by Tim Wheat
“Sir, I should report to you about my findings today.”
“Of course, you are correct.”
Hans told the entire story, and when he finished, Dietrich Hoff sat still for almost thirty minutes in complete silence with his eyes closed. Hans, believing his father now slept, reached into his pocket for a cigarette.
“May I have one as well?” Hoff broke the silence.
“Certainly, sir.”
The two of them sat in silence another five minutes while they enjoyed their cigarettes. When he finished Dietrich Hoff exited the vehicle, walked around to the driver’s side and motioned for Hans to roll down the window. His bulky frame leaned against the roof of the car and arms outstretched, he looked at Hans and spoke.
“Kill them both. Make the girl’s an execution; people will think it has something to do with her father. I don’t care what you do about this Rex Chase character. An accident would be best.”
Hans answered with a nod of his head. He didn’t know how Hoff knew who the girl was. Hans had noticed the name Mary Elizabeth on the sweater that she wore, but that was a common name. His orders were issued, though, and as Dietrich Hoff, his father, walked away, he turned to watch. The man was a true monster, not just in physical build, but in psyche. It took significant fortitude to mandate the deaths of two people like an order of pancakes for breakfast. Then Dietrich turned and addressed him again.
“Oh, I almost forgot. Wait until it’s dark, and get the job done. We have a plane leaving the airport at eleven o’clock.”
“Yes sir.”
Nightfall wasn’t far away, but Hans had hours to burn. He buried his chin in his chest, and fell asleep.
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14.
“George.”
At the first explosion Angela leapt from her bed where she had been reading a book, grabbed her .357 from the table, and headed for the front door. Her father, who was quick for his squat frame, beat her to the door, however, and forced her back toward the table. Though smaller than her, he was still stronger, and he pulled the table down, using it as a shield. After a short argument she agreed to sit with him, and after the commotion seemed to be limited to the loud bang, they agreed to check things out. The law of probabilities suggested some drunkard was playing with dynamite.
They no more started to stand up than gunshots rang out, causing her father to pull her to the ground by her hair. Bullets permeated the thin walls of the building, and a couple hit the table which was their last defense. Angela looked at her father, saw the fear in his eyes, and it was very real. When the door kicked open they both froze in place. Then, like a dream, she realized it. That was George. She stood up and exclaimed.
“George.”
With a calmness she couldn’t quite fathom, he looked at her with that same smile she had seen the day before.
“Baby, I’d love to stand here and chat, but we gotta go.”
George turned, and then he left.
“He left us. He left us here to die.” exclaimed her father pulling her back down to the floor.
The gunfight outside erupted around them with astounding ferocity. It seemed that the noise of gunfire was almost exclusive to the front of the cabin, save for one gun moving around to their left and right, chattering in bursts. When the back of the cabin began getting pounded on, her father squeezed her arm so tight Angela thought he was going to cut off all her circulation.
She still grasped the .357 and aimed it toward the pounding sound. Her heart beat so hard she thought that it might burst right out of her chest. Her head was a mass of thoughts. Where had George gone? Where had he gotten that rifle he was holding? Why wasn’t he coming back? Perhaps she was wrong about him. Maybe all of those lines he fed her were just that, lines.
Then the first cabin board came loose, followed by the second, then the third. Someone was beating it with an axe. Angela prepared to die. Ever since her mother’s passing she had prepared for it. Thoughts of suicide had permeated her line of thinking so many times she had lost count, but still, when it came to this moment, she wanted to live. Even if George had abandoned them, and even if everything he had meant to her only minutes ago was all a lie, he had shown her that love was possible, even for her. Then it happened. Through the hole in the back wall poked a face, George’s face.
“Honey, I was thinking a back door right here, maybe with a little deck where I can put my rocking chair and whittle wood and whatnot.”
Ahiga had turned earlier to see two men advancing on him with no less than a dozen more in their support. In an instant he knew that he needed to move the fight away from the front of the cabin if he were going to save its occupants. By then the men of the shantytown had fled. Their weapons consisted of knives, tire irons, and baseball bats, which were no match for the submachine guns of the enemy.
With the situation assessed in milliseconds, Ahiga moved with purpose to his right and double tapped the first advancing soldier in the chest. He had heard good reports about the M1 Garand, but this was his first field operation with the weapon. So far, so good. After shooting the first man, he used his momentum in a roll ending on the far side of the structure where a large part of his body lay concealed by a post holding up the porch. He aimed, and double tapped a second man square in the chest.
A fifteen second lull followed as the ten remaining commandos regrouped. Ahiga could hear their leader shouting instructions in German, and he wished that he had paid attention when his good friend Rex had tried to teach him the language many years ago. During the lull he ran to the other side of the cabin and retrieved an axe that was near the woodpile. He noticed, with small regret, that the first guard’s body now sat riddled with holes.
Ahiga had a clear shot at one of the commandos across the road and shot him once in the head. A barrage of bullets answered him and he ducked back behind the wood pile. The road was the main thing keeping them alive right now. The other group of men was hesitant to come out into the open as Ahiga had proven his aim was true and his fear under control. Minutes passed with George running to one side of the cabin, loosing a few shots, stopping on his way by, whacking the cabin with the axe, and then repeating the procedure. After he had three boards out of the way he stuck his head through and made contact.
He then started throwing objects through the hole. First he threw in his three empty clips, next the axe, and then the bandolier. He rushed to the side of the cabin again and noticed two of the commandos coming around that flank. With the assumption that two more were coming from the opposite direction, he sprinted to the other side and confirmed his suspicions. He fired two potshots at the men he could see attempting to flank him and ran back to the hole. Two full clips awaited his return.
“Thanks.” His voice was tense, but firm and unafraid. “Take the axe and get out this back way. I will meet you fifty yards straight behind the cabin. You’re going to hear more explosions, and watch your left flank, there are two men heading that way and I may not be back before they get close. I’m hoping they zero in on the cabin and you’re not here anymore”
“Got it.” Angela said.
Nicholas began beating on the back of the cabin. His little round body hacked away with the fury of a demon. His brow furled, his eyes narrowed in determination, and his face glowed a bright red from the exertion. Ahiga took notice that he wouldn’t be able to keep up the pace for long, but that would not be needed.
Angela would be able to fit out the hole right now, but he couldn’t ask her to leave her father because he knew she wouldn’t. It wouldn’t be another 30 seconds before he had it open anyway. Content that his plan was the best way, Ahiga took off straight up the hill behind the cabin at an astounding pace. He covered fifty yards through the middle of the dense brush in less than ten seconds. His clothes tore as thorns gripped them and the flesh on his arms and legs protested, but he was now where he needed to be, and made a quick left. A mere five seconds later he saw the two men who attempted to flank him on that side. A
higa closed the twenty yard gap between them so fast, and with such ferocity, that the first man didn’t even have time to attempt to dodge the knife that slashed his jugular. The second man started to raise his gun and turn, but Ahiga grabbed his neck with one powerful arm, twisted, and then met the other powerful arm going the other way. The commando’s neck snapped like a small twig, and without firing a shot George defended the flank. Ahiga sat still for a few seconds, assessing the situation, and hoping that since the sound of the axe had ended, Angela and her father were out, heading up the hill.
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15.
“A little light reading, huh” Chase muttered to himself after letting Mary Elizabeth into his suite in Conant Hall.
Mary Elizabeth looked around the apartment and the cleanliness of the place amazed her. It did not look like the dorm rooms or frat houses she had seen before. The boys in those places lived disgusting lives, but this residency was nothing like that. Everything was neat and tidy, and save for the giant stacks of books on the table, in its place.
She had gathered, in her limited time knowing Rex Chase, that he was not from a privileged background like her. That explained the sparseness of furnishings. All in all, however, it was a very nice place. It was not as nice as where she lived, but she couldn’t hold that against him.
“So, welcome to my pad. Whatya think?” Chase said as he flipped on the radio.
“I love it. It’s so neat and tidy,” she replied with a smile.
“Well, if my mother ever dropped by and it weren’t I’d never hear the end of it, so I just stay on top of things.”
“It’s amazing you’re able to find the time to do your own laundry, wash your own dishes, sweep your own floors, and make your own bed. I guess when you’re a super genius getting two doctorates at once, nothing is impossible,” she teased while sitting down next to him on the couch.
“I can’t tell a lie,” Chase said, “My mom does my laundry. Most days I eat in the cafeteria or at my parent’s place. I don’t make my bed, but, I do sweep the floor. All by myself, I might add.”
She giggled as Chase stood up and crossed the room, thumbing through one of the books on the table.
“What are all those?” she asked.
“I don’t know; a little light reading from the General.”
“Oh my, those would take me a year to read. Do I even want to know how long they will take you?”
“Ha. I doubt it.”
“OK, you know I do. Please tell me. Pleeeeasssse…” she said while batting her eyes, tilting her head and resting her chin on the backs of her hands.
“Well, if I got real serious, I could get this done by the morning.”
“That whole book. You would understand and remember it all too.” she said.
“No, my dear,” Chase flashed her that smile, cleared the hair from his face, and gestured toward the table, “my whole table full of books.”
“Gross” she said.
“Gross. You’re calling me gross.” Chase laughed as he walked back and sat down next to her on the couch.
“Yes, you’re gross. You smell like a factory worker and you’re filthy and sweaty. I should leave so that you can take a shower.”
Chase’s demeanor changed in an instant.
“No, no, no, no, please don’t leave. I just want to make you dinner, lay with you on the couch, and listen to the radio all night. I can read stupid books tomorrow.” Chase was already off the couch and heading down the hallway. “You stay right there young lady. I’m going to fly through a shower in no time. You won’t even know I’m gone.”
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16.
Nicholas tired faster than he thought he would. Angela could slip through the hole with ease, but he still had no chance of fitting.
“Go,” he wheezed, doubled over from exertion “Please, go”
“No Daddy.” Angela wept bitter tears, hugged her father, and leaned close while whispering. “Until yesterday, you were my only reason for living daddy, and now my other reason is out there, and he’s going to save us. I know it.”
“How?” The professor attempted to control his breathing, but the physicality of the axe swinging had taken its toll. He felt like he was going to pass out and a sharp pain went shooting down his left arm. It was his heart, he knew it. All those years of eating donuts every morning and drinking a bottle of whiskey at a time had gotten to him. He was dying out here in the middle of nowhere, not from the bullets, but from his failing old heart.
“Daddy, he just will, I know it.” She whispered once more in his ear as a strange tranquility surrounded the cabin. “I just do.”
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17.
The silence in the camp was unsettling. Ahiga made his way around the enemy flank without being noticed and down the road to what he assumed was once a mill or small factory of some kind. He now had his M1 Garand, two German MP 18’s, an amount of 9mm ammunition that would defend him for days, and enough dynamite wired around the camp to blow it up twice. His problem was going to be getting to all of his detonating devices. He had set them up before in case he needed to make a retreat in the opposite direction of where he now sat.
Ahiga entertained a quick thought about making the run back the other way, but dismissed it. These were the closest charges and were more spread out. Maybe the commandos would believe there was more than just one of him. His plan was beginning to fall apart. If he had just one more man with him, even if that man were inexperienced, like his best friend Rex, he knew he could be successful. Ahiga had seen Rex laugh in the face of death on more than one occasion without ever batting an eye.
Now it was time to focus on the task at hand, though, and he had given the commandos just enough time to begin to become comfortable. It was then that Ahiga heard a sound that made his heart drop. Angela, almost a hundred yards away now, and still in the cabin, let loose a blood curdling scream followed by a flurry of gunshots and male voices yelling.
Ahiga resisted the urge to run to her, knowing that he would just be cut down by the commandos. He did the only thing he could think of. He blew the charges covering over half the camp all at once.
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18.
The two flanking commandos had come upon the back of the shot up cabin with extreme stealth. They could see inside the slumped down fat man and his weeping daughter. Their instructions were to kill the girl only if no other option presented itself whereas the fat man was not to be harmed, and was to stay at the camp. The girl was to be extracted if possible. Information they weren’t privy to, though, was that the fat man had hired a team of professionals to stop them from doing their jobs.
At least half of their fourteen man team was already dead, and the other men held tentative positions, though spread thin. They needed to get in, grab the girl, gag her, deliver the message, and disappear up the hill behind the cabin to a rally point a couple miles down the road. The first commando reached through the break in the wall, grabbed a hold of Angela’s hair and attempted to bully her through the hole.
***
Angela had alerted to their presence when she heard one of their rifles move past a thick spruce behind the cabin. She had continued to pretend to weep, while watching their movements through her jumbled hair. Then the man reached through and grabbed her. She dropped to her behind and emptied all six shots from the .357 in their direction. One shot hit the first man in the jaw, but he held tight, and continued to fight her through the hole. The other man returned fire, wounding her in the leg, and she cried out in pain as her will to fight lessened.
Angela clutched the spot where the bullet laid embedded in her thigh. It burned like a hot poker from a fire and she gave up her battle with the men, allowing herself to be pulled outside. Her father watched, impotent to act as the second commando poked his head back through the hole.
“The boss has been getting the impression that you aren’t doing everything you can to get th
is job done. He thinks maybe you didn’t have enough incentive. If you deliver on what you promised you will see your daughters again.”
Her father replied with wheezing, but Angela had heard what the commando said, and almost couldn’t believe it. She hadn’t seen her twin sister since just after her mother’s funeral. She blamed Tricia for the loss of their mother, and though her father would never admit it, he blamed her too. Could she have something to do with all of this?
The first gunman began making gurgling noises and slumped against the back of the cabin wall. Angela got some satisfaction knowing she had killed one of her would be assailants, but that was no great solace to her now. As the second commando began dragging her up the hill she prepared to scream, but then noticed that somehow, during all the madness, he had tied a gag in her mouth.
How had she not noticed that? Where was George? Where was George?
At that moment the ground shook with the ferocity of an earthquake. The skies seemed to be raining fire, dirt, nails, wood, and glass. A never ending stream of gunfire followed the blast with the intensity of a dragon belching death across the camp. She knew what that meant. He was coming for her and she just needed to hold out a little longer. The commando had resisted the urge to drop and continued to drag Angela up the hill. She fought him for a few yards, making his trek more arduous, and then he struck her in the head and it was dark.
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