The Secret Files of Lucky Ford: The Dragon, the Wolf, and the Maiden, Part 11 of 12
Lucky Ford and the officials have managed to thwart their captors, but cannibal Vargulf and the panzerritter walking tanks stand between them and their freedom. With Miller down, impaled through the heart, do they stand any chance of escape?
The Dragon, the Wolf, and the Maiden is now available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, or as a DRM-free ePub!
This is Part 11 of The Secret Files of Lucky Ford: The Dragon, the Wolf, and the Maiden. If you aren’t caught up yet, check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, and Part 10 before reading any further.
Content Warnings: Violence, Gun Violence, Gore, Death, Mild Swearing, Tobacco Use, Nazis
SUNDAY MORNING, JULY 10, 1942
SS DEPARTMENT THREE BASE: VESUVIUS
OUTSIDE THE CITY OF NAPLES, ITALY
Werner von Werner stood over Lucky, sword hand empty and trembling as he watched Miller lay motionless.
“The reports were... wrong?” Werner stammered.
Lucky crawled away from the murderer, scuttling across the glass-strewn floor until his hand bumped into something hard and heavy. It was Werner's clipboard, all ten pounds of stacked memos and notes, with its pointed metal corners. It would do.
Before Lucky considered any other option, it was already over.
In an instant he found himself on his feet, his hands trembling. Werner was splayed out, blood from his split scalp joined that oozing from his ragged face. The red had misted over Lucky's face and arms. He gripped the clipboard with both hands, crimson soaking into its reams of notes, and raised it high above his head, ready to end the traitor. Ready, eager, to attack a defenseless person.
Lucky felt a gentle hand pat him on the back, and a familiar voice spoke up in a frustratingly formal British accent:
“That's enough, Private Ford.”
Lucky lowered the clipboard and turned to find Miller standing. Werner's sword was still protruding from his chest.
“Miller?” Lucky wondered. He was shaking in disbelief.
“As I mentioned, Private Ford, I have a tendency to get up whenever I fall down,” he said. He chuckled, the sword's handle wobbling with each pained syllable. Miller trembled then fell back into a chair, wheezing. The sword's tip scraped against the stone wall behind him, eliciting a groan. He reached for its handle, but he couldn't quite lift his arms high enough. He sighed and asked Lucky: “Would you mind terribly removing this degen?”
“What?” Lucky started, suddenly acutely aware of the extent of Miller's horrific wound.
“A degen is a ceremonial saber awarded to noncommissioned officers of the Schutzstaffel on the basis of merit,” Miller wheezed.
“That's not…” Lucky muttered.
“Just pull the damn thing out, Lucky, we ain't got all day over here,” Bucket huffed. He and MacLeod were pressing their ears against the steel hallway door.
“Ah kin 'ear the bastards out there, Colonel. They got no bandy thought o' what's clippin' along in 'ere.” MacLeod whispered after a moment.
“Excellent, now Lucky, if you would be so kind as to remove that sword from Miller's chest, we can make our exit,” the Colonel said as he patted down his pockets. He seemed dismayed, then sighed when he couldn't find what he was looking for. He muttered to no one in particular: “It's so hard to find a pipe one likes these days.”
Lucky stared at Miller and the sword impaling his chest, still uncertain of what exactly they were asking him to do.
“So, just pull it out?” Lucky asked.
“Try not to further damage the environment suit, if that can be helped,” he gasped.
Lucky gulped, then wrapped his hands around the sword's grip, one finger at a time. A slow tempo beat through the blade. It was Millers heart, pierced but still pounding. Lucky pushed that idea out of his mind and braced his feet, tensed his arms, and took a deep breath. Miller's eyes went wide and he blurted: “Hold on there!”
Lucky let go and took three steps back, his hands up like he'd been caught stealing cookies, his breath escaping his body and deflating him. He almost tripped again, this time over Werner's unconscious body.
Miller looked over the items still clipped to his uniform and grabbed the olive drab hurricane tape Woody had given him back on board the Saint George.
“Thank goodness for Chief Woodruff,” Miller said. “Now let's get this out, we cannot wait all night, Private Ford.”
Lucky stepped forward and grabbed the grip again. Miller's heartbeat slowly reverberated up and down the sword blade, pulsing slower and calmer than any man's heart should be after being impaled.
Lucky looked down at him. Miller's ice-blue eyes weren't scared, or even worried. He nodded. Lucky braced his feet, then pulled.
The sword scraped against against Miller's ribs as Lucky dragged it out. He could feel every dull centimeter and nick in its edge catching bone as he pulled. He nearly gagged. When the sword's tip finally emerged, Lucky twisted away and covered his face in an attempt to shield himself from the coming spray of blood.
Miller's wounds hissed outward, but not in the hot red spray Lucky was expecting. Instead, a cold mist of icy water soaked his arm. White fog, like the vapors that rise from shaved ice left in the summer sun, escaped from the gashes in the front and back of Miller's suit.
“Curses!” Miller grunted as he fumbled with the roll of tape, unable to find an edge with his thick leather gloves on. “Quickly! Take this and seal me up!”
Lucky grabbed the hurricane tape and peeled off a four-inch segment. He tore it off the roll with his teeth and slapped it over the stab hole in Miller's chest.
“Lean forward,” Lucky told him. He ripped off another piece of tape and stuck it over the hole in Miller's back.
“Many thanks, Private Ford.” Miller said. He leaned back in the chair, relieved. Lucky stared at him, dumbfounded and hyperventilating.
“Holy smokes,” Lucky gasped. The man who could take a sword through the heart and not buy it, much less talk and walk afterward, just looked up at him through his gas mask.
“That is the first thing I ever heard you say, Private Ford, back in Sicily,” Miller said, ignoring the weirdness altogether. He carefully examined the hurricane tape for leaks, then stood and cautiously stretched out, testing his full range of motion with the temporary repairs. He looked back at Lucky, noticing for the first time that he was honestly distressed.
“Trust me, my friend, there will be time for explanations later. Now, we must fight our way past the panzerritters with naught but a ceremonial sword and a pistol that cannot leave even a scratch on their armor,” he said. He knew he'd danced around any kind of answer, so he added:
“Just know that while I fight by your side, your luck will always be good.”
He smiled with his eyes then held his gloved hand out. Lucky took it, feeling a chill run up his arm. He hauled Miller to his feet and stuck close to him. He was the man who survived by passing the buck to the next grunt over, fighting side-by-side with the man who couldn't die.
“Come along, Private Ford,” Miller said. They ducked to the side as MacLeod dragged Werner and Gerhardt's still bodies to the far end of the narrow room. Smoke had begun to the cling the ceiling, having boiled through the broken window. Lucky’s eyes and throat were stinging.
Bucket was still pressed against the door, listening for any change in the panzerritter guard, discussing and dismissing idea after idea with the Colonel. Between the two of them, they were holding up Cão and Ajax to keep them from passing out on the floor.
The Portuguese sailor was about to collapse from blood loss while the Greek commando was delirious. Miller immediately went to work, ripping off Cão's trousers at the knee for use as bandages to press over his wounds. The sailor grunted and his legs nearly buckled, but he managed to hold fast while Miller tended to him. Bucket tried snapping his fingers next to Ajax's ears, but got no response.
“Did you notice any weak points in their armor, Bucket?” the Colonel asked, grunting as he shifted Cão's weight on his shoulder.
“Nothing easy to hit, Colonel. I mean, we could scramble their eggs pretty good with a bazooka, might even be able to get a good boil going with a flamethrower, but we don't have the right gear to take on these guys.” Bucket said, shaking his head. He stepped back from the hatch and let MacLeod take a listen,
Bucket patted Ajax on the cheek, making sure the Greek commando was still with them. Ajax looked around in a stupor, crusty blood in his ears, eyes unfocussed.
“I mean, about their only weak spot would have to be the eyes, or the hydraulics, if we could foul up their lines,” Bucket offered.
Ajax began tapping Bucket on the shoulder. Bucket looked at him, gave him a corny thumb's up while exaggeratedly mouthing:
“Don't worry champ, we'll get out of this.”
Ajax's eyes grew wide and he began tapping even more insistently. MacLeod turned from his listening spot at the hatch and looked at what had startled Ajax.
“Well lads, looks like we mayn't 'ave the time to bally on about this too much longer,” the Scotsman said, then nodded to the back of the room.
Everyone turned to find Gerhardt awake and standing, a syringe of sickening, familiar brown liquid held in his hand. Blood pumped from where he'd wrenched the harpoon from his shoulder. It was pouring down his arm and pooling onto the concrete floor, staining six other freshly-emptied syringes. He’d torn his uniform open, revealing pale flesh crisscrossed with surgical scars.
Gerhardt was breathing heavily, and small trickles of blood stained his abdomen where he'd violently self-administered the cocktail of the Vargulf chemicals. He grinned as he raised the last shining needle, then plunged it deep into his chest, expertly threading it between his ribs. Amber foam boiled out of his mouth, his eyes rolled back into his skull, and he collapsed.
Alien muscles began to writhe beneath his pale skin and his wound rippled, the flesh oozing shut over it.
“Put a bullet in him,” Bucket snapped.
“Ah 'ave plans for these bullets,” MacLeod said. “And stabbin' the git will only make 'im madder.”
“He's right. Gentleman, it seems our time-table has moved up,” the Colonel said. “Miller!”
Miller tossed Werner's sword into the Colonel's outstretched hand, then hauled Cão's arm over his shoulder, taking the passed-out sailor from the Colonel.
“Check your bootlaces, men, this will have to be a quick one.” the Colonel advised. He nodded to MacLeod who cranked the heavy steel hatch open an inch. His heavy boot propelled it the rest of the way.
Loud MacLeod and the Colonel crashed through the open door, pistol and sword brought to bear against machine guns and walking tanks. It didn't matter what happened to them, Lucky knew they couldn't stay there much longer. He looked around for a weapon, but found only broken glass and Werner's heavy clipboard. It was hefty and he knew it packed a punch. It would have to do.
A low moan emerged from deep within the warping body of Isaak Gerhardt. Bullet-proof black fur had already begun sprouting all over his body, which Lucky swore had already doubled in size on his skeletal frame.
Lucky put the mutating Nazi behind him and, wielding the clipboard, charged through the steel hatch, headlong into battle.
Colonel Halistone stood frozen in the breach, his right arm extended in a perfect fencing thrust behind Werner's straight-bladed saber. His legs were expertly positioned for maximum force with no loss of balance. Always the gentleman, his free hand was behind his back.
Before him, a panzerritter soldier stood still as a statue. By this kraut's logic, the sword was little more than an annoyance against his armor and he hadn't hesitated to charge in and teach the Colonel a lesson.
Such archaic fighting traditions were surely useless against German technology.
The slit in the Nazi's faceplate was no larger than a nickelodeon's coin slot, but the Colonel's decades of sword training had taken over. He'd guided the sword's razor-sharp tip into that impossibly small target, sliding through the panzerritter's eye, skull, and brain with perfect accuracy.
A drop of blood leaked from the kraut's eye slit, tumbled down his face plate, and stained the intricate coat-of-arms on his chest. The bright red tear painted a crimson line that bisected a rearing gray horse in the center of the crest.
The six remaining panzerritters stood in frozen shock for just a second, but a second was all Loud MacLeod needed.
“Commando!” he roared, his battlecry reverberating through the volcano's tunnels.
The massive Scotsman snaked around the Colonel like a red-haired dust-devil, Gerhardt's modified Mauser barking as he charged the armored Nazis. MacLeod knew the pistol's soft lead nine-millimeter rounds wouldn't scratch the armor, but he wasn't aiming at the men.
Instead, the rounds he fired hammered into their weapons. Their MG-42's were made from thin stamped steel, and their belt-feeds crumpled under the barrage. The three closest krauts raised their weapons to mow down MacLeod and the rest of the emerging officials, only to find their guns impotent.
MacLeod's Mauser clicked empty, and he threw it at a fourth panzerritter, the man with the leering totenkopf painted on his faceplate. The impact distracted him long enough for MacLeod to slam full-speed into two of the Nazis with ruined weapons.
The huge Scotsman's muscles bulged as he caught the two around their waists, rocking them back far enough that their heavy armor did the rest of the work. Once off their delicate balance, the Nazis couldn't anything but flail as they fell, slamming to the stone floor with three hundred pounds of hardened steel on top of them.
The next panzerritter was ready. He threw his mangled gun at MacLeod's feet, tripping the charging warrior with four feet and thirty pounds of metal, wood, and ammunition. MacLeod took a dive, but Lucky was hard on his heels, bringing that blood-stained clipboard around like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and the rest of the Murderers' Row were all rolled into one swing.
He slammed panzerritter's faceplate, spinning it halfway around his head and leaving him blind with his bell rung. The Nazi stumbled and tripped over his own boots, catching the floor face-first. The heavier the armor, the harder they fall, and Lucky swore he heard ribs crack when the kraut met the black stone.
Lucky's follow-through kept him moving, and he fell to his knee, hard. He looked up to find the skull-faced panzerritter had collected himself after being beaned in the melon by MacLeod's knuckleball Mauser. He reared back and planted a steel-toed boot in Lucky's chest that hit like a body shot from a jackhammer.
Lucky's diaphragm spasmed and he dropped like a sack of crap, struggling for breath. The three panzerritters left standing pulled back the charging handles on their MG-42's and settled their sights on Lucky's face. Hydraulic lines within their armor groaned as they brought the heavy machine guns to bear.
Lucky looked down the long barrel and past the iron sights to the grinning painted skull. He was sure the kraut had that same grin on his Aryan face behind the mask.
The Germans barked muffled orders, but Lucky couldn't catch a work of it. Behind him, MacLeod had gotten back to his feet and braced himself to charge the three panzerritters unarmed. Before he could leap into action, the Colonel yelled at him.
“Corporal!” he yelled, “Disengage!”
None of the fire died down in his green eyes, but MacLeod's ropey muscles eased their way back into his arms and neck, and the red flush in his face faded back to his usual freckled tan.
Colonel Halistone casually whipped the SS straight saber from the dead panzerritter's faceplate, then slowly laid it on the ground next to him. The dead man, still standing, quivered for a second, but the groan of hydraulic pistons kept the armor frozen around the dead Nazi. Without any internal commands for movement, the steel shell had become a standing sarcophagus.
The furthest panzerritter in the group, the squad leader with the SS lightning runes proudly emblazoned on his shoulder pauldrons, Sturmmann Meyer, stepped forward, MG-42 unwavering from its target: a spot about half an inch above Lucky's left eyebrow. Pistons hissed with every heavy step and his finger never left the machine gun's trigger. His voice was muffled behind the thick layers of faceplate and gas mask as he spoke in broken English to the Colonel.
“Hands to head, tommy,” the armored Nazi growled. “Or your friend, he is over.”
The Colonel smiled, and slowly, so the Nazi holding the huge gun to Lucky's head wouldn't spook, placed both hands on the back of his head.
“All of your men,” Meyer ordered, indicating he knew Bucket and Miller were still in the room.
“You heard him, gents.”
At the Colonel's word, Bucket and Miller walked out carrying Cão and Ajax over their shoulders. The two officials gingerly placed their wounded comrades on the floor, then Miller stood with gloved hands firmly intertwined behind his masked head. Bucket immediately turned and grabbed the thick hatch and slammed it closed, turning the locking wheel and cranking the door firmly shut. Bucket then took his place next to Miller with hands behind his head.
“Believe me, jerry,” he explained to Meyer, “Your boss is getting pretty twitchy in there.”
“Good thinking, Sergeant,” the Colonel acknowledged. They knew Gerhardt wouldn't be able to stop himself from tearing everyone to pieces, surrendered or not, enemy or countryman.
“Ruhe!” Meyer yelled, “Quiet!”
The Nazi examined his squad: one dead, frozen in his armor; three down, heavy armor crushing them when they fell with their disabled weapons; just himself and two others left combat operational. Before him, he had seven prisoners, two wounded. His superiors, Werner and Gerhardt, were in unknown condition.
Meyer was quick to issue tense orders to his men in German. One panzerritter disengaged, removing his machine gun sights from Lucky to clomp his way down the stone hallway. He every step clanked against the stone floor and sent a small belch of exhaust up to the ceiling. Meyer left his sights settled on Lucky's face. His skull-faced subordinate shifted his aim to the rest of the officials to discourage any further heroics.
“Where is Gerhardt?” Meyer demanded. His finger tensed on the trigger up when he asked.
Clanking boot steps echoed down the hall.
“I don't think you'll want to disturb him, Sturmmann.” the Colonel replied. “He is not himself right now.”
A slam shook the locked hatch behind him as if in response to his warning.
Meyer froze in place, his fear obvious even through his armor. He knew that the Vargulf could do and wasn't about to unleash that on himself or his men.
“You will need help, Sturmmann Meyer,” Miller advised. “I understand the Vargulf Korps has killed as many Germans as they have Allied soldiers.”
“Halt di Klappe!” Meyer snapped. He twisted around to watch his retreating man, still making his way down the long tunnel. Steel skidded against stone, nails on a chalkboard.
“Sturm-!” the distant panzerritter tried to shout, but his cry was cut off abruptly by a massive gunshot.
Despite the layers of bullet-proof panzerritter armor, a single shell punched through the Nazi's chest plate. The armored man lifted off his feet and dropped. The incredible impact shocked his hydraulic lines, sending vapor hissing out from between the steel plates as the corpse settled to the floor. He didn't look like a body, just a twisted pile of scrap.
Beyond the corpse, Lieutenant Edgard Neff, Official First Class, knelt on the hard stone floor, working a second fifty-caliber round into the chamber of his anti-tank rifle. A gang of eight Italians was with him, decked out in everything from stained work clothes and torn prisoner pyjamas to expensive silk suits. They brought an array of Thompsons and shotguns to their shoulders and fired down the hallway, pelting the two standing Nazis with hot lead.
Scores of rounds impacted the panzerritters with no hope of damaging their armor, but the distraction gave Lucky enough time to duck behind a fallen panzerritter before he could be shredded by an MG-42 or friendly fire.
The skull-faced Nazi brought his machine gun around to tear apart the attackers, but Neff had him in his sights.
His anti-tank roared a second time, and with a muzzle velocity of over half-a-mile per second, at a hundred yards the sound of the shot reached the panzerritter a fifth of a second after the tungsten-cored armor-piercing round did. It absolutely hollowed him.
Meyer dove aside as his last fighting man died, expertly rolling in his heavy armor. His motions were smooth and practiced, natural in a way that used the weight and momentum to his advantage and didn't leave him with concussions and broken bones. He landed the roll in a comfortable kneel with his weapon shouldered. He sought the group of unarmed officials down his sights. Instead, he found himself looking up at a dead man.
Bucket had leapt into action when the Italian barrage sent Meyer and his man scrambling.
While Lucky and the other officials dove for cover, he’d jumped onto the back of the dead-but-standing panzerritter, latching on like a baby possum. He worked his spindly fingers in beneath the Nazi's rear armor plate and wrenched it loose, letting it clatter to the floor.
Bucket only needed one look at the armor's internal mechanisms to understand how they worked. His left hand dove into the suit's innards, emerging with a handful of rubber hydraulic lines. The armor shifted as he supplied commands for it to respond to. One yank of the tubes made its pistons hiss and forced the walking sarcophagus to perform a hundred-eighty-degree turn. Meyer recovered from his tuck and roll to see it facing him. A second tug on another line brought the dead man's MG-42 to bear on the kneeling and damn shocked Nazi.
“And here she goes!” Bucket yelled. He yanked one last line, tearing it completely free as he dove off the back of the mechanical armor. Hydraulic fluid sprayed into the air as the dead panzerritter's finger squeezed the heavy machine gun's trigger.
At full rip, an MG-42 can put its entire two-hundred-fifty round belt down range in one riotous, sustained barrage lasting just over ten seconds. Every single one of these rounds slammed into Sturmmann Meyer, pounding his armor into junk.
When it was over, Meyer groaned inside his ruined armor. Blood oozed from bullet-pounded cracks in his faceplate. None of the rounds had pierced it, but he'd gotten the full punching bag treatment, with each impact knocking a little dent into the steel, little dents that had tenderized the man within. He shuddered, trying to keep his feet, but his bones creaked and his armor dragged him down to the black stone floor. Shallow, ragged breaths echoed behind his faceplate.
It took Lucky a minute to realize that everyone had stopped firing, Nazis, Italians, and officials alike.
With the machine gun out of his face, Lucky allowed himself to breathe again. He took a moment to calm down before pushing himself to his feet as Neff and the Italians reached the scene.
“I knew I could count on you, Edgard,” the Colonel said, clapping Neff on his hairy shoulder. The squat Frenchman lit one of his hand-rolled cigarettes, grunting. The Colonel turned to the Italians, holding his hand out to the hard-eyed leader, the man with the mustache who Lucky had seen cracking rocks on the slave road, saying: “I'm Colonel Halistone, of the Office. And you are Agent Boots, I presume?”
The big man took the Colonel's hand.
“I always hated that pseudonym,” he replied in a boisterous Chicago accent. “You know, my associates and I call Clay 'Agent Thirsty.'”
He repeated this in Italian to his assembled men, earning a hearty chuckle from the group.
“Giacomo Selvaggio, but back stateside everybody calls me 'Putter,'” the man said.
“Putter?” the Colonel asked.
“There’s a few folks out there that say I broke a golf club over a wise guy’s knee once,” Putter said, smirking. “But then again, it might be that 'Giacomo' is a mouthful, who’s to say?”
“Colonel,” Neff said, pulling the Colonel away from Putter and his men for a moment. “We were able to liberate a few things for you.”
“Ah, yes, your toys,” Putter said. He spoke in quick Italian, and three of his men set down the huge duffel bags they carried, revealing the contents.
“Ye bloomin' frog, ah could kiss ye!” MacLeod shouting, pulling his three-foot claymore sword from the closest bag.
Lucky's Garand and Sergeant Burke's Colt were in there too, along with his helmet and the silver-edged trench knife Woody had given him.
Neff paced, watching up and down the long hall while the squad strapped their holsters and weapons back on.
“This mountain is about to find out what we did, Colonel,” he said. “It is about to come down on our heads.”
“Agreed, Edgard,” the Colonel said. He finished fastening his triple Webley revolver holster to his right thigh and his cavalry sword to his left. “Any ideas on how we can make our exit?”
“That's where I come in, pal,” Putter spoke up. “My people have been underground in the labor camps since the government began rounding up the Jews and dissidents in 'thirty-eight. Took anyone who gave 'em trouble, see? Hell, for the camorra it was like the Prefetto de Ferro all over again, except they weren't sending us to jail, they were turning us into slave labor for the krauts.”
Putter shook his head.
“I digress. I been hip deep in every heavy labor project in Sicily and Italy, from Etna to Roma to Vesuvius. The Nazis may think this is their base, but Italians have lived at the base of the Dragon since before the Romans. This is our mountain.”
MacLeod, once again decked out in his medieval helmet, claymore in one hand and BAR in the other, cut Putter off:
“That's all flowers an' butterflies, lad, but it be time tae git our boots movin'. Gerhardt's awake, an' 'e sounds like 'e didn't get enough pluck in 'is 'aggis.”
Another powerful impact rattled the thick steel hatch in its stone frame. Claws squealed against the raw metal.
“Quickly!” the Colonel ordered, “Brace that door!”
Bucket and Lucky grabbed a pair of the disabled MG-42's from their groaning owners' hands and forced them crossways through the metal access wheel, jamming the hatch's locks shut. Even if the enraged Vargulf figured out how to open the hatch, he'd have to break through sixty pounds of gunmetal to do it.
“Enough fun for one evening, boys!” Putter shouted. “Let's move!”
He shouted orders in Italian to his men, who primed their weapons and took off down the long hallway.
MacLeod slung his broadsword across his back and took the unconscious Cão over his left shoulder in a fireman's carry, somehow still having enough strength to run with his twenty pound BAR leveled ahead of him and an oozing surgical wound in his arm. Miller and the Colonel carried Ajax between them. Miller sported his grease gun to cover their left while the Colonel had the right with his silver-loaded Webley Mark IV revolver.
Bucket stuck close to them, covering the wounded with custom Thompson.
That left Neff and Lucky to take up the rear. Lucky's thirty-cal Garand looking depressingly puny next to the tank-busting power of the Frenchman’s cannon.
They made it down the hall and were turning the corner before they heard the ominous shriek of shearing metal.
The two locked eyes at the sound. They both knew what it was: Gerhardt had just torn through the two machine guns barring the hatch.
“Run!” Neff barked.
A roar quaked down the hallway and around the corner behind them, inhuman and furious.
Lucky put on the gas, but he knew he would't be able to outrun a Vargulf for long.
“Ford!” Neff yelled as he ran.
“What?” Lucky shouted back, confused and pre-occupied.
“Drop your helmet!” he yelled.
“I just it back,” Lucky wheezed.
“Do it now!” Neff snapped. Lucky didn't argue, he unbuckled the leather strap under his chin and dropped his steel pot behind him. It bounced on the stone floor.
“What was that for?” Lucky asked, though he didn't really care. He had to keep moving.
“There he is,” Neff said between heavy breaths. The Frenchman stopped dead and turned, bringing his massive rifle to his shoulder.
Lucky nearly bowled him over but spun aside and skidded to a halt to see Gerhardt, the cross scar burnt pink through his black fur, bound around the corner, running on all fours like a rabid dog. The harpoon wound in his shoulder had sealed itself shut, courtesy of the Vargulf serum.
Lucky recovered and started firing his Garand. The few rounds that connected bounced off Gerhardt's bulletproof pelt one after the other.
Neff watched the Vargulf through his sights. He steadied the rifle’s five-foot-long barrel, exhaled, and squeezed its trigger. It roared and blasted a fifty-cal silver shell down the hall.
Gerhardt kept his bloodshot eyes locked on Neff's sights. When he saw the trigger squeeze, he bounded to the side. The supersonic shell whipped past him and exploded through the wall at the far end of the tunnel.
The Vargulf surged forward.
Neff pulled back the bolt, fed a fresh round into the chamber, aimed, and fired again. Gerhardt watched his aim and once more dodged just as Neff pulled the trigger.
The Frenchman, now with less than fifty yards between himself and the charging Vargulf, pulled the bolt again, ejected a spent pony-bottle-size cartridge, and rammed a third round into the chamber. This time Neff aimed low and fired.
Gerhardt anticipated the shot, leaping high over the silver bullet.
The Vargulf would have been on them in an instant if he had been what Neff was shooting at.
With Gerhardt in mid-air, Neff's soft silver round collided with the crown of Lucky's discarded helmet, dropped in the center of the floor.
Gerhardt was directly over the helmet when silver met steel. The round shattered, sending red-hot silver shrapnel in every direction.
A half-dozen centimeter-long slivers tore into Gerhardt's legs and abdomen, impacting with geysers of scalding pink steam. The Vargulf yelped in pain and shock, landing off-balance on wounded legs. He stumbled and fell, catching the stone floor face-first.
Gerhardt scrabbled back to his feet and watched Neff work the rifle's bolt a third time, ejecting the spent shell. Gerhardt snarled, bright sizzling stars cascading from his mangled legs and stomach. He was staring straight at Lucky, his breath shaking in his barrel chest. The sparks died down in his wounds, but steaming blood continued to gurgle through his pelt to bubble black against the floor.
The Nazi tensed, piling his muscles back like a cat preparing to pounce. Lucky was afraid the Vargulf would attack, even without any chance to dodging Neff's next point-blank shot. His enraged eyes never left Lucky.
Lucky slowly shifted the Garand to his back, hanging it from its leather strap. He returned the monster's stare, unsheathing the silver trench knife from his boot and keeping its gleaming edge between himself and the Vargulf. The two stood mesmerized, never letting their gaze waver.
Neff slammed the bolt forward, shocking the pair from their trance. He pointed the anti-tank gun straight at Gerhardt's chest, leaving the beast no chance of escape. Not even a Vargulf would be able to dodge a shot at this range.
The Nazi roared again, then leapt backward, landing with a whimper to lope in painful zig-zags back down the hallway he had come from. The Frenchman tracked Gerhardt's retreat with his rifle until he had disappeared around the corner. Satisfied Gerhardt had been cowed, he finally stood and brushed off his knee, then began to whistle a cheerful tune as he strolled back down the hall, following Gerhardt's retreat.
“You let him go?” Lucky asked, astounded that Neff, of all people, wouldn't have put the Vargulf down on the spot.
“Ford, do you play poque?” he asked, using a French term Lucky wasn't familiar with.
“Play what?” Lucky asked.
“Poker, in America.” he translated.
“What, why?” Lucky wondered, more confused than before.
“Because I would enjoy playing you,” the stocky Frenchman answered. He picked up Lucky's ruined helmet and tossed it to him. Lucky caught it and examined it. Neff's massive bullet had hit at the perfect angle to burst against the thin steel rather than punch straight through.
“How's that?” Lucky wondered.
Neff didn't answer, he only smiled and pulled the box magazine from his rifle. It was empty.
“What the hell?” Lucky asked.
The frog had bluffed him.
Gerhardt was the leader of the Vargulf Korps, a proud Nazi, an unrepentant cannibal, and one of Department Three's most merciless killing machines, and Neff had forced him to retreat using an empty gun.
Neff slung the anti-tank rifle over his shoulder and drew his backup gun, a diminutive French MAB D pistol.
“Let's go, Ford,” he said, “In this mountain, the Italiens are as swift as foxes in their own dens. If we lose them, we are lost.”
Lucky nodded, and they took off in the direction they'd last seen the officials and their insurgent rescuers go. They knew that Gerhardt wouldn't give up so easily, and soon he'd have the entirety of the Vargulf Korps hunting the officials through the mountain's guts, along with the rest of Department Three and the surviving Panzerritter Korps.
As Neff and Lucky neared one last blind corner, a sharp explosion rocked the hallway. A concussive wave of pulverized volcanic dust rolled around the bend and over them, nearly sending them to the floor. They both covered their faces by instinct, desperate to keep sharp black fragments out of their eyes and noses.
Neff grabbed Lucky's shoulder and dragged him up and over to the corner to brace against the stone wall. The Frenchman pointed around the bend with his pistol and then held up three fingers and began a silent countdown.
Three, Lucky nodded and reached for the leather holster on his right hip.
Two, he pulled Sergeant Burke's old Colt 1911 and made sure it was ready.
One, he drew a deep breath and tensed up, ready to charge.
Neff and Lucky rushed around the corner, pistols leveled and ready to drop any Nazis in sight. Instead, they found themselves staring down the barrel of a trio of Tommy guns. Putter, Bucket, and another Italian were waiting next to a dark opening in the otherwise blank rock face of a dead end tunnel. Gravel and dust was still falling from its ceiling. Beyond, Lucky could hear the other officials huffing and shouting in the pitch blackness.
“I almost stitched you boys up,” Putter grunted around a stogie. He put up his gun and asked: “Were you followed?”
“Not for long,” Neff replied.
“Good,” Putter grunted.
“Throttle down there, boys," Bucket said, and Neff and Lucky holstered their weapons. “Had to blow that wall to expose the escape tunnel Putter’s people built over here. He says it's a smooth run and a straight shot out of here.”
“So don't just stand there, ya mooks!” Putter snapped. He waved at the tunnel with the barrel of his submachine gun. “Keep walking 'til you get out. My boys have a couple trucks waiting to take us down to the water. Get going.”
Lucky followed Neff into the dark tunnel. They were careful to step over Bucket and the Italian's work: they'd begun wiring the tunnel's mouth with enough TNT to bring down the western half of the mountain.
The escape tunnel had been hand-carved out of volcanic stone like the rest of the base, but it was unfinished. The people who'd dug it in secret didn’t paint it white or rig it with ventilation and lights like the rest of the base. Lucky put out his left hand out and dragged his fingers across the stone wall as he plunged forward, using his sense of touch to guide himself once the diminishing light from the mouth of the tunnel had dwindled to nothing.
Lucky and Neff were deep into the blackness beneath the mountain before all hell broke loose.
A deafening air-raid siren began howling through the hallways, sending ear-splitting echoes up the escape tunnel. The light leaking through the entrance, a white star now smaller than a dime, became blood red.
“That's our cue!” Putter yelled. The tunnel carried voices like the men they belonged to were right behind Lucky and Neff. “Hoof it, boys!”
Lucky and Neff didn't need an invitation. They began sprinting down the black tunnel.
“All done!” Bucket's shout echoed. Stomping boot steps thundered up and down the tunnel, louder even than the siren.
More shouting, German now, joined the cacophony, but that was overwhelmed by Putter belting out a long string of Italian curses then opening up with his Tommy gun. He ripped off about fifty rounds that silenced the Nazi voices.
“Thirty seconds,” Putter yelled. “Grow some cogliones and move your ass!”
The red light blinked as kraut soldiers crossed in front of the tunnel. Muzzle flashes winked behind them, and pulverized stone splashed at Lucky's feet.
“Just stand there for another second, michones...” Putter huffed, taunting them while maintaining a desperate sprint.
The four bundles of dynamite exploded around the SS troops, vaporizing the closest Nazis and burying the rest in shattered igneous rock.
A wall of black dust roared down the tunnel, whipping around all of the escapees and choking out the pinprick of light far ahead with a thick cloud of airborne stone.
It took another six minutes at a full-out run for Lucky and Neff to reach the end of the tunnel and emerge into the fresh morning air. Lucky collapsed into a dusty heap as soon as he saw the stars.
The eastern sky was glowing orange over the cone of Vesuvius as the sun rose behind it, while the western horizon bled red. Naples was burning. The stars were beginning to retreat as the sun made its final push up and over the ancient peak.
Colonel Halistone jumped off a truck's tailgate and trotted over. Lucky pushed himself to his feet.
“Sir,” Lucky said.
“I am sorry I brought you here, Lucky,” the Colonel said as he brushed at the thick layer of black dust on Lucky'd shoulders and back. He quickly saw it was of no use and gave up. He sighed, then said:
“These things we fight, no one should have to see them. We will return you to your unit as soon as we can.”
“I'm the only one left,” Lucky said to himself after the Colonel wandered away to check on Cão and Ajax.
The men and women of the Office made a terrible sacrifice on behalf of those who would live on: an official chose to live with the knowledge of the evil that people were capable of. These officials would find no peace after this war, not with the horrors they had seen and the losses they'd experienced.
The Office chose to take on that damnation so no one else had to.
If the world saw what they had seen, there would never be peace again.
Neff patted Lucky on the back. He’d already lit up and cigarette and was billowing smoke.
“Come sit, Ford,” he said, motioning to the truck, waiting just like Putter said it would be. “The world is heavy thing for one man.”
The small Frenchman hopped up on the back of the tailgate, a cargo truck labeled 'Fabbrica di Pescatori di Mano Nera' with a picture of a cartoon fish. Neff held his calloused hand out. Lucky took it and let Neff lift him up.
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Copyright © 2022 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.
Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Dudu Torres.