by David Wood
“What’s the reward for that?” Willis growled as he came forward, his weapon at the ready. He circled around the desk, aimed the muzzle down, and fired again.
Bones shook himself, and rounded the desk from the opposite side. Telesh lay motionless, the Blutfahne partially covering him like a shroud.
Willis stared down at the tableau. “Man, I am so sick of this Nazi voodoo bullcrap,”
“Amen, brother,” Bones murmured. He lowered his rifle, letting it hang from its sling, and took an incendiary grenade from a pouch on his tactical vest. “Only one thing left to do now.”
Willis gave a nod of approval, but then pointed to something on the floor, just partially covered by the flag. “What’s that?”
Bones nudged the fabric aside to reveal a handheld satellite phone. The LCD display and buttons were lit up, indicating an open line. Bones knelt and picked it up. The display showed a call in progress, the time elapsed just ticking over two minutes. He held it to his ear and heard someone shouting demands in Russian. He dropped the phone to the floor and smashed it under one heel. “Son of a bitch got a call off. How long do you think we’ve got?”
Willis shrugged. “I guess it depends on who he called. If it was his friend in the SVR, then I guess as long as it takes for a helicopter to get here from the nearest army base. half an hour, maybe?”
Bones was thinking more like fifteen minutes. Either way, they had to get clear of the house and back to the beach, ASAP. He keyed his mic. “Maddock, you finished up down there?”
There was silence for a few seconds, then a voice that wasn’t Maddock’s squawked in his ear. “The boss is a little tied up at the moment.”
“Well, tell him to quit screwin’ around. Objective one is done, but the bad guy got a call out before we could shut him down. Clock is ticking. We need to bug out, now.”
“I’ll tell him.”
Willis pointed to the grenade. “Once that pops, this whole place will go up in about thirty seconds.”
“Your point?”
“If there are helos inbound and they see this place burning like the mother of all bonfires, they ain’t gonna stop and check it out. They won’t even land. They’ll just start looking for us.”
Bones knew his friend was right. They needed to buy as much time for their exfiltration as possible. The five or so minutes it would take for the Russians to search the house might mean the difference between a clean getaway and another FUBAR firefight.
But that left him with a more immediate problem. “Well we can’t leave this thing here.” He kicked the Blood Flag with his toe. “And I sure as hell am not bringing it along.”
Willis gave a sympathetic nod then shrugged. “Sorry, brother. I got nothing.”
“Son of a bitch,” Bones snarled. He shoved the incendiary grenade back into its pouch, and then drew his Recon One combat knife. “Next best thing.”
He was loath to touch the flag—even without its possibly supernatural cachet, it was a symbol of one of the vilest ideologies that had ever existed—so instead he placed a boot heel on one corner of the flag to hold it in place. Then, he began slashing back and forth.
As sharp as the blade was, it snagged and stuttered across the fabric. The white circle and black swastika came apart easily, but the red cloth underneath resisted the edge like it had been woven from steel wool. Instead of sectioning the Blutfahne, he succeeded only in perforating it. But with each cut, he felt his revulsion slackening. Maybe the damage he was doing, limited though it was, was weakening its power. He sheathed the blade, then picked up the flag in his gloved hands and pulled at one of the frayed cuts. Once more, the fabric resisted his efforts, but he didn’t relent, and after several seconds, it yielded, tearing down the middle.
He found another weak spot and began tearing again.
“Give me half,” Willis said.
Bones passed one of the sections over. Working together they managed to reduce the most sacred relic of the Third Reich to eight swatches no bigger than hand towels. The process had taken a full minute, and left them both exhausted.
“That’s gonna have to do it,” Willis announced, letting the pieces fall to the floor. “Time to boogie.”
Bones looked down at the fragments, wishing he could do more, but Willis was right. They had reached a point of diminishing returns. Any more time spent defacing the Nazi symbol would defeat the purpose of not simply setting it on fire. But did he dare leave it? For that matter, should they bring it with them? That was after all what the CIA had, in an oblique fashion, ordered them to do. What if someone stitched the pieces together again? Would the flag retain its mystical power to sway hearts and seduce the masses?
“Bones!” Willis said, almost shouting. “Gotta go.”
Bones allowed the pieces he held to fall onto Telesh’s body. Willis nodded, satisfied with his response and started for the exit. Bones followed, but as he was about to re-enter the bedroom, inspiration dawned.
“Hey,” he called out. “Go on without me. I’ll be just a sec.”
Willis glanced back, flashing an irritated look. “Dude, we need to go.”
“Exactly,” Bones said, and nodded toward the bathroom.
Maddock had managed to twist his falling body out from under his attacker so that, when they crashed onto the stairs, he was not crushed under Tweedledum’s massive bulk. The impact nevertheless felt like... Well, like falling six feet onto a flight of stairs.
Sharp pain flared in his recently patched up bullet wounds, and a duller ache throbbed up and down his body where it had met the treads of the stairwell, but aside from that everything still seemed to be functional. He had about a second to appreciate this before the massive figure lying next to him began to stir.
Oh, crap!
Tweedledum pushed up onto his elbows and turned to look at Maddock. The fury in his eyes was undiminished—if anything, the blood that dribbled from the corner of his mouth and the dust that streaked his face made him look even more unhinged. Maddock tried to scramble away, to put some distance between them, maybe give his teammates a chance to finish what he had started, but the Russian moved too fast. One of his massive paws caught Maddock and pulled him into a crushing bear hug.
Maddock twisted and shook, trying to loosen the man’s grip, but his thrashing only served to jostle them both from their precarious position. Unbalanced, the big man began rolling uncontrollably down the stairs, taking Maddock with him.
Each rotation was like falling from the landing all over again. Maddock winced and grunted and then could only gasp as the breath was squeezed out of him, but then, just as black spots began to swirl at the edge of his vision, the rolling stopped. Maddock lay atop the supine man. The embrace had loosened just enough for him to wrench his left arm free, and he immediately began to rain blows on Tweedledum’s unprotected head, aiming for ears and eyes. He was peripherally aware of his fellow SEALs—five or six of them—gathering around the combatants in a circle. He wanted to scream at them to just shoot the man, but knew they were holding back to avoid accidentally shooting him.
Then, after what seemed like forever—probably only a second or two—two of them set aside their rifles and moved in closer. Maddock couldn’t tell who, but he saw their hands grasping the Russian’s shoulders and legs in an attempt to pin him down, pry loose his deathgrip on Maddock. Tweedledum swatted them away disdainfully, and then, rolled over. For a moment, his bulk crushed against Maddock, but then the pressure eased as, with a titanic effort, the Russian heaved himself to his feet, arms thrown wide, bellowing like a bear.
A mortally wounded bear.
Maddock lay on the floor at his feet, staring up at the giant, unable to believe that he was free. He scrambled back, removing himself from the other SEALs’ line of fire, but before a single shot was fired, Tweedledum’s roar fell silent. His shirtfront was soaked through with blood which streamed from a pair of abdominal wounds, probably sustained when he had initially charged Maddock upstairs. He remained upright, tottering sl
ightly on his feet, but the fury had left his eyes, and after a couple more seconds, he toppled forward.
The SEALs who had earlier attempted to tag team with Maddock now moved in to help him to his feet. He heard them asking questions—“Are you all right? Can you move?”—but he couldn’t seem to find the breath to answer. He managed to raise a hand, as if to say, Give me a second.
Someone else called out from behind him—Matt James, the platoon comms guru. “Boss, Bones is trying to call you.”
Maddock wondered why he hadn’t received that transmission, and then realized that he’d lost his earpiece in the melee. He shook his head, unable to put this discovery into words.
James spoke again, but not to Maddock. “The boss is a little tied up at the moment.” There was a pause, then, “I’ll tell him.” James moved in closer. “Bones says they nailed OBJ one, but he might have gotten a call out. We need to exfil.”
Maddock drew in a ragged breath, nodded. “Okay.” The word was barely a whisper. He tried again, and this time managed a decent volume. “Okay. Give the signal. We’re done here.”
As James relayed the message, Maddock looked around, retrieving his rifle and other bits of equipment that had been lost during the struggle with Tweedledum. It was imperative that they leave behind nothing that could be definitively linked to the United States. He found his radio earpiece amidst the rubble of the balustrade—the cord had been yanked out by the roots—and stuffed it in a pocket.
Willis appeared above him, descending the stairs with the rest of the second story assault element in tow, save for one conspicuous absence. “Where’s Bones?”
Willis grinned. “Taking care of business. He’ll catch up.”
Business? Maddock wondered, and then understood. The Blutfahne.
Bones descended only a few seconds later, a grim smile on his face.
Maddock looked up at him. “Did you burn it?”
“Nah. Came up with an even better idea.” For a moment, Maddock wondered if his friend had perhaps fallen under the spell of Helen’s Charm, and at the end, had chosen to selfishly keep its power for himself, but then Bones elaborated. “It’s where it deserves to be. Let’s just say that no one is going to call it the Blood-Stained Flag ever again.”
Maddock stared at him quizzically for a few seconds and then understood. “You didn’t.”
Bones’ grin widened. “I did.”
Despite feeling like he’d been run over by a bus, Maddock couldn’t help but laugh. “Good. Let’s get out of here.”
EPILOGUE
The Pentagon—Two weeks later
Maddock looked up at the sound of an opening door, prepared to jump to his feet if he spied brass. When the door to his left—the one that exited into a corridor on the B-Ring—swung open and he spied Willis, looking impressive in his immaculate dress blue uniform, Maddock relaxed, but only a little. Willis was alone.
“Where is he?” Maddock whispered. “Is he coming?”
Willis stepped inside the small waiting room, closed the door and came over to sit beside Maddock. “Couldn’t find him. His place is cleaned out. I think maybe he went back home to the Res.”
“Damn him.” Maddock slumped in his chair. He had covered for Bones a lot in the past, mostly in the early days, before they had become friends. As the years had piled up, Bones had matured—in his own way at least—and while he had never completely lost his irreverent edge, he had always been able to tone down his puerile impulses when orders or the mission required it. But since returning from Russia, Bones had spiraled into something that a psychiatrist would probably have diagnosed as depression. He’d been drinking more and showing up less. Three days previously, he had not even bothered to call in.
They had all been in a holding pattern, uncertain of what fate awaited them professionally, to say nothing of personally. Their Agency handler had not been at all happy to learn that they had returned without the Blutfahne—Maddock had not provided a full account of Bones’ unique solution for disposing of it, but had only indicated that it had been destroyed in the raid and was unrecoverable. He didn’t think the CIA would take punitive action against them for this perceived failure, but no sooner had they offloaded their gear in the team room at Dam Neck when Maxie called them into his office and took them off operational status. Maddock had told Maxie the whole story, but that had not changed anything. From that point forward, they had been more or less on their own, required to report daily to the team room. No training, no special duty—just show up and sit there until day’s end.
This was not exactly a punishment. Maddock had already submitted his letter of resignation prior to leaving for Moscow, and everything that had happened subsequently had only deepened his conviction that it was time to move on. Bones and Willis had both expressed similar disillusionment with their military careers. Like Maddock, they had grave doubts about who the good guys were. Unlike Maddock, they were contractually obligated to serve out their term of service—two more years for Willis, sixteen months for Bones. There were other jobs in the navy, duty stations where they could mark time until their enlistments were up, provided of course that the brass was willing to let them go.
Maddock was beginning to wonder about that however. The things they had discovered, the dark secrets they knew—like the identity of the bodies that were buried under the rubble of a Cape Cod on Savile Lane—were things that the government dared not allow them to reveal. They were of course legally prohibited from sharing classified information with anyone, even after leaving the service, but keeping them under orders, under the government’s thumb, was one way to ensure their compliance. Sending them off to rot in the disciplinary barracks at Fort Leavenworth was another.
Maddock suspected this meeting they had been summoned to would resolve his doubts, one way or another. Bones’ decision to ignore orders and drop off the radar all but guaranteed a bad outcome for him.
The interior door—the one on the opposite side of the room opened, and both Maddock and Willis jumped up and snapped to attention. Maxie backed through the doorway, his gaze on the unseen figures inside. He maintained this orientation until he was clear of the doorway, as if afraid to turn his back on the room’s occupants, and then closed the door firmly. Only then did he turn to face his subordinates. There was a manila folder in his left hand. He stared at Maddock and Willis for a moment, his face an unreadable mask, then spoke. “Where the hell is Bonebrake?”
Maddock swallowed, then gave the only answer he could. The truth. “UA, sir.”
UA—Unauthorized Absence—was the navy’s equivalent of AWOL—absent without leave. It wasn’t as serious as desertion, but could still result in fines, reduction in rank, or confinement.
Maxie stared back at him, gave a grunt of acknowledgement, then turned his attention to the folder. He opened it to reveal several type-written pages, collated into three packets. He passed one each to Maddock and Willis, and then, after a moment’s consideration, handed the remaining packet to Maddock as well. “When you see him, give him this.”
Maddock looked down at the cover sheet. It bore the Seal of the Navy, and looked very official. He skimmed it, looking for words like “ordered to report” and “Leavenworth,” but if they were present, he did not see them. The formal legalistic language contained in the body of the missive defied comprehension at a glance.
“Sir, what is this?”
“Your golden ticket,” Maxie said, and for the first time since their return from Russia, Maddock saw his CO smile. “Effective immediately, you three jokers are civilians again.”
Maddock glanced over at Willis, unable to believe his ears, then returned his attention to Maxie. “Honorable discharges?”
Maxie chuckled and shook his head. “Even better. You’re retired. Full pension and benefits.”
“That’s...” Maddock was momentarily speechless.
Willis was similarly dumbfounded. “But I’ve still got six more years on my twenty.”
“Not
any more you don’t.” Maxie let that settle in, then went on. “Technically, the DOD reserves the right to recall, but I wouldn’t worry about that too much.”
Maddock’s elation at the good news was dampened a little at this caveat. “And I suppose this is all contingent on us keeping our mouths shut about what really happened.”
Maxie shrugged. “You’d have to do that, regardless. This whole thing is classified and compartmented. Talk about it and you lose more than just your health insurance. That said, there is another NDA in there which you will have to sign and notarize before you leave this building.” When Maddock didn’t respond, he sighed. “Dane, this is a win. You got what you wanted. You’re out. Go live your life.”
Willis grinned and gave the papers a dramatic snap. “Hells, yeah.” Then, as if remembering who he was talking to, he returned to attention. “Permission to depart, sir?”
“What are you asking me for? I’m not your boss.”
Willis snapped a salute, then did an about face and exited the waiting room.
Maddock continued to stare at the papers in disbelief. Finally, he met Maxie’s gaze. “Doesn’t it bother you? Keeping this a secret?”
Maxie seemed to think about his answer for a long time. “Yeah. It sucks.”
Maddock didn’t know how to respond to that, so he didn’t. He just shook his head and turned for the door.
“Hey, Dane!”
He paused, looked back.
“Keep in touch, okay?”
Once the ink on the notary stamp affixed to the exhaustive non-disclosure agreement was dry, Maddock exited the Pentagon and started walking toward the bus terminal to the southwest, even though he had no idea where he was going next. He considered catching a ride across the river to the National Mall. Maybe he would drop in and surprise Melissa with his news. She would, he knew, be overjoyed to learn that he was no longer going to be risking his life on a daily basis.
Maybe that was the thing that had always kept him from putting a ring on her finger.
