Portals in Time 3

by Michael Beals

  “What the hell? The Germans might be evil and ruthless, but I’ve never known them to be cowards.” Kat froze, half out of her foxhole.

  “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Let’s go, phase two!” Captain Steele raised his rifle as the rest of the well-concealed northern fire team lit up the truck drivers below, all of whom were easy targets as they huddled together for safety on the exposed northern side of their vehicles.

  Less than ten seconds later, Steele stood straight up in his hole. “All clear, ceasefire! Dixon, stay here and cover us. The rest of you, follow me!” He looped a satchel charge over his back and dashed off towards the six idling five-ton prizes. Just as they had rehearsed, no one had fired a single shot into an engine block, fuel tank, or tire.

  As soon as the gang reached the trucks, Steele double-tapped a struggling survivor, ignoring his Italian uniform. He bounded into the rear of the lead truck and dived out a second later without his bomb sack, making a beeline for the driver’s seat.

  “Remember to set the charges with a twenty-minute delay. We need them to sink all the way to the bottom of the bay before going off.”

  From the last truck, Major Trufflefoot’s wobbly voice broke the chain of excited affirmations. “Oh, dear God. Everyone, crack open your crates!”

  A bead of sweat that had nothing to do with the sun trickled down Kat’s brow. She slid out of the cab and clambered back into the cargo bed. With a few quick butt-strokes, she pounded the padlock’s clasp off and cursed into the giant wooden box. Kat disarmed her demo charge and shrugged the deadly purse over her back.

  She dallied a whole half-second, gawking at the emptiness inside, before swan-diving out the tailgate. “Extract! It’s a trap...”

  Sergeant Dore tilted his ear to the sky. “Incoming!” He snagged Kat’s wrist and forced her into a shallow drainage ditch on the side of the road.

  The first salvo of six 155mm artillery rounds flew way over their heads… and struck with pinpoint precision against the southeastern firing position. Captain Steele gritted his teeth, shaking with professional rage as the proximity fuses detonated seven meters above the ground. Even if his men managed to get low in their holes, the artillery shells would shower them in steel rain, instead of bursting in the ground and wasting most of their power.

  “Go, go! Back to the fort!”

  Trufflefoot shouted as he ran. “What about the other firing position? That’s half your men! We can’t abandon—”

  A second volley rocked the doomed ambushers and shut him up. He and Kat followed Steele’s lead and slid back into their foxholes in the old fort, just as a third volley devastated the abandoned five-tons on the road. The six shells, each packed full of 70 pounds of High Explosives with a 50-meter wide kill radius, landed in a perfectly spaced-out line along the highway. Steele hollered over the shrapnel zinging millimeters above his head.

  “We still have one Chevy and your Willy. Hitting a moving target with arty is hard as hell. Mount up, but stay low and on the backside of the hill!”

  Atkins and an LRDG private skidded down the ridge on their butts towards the camouflaged vehicles on the ridge’s reverse slope, as Sergeant Dore jerked his thumb down the road.

  “Won’t be able to dodge them, sir.” Dore snagged Capson with his MG42 machine gun and untangled the belts of rounds trailing in his wake. “Give me that thing, Corporal. I’ll cover the retreat.”

  Steele flicked his binos towards a dozen well-armed, custom rigged trucks blazing down the highway and fanning out. “Well, well. Those aren’t Germans. AS.42s, like a cross between a jeep and a light truck. Must be the Compagnie Auto-Avio-Sahariane—the Macaroni version of the Long Range Desert Group. Looks like they finally brought in some pros.”

  As his trucks backed up the hill and Atkins blared a horn, Steele huddled in a quick conference with the last four members of his original patrol. Several of the haggard men shot suspicious glances at Kat before shaking hands with their Commander and mounting up. Even Dore squeezed the Captain’s shoulder, his eyes clouding up with the strangest wetness.

  “Steele! Quit the damn macho routine and get in. We can all—”

  “Incoming!”

  Captain Steele scooped Kat up and flung her like a doll headfirst into the jeep. Before she could move or cuss, Atkins popped the clutch and roared down the hill towards the pristine beach below. The Captain disappeared into an old hole in the ancient fortress just as the small hilltop evaporated under more steel rain.

  “Where… to?!” Atkins screamed as the jeep went airborne, something metal on metal screeching when they slammed back down to earth.

  Trufflefoot shot a hand to his face, covering up his yet again spouting nose after it bounced off the machine gun’s swaying muzzle. “East! Try to get back to the oasis, and we’ll get some directions from the Bedouins…”

  Twin riiips from Capson’s machine guns, inches from his ears, drowned him out, and Kat followed the tracers, from both her jeep and the ANZAC Chevy trailing them, back to the ruined fort. Three heavily armed Italian recon vehicles, basically armored cars without a roof, crested the ridge less than three hundred meters away and perched right on top of Captain Steele’s final resting place.

  For a final touch of overkill, one of them spun a giant 47mm anti-tank gun in their direction.

  “Too late! Slow down so I can aim.” Capson poured all his concentration into his fire, but not a single round struck within ten yards of the target.

  “Hell no! You see that deep wadi ahead?” Dore clambered over the fuel cans in the jeep’s center bay and jammed a bleeding finger straight ahead. “I don’t care if it’s a dead end. That’s the only cover around. Burn out the transmission if you have to, but get us in there as fast as you—”

  A geyser fountained directly in front of them just as Dore sat up and tried to twist around. Atkins jerked the wheel fast enough to avoid the crater, but not the laws of physics. With only a howl, Dore tumbled face-first over the jeep’s tailgate into the spewing sand plume behind the tires.

  Kat wrapped herself around the big man’s waist, using all her weight to keep his legs inside. Dore howled even louder at the moon while his head swung between the mud flaps. After a far too long moment of shock, Trufflefoot and Capson scurried over and hauled him up. Dore flopped over on his side, gasping and dry heaving dust.

  “Now that’s just embarrassing—suffocating in the middle of a firefight! What would your mum think?” Kat chuckled over him and splashed a canteen in his face.

  “What’s so bloody funny about this? We’ll never outrun that gun!”

  Kat batted doe eyes at the fading hilltop and sighed. “What gun?”

  Far behind them, a phoenix rose from the rubble. The lightning-fast silhouette dashed behind the first two AS.42s, cooking off and wedging a hand grenade into the fuel cans strapped to the sides. The crews whipped up their weapons, but both jeeps erupted in little volcanoes before they could get a shot off.

  The three Italian’s manning the anti-tank gun on the last car missed the show. They didn’t even have a chance to appreciate the beauty of that gorgeous Maori war ax glinting in the sun before Captain Steele diced them into so much pepperoni.

  Dore whistled as several more enemy vehicles circled around the hill from the west, charging towards from the beachside. “Damn, that evened the odds some. Let’s turn around and take out these guys and maybe…”

  Even as he mussed, Steele hand-cranked his new 47mm toy straight down and blasted the first Auto-Saharan Company car into history. The rest scattered, temporarily abandoning the chase to rake the hill with cannon and machine gun fire. Dozens of troops dismounted, but not one charged up the ridge.

  Steele’s silhouette staggered under the barrage, and he fastidiously reloaded the gun without pause. Kat ground her teeth and forced herself to look away. “We have to keep going, or it was all for nothing.”

  A triple volley of 18 artillery rounds freight-trained in and smothered the old redoubt, the e
ndless ka-rumps drowning out even the engine’s strained whining. The crews of both vehicles drudged on in silence for the last two kilometers before the wadi.

  Everyone except for Kat.

  Growling to herself, she rummaged around the jeep’s meager supplies while Dore gently patted her back. With a few quick snips from wire cutters under the seat, she stripped the detonator wire from her satchel purse.

  “Hand me that saw, would you, Sergeant?”

  Dore shook his head and slid over their only hacksaw, anyway. Kat snapped the saw’s blade from the handle and wrapped the detonator’s exposed copper wire snugly around the flimsy metal’s mounting hole. With a few wild slashes of her bayonet, she freed the inner rubber tube out of their shredded spare tire and threaded the saw blade and wire assembly inside.

  “Is that supposed to be a pressure plate? Kat, we don’t have time for this.” Despite his mumbling, Dore didn’t lift a finger to stop her. Seconds later, the two fleeing vehicles slipped into the relative safety of the dry riverbed. About twenty yards farther, when the high banks clustered overhead barely wide enough for the jeep to pass, Kat whistled at Atkins.

  “Hold up. Give me a quick second.” She stalked out while Dore murmured, “Kat…”

  “The Captain was a simple man. I think this is the only eulogy he would have cared for.” Kat locked eyes with the stone-faced New Zealander’s waiting in the truck behind her.

  “You boys might want to go around first. Lady Luck is being extra bitchy today.”

  The Chevy driver smirked and tossed her a salute as Dixon chucked her an entrenching tool in passing. She dug a narrow, shallow trench out of the jeep’s track and placed the wired inner tube inside. With a couple more strokes of the shovel, she buried the ten-pound demolition bag in a small hole between the pairs of vehicle tracks. Kat ever so gently tossed a few handfuls of sand over the pressure plate, just barely enough to hide it, before twisting the arming knob on the detonator and covering it as well.

  She skipped away in a hurry. The rest of the crews held their collective breaths, not risking a single movement that might trigger the ghetto-rigged IED. Major Trufflefoot grabbed her wrist and hefted Kat on board. He forced out a thin grin.

  “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, eh?”

  Oberführer Pernass barked from his open-top Volkswagen Kübelwagen at the Italian troops charging up the devastated hill. “Damn the dead! Finish off the survivors if you want your men’s sacrifice to mean something!”

  The Auto-Savannah Commander snarled, blowing a whistle at the rest of his men. Technically, the Oberführer was just an advisor. Not even in the same army. Theoretically, that ghoul had no authority over him.

  Of course, theoretically, the devil was also supposed to stay in hell.

  Pernass bucked up and down as the Italians rallied and dallied. He kicked the back of the driver’s seat, shooting a bony finger at the two LRDG trucks slipping inside the wadi three clicks away.

  “Let’s go! Get me there first.” Pernass personally manned the fifty-caliber machine gun with one hand while chirping in his radio with the other. “Captain Sparmann! Release the dogs!”

  A line of well-armored half-tracks, all bulging with desert camo-clad SS men, clanked around from the other side of the hill. They roared through the Italians without the slightest pause, sideswiping more than one of the AS.42 cars out of the way. Pernass ignored the chaos behind him and stuck his bouncing binos to his face. A thin trail of dust rose out the riverbed, then faded.

  “Ah, there you are...”

  The staff Officer beside him, holding on to the wrap-around antennae grid for dear life and shouted. “There’s no way we can catch them, sir. Those damn ANZAC raiders just have too big a head start.”

  One hundred meters short of the wadi’s narrow entrance, Pernass had a better vantage point on the Allied patrol’s steady trailing dust cloud. “Who said anything about capturing them?”

  He bent down and switched his radio channel back to the fire support frequency. It only took him two seconds to calculate the enemy’s speed and direction and plot their course on his map. For an old artilleryman, it was child’s play to figure out where they’d be in the 30 seconds it took for the guns to launch the fire mission, plus the ten second time of flight for the rounds.

  “This is Werewolf 6. Fire mission. Mobile targets in defilade, fire for effect, linear target. Grid, 356700 to 356—”

  The Auto-Savannah Commander, riding like greased lightning in his much faster recon car, finally caught up with Pernass. The man might not have shared the Gestapo fanatic’s passion, but he still had his professional pride. The Italian Major flashed past the Oberführer’s little Volkswagen, throwing out a sardonic Heil Hitler salute. He zoomed into the riverbed, a car’s length ahead of the SS Kübelwagen.

  “Son of a bitch!” Pernass’s driver tapped the brakes reflexively as the other car’s sand plume battered his driving goggles. Despite those fast reflexes, he was too shocked to slow down when reality split wide open in front of them. The Italian vehicle disintegrated, a brief flash of bodies and an undercarriage flicking heavenwards. Pernass and his assistant dived over the sides as the VW struck the edge of the crater ahead, bounced up, and jackknifed in a 360-degree spin.

  With impressive skill, the now alone driver managed to regain control and hit the riverbank’s walls at a reasonably low speed. He coughed in the swirling vortex of smoke and sand for a second, throwing a quick prayer of thanks to heaven.

  God followed up that miracle by sending the twisted chassis of the Italian Major’s airborne AS.42 crashing back down on his head.

  Ten yards away, Pernass stumbled to his feet and found his skull and bones field cap. He knocked off the sand and tucked the hat over his gushing scalp. The Staff Officer at his feet writhed on the ground and clutched his shoulder.

  “Sir, I… think it’s… broken.” Pernass turned up his nose and hefted the man to his feet.

  “You’re alive, unlike so many others. Quit your sniveling and do your damn job.” The lead SS half-track rolled up, and Captain Sparmann bounded out with a medic a step behind him. Pernass waved the Red Cross helmeted man off while happily accepting the extra machine pistol Sparmann stuck out.

  “It’s not over yet. Those Commandos are on the run with limited supplies. They’ll never get back to their lines, or even close enough to radio in a warning about what they’ve discovered, without help.” He yanked the Captain’s map straight out of the man’s pocket and took a knee. Producing a protractor and marker from his pocket, Pernass drew a quick circle across the overlay and filled it in with Xs.

  “There are many routes they could take, but they all eventually lead to the same chokepoints. Commandeer however many men you need from the regular army and set up ambush sites before they get out into open desert. You’ll probably need at least two infantry companies to do this right.”

  “Ja wohl!” Sparmann reached for his map, but Pernass’s shark eyes darkened another notch.

  “Actually, have headquarters set that up. I want you to handle another little chore for me personally. I see three different oases within an hour’s drive east. Captain, take your stormtroopers and sanitize those watering holes. Go back to the road and loop around from the south. And I don’t mean just run the locals off. The Bedouins have clearly been aiding the enemy. Slaughter them all to send a message to the rest. Call in all the air support you require to hunt down any runners.” The Captain snapped to rigid attention.

  “As you wish, sir. I should warn you, Rommel’s staff is already throwing a fit that we’re expending so many resources just to hunt down a handful of saboteurs. This new operation is going to step on a lot of toes. What if they don’t cooperate?”

  “If anyone gives you problems, take down their serial number and have them talk to me face to face.”

  Sparmann’s face betrayed no emotion, but his snappy salute was full of excitement. Pernass wagged a finger. “You have some great potential, young
man, but keep your priorities straight. Stay focused and don’t have too much fun wielding that fear. This one is close. If we can’t stop them, don’t think I’m going to a camp alone.”

  “Not to worry, sir. There’s only a handful of them left now, and they’re desperate. Out of options. It’s only a matter of time.”

  Pernass snorted. “It’s not good to drive men into final corners. At those moments, they could all grow teeth and claws.”

  Sparmann cocked his head. “Is that a Prussian proverb, sir?”

  “No, an American author… just get to work, Captain. Dismissed.”

  Pernass turned back to the Wehrmacht staff Officer, who grimaced as the medic tightened a dressing around his collar bone. “Go back to headquarters and call ahead to the port. Leave the uranium in the subs. Don’t do anything until I get back to Tripoli. Should be around dawn. We’ll move the bombs surrounded by that new panzer battalion that just arrived. I’m going to oversee the whole operation personally. No more screw-ups.”

  “Rommel won’t like that, ah…” The staffer blew out a long sigh as the medic pricked him with a morphine dose in his right arm. “Sir, he’s getting impatient to finish off Tobruk and this new British 8th Army slowing forming up in Egypt. Might even go over your head and complain to the Fuhrer.”

  Pernass bark-laughed with traditional Prussian mirth while tidying up his ripped tunic. “If he does, then tell the field marshal that I’ll happily leave Africa and get out of his way. He can clean up his own mess. Don’t worry, though, that showboat loves his plausible deniability. The SS will just have to do the dirty work, behind his back, like always.”

  Italian Forward Operating Base “Resolute”

  15 miles west of Ras Lanuf

  “Are you sure we can get away with this?”

  Kat crawled backward on her belly towards all the whispering. Sergeant Bagnold, the highest-ranking surviving LRDG patrolman, rapped his knuckles in the sand.

  Dixon popped up on an elbow and scanned the barely visible airstrip five hundred yards below. “No problemo, man. From what I recall in the last mission briefing, this is one of the smallest satellite airstrips around.”