North Reich (20 page)

      
Still more Black Shirts were coming.
 
Sandman was doomed.
 
Tinker fired two more times at the oncoming enemy, causing them to duck.
 
When they did, he ran like he was on fire.
 

He reached a dirt road that had been plowed.
 
Good.
 
He wouldn't be leaving tracks in the snow for the Black Shirts to follow.
 
He knew he would escape because he knew the area and had planned for such a disaster.
 
It had begun to snow heavily and the night was getting darker.
 
He would make it, but Sandman was doomed.
 
Damn it to hell.
 
Thank God he'd used an alias.
 
A lot of people knew Tinker, but nobody knew Felon.

Oskar Neumann was fairly pleased with the day's news and events. First, he'd gotten official word that April second was the day the despised Jewish-dominated Americans would begin to pay for all the insults inflicted on the Reich.
 
He could continue to destroy the Jewish culture that permeated both Canada and the United States.

      
Second, another detachment of Gestapo agents had arrived, bringing his suddenly burgeoning force to over two hundred.
 
Along with his Black Shirts and SS volunteers, he would be able to raise hell with the Canadians.
 
It didn't matter that only a few of them spoke more than a smattering of English. Their presence would be enough to cow the Canadians.

      
He was less than thrilled with the presence of General Heinz Guderian.
 
The general was not one of Neumann's favorite people due to his annoying habit of arguing with the Fuhrer.
 
That was unheard of.
 
Neumann did not believe in God, but if he did, he was certain the deity would look a lot like Adolf Hitler.
 
Besides, who was in charge of the army in Ontario – Guderian or von Arnim?
 
Guderian said it was von Arnim and nobody disputed that fact.
 
Yet.
 
Perhaps Guderian would take over when the army became large enough, which might be very soon.
 
Additional German soldiers were arriving every day.

      
Jed Munro knocked on his door and entered.
 
He was sweaty and his shirt was open.
 
There was blood on his chest.
 
"We're done, sir."

      
Neumann stood, straightened his uniform, and followed his loyal Black Shirt down the stairways to the basement and the room in which so many had been "interrogated," beginning with Mary Bradford.
 
Not much had changed since then, except for the addition of drains in the floor to carry away the blood.

      
The naked man strapped to the chair had been beaten to a pulp.
 
His body was covered with cuts, welts, and burns, and his fingertips and toes were bloody stumps where the nails had been pulled out.
 
He was breathing but likely barely conscious.
 
The other Munro brother, stripped to the waist and covered with sweat and the prisoner's blood, stood behind the prisoner.
 
Jed pulled the man's head back.
 
His mouth opened, exposing gaps where teeth had been pulled out.

      
"How long did it take?" Neumann asked.
 
He wondered if his Canadian protégé had learned anything about the art of interrogation.

      
Jed grinned.
 
"He started out brave enough, even laughing when we hit him like he was going to be some kind of hero when he got home.
 
Maybe he thought he’d even get a medal.
 
He stopped, though, when we squeezed his testicles between a couple of bricks.
 
Then he began to howl like a cat on fire.
 
Right then he began telling us everything he knew, including his mother's name, which is Agatha, by the way."

      
"Excellent, and what did you find out?"

      
"He's with the OSS and his code name is Sandman.
 
He was with a Canadian whose code-name is Felon and they were observing the camp.
 
They figured out that it's going to be a concentration camp for fucking Jews.
 
Felon escaped and he had a car, which means he's far away by now.
 
This guy, his real name is Arthur Brewer by the way, doesn't know anything more about Felon, only described him as a little shrimp.
 
A second Canadian, Maple, had them meet.
 
He thinks Maple is a cop, but isn't certain.
 
Arthur is from Baltimore if you're interested."

      
Neumann wasn't but nodded politely.
 
You could never tell when such tidbits of information might become useful.
 
"Did you keep on working him after he told you everything?"

Jed puffed up proudly and Wally grinned.
 
"Yes, sir, just like you told us.
 
He might have thought we'd go easy after he squealed, but, like you said, who's to know what else he might have in his brain."

      
Neumann picked up a pair of tongs and cruelly pinched the flesh on Sandman's ribs.
 
He screamed and tried to move away.
 
"This creature isn't Jewish, is he?"
 
Neumann asked.
 
He had tried to ascertain, but the man's scrotum and penis were so swollen and purple from internal bleeding that he could barely see whether he'd been circumcised, although it looked like he had been.
 

      
"No sir.
 
He said he was Lutheran."

      
Neumann was inclined to believe it.
 
Even in Germany, many non-Jews had been circumcised, and the custom in Canada and the U.S. was even more widespread.

      
"What do you want us to do with him?" asked Jed.

      
Neumann thought for only a moment.
 
Sandman had no further use.
 
"Go ahead," he said to a grinning Jed who pulled a revolver and fired once into the back of Sandman's head.

      
He went back upstairs to his office, leaving the Munro boys with the task of disposing of the body – it would be buried in an adjacent field – and hosing down the mess in the interrogation room.
 

      
Neumann sat at his desk and lit a cigarette.
 
The Americans in general and the OSS in particular were annoying to him.
 
If the war started as planned on April 2, he would be temporarily cut off from the Reich.
 
As it was, ships were arriving daily with men and supplies and leaving empty unless they carried foodstuffs to an ever hungry Reich.
 
Perhaps now was the time to start getting rid of the garbage - Jewish garbage of course.

      
April second was coming up far too quickly.
 
When the war started in earnest, it would be very difficult for him to ship his Jews to their final destination.
 
He would have to act quickly.

Terry Romano thought his B24 was getting loaded down with too many weapons.
 
Each one meant additional weight and that could cause problems with stability and fuel consumption.
 
Now someone had thought to add five-inch rockets with modified anti-aircraft warheads to the plane's already impressive arsenal.
 
Two of these were slung under each wing and much time had been spent learning how to use the weapons that had originally been intended as tank killers on fighter planes.
 
Terry and his crew were confident that the rockets would easily pierce the hull of a U-boat and raise holy hell inside, probably sinking it.
 

However, hitting the target was the problem.
 
If the approach was made from the side of the target, it was very easy to shoot either over or under the slender target.
 
If approached from the bow or stern, the narrow shape of the hull meant similar difficulties.
 
After much trial and error and a lot of practice with dummy warheads, Terry and the crew of the
Vampire
were confident that they might just hit a German submarine if the situation was right.

      
At least they'd gotten off the graveyard shift.
 
Someone on high had the bright idea that enemy subs might just be active during the day; thus, the crew of the
Vampire
was flying sedately out the Chesapeake Bay.
 
Another time and place and the view would have been beautiful, even though it was still freezing cold and the men wore every piece of warm clothing they could.
 
The brass didn't care about their creature comforts.
 
Today, their task was to look for ships and identify friend or foe.

      
They left the Bay and flew farther out into the Atlantic until they were well past the invisible line that the U.S. claimed as its territory.
 
A number of ships were visible below, and a surprising number were American warships.
 
No carriers, of course, they were either in the Pacific or safely in a harbor.
 
No sense tempting some Nazi sub commander with a target he couldn't refuse, even if it meant starting a war.

      
Phil Watson, his co-pilot, jabbed him on the shoulder.
 
"Look down there."

      
Tony didn't see it at first and then he did.
 
It was just visible as a short thin line in the water with a flickering white tail.
 
Jesus, he thought, it was a sub.
 
But was it one of ours or a U-boat?
 
Even though this was still peace time, nobody wanted to make a mistake that might cause American deaths.
 
All the pilots and crews had spent a lot of time in ship recognition courses so he flew low and got a better look.
 
Yep, it was a type IX U-boat but it looked different from the pictures and silhouettes he'd seen.
 
The sub spotted them and one of his men took pictures before the kraut could dive.

      
"What was that on its conning tower?" Tony asked as the sub disappeared under the waves.
 
He thought he knew the answer but wanted confirmation.
 
A tall thick pipe extended far higher than the sub's conning tower.

      
"Looks like a snorkel to me," said his co-pilot, giving the German word
schnorkel
the American pronunciation.

      
"Damn it, just what we needed," Tony said.
 

      
Intelligence said that the snorkel enabled the German subs to stay under forever because they could change their air and keep running on their diesels while submerged without suffocating the crew.
 
They would only have to use their batteries when running deep and it was thought they could re-charge them while using the snorkel.

Without a snorkel, subs spent most of their time on the surface.
 
Their batteries were so limited they couldn't stay submerged very long, and they couldn't run their diesels while submerged because the crew would suffocate.
 
The crew would suffocate anyhow if the air wasn't changed.
 
The snorkel solved these problems by sucking air into the sub, and raised new problems for the United States.
 

The snorkel was very imperfect, mainly because the air it delivered was still foul, but breathable and sometimes heavy seas caused water to come down the pipe.
 
Despite all its flaws and shortcomings, it would give the Germans a tremendous advantage if the rumors were only half true.

      
Tony checked his fuel status.
 
Time to head back.
 
He'd reported the U-boat's position but nothing would come of it.
 
It would be long gone before any ships showed up.
 
Besides, what would they do besides annoy the sub.
 
It wasn't as if the U.S. was at war with Germany.
 
At least they'd be back on shore while restaurants were open and wouldn't have to eat at the mess hall.

      
He flipped on the intercom. "Hey, any of you guys ever have a pizza pie?"

      
"A what?" they responded.
 
Someone else said he'd heard of apple and cherry, but not pizza pie.

      
Tony laughed.
 
"I said a pizza pie.
 
It's an Italian food that you usually only find in Italian communities.
 
It's made of baked flat bread and covered with tomato sauce, melted cheese, and sometimes sausages and onions, and it's delicious.
 
Be thankful that your loyal skipper did find a place that just opened up and it's only a short drive from the base."