Grease and Lucky, cover him.”

“Me first,” Grease grunted. He vaulted over the catwalk's rail and slammed down onto the concrete below, swinging his stubby punt gun in a hundred-eighty degree arc to cover his twelve and his six. No targets presented themselves.

“Clear down here!” he called up. Bucket slid down a long ladder, his feet hooked just tight enough to keep him from falling free. He clomped down next to Grease and pulled his captured StG 44 to his shoulder. Lucky slid down right after him.

One Nazi was still alive, quivering around a bullet hole spilling crimson over his reflective jumpsuit. Lucky kicked his Luger away from his grasping hands and stepped over him.

“What were they doing?” Lucky asked Bucket's back.

“Collecting webs,” he answered. “They spool up miles of the stuff, then treat it before packing it into spinnennetz ordnance.”

Bucket pointed at the leader's empty leash and added: “Malay dog-hunting spiders produce best when fed their preferred diet.”

“Damn,” Lucky whispered. He hopped over another reddened kraut and pulled hard on the spider enclosure's hatch, slamming it shut. He wrenched the handle down hard, racking its bolts into place. None of those things were getting out.

“Which way, four eyes?” Grease asked.

“We're following the wires, sasquatch,” Bucket answered, pointing at the thick cables coming off the banks of lights that illuminated each of the massive bug tanks. He stalked past the thrumming honeybee enclosure and called: “Got your eyes on up there, Cheddarwright?”

Lucky looked up to find Cheddarwright pacing along above, an arrow ready in her bow.

“I have you covered,” she called down.

Bucket whipped around the corner of the final enclosure, his assault rifle leveled.

“This is it,” he said. Lucky followed him with Grease close on their heels. There was a control booth and a huge roll-up door. The windowed-in booth held a collection of dials and mechanisms to control every variable in the enclosures, from temperature and light level to humidity. There was also a phone inside, and a radio. The door next to it was big enough to wheel one of the huge glass tanks through.

“Sasquatch, we need your foot again,” Bucket said.

Grease had a huge grin on his face as he put his boot through the control room's door. Bucket wormed past the big man and immediately found the console he was looking for. He pried off its cover and worked at its innards.

“What are you doing?” Lucky hissed.

“Making sure whoever tracks us in here gets a proper welcome,” he said. He reached in his pack and unwound a long copper wire. “Watch this.”

He twisted one end of the wire onto some gizmo in the console, then ran it across the room and tied it into another set of controls.

“What can I do?” Grease asked.

“See the phone in that wall?” Bucket responded.

“Yeah.”

“I want it against that wall,” Bucket replied. Grease smirked, grabbed the phone and ripped it, cord and all, out of the concrete, then chucked it through the control room's window. It skipped across the floor, scattering shards along with it. Bucket added: “And the radio.”

The squat black box collapsed under Grease's fist like a house of cards. Sparks flew and blue smoke billowed.

“And that should do it,” Bucket said, waving his hand in front of his face to clear the acrid haze. “Let's move.”

Bucket lead them back through the facility as Cheddarwright shadowed them. There was a smaller door at the north end, past the roach tanks, a reinforced hatch like on the roof. Bucket called to the officials on the catwalk: “We're good, time to move.”

The Colonel started down the ladder, followed by a tentative Miller, then MacLeod, Grand, Cheddarwright, Quint, Sinclair, and Goldbrick, with Neff and his rifle waiting for last. A green light glowed to life above the big door.

“What's that mean?” Lucky wondered aloud.

“Means we got to go,” Bucket said, then shouted loud enough for everyone to hear: “Krauts incoming!”

The huge door rumbled and began clanking upward. Jackboots gleamed behind the widening gap at the floor.

“Draw 'em in!” Goldbrick shouted. The Colonel raised his pearl-handled Webley Mk VI revolver and fired twice, pounding both rounds straight through the rising door. One pair of jackboots on the other side tipped backward and went still, toes up.

“That should make them quite a bit more determined,” he pointed out. The last official descended the ladder and the Colonel addressed the whole group. “Miller, we are using the north exit. Grease, Neff, hang back, lure them into locking themselves in.”

“Yes, sir,” Grease told him. He squared up with the door sighted down his punt gun as it inched upward. Neff ducked behind the corner of the honeybee tank, lit his cigarette, and splayed out on his belly, the door square in his sights.

Miller hauled the northern door open and cleared the outside, grease gun at the ready. Lucky followed him out. A wall of heat from burning aviation fuel washed over them. Black smoke was pooling against the blue ceiling three hundred feet up, blocking out the spotlights up there. Lucky could hear distant yelling: rescue crews shouting orders in German, crushed and burning victims screaming without language.

“We go building by building,” Goldbrick was shouting over all of that. “Stay out of the open and keep 'em on their heels. They'll be too busy cleaning up after us to figure out where we're going next. Got to make ten officials hit like a hundred.”

“Two squads?” Sinclair asked.

“We're done with that, we need concentrated fire. One squad, multiple fire teams. I'm not losing anyone else,” Goldbrick replied. “Two breaching teams, Neff and Cheddar sniping, Miller, Sinclair, and Al will be securing or destroying intel, and Quint and Bucket will be leaving presents for our pursuers.”

Neff shook the whole insectarium with his fifty-caliber roar, but was muted by the deafening howl of an enraged trench shark that sent him and Grease scrambling out the back door. The Frenchman slammed the hatch behind them, and Quint cold-welded it shut without a second guess.

An impact shook the wall, sprinkling gray dust onto their heads. The trench shark was as strong as a battering ram. Concrete and steel could not hold her.

“They're inside alright, got to be twenty of 'em at least, plus the shark,” Grease huffed. He brushed crushed bullets off his plated chest.

“Good,” Bucket said. He counted down on his fingers, and when he reached 'one' a loud mechanical whine pealed front the south end of the building. “Big door's closing, tank doors are opening.”

The rolling door slammed its tons to the ground at the same instant the droning within the building increased in volume. Miller shuddered at the sound. Nazi screams were drowned out by tens of millions of ravenous bugs . The trench shark roared once, but her cry was choked to a gurgle.

“I don't want to be around when they get the front door open again,” Bucket said.

“Agreed,” the Colonel replied. He pointed his pistol at the next building in the row, another squat facility, long and narrow, poured out of solid concrete with no windows and one door. Gargoyles and statues leered from its flat roof, encircling house-sized machinery. Red banners hung limp in the breezeless air.

“That's where we're going. Grease, that's your door,” the Colonel said.

A howling rose, the baying of ravenous, mutated hounds. Grease stuffed a red shell into his punt gun and led the charge to the next building. Neff's rifle roared again, but Lucky didn't look back to see what he'd shot.

He just ran.

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Copyright © 2023 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

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