by Jack Fernley
On the ground floor, Hand and Cromwell found with ease what they were looking for: the iron bars of the cells. There were twelve in total. The middle cell’s cage had been bent out of all shape by the impact of the explosion. Inside it, the charred remains of a prisoner. The shell had ended its life here, it seemed, and turned the man into charcoal. Had they killed George Washington?
Climbing over the debris, a second cell contained two men, screaming in pain, and in the third, as quiet as one could imagine, a dishevelled figure, hugging his limbs and shaking. It was Washington.
‘General Washington, it’s Edward Hand, I’m come to rescue you.’
Covered in dust, Washington slowly raised his head, shock giving way to a thin smile. In a cracked voice, he said, ‘Thank God for you, Edward Hand. The keys to this cell and these chains are over there, hanging on that wall.’ He slowly raised himself from the ground. Almost immediately, he appeared to regain the height and confidence of the war commander, his false teeth were in place and he reached for a dust-covered wig. ‘Let us get out of here before these damn Germans capture us again.’
Hand collected a large round ring with several heavy iron keys. Turning towards the cell, he found his feet were stuck. Something was holding his right leg. From the grey debris on the floor, a huge, monstrous hand gripped Hand’s ankle tightly. Under the dust, wood and bricks, he could make out the outline of a giant’s body. A blond mop of hair coated in muck, blue eyes fixed and determined, and the face of Lothar Kluggman.
With an almighty tug, Kluggman pulled Hand to the floor, before rising from the ground, scattering rubble as he did so. Hand landed painfully on the floor, but was composed enough to throw the keys towards Washington. He looked up as Kluggman’s boot was coming towards his face. Hand’s head jerked to the left and the boot crashed on a pile of rubbish. The Irishman reached out for a weapon, any weapon, scrambling about the floor as he did so. Before he could find anything, Kluggman had lifted him up from the waist, throwing Hand into a pile of broken chairs and tables.
From behind, Cromwell threw himself on to Kluggman, pulling at his hair, trying to punch his head. The blows seemed insignificant to the German, little more than an irritant. Reaching behind, he pulled Cromwell around and headbutted him square in the nose. Cromwell shrieked in pain. Now Kluggman punched him once, twice in the stomach, and Cromwell fell to the ground, before the German delivered a kick to the ribs. He stopped only because Hand was up, gripping a plank of wood that had once been the top of a desk. He struck Kluggman around the head twice with the wood. The giant stopped momentarily, slumping under the blows, but as Hand went to make a third strike, Kluggman seized hold of the plank and wrestled with Hand for it. Jerking it from side to side, he overpowered the Irishman, who let the wood slip and stumbled to his right. Kluggman threw the plank at Hand, who put his hands up to protect himself, as it splintered about him.
Before Hand could make his next move, Kluggman seized hold of him, putting his head under his left arm. Squeezing the Irishman tightly, he punched him in the face with his right fist. He was about to punch for the second time, when an enormous explosion rocked the prison. Jefferson had fired a second round into the jailhouse, aiming higher than the first; it brought down what remained of the roof. Bricks and slate rained down. Kluggman’s enormous body protected Hand’s head, but large fragments of brick and tile landed straight on the German’s skull. Trying to protect his head, his arms released Hand. Dazed and stumbling, further debris knocked Kluggman off balance, and he fell backwards, slamming against the iron bars of Washington’s cell.
The German tried to get to his feet, but he could not raise his head. He felt metal against his neck.
Washington had unlocked his chains during the fight and now had them wrapped around the German’s neck, pulling him right up against the bars. Kluggman tried to fight back, thrashing about with his legs and body. Washington struggled to hold him rigid, such was the strength of the Stormtrooper, the general’s long legs held against the bars as he sought every leverage to pull the chains tighter. Back on his feet, Hand started to kick the German in the chest, and now Kluggman tried to kick out at him. Pulling a brick from the rubble around him, Hand smacked it full into the German’s face, not once but twice. At last the German began to weaken, the kicking and thrashing less intense. Washington pulled the chain tighter and tighter around his neck. Kluggman’s face went bluer and bluer with each pull until, finally, he gave up the fight.
Von Steuben and Conze surveyed the destruction of the jailhouse and the broken body of Kluggman. Through the gaping hole in the prison, out on the road, lay the managed metal remains of the carriage and gun, destroyed by Jefferson before the quartet had fled the scene.
‘We have sent a unit up the Trenton Road. They won’t get far. We will soon have them back.’
‘Don’t be so sure, Obergruppenführer,’ replied von Steuben. ‘Whoever broke Washington out was organised. They executed their plan well.’
‘Four men were seen riding away, just four men.’
‘I cannot believe four men alone overpowered the guards at the docks, stole the tank and then did this, all this! Four men alone could not murder Kluggman. This is bigger than four men. There is a conspiracy. How could they have known of the tank, how to drive it and fire the cannon? There are those in the Continental Army still loyal to Washington. Even in Congress, and now we see within our own forces. We need to root them all out. The traitors must be purged. Our mission, Werner, is not as simple as we may have thought. We have a long way to go before we have established the Reich in this land.’
FIFTY-ONE
Across from the lake, the wind blew through the trees and with it the last leaves of autumn fell. The chill breeze cooled the bronzed arms of the rowers who had brought Akiatonharónkwen, Tyonajanegen and her husband, Han Yerry Tewahangarahken across the water. Pulling their canoes up on to the pebbled shore of Lake Oneida, they formed a guard around their leaders as the rest of the tribes formed a large semicircle. The Oneida had come from all over their lands, west from Canandaigua, south from the Susquehanna River, from the St Lawrence in the north, but most had walked the seven miles from the town of Oneida itself.
The son of an Abenaki mother and African slave father, Akiatonharónkwen’s birth name was Louis Cook. The French captured the family and gave the boy up to the Mohawk, who named him Akiatonharónkwen – ‘he unhangs himself from the group’. The name suited him. He had spent years fighting for the French in the Seven Years’ War and broke from his Mohawk brothers at the start of the Revolutionary War by leading the Oneida and Tuscarora in siding with the Colonists. In doing so, he wrecked the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy, the other four tribes siding with the British. The Americans had come to call him Colonel Louis, a nickname won by his efforts in Benedict Arnold’s Quebec expedition of 1775.
Now he walked up from the beach and towards a man he had first seen in 1755 when they were both part of a failed peace conference on the eve of the Battle of the Monongahela. The battle in which he first fought the British and destroyed the Braddock Expedition.
The twenty-two years that had passed had aged both men. Akiatonharónkwen’s naked torso bore the marks of many battles and a life spent living rough, moving from village to village as the British ate into his people’s lands. The man he walked towards was grey-faced, his hair white, a troubled jaw jutting out in the wind. With him were three men he had never met, but he knew who they were. And behind them their troops.
‘Father George, it pleases my heart to see you once more.’
‘Colonel Louis, old friend, my spirit rises to see you and your people this day.’
‘The war cloud rising in the east has made much trouble and brought a great distress upon the American people, which troubles my soul. War is a great evil to any nation or people. I know this by sad experience. The war between the English and France ended in the conquest of Canada by the English King George. It brought devastation to the French people of these lands, but also
to the Oneida, the Tuscarora, the Mohawk, the Onondaga, the Cayuga, the Seneca. I rejoiced when you took up arms to defend your rights and liberties against the English. I came to you and pledged myself and the Oneida in your cause. That broke the Iroquois. And now, I am told that the American cause is broken.’
‘It is true our cause is no longer united. The British are almost gone from America. King George has few supporters left. They are under siege in New York and by the end of winter they will be finished. But we allowed our cause to be perverted by others who did not share our values of liberty. If we allow them to succeed, they will prove themselves to be greater tyrants than even King George. They will enslave the Iroquois and all the native peoples of America. They will destroy the forests. Poison the lakes. Kill the animals. They will turn this land into a desert. We come here today to forge an undying alliance with the peoples of the Oneida and Tuscarora and hope it may lead to restoring the ancient bonds of the whole Iroquois people. For these Hessians – or Nazis, as they now call themselves – threaten the life of all the peoples native to this America.’
‘Father George, we the Iroquois, are now in a feeble state compared to what we were once. We were once the lords of this soil, but we are now much reduced in numbers and strength. We once lived as free as the deer in the forest and fowls in the air. We will ally with you if you determine to live peacefully and no more violate the lands of the Iroquois or any people who dwelt here before the white face. If you agree to this, then we will treaty with you. We may build a Two Nation Army, of our peoples and yours. The war spirit, which is naturally in us, still burns in our blood. If you uphold such an alliance, then we will exert ourselves to our uttermost to aid you against the Nazis, your enemies. Your enemies will be ours and ours, yours.’
He stretched out an arm.
‘Let us seal our understanding in the way of you Americans.’
Washington moved forward and took Akiatonharónkwen’s hand.
‘Great Akiatonharónkwen, the chief known and feared by all Americans as Colonel Louis, let us this day pledge to create a new nation, a nation of equals, where the white man, the red man and the black man all find common cause together. A cause to defeat the dark forces that would divide men, forces that aim to destroy all that is good and pure in the hearts of men. Let us build together a nation of liberty, freedom and tolerance.’
Washington pulled Akiatonharónkwen into his arms and, as the two men embraced on the shores of the lake, great cheers arose from the Oneida and Tuscarora people, cheers that were picked up by the blue-jacketed men, white and black faces, of the Sons of Liberty brigade, the new army established by Washington and his allies. Seizing the moment, Thomas Jefferson, Edward Hand, Henry Knox and Oliver Cromwell joined in to embrace Tyonajanegen and Han Yerry Tewahangarahken.
The wind rose again. Ripples became waves across Lake Oneida; the tops of the pine trees on its shores billowed and shook. Over the forests, towards the towns and cities of the east and the south, the wind carried the message: America fights on; we will fight to the death for liberty, freedom and tolerance.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A number of people were wonderfully supportive during the writing of this novel. In particular, thanks are due to Dan Jones, the world’s foremost tattooed historian, for helping sort out the initial storyline and continual enthusiasm. My apologies for failing to deliver on your vision of a Panzer tank on an Elizabethan warship, but there’s always next time. Celina Parker insisted on helping out and provided insightful comments on early drafts.
Thanks are due to the wonderful team at Unbound who got the pitch immediately and then supported the part-time author with minimal cajoling and maximum patience. So that’s a large helping of appreciation to Philip Connor, Jimmy Leach, Georgia Odd, Anna Simpson, Caitlin Harvey and Imogen Denny; Justine Taylor for her superb, no-nonsense editing and Mark Bowsher for making the video which may (or may not) have helped the funding, and if it didn’t, it was entirely down to the presenter.
To all those friends who responded by pledging money to help raise the funding, thank you for coming on-board and making this book possible. I can only hope it wasn’t too painful and the read is worth it.
Finally, one person bore the brunt of it all more than others, so thanks to my darling wife Tess for her continued support, encouragement and love. Now write your book!
SUPPORTERS
Unbound is a new kind of publishing house. Our books are funded directly by readers. This was a very popular idea during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Now we have revived it for the internet age. It allows authors to write the books they really want to write and readers to support the books they would most like to see published.
The names listed below are of readers who have pledged their support and made this book happen. If you’d like to join them, visit www.unbound.com.
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This edition first published in 2018
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© Wayne Garvie, 2018
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