Blackhawk

The Cry of the Hawk

by Doc Quantum of the Time Trust

A sneak attack on the California coast and an escape to Washington, D.C., is a prelude to the formation of a new team of Blackhawks, led by Will Hawk, son of the original Blackhawk. Introducing Zinda Blake, Jimmy Chan, Elsa Hendrickson, Reed Grover-Baines, and Dmitri Pushkin, the new Blackhawks! Guest starring President Donald Daniel Richards (the former Manhunter) and Vice President Chuck Wilson (member of the original Blackhawks)!

• Chapter 1: A Day of Infamy

• Chapter 2: The New Blackhawks

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Will Hawk moaned loudly and awoke with a start, his heart pounding fast as a jackhammer.

“Are you all right, Will?” said the beautiful blonde Veronica Lake lookalike standing over him with a concerned look on her face.

“It was just the dream again,” he replied.

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

Will couldn’t help but smile at the look of worry on Zinda Blake’s face. “I’m OK, honey. I could use a kiss, though.”

Zinda leveled her eyes at him. “I think you’re doing better. Personally, I think you’d be better off with a cold shower.”

He laughed lightly at that, glad for the company. The dream and variations of it had been plaguing him for the last two months, ever since he left California. If only it was nothing more than a dream, he thought. If only it wasn’t so close to the truth.

“Come on,” Zinda said, tossing him his clothes and opening up the curtains to let the morning sunshine in. “The Vice President’s waiting for you. You don’t want to keep him waiting like you did last time.”

“The V.P.’s an old family friend of mine,” said Will, smiling. “I really don’t think he’ll mind too much.”

Zinda looked back at him, deadly serious. “I think this time is an exception. President Richards is waiting for you as well, with some special guests they want you to meet. Now get ready.” At that, she stepped outside and closed the door just enough to give him privacy to change into his clothes.

Several moments later, Will and Zinda were walking together down the length of the White House hallways to the Oval Office. Will was again proudly dressed in uniform, this time for his chief commanding officer. Two Secret Service men at the door to the Oval Office allowed them in.

“Will! How are ya, bud?” said the Vice President, a smile on his face as usual. Even after he was drafted into politics, he’d always been an easygoing, down-to-earth kind of guy — except when he got angry, and it took a lot to get him angry.

“I’m doing much better, Mr. Vice President,” Will replied.

“I’ll have none o’ that, m’boy. Y’can always call me Chuck. If it was good enough for your father — may he rest in peace — it’s good enough for you.”

“Now, now, Chuck. You’re embarrassing the boy,” said the man next to him, the President of the United States of America. He extended a welcoming hand to the young pilot. “Dan Richards. Pleased to meet you, Captain Hawk.”

“The honor is all mine, sir — and you can call me Will,” he said, shaking his hand. As a president, Donald Daniel Richards — known affectionately to the public as DDR — was easily as popular as his predecessor, Brian O’Brien, and almost as well-regarded as JFK or FDR.

President Richards examined the U.S. Air Force pilot soberly. “Son, we’ve brought you here to the White House for a reason. Chuck, here, has assured me that you’re every bit the man that your father was, maybe even more. What I want to know is – are you?”

Will hadn’t expected the question. “I could never replace my father, sir. He was a hero.”

“I’m not asking if you could replace your father, Will,” said the president. “I’m asking you if you’re up to the task we’re about to propose to you.”

The son of Blackhawk stopped to consider. He was being put to the test, he knew. The President wanted to see if he was made of the right stuff.

“I am, sir,” he said with conviction. “Consider me at your service.”

President Richards continued to examine him, his stare evenly met by the young pilot’s matching gaze. Finally, the President smiled and patted Will on the shoulder. “I think Chuck may be right about you, after all. You are every bit your father’s son.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Will, I’d like you to meet a few brave young men — young people such as yourself. You may know some of them, may have heard of the others.” The President motioned to a couple of Secret Service agents to bring them in.

A smile broke upon his face as Will recognized the first man. “Jimmy!” he said excitedly as he regarded his longtime friend. Thanks to their fathers being members of the famed Blackhawks, the two had known each other their whole lives. “What brings you here? I thought you were living up in Vancouver now.”

Jimmy Chan smiled, nodding at the President and Vice President, and replied, “Hopefully for the same reason you’re here, Will. Our countries need us.”

The next man to walk in was Dmitri Pushkin. Will had heard of him and his so-called Rocket Red Squadron over in Russia. If the reports were true, this man could equal the best American pilots any day. Will shook his hand and was received with a wide, crooked smile behind the Russian’s beard.

Behind the two men walked Elsa Hendrickson, daughter of the famed Hans Hendrickson of the Blackhawks. Will greeted his old friend with a warm hug, biting back a patronizing remark about how beautiful she had become, now that she was all grown up.

Two other men Will didn’t recognize followed her in, one a regal-looking black man and the other a Spaniard who resembled another of his so-called uncles.

“Will, I’d like you to meet Reed Grover-Baines of England,” said the President.

The Englishman stepped up and shook Will’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“The pleasure is all mine,” said Will. “Am I correct in assuming that you’re the pilot responsible for rescuing the Queen and bringing the Royal Family to safety in Canada?”

Reed smiled politely and said, “You’re giving me too much credit. It was Sir Justin Sheldrake who saved the Royal Family. I just came along for the ride.”

“No need to be modest, Reed,” said the President. “You were, after all, the co-pilot.” He turned to another man. “And this is Paco Herrera. He’s Andre Blanc-Dumont’s nephew.”

“So you’re Andre’s nephew!” said Will ecstatically as he shook the Spaniard’s hand.

“Yes,” Paco said with a slight accent as he returned the handshake. “My mother was Andre’s half-sister.”

“He was a good man,” said Will. “I was very young when he was killed, but I remember how he always had chocolate for me.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” President Richards said, addressing the seven men and women in the room, “the reason I’ve brought you all here is this. As you all know, the unthinkable has happened — Nazi Germany, thought to be long extinct, has risen again from the underground and attacked our world. Even the continental United States has been attacked and partly occupied by an Imperial Japanese faction working with the Nazis. No single goverment has been able stop them yet, nor should any of us try to go it alone in the face of this worldwide crisis.

“Our world has been attacked by a very powerful enemy, one that has held everyone under its thrall before, and one that seeks to do so again. The only thing stopping them are the hearts and minds of good people all over this green Earth. But the battle for morale, which is the first battle we need to win, is one of the most difficult battles of all.

“We’ve all seen the Nazi propaganda and the claims they’ve made that extraterrestrials — aliens from the planet Mars, no less — are helping them win this war. The Nazis claim that the Martians have recognized the so-called superiority of the Aryan race and have rallied behind it, supporting the Nazi cause with amazing technology and their greatest warrior, whom they’re calling the Manhunter.”

President Dan Richards wore a look of disgust as he said the name. It had been decades since he’d been a rookie policeman who took the law into his own hands as the vigilante crimefighter known as the Manhunter, but he knew the choice for that name was deliberate.

“The Nazis are currently winning the war for morale, ladies and gentlemen,” continued the President. “Some of us may laugh at the idea of a Manhunter from Mars, but I can assure you that the people of Russia are not laughing. As Dmitri can tell you, this genetic abomination the Nazis are calling the Manhunter is currently slaughtering hundreds of men, women, and children every day in the Ukraine and Russia.”

“Da. It is true,” said Dmitri grimly. “I have seen the monster at work myself. He has slaughtered village after village, almost enjoying it. It is like he does not even care as much about the military victory as the killing itself.”

“And as if that were not enough,” continued President Richards, “this so-called Martian is the leader of a group of sadistic men with super-powers who have also been given the names of our world’s heroes. The S.S. Ubermenschen is no joke, people. With the Freedom Fighters gone missing ever since the Crisis on Infinite Earths and the lack of any real opposition, this team of Nazi super-agents has captured the public’s imagination in a way we never dreamed possible only two months ago.

“To add insult to injury, except for the Ray, the names that most of these men have taken — the Red Torpedo, Magno, the Invisible Hood, Neon the Unknown — are the names of some of our dearest heroes. The men who originally held these names died in a mission led by Uncle Sam to prevent a sneak attack on a U.S. naval base called Pearl Harbor. While they were unknown at the time, the world now knows how they died in a valiant but doomed attempt to stop a war. They may not have stopped a war, but their deaths brought about a much larger and more powerful team of Freedom Fighters that helped eventually win that war. (*) And I will tell you this, ladies and gentlemen — I won’t have their names dragged through the mud much longer.

[(*) Editor's note: See "Crisis on Earth-X: The Prequel," All-Star Squadron #32 (April, 1984).]

“Uncle Sam and his Freedom Fighters may be missing either temporarily or for good, but we can’t pause for one minute to wonder where they are or whether they survived the Crisis at all. (*) What the world needs now, more than ever, are heroes.

[(*) Editor's note: See Freedom Fighters: The Fight Continues.]

“Your fathers, Will, Jimmy, and Elsa, and your uncle, Paco — they fought and died battling this evil that has been set loose upon the world once again, leaving behind only two survivors. As Chuck can tell you, it wasn’t an easy fight. And they lost good men along the way. But they never gave up, even in the face of certain destruction. As you all know, the world lost the Blackhawks in 1968 when they made a valiant but doomed attempt to destroy the Nazi mind-control devices before they went on-line and enslaved the entire world. As one of the precious few unaffected by the rays, I can tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that in 1968 things looked bleaker than they ever had before. And yet, a mere five years later, the scourge of Nazism was wiped clean from the face of the world.

“Today we face another disaster of seemingly unsurmountable proportions. Mere hours after the Crisis, as the world was just starting over and picking up the pieces, we learned that Nazism was not merely something to be remembered but that it lives on to this day. We learned that the moment those Nazi bastards came from nowhere and overran the globe in a record amount of time, establishing a Fourth Reich and turning the world back to war. And now the fight continues. It’s almost as if the last thirteen years had never even occurred, as if those years of peace had been a mere interval between times of war. But I will tell you this: It won’t be another five years before the world regains its freedom. I know this, because even without the Freedom Fighters, the world still has heroes. And heroes are what the world needs now more than ever.”

President Dan Richards paused to look into the faces of each of the men and women standing in front of him and said, “Will, Zinda, Jimmy, Elsa, Reed, Paco, Dmitri — the world needs all seven of you to stand against the powers of darkness. The world needs the Blackhawks once more. Will you be the heroes that our world so desperately needs? Will you be the new Blackhawks?”

Captain William Hawk looked around the room. He saw Zinda smile at him, and Jimmy give him a slight nod. He saw the others nod their assent as well, and he looked at Vice President Chuck Wilson, who gave him a thumb’s-up sign.

“I think I speak for us all, sir,” said Will, grinning, “when I say we’d be proud to serve.”

“If Uncle Sam were here, I know what he’d say,” said the President, smiling broadly. “We beat ‘em before – and we can beat ‘em again!”

Vice President Chuck Wilson shouted in a Texan drawl, “And don’t forget to give ‘em hell, boys!”

The room erupted with applause and the famous whooping cry of the Blackhawks:

“Hawk-a-a-a!”

The End

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Wednesday, August 7, 1985, two days after the Crisis on Infinite Earths:

Captain William Prohaska Hawk and Captain Travis “Ace” Jordan strode, almost swaggering, down the hallway of an Air Force base in Santa Barbara, California. They felt on top of the world. True, they were the best of the best, but it was not that fact that made them happy this day.

The reason the two were so jubilant was that they had a hot double date with two of the most beautiful girls in California. Will’s date was Zinda Blake, a fellow United States Air Force Academy alumni and pilot in her own right. And Travis’ date was Tara Ferris Jordan, his beautiful wife and the mother of his child.

“So what do you think, Will?” Travis asked his best friend with concern. He was a tall, Nordic-looking man with pale blonde, almost white hair and a non-regulation white goatee that he’d grown over his leave. He was in his thirties and still in peak physical shape. “You think the Nazis are trying to make a comeback?”

Will Hawk was silent for a moment. The younger man, in his late twenties, had jet-black hair, a strong jawline, and a hawklike nose. Anyone who met him noted that his blue eyes were unnaturally piercing, like those of a bird of prey. Now he averted those eyes and tried to keep things irreverent. “All I know is what I’ve seen on the news, buddy,” he said. “It looks like they were making an attempt on Europe this morning. It’s been a virtual news blackout since then. I wish I knew.”

“Sorry, man,” Travis said, patting Will on the back. “I know you hate the Nazis for what they did to your dad. He was a great hero.”

Will smiled and said, “Yeah, I miss my dad. I wish he could see me now. But I’d like to think he would be proud of me, being the head of my own air squadron and all.”

“Hey, what were Larry and Nate up to tonight, anyway?”

Shrugging, Will said, “Probably the same as us, Ace. You gotta love these California girls. Hey, what’s that?” He pointed up into the sky at some moving objects.

“Oh, God, no,” Travis said after a moment. “They’re bombers! Run for it!”

***

It all began so peacefully, didn’t it? We were walking down the long hallway, my best friend and I, proudly dressed in our uniforms, all smiles, spit ‘n’ polished. And we were ready to take our best girls out for a night on the town. Nothing’s too good for my girl.

Then there’s the first shock. A bomb. And not too far away. They’re bombing us, we realize in horror!

Running. We’re running down the long hallway, trying to make it to the exit to see what’s happening. My baby. She’s in trouble.

Gaaah! An explosion blows out the wall behind me, and I’m sent flying toward the door. I black out for a few moments, only to awake just outside. Travis strikes my face for what seems to be the second time in an attempt to rouse me, and I grab his wrist before he can do it a third time. He gives me a firm nod, and I pick myself up in a moment of clarity and follow him. Barely conscious, I look up to see the hordes of jets in the air strafing the field. There’s no way. No. My baby’s gone. They’ve bombed her. My jet-black baby. Now only a smoldering ruin.

***

Will and Travis went running for the airfield just as the first wave of bombs ended. They quickly search for any undamaged fighter jets to take the fight into the air, but it was no use. The entire field was a smoking ruin. Nearby, rounds of antiaircraft fire were trying with limited success to shoot down the second wave of bombers. But as for the two pilots, they were grounded, and there was nothing more frustrating than that.

“They’re heading into the city!” cried Travis. “Damn it!”

“Over here!” said Will, pointing to a couple of antiaircraft guns. The gunners had been killed by shrapnel, but the guns themselves were undamaged. “At least we might be able to get a few of those bastards before they hit the city!”

Jumping into place, they began firing round after round into the attacking warplanes, which they couldn’t help but notice were painted with the insignia of the old Empire of Japan. Overnight, it seemed, the political landscape of the world had reverted to thirty or forty years earlier. Did this world love war so much that it could just pick up where the last war left off as if no time had passed?

“Ace, look over there!” Will said, pointing to the far end of the field, where the smoke had cleared enough for them to see that a few planes were still undamaged. ”Isn’t that Larry and Nate?”

“Yeah,” Travis replied. ”They’re trying to take off. Let’s keep ‘em safe.”

“You got it,” said Will. The two trained their antiaircraft guns to the sky above the field. With any luck, their fellow pilots would be taking the fight into the air.

On the airfield, Nate Trainor scrambled into the cockpit of his jet and started up the engines. Larry Adam did likewise, but half a second later a bomb hit, blowing up both the plane and Larry within it.

“Aw, no!“ screamed Travis, watching from afar. ”Larrryyy!”

“He’s dead, Ace!” said Will, his mind quickly focusing on the next problem, despite his injuries. ”Nate, get it in gear!” he muttered, knowing his buddy couldn’t hear him. “You’ve gotta get out of there, man!”

But the jet didn’t respond. And in another moment, Nate Trainor was also destroyed in a blast.

“Nooo!”

***

Another blast knocks me out for I don’t know how long, and where I was there’s only a crater left, and I realize I’m alone. I run. There was nowhere left to run, but I run. It really is the Nazis, I realize — or the Japanese, if the rumors about an Imperialist coup there are true. Somehow they’ve managed this sneak attack without being detected. Just too fast, I guess. I keep on running. Along the walls, toward the barracks. Toward my buddies. My buddy? Wasn’t my best friend with me a second ago? Oh, well. No time to worry about that now.

Twenty feet from the barracks, a bomb drops on it, blasting it all to pieces. I scream. All of them, dead. Dead. Tears are streaming down my face now. Or is it blood? I can’t see that well, but I keep running. My father would’ve expected me to keep running. And so I do. Away from the barracks. Away from the base. Somehow I manage it, and not just me. Travis catches up with me, and it’s a good thing, too — I can’t keep my mind clear from the red haze infesting it. Somehow we manage to get away without being killed. We find a Jeep and head into the city to get our girls.

***

Zinda Blake rose from the shattered ruins of the restaurant she and Tara Ferris-Jordan had been waiting at. Although her memory was extremely fuzzy, Zinda remembered having heard explosions and screaming.

“Tara?” Zinda brushed her long blonde hair out of her face and looked around, but her vision was blurry. The smoke didn’t help things much. “Tara, where are you?”

Seeing a hand from beneath some debris, Zinda rushed over and uncovered it. It was Tara, barely conscious. Her dark auburn hair was red with blood. “Tara!” she screamed.

“Z-Zinda… I’m… I’m dying. F-find Xeo. K-keep him safe.” Tara winced from the pain, fighting for consciousness for another moment, and finally said, “P-please tell Travis I — I l-love…” At that, she went limp. Zinda could tell she was already dead.

After a moment, she realized that someone was shouting. “Zinda! Tara! Where are you?”

Zinda heard the shouts. It was Will, thank God. She called back, weakly, “O-over here.” She was already losing a lot of blood and felt like she was going to pass out.

Will Hawk and broke through the smoke and found her, Travis Jordan hot on his heels. Travis had driven like mad back into the city as Will tried to keep from passing out in the passenger seat. Travis was silent all the way; he had known something was very wrong. And when the two pilots found the bombed and smoking restaurant where they were supposed to meet the girls, it seemed that all their worst fears were realized.

But while Will’s girlfriend was injured and looked hurt, it didn’t seem to be too serious. “Zinda, honey, are you all right?”

“T-Tara…” Zinda began weakly. “Sh-she…”

“Tara!” cried Travis, seeing the dead body of his wife. Grief-stricken, he fell to his knees and began to weep bitterly. “Oh, God, no… No, no, no…”

“Ace, we’ve… we’ve got to go…” said Will.

After several moments, Will was finally able to rouse Travis from his stupor. They made their way back to the Jeep, but only after Travis insisted on bringing Tara’s body along with them. Spotting bomber planes in the dusky sky, Will turned off the headlights and drove off as fast as he could.

Not long after, they were back at the hangar just as it began to get dark. “It’s time for us to escape, Ace. We’ve got to get to D.C. to warn them — tell them what’s happened. My father had contacts there, which I’m sure I could look up. Ace?” Will looked over at his friend. “Travis?”

Travis Jordan still held the limp body of Tara Ferris in his arms. “You go ahead, Will. You and Zinda get out of here — now.”

“Ace, listen to me,” began Will. “You’ve got more to worry about than yourself. What about your son? What about Xeo?”

“Now, Will,” Travis insisted. “I’ve got to bury my Tara. It’s what I have to do. I’ll be on my way shortly. Just leave. Now.”

Knowing the stubbornness of his friend, Will and Zinda went in search of a plane.

***

I know I’m in shock, because everything in those hours — or were they days? — is almost a blank, except for one thing. I know my buddy’s girl died, but mine survived.

It’s nearly nightfall, and Zinda and I are wandering around the charred ruins of jet planes. I think I must be going crazy when I spot an undamaged fighter jet. It’s my baby, painted jet black. By some miracle, it’s only been singed. I think to myself, it’s only twenty minutes to Nevada, and the Axis forces can’t have cemented their occupation of California just yet.

Still in shock, I jump into the cockpit, Zinda right behind me, and attempt to take off. It works. Somehow we make it to Nevada and to an American base there. I can’t remember anything between the takeoff and the landing, but I know it had to have been a miracle that we made it out of there.

The uniformed men at the base are both shocked and suspicious at our arrival. And then they realize who I am, who my father was. It doesn’t hurt to have a father who’s a renowned war hero, especially if he was known as Blackhawk.

***

The blitzkrieg attack orchestrated by the Nazis and Imperial Japanese was at several key locations around the world and was almost simultaneous. Thanks to the sabotage of Nazi sympathizers, power outages and media blackouts ensured that news of the attacks could not spread far. In a world still attempting to overcome the Nazi occupation of the 1960s and early 1970s, it was a terrific shock. Who would have thought that history could repeat itself in such a drastic way?

Dmitri Pushkin was a member of the elite Soviet Rocket Red Brigade, Russia’s premier defensive air patrol. When the news of the Nazi invasion of England and parts of Europe broke out, Dmitri was chosen to go to the United States to coordinate a defense. It was only a matter of time before the Germans would attempt another invasion of the Motherland.

Paco Herrera was visiting relatives in Spain when the Nazi wave hit. Although now only a mail-plane pilot, he had been a resistance fighter during the days of the war. Now another war was here, and Paco knew it was time to fight. He escaped to America with his cousins.

Elsa Hendrickson was the only daughter of the famed Hans Hendrickson, a member of the elite Blackhawk squadron who had died fighting the Nazis in the last war. Now twenty-two years old, she was raised to be the best of the best. Her piloting skills were without equal in her homeland of Holland. And it was Holland she was worried about now, because while visiting friends in the U.S., it had been invaded once again by the Nazis in a quick, decisive invasion that had left everyone wondering exactly how they had done it.

Reed Grover-Baines had been at Dover Airfield in Kent County when the Nazis invaded England once more, this time in full force. He wanted to stay and fight for England, but his friend and mentor, war veteran Sir Justin Sheldrake, had a critical mission to perform and wanted Reed’s help. For the future of the nation, they needed to fly Queen Elizabeth and the Royal Family to safety in Canada, and they were the only men able to do the job.

Jimmy Chan was a young, hotshot pilot from Vancouver, Canada. He was twenty-five years of age and the son of Weng Chan, youngest member of the Blackhawks. His father had been one of only two members of the Blackhawk squadron to survive the war and had filled the young boy’s head with stories of honor and glory. Now grown up, Jimmy was on his way to try to live up to the legacy, and just in time, too. For the Nazis were back and had now invaded most of Europe, England, North Africa, and now Southern California. He called his father, who told him to look up a certain old friend.

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The Unknown Soldier

Times Past, 1953

Death at the Inn of the Red Swan

by Blackwolf247, with Doc Quantum of the Time Trust

A version of the Korean War in an alternate timeline in which the Nazis and Imperial Japanese remain undefeated is the backdrop of this exciting spy story. The Unknown Soldier is sent to Korea to either retrieve or kill a scientist who is a supposed traitor before he can supply the Japanese with a powerful mind-control technique. But before he can do so, he has to grapple with a new King Cobra and two other special agents of the Axis. Just another day in the life of the Unknown Soldier! Featuring a short history of the Blackhawks — all three groups by that name!

• Chapter 1: South of the 38th Parallel

• Chapter 2: Too Many Blackhawks

• Chapter 3: King Cobra’s Nest

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Wing How and I, dressed as Franciscan monks, were comfortably set up in a small room, the sort used for storage. We were placed there with much apologies about the lack of rooms available.

Our hostess, the aforementioned Silver Fox, spoke Italian as well as English, I discovered. Believing me to be Italian, she was eager to demonstrate her command of the language. Thanks to her desire to practice Italian, she may have let slip information she shouldn’t have. That, or she deliberately acted in a manner designated to discover if we might by our actions be spies for either the Allies or the Third Reich. We weren’t sure.

However, speaking softly in Latin — which we had both learned in our high-school years — Wing and I discussed whether or not we should do anything.

It seemed that we had stopped at the very same place where King Cobra — the Nazi version of our own Blackhawk — had been planning a get-together to recruit a few potential members of his own team. That news shook us up a bit.

You see, King Cobra was the alias of Baron Vyberg, who had been shot dead in 1943 by a German whose wife he killed, and his death had been witnessed and verified by the original Blackhawks. (*) Yet we both saw him there with our own eyes. It wasn’t until we saw him turn, revealing a strange but decidedly Oriental profile, that we realized it was not the same man. This new King Cobra was not a German at all but a pale-haired Japanese warlord now using the name, whose bizarre appearance actually resembled that of a human snake.

[(*) Editor's note: See "King Cobra," Military Comics #19 (May, 1943).]

Our target himself was also there with Cobra. Dr. Samuel Lewis, renowned biochemist and alleged traitor, was part of the Jap’s retinue. I told Wing that during the time frame when everyone should be asleep and what few guards were posted would themselves be sleepy, I planned to pay a visit to the good doctor. If necessary, I would kill him. If not, I’d bring him with us. I told Wing to get some rest, because three A.M. would come early.

What I didn’t know at the time was that King Cobra had someone outside our room. It was something I should have counted on but didn’t.

***

Late that night, I was skulking about in the shadows when familiar voices coming out of an office caught my attention.

“My man is very good at the western languages, and he could not understand what they were saying.” King Cobra was the one speaking.

Silver Fox responded, “Maybe it’s that church language, Latin.”

There was silence, then King Cobra spoke again. “In the morning, I’ll have our special guest listen to this tape. He understands that tongue. It’s used in western science a lot.” He snorted derisively. “Oh, for the day we can smash these barbarians of the west as he has helped us crush the gutter races of Asia.”

Just like the Chinese, Koreans, Indonesians, and others were forced against their will to join the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, I thought to myself.

“Oh, well,” Cobra declared at last. “I have guards posted, my dear lady. Those two won’t be going anywhere, I can assure you of that.”

If all the guards were sleeping like the ones I saw, then I had nothing to worry about. Of course, the guards not far from our door had been drinking saké against orders, but I suppose they figured two monks wouldn’t be a problem for them.

My mission now was to find the doctor and discover if he was committed to the Axis or wanted to get out. Then I had to see if we could get him out or kill him, which was my inclination. I knew how the Nazis had discovered ways to turn people in such a way that they would be willing to kill their own mothers for the good of the Führer. The brains back in D.C. believed they had shared that secret with the Japs. I was about to leave where I was and go look for him, when the new King Cobra spoke again.

“Tomorrow, several new people will be arriving — potential members of my squadron. If they are half as good as I have been told they are — and I know Captain Thor is — then thanks to the doctor, we can begin our infiltration of Alaska.”

I pondered that, then heard Silver Fox speak again. “What about the monks?”

“Oh, tomorrow they’ll be target practice for my new recruits, and their church masters will be told these two ran afoul of bandits or something.”

Both laughed, then Silver Fox added, “Terrible thing, this mountain bandit problem, isn’t it?”

King Cobra snorted. “Yes, these Koreans are good for something besides cannon fodder and slave labor.” He laughed uproariously. “They also make good excuses for the reasons people who come to this lousy country sometimes disappear.”

As they laughed, I moved on to kill the doctor, now convinced he had indeed betrayed the Allies. Then I would warn Wing. I was almost to the doctor’s quarters, when there he was as big as life.

“Oh, Father, thank God!” Dr. Samuel Lewis told me even as I reached for my knife. “Please, I need your help. I need to get out of here. In the name of God, please help me!”

I admit he looked convincingly frightened. Even moreso when we both heard the click of rifles being readied to shoot coming from behind me. King Cobra and the Silver Fox were both laughing again, only this time at me.

Quickly slipping a smoke bomb down my sleeve, I dropped it and grabbed the doctor as it hit the floor, and we crashed through the rice paper they use for windows around here, hitting the ground in a roll.

I landed on a guard, slugged him, grabbed his rifle, and urged the doctor to run for the trees while I fired off several rounds, hoping to slow our pursuers.

We hurried as best we could through the snow until we came to a guard post. They hadn’t yet received word of our escape, so we easily overpowered them and tied them up. Thus we had two machine guns and a Jeep to go with the now-empty rifle, which I abandoned.

I drove into a cave, a location Wing and I had found earlier. Within seconds I had covered our tracks, hoping that the rising snowstorm would further hamper attempts to follow us. I hoped Wing was OK, but he was on his own from here on out.

If necessary, I would take the doctor back to where Wing and I were supposed to meet our ride out of here — that is, if the doctor passed my test. Hypnotizing him was almost too easy, and when something is that easy, I become suspicious.

On the other hand, what poured out of him convinced me to trust him. Because of his unique psychological capabilities, he had been subject to no brainwashing. Primarily because the Axis agents thought he was already converted.

Then I pried deeper and discovered something that chilled me to the bone. The information I got out of him had been programmed into him. He was as clean an individual as the driven slush.

I was prepared to end his existence then, when a voice spoke commandingly, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Looking toward the voice, I nearly did a double take at what I saw. This newcomer was tall, nearly seven feet easily, and had muscles on his muscles, with long, thick, braided red hair, and an equally long and braided red beard with a handlebar mustache. His clothing was reminiscent of something out of a Viking movie, and his right hand was encased in a metal glove. Around his waist was a belt made of the same dull gray metal, and in his ham-sized right hand was a nasty-looking stone mallet.

“Captain Thor, I presume?”

He nodded, bowing slightly, and said in perfect American English, “I see that my reputation has preceded me. I am most pleased. You must be the renegade monk I have been sent to look for.”

“Obviously the winter storm didn’t slow you down,” I growled.

Grinning, he said, “To one who was born the son of Wotan and a storm giant, no storm can slow me down. Now drop your weapon, priest, and we shall return to see King Cobra.”

“Storm giant?” I scoffed. “I thought that was Loki, not Thor.”

He shrugged. “Loki and I are both the sons of storm giants now.” His voice turned cold. “Drop the weapon, or I shall have to use Mjollnir on you.”

I laughed, and he looked puzzled even as he raised his hammer. Then I let him have several rounds of hot lead. His face registered surprise as blood spurted out of his body. He started to say something but instead decided just to hit the floor, face down.

“Never was one to believe in the old gods,” I said to the doctor, who was still sitting and quietly minding his own business, which I assumed was due to the hypnotic state I had him in.

Deciding then and there to save my ammo, I used the butt of my machine gun to finish off the traitor. One thing I had always hated was a traitor. A man who turns on his own country, not because he believes the leadership is insane or evil, but solely to be allowed to pursue experiments on human minds — well, that just pissed me off.

I sat there, lit a cigarette, and reflected on the two dead bodies. One was a man who had been convinced he was a legendary god come down to save Germany, while the other was nothing more than a filthy traitor. Captain Thor I had to respect. He, at least, had been raised to believe he was who he said he was. But no way was I going to mourn either of them.

In 1942, I faced a choice of which branch of the military to join when my country was attacked at Santa Barbara. I debated between the Marines and the Navy, flipped a coin, and became a swabbie instead of a gyrene. My younger brother joined the Army, and my older brother — well, he became one of Bart Hawk’s Black Hawks, but only for a time. We all made our mark in our own ways, but I eventually became a special operative under the name of the Unknown Soldier. It’s a name I inherited from the last guy after he died, and I suppose someday someone else will be given the name after I kick the bucket.

Times like this I wished we had put the Axis into a deep grave, then paved over the cemetery plot. One thing was for sure — with or without Wing, I was leaving this Godforsaken land and heading home.

***

So as I sit here at my desk typing up this rough draft of my official report, I have a few things left to summarize.

Wing How — I never connected with him, but Captain Weng Chan told me not to worry about him, as Wing was known for his daring escapes and has connections with the Korean underground.

Captain Thor, whose fingerprints are included with report, sounded to me like he was American-born. He could have been a pro-wrestler, circus strongman, body builder, or even one of those costumed jackasses that were fashionable ten years ago. It was something to ask Uncle Sam about. If anyone knew what had happened to former masked mystery-men, he’s the one to ask. Fortunately, that’s not my department.

The new King Cobra and Silver Fox — their conversation leads me to suspect that they’re going to cause major headaches for the Allies in years to come.

Brainwashing — obviously, the Ratzis have new techniques so good someone won’t even know they been changed over. This is going to be a serious problem for our side. That’s something for the brains in D.C. to worry about, though. I’m just a Navy man with a funny nickname and a job to do.

Lastly, I’m going to recommend a medal for the stew crew here on the U.S.S. Idaho. I haven’t eaten this good in months.

The End

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“Bart Hawk!” I exclaimed, seeing the raven-haired leader of a private military unit.

He nodded, gazed deeply into my bandaged face, and said quite calmly, “The Invisible Man, I suppose?”

“Close enough,” I said in response as I and my companions crossed over to the submarine.

“At any rate, Hawk,” I continued, “I’ve got some very important film to get back to Washington, pronto.”

Captain Chan saluted the black-uniformed Hawk. “Commander, it’s good to see you again.”

Hawk returned the salute. “You too, Chopper. How’s the fishing biz?”

Chan shrugged. “Same as always. Catch some, lose some.”

All of us went down into the submarine, and Gunner said to me, “I thought the Blackhawks were all killed by the Ratzis back in ’42.”

I shrugged this time, indicating the hawk symbol on the front of Hawk’s jacket. “He may wear a target on his chest, but I suspect that American Indian has nine lives.”

Bart Hawk ahemed to get our attention. “Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Mummy, but I’ve received new orders from Washington to pass on to you. If you will follow me to my quarters, Chan will take your Marines to the galley.”

In the small-but-comfortable quarters Hawk operated out of, he lit a pipe and offered me some tobacco and a drink of brandy.

“I don’t know who you are, or what the Halloween getup is for,” he said cooly, “but the President himself sent word of new developments he wants checked out.” He handed me a sealed envelope. “No one except I has seen this, but I warn you — you won’t be happy.”

As Hawk had said, inside was a message from the President. It seemed that I was to go back into Korea, locate and rescue — or, if necessary, kill – an American scientist who may have defected or been kidnapped.

The man in question had been developing a psychological control system that looked to be a hundred percent effective.

“Great,” I gasped. “How the hell am I supposed to know if he’s been turned?”

Bart Hawk looked sympathetic. “My suggestion would be to flat-out kill him just to be safe.” He looked sad for a moment. “I had to leave one of my own men behind once. When we went back, he was dead.” He took a swig of brandy and explained, “Some costumed galoot calls himself the Sniper claimed my man had turned on us. Tried to kill an important member of the Dutch Underground.”

Bitterly, Hawk continued. “My point is, had I found him and had proof he had been turned, I would have killed him myself. Hell, I once had to kill a very close friend of mine who had been turned.” I thought I saw tears in his eyes as he spoke.

At that, Hawk raised his glass. “To old friends,” he said, and tossed his drink back.

For the first time in five years, I didn’t want to kill this man.

“Says here I am to go in alone.” I had felt embarrassed, which is why I changed the subject back to my orders. “My friends will be disappointed. I think they wanted to kill some Nips.”

“Got orders for them, too. Seems to be some action in a place called Cambodia. I’m to see they get to the underground there and give them a hand.” He stood up then. “Get some rest, because in a few hours, I have to drop you off back in Korea.”

I nodded, raised my own glass, and said, “To Korea!” Swallowing, I ground out my cigarette and rose to leave.

Truth of the matter was, I wasn’t looking forward to going back to Korea. But then again, I am a soldier sworn to follow orders, fight the bad guys, and all that good stuff.

***

Wing and I hauled the life raft ashore quickly and made short work of it, chopping it up enough to bury it.

Checking a map, we made our way inland. My bosses back in Washington felt I needed Wing as backup. I couldn’t argue with anonymous people thousands of miles away acting on behalf of the President himself, so here we were.

Swifter than you can say Babe Ruth, the Brooklyn-born Wing How — which I learned then was his full name — and I were in our disguises. We both wore false faces I conveniently pulled out of a disguise kit that made us look Italian — specifically like Franciscan monks. Many people back home didn’t know this, but Christians still lived normal lives (well, more or less normal) throughout the Empire of the Rising Sun. That, and with paperwork stating I was Father Francisco DiGuillarmo of Sicily, I would be considered a visiting missionary from an Axis nation.

Our mission was not, in fact, saving souls, but rather to locate and rescue — or, if necessary, kill — an American scientist who had either been kidnapped or defected to the Axis. Dr. Samuel Lewis was a renowned biochemist and, until recently, a very important member of a secret research team working on new forms of chemical weapons.

As we walked, I reflected on my own history and that of the Blackhawks — all three of those groups. My older brother had been a part of Bart Hawk’s team until somehow he ended up a Nazi captive and allegedly became turned to the Nazi cause.

I had a cousin who once worked with the most famous man called Blackhawk, the Polish fellow who led his team of Blackhawks throughout the war years and still makes the news fighting the Japanese here in Korea. Hell, for all I knew, my sister missing since 1943 ran off with the Frenchman Blackhawk worked with.

Hell of it is, not even the bigwigs in D.C. knew for sure just how many Blackhawks there were overall. Since I had a personal connection with the subject, I’d done my research and knew more than most. There were three teams of Blackhawks, as far as I knew, with dozens of men — and a few women — involved in one capacity or another. Strangely enough, there were also three Chinese guys codenamed Chop-Chop, Chopper, or Chops, each connected with one of the three teams. Made my head hurt to think about it.

Blackhawk — the original who had gathered his own team of Blackhawks by 1941 — is usually only ever called by that name. But I know that long before he was Blackhawk he was a Pole named Janos Prohaska. Still, despite his Eastern European roots, the man speaks perfect American English with no trace of an accent, and there’s probably a story behind that I’ve not yet learned. This most famous group of Blackhawks is the team of wartime fighter pilots also known as the Dark Knights. Originally a group of nine, their number eventually dropped to six pilots altogether, the same six that are still around today — Blackhawk, Andre, Olaf, Hendrickson, Chuck, and Stanislaus. They added to their number a seventh who wasn’t a pilot. This was the famous Liu “Chop-Chop” Huang, a Chinese-born young man who — despite being overweight — had been the team’s loyal right-hand man ever since he was a teenager. I’ve heard rumors that Chop-Chop, now an adult and in much better shape, is training to become a pilot himself. He might already be one now.

Bart Hawk, a descendant of Chief Black Hawk, the nineteenth-century American Indian chief from Utah who believed whites and his people could coexist in peace, is a pilot and soldier known himself as Black Hawk. The paramilitary group he runs was brought together in 1944 by Eisenhower himself as a low-key counterpart to the Blackhawks that would be focused on Europe at a time when the Blackhawks themselves had completely moved their operations over to the Pacific. In June, 1944, this team called the Black Hawks was dropped into Occupied France, where they helped a French Resistance agent named Heracles in preparation for a planned Allied invasion of Normandy. (*) Unfortunately, the German defenses in France were too strong, and the invasion was a disaster, resulting in the deaths or capture of thousands of Allied soldiers. As a result of Normandy, the Allies redoubled their efforts in Italy, which they’d already invaded in 1943, and pushed on through the Balkans until the end of the war in 1946. I’ve heard rumors that Blackhawk has borrowed Bart Hawk’s name on occasion, although I’m not sure how well the two men know each other. Captain Weng “Chopper” Chan, of course, was part of Hawk’s team of mercenaries.

[(*) Editor's note: This is a modified version of an apocryphal Blackhawk origin story called "The Origin of the Blackhawks," Blackhawk #198 (July, 1964).]

But there was also another strange group of seven Blackhawks that suddenly appeared in the spring of 1942, fully formed, who seemed almost identical to the original Blackhawks, with a few minor exceptions. For example, among their members was a Chinese martial arts master who didn’t look like Chop-Chop at all. (*) After fighting the Nazis for just a few months, that group disappeared and was never seen again. That disappearance began the rumors that the original Blackhawks had all been killed by the Ratzis during World War II. Despite the fact that the original team of Blackhawks was still very much in the public eye, that rumor still refused to die, as evidenced by Sarge’s earlier confusion.

[(*) Editor's note: This are the Earth-Two Blackhawks, who temporarily migrated to Earth-X in April, 1942, as seen in "Crisis Point," All-Star Squadron #50 (October, 1985), and who had returned to Earth-Two by 1944, as seen in "Ice Station Alpha," The Brave and the Bold #167 (October, 1980).]

One thing this long-winded meditation did for me was help me pass the time until we got to the village of Cho-Sang. I trust, in the unlikely event my memoirs ever get published, readers will forgive me for editing out most of my rambling thoughts and miscellanea. But the purpose of my writing this is to record my mission, not bore you with long-winded dissertations more than necessary.

At any rate, we arrived at the Inn of the Red Swan, where we hoped to get a room or at least some food. Imagine my shock, then, when we walked into the inn, looked around, and spotted someone we both thought was dead.

Standing near the bar, as big as life and twice as beautiful, was none other than the most elegant, sensuous, sexy, and dangerous woman to ever have been born.

Her real name unknown, she used the alias of Silver Fox, a deadly assassin of Eurasian parentage. She had a cold heart and a warm body, as well as a burning desire to see the Japanese Emperor rule the world.

I admit I had mixed feelings at seeing her. I wanted to both kiss her passionately and kill her painfully. Wing, as I found out later, had his own beefs with her. She spotted us, and with a sunny smile on her gorgeous face, began walking toward us. It was a good thing we were disguised, or it would have been game over.

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Dateline: Korea, 1953:

It was cold, colder than a winter even this close to the Arctic has a right to be. We’re somewhere deep within the mountains in Japanese-occupied South Korea. Why am I here with two Marines wearing white and taking pictures of a Jap installation? It’s my job. I am Naval Intelligence, after all.

The sergeant, called only Sarge by anyone who knows him, told me we’ve got to get moving out of here pretty soon. I understand he and his pal Gunner have been really good companions in this mission.

Whatever the Axis has going on here, I dare say the Emperor, kept safe in his palace back in Nippon, is probably less aware of it then my C.O. back in Washington.

The Korean War has been dragging on since 1951, when the puppet government of South Korea invaded North Korea, which has been fortified by the Allies since 1946. Back when the Empire of Japan won the war in the Pacific at the end of ’45, it looked like Asia was just as lost to Imperial Japan as Fortress Europe was to the Third Reich. The Japanese had a whole two months to celebrate their victory and finally rest from war, when the Nazis, being the opportunistic, greedy types that they were, decided to make the Empire of Japan a vassal to its own empire.

As the world watched, the two most powerful empires in the world came to a standoff. And then something happened that none of us expected. The U.S., having lost the war in the Pacific and been forced to surrender Hawaii and everything east of there to the Japanese, left a nasty present for the Emperor during the withdrawal. Instead of allowing Imperial Japan to take over the naval base in Pearl Harbor, which would pose an ongoing threat to all of America, President Thomas Dewey left one atomic bomb in Oahu. It was the explosion that rocked the world, since it gave the Allies new hope that both Japan and Germany could now be defeated, especially since there were rumors that the U.S. had a second bomb it was planning to use on Germany.

Hitler, faced with a series of new uprisings all over Nazi-held Europe, knew he had to respond to what he perceived as an American challenge to German supremacy over the world. He could not challenge the U.S. directly, since they had the atom bomb, but he could show the world that he, too, held this power in his grasp and was just as willing to use it.

Mere days after Hawaii was decimated, the Third Reich made its final demand for Japan to concede to its will and become little more than a colony, Germany’s own place in the sun. When the demand was refused as predicted, Hitler’s response was to drop two atomic bombs on Japan, one in Hiroshima and the other in Nagasaki. While the news that Germany also had the atom bomb sent a resounding wave of fear across the world, securing the Third Reich’s supremacy in Europe, it also backfired for them in Asia.

With much of Japan in ruins, the Empire of Japan itself began to quickly crumble, and not even a new puppet government headed by Japanese leaders handpicked by the Nazis could keep it together. A tidal wave of freedom washed over Southeast Asia, enabling many governments to throw off the yoke of their Japanese oppressors. Australia was one of the first to run the Japanese out of their country, followed by India, China, and Indochina. The Koreans tried it next, but the Japanese managed to dig in at the 38th parallel. When the United States stepped in to assist North Korea, threatening a new war in the Pacific, a weakened Imperial Japan relented and signed a treaty allowing it to keep only South Korea.

Ever since then, the Asia problem had dominated the affairs of both the Third Reich and its vassal state, the weakened Empire of Japan. Over the next five years, Imperial Japan bided its time, slowly regaining its strength with aid from Nazi Germany in exchange for its eternal servitude. And then, in January, 1951, Japan made its first major move in Asia. South Korea, encouraged by Imperial Japan’s growing strength, invaded North Korea. America and its Allies — England, Canada, and Australia, amongst others — quickly amassed their troops and helped North Korea defend itself against the invaders from the south.

It was a sign of the times, I suppose. The Allies and the Axis could no longer fight each other directly without engaging in a new war that could result in half the world being blown to bits by the atom bomb. So they began fighting each other indirectly by supporting opposing sides in smaller wars. Similar conflicts were starting to happen throughout Indochina as well as Africa and even Latin America. It was George Orwell who coined a term for this kind of peace that is no peace. He called what we’re in now a cold war. And given my current circumstances, I’m inclined to agree with him.

Lord, it’s cold. My thoughts keep running back and forth on why I’m here. To take pictures, of course. That’s what I do. We’ve got three days to make it back to the coast with the hope that our sub hasn’t been found and sunk or captured. Three more days in this frozen hell-hole.

How close to the Arctic Circle are we, anyway? Feels to me like we’re right on it. Gunner says it’s quite a ways north of us. He adds that this isn’t any colder than a North Dakota winter. Remind me never to go to North Dakota. Sure hope we make it safely back to America. I can’t wait to get back home.

We found ourselves emerging from the snows near the Sea of Japan, where a fishing boat was undergoing some repairs. A tall Asian man waved to us to hurry, and within seconds the three of us were aboard the boat in the galley as it pulled out.

The Asian in a quilted green jacket served us hot green tea and offered us some rice cakes. “Not much, but you’ll eat better aboard the sub,” he said to us in clear English.

“Not a problem, Captain,” Sarge told him. “We appreciate the pickup.”

“Glad to help. Any time we can stick it to the Emperor, we do.” He snorted as he lit a cigarette. “Fact is, I am glad you came when you did. Permission to fix our boat was almost up.”

“Well, Captain,” the Sarge went on, “makes me feel humbled to have some help from the Free Chinese. It really does.”

The captain chuckled. “My first mate Wing and I aren’t with them, but we work with them.” He took a deep drag of his smoke and continued. “Truth to tell, most of the time I can’t make heads or tails out of that Marxist stuff they’re always spouting.”

Gunner said, “You almost sound like an American. I know a number of Chinese-Americans are working with the resistance over here, but–”

“I was born and raised in San Francisco,” the captain interrupted, laughing. “My first officer’s from New York, and trust me — if the Nips ever suspected we weren’t born over here, we’d be dead.”

Finally, I asked, “How long till we meet the sub?”

The captain looked thoughtful. “Tomorrow, sometime after eight bells.” With a shrug he indicated some cupboards. “If we stop suddenly, you three Yanks crawl into these. Go towards the back, and you’ll find some stuff to pull over you. Then pray.” Another shrug. “Not the best hidey-holes, but all we got.”

“Captain Chan,” Sarge interjected, “we’re grateful.”

The captain nodded. “I appreciate that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, we’ve got fish to catch.”

After the captain left, Gunner turned to Sarge, who was cleaning his lighter. “Didn’t he used to box?”

“Yep,” said the Sarge. “I remember him from San Francisco. Weng ‘Chopper’ Chan, Golden Gloves Champion, West Coast Division, 1941.”

I relaxed. That must have been where I knew him from. Of course, with my face hidden under bandages, he wouldn’t have recognized me at all. Unfortunately, at that moment we felt the boat come to a sudden halt.

It was night, and the boat had dropped anchor. Dinner consisted of fish-head stew with rice. Gunner, Sarge, and I were relaxing with some tea and smokes, just about to settle in for a rest, when Wing came down to visit.

Now this fellow is indeed New York City born and bred, but being tall and slender made him look — as did Captain Chan — very much like a Northern Chinese, which in actual fact the rest of the crew were.

Wing lit up, exhaled a huge cloud of smoke, looked relaxed, then stated, “Chan says the sub should be meeting up with us at 0500. Plenty of time to get some rest, if you want it.”

“Rest? Hell, I need to stretch my legs, breathe some fresh air, maybe even relieve myself over the side just to hear the water,” Sarge grumbled.

Wing shook his head. “Too dangerous. Nip patrols might show up yet. The Russkies have also been known to show up sometimes.”

After Nazi Germany invaded Russia in 1941, they placed the White Russians in charge of the former Soviet Union. These White Russians — who had started out as an anti-Communist coalition and ended up becoming as authoritarian as the old Czars or worse – held less influence over eastern Siberia, where there was a large Free Russian presence. But as good little fascists they still answered to the Third Reich and were just as ruthless as the Nazis.

Taking another deep drag of his smoke, Wing said, “As it is, when the sub comes, you three will have a window of about thirty seconds to get aboard.” Then he changed the subject. “How are my Dodgers doing?”

“Them bums!” snorted the Sarge. “Almost had the pennant and blew it in the fourth game!” He shook his head. “Seven to one, and it was downhill from there.” He looked at Wing. “You from Brooklyn?”

“Why?” asked Wing. “Don’t I look like I’m from Brooklyn?”

Before Sarge could respond, however, the sudden whump whump of motor fire caused us all to instinctively grab our weapons. It sounded like something big, heavy, and possibly deadly struck the boat. We heard shouting in Chinese.

Wing threw his cigarette down. “$%*&!” he gasped and ran up to the deck of the ship. “Quick — out of sight!”

It was too late. Next thing I knew there was shouting, shots fired, and bodies hitting the floor above us.

Gunner, Sarge, and I grabbed our weapons. Two men we didn’t recognize came down the steps, rifles in hand. We opened fire, and both newcomers fell into bloody heaps in front of us. “Pirates!” I exclaimed.

Within moments, the fighting was over, judging from the sounds we heard above us.

Wing came running back down. “We have to abandon ship. You three will be with the captain and me. What’s left of our crew will take the other boat to the nearest cove. I only hope it’s not where them bastards came from!” At least I assume he said something like bastards in Chinese.

Captain Chan was yelling last-minute instructions to the surviving crew when we came up the stairs. “You three killed two of them, right?” I nodded, and he smiled. “Good for you.” Then he directed us to a rubber life raft. “Let’s go. The sub will be along shortly, I hope.”

As we sat in the raft, crowded but stable with nothing more to do but smoke, the captain eyeballed me heavily. “Why the bandages around your face, if I may ask?”

I chuckled. “My true face must remain unknown. And there’s no way I’m wearing one of them masks like the Freedom Fighters.”

He nodded in acceptance. “Forgive my curiosity, but frankly your appearance disturbed my crew.” I nodded in understanding.

At that moment, Gunner spotted a periscope rising.

All five of us grabbed our weapons, although truthfully, if it had been a Jap sub, we would have stood a snowball’s chance in Hell of surviving.

“Out of the frying pan and into the fire?” Sarge asked me.

I shrugged. “Hopefully not,” was all I could reply.

The sub, when it surfaced, turned out to be solid black. Chan and Wing started to relax, but the sight of who emerged made my blood run cold.

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Weird War Tales

Retribution

by Drivtaan

With the Nazis again in control of Europe, they begin plans to set up the concentration camp system once more. Learning of these plans, a Jewish rabbi who survived the original Holocaust enacts his own plan to stop Hitler’s Final Solution. But will the golem calling itself Retribution be a new hero or an unbridled monster?

• Chapter 1: We’ll Meet Again

• Chapter 2: Three Graves

• Chapter 3: The Golem

Return to Earth-X titles. Return to Independents stories.

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“It is finished.” The weariness of the voice drew everyone’s attention to the entrance of the Children’s Memorial.

It had been more than thirty hours since the kabbalists had first entered the underground cavern, and now they were beginning to emerge. Despite his years, Benjamin was the first to run and greet them.

Seeing the expectant look on the rabbi’s face, one of the kabbalists shrugged. “It lives,” he said, “but we must remember that while our intentions and God’s are often the same, his path to the end result does not always follow man’s logic.”

Benjamin knew that he would get no true answer to the man’s mysterious comment, nor did he expect one. He took Christman by the arm and led him and the others into the Memorial.

Upon entering the cavern, the first thing that struck Christman and the others who had never had the opportunity to visit the Memorial was the sense of perpetual sorrow. It seemed only fitting that a place of such utter despair be the birthplace of renewed hope.

In the center of the main chamber a sturdy, wooden table nearly eight feet long and three feet tall stood empty. As the party looked around, Guardineer was the first to spot the lone figure huddled in a shadow-filled alcove. He touched the rabbi on the shoulder and directed his attention.

“Come out, my child,” Benjamin said softly. “You are among friends.”

Slowly, the figure stood. As he reached his full height, several of the men took a step back. Cautiously, the golem stepped from the shadows and into the light provided by the many candles.

Standing nearly seven feet tall, the golem looked nearly human. Although its basic build was that of a male, its nakedness revealed that it was, in fact, sexless. Its skin was paler than that of a normal human but held a blood-red tint and was completely devoid of hair. As it drew closer to the rabbi, he noticed that the flesh covering its mouth and jaw area appeared to be scarred, as if from a great heat.

Benjamin immediately understood what the kabbalist had told him.

As the rabbi wondered how the golem could be of use to their cause, Baker and Guardineer were suddenly whispering excitedly back and forth. Christman turned to see what had gotten into his friends.

“What are you two doing?” Christman asked.

“We’ve had an idea,” Baker replied. “Can we speak to you outside?”

Christman approached the rabbi and excused his men and himself. Moments later, the two men were explaining their idea to their friend. Initially, he was highly skeptical at what they were suggesting, but after mulling it over, a grin appeared on his face.

Spotting one of the kabbalists, he respectfully asked the man to join them for a moment. “Could we ask you a couple questions about the golem?”

The man thought for a moment, then nodded.

“How strong is it?” Guardineer asked.

The kabbalist glanced around. Within seconds, his eyes focused on something off to the left. “Do you see that military vehicle?”

The other three men sought out what he was talking about.

“The truck?” Baker asked.

“Yes,” the kabbalist answered. “The golem has enough strength to push it over onto its side.”

“Does it have any other abilities?” Guardineer wanted to know.

“It can run at nearly ninety kilometers per hour for a short period of time, and does not need to eat or breathe.”

“Thank you for your time,” Christman smiled before excusing himself to return to the cavern.

“Do you think the rabbi will go for it?” Baker asked.

“I don’t see why not,” Guardineer replied. “Just look at the effect Uncle Sam has on the Nazis when he rears his head. Why do you think they took such pains to capture him last year? Imagine their surprise when another costumed hero joins the Resistance.”

At the mention of a costume, Baker began to pat his pockets until he found a small pad of paper and a pencil. Five minutes later, he had a completed sketch. He handed it to his friend.

Guardineer took one look at the picture and grinned. “I like it.”

Together, the two men re-entered the memorial. By the time they reached Christman, he had already explained their idea to Benjamin. They handed him the sketch.

After a few seconds of studying the picture, the rabbi looked at the three men. “He is going to need a name.”

As the men thought, the golem opened his mouth and began to speak. Taken by surprise, Benjamin and his friends could only listen in awe to the words it spoke. They changed in pitch and tone, sometimes male, sometimes female, sometimes old, sometimes young, and even the nationality and dialects changed. Nearly a minute went by before the golem’s voice settled on one specific language. When it did, it spoke one single word in a high-pitched, childlike voice.

The rabbi fell to his knees.

Immediately, Christman and Baker were at his side. “Are you OK?” Christman asked.

“That voice,” Benjamin stammered. “That was the voice… of my nephew.”

As tears began to fill the rabbi’s eyes, the other men could only stare at each other. Finally, Guardineer found his own voice and whispered, “What did he say?”

Looking up, Benjamin could hardly speak. “It was… Polish. It… means… retribution.”

***

Colonel Franz von Lossberg took a sip of vodka, then began to flip through the files laying on his desk. The new Treblinka camp was due to begin processing Jews in six weeks, and he still to choose a doctor. One file in particular caught his eye.

The candidate was Dr. Ubel Hoffman. As he read through the man’s file, Colonel von Lossberg’s eyes widened. The man had the personal endorsement of none other than Dr. Mengele himself. With such a reference, the colonel knew he needed to look no further. Thankful for a quick end to what at first had appeared to be a long night, he pulled a cigarette case from on inner pocket and removed a cigarette. He had just raised his lighter when he heard a deafening siren begin to scream.

Tossing the unlit cigarette onto his desk, the colonel grabbed his coat and hat. After quickly buttoning his coat, he grabbed his belt from where it hung on his chair and strapped it around his waist. He removed his Luger from its holster and made sure it was loaded.

As he opened the door, a sergeant was running down the hall toward his office. Lossberg didn’t have to ask what was going on; the sergeant immediately began to recount the events if the past few minutes.

“We are under attack, Herr Lossberg.”

“How many men do we face?” the colonel asked. “Fifty? One hundred?”

“There is only one, but he is no man. He is a monster!” the sergeant cried. “He is dressed all in black from the bridge of his nose to the soles of his feet. He stands taller than any man in the camp and has the strength of a demon.”

In his years of military service, Franz von Lossberg had come to realize that unmitigated terror might elicit babbling, but it rarely brought forth falsehoods. He wasn’t certain what his sergeant had seen, but he knew that the man spoke the truth as he perceived it.

“Is there anything else you can tell me about this ‘monster’? he asked, hoping to get a more realistic idea of the situation.

“He can cast fire from his eyes, and he speaks with the tongue of a thousand men,” the soldier said. “There is one more thing about him that you should know.”

“And that would be?”

The sergeant took a breath. “Upon his chest, he wears the symbol of those accursed Jews.”

***

Outside, the ground was littered with the bodies of dead and dying Nazis. A swath of destruction stretched from the front gates, which had been torn free and cast aside, to the wooden barracks that housed the camp’s soldiers. The creature that had called itself Retribution from the day of its creation left nothing standing.

As it stood facing the door of the barracks, a hail of bullets from the men inside did nothing more than enrage it. With a roar that bore in its depths the voices of thousands of murdered gypsies, it screamed its name again.

In horror, the trapped soldiers watched as flames began to dance in the corners of their attacker’s eyes. In less than the time it took for one to blink, the flames grew and burst forth to engulf the building. The structure went up like dry tinder. Many inside died now knowing how the Jews must have felt when cast into the camp’s incinerators decades before. Satisfied that these men would no longer harm an innocent, Retribution turned its attention to the next building.

As soldiers came from other parts of the camp to face the monster, three men slipped through the opening where the gates once stood. Christman, Baker, and Guardineer each carried a backpack filled with explosives, and each man determined that when they left this place, there would be nothing left.

Under the cover of noise and chaos, they found the camp virtually open to them. With Baker in the lead, the saboteurs turned their attention towards the small, unassuming outbuilding that led to a series of underground gas chambers. Only Guardineer stopped long enough to see what happened next.

Colonel Lossberg and a squad of SS soldiers exited his headquarters to find themselves face to face with golem. Immediately, the men unleashed a deadly barrage of bullets at their foe. A thick cloud of smoke filled the air surrounding their target.

As they lowered their empty weapons, a long black-clad arm emerged from the cloud, and a massive hand clamped around the colonel’s face. Lossberg disappeared into the smoke. Unsure of what to do, the Nazis took a collective step back.

Screams unlike any they had ever heard, even in their tortures of local Gypsies, began to issue from the smoke. They took several more steps back.

When the smoke finally began to dissipate, the golem stood like a statue splattered in crimson. Of Lossberg, there was very little that had not been torn to shreds. The soldiers broke and fled.

From his vantage point, Guardineer could only think of two words. “My God.”

***

The small private jet touched down in Cairo to find a truck waiting to take its passengers to Giza. When the truck reached its final destination, four figures climbed from the back. Benjamin, along with his Egyptian friend Hakizimana, was there to greet them.

“Word of your success came like music to our ears,” the Egyptian smiled.

Christman nodded. “When we left, there were very few buildings left standing, and those that were lit the night sky.”

Benjamin approached the golem. “And was our friend, here, a capable companion?”

The three men looked at each other, not certain how they should tell of what they had witnessed. Seeing no alternatives, they decided to recount the entire mission without omitting any of the facts.

As they spoke, the rabbi never took his eyes off of the golem. His reactions ranged from utter shock to — shamefully — complete satisfaction. When the men finished speaking, they all stood in awkward silence.

It was the golem that spoke next. The voice belonged to a young Hungarian man.

“We… some of us… regret our actions,” it began, “but when we saw what the Nazis were planning, we could not contain our rage. We hope that this will give the enemy pause when they consider something like this again, yet if it doesn’t, then they shall again face Retribution.”

No one knew how to respond. All they could do was hope that Germans had learned a valuable lesson. If not, well, they would make that decision when it arose.

The End

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The Polish countryside lay like a sleeping child beneath a blanket of pre-dawn mist. At the edge of a large open field, tendrils of gray wetness gently tried to push their way into the ancient forest. A surreal silence seemed to permeate the entire area. The night creatures had already returned to their homes, while the day creatures had yet to awaken.

Four black-clad figures knelt down just inside the tree line. The one in front raised his hand, signaling the others to stop. “This is as far as I go,” the man said.

“You have our gratitude, Bogumil,” one of the others told him.

Bogumil nodded. “I will be waiting at the rendezvous point. May God go with you.”

“Thank you,” the other man said.

The Pole turned and disappeared back into the forest. If everything went according to the plan, the four men would be reunited within the hour, and all that would be left of the mission was to return to Egypt.

“There it is, boys — Treblinka,” the man told his companions as he pointed out across the field. “That’s the last stop on our little shopping excursion.”

“Tell me, Christman,” one of the men said. “I know Guardineer and I weren’t told the reason for all we have done for security reasons, but since this is the last stop, can’t you give us a little hint?”

“Baker’s got a point,” Guardineer said. “I’m kind of curious myself.”

“All I know is that the fate of millions rests in our hands,” Christman told the two men. “I wish I could tell you more, but I was told that our mission is so important that they could risk the Nazis finding out. Sorry.”

“Oh, well,” Baker shrugged. “Let’s get this over with and go home.”

Each of the men knew his task, so they wasted no more time with words. Keeping low and taking advantage of the mist, they moved out of the forest and started across the field.

Guardineer was the first to spot the two German soldiers. If he tried to alert his companions, he knew he took the chance of drawing the Germans’ attention as well. Still using the mist, he quietly crept toward them. Since it was still dark, silhouettes were all that could be made out, and a plan immediately popped into his head.

The two men passed, and Guardineer waited until their backs were toward each other before he made his move. As the German passed him, he stood up, wrapped an arm around his neck, and grabbed his chin with his free hand. One quick jerk, and the man fell to the ground with a broken neck. Quickly, Guardineer removed his helmet and collected his machine gun.

In the distance, he saw the other German turning and walking toward him. Putting the helmet on, he stood up and started walking toward the other soldier. Keeping his head bowed until he was almost face to face with the German, Guardineer suddenly brought the butt of the machine gun up and slammed it into his enemy’s throat. The man died wondering why his friend had killed him. Moving away from where the German’s blood was seeping into the ground, Guardineer removed a vial from his vest pocket, knelt down, and began filling it with soil.

Unaware of what was taking place not too far away, Baker had stumbled across what appeared to be a disguised air vent. Quietly, he uncovered it, then lay down to see if he could hear anything. At first there was nothing, and Baker started to rise. He was on his knees when he heard a faint cry. Dropping flat, he listened more intently.

“Ah, Fritz, do you hear? The poor little Gypsy begs to know why we end his life.”

“What a foolish question he asks, Hans. Why else would we do this but for the glory of the Fourth Reich?”

The closing of a door suddenly cut off the two voices. The cries of the Gypsy seemed to bore into Baker’s soul. Pressing his face to the vent, he started to call out, but the aroma of exhaust fumes silenced his tongue. He knew it was too late.

He didn’t know why, but for some reason, collecting his soil sample from this spot seemed to be appropriate.

Unlike his companions elsewhere, Christman encountered no one. He pulled a small map from his pocket and began to look around, feeling an unearthly chill grip his body when he realized he had reached his destination. Not more than three feet beneath him, the decayed bodies of an untold number of Jews lay in their final escape from the persecution of the Nazis.

Closing his eyes, the man said a silent prayer. As he knelt there atop the mass grave, he would have sworn that he heard a collective whisper from the past saying, “No more.”

He opened his eyes to find Guardineer and Baker standing before him.

“Are you OK?” Guardineer asked. “You’ve been like this for almost five minutes.”

Christman looked at his friends, then back down at his hands. He didn’t know when he did it, but the vial was in his hands and overflowing with soil. He wiped away the excess and replaced the lid.

As he stood, he noticed that Baker seemed distracted and somewhat agitated, but he said nothing. Guardineer took his friends by the arms and steered them toward the trees.

“Let’s go.”

It was a quiet trip to the rendezvous. Christman and Baker seemed to be only marginally aware that they were moving. As Guardineer continued to lead them, he could only imagine at what had happened to his friends.

***

“Do not think that I seek to rid myself of your company,” Benjamin said to the man standing beside him, “but wouldn’t you rather return to your hotel and rest?”

Christman stifled a yawn and shook his head to clear the drowsiness. “Honestly?” he asked. “Yes, I would. Unfortunately, I don’t think I could.”

The rabbi gave his new friend a questioning look.

“Something happened,” Christman said, his voice barely more than a whisper, “in Treblinka.” If anyone would understand, he knew it would be the rabbi, so he told the old man everything he had heard. “I promised them,” he said in conclusion.

Benjamin put his hand on Christman’s shoulder. “I, too, have heard and made that vow.”

After a moment of silence, Christman cleared his throat. Before he had a chance to say anything, the rabbi spoke.

“Your mind is troubled. You wish to know about your mission. You wonder why we left the safety of Egypt to come into occupied Israel.” With a slight grin, he added, “And you would really like to know about the men in the hooded robes, wouldn’t you?”

The younger man didn’t question how he knew this; he only acknowledged what the old man said.

“Have you heard of Yad Vashem?” Benjamin asked.

“No,” Christman said. “Should I?”

“I only wish more people did.” The rabbi’s voice was full of sorrow, and Christman was suddenly ashamed.

“Yad Vashem means name. In this instance, it is also the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority. The purpose of Yad Vashem is to make sure that those who died at the hands of the Nazis are never forgotten, and to honor those who risked their lives to save as many Jews as possible.

“This place,” he said, motioning toward the entrance of an underground cavern guarded by members of the Resistance, “is the Children’s Memorial. Were you to enter the cavern, you would see the reflection of memorial candles in the darkness that brings to mind the stars in the heavens. In the background, you would hear the names of nearly one and a half million children, as well as their ages and their countries of origin.

“For reasons known only to God, the Germans have never ventured near this complex; perhaps it is His way of making sure those taken from us in the Holocaust are not forgotten.

“As you know, you have collected soil from each of the sites of the concentration camps, and for that we are truly grateful. That soil is being used in a formula that will be used in the creation of a savior. It holds the blood, sweat, and tears of the victims of the Holocaust. You also collected soil from three graves — one in Russia, one in America, and one in Germany itself. Each of these graves held men who are what Yad Vashem refers to as Righteous Among the Nations. These men, along with thousands of others, risked their lives to protect the Jews.

“The Russian grave held the body of Pan-Jun-Shun, the first Chinese to be awarded the title. He took a young Jewish girl into his home and raised her as his own daughter, keeping her hidden from the Germans. He died in 1974.

“The American grave was the final resting place of Varian Fry. He helped smuggle over one thousand Jews out of occupied France.

“Albert Battel occupies the German grave. He served as an Oberleutenant in the German army. It was he who helped members of my own family escape the Warsaw Ghetto. On July 26, 1942, he directly defied the SS who were to begin transporting the Ghetto’s inmates to Belzec. Himmler himself took an interest in the investigation of the events of that day.

“The soil from these three graves symbolize the compassion of those who thought the lives of the Jews were worth the risks. It will be mixed with the soil of the victims.”

“And the men in the cavern?” Christman asked.

Benjamin’s voice dropped to a whisper. “They are kabbalists.”

Christman was unfamiliar with the word.

“They deal in the mysteries of God,” the rabbi said by way of explanation. When he saw that his friend was still not grasping what he was being told, he decided to ask one more question.

“Have you ever heard of a golem?”

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The man and woman stood in the darkness of a Prague hotel room, holding each other tightly in a lover’s embrace. Cheek to cheek, they whispered words not meant for others to hear.

“Are you certain of this information?” the man asked as his lips brushed the woman’s ear.

“Unfortunately,” she replied. Before saying anything else, she allowed a soft moan to escape her lips. “We lost two good agents smuggling the microfilm out of Poland.”

The man tensed. “There are… pictures? Where?”

“Sewn into my garter,” she told him. “Slide your hand up my right leg.”

He did as he was told, letting his hand caress her outer thigh until he felt the lace-covered elastic band. Guiding the woman backward to the bed, he lay her down and slid the garter down her leg.

With a smile, the woman held out her arms and wordlessly invited the man to join her on the bed. As he did, she put her arms around him and whispered in his ear. “You know we have to make this look convincing.”

Before he could respond, she climbed out of bed and unzipped her skirt. As it fell to the floor, she began to unbutton her blouse.

Seeing the woman standing before him in only her black lace undergarments and a pair of black nylons, the man truly regretted what he had to do next. He let himself admire her a moment longer, then said, “I… I can’t do this. I’m married.” His German was perfect.

The woman slapped his face, a bit harder than she intended, and ran crying into the bathroom.

The man sat on the edge of the bed with his head down. He put the garter on the bed and stood up. He took his jacket from the back of a chair and turned toward the door. He paused as if thinking, then turned around and tossed his jacket on the bed. Kneeling down, he picked up her clothes and placed them neatly on the bed.

Picking his jacket back up, he walked to the door. As he turned the knob, he glanced back at the bathroom door. Maybe one day, he thought, when my people are safe, we’ll meet again.

The man was gone when the woman came out of the bathroom. She picked up her clothes, careful not to reveal the small slip of paper she knew to be concealed in one of the folds, and returned to the bathroom. As she closed the door behind her, she leaned against it and bowed her head. Maybe one day, she thought.

***

Several blocks away, a small man in black, round-framed spectacles and a gray wool uniform of the SS had just made the biggest mistake of his life.

One of the many cameras the Nazis had hidden throughout the city had indeed been focused on the drama in the hotel room. When the couple had entered, the sight of the attractive blonde woman immediately drew his attention to that particular monitor.

The Nazi voyeur watched as they closed the door behind them and began to embrace. Tiny microphones picked up the muffles of their whispers, and while he couldn’t understand what was being said, he didn’t bother to adjust the volume. Instead, he let his own dirty little mind fill in their conversation.

With lecherous glee, he watched as the man slid his hand beneath her skirt and guide her to the bed. As the man’s hand re-emerged holding the garter, his comments were crude. When the woman — obviously Aryan, the small man had surmised because of her beauty — began to undress, nothing else in the world seemed to exist. And then, when the man surrendered to the weakness of being faithful to his wife, the voyeur spat a stream of obscenities at the screen.

His mistake? He wasted too much time watching the players in the drama and paid too little attention to the props. Had he watched the man’s jacket being tossed, he might have noticed that it landed on the garter. Had he kept his attention focused on the jacket, he might have noticed that when it was picked up, the garter was gone. And had he thought about it, he might have realized that wasn’t the souvenir a man faithful to his wife would keep and consquentially alerted his SS superiors.

The small man’s mistake not only cost him a promotion, it was about to cost his Nazi cohorts in a big way.

***

An aging rabbi kissed the hem of his prayer shawl and thought about the irony of his current situation. The last time his people had been so desperate that they cried out to God for a deliverer, they were slave labor for the Egyptians. Now here he was, hidden in a pyramid at Giza by his Egyptian allies, praying for another one.

Or maybe it wasn’t so ironic, he thought. Did not the prophet Isaiah himself speak of a day when God would bless Egypt, Assyria, and Israel as one?

“Benjamin?”

The rabbi turned at the mention of his name. “Why do you wander these dusty passageways? Surely you cannot be finding solace in the place of the dead.”

Benjamin gave his friend a sad smile. “Hakizimana, my dear friend. I have found no solace for over forty years. The voices of over three million of my people have continually cried out to me from beyond the grave.”

“Then my heart is filled with sorrow and regret at the burden I must place upon your heart,” the Egyptian said.

The rabbi looked into the younger man’s eyes, then took him by the arm. “It is about to happen again, isn’t it?”

Hakizimana felt a tear roll down his cheek. “Yes,” was all he could say.

***

The anguish appeared to have been carved into Benjamin’s face as he looked at the pictures spread out on the table. Everyone present knew that while his eyes were staring at the photographs, his heart was seeing only the past.

As a young man, Benjamin was forced to endure the hellish squalor that was the Warsaw Ghetto. Yet the horrors he faced there on a daily basis were paradise compared to his next destination.

Near the end of July, 1942, the SS was preparing to begin the deportation of the Polish Jews to the Belzec extermination camp. On the twenty-sixth of that month, they attempted to cross the bridge over the River San, the only route into the Jewish ghetto, only to find it blocked. Under orders from Major Max Liedtke, the local military commander, the sergeant major in charge of the bridge threatened to open fire. Wisely, the SS withdrew.

Later that afternoon, Oberleutenant Albert Battel — the adjutant to Major Liedtke and the man behind the blocking of the bridge — along with an army detachment entered the cordoned-off area of the ghetto with trucks. When they emerged from the ghetto, they brought with them nearly one hundred Jews and their families. With the exception of Benjamin and his seven-year-old nephew Eli, who were off trying to find food in another part of the slum, what few members of his family who still survived were among them. Two days later, Benjamin and his nephew were resettled.

Like cattle, the inhabitants of the ghetto were rounded up and herded aboard train cars. So tightly packed in were the people that there was no room to sit down. The trip alone claimed the lives of dozens.

When the train finally lurched to a stop after what seemed an eternity, Benjamin learned that it was not Belzec but Treblinka that had become their final destination.

As the people were unloaded, the SS divided them into three groups: men, women, and women with children. Eli was taken from Benjamin and placed in the third group.

The third group was led away, and the soldiers turned their attention to the dividing of the two remaining groups between old and young. Once this division was complete, the older men and women were sent along in the wake of the children. The remaining men and women were led away to barracks.

Fifteen minutes after the train’s arrival, the station was clear, and nearly half of the children were dead.

Upon reaching the men’s barracks, Benjamin and several other young men were given the gruesome task of removing the bodies from the gas chamber and disposing of them. Benjamin was sent to the crematorium, where he saw Eli one final time.

Although it didn’t seem like it then, the old rabbi realized that God had had His hand on him. He had been spared both the physical cruelty of the guards and the sickness and disease that ravaged his fellow Jews.

“It was March, I think, of ’45,” Benjamin said aloud, “when the Blackhawks came.”

The Egyptians and Israelis who were gathered in the chamber exchanged glances but said nothing. Each one had come to respect and even admire the rabbi, so they listened.

“It was both a frightening and a glorious day,” the man continued. “We heard the roar of their Grummans moments before we saw them. As they passed overhead, they dropped their bombs. The barracks were untouched, but everything else took heavy damage. Most of the Nazis perished, and the prisoners overpowered those that didn’t.”

Benjamin looked up and his friends. “It wasn’t as heroic as you might think,” he told them. “We were fortunate that those who lived were not as heavily armed as they should have been.”

“I had heard that most of the concentration camps felt the wrath of the Blackhawks,” an older Egyptian said.

The rabbi nodded. “I was told that one of the pilots, a Pole, lost family who were relocated from the ghetto to one of the camps. I guess they felt it was time to retaliate.”

Benjamin picked up one of the pictures and looked at the image of new furnaces being built underground. “We swore we would not let it happen again, but it appears we have failed.”

He lay the photograph down and wept.

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Weird War Tales

The Monsters Within

by CSyphrett

With the war against the Fourth Reich going badly, the Allies need any advantage they can get. And they got it when Quicksilver defeated the powerful Manhunter of the S.S. Ubermenschen. After discovering that the Manhunter’s amazing DNA can grant undreamt-of powers to their own soldiers, the Allies created Project M. But rather than create super-soldiers, will the Manhunter’s DNA create monsters? And will those monsters be formidable enough to stop him when the Manhunter breaks loose?

• Chapter 1: Project M

• Chapter 2: Monster Mash

• Chapter 3: The Creature Commandos

Return to Earth-X titles. Return to Independents stories.

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In his private cell, the prisoner of Project M moaned slightly as his eyes opened for the first time since his capture by that blue-clad demon called Quicksilver. He looked around, realizing he was in some type of hospital, judging by the monitoring systems hooked to his body.

It was time to leave, he decided as the rage began to build, ripping out the IVs and pulling wires loose from his chest. He was Germany’s greatest hero, not a lab rat. Someone would pay for this indignity.

He staggered to the door, fighting the remains of the drugs in his body, and pressed on the barrier. It seemed to be solid steel. Checking the walls, he noted that the concrete was thicker than he expected. These people were intent on keeping him under lock and key.

Turning toward the door, his deep-set red eyes lit with fire, which blasted at the lock on the vault-like door. The beam worked on the steel, softening it. He threw his body against the door, which swung open, crashing against the wall.

The Manhunter was free.

***

Roy Miller gradually awoke from his drugged sleep, repressing the screams he felt trying to claw their way out of his throat. He was a soldier, and he could take this. If only he didn’t see transparent men and women everywhere. If only his own body was opaque as it used to be.

The man with the x-ray eyes glanced over at the plastic bathtub next to his bed. At least he hadn’t wound up like Stefan Queen, he mused. X-ray eyes were preferable than being a blob of Jell-O, as far as he was concerned.

An alarm began to siren its call-to-arms. Miller looked around, searching for the source of the trouble, and frowned when he saw soldiers running to the stairs to the lower levels. Using his x-ray eyes, he traced their path through the building until he found a group of soldiers massing in the lowest level of the base. One look at their opponent made him lurch out of bed.

“Hey!” Miller shouted as he kicked Queen’s tub and looked around for clothes more decent that a hospital gown. “Hey, wake up!” he shouted, kicking the tub again before he went to a closet and dug out a lab coat. He pulled on the coat, then kicked the tub a third time, shouting, “Queen! Get your ass up!”

“Lemme alone, Mom,” said a bubbly, high-pitched voice from the blob made of a pudding-like yellow substance. “Get up in a minute.”

“At-ten-tion!” Miller ordered in his best parade ground voice.

Queen’s blob-like body suddenly reformed itself a pillar, sloppily saluting with a makeshift arm. Then he saw who gave the order and splashed back in his tub. “What’s the idea?” he grumbled.

“Get your mucous butt in gear,” ordered Miller, heading for the fish tank set up for the amphibian at the end of the row. “The Manhunter’s coming to get us.”

He slapped the fish tank hard and watched as large, black eyes regarded him coldly. “Get up, buddy,” Miller told the scaly horror that had once been Martin Cove. “Let’s go.” He wished he had a pair of shades to cover his eyes. He felt the fish man was staring at them, and he didn’t like it.

“Wake up, Vincent!” Miller shouted, overturning the bed. But David Vincent continued to float in the air, unaware or uncaring of any disturbance.

Miller glanced at the other two, noting he had finally got them on their feet — or whatever they now used to stand — in order to help him out. The question was what they could do that a squadron of soldiers couldn’t. “Right,” he began. “The troops are blocking the way out of the basement with some heavy firepower. The Manhunter is waiting at the other end of the hall. He doesn’t look too steady, so we might be able to take him.”

“With what?” asked the bloblike Queen. “Our devastating good looks?”

“I’ve got a plan,” said Miller, smiling as his eyes burned unnaturally. “Phase one is for you to get down there and keep him busy.”

“Then what, genius?” asked the gelatinous mass.

“Me and Marty will get some equipment and ambush him,” said Miller. “How simple is that?”

Queen shrugged his whole body, then began to flow out of the room. “You’d better be there,” he warned.

Flowing through the ventilation system like thick syrup, Stefan Queen’s new body was both amazing and horrific. He would never have thought he would be jelly on the run. Reaching a shaft leading down, he dropped into it, his blob-like body compacting as he fell to the basement level.

As he hit the grill covering the shaft, the piece of flimsy metal flew out into the basement room, and Queen’s semi-liquid body splattered against the floor. Looking around quickly, he hoped to find the Manhunter and distract him from beating on the security guys.

Queen saw a staggering shadow, and a small dripping smile crossed his lumpy face before sinking out of sight. It was time to do his job. He hoped Miller appreciated this.

Flowing across the floor, Queen waved at Lieutenant Shrieve when he saw him lined up behind a plastic shield. He paused when he saw the Manhunter leaning against the wall. The Nazi super-soldier looked strung out from whatever he had been through. The private could imagine that they had pumped him full of drugs to keep him quiet.

“Would you like to go back to your cell quietly?” Queen asked in his bubbling voice, “or do I have to get tough and pound you into the ground?”

“Get away from me, schweinhund,” said the German hero, and twins beams of energy leaped out of his eyes at the yellow pudding man.

“Yikes!” said Queen, bouncing out of the way.

Elsewhere, Roy Miller led the way as he searched for what he needed. He hoped that the weird blob his fellow prisoner had become had enough strength to help him carry out his plan.

Checking quickly on Queen, he could see that the yellow pudding man had started distracting the German ubermensch. Miller saw that the Manhunter was visibly enraged by his fellow experimental subject. The basement area was becoming a war zone as the two went at each other. He turned away and focused on the job he was supposed to be taking care of while Queen did his.

Moments later, he found what he was looking for in a supply closet. The silvery tanks were transparent as glass to his new x-ray eyes. Focusing on the writing caused the black letters to stand out. Have to remember that for later, when I’m not about to be killed, Miller thought.

“This is what we want, I think,” he said to Martin Cove as he gestured at the large tank. “Do you think we can carry it between the two of us?”

“Step back,” said Cove, rubbing his scaly arms with webbed hands. He grabbed one end of the tank and lifted it, testing for strain on his amphibian body. “We’re in business.”

“Let’s get this sucker to the basement,” said Miller, leading the way out of the supply room.

“And we are helping that #&*$&@ Shrieve for what reason?” Cove said, hefting the tank on his shoulder, easily following behind the man with the x-ray eyes.

“Cause if that so-called Martian gets away, we might be lab rats forever,” said Miller. “It’s bad enough we’re the only successes.”

“Got it,” said the green-scaled Cove.

As they made their way to the basement of the lab building, the amphibious creature held the tank on his shoulder easily. Cove didn’t put much thought into that fact, since it was one of the few side-effects of his condition that he liked. He glanced at a polished piece of wall tile, flinching at the sight until he recognized himself. Looking like a fish was just something he would have to get used to, he realized.

Roy Miller gestured for the soldiers watching the blob-like Stefan Queen bounce around the basement to get out of their way. The men silently complied, some blanching when they saw his malformed eyes and Martin Cove’s scaled shape. Lieutenant Shrieve saw the men but got out of the way with a frown.

“He’s about ten feet away, at two o’clock,” Miller said quietly.

“Got it,” said Cove, stepping around the corner. He flung the tank like a javelin, and the metal whistled as it flew forward.

The Manhunter turned at the sound, and the Nazi superman’s eye-beams fell on the tank, slicing it in half. White gas sprayed out in a cloud over the escapee, and when it cleared, a statue of ice stood in his place.

“Good job, Marty,” said Queen, impulsively rolling up in a wave of yellow pudding and smashing down on top of the statue. The laboratory-created man broke apart in a spray of splinters. The Manhunter of the S.S. Ubermenschen was dead.

“We might have needed him alive, Stefan,” Miller said, wincing at the sight of frozen pieces of tissue spread out over the floor like a broken vase. “Like maybe for a cure for our conditions, you idiot!”

“We don’t need no stinking Martians,” said Queen, his bubbly voice buzzing slightly.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” said Lieutenant Shrieve, joining three of his four test subject prisoners. “Is Vincent with you?”

“He’s up in his room vegetating,” growled Martin Cove. “He was floating in some kind of bubble the last time we saw him.”

“Let’s get you guys tested out,” said Shrieve, gesturing with the rifle he had borrowed from a regular security soldier. “The brass can figure out what they want done with this mess.”

“And what happens to us?” Miller asked.

“The brass will have to decide that, too,” said Shrieve, scratching his forehead with a thumb. “I doubt you guys will see any type of combat.”

“Don’t believe that,” said Cove quietly. “We’re the perfect expendable weapon. Just call us the Creature Commandos.”

“Got that right, brother,” said Queen. “I’m gonna be the new Plastic Man.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” said Lieutenant Shrieve, leading the way from the room. “You don’t have enough class to pretend to be Plastic Man.”

***

Across the continent, Dr. Josef Mengele walked along a cat walk in an underground laboratory complex on Long Island, New York. Below his feet were clear tubes suspended from a network of life-supporting cables. Inside the life-support system, albino men with cobalt eyes were growing to adulthood.

Dr. Mengele smiled. Soon his creations would flood the world in the name of the Fourth Reich, and no force on Earth would be able to stop it. The Allied armed forces would be ineffectual, and not even the Freedom Fighters, the Marksman and his Resistance, the Red Bee, or that English popinjay the Jester would get in the way of the Reich’s cloned army. If they did, they would be crushed by the powers he was bringing to bear against them.

Uncle Sam would weep at the loss of freedom in the world, and no otherdimensional forces would arrive to help him preserve the United States this time.

To Be Continued in We Will Fight Our Countries’ Battles

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Professor James Oak and his chief assistant Cary Frederick went over each man quietly and calmly. Tissue samples were taken and stored in case an analysis would be needed to gauge the changes on each of the volunteers. Then each of the guinea pigs was taken to his own cell to wait for the next step in the experiment.

Lieutenant Shrieve remained there to escort each man and act as guard in case any of them decided to take a hostage and try to escape. He worked quietly and ruthlessly in the performance of his duty.

It made Frederick nervous to be under such scrutiny while he waited for the special prisoner to come to his senses and try to escape the facility.

***

Private Roy Miller looked out the window of his room. It was a nice view of the desert on three sides of the base. A chain-link fence ran around the perimeter as far as he could see. Patrols drove back and forth along the fence quietly in front of his perch.

If he could get out of his room, he would have to get out of the building and cross the wasteland before an alarm and search could start. That wasn’t likely, since he didn’t know which way to run. He had a good chance of dying before he could even get over the fence.

It was better to wait and see what happened when they put that stuff in him, he decided. He had a better chance of surviving that and being returned to his cell at Leavenworth than an escape.

As the sun slowly worked toward the horizon, Miller continued staring out the window, wondering if certain death was perhaps better than a small chance of survival.

***

Professor Oak checked the reports on each of the applicants. Vials of manufactured serum rested in a rack on a nearby table, while wrapped disposable needles lay in a tray next to the rack. The serum had strange bubbles floating in it as the artificial DNA worked through it.

Colonel Sanchez stood in the doorway patiently, his blocky face placid at the orders he had to carry out. It would put him in front of a war crimes tribunal when the war ended. But that was only if the war ended and if the experiment was disclosed. As for the professor, he didn’t want to think what he would have to go through if his part in this was discovered. “Ready?” asked Sanchez.

“As I’ll ever be,” replied Oak.

“Let’s get this over with,” said the colonel. “We’re fooling ourselves if we think this is going to get any easier as time goes by.”

The professor nodded, placing the rack and needles on a cart. The two then headed for the makeshift hospital rooms for the volunteers.

***

Roy Miller sat on his bed and rolled his sleeve up without being told. He watched dispassionately as a hypodermic needle was prepped for use by Cary Frederick.

The lab assistant plunged the needle into Miller’s arm, and one push of his thumb dumped all of the serum into the convict’s bloodstream in a moment of blinding pain.

Miller couldn’t tell if the pain was from the needle in his vein or if it was from the serum turning him into a super-soldier. All he knew was that there was now a raging fire spreading through his system.

He lay down on the bed, thinking that maybe he would be lucky and nothing would happen to him at all. It would be the first piece of good luck since he had been sentenced to imprisonment at Leavenworth.

Frederick placed the used needle in a disposal box on the cart, making notes of the time of the injection on the chart he had with him. One more victim to inject and he would be done with this part of things. He would then be allowed to return to his own quarters while nurses monitored things with the help of Lieutenant Shrieve. He wondered how many he had helped killed with this untried stuff.

***

Lieutenant Matthew Shrieve and Sergeant Pat Riley had been told to keep watch and record and report the symptoms if or when they should appear. They took alternating shifts on watch as the hours continued to march by. Shrieve was on duty and reading an article in Life magazine when things began to fall apart.

First came the screams. Then one of the test subjects, Kenny Kiel, suddenly burst into flames, running for the door and screaming at the top of his lungs. Grabbing at the locked door to his room, Kiel began heating the metal as his fingers wrapped around the knob, causing it to begin steaming.

Reacting instinctively to put the flames out, Shrieve grabbed a nearby fire extinguisher from a wall hook as Kiel burned his way through the door. He pulled the pin and directed the nozzle at his escaping prisoner, then pressed the grip.

A cloud of foam forcefully wrapped around Kiel, and the lieutenant winced at the cry that erupted from the private’s mouth as the carbon dioxide soaked into his skin. Spraying the extinguisher dry, he was thankful that the building’s sprinklers finally decided to erupt in a rain storm.

When the fog cleared, Kenny Kiel had become nothing more than a statue of charred carbon that began to be washed away by the water and soon crumbled under its own weight.

***

As Roy Miller slept, the pain fading enough from his injection to allow that, dreams floated through his mind. He felt nothing more than a pinprick at first. Then suddenly that tiny spot flared into a raging fire in his arm.

Rolling in his sleep as he dreamed a monster had seized him, Miller fell off the bed with a thump. Loud cries reached his ears as he awoke, and he felt extreme pain in his head and arms.

“What happened?” he asked himself, examining the room around him. He heard the sound of distant screams and frantic orders. Something alarming was happening elsewhere, he guessed. That was when Miller realized his eyes were closed, and he could see right through his eyelids.

He bit back his own scream, telling himself he was still asleep and safely his bunk. You could do anything in dreams. You could even see through solid flesh.

Staggering into the bathroom, Miller looked into the small mirror over the sink. He finally screamed then, now fully aware of what had happened to him.

***

The United States Army had brought ten men to use the chemical synthesized from the Manhunter of the S.S. Ubermenschen. Six died within hours, while the other four became freaks.

Roy Miller had stopped screaming when a nurse pumped him full of sedative in his temporary bathroom. The man with the x-ray eyes had been so entranced by what he saw in the mirror that he never even noticed her arrival.

The three others had been mutated in different but still horrific ways.

Stefan Queen had been gathered into a plastic tub, his body mass having been turned to jelly yet somehow remaining alive. The blob he was now stirred gruesomely, reaching with phantom hands as the drugs saturated his system.

Martin Cove had pulled himself into the bathroom. Although he wanted to scream, he hadn’t because he was having a hard time adjusting to both breathing air and growing gills at the same time. Turning on the shower, he let the water wash over him, instinctively knowing that was what he needed more than anything. The creature he now was, looking like he had come from a deep black lagoon, kept his eyes closed as scales grew over his skin.

The last man, David Vincent, hovered above his bed, energy wrapping him in a cocoon and keeping his nurses away from him. He had only screamed once when his transformation had first begun. Ever since then, he had been eerily silent.

Later, as the remaining four prisoners were herded into one room, Lieutenant Matthew Shrieve grimaced at the sight of them. The rest had died grotesquely, unable to deal with the transformations wrought by the Manhunter’s altered DNA. He would have to file reports on what happened as soon as he could figure out how to explain away the chaotic events.

At least the lab and hospital had survived the resulting display. The Atomic Energy Commission would have to refit the top of the building. That was out of Shrieve’s hands. All he was concerned with were his monstrous charges.

Who would have thought his career would lead him into a fantasyland like this? He thought idly that he needed to get a transfer out of this chicken outfit as soon as possible, before he was completely and utterly FUBARed.

***

Colonel Sanchez sat at his desk reading the reports from Damage Control. The top floor would have to be renovated and restored. Professor Oak’s reports on the subjects said the transformation they had suffered had put them into deep comas. The professor didn’t know when they would wake up, if they would wake up at all. All told, it was an expensive failure for the Project.

Putting the reports aside, Sanchez dug out his pipe and tobacco and sat back in his chair. After stuffing the bowl, he struck a match and puffed the pipe alight while thinking about what else could wrong.

It was at that moment that the alarm blared over the loudspeaker.

“Me and my big mouth,” he muttered to himself as he rushed from the room.

Sanchez hurried to the security room to find out what the emergency was. There were only two things on base it could be. The Manhunter or the experiments. Let it be the experiments, he thought desperately.

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Professor James Oak looked through the microscope intently, hardly believing what he was staring at. The sample was literally trying to squirm off the slide and escape. His hands slightly trembling, he pulled the slide loose and placed it in a secured case. Putting the locked case in a refrigerator to keep the sample fresh, he considered his next move. The professor didn’t quite know what he was going to put in his report.

He did know what he had been looking at, however. He had been examining a sample of altered DNA and cell tissue from his test subject, the Manhunter of the S.S. Ubermenschen. Based on the DNA, he had concluded that the Manhunter’s extraterrestrial origins had been yet another Nazi lie, and that contrary to his supposed Martian origins, he must have been created in a lab.

Two questions now arose from this fact. One, how it had been done? And two, who was brilliant enough to have done it? Once he was able to surmise the answer to the first question, he could duplicate the process and make his own super-soldiers for America. That was the primary purpose of Project M.

Oak went to his office after securing his sample. He had numerous reports to send back to Washington, D.C., and some of the points in his research were positive. The difficult part of the job was to set everything in layman’s terms for the President, the House, and the Senate. He didn’t look forward to doing that. It was hard enough finding the right technical terms for scientific methods. Using plain language wasn’t nearly exact enough.

Sitting down, the professor began trying to come up with a way to explain genetic design in one- or two-syllable words. He stared at the blank paper for some time before he started typing.

A few hours later, Professor Oak put aside his reports for the moment and rubbed his eyes. He had to get some more papers from the lab to finish the report for his superiors.

Oak waved to his assistant, Cary Frederick, as he stepped into the lab and looked around for the papers he needed. A knock on the door came as he finally found the reports, interrupting the idle thought that the reports had grown legs because they were in the wrong place.

“Hello, Colonel Sanchez,” Oak said, not looking up to greet his visitor as he flipped purposefully through the loose sheets.

“Hello, Professor,” said the base commander, whose brown hair was speckled with gray. He had crow’s feet and a perpetual squint from a lifetime of glaring into the sun. “I have some bad news for you.”

“What kind of bad news?” Oak asked, finally looking up from his papers at him. Sanchez was a master of understatement, so if he said the news was bad, it was likely to be horrific by anyone else’s standards.

“The brass wants you to take this stuff and inject it into test subjects,” Sanchez said in a neutral tone. “They want to see what happens to the guinea pigs. See if it can be used to start creating our own supermen.”

“That’s an impossibility,” said Oak, a line drawing down his forehead in concern. “Anything could happen if we inject this unstable substance into a normal body.”

“They want to know what,” said Sanchez. “They want to know if the altered DNA can be shaped when it starts working through a human being’s ordinary DNA.”

“That’s irresponsible at best,” said Oak, placing his reports on a nearby table. “At worst, we could end up creating monsters far worse than the one we have locked up.”

“Professor, if you don’t go along,” said Sanchez. “They’ll want to replace you with someone who will. We’re at war.”

Oak looked at Sanchez’s bluff face. He knew the colonel also didn’t like the orders but would still go through with it. Their nation was at war with a ruthless enemy, and any risk that would end the war early would be taken, even if innocent lives were lost in the attempt. “When do they want this thing to start?” asked the professor, weary from the days of work he had already put in.

“As soon as possible,” said Sanchez. “The subjects will be arriving in a few hours. After that, it will be up to you to determine how you want to handle things.”

“I see,” said Oak. “I want you to understand that this could be utterly disastrous.”

The colonel nodded. “I know,” he said and turned to go.

As Oak returned to his office with the papers, his assistant went about his own business. Cary Frederick had become Oak’s chief assistant after having worked his way through several screenings by the FBI. Unbeknownst to either Oak or the FBI, however, Frederick reported everything he knew to a man he knew only as Eric.

This day he had received a message from Eric ordering him to wake up the captive from California. The idea was to let the Manhunter run amuck while Frederick would grab whatever notes he could and sneak them out of the facility.

That would put an end to Project M as well as the New Mexico base itself when the Manhunter busted free. There was no doubt, according to Eric, that the escape would inflict numerous casualties among the staff and security assigned to the place in the desert.

The Manhunter was kept sedated, constantly administered drugs intravenously. Frederick adjusted the intravenous feed to enable the pale thing to wake up slowly, allowing him plenty of time to either sneak away as planned or establish an alibi in case something went wrong.

He didn’t want to outlive his usefulness if the army troopers somehow got the Manhunter under control before he could fight his way clear.

***

Deep in the bowels of Project M, the Nazi super-agent known as the Manhunter of the S.S. Ubermenschen began to stir in the care of his electronic monitors. His fingers flexed and clawed blindly at the mattress he lay on, and his eyelids occasionally flickered as he struggled with the weakening influence of the drugs that slowly dripped away.

His sleeping mind demanded revenge on the one called Quicksilver, who had captured him for the Allies. He would rip out the man’s spine as soon as he awakened. For now he had to dream and relive his defeat repeatedly until he could return to the real world.

***

Professor James Oak and Colonel Sanchez waited at the field hospital for the arriving subjects for the planned experiments. Oak had continued work on the experimental DNA until he was sure it would bond with the target DNA. All that needed to be done was to inject the resulting solution into a human being and seeing how much he could wreck the rest of their lives. Acid burned in his stomach at the thought.

A half-ton, olive-colored army truck rolled to a stop in front of the hospital, and a lieutenant bailed out of the passenger side. Heading to the rear, he threw the gate down and shouted something to the passengers in the back of the truck. Men began hopping down, forming a line in front of the hospital. They raggedly came to attention when the lieutenant shouted at them.

“Let’s meet our draftees,” Sanchez said grimly, leading the way out of the receiving room.

Colonel Sanchez looked at each of the men. Having gone over their files when he had been ordered to oversee the experiment, he was not happy with what he saw when he looked into their eyes that first time. “Do any of you know why you are here?” he asked.

The men looked confused at the question.

“What were your orders, Lieutenant?” Sanchez asked.

“Sir, I was ordered to pick ten men out of the brig and escort them here for detached duty,” said the junior officer.

“Let me tell you the reason why you’re here,” said Colonel Sanchez. “We have in our possession a special agent of the German government. We hope to use chemicals synthesized from that agent to recreate his abilities in one of you. The process is untried and risky. Anyone who wants to return to his cell and suffer his punishment, get back on the truck.”

The men looked at him blankly.

“All right, then. You should know that this is a highly classified project. Professor Oak will have to examine you, assign room numbers, and get your paperwork filled out. Then we’ll have a more comprehensive briefing on the means and such.” He looked at the men, waiting for a reaction that never came. “If anyone tries to get off base before the experiment is done,” warned Sanchez, “you will be shot. Good luck.”

As he walked away, the colonel added, “Lieutenant Shrieve, get them sorted out as fast as you can.”

“You heard the man,” shouted Shrieve. “Form up at the door, and let’s get started.”

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