Grudge: Operation Highjump Read online

  Slowly, he rolled onto his stomach and began clawing his way toward the exit. As long as he kept his lower back generally straight, he was able to move, but doing so necessitated that he not use his legs. Inch by agonizing inch, James pulled himself along the floor.

  By the time he was halfway across the communications room his hands were bleeding from the shards of glass that covered the floor. He turned his head to examine the path ahead. Glass glittered in the light of the fires. He would be cut to ribbons by the time he made it through the room.

  He had to clear the way. A quick scan of the surrounding area gave him an idea and he grabbed a dangling keyboard, pulling the cord free of the computer. Using the keyboard, he swept the glass out of the way in front of him, advanced and then swept more of the glass away before crawling forward again.

  He had no idea what he’d do when he finally reached the stairwell.

  “We’ll figure that out when we get there,” he groaned.

  “Hello! Help me!” Major Leeland shouted weakly from the common area of the branch office.

  James pulled himself another few feet, angling toward the sound of the major’s whimpers. A mangled pile of cubicle dividers, chairs and various other office equipment lay jumbled against the structural wall. A pale, fleshy hand sticking through the mess moved weakly.

  “Tom? Tom, are you in there?” James croaked.

  “Here,” he whispered breathlessly.

  “Hold on. I’ll see if I can get you out.”

  James pulled at the pile, dislodging parts where he could. Every movement was agony. He pulled at the leg of a small coffee table, causing a telephone to fall from above and hit him in the head. He eyed the mass of furniture above him dubiously and continued on, finding a foot that he used as a point of reference to pull himself along until he came to Leeland.

  It wasn’t good. Dried blood ran in streaks from the officer’s ears and his nose was partially sheared off, dangling by a thin piece of flesh.

  “Tom, can you hear me?”

  Leeland’s head lolled to the side, rolls of fat in his neck supporting its weight without effort. He blinked in confusion at James, but made no further attempt to speak.

  “Can you move? The building is on fire.”

  James pulled ineffectively at the bigger man’s leg. It was too much. He couldn’t gain any type of leverage in his own injured state.

  “I need you to try to move, Tom,” he ordered calmly.

  Leeland blinked at him and then flopped an arm to his stomach, where it fell against something with a dull thud. James adjusted his angle to see what he was working with, cursing his back for not allowing him to lift his head higher than a few inches.

  Finally, he saw it. The leg of a chair protruded through Tom’s abdomen. He’d been impaled through the lower back and the blunt, metal leg emerged from just above his pelvis. There was a surprisingly small amount of blood around the exit point.

  That may be worse, James thought. The injury would still bleed. If it wasn’t coming out, then it was building up inside his abdominal cavity. If the chair leg perforated his stomach or his intestines, all that fluid would seep into Tom and poison him before help could arrive.

  James reached up and shook the chair leg gently. Another leg above them in the jumble of office equipment moved in time with his actions. The leg sticking through Tom was still attached to the seat of the chair. Even if he could move Tom’s bulk, the pile would likely collapse on top of them with the shift of an entire chair.

  There was nothing James could do for his boss. “I have to go get help, Tom. I can’t do this alone.”

  The man’s eyes glittered, reflecting the light of the fires in the office. He mouthed something, but only gurgling sounds emerged.

  James pushed himself backward, exiting the pile and leaving Tom to his fate. It was a tough decision. He hadn’t liked the man, but leaving him to die a horribly painful and lonely death wasn’t right. If his current injuries didn’t kill him, Major Leeland would be roasted alive or crushed when the floors collapsed.

  The number of fires burning across the city would overwhelm EMS. Even if James made it to safety himself, it was unlikely that anyone would go into the burning building. The best thing that could happen to Tom would be for him to pass out from the carbon monoxide and other toxic fumes produced in the fire, and then never wake up.

  The dense layer of smoke creeping along the ceiling flowed out through the broken office windows. It had deepened to a dark, charcoal grey over the course of James’ failed rescue attempt and the flashing strobe lights confused him further. If he hadn’t worked in the same office for over four years, he easily could have crawled the wrong way. As it was, though, he knew that the exit to the hallway was only about ten more feet and the stairwell was six feet to the left. Then the real challenge would begin.

  The crawl to the stairwell took an insufferably long time. When he got there, another challenge presented itself. The push bar to open the stairwell door was at waist-height. Even using the keyboard as an extension, he couldn’t quite reach it. He tried once again to get his legs under him, but it wouldn’t work. His back was completely locked up.

  James looked around the hallway for anything he could use. Nothing. It was your standard Department of Defense office building with no frills in the common areas.

  “What the fuck!” he screamed in frustration. All that he’d been through had been for nothing. He was stuck in the goddamned hallway.

  An idea came to him and he maneuvered his body around until his feet were near the door. He turned over painfully onto his back and lifted his leg a few inches until he could grab his pants leg. James pulled his leg up, ignoring the grating sound in his back, and put his foot against the push bar. Then, he pushed his body forward and the bar depressed, allowing the door to swing into the stairwell.

  His foot fell and an excruciating pain riddled his body, worse than anything he’d felt yet. The pain in his lower body ceased. He lay there for a moment as the pain elsewhere went from the massive spike he’d experienced to a constant level. He tried to move his toes and couldn’t; his legs were both totally useless now. He was paralyzed from the waist down.

  “Goddammit!” He used his anger to fuel his need to survive and pushed his way into the stairwell. Surprisingly, the lack of feeling in his back made it easier for him to move than the immense spikes of pain at every movement before.

  James made it to the stairwell and tried to slide backward on his stomach, but his dead feet got in the way, sticking to the non-skid steps. He had to turn around and ease himself down headfirst, step by step on his belly, pausing at each landing to let the blood flow out of his head.

  Ten floors. Twenty-six steps between each floor. He fell, rolling down the remainder of the flight of steps on two different occasions, once from more than halfway up. His hands were bruised and bloody, the skin torn away from the ends of three fingers on his left hand and the palm of his right looked like he’d taken a spill on a bicycle—but he made it.

  In the lobby, a security guard outside the building saw him emerge from the stairs and rushed inside. The guard pulled him out of the building and several people that he’d seen in the lobby coffee shop over the years assisted with getting him across the street.

  His ordeal was over. He was safe. They’d get him to the hospital and he’d get examined. The doctors could repair his body. Couldn’t they?

  *****

  04 July 2025

  Norfolk, Virginia

  “Launch everything!” Vice Admiral Sexton screamed. “If they’re not armed yet, send them inland. We need to preserve as much combat power as possible.”

  “Aye-aye, sir!”

  “Send word to the George Washington and George Bush to do the same.”

  “Aye-aye, sir!”

  The carrier’s general alert claxons began to sound and the admiral imagined he could hear the pounding of feet on the decks below him. He’d received the emergency report that DC was und
er attack and started arming the jets on the three carriers docked at the naval base. The planes on the ground wouldn’t be able to be armed in time; there was simply too much bureaucratic red tape with keeping ammunition easily accessible on the mainland. They’d have to try and get to an airport somewhere in the interior of the country until the government could coordinate a response—if there was a government anymore.

  “Target anything in the sky without a US transponder,” Admiral Sexton ordered. “I want to shoot a few of these fuckers down before they sink my boat. Tell the other ships that they are weapons free.”

  The claxons took on a different sound as the Sea Sparrow missile pods activated.

  “Tracking inbound targets!” a sailor shouted.

  “Kill the bastards, dammit! Don’t wait for my order. We don’t have time.”

  The first missile exploded from the pod, sending flames in all directions, severely burning several crew members who hadn’t moved away from the system fast enough.

  “Fire as soon as you get another lock,” he ordered.

  Outbound missiles began to stream from other boats, streaking off toward the ocean and unseen targets miles away. They didn’t even know what they were shooting at. The radar signatures were completely unlike anything in the computer database and the satellite imagery from DC was inconclusive—the goddamned things were just so fast.

  “Reports coming in from DC,” a sailor called. “The air defense batteries shot down several of the UFOs before getting wiped out.”

  “UFOs…” the admiral mused.

  He wasn’t a believer of alien conspiracy theories until ten minutes ago. Given what he’d seen, though, Sexton had to believe that their enemy wasn’t human. There was no way a human body could take the sustained speed and the rapid changes in direction that the craft appeared to take would have caused a human to black out.

  “Sir! There are fast-moving boats that just appeared out of nowhere on radar. They are ten miles from shore.”

  “Put it up on the screen.”

  The coast of Virginia and eastern Maryland appeared on the bridge video screens. Hundreds of boats appeared, fanning outward from a spot in the middle of the ocean, sailing rapidly toward the coast. They were simply appearing out of thin air.

  “Have the Vella Gulf and Anzio target the origination point with harpoon missiles.”

  “Sir, there’s nothing there.”

  “Bullshit,” the old sailor countered. “There’s something there. They’re coming from somewhere goddamn it. I’m willing to bet there’s some type of stealth vessel out there.”

  He watched as the radioman talked into his headset. “Sir, both cruisers acknowledge.”

  “Fire!” he ordered.

  Below him, on the flight deck, planes shot skyward from the catapults. Too many of them headed west. They hadn’t gotten enough time to arm. Would they even have ammunition for them at an Air Force installation? he wondered.

  Six large, ship-killing missiles roared away from the cruisers Vella Gulf and Anzio. He hoped he was right and second-guessed his decision to fire at an empty spot on the radar. “Have the cruisers target the inbound boats.”

  “Sir?”

  “Change the cruiser’s target from the origination point to the take out any of the inbound boats that they can.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.”

  “Sir, we have visual!”

  He pivoted in his chair and followed the outstretched arm of his executive officer. Admiral Sexton picked up his binoculars and lifted them to his tired eyes.

  A dark cloud of what appeared to be UFOs sped toward the naval base from the east. Too late, he realized there were hundreds of smaller objects streaking ahead of the approaching fighters.

  “Incoming!”

  TWELVE

  05 July 2025

  Hunter Army Airfield, Savannah, Georgia

  “Let’s go, Berserkers! Get on that plane before I smoke your asses myself,” First Sergeant Thomas shouted.

  Gabe grinned in spite of the severity of the situation. His company was loading three of the smaller, propeller engine C-130s for rapid deployment to Washington, DC of all places.

  The 82nd Airborne out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina had apparently tried to parachute directly into DC and gotten decimated by the German fighters that controlled the skies above the capitol. The plan to get US troops into the fight was to go overland, so Gabe’s company was going to land somewhere in central Virginia to secure a usable airport runway that the 3rd Infantry Division could use to move their tanks and Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles northward.

  It was a risky move since the Nazis were attacking from the sea. Moving the 3rd Infantry out of Georgia left the entire southeast portion of the United States open to attack with no counterpunch options, but they didn’t have other, viable, quick response options.

  The capitol was in ruins only a day after the initial attack. The president and vice-president were hosting a breakfast event at the White House to celebrate Independence Day and presumed dead. As such, the Speaker of the House, Javier Sanchez, was sworn into office the evening prior in his home in Sacramento. Sanchez, a career-long adversary of the military, had ordered the overland attack after the failed airborne response by the remnants of the Pentagon leadership.

  Gabe checked his watch. They were ten minutes ahead of schedule. He motioned to one of the crewmen inside. She walked down the short steps and looked him up and down before saying, “What is it, sir?”

  “Any idea where we’re going yet, Lieutenant? I need that information so I can plan how I’m going to secure the site.”

  “We’ve been discussing that with the MAC. They’re going to use C-5’s to transport tanks to whatever location your company secures and those suckers need a ton of runway—eight thousand feet—so every municipal airport is out. That leaves BWI in Baltimore or Richmond International. There are unconfirmed reports that BWI’s runways have been rendered unusable, so we’re going to Richmond.”

  “Richmond?” Gabe asked. “How far from DC is that?”

  “It’s about a hundred miles or so,” she replied. “The tanks will drive past the Marine Corps base at Quantico on the way to DC, so they may find a lot of troops whose units were destroyed in the initial air attack. All those Marines just need an enemy to shoot at.”

  “Thanks,” he replied and turned back toward the tarmac where his company had finished loading the other two planes.

  Unofficial reports stated that German troops were in DC. It made sense, their fighter planes could inflict terrible damage from the air, but if they wanted to take the capitol, they had to put men on the ground. That gave the Americans the advantage. If they could capture a German, they could discover where they came from, how they got there…and what their objectives were.

  “That’s it, sir,” the first sergeant yelled, holding up his cell phone as he walked along the cargo plane’s fuselage from where he’d been standing. “The other two birds are loaded, ready to go. You and I are the last two.”

  Gabe nodded and grasped the metal pole on the stairs, pulling himself inside. “We’re going to Richmond,” he told First Sergeant Thomas once they’d settled into the cargo net seats near the front of the plane.

  “Richmond, huh?” the noncommissioned officer grunted as he shook out a pair of earplugs into the palm of his hand. “Never been there before.”

  Gabe marveled at his first sergeant’s calm demeanor. The US was under attack and they were flying into position to counterattack. The paratroopers the 82nd Airborne Division tried to send had been wiped out before they had a chance to jump. If the Germans had any type of radar system, there was a very real possibility that they’d detect the airplanes and shoot them down too. The man had ice in his veins.

  “It’s a lot farther out than we thought we’d be.”

  “Just means we’re gonna get some exercise, sir. We’ll be on the move by Wednesday or Thursday.”

  The first sergeant had a point. It didn’t re
ally matter where they started from as long as they got in on the action. The tankers and the infantrymen in the Bradleys would have an advantage on the rapid movement piece, but the Berserkers would be in the shit before too long. It was only a matter of time.

  *****

  05 July 2025

  Near Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana

  “Scheisse!” Oberleutnant Gregory Wagner shouted in frustration. The remaining twenty-one members of his fallschirmjäger platoon were completely alone without any communication back to Wehrmacht Field Headquarters in Washington, DC or even with Argus Base.

  “You mustn’t let the men see your frustration, Oberleutnant,” Feldwebel Anders stated flatly. “Our situation is not what we’d planned, but we are still a capable German fighting unit and we can continue our mission.”

  From the moment Gregory’s feet had touched down on American soil, the mission had been a near disaster. From his own broken ankle, to the loss of the transport plane and half of his men, the predawn mission hadn’t started well yesterday. Additionally, the platoon had suffered a forty percent injury rate that took Schütze Markel the entire morning to repair.

  By the time they began movement, they had to be extremely cautious due to the satellite overflight and move slowly toward their target, a nuclear launch site labeled as Yankee Flight on all of his maps. After an arduous day in the blazing hot sun, they’d finally reached the perimeter of Yankee Flight the previous evening.

  It was abandoned. Years of neglect and misuse had left the fence in ruins and graffiti covered the concrete bunker. It was easily the biggest disappointment in the oberleutnant’s young life.

  To compound the problems, he received a frantic call over the wireless that their sister platoon, which had parachuted into Bravo Flight, a site about one hundred and forty kilometers away, was on the verge of being wiped out by security forces at their target. That was four hours ago.

  The final chunk of ice on the grave was the loss of their remaining escort düsenjägers. They’d responded to assist with the other platoon’s battle and Gregory had listened in alarm as a pilot described the loss of his wingman and the third düsen to the superior dogfighting skills of the American pilots in their inferior machines. The men had gathered around the radio, shielding themselves from the oppressive July heat in the shadow of Yankee Flight’s bunker.