Grudge: Operation Highjump Page 9

  The cargo doors continued to widen and he gripped the static line tightly in his right hand. Gregory wondered if his brother, Matthias, felt the same fear as he did now. He was going ashore somewhere on the United States’ eastern shore while Gregory’s platoon was tasked with securing the two nuclear launch facilities near the Air Force base.

  He stared blankly through the open door of the transport at the early morning landscape below. It was a dun-colored mass of irregular shapes delineating property boundaries, spotted with the occasional patch of green. He’d studied his target along with the information provided by the intelligence section for more than a week, memorizing details in the event that he lost his map—although he wasn’t quite sure what good the additional info they’d chosen would do.

  The intelligence section had given him a geography lesson rolled up with economics and a brief highlight of the major events in Montana’s history, including when the Luftwaffe visited the Air Force base in 1967 to test their ability to interfere with missile launch controls.

  The temperatures of Montana averaged thirty degrees Celsius in July. The economy was dependent upon agriculture and tourism from the two most prominent outdoor exercise locations in the nation. Yellowstone National Park and Glacier National Park encompassed thousands of kilometers, which would make becoming stranded there a death sentence.

  Interestingly, the Malmstrom Air Force Base and the Great Falls area was one of the most heavily visited sites by UFOs and led the nation in UFO sightings. However, Gregory knew from discussing with the Luftwaffe intelligence and operations personnel that Luftwaffe düsenjägers had only visited a handful of times. He wondered whether those other sightings were the legitimate sighting of another group or if they were some type of mass hysteria, passed along from generation to generation.

  “Fifteen seconds!”

  Gregory gripped the static line tightly and stepped forward to the line painted on the floor. It was time to accomplish his mission. There was no more time for contemplating the silly and unhelpful facts that the intelligence section gave him about the area.

  “Go, fallschirmjägers. Good luck!”

  Gregory stepped into oblivion.

  The wind at the low altitude the transport flew buffeted him sideways the moment he exited the aircraft. There was a brief sensation of weightlessness and then he was jerked violently backward as the static line ripped the parachute from the backpack, causing him to bite his tongue. He pissed himself slightly as the harness ground into his crotch and pressed into his stomach, ejecting the fluid that had built up in his bladder during the ten hour flight from Argus Base.

  He was disoriented, swinging wildly one way, then the opposite direction like a pendulum. The lessons from a few weeks ago—years ago in reality—came back to him. He needed to grip the risers on the opposite side of the direction he swung to collapse the chute slightly and control the oscillation. He’d likely need to do it a few times, switching sides to counter the direction of the swing, to get his descent under control.

  Gregory’s back muscles strained in protest at being used to lift his bodyweight on the riser after sitting in the cramped transport for so long. He swung toward the left, so he pulled on the right side and then reversed it as the oscillation carried him back toward the right. He only needed to correct his fall the two times before the chute filled with air completely and his body stopped the unnatural pendulum swing.

  Then he was floating in the air on the surplus US Army parachute. Miles to the west, the lights of the main Air Force base illuminated the sky and tracer rounds arced skyward toward the transport as it continued its slow flight while the remainder of the paratroopers jumped.

  A massive fireball above detailed the destruction of the transport. Of course they all knew that it was a possibility, but their intelligence section had told them that the anti-aircraft systems wouldn’t be able to acquire, track and fire in the two or three minutes that the shroud would be down. Either the American weaponry was more advanced than the German intelligence understood or they were very lucky—neither of which bode well for the paratroopers floating down to the earth.

  To the west, Gregory could barely discern the four düsenjägers that had escorted them from Argus Base disengage from their primary mission of strafing the runway and hangars. They zipped rapidly toward the anti-aircraft gun and fired their cannons into the site repeatedly. One of them exploded, hit by the Phalanx before the others destroyed the system. Then they returned to the airfield to finalize the destruction of the base’s fighter capability.

  You’re late, Luftwaffe, Gregory thought bitterly as he looked away. Without the transport, the fallschirmjägers were stuck until they could find a different transport to return to base or somehow fight their way to the coast thousands of kilometers away. Possibly into Canada first and then to the coast. The idea was daunting.

  Below him, he could see the searchlights on the target facility sweeping the ground rapidly. They’d been alerted to the attack, but they hadn’t been told that the threat was descending from above. He pulled his riser to angle closer toward the launch control facility.

  He’d established a rally point five hundred meters to the east of the facility prior to leaving Argus. In the darkness, there was no way of knowing whether his men were converging on the rally point or if they were floating off somewhere else. The dun scrub brush loomed and he pressed his feet and knees together like he’d been taught, bent his knees and stared straight ahead to avoid the human tendency to reach for the ground.

  Gregory’s feet slammed into the earth at different heights as his left foot landed on a rock. Pain shot through his leg, up his spine and into his brain. He collapsed to the side and clutched his knee so he could see his ankle. It throbbed in time with his heartbeat, but he couldn’t see the flesh through the heavy, black boots he wore…allegedly for protection against ankle injuries.

  He pulled the release on his parachute harness to avoid getting dragged by the wind and shrugged painfully out of the harness. Gregory knew his ankle was broken. Somehow, he’d landed incorrectly and had paid the price. Nearby, he saw the platoon medic touch down and execute a perfect parachute landing fall. First the balls of the medic’s feet hit the ground, then he twisted to the side and let gravity take him as the side of his calf impacted against the ground, next the thigh and buttocks, finally, his back hit and he allowed his legs to lift into the air to alleviate the force of the impact. Textbook.

  Oberleutnant Wagner waved at the medic, who rushed over to his lieutenant and knelt beside him. “It is broken,” Gregory muttered, pointing angrily at his ankle.

  “Can you put pressure on it?”

  “No.”

  The medic unzipped his pouch and brought out a brown vial. “This is the regeneration serum,” he stated. “The same that you were given a few days before being frozen.”

  “This will mend my ankle?”

  “In time. Give me your arm.”

  Gregory did as directed and the medic inserted a needle into the vial, then tapped out the bubbles before plunging it into the vein in the crook of his arm. An exhilarating rush of energy hit his brain within seconds as the serum spread through his body.

  “I’ll tape a brace around your ankle and you’ll have to endure the pain until the bones mend.”

  “That’s fine. Just get me patched up enough to continue the mission.”

  The medic unfolded a U-shaped piece of rigid plastic and placed it under Gregory’s foot. He winced at the pressure as the plastic was forced over his ankle.

  “What is your name?” the lieutenant asked.

  “Schütze Markel, Oberleutnant,” he replied, producing a giant roll of two-inch wide tape, which he used to secure the plastic around Gregory’s ankle. Then he proceeded to wrap multiple layers to immobilize movement in the ankle as much as possible.

  “You will need a cane or a crutch for the next several hours. The serum is already working to repair the damage, but it doesn’t happen insta
ntly, Oberleutnant.”

  “Thank you, Markel,” Gregory grimaced.

  “Oberleutnant? Is that you?” a new voice called from the lightening darkness.

  “Feldwebel Anders? You made it from the transport!”

  “Yes, sir,” the platoon feldwebel replied, materializing beside the two paratroopers. “Are you injured?”

  “I will be fine,” Gregory replied. “Schütze Markel has given me a treatment and wrapped my ankle.”

  “Can you walk?”

  “I’m fine,” Gregory repeated forcefully. “Bring the men to my location and we’ll prepare to move into the attack position.”

  “Our transport was destroyed.”

  “That is a problem we’ll address after we complete our mission, Feldwebel.”

  “Understood, sir. I’ll gather the men that survived the jump.”

  He disappeared once more and harsh whispered orders drifted out of the night. They would continue their mission and then determine a course of action for their exfiltration.

  *****

  04 July 2025

  30 miles off the coast of Delaware, United States

  Oberleutnant Fischer’s insides felt as if they would empty onto the deck at any moment. The Luftwaffe pilots and soldiers of the Heer were not needed for the journey from Antarctica, so they’d been shoved below decks as the Kriegsmarine sailors managed the transport ships.

  The tilt and roll of the ship combined with the reverberation of the shrouding device to make him queasy. Added to that was the god-awful heat of the American coastline. Why Generalfeldmarschall Mueller chose July to attack was beyond him. The summers in North America were some of the worst in the world, the heat drove the Americans mad, inciting them to invade other countries. The desire for a more hospitable climate is partly why they destroyed the German way of life in the previous war before the relocation to Argus Base.

  The young lieutenant went over the mission in his mind. From here, the Luftwaffe would divide into five battle groups to attack multiple targets. The two smaller groups with only fifty düsenjägers each would attack the airfields at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. The large cargo planes stationed there were capable of moving thousands of troops and equipment into the fight against the Heer, so their job was to destroy them on the ground.

  The next group was larger, with two hundred of the flying discs assigned to it. They were responsible for wreaking havoc amongst the American government by destroying buildings in and around Washington, DC. Cutting off the head of the snake wouldn’t kill the beast, but it would cause panic and a disjointed response.

  Finally, the two largest fighter groups would attack the naval bases in Virginia Beach and Norfolk. Intelligence said there were currently three aircraft carriers in port at Norfolk, so sinking them, along with their fighter planes and destroying the planes on the ground were paramount to the success of the initial invasion. His squadron, Vengeance Squadron, would participate in the Washington, DC attack ahead of the amphibious landing forces.

  “You know, they say the Americans have anti-aircraft missiles that will shoot down all of your precious düsenjägers, Berndt,” a familiar voice interrupted his misery.

  Fischer looked up to see his friend, Matthias Wagner. “Ugh,” he groaned. “And their panzers will litter the sand with the bodies of the Heer. You won’t even make it off the landing craft before you are ground up and fed to the farms.”

  Matthias gripped his forearm. “Good luck today, brother.”

  “Thank you. Good luck to you and your men also.” Fischer patted the vacant space beside him on the bunk. Once Matthias had settled beside him, he continued, “I mean that. Good luck. You have a much harder mission than I do.”

  Wagner shrugged. “If I’d tried harder on my aptitude tests, then maybe I could have qualified for pilot training also. But, there were so many girls who required bedding. It was my solemn duty to the Reich to be with as many of them as I could.”

  They shared a laugh that petered out after a moment. The Reich’s young men were encouraged to copulate as often as possible with the women before they were frozen. No one, not even the Aryan, knew if the male reproductive system survived the massive testosterone flood when they were injected with the regeneration serum and then put to sleep with a cocktail of drugs.

  “What do you think they’ll be like, Berndt?”

  “Who, the women?” Fischer asked, confused.

  “No, not the women. The men. The people who will fight. Are they as cruel and heartless as the professors say they are?”

  “Yes,” Berndt replied immediately. “They destroyed Germany. Our ancestors were simply trying to secure a better way of life for themselves and the Americans partnered with the Slavs to destroy us. They bombed our cities, murdered our children, and raped our grandmothers—they even hunted the Reich to the ends of the earth and used nuclear weapons to wipe out our second base. What kind of people do that?”

  Matthias nodded his head. “What is the term when one group of people tries to rid the world of another?”

  “Genocide,” Berndt replied coldly. “The Americans are murdering bastards that have no clue we’re coming for them. They will regret their actions against the Fatherland.”

  “What do we do with their women and children?”

  “It’s—” Fischer paused. “I’m not sure, Matthias.”

  “I’ll tell you what you do, oberleutnant,” an unfamiliar voice boomed across their small space.

  Neither of the men knew who the man who’d spoken was, but his braided shoulder epaulet indicated that he was a light infantry major. They stood rapidly and saluted.

  “The American women and children are to be bypassed to save ammunition. Even those who wear the uniform are assigned to medical and supply roles. It is known through our research that they pose no threat to an invading army; their women are known to be weak and often do whatever their males tell them to do. However, if Generalfeldmarschall Mueller chooses to become an occupying army, then we may have more problems with them that require a permanent solution.”

  “Will we occupy the continent?” Matthias asked.

  Fischer flexed his wrist, slapping his partner on the leg. Why is he asking so many questions today?

  “It’s fine, oberleutnant,” the major said, obviously noticing Berndt’s movement. “It will be decided in the future. We also have a score to settle with the Slavs, but for now, the entirety of the Wehrmacht is focused on defeating the Americans. We’ll make quick work of their inferior military and be back on the boats by September.”

  “And from there, Major?” Matthias pressed. A small crowd had gathered around Berndt’s bunk space as men pressed close to hear what the senior officer had to say.

  “Once the Americans are defeated, we may attack the Russians or we may return to the Fatherland as victors. It is unknown at this time, but I assure you, Mueller is a brilliant tactician and won’t overextend the Wehrmacht. He was handpicked for the rescue of the Führer in 1945 and was one of the architects of our way of life in Argus Base. We are fortunate to have such a great man as our leader.”

  “Yes, sir. We are very fortunate,” Berndt answered woodenly. He’d never met the man or even heard him speak, but he’d heard from a few men born in earlier generations that the generalfeldmarschall was a motivating speaker. As he thought about the demons he was about to face in combat, he hoped that Mueller was more than a good public speaker. He had to be like the great Erwin Rommel—better than him in fact. Rommel had never sent his men into the heart of American the stronghold.

  It would take every ounce of strength and determination to win this fight. The Reich was capable, but they had to stay focused. He had to stay focused and survive his first mission.

  The claxon directly overhead began to blare and a red strobe light sprang to life, bathing the small crowd in garish shadows. The transport speakers crackled and then the announcement followed, “Attention, all Luftwaffe pi
lots. Report to your düsenjäger for immediate launch. This is not a drill. Revenge is at hand. Report to your düsenjäger for immediate launch.”

  Berndt hugged his friend quickly, wondering if it would be the last time he saw the man, then he picked up his helmet and jogged toward the düsen bay. Men lined the corridors, cheering the pilots onward. They’d move to their landing transports soon enough, but for now, they would encourage the Luftwaffe.

  In the bay, male and female technicians scrambled to make last-minute adjustments to the fighters. Row upon row of düsenjägers sat ready for their pilots. The circular craft were stored in an upright position to maximize the amount of space available on the cargo ship. Berndt’s heart swelled with pride at the knowledge that he’d be one of the first Germans to attack.

  He weaved between rows until he made it to the fifth row where the Vengeance Squadron’s fighters were suspended. His was the eighteenth from the end. When he stepped in front of Düsenjäger 519, he pushed the helmet down over his ears and shook his head slightly to seat it firmly on the crown of his head. A technician appeared and handed him two cyanide pills and a box of ammunition for his pistol, which he dropped into the pocket on his pant leg.

  A different technician held a foldable four-meter ladder for him beside his fighter, which he climbed cautiously to the cockpit. Berndt gripped the pilot-assist handle and swung down into the craft, then situated his back against the seat to secure the harness across his chest. He’d have his legs in the air above his head until he launched, but he’d spent months training in the massive underground hangers of Argus Base, so mentally, he was prepared for it.

  However, as it turned out, what felt like only a couple of weeks to him had been six years. He’d been frozen for a quarter of the time his body had been on the earth. There was a slight stiffness in his joints that hadn’t subsided in the week since he’d awoke aboard the cargo ship, but he was confident that it would go away with time.