“What is blahblahblah?” asked Hans, instantly confused.
That got another laugh, before Sam explained it.
“Anyway, spending the whole day with you was our own idea. And our parents certainly don’t know we’re here today. We came because we wanted to. We like you and trust you enough to have you be part of our secret mission.”
Kevin added, “American parents don’t tell us important things either—or want us to talk about some stuff. We can talk about the Nazis all we want, but what no one ever mentions are the Communists. It sounds like your parents are just as bad as ours.”
“This is all good to hear, but we are still confused why you would want to be friends with Germans,” said Hans. “Germans killed so many people they thought were inferior. Germans wanted to rule the world. It’s embarrassing for us. It’s hard for us to live with. Even we wouldn’t want to be friends with us.”
“Look, it was really bad, Hans, but it’s the past,” said Jack. “I didn’t cause it and neither did you.”
“Yeah, so you’re just gonna have to get over that,” said Jayla. “Because we do like you.”
“And to prove it, we told you about Mission Mountaintop.”
For a bit, no one said more. Until Jack, being Jack, said, “Can we ask some more questions about the Nazis?”
“Please do,” Hans said, obviously relieved to move on. “And surely, one thing you want to know is if our parents were Nazis. Correct?”
“Well, yes. Were they?”
“My father was a pretty important Nazi in Göppingen.”
“My father was one, too,” Günther said.
“Were they in the military?”
Hans said, “My father was a colonel in the German Army during the war.”
“No wonder you have solid brat-radar!” said Jack, grinning. “You’re a brat just like us.” Hans definitely looked confused by the comment, so Jack did his best to explain what military brats were, and about their brat-radar.
“Maybe I am a bit of a brat, even if I wasn’t born when my father was in the army.”
“My father wasn’t in the military,” said Günther, “but he tried to be. The Wehrmacht told him that his war job was being a farmer and producing food for the military.”
“So then why did he become a Nazi?”
“I’m not sure. He never talks about it. But I do know he had a big contract to supply food to the Luftwaffe on the Fliegerhorst Kaserne, before it was your military base. I’m pretty sure only good Nazis got contracts like that.”
“What?” said Charlie. “Our base was used by the German Air Force during the war?”
“Sure.”
“Tell us everything you know,” demanded Charlie.
Günther said, “Well, Fliegerhorst means military airfield and Kaserne means barracks. It was a base devoted to aircraft. One night my grandfather had a little too much Schnapps to drink, and he did say some things about it.”
All eyes locked on him.
“In ancient times the whole area was nothing but meadows, farmland, and woods. But around 1930, when airplanes became popular, a civilian Flugplatz was built there. Then in 1935 the Luftwaffe took over the airfield and rebuilt the whole thing. When the war started, it was used to train Luftwaffe pilots to fly lots of different kinds of aircraft. Mostly to be fighter pilots.”
“We’ve found big Nazi shells. And of course there are bunkers and pillboxes on the base. What were they for?” asked Charlie, fascinated.
“Most of that was from the Soldaten der Flakabteilung, an anti-aircraft unit.”
Charlie and Jack gave each other a knowing glance.
“Their job was to protect the Luftwaffe from getting destroyed by the American and British bombers.” Günther, looking a little embarrassed, said, “Sorry to say, their job was to shoot down your bombers.”
“Don’t feel bad,” Sam piped up, “our guys were trying to bomb your planes.”
“Did our bombers ever actually hit the airfield?” Jack asked.
Günther’s eyes lit up. “This is what my grandfather talked about that night: The base wasn’t hit for most of the war. By the end, it was one of the last airfields still open in the south part of Germany. But then it was bombed, and my father got blamed.”
“What?” Jayla demanded. “Your father was a farmer!”
“Well, there was a way they could flood the Flugplatz during daylight and then take away the water at night so the pilots could use the airfield. Sounds crazy, right? But during the daytime it looked like a lake so the bombers left it alone.”
“Cool,” Kevin said.
“Yes, cool until a few of my dad’s sheep wandered out into the middle of the lake one day. An American or British flyer spotted them just standing there in a few inches of water and knew something was wrong. That’s when they bombed the place. My dad got blamed.”
“What did they do to him?” Jack asked.
“He was terrified the Gestapo would take him off to prison. But the war ended and nothing happened to him.”
“Good thing!” Jack said, “So, they had a way to flood the whole airfield and then unflood it . . .”
“That’s what my grandfather said.”
Jack leaned toward Charlie. “One of these days we need to gather intel on that little engineering feat.”
The look on Charlie’s face told Jack that Scrounger Charlie was already scrounging for a solution.
Jack said to everyone, “Now that Hans and Günther have signed on, we can follow through with Mission Mountaintop. We have Black Squirrel Crossing, The One-Way Street to Germany, and two friends to lead us through the German countryside. We’re almost there.”
Sam might have seemed apprehensive, but Jayla was smiling.
32
Meeting the Threat
Jack was writing an equipment checklist for Mission Mountaintop when Queenie popped her head through the door. “Mom wants us. Family meeting.”
Mrs. McMasters sat on the couch, five blue suitcases lined up by her feet. “Your father needs a vacation. If we depart in two days, we can squeeze in two weeks of leave before school starts again.”
“What about Ingrid?” asked Queenie.
“She needs a break, too. Her friend Lena has managed to get vacation time, so they’ll be going off together.”
“Where we going?” bounced Rabbit.
“We’ll drive to Italy.” Their mom glanced at the suitcases. “I bought us new suitcases that fit better in the car. So each of you take one. Your first job is to pack your best play clothes and one nice outfit. Then we have cleaning to do so we come home to a quarters that is spick-and-span.”
Rabbit grabbed her suitcase and bounded toward her room. Queenie and Jack each grabbed one. As they walked to their rooms, he said, “These look about the same size as the packed ones. The ones supposed to be packed for quick trips.”
Queenie smirked. “She just doesn’t want to tamper with the emergency evacuation suitcases.”
Jack barely had time to talk to his crew before he left for Italy. For once, he wasn’t thrilled about the idea of heading off to a different country—nor were Jayla and the others.
During the drive through the Alps and down to Venice, of course Rabbit was in the middle of the back seat, bouncing hour after hour. During her hundredth run-through of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” Jack decided any planning during the trip would be impossible. At least wandering the tiny passageways of Venice and gliding on a gondola through its canals became its own adventure. Once he got to Rome and saw the walls covered in human skulls in the Capuchin Crypt and played hide-and-seek with his sisters in the Coliseum, he was enjoying himself too much to be frustrated.
Jack and company were at Kevin’s house, fortifying themselves with peanut butter and jelly on white bread straight out of the toaster.
“That way, it melts. And speaking of great food, now I understand why your mom is so
fantastic at pasta, Charlie. She’s Italian! And they are some of the greatest cooks in the whole—”
“Good. You’re here,” interrupted Karen, as she barged through the back door into the Duncan kitchen. “Jack, Queenie wants you right now.”
Karen kept her voice quiet, but Jack could tell it took effort—probably so the Buddha wouldn’t overhear from her usual chair in the living room. Jack was all too familiar with Queenie’s demands, but they were rarely delivered in such a desperate tone of voice. He followed Karen outside. Kevin, Charlie, Jayla, and Sam went, too. They found Queenie pacing next to Camila and Liz on the driveway.
Queenie looked crazed. “Jack, we’ve got to do something! Karen, did you tell him what you heard?”
Kevin’s sister said, “I was down at the post library a little while ago, and I heard a girl say that Kerrigan’s planning to kick Rabbit’s ass.”
Jack said, “What? That makes no sense.”
Jayla moved a step forward. “Rabbit’s just a little kid. Why would Kerrigan mess with her?”
Karen shrugged. “At first I didn’t believe it either. But the girl said something about him being sick and tired of her big mouth.”
“Jack, we’ve gotta do something to stop him once and for all,” said Queenie. “It was one thing when he pounded you or Charlie—but not Rabbit!”
Jack’s eyelids were half closed, but he wasn’t shutting down. His brain was cranking.
“Are you listening to me, Jack McMasters? We’ve gotta do something, and we’ve gotta do it right now!”
“Oh, I’m listening,” said Jack, “and we’ll do something. But we are not going off halfcocked. We need to plan this carefully.”
“Plan, nothin’. We just need to go kick his ass.”
All eyes turned to Jack.
“Wrong. We are not.” His voice was deathly calm. “I’m the one who needs to kick his ass. But we can’t afford to lose this one. I need to ensure he is stopped for good. But that might involve all of us.”
“What are you talking about?” demanded Queenie.
“Look, let’s hope it comes down to just Ryan and me. But the odds of that aren’t good. Times have changed. At first it was just Ryan. Then it was Ryan and his gang. Now he’s also hooked up with the Sevens. In case you haven’t noticed, Ryan Kerrigan is rarely alone these days. I might not get to deal with him one-on-one. If I’m going to stop him, we might end up in a situation where we need to deal with all of them. And for that we’ll need a solid plan.”
“Jack, we can’t take on all of them,” said Sam. “They aren’t just stronger than we are, they also outnumber us.”
“I know,” Jack agreed. “But I’ve been thinking about this for some time. Here’s what I’ve concluded: We don’t have to beat them. We just need to make sure they can’t beat us.”
“How are we going to manage that?” Jayla said.
“Say that I end up challenging Ryan, but I have to do it in front of a bunch of others. I’ll still challenge him to a one-on-one. And he probably won’t be able to back down. And, hopefully, the Sevens will let the two of us go at it. But if I win, they might take revenge on all of us. We need to be prepared to defend ourselves if that happens. And that’s where Kevin’s story about the Spartans comes in. We need to modify the Spartan phalanx.”
“Jack, this is no time for your stupid stories and military mumbo jumbo!” Queenie looked ready to wring his neck.
Kevin smoothly took over. “It’s not just military talk, Laura. I got some advice from my dad on how to fight a bigger force, without exactly telling him why I needed to know. But it’s going to take all of us to make it work.”
“I’m listening,” Queenie said grudgingly.
His sister nodded her approval, too. So did Camila and Liz.
“I’m with you,” said Jayla.
Jack nodded a silent thank-you her way. He knew her support was costing her a lot. It meant postponing Mission Mountaintop. School would start next week. Pretty soon, the days would get noticeably shorter and the weather worse. Every passing day brought them closer to now or never.
Kevin explained that the traditional Spartan phalanx was a square formation, normally ten men in a row and ten rows deep, fighting shoulder-to-shoulder and moving as one.
Jack took over, “There are nine of us—not enough for the square formation, but six kids could form a tight circle with three inside.”
He could tell none of them was sure where he was going with this. He was glad they kept listening.
“It’s pretty obvious that Kevin and Jayla are our best fighters. We’ll place them and Laura in the middle of the circle.”
“Why put them in the middle?” ask Karen. “If they’re the best fighters, shouldn’t they be up front?”
“The thing is, Karen, there is no front. We form a circle so that no matter which direction the Sevens come at us from, we are protected. We have to give up the idea of fighting as individuals. Like the Spartans, we fight as a single unit. For the Sevens to beat us, they’ll have to break through our tight formation—something that we want to make very difficult for them to do.”
“So, say, someone attacks Karen,” said Queenie. “What does she do?”
“She fights them off. But if the attacker is bigger and stronger than Karen, alone she might get clobbered. With the phalanx, there will be two others—let’s say, Camila and Charlie—pressed tightly next to her. So they can help her fight.”
“Okay . . .” said Queenie.
“Look,” Jack said, “the Sevens will try and break up our circle so they can fight us individually. And we all know where that will lead. So we can’t let that happen. We have to remain a single unit. A single fighting force.”
“What do we do if the person attacking Karen is winning? Fall back?” asked Charlie.
“Nope. We do the exact opposite.”
“What?” Karen gasped. “Why?”
“If you’re losing, you’ll most likely be getting shoved backwards, right?” asked Jack.
“Yeah,” said Karen, not liking this.
“But I will yell out, ‘On Karen.’ And, when I do, we all move forward as a single unit toward her and swarm around both Karen and her attacker. We reclose the circle with them inside. Once they’re swallowed up, our best fighters (who are in the center) take on that attacker, but now it will be Karen, Kevin, Jayla, and Queenie all fighting him. Four on one.”
“Jack, I don’t know how to fight,” said Queenie. “Why am I in the center?”
“The whole point of the phalanx, or at least ours, is that it has nothing to do with how good an individual fighter is. It’s about using what we have to best defend ourselves. For example, I know you can’t box, Laura, but you’re taller than most of us. So, your job will be to grab the guy and try to hold him by an arm, by the legs, by his shirt. Whatever. Just make it harder for him to fight. Then Kevin and Jayla will do what they can to stop him.”
Queenie’s smile was devilish. “I can do that.”
Jack smiled back. “Oh, I know you can. The two rules are, always stay together forming a ring. And if we let in an attacker, we stop him.”
Kevin was raring to go. “Let’s meet behind the post gym and give it a try.”
Everyone went in the house. Kevin and his friends finished their snack and cleaned up their mess. Karen, Queenie, Camila, and Liz made their own snack. Then they all walked down to the post gym.
On the way, Jack thought up a hand signal they could use. He joined his two index fingers and his two thumbs together, forming a square like the traditional phalanx. It would alert everyone to form their tight, round phalanx.
Once they were at the site of Jack’s previous fight with Kerrigan behind the gym, he showed them the hand signal. To his relief, everyone accepted it and was ready to work.
They repeated the process until forming the phalanx became second nature. Then Jack had them practice moving as a single unit on his command, “On Karen . . . On Charlie . . . On me.”
For the next two days they met to practice forming their modified Spartan phalanx and to fight as a phalanx, with Kevin, Queenie, and Jayla as the core of their defense.
Things were going great, until Private Finnegan came out one afternoon for a smoke break.
Something in the way they were scrapping made him stomp over to them. “I haven’t helped you kids learn to box so you can go out and pick fights, or beat up other kids. I did it so you could protect yourselves and learn self-discipline.”
Jayla said, “This isn’t how we wanted to spend our last days of freedom, believe me, Private Finnegan. Remember that fight you broke up between Jack and that other kid? That was Ryan Kerrigan. He’s out to take revenge on Jack’s little sister, Rabbit. Jack has to stop Ryan, and we’re getting ready to back him up in case Ryan’s gang won’t stand for it.”
Private Finnegan studied them, and then glanced at his watch. “I’m covering for someone today. I’m here a couple more hours. Come with me.”
They all filed through the back door.
Finnegan had Jack and Kevin spar in the ring while he coached them. Queenie and her crew listened closely to pick up pointers
Jack attempted to sidestep one of Kevin’s punches but almost tripped.
“Footwork, Jack! Watch your footwork,” said Finnegan. He turned toward the girls. “Half the fight is about your footwork. You have to be able to lightly dance out of the way, and still stay solidly enough on your feet to throw a serious punch.”
The girls started watching Jack’s feet as well as his arms.
At one point, Jack was sure he had Kevin. He unloaded a huge roundhouse punch, only to have Kevin sidestep it.
Camila giggled.
BRAT and the Kids of Warriors Page 35
