“No, no… that’s…uh… a poor solution for us all.”
While Kat puzzled over the man’s odd fear, Captain Steele bounded over.
“Why? Is something going to happen soon? Then give me some hot intel that keeps me out in the field instead of rushing home to mama.”
The German opened, then shut his mouth, only the gnashing of his grinding teeth coming out. Kat yanked a leather-wrapped notebook out of her thigh pocket and flapped it in his face. The busted lock bounced off his forehead.
“Then let’s skip the middleman and make a deal right now. Where’s the decryption key for this ledger? Seems real important. None of the regular codes work.”
The Colonel dropped his brow and muttered. As soon as Steele bent to his level, the older man tried headbutting the Captain, clawing for the pistol on his belt.
“Oh, please. You’re embarrassing yourself.” Steele flipped the prisoner over his lean back and dropped a knee on his throat. “You’re way too slow for stunts like that. No one’s going to shoot you, no matter how hard you try.”
Kat dropped to the sand, stretching out beside the Colonel as he fought back the tears. “The Captain’s right, but there are other ways to kill you. Suppose we release you now?”
“Don’t toy with me, you damn…”
She purred and scratched her belly. “No joke. Give you food and water and point you towards the highway. You should get picked up sometime tomorrow, just about when we’re within radio range of friendly forces. Then the good Captain here sends an urgent broadcast about a massive pending attack. Can’t give the details over the air, of course, but an exceptionally cooperative high-level prisoner gave us the skinny in return for his freedom.”
Propping up on an elbow, she shot the Colonel a wink. “Obviously, we’ll use one of the older radio encryption keys. Something that I’m sure your intelligence section has already broken.”
He locked surprisingly bright eyes on Kat and ground his jaw again.
A sliver of blood trickled out of his cringing lips.
“Oh no you don’t!” She lunged at him and shoved the notebook in his mouth, right over his half-bitten off tongue.
Captain Steele dashed back to the trucks hidden under the rocks. A moment later, he playfully spun a pair of pliers over his head. “Stand back, Kat. Mother always wanted me to be a dentist.”
“Wait, we can do better than that. Instead of trying to stop him from chewing off his own tongue, let’s give him a reason to use it.” Kat took the Colonel’s hand and massaged the scratched golden ring.
“How long have you been married?”
The German heaved himself up to a crouch, facing her with all the defiance he could muster with his wrists still pinned behind his back. He and Kat cursed each for a solid minute without saying a word. Eventually, the prisoner spit out blood and hissed.
“Have some mercy! You’re worse than any…”
“NAZI?” Kat cocked her head while baring her teeth.
Steele bent down and whispered in her ear. “What the bloody hell are you going on about?”
Kat shooed the Captain off. “Your wife’s letters aren’t encrypted. Neither are the ones from your boys. Good job getting them safely tucked away on occupation duty in France.”
Pouncing to her feet, Kat paced in fast circles around him. “What do you think, Major? You’re the professor.”
“Why drag me into this? You’re the expert at… whatever this is.” Trufflefoot shuffled out of the shadows, hugging himself. “Besides, you already know what to do. He’s five steps ahead of us. That’s his job. Just get it over with.”
“Enough with the mind games.” Captain Steele snorted and snagged the back of the prisoner’s scalp. He snapped the pliers open and shut. “Let’s start yanking things out until his tongue loosens up. That’s what these sick bastards would do to any of us. I’ve seen it happen.”
When Kat squeezed Steele’s shoulder, his coiled muscles melted. “Now that would be a waste of time. The Colonel’s body may be slow, but that devious mind of his has it all figured out. Isn’t that right?” The man finally stopped shaking and collapsed back to the ground.
“Yeah, if we take him to headquarters, he’s dead from whatever nasty surprise they have in store. If we make a deal and let him go, the Gestapo will do far worse than anything you could imagine…”
“So we should kill him now and quit pussyfooting around? Roger that.” Steele reached for his sidearm.
“Tsk, tsk. Again, we’re better than that. There’s still one thing we can offer. One glimmer of hope he’s been clinging to for a while.”
Kat whipped out her Elite-Diamant blade from an unseen hidey-hole.
“An honorable death.”
The kraut never blinked as she flipped the point to his ear…and then trailed it down his spine. Kat slashed the ropes around the Colonel’s wrists and ankles with two light flicks of her hand. “Tell me what’s in that book, and we’ll leave your bullet-riddled body in a pile of spent brass. We’ll even add some blood trails from the corpses of the men we lost, so it looks like you went out in a blaze of glory. You have my word.”
She flicked her lips to his ear. “Als die Tochter von Oberst Pernass.” The prisoner cut his eyes at her, trying to set Kat afire with pure rage. She stood, straightened her hair and yawned.
“Or we bury you where you’ll never be found and send a not-too-well coded letter to your wife saying you cut a lucrative deal with the Brits. Naturally, we’ll provide detailed directions on how she can meet up with you in Brazil.”
Steele chuckled and covered the tensed prisoner with his weapon, Kat sidestepping into his line of fire. “So what’s it going to be, mate? A posthumous Iron Cross, or your whole bloodline thrown into a concentration camp until your deserting arse is found? Funny to think about your boys working as slaves in the same sweatshops as the Jews. I can only imagine what chores they have for your wife…”
“Ah, this is a bunch of piss. Get out of the way, Kat. He’ll never go for—”
The Colonel took a deep breath and drew himself up to parade ground attention.
“Number three is the legitimate key sheet. The others are fakes. My code group is L3, R1, and B4. The rest should be self-explanatory.”
He took a few steps towards Steele and bumped his chest. “You should still pull out my teeth and fingernails afterward. The SS wouldn’t believe it otherwise. Oh, and a final request, from one Officer to another?”
Steele gave a slight nod.
“Not in the head. My wife would prefer an open casket funeral.”
Steele snapped off a salute.
The Colonel grunted, “see you all in hell.”
While the men went around the corner to handle the details, Kat rushed back to the trucks and dived into decoding the book. Trufflefoot shuffled after her and tried to pry the ledger from her hand. “Kat, you need to take a break. Let me handle the grunt translation work, and you can look it over later. You’ve barely slept since… the incident.”
“We can split the workload if you like, but I’ll get all the sleep I need when I’m dead.” Kat never glanced up, although she paused long enough to rip the last half of the book out.
Dore hovered protectively around her the whole time, trying to catch the fevered woman’s attention. Finally, he took a chance and squeezed her shoulder. “Not if you keep coming back from the dead! Damn it, Kat. What’s gotten into you? What’s so blasted personal about this? We’ll be home in another day or two. No need to keep taking such risks…”
He jumped back as she snapped her head around and flashed frantic, bloodshot eyes at him. “You’re blocking my light, Sergeant.”
A long burst of fire on the other side of the rocks cut him off. Saving face, Dore wandered off to help Capson and Atkins give their battered Willy some much needed TLC. An hour later, he came back to the circled Chevy’s. Trufflefoot and Kat still hunkered over their papers, without budging an inch since he left. Dore plopped down two lukewarm cups of in
stant coffee on the first truck’s hood.
Kat ignored the distraction, but Trufflefoot gulped his down fast. “Thanks, Sergeant.”
“Any luck?” Dore spoke to the Major, keeping his eyes on Kat’s hunched shoulders.
“Jein, as the Deutsch would say. I can translate exactly what they’re going to do, but not what the bloody hell they mean by that. They have some type of superweapon, but it sounds like gibberish.” Kat shot up and cracked her back, blinking at the men around her.
“I’m telling you, Uranium Club has to be code for an SS unit. They love their weird nicknames.”
Captain Steele dropped his half-assembled sten gun, barely catching the cleaning rod before it fell in the dirt. “Bugger me! Did you say uranium? Does that book have anything in there about plutonium or other quirky sciency names?”
“Yeah, a bunch of -ium things. I’ve never heard of any of these doofers before. It must be a code within a code.” Kat leaned against Dore’s shoulder, giving the Captain all her attention.
“Yeah... I’ve heard of them.” His perpetual poker face slipped. “These are all forms of ultra-concentrated poison. Isotopes or whatever from uranium.”
Trufflefoot pried off his dirty glasses and vainly rubbed the scratches. “Pray tell, Captain. At what institution did you study chemistry?”
Steele crossed his arms and paced in a circle. “Last summer, when the NAZIs were pounding London, and we were scrambling for any way to strike back at the fascists, I volunteered for a new, hush-hush outfit. Something called the Special Operations Branch. Seemed like fun, sneaking saboteurs and Commandos into the occupied mainland. We had a smashing good time, at least for a while.”
Trufflefoot chuckled, “and there you earned your doctorate or what?”
Steele plopped down on the Chevy’s fender and tore off his turban. He shook the sand out aimlessly while glaring at the setting sun. “There’s a special power plant in Telemark, Norway. Apparently, it’s a front for the production of something called heavy water. It was odd that all these eggheads were giving the pre-mission briefing. The details were way over my head. Our job was to neutralize the site before the Krauts could use that water to make uranium and plutonium. Whatever that stuff is, Command was terrified Berlin could manufacture a super bomb. Like a city killer. Sounded like a bunch of piss to me, but the Germans sure took it seriously.”
The scar on his cheek twitched hard as he spat in the dirt. “Must have been a whole regiment guarding that plant. We never got closer than five klicks before all hell broke loose. The Special Operations Branch sent a whole platoon. Three of us made it out. After that poorly planned cock-up, I had a little row with the civilian leading the program. He spent two weeks in hospital, and they exiled me to the middle of nowhere… well, at least I don’t have to work for those S.O.B.’s again.”
“Look, Captain, What does any of this have to do…”
Steele stopped twitching and rapped his scarred knuckles on the hood. “Because these chemicals are a hundred times more lethal than mustard gas. According to the scientists, even gas masks wouldn’t work. The contamination is supposed to last for years. One thing they said was quite clear, If we found any uranium, don’t set the charges. It would only spread the poison. Something about a Dirty Bomb. They claimed we’d wind up contaminating half of Norway and Sweden if we set off explosives around any barrels labeled with an -ium.”
Trufflefoot crossed his arms and puffed out his cheeks. “Don’t get me wrong. I do believe you, but it’s so much speculation. Even if the Germans had an exotic chemical weapon, it must be quite rare. Why bother deploying it here? Wouldn’t the natural target be Britain proper, or on the Eastern front?”
Kat finally pulled her nose out of her section of the notepad. Dore ran over as she hyperventilated. “Kat, what’s…”
“Because every storm that rolls over the Atlantic would blow the poison back into the Vaterland. The same goes for the strong east wind that rakes through central Germany from Siberia every winter. Way down here in North Africa though, the contamination is confined to the inferior races.” Trufflefoot refused to meet her gaze.
“Maybe, but still, the Herr only has a division or two committed here. Seems such a waste to throw away their Wunderwaffe on a sideshow.”
Lieutenant Stewart sniffed, not a tinge of emotion marring his calculating voice as he butted in for the first time. “Think about it. A few of these dirty bombs are the same as deploying a few extra panzer divisions. You don’t even need to poison hundreds of square miles at a time. This desert war is like a dry version of an island-hopping campaign. All they’d need to do is irradiate, or whatever you call it, a few key ports and cities, and that’s the bulk of our army and support network gone.”
Captain Steele stomped his boot in the sand like a bull. “Rommel really could be sunbathing at the Persian Gulf in a fortnight, invading Russia from the south a few weeks after that. Not to mention, how exactly are we supposed to stay in the fight when the Commonwealth’s oil supply is in Axis hands?”
Trufflefoot deflated completely.
“How much would you need? Hundreds, maybe thousands of pounds of this stuff?”
“Probably a few shipping crates’ worth.” Kat slid a decoded page along the hood between the two officers. “Kinda like these six coming into Tripoli the day after tomorrow.”
Trufflefoot mumbled while meticulously studying the whole section. “There’s too little to go on. I bet hundreds of shipments arrive there every day. It’s the primary supply hub for all of Axis controlled North Africa, after all.”
“Yeah, but how many shipping containers arrive via U-boat? And how many are supposed to be personally escorted by the head Gestapo agent in theater?”
Captain Steele spent all of three seconds staring off at the horizon before whipping out his riding gloves. “Let’s quit screwing around. Break camp boys. We’re moving out in five mikes. Executive Officer! How long if we haul ass?”
The lieutenant and the patrol’s navigator were already at his elbow, pouring over several map overlays. “Roger that, sir. If you aren’t too worried about kicking up dust, we’ll take the emergency protocol. Cut straight across the sand sea well south of the coastal road. Assuming no breakdowns and no stops other than refueling, then we should be back in Egypt shortly after dawn. That’s at least within radio range of our forces.”
Kat whistled from the truck’s passenger seat. “Hello! Have I been talking to myself the whole time? We only have two or three days before they put these weapons in play. No time to get back and file a friggin’ report. It’s up to us to stop them.”
“That’s fine. Just enough time to get back.”
Kat climbed over the hood and slammed her slender hands down on his map. “Wake up! Playing things by the book is going to cost us the whole war. Once we get back, they’ll keep us tied up for a day or so in debriefings while we’re shuffled around between different Command Posts. Come on. I spent way too much time in the General’s office. Those old men will talk endlessly and gossip for days, doing everything they can to convince themselves we’re spinning fairy tales. Even if they believe us, it’ll likely be at least a week before they can organize an air raid or special forces strike.”
Steele ground his teeth. “Kat, think with your head, not your balls. It’s 800 kilometers back to Tripoli. The only chance we have is to hurry back and convince Command to throw every bomber they’ve got at the port. Our job is reconnaissance, and we’ve got the mother of all intel to report. Getting that notebook in the General’s hands is now our sole mission.”
He stuck his hand out, as Kat rapped the book on the dash. “Bombers… of course, you’re right! The Luftwaffe doesn’t have any long-range strike aircraft, so they’ll have to move these crates to forward airfields. We don’t have to go all the way to Tripoli. They’ll come to us. We backtrack to where you found us in Ras Lanuf. That’s the best highway bottleneck to watch.”
Captain Steele snorted as Trufflef
oot wrung his cracked hands inside and out. “Talk about a needle in a haystack. Dozens of convoys coming through every day. How would we find the right one?”
“That’s the easy part. Just look for the trucks escorted by scores of SS troopers. Likely some tanks, too.”
“Have fun with that. We’ll send a postcard from the beaches of Alexandria.” Captain Steele slashed his hand through the air and went back to planning their route.
Sergeant Dore bummed a pinch of snuff from the Executive Officer and howled. “Count me in! Sounds like the most fun you can have with your clothes on.”
Kat shot him a wink. “It’s a date then, Wolf Man. What about you, Major?”
Trufflefoot rubbed his still-swollen nose and winced. “It’s not quite the craziest thing we’ve done this week. And we would have the element of surprise…” She beamed and turned to the boys sitting on the truck’s rear fender.
“Capson, Atkins? This is all a tall order. No shame in it if you want to head home with the LRDG.”
Atkins dropped his ration and bounded to his feet. “Can we really? Then absolutely—” Atkins shoved a Sten gun into Atkins’s chest and clapped his own hands. “You can count on us. We won’t let the team down. King and country!”
Atkins rolled his eyes, grabbed a fuel can, and shuffled over to their jeep, his shoulders practically dragging in the sand.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake! Are you really serious about this suicide mission? I’m not wasting any more time with your games.” He lunged for the notebook. Kat slipped out of his reach and clucked her tongue.
“Finders keepers, Captain... I’ll tell you what, maybe we can trade for that big Chevy truck with the anti-tank gun on the back? Dore, do you know how to operate that thing?”
“Too right, lassie. Get a couple more machine guns too.”
Captain Steele crossed his arms and growled at Sergeant Dore. “Slow your roll, Jock. Sergeant, you’re still subject to military discipline.” The big Scotsman bared his teeth and jumped forward, bumping chests with the Captain.
“Never would have pegged you for a coward. Why don’t you bugger off back to mama, already? Before I kick your ass out of here.” By now, the whole patrol clustered around the unblinking men. No one twitched a muscle for a solid minute. Even Kat kept her mouth shut.
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