Grudge: Operation Highjump Read online

  “Come on, then.”

  He closed the distance quickly and pulled his glove off before shaking everyone’s hand. “Captain Gabriel Murdock, commander of Berserker Company, Three-Seven Infantry, Third Infantry Division. We’re here to link up with a man named Deacon. Have you heard of him?”

  The police officer frowned. “Well, sir, you’re a couple days too late. Deacon Johns was killed two days ago fighting against those Nazi bastards near the bridge.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Gabe answered truthfully, mimicking the cop’s frown. “He had something in his possession that we needed, something that could turn the tide of the war.”

  “You mean the German and that family in Lucretia’s basement?” the point man asked.

  “Ah… The German, yes—if he’s the one I’m hoping for. Is he a high-ranking Nazi?”

  “I guess so. He’s a defector and Deacon Johns seemed to think he was important,” the police officer stopped, glancing behind Gabe. “You can put that away, fella. We ain’t gonna shoot your boss.”

  Gabe turned to see the barrel of Griffiths’ machine gun bristling from the bush. He nodded and patted the air down to try and get the men to understand that the newcomers were alright. “This is Berserker Six,” he said, thumbing his throat mike. “Everyone come out. Sergeant Kelley, Corporal Hicks, stay in overwatch position.”

  “Roger.”

  Sergeant Paredes’ men materialized from the darkness, fanning out behind Gabe. “We’re in a hurry, uh, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “I’m Jerry,” the cop replied. “You’ve met William, let’s see,” he pointed at the man farthest away and then indicated each individual when he called out their name. “That’s Skinny. Next to him is D’Andre, then Tyson, Michael, Chris, and uh… Oh yeah, and Anthony.”

  Gabe acknowledged each of the men before repeating his statement. “Nice to meet everyone. We’re in a hurry. We have orders to get the German out of the city tonight, so we can have him back to the headquarters by tomorrow evening. They’ll get all the information that they can and hopefully, we can use that to defeat the Nazis once and for all.”

  “Hey, sir. This is Berserker One.”

  Gabe held up his index finger to Jerry and the others, and then turned away, placing his hand up to his ear—more for the civilians to realize he was on the radio than out of need. “This is Six. Go ahead.”

  “We’ve got a second drone inbound. Coming from the city.”

  “Shit,” Gabe said out loud. “The Nazis have sent up a drone. It’s coming our way.”

  Jerry cursed under his breath. “They probably heard William’s gun go off. Come on, let’s get you to the house where the defector is staying.” The civilians turned and began walking without waiting to see if the soldiers would follow.

  “They fly a drone over the area before they send in troops,” the cop called over his shoulder. “It’s a good bet they’re already on their way.”

  “Alright, Berserkers, let’s go,” he said, waving his men on.

  “Sir, what about us?” Sergeant Kelley asked.

  He’d temporarily forgotten about the snipers. “Ah, can you get on top of that fire station? I’d like to maintain overwatch.”

  “Eh, we could get up there, but the drone would see us pretty easily. Especially if it’s equipped with infrared.”

  “Dammit, you’re right,” he conceded. He wished they had some time to prepare a hide site for the snipers so they could keep an eye on things, but it couldn’t be helped. He’d have to rely on Lieutenant Wilcox’s drone to give them updates. “Alright, let’s go. Everybody.”

  They shuffled along quickly behind Jerry and his men to the fourth house on the block, a narrow, grey siding-covered house with wide concrete steps that reached all the way to the sidewalk. They rushed up onto the porch to try and get under the overhang.

  “Hold on, fellas,” Jerry ordered. “We can’t all fit under here. Let me unlock the door and then we can get off the street.”

  Despite the seriousness of the situation, Gabe smiled at twenty grown men trying to fit onto a porch designed to hold two chairs and a small side table.

  Jerry produced a key from his pocket and unlocked the door. He twisted the knob and called out into the darkness behind the door, letting the occupants know who was coming in. The police officer disappeared inside.

  “Six, that drone is only about two blocks away. You need to get under cover now!” Lieutenant Wilcox radioed.

  “We’re working on it, One,” Gabe replied, glancing unconsciously skyward. It wouldn’t do any good; he’d never be able to see a tiny drone against the night sky.

  Jerry reappeared. “Okay, come on in.”

  The squad filed in quickly and Gabe was grateful to be off the street, even if it meant they were temporarily holed up without any eyes on the surrounding area.

  *****

  17 July 2025

  Anacostia, Washington, DC

  Gloria heard the door upstairs open and several pairs of feet tramped across the hardwood. She glanced at her watch; it was only 3 a.m. What were so many people doing out at this hour?

  Then the realization hit her and her stomach dropped. It was the Nazi death squad. They’d found out about Frederick and were here now. They’d shoot everyone because of the colonel and leave their bodies rotting in the streets.

  “James! James, wake up,” she hissed.

  “Huh?”

  “Nazis!”

  “What?” he asked, becoming more awake.

  “Upstairs. Nazis. I’m going to wake the children and have them hide.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  She sat up awkwardly on the lumpy mattress and put her feet down on the rug. In her haste to reach the children, she stumbled blindly into the wheelchair, sending it crashing to the side with an audible clank when it fell against the concrete floor.

  Gloria fell with it, crying out in pain as all of her weight landed on one hand, spraining her wrist. She pushed herself up determinedly and stumbled to the main room where the children slept, guarding her injured wrist.

  Frederick crouched at the base of the stairs with a pistol of some sort.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m not going to be shot in the back of the head with my hands behind my back,” the German replied. “If I die, I want to die fighting.”

  “You’ll get us all killed, you idiot.”

  “You’re dead anyways. Everyone inside this house is dead.”

  She shook her head as more boots clomped across the floor above her. Gloria turned her back on the German and rushed to the couch where D’onta and his sisters slept. The little boy’s eyes were already wide, their whites showing in the basement darkness.

  “They found us, didn’t they?” he asked.

  “Yeah, sweetie,” she replied, nodding foolishly since he couldn’t see her. “The bad people are here. I need you to hide in the back of the storage closet like we practiced.”

  “Okay. We’ll be quiet.”

  D’onta gently shook his sisters awake and whispered that they had to go to the closet. Gloria willed them to go faster, eyeing the stairs as she picked up Phelisha and carried her to the closet.

  The children were quiet and didn’t complain when she stacked up the few boxes that the homeowner had. It wouldn’t survive much more than a cursory inspection, but she had to hope that they would be satisfied with the adults—especially Frederick. She closed the door quickly and rushed back toward the room she shared with James.

  “This is Jerry,” a man’s voice drifted down from the stairwell. “It’s okay, we have US Army soldiers with us.”

  “Jerry?” Gloria blurted out much louder than she’d meant to.

  “Yes, ma’am. I know you’re armed, please don’t shoot us.”

  “Put that thing away, Frederick,” she ordered the German, who still stood at the base of the stairs with the pistol.

  “How do we know that he’s telling the truth? No one was s
upposed to be back inside the house until the morning.”

  “If they wanted us dead, they’d just toss a few grenades down the stairs,” James said from the doorway where he’d dragged himself.

  “Put the gun down.” Gloria was getting pissed at the German. He knew they were waiting for a link-up with an Army unit, why wouldn’t they choose to come at night? It made perfect sense to her.

  Frederick reluctantly put the gun in the holster under his arm. “I have secured my weapon,” he called up the stairs to Jerry.

  “Alright,” the police officer replied. “We’re opening the door. Again, I have a US Army unit with me. They’re armed.”

  “Oh, for Heaven’s sake,” Gloria muttered, storming back to where Frederick stood.

  “Jerry, it’s Gloria. Come down. He put the pistol away.”

  “Alright, thank you, Gloria,” Jerry answered and soon the sound of footsteps thumping on the old wooden stairs filled the basement as several men came down.

  A white guy in civilian clothes wearing all sorts of military gear stepped out from behind Jerry and extended his hand to Frederick. “Oberst Albrecht?”

  “Yes, that is me,” Frederick responded, grasping the soldier’s hand.

  “I’m Captain Gabriel Murdock, from the US Army 3rd Infantry Division. We were sent here to escort you out of the city so you can tell us what you know.”

  “I know many things,” Frederick stated.

  “Uh, yeah. Okay, that’s good,” the officer replied, looking around the basement. He noticed Gloria and said, “Hello, ma’am. Is this your house?”

  She laughed. “No, it’s not, Captain Murdock. I’m Lieutenant Colonel Adams-Branson, US Army Center for Military History over at Fort McNair.”

  He took her hand lightly. “Ma’am. Uh… If this isn’t your house, what are you doing here with the colonel—if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “So that must mean that we never came up,” Gloria surmised.

  “No, I… Ah, I don’t think so, ma’am.”

  “We were leaving the city and got caught up with Oberst Albrecht when Devon Johns was coordinating to get him out of the city. Devon wanted us to take him with us since he can’t read English and would need a guide of some kind. We agreed, came here to wait to leave the city under the cover of darkness. Then, the Germans began expanding their lines and the Resistance pushed back. We got stuck, waiting for a break in the fighting. Devon said he contacted the Army and that the new plan was for us to wait until you guys arrived.

  “That was four days ago,” she finished.

  “Hmm,” the captain mumbled. “I’m authorized to bring Oberst Albrecht back with me, but not you.”

  “It’s not just me,” Gloria amended, realizing that she hadn’t introducing her husband. “My husband, James, is the Deputy Director of the Joint North American Defense Branch, which was responsible for coordinating the US defense after the attacks in Florida a few years ago.”

  “Did you say ‘Florida’?” Frederick asked, seeming to come to life.

  “Yes,” Gloria replied. “I met with James and some others after the German sneak attack in Fort Lauderdale—”

  “It was hardly a sneak attack,” Frederick scoffed. “It was a tightly controlled, limited test of the German capabilities, using inexperienced pilots and soldiers.”

  “Limited test?” Captain Murdock whirled on the German. “I was there, you son of a bitch. Sixty-three thousand people died.”

  “I did not know my mother,” Frederick answered casually. “She may well have been a bitch.”

  “What’s your game, man? Why are you helping us if you don’t care about what happened?”

  “On the contrary, Captain. I do care. I ordered that attack to determine whether the Reich was ready to begin thawing our soldiers or whether we needed to develop more advanced technology. The American response was pathetic. There was no resistance. I knew it was time to wake everyone and seize our opportunity. It—”

  The buttstock of the captain’s rifle impacted solidly into Frederick’s nose, crushing it and ending his haughty statement. The older man crumpled to the ground and Gloria was dimly aware of the soldiers using zip ties to secure the German’s hands behind his back.

  Her mind reeled at the implications of what Frederick said. He’d admitted to ordering the attack in Florida. He was the reason for everything that had happened since that day. She’d slept twenty feet away from a mass murderer…

  Gloria’s vision began to swim and she had to sit down on the arm of the sofa.

  “Are you alright, ma’am?” the captain asked.

  “Yeah, I just need to— I just need to—”

  Gloria passed out, falling backward onto the couch.

  TWENTY

  17 July 2025

  Holloway Office Complex, CIA Site Three, Reston, Virginia

  “Wakey, wakey. Hands off snakey,” a guard said, tapping on the bars of Berndt’s cell, waking him from a fitful slumber.

  “I am tired,” he protested. “Please leave me alone.”

  “We ain’t leaving you alone, ya filthy Kraut,” the second guard replied. “It’s time to go see the doctor.”

  Berndt tried to remember how long it had been since his last interrogation. Was it two meals ago or three? The time truly ran together in this place. The last time he’d spoken to anyone besides Gregory—whom he was now convinced was insane—had been when the woman beat him.

  The door to his cell opened and he pushed himself up. “May I use the lavatory first?” he asked.

  “Oooh! Good idea!” Gregory’s voice lilted through the hallway as if he were singing a happy tune. “That way you don’t piss yourself when they shock you!”

  “Shut up, Wagner,” the first guard ordered.

  “You can’t do much more to me! No, no, no! Only I know where the base is, but it’s locked away forever…in my mind,” Gregory’s voice changed to a hoarse whisper, like the sound of ice chunks grating against one another. “You’ll have to kill me and look through my skull for the answers!”

  “How’s about we go over and dig it out through your ear right now?” the meaner of the two guards, the one who always wore a hat with the letter “B” embroidered on it, asked.

  They closed his door with a loud clang and the two of them disappeared in the direction of Gregory’s cell. The man was a fool, bringing more misery upon himself than was needed.

  Berndt stumbled to the lavatory to relieve himself since the guards hadn’t told him that he couldn’t. They were too occupied with Gregory anyways. The last time he’d returned, he’d been a bloody mess, much worse than any time before. Berndt had tried to ask him what they wanted, but the other man’s mind had clearly been broken during that session. He babbled incoherently about different ways to keep secrets and men being cooked in giant ovens.

  It made Berndt wonder why the interrogations were so incredibly different between himself and the paratrooper. They were both officers, allegedly protected under the Geneva Conventions of 1929—and while the Reich didn’t sign it, the Geneva Convention of 1949 should have governed the United States as well, which granted even more protections to prisoners of war. Torture was expressly forbidden.

  “They’re going to lie to you, düsen-driver!” Gregory screamed as the sound of batons impacting against flesh echoed down the hallway, causing a few other prisoners to grumble about trying to get sleep. The man cried out in pain as they did who knew what to him behind the cinderblock wall.

  Finally, they stopped and returned to Berndt’s cell. “You wanna come along or we gotta convince you, too?” the hat-wearing guard asked.

  “I’m ready, sir,” Berndt replied truthfully, waiting patiently in the center of his cell.

  “What is it about you Krauts? Half of you is polite as can be and the other half do everything they can to fight us.”

  “It must be the different year groups and how long someone was frozen,” Berndt answered. “I’ve noticed that the longer a solder is i
n cryogenic hibernation, the more aggressive they become.” Of course, he had no way of knowing if that held true in Gregory’s case or whether he was simply an ass.

  “Good to know,” the first guard said. “Come along. Time to see the doctor.”

  “They’re the animals, Berndt!” Gregory croaked. “Not us! Them! They did this to us!”

  The guards ignored the paratrooper’s comments this time and led him, handcuffed, down the hall to the familiar interrogation room. As he shuffled in, Berndt noticed that there was much more dried blood on the floor than in his previous visits. He wondered if this room was used for multiple people, like Gregory, or if that was his blood that hadn’t been cleaned.

  He sat in the chair with his arms over the back, as always. This time, he was surprised when they wrapped a chain around his waist to secure him to the chair.

  “Gentlemen, I assure you, this is not necessary.”

  “On the contrary, Oberleutnant Fischer, it is.” The familiar voice of the bespectacled doctor came from behind him as the guards secured his legs to the chair as well.

  “We’re going to try a different tactic with you today.”

  Berndt cringed internally. So this is it. This is the day they begin the torture. They’d tortured the others; apparently it was his turn. “I will not betray the Reich,” he managed to say, sounding much more convincing than he felt.

  “That may change when you learn the true origins of your Reich,” the doctor stated. “I am on your side, Berndt. I have stopped my superiors from ordering your torture like they have done to the others.”

  He sat in the chair opposite the pilot. “So I am not going to be tortured?” Berndt asked hopefully.

  “I am doing all I can to keep them at bay. You must understand that the longer this war lasts, the more bloodthirsty they will become. Like my hot-headed companion said the other day, we estimate four million Americans have died in the Nazi attacks. That’s a tough pill to swallow, Berndt.”