by Pliss, Todd
Wayne shot back, “Linda, we have to get the fuck out of here!”
“Heads or tails?” she repeated.
“Tails.”
“You lose,” Linda wryly informed her target and fired.
“Are you happy now?” Wayne asked.
The private, who was spread out on the floor, took a small pineapple shaped hand grenade from his holster and pulled the pin on it. There could be no greater honor to bestow upon oneself than to die in the course of carrying out one’s duty for the Reich. The private began to laugh deliriously.
“Wayne,” Linda called out, “Grenade!”
“Go!” Wayne sprinted for the door.
Linda grabbed the grenade.
Wayne screams, “What are you doing!” Linda drops the grenade quickly and Wayne yanks her out of the room.
A platoon of military policemen was swiftly converging on the intruders.
Wayne unwound a long burlap fire hose from its resting place on the corridor wall. “Jump on my back,” he shouted at Linda. The pack of policemen drew closer.
“I don’t know what you’re doing, but it better be good,” Linda said and hopped on Wayne’s back.
Wayne, clinging to the hose with all of his available strength, crawled over the balcony.
A great explosion emanated from the administrative room on the fourth floor, rocking the hallway, and killing most of the platoon.
Wayne tumbled, with his passenger, down to the first story. A bullet whizzed by them. Wayne couldn’t tell where it came from, but he didn’t really care. What mattered to him was that it hadn’t either of them.
“Keep low,” Wayne muttered as they kept moving. BANG.
“I’ve been shot. I’ve been shot!” he yelled as blood stained his shirt. He ripped off his shirt sleeve.
“I think it’s just a graze,” Linda said tying the sleeve tightly around his arm.
“Well, it hurts like a motherfucker,” Wayne retorted. “Let’s get over by that plane. I have a plan.”
Wayne and Linda approached the massive German bomber. The technicians and engineers whom had been working around and on it had scattered when the emergency siren went off. Wayne spotted a woman pointing a rifle at him from the balcony and took a dive. Linda fired off a shot at her. The military policewoman fell over the balcony, dead.
The fugitives made their way to the huge military aircraft and ducked under its fuselage. The bullets suddenly stopped for fear of hitting the bomber itself. Wayne looked up to see an open panel that revealed part of the plane’s complex engine. He gloated at the sight.
“What do you have in mind?” Linda asked.
From his lab coat’s side pocket, Wayne removed the pocketknife, which he had lifted from the chemist’s workshop.
He said, “I figure our chances of getting out of here are a lot better if this place is in total chaos.”
He put the knife’s sharp edge up to the plane’s fuel line. Before he was able to cut it, Corporal Bruener pulled him into a headlock from behind, fire retardant still smeared on his coat.
“Cut the red one,” Wayne squeaked as he handed the knife to Linda.
Bruener’s grip tightened around Wayne’s neck as he struggled to reach Linda too.
With one expeditious movement, Linda slashed the fuel line. Gasoline started streaming down from the plane.
Wayne slammed the Corporal’s body into the plane’s mammoth wing as hard he could. Wayne twisted the Nazi’s arm behind his back and pinned him against the plane, directly underneath the broken fuel line. The Corporal coughed as his hair and clothes became soaked with kerosene.
Bruener knocked his head against Wayne’s, liberating himself. He quickly took out a ten-inch steel knife from its sheath. “Are we having fun yet?” he smirked.
Linda grabbed the book of matches out of her pocket and opened it up. One match remained. Corporal Bruener lunged forward but missed Wayne as he darted to the side.
Ripping the last match from its cover, Linda struck it lit, and tossed the burning match onto him. He became a human torch as flames consumed his body. Bruener screamed at the top of his lungs.
“Surprise, surprise, surprise,” Wayne said in his best Gomer Pyle drawl. Wayne kicked the flaming Nazi into the increasing puddle of fuel, igniting the immediate area into flames. Fire spread onto the bomber’s fuel line, and it started to burn like the fuse to a stick of dynamite.
“It’s gonna explode! Run!” Wayne yelled.
With a swarm of immaculately dressed Nazi privates and military policemen ascending upon the scene, the great Reich bomber’s main fuel tank exploded with a monstrous immensity as Wayne and Linda ran for their lives.
Aircraft debris hit every nook and cranny of the building. Each person who was within one hundred feet of the plane, at the time of the explosion, would be left with a permanent hearing impairment, if they were lucky enough to be alive. Thirty seconds after the first burst, a second, but equally disastrous, explosion rocked the burning, metal bird as the reserve fuel tank exploded. Pandemonium broke out as the force of the explosions caused bodies to go flying and a number of men to experience painful third degree burns. A young private, fresh out of training academy, only six meters distant from the bomber and engulfed in flames, cried out, “HELP! I’M ON FIRE! WATER...” before his voice went forever silent. A fire alarm sounded as smoke filled the air, adding to the orchestra of noise. The water sprinklers that worked did little to help the situation.
The fugitives raced up the steps of a stairway and exited at the third floor.
“What are we doing?” Linda inquired.
“What?” Wayne loudly said, his ears ringing badly.
“Why are we up here?” Linda spoke in his ear.
“Because there’s no fucking way we’re getting out of here on that bottom floor.” The rapidly increasing amount of thick smoke began to make Wayne cough incessantly.
“The best bet is for us to get out of this building before we choke,” he said. He attempted to turn the doorknob on a room door. It wouldn’t turn.
“Stand back,” Linda said. She pointed her pistol at the lock and fired three shots, demolishing it.
As they sprinted into a small storage room, Wayne peered through the dense vapor to see if any Nazis were on their tails. None appeared to be.
Linda looked out the window.
“Oh,” she said.
“Beautiful,” Wayne agreed. With a swift, strong kick, he broke the glass. “Go first.”
“Why me first?” she said startled.
“So you can break my fall.”
“That’s thoughtful of you.”
Another massive explosion caused the entire building to tremble.
“GO! JUMP!” Wayne yelped.
Linda leaped from the room and landed on the outside of the back of the building, in a trash dumpster piled high with rubbish. Wayne, without faltering, next took the plunge, landing beside her. Climbing out of the dumpster, Wayne felt the precious vial of Gadolinium Crystals to make sure that it was intact. It was.
Fire trucks blanketed the front of the huge, flaming building. Firemen went to work with their hoses and ladders.
“Well, hotshot, what do you suppose we do now?”
“The quickest way to get back to the city will be by airplane. This is a military base. Let’s go find ourselves a plane before they figure out that we’re still alive.”
“Just like that, you think we’ll find a plane?”
“We have to. It’s only a matter of time before they have an army out here searching for us. We’ll never make it on foot and we’d be spotted too easily in a vehicle.”
Wayne headed toward a small, red military jeep. He hopped in and ran his hand under the dashboard and fiddled with some of its wires.
“Those crystals of yours better be pretty damned important if we went through all this shit for them,” Linda complained.
“I told you why I need them,” Wayne said as Linda climbed in. He peeked at the wires
below the dashboard. He touched two wires together and the jeep’s engine purred to life.
“Ah, the things you learn in Brooklyn.” Wayne shifted the vehicle into first gear and drove away from the burning building and the mass of black smoke rising above it. In the rearview mirror, the sun was setting.
Pliss / Reich
CHAPTER EIGHT
At base headquarters, the SS-Oberstgruppenfuehrer was in charge of the day-to-day operations at Oberkoblenz Military Installation and he was not happy.
He shouted with indignation, “Find out who is responsible for causing this trouble on my base. I want his head.”
“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Rangsdorf saluted the General.
Wayne sped the jeep along and turned south in a path opposite the main entrance of the base. The roads of Oberkoblenz were empty.
“Bingo,” Wayne said as he saw a large, grassy airfield with different types and sizes of airplanes parked on it. He swerved the vehicle sharply to the left, onto the airfield, and then drove it up beside a single-engine, two-seated airplane. Wayne climbed out of the jeep and into the plane’s open-air cockpit. Thirty-eight yards away was an equipment shed. “Go over there and see if you can find two parachutes,” he persuaded Linda.
“Parachutes?”
“I went flying in a small plane like this with a friend once. I think I can fly it, but I’m not sure about landing it.”
“Glad to hear it,” Linda said sarcastically.
“Hurry up! Let’s go,” Wayne urged.
“I’m going, I’m going.” Linda ran to the equipment shed.
“Let me see,” Wayne thought aloud as he viewed the cockpit’s instrument panel, “all I have to do is what I saw Joey do when he took me flying with him.” He pushed a button on the control panel. Nothing happened. “Shit!” He tried flicking a switch up on the instrument board. The propeller commenced spinning as the aircraft’s engine came to life. “Alright,” Wayne said with relief.
Carrying a parachute in each hand, Linda ran back to the airplane, “I found them.” She tossed them into the cockpit and climbed aboard and sat next to Wayne.
Wayne pushed a lever down. The propeller spun faster as the plane’s engine worked at its full capacity.
A young Nazi private approached the plane, “Where is your authorization?”
Linda stuck a gun in the private’s face, “It’s right here.” He raised his hands and backed away slowly.
The small plane started to taxi away from the other parked aircraft and towards an open area of field.
A caravan of five military transport vehicles, holding a squadron of elite Waffen-SS soldiers, led by SS Sergeant Rangsdorf, screeched up to the naive private.
Rangsdorf, sitting in the lead automobile, inquired, “Has anybody entered this area within the last ten minutes?”
“Two people,” the private nervously answered.
Rangsdorf’s right eyebrow twitched, which was its habit when he became agitated. He asked, in a strangely subdued manner, “What did they look like?”
“They were young, sir,” the private, avoiding eye contact with the SS Sergeant, said. “A big man and a woman of average height with dark hair, sir.”
“You idiot!” Rangsdorf shouted. He raised his favorite pistol, one his grandfather had passed along to him, and fired it. The young man dropped to the ground, dead.
The single engine flying machine approached takeoff speed.
“I should tell you,” Linda said, “I’ve never been in one of these things before.”
“Don’t worry, there’s nothing to flying,” Wayne assured her. “It’s safer than being in a car.” He pulled the cockpit flight wheel towards him.
The airplane, with its refugees, lifted off right above the heads of the seasoned Sergeant and his Waffen-SS troops.
“You can fly this thing, right Wayne?” Linda tensely asked as the plane elevated.
Wayne glanced at the flyer’s compass, without paying attention to the words his passenger had spoken, “Just have to fly east to the Atlantic, then head south.”
“You didn’t answer my question, Wayne,” Linda said with annoyance. “You can fly this thing, right?”
“Well, we’re up in the air, aren’t we? It is not going to do you or me any good if you work yourself into a tizzy about flying. Now, sit back and enjoy the view.”
Fifteen minutes later, Waffen-SS soliders loaded onto a large F-343. SS Sergeant Rangsdorf was the last one to board. The pilot fired up the aircraft’s two sturdy engines.
With the last of the sun setting on the horizon, the fugitives were soaring over a glimmer of lights. “Almost there, almost there,” Wayne said pepping himself up. He looked out of the airplane and at the terrain that he glided so high above. “Want to know something, everyone down there?” he raised his voice. “Soon you’ll be yuppies driving BMWs and Mercedes, instead of Nazis.” He paused. “Why doesn’t that sound right?”
Linda was quickly turning green in the face. “Wayne, can you please keep it steady?” she asked. “I’m getting really nauseous.”
“She’s as steady as I can make her. It shouldn’t be much longer.”
The F-343 neared the coastline of the ocean. Next to the pilot, Sergeant Rangsdorf became fidgety, “Can’t we go any faster? We should have overtaken them by now.”
“I’m flying her as fast as I can, sir. This airplane was not built for speed. I think we should radio for backup.”
Rangsdorf fixed his iron gaze upon the pilot and said, “Are you suggesting that I am not able to handle the situation myself, Corporal?”
“No, sir,” the pilot bit his tongue.
A bleep sounded from the airplane’s radar tracking system and a small red dot appeared on its screen.
“I think we’ve got them, sir,” the pilot stated.
The Sergeant, envisioning a promotion as a reward for his capture of the fugitives, nodded his head, “Good. Very good.”
Nestled beneath the compact, piston powered plane, the bright lights of New Berlin City shone in the distance.
“New York, I’m coming home,” Wayne joyfully said. “I think I can see Times Square from here, or what used to be Times Square. Dick Clark would drop a big apple from there every New Year’s Eve to ring in the New Year. The streets would be lined with loads of people, not to mention the bums, pimps, hookers, and peep shows. That’s New York, not New fuckin’ Berlin.”
Mocking a German accent, he added, “They probably call it the Big Weiner schnitzel now.”
Linda slung her head over the side of the plane, vomited the small amount in her stomach, and she went pale.
“Are you okay, Linda?” Wayne asked.
“I am never getting in an airplane again as long as I live,” she said firmly.
Wayne heard the roar of the F-343’s double engines, not far off in the clear sky. “Damn! Don’t these guys ever give up?” he grumbled. Wayne slipped on a parachute and told his partner, “Put on your parachute.”
“You mean right now?”
“Right now. Just in case.”
“In case of what?”
“Just in case.”
The pilot of the F-343 glimpsed at his radar-tracking screen. He informed his superior, “Sir, we are almost on them.”
“Almost is not good enough,” Rangsdorf snapped. “I want to be on their asses.” The large F-343 nosedived.
The SS Sergeant ordered his gunner, “Fire on them.”
Bullets flew in the direction of the small plane. “Duck down,” Wayne said. He pushed in his flight wheel, causing the airplanes to swiftly fall away from its nemesis.
“Keep on them,” Rangsdorf barked.
From his position in his cockpit, Wayne was able to see the F-343’s gunner, with machine gun in place, preparing to fire on him. “Hold on!” Wayne shouted above the noise of the engine.
“What are you going to–”
Wayne pulled his flight control wheel all the way out, making the plane loop in the sky.
“Whoa, shit!” Linda exclaimed.
The Nazi gunner fired a hail of bullets at Wayne’s small plane, piercing the window of the aircraft and nailing Wayne in the shoulder.
“OW!” Wayne screamed and the plane tipped downward. Struggling, he leveled out the plane. Fresh blood had splattered like paint onto the flight wheel and covered Wayne’s shirt.
“Are you okay?” Linda peered out the window, trying to get a read on the other plane.
“They got my shoulder,” Wayne said, regaining his orientation after the aerial acrobatic he had just performed. “And no, it’s not a flesh wound this time. I feel something lodged in there.”
“Let me take a look,” Linda offered.
“Can’t worry ‘bout it now,” Wayne retorted. The predatory aircraft buzzed along at only 200 meters away just off to his left. “Can you keep an eye on them?
Linda replied, “I have been but I think I’m going to puke again. Next time, I’ll stick with a car.”
Sergeant Rangsdorf had his face pressed up against the front window. “Clip him.”
“What?”
“I said,” Rangsdorf maintained his calm, “I want you to clip his plane.”
“But sir, that could be suicide… for us.”
The Sergeant put his hand up to his cap, with its proud SS insignia, straightened it out on his head, and, in his dark tone, said, “Need I remind you of the penalty for failing to obey an officer’s command?”
The pilot didn’t have to think twice.
“No, sir,” he reluctantly said. “Hold on, this might get tricky.”
As the web of lights of New Berlin City glistened a mile below, the Reich F-343 closed in on the propeller plane, flying toward it in a sweeping motion with its big wings tilted at a forty-five degree angle.
Wayne steered his little flyer away from the F-343, but couldn’t shake him.
“What the fuck are they trying to do?” Linda watched in amazement as the F-343 got closer and closer..
“Whatever it is, they are absolutely insane.”
“Can you land?” Linda, her hair ruffled by the wind, anxiously questioned her pilot.
