Final Mission: Zion - A World War 2 Thriller

by Chuck Driskell

Anguished cries of pain.

  Then…

  The largest explosion of the night rocked the Gallipoli Peninsula. A fireball fifty feet high went up as rounds and explosives could be heard igniting secondarily.

  When the chest-pounding shockwave had passed, Yeager jammed the field glasses to his face, scanning frantically. Then he saw something. Yeager watched, rapt, as a darkened figure leapt from the front of the fiery pillbox, starkly silhouetted against the vivid orange flames licking up behind him. The lean shadow dove into what must have been a frontal trench, his knife-laden hand striking up and down, stabbing viciously. The stabbing figure moved laterally in the furrow, fiercely meting out his death blows. The figure finally emerged, again backlit by the flaming pillbox, his skin shiny from perspiration and blood. He held the British general’s bolo knife high in the air, shouting a piercing cry into the night sky.

  After struggling to moisten his mouth, General Yeager said, “George…something tells me that was your signal.”

  General George Cresswell, like Yeager, had been watching through his own field glasses, his jaw slack. He lowered the glasses, appearing to struggle with what he’d just witnessed. Then he turned to the group and in a thunderous yell said, “Get off your arses, gents! Take those brave boys forward and seize that blasted hill!”

  The British general turned to his old American friend, General Horace Yeager, skipping the handshake, bear-hugging him before both officers charged forward, pistols drawn as they willingly joined their men on the advance.

  ~~~

  Six Weeks Later

  A chilly September wind pressed in from the Pacific, ushering in the smell of the sea to San Francisco’s Presidio. The lush green grass of the Army installation’s expansive lawns seemed to glow under the sun and extensive blue sky. Separating the lawns from the walkways were the ever-present whitewashed knee-fences found on all Army posts, designed to keep soldiers from taking unwarranted shortcuts in one of the military’s many little methods to maintain good order. Neil Reuter, dressed in his khaki cotton uniform—now adorned with the rank of corporal—crossed Lincoln Boulevard, following the walkway to the headquarters building, snapping off smart salutes as he passed officers. Inside, after removing his headgear, he turned right, his polished boots clicking on the gleaming floors. The general’s comely civilian secretary beamed upon seeing him.

  “Good morning, Corporal Reuter. I must say, that was fast.”

  Neil nodded. “The general calls.”

  “Go right in. He’s expecting you.”

  General Yeager, wearing his dress uniform, sat behind the wide desk. He was leaning back, hands laced behind his head. “Reuter, my boy, how the hell are you?” he asked.

  The general’s affability set Neil on guard.

  “Fine, sir. As are you, I hope?”

  “Fine, fine.” General Yeager stood, motioning Neil to the sitting area on the far side of the room. Never before had Neil seen anyone under the rank of full colonel welcomed into the general’s semi-circle of comfortable chairs. The chairs faced a large window, behind it the sloping lawn that led to the crashing waters of the South Bay.

  “Something to drink?” the general asked, motioning to a gleaming coffee urn.

  “No, thank you, sir,” Neil answered, sitting rigid, palms on knees and feeling quite uncomfortable.

  “I’ll get right down to it, then. Corporal Reuter…much as it pains me, I’m letting you go.”

  Neil blinked several times. “Sir?”

  “It’s not easy for me, son. I lost Wingo and Hamilton…now you.” He straightened. “But I can’t keep you hidden here for myself. As much as I’d like to, yours is a different kind of star, and it’s on the rise.”

  Neil was silent, unsure of what the general meant—also unsure of how to respond.

  The general hitched his thumb. “There’s a school being put together at Fort Johnston, back east, in North Carolina. I’m sending you there.”

  “Sir, might I ask what sort of school it is?”

  “They call it unconventional warfare, son. I certainly don’t have to explain to you what that means.”

  Neil broke eye contact, glancing downward in mild embarrassment.

  “There’s a growing segment among the Army leadership…and you can count me as one of them…who believe wars aren’t always going to be fought shoulder-to-shoulder, directly between two opposing lines.” The general leaned forward. “There’s a better way to do things in the killing fields.”

  Looking up, Neil said, “It’s best not to get in a fight in the first place, sir.”

  “Fights happen, Reuter.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re going to that school, and you’re not only going to learn, you’re going to teach, too. I’ve already seen to that.” Yeager chuckled. “Aren’t those fellas going to be surprised?”

  Neil didn’t respond.

  “I’m recommending, after the school, we send you to officer candidate school. Get you schooled up on more than just fighting. We need officers like you leading our young men. There’s a war brewing, you know.”

  “Yes, sir,” Neil said, looking beyond the general.

  “Reuter?”

  Neil joined eyes with him.

  “This is the beginning of a new life for you, an important life. And life’s what you make it.”

  Neil tried to understand what the general meant. “I’ll honor your wishes by doing my best, sir.”

  “Can’t ask for more than that.” The general stood, offering his hand. When Neil took it, Yeager pumped hard and pulled him close. “Son, I gotta ask you one more time. How the hell did you do what you did at Gallipoli?”

  Neil allowed a hint of irritation to enter his voice, giving a clue to the man he would someday become. “I can’t really say, sir. Some things a man is taught, some things he just knows.”

  “And you just knew how to do that?” the general asked, wearing a skeptical face. “The blood, the way you got to that pillbox undetected, the hawk-like shriek?”

  “Sir,” Neil said, pulling his hand away. “Do you remember learning to breathe?”

  “Of course not,” the general snorted.

  “It’s like that.”

  The general knotted his lips together, clearly unsatisfied but eyeing Neil the way a proud father views his son who has grown beyond his sphere of control. “Good luck to you, Corporal Reuter.”

  “And you as well, sir.”

  “Enjoy your new life. I’m convinced it’ll be stimulating. I’m even more convinced you’ll do amazing things.”

  The general’s words couldn’t have been more prophetic. Neil Reuter did begin a new and important life that was marked by many astonishing moments. It was a life that would take him around the world, doing things most men would never dare dream. It brought him power. It brought him wealth.

  It brought him misery.

  CHAPTER TWO

  July, 1938 – Twenty-Three Years Later

  In a mansion perched high above San Francisco Bay, Neil Reuter couldn’t understand what in the hell could be making such a racket. He withdrew his head from under the pillow. The wispy light from the gaps between the heavy drawn drapes pierced his brain, making him lurch in agony while he fought down a wave of nausea. After finally marshaling enough saliva to moisten his mouth, he shouted for Agnes, the sound of his yells making his brain recoil inside of his skull.

  There was the noise again—a loud, thudding sound. And no reply from Agnes, damn it.

  Neil swung his feet over the side of the bed and moaned as both of his hands automatically shot to his temples. From the hook next to the nightstand, he donned his silken robe, realizing he had slept with nothing on. After a moment of slit-eyed searching, he located his pajama bottoms, pulling them on and tying the waist cord. Using his hands to find his way—because his eyes were again shut—Neil shuffled to the bedroom door, opening it as he braved the luminosity of the main hallway.

  Boom. Boom. Boom.

&n
bsp; It was the knocker, the damned bronze gargoyle knocker, given to Emilee by the San Francisco Flower Club when he had first purchased the estate known as Hillside. Some pest was at the front door, going to town with it, and it didn’t sound like they planned on leaving until someone yanked it from their hand.

  Sonofabitch, where the hell is Agnes?

  Neil shuffled over the thick oriental runner, choosing, as he always did, to take the right curving staircase down into the three-story grand foyer. The architect had designed the striking space for Emilee to host vernissages, whatever that meant. There was movement behind the stained glass on the front stoop and, as Neil reached the foyer, a glance at the ten-foot-tall weighted clock showed him it was 12:45 p.m. Lunchtime for normal people. Agnes would be across the main yard, in her quarters, having a long lunch. No doubt she was leaning forward, rapt, as she listened to the crucial mid-week episode of Big Sister on the RCA radio Emilee had given her three Christmases ago.

  Neil, finally able to see clearly, glanced down at himself. He made sure the robe was pulled tightly around his torso. As he always did when receiving an unknown guest, he opened the top drawer of the door-side Victorian cabinet, removing the chunky Obregon pistol, gripping it behind his back as he moved to the door. With a twist of the bolt and another wince at the metallic snapping sounds, he opened the door, using his left hand to shield his throbbing head from the potent midday brilliance of the Northern California July sky. As his eyes adjusted to the intensity of light, he saw the outline of a woman wearing a large hat. As she came into focus, he noticed that she wore a fashionable red suit and clutched a small purse over her midsection.

  “Yeah?” was all he managed to mutter, still shielding his eyes.

  “Neil?” A soft voice. A kind voice. A concerned voice.

  “Unfortunately, that’s me,” he answered flatly, without a trace of self-deprecating humor. Now that he could see, Neil lowered his hand and studied his visitor. She had dark hair and the smooth, eggshell skin of a porcelain doll. Her lipstick was perfectly matched with her trim suit and she couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds soaking wet. She was as pretty as any woman Neil had ever seen but, at that moment—consumed by leaden grief; ridiculed by shame over a recent incident; and suffering a blistering hangover—Neil didn’t notice. To him, this woman was simply an irritating roadblock to his glorious, alcohol-induced coma.

  His visitor bounced on her toes, urgency in her voice as she spoke. “Neil, don’t you remember me?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I grew up right behind your home on O’Farrell.” She tilted her head, seeming frustrated at his lack of recognition. “I’m Meg Herman, Jakey’s younger sister.”

  Neil raised his eyebrows just a fraction. He hadn’t seen Meghan Herman in…his brain struggled to recollect…well, at least since he went north and joined the Army. That would have been more than twenty years before, and at that time she’d been only seven or eight.

  “I can barely remember you. What do you want?” he asked.

  She seemed exasperated with his brusqueness. “Can I at least come inside?”

  Equally annoyed, he motioned her in, dropping the Obregon back into its drawer when her back was turned. He asked her to sit, appropriately, in the sitting room. It was much too bright for Neil’s liking and still decorated exactly the way Emilee had decorated it. Neil only chose the room because the wet bar was close by.

  The wooden floor creaked under his weight as he shambled the shiny, well-worn pathway to the center of the marble bar. Without asking Meghan if she wanted one, he poured Russian vodka into a tall glass, filling it halfway. After spiriting the tomato juice from the icebox, placed there three hours before by the well-trained Agnes, Neil topped off the glass, sprinkling several dashes of pepper on top of the concoction. Without leaving that spot, he turned the glass up, drinking two-thirds of the drink, allowing it to flood down his throat and open his sinuses at the same time. He stood there with his eyes closed for a long moment, eventually letting out a breath as he began the slow crawl back toward his place among the living human race.

  Breakfast.

  Neil staggered back into the sitting room, frowning at Meghan as she sat primly. Meghan returned his frown with an expression that was a combination of concern and unease. He sat diagonally from her, choosing the most uncomfortable, thinly padded chair in the room. He did this to remind himself to make this…whatever this was…brief.

  “They still call you Meg?” he asked as he closed his eyes and again massaged his temples. There was already a heavenly hint of the alcohol hitting his bloodstream. Just a hint.

  “Yes, I go by Meg.” She smoothed her skirt and crossed her ankles as she leaned forward. “How have you been, Neil?”

  Dammit.

  It had been the same question, the very same damned question—identical tone, wording, and inflection—for two damned years. Always the same. At least a hundred women had asked him those exact words, and all of them had cocked their head the way Meg Herman had just done, like he was some sort of failed science project that still managed to rouse their deepest curiosities.

  He leaned back, his face tilting to the ceiling as the alcohol continued its infiltration of his circulatory system. Keep coming…

  “Neil, I’m so sorry about your wife.” Meg’s brown eyes widened, rimmed by the sparkling of the tears that pooled on the verge of cascading.

  Neil looked at her. “And my son,” he said monotone, a disinterested actor reading from a script he knew forward and backward.

  “Your son?”

  “Emilee was pregnant when she was murdered.”

  Meg’s painted lips parted before she put a gloved hand to her mouth. “Oh, God, Neil. I hadn’t heard that. I…I’m just so very sorry.”

  Neil eyed her, his expression displaying neither hostility nor gratitude. He was simply there, marinating in his lone joy of alcohol. His only desire was to drink himself to oblivion, to forgetfulness, to nothingness, to that vacuous nirvana he’d come to know, and love, and depend on. Everything in between was simply a function of physiology. Eating, sleeping, relieving himself: just like his damned heart still beating on its own. It all just happened, seemingly on full automatic. While he’d never entertained suicide, a piece of his subconscious he stayed well away from knew that he was taking the slow road to killing himself. In reality, although most people who knew him believed he was a drunk, Neil wasn’t addicted to booze. It’s just that alcohol was his only true choice—and he needed to maintain some semblance of direction over his life that had spun decidedly out of control. He turned the drink up, draining every drop of the simplistic bloody Mary, trying his best to suck down the last fleck of pepper.

  “I have some things to do,” he said, standing and walking away.

  “Neil, wait.”

  Neil faced Meghan Herman. He swept his hand in her direction as the skin on his distinct face tightened from the strain. “Look, Meg, I guess I appreciate the sorrow that everyone feels so compelled to express. Maybe someday I’ll truly be able to welcome it. I’m not trying to be callous, honest. But I’ve got to—”

  “Neil—”

  “Wait,” he snapped. “As I was saying, to be honest, I can’t help but notice that most of my women callers aren’t married, and I can tell you right now that I will never—do you hear me?—never get married again.” After the words fired out like machine gun bullets, Neil’s mind shot back to the regrettable incident down in Santa Monica, making him wince.

  No. Not that. Not now.

  He took a calming breath, softening his tone. “Look, Meg, I don’t mean to be rude. But if I have to endure one more visit from a woman who thinks she’s going to ensnare me into her—”

  “Jakey’s dead.”

  The two words stopped his coming diatribe like a reinforced brick wall.

  Neil’s mouth moved to speak but nothing came out. He instantly pictured his best friend, Meg’s older brother. Many years before, their f
riendship had begun with a fistfight and, from that day on, the two had been inseparable. Following Neil’s appointment to the Unconventional Warfare School, he’d immediately recommended they recruit Jakey. It wasn’t long before the two of them were in Europe together, serving side-by-side while the Great War claimed so many thousands of lives around them. Afterward, Neil and Jakey came home together, building similar professional lives. They’d even occasionally worked with one another, off and on, until three years before, when Jakey headed back across the Atlantic on a private mission. When Neil last spoke with him, Jakey had been busy frustrating the British gentry in tumultuous Palestine.

  Feeling numb from the waist down, Neil dropped back into the uncomfortable seat, focusing on Meg Herman. “How?”

  Meg’s cheeks glistened with tears. The twitches in her face told him she was on the verge of sobbing. Finally, she unbuckled her clutch and removed a tattered envelope. Handmade from stained paper, it was folded twice and had a broken wax seal on the back. She unfolded the heavy stock paper and placed it on the table, sliding it across but allowing her gloved fingers to linger on it for a few extra seconds. Neil took it. Upon seeing the word “Barkie” scrawled across the front in Jakey’s horrid penmanship, he knew it was genuine. Jakey Herman was the only person on earth who knew Neil as “Barkie.” It was an old, silly joke from their teen years but, with Jakey, the moniker had stuck. The envelope was postmarked Innsbruck, Austria. The date wasn’t legible. Neil flipped it over. On the back of the envelope, under the broken closure, was a simple phrase:

  Give to Neil Reuter in the event of my death.

  “When did he give you this?” Neil demanded, carefully flattening the dog-eared envelope.

  “I received it from a friend.”

  “Who opened it?” he asked, fingering the wax seal.

  “It was that way when I received it.”

  “How did they know who I was?”

  “Jakey’s lady friend had heard all about you from him. She and some of her friends made sure I received the note.”