The End.
VIR Day +57.
Johan woke up first. His internal clock told him that it was ten in the morning. At first he was appalled. He hadn’t ever overslept by such a massive margin. But then he made visual contact with the beautiful woman in his arms. She had buried her whole face into the big patch of fluff on his chest, and all he could see was her little button of a nose. Her hands were positioned in such a way that she had a hold of him without running the risk of having them crushed.
Men above him had told him about junior grade officers who had lost control of their bowels because of her mere presence. Johan didn’t believe these stories of course, he had heard most of them about other officers before he had heard them about Leona. The ones that he did believe included his favorite one, how she met her first husband.
Leona was over Moscow with her Russian counterpart when they were attacked by superior numbers of communist fighters. Leona was alright, but her Russian wingman had taken significant amounts of damage. Leona plugged the nose of her Reynard-50D interceptor into the tailpipe of her friend’s MiG-21 and flew him out of danger. Once over friendly territory, Leona ditched the Russian over a bean field and followed his decent down to barely one-hundred feet. After confirming that the guy was okay she flew back to her base and got a search and rescue team to the crash site. This man, one Alexi E. Sargetov, asked Leona to marry him on the spot.
It was a great story of both war and love, and Johan had a liking for both. If all was fair in love and war, then Johan was probably the luckiest man on Earth. Leona brought him back to reality; she stirred around for a minute and squirmed in his arms and woke up. He didn’t know what was more beautiful, the sun or the bright blue eyes peeking out at him. He welcomed her back to the realm of the living with a polite kiss on the cheek and a soft nuzzle.
This could have been his last day alive and he would have been totally content in the knowledge that he would be dying in the arms of a woman who he loved. He doubted that she didn’t feel the same. If he died today, he’d want to be right there in the little room with her.
They got up and showered and ate a breakfast of waffles and a grapefruit each. After they got dressed it was time for both of them to leave. It turned out that the sedan wasn’t hers and it wasn’t a car from the motor pool, so he offered her a ride in his Reynard Sabre. She must have liked big, burly, muscle bound cars because she jumped at the chance without hesitating.
She jumped out of her skin when he started it up. The big twenty-eight cylinder radial engine was started with a shotgun cartridge or shot-shell. The engine revved itself up to a high idle speed for a minute to get the oil pumping through it. The big model 3800-W was designed in 1942 as a substitute for the Pratt and Whitney R-2800 radials that planes like the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt used or the Write R-3350 Duplex Cyclone like the Boeing Superfortress used. He figured that Leona, being a jet pilot, didn’t know this. He was wrong.
“The Reynard thirty-eight-hundred doesn’t swim in oil,” she said,” it’s a big engine that needs a lot of it to be sure, but it doesn’t swim in it and leak like the Write Cyclones or the Pratt and Whitney Wasps. Reynard was a smart guy. Leave it to him to figure something out.
“But American and British flyers weren’t so keen on flying a plane with German engines, and I can’t say that I blame them.” She continued,” If I was at war with an enemy like Russia again I don’t think I’d like flying around with an Ivchenko-Progress engine. I think I’d be a little antsy at the very idea.”
Johan backed the car out of the lot and accelerated down the street.
“So the Reynards weren’t popular?” He asked.
“Oh,” she said,” they were popular with German defectors. Are you familiar with the Owl attack aircraft? Of course you’re not, you’re an infantry guy. The Republic P-47 was the first aircraft that these defectors were allowed to use. These Jugs were fielded with Reynard radials, and never had you seen a group of men so happy with their airplanes.
“The Owls were the manifestation of the 12F defector’s P-47s and a few F6Fs. These guys couldn’t get enough of the big Reynard. The Owls aren’t made anymore, but the thirty-eight-hundred lives on with a new model popping up every so often.”
She turned to face him as they accelerated down the highway,” What’s this thing got under the hood?”
He said,” 3800-28CR-W.”
“Ah,” she said,” the water-cooled version, intended for locomotives, actually. The W was the last one of these pigs to produce less than four-thousand horsepower. I’ve got an old Owl-G, it was a real mess for a long time. Needed a new engine and, go figure, I couldn’t find an original D-series engine for her. Well, good old Reynard came through for me with a brand new line; the F-series.”
She went quiet for a few minutes as they sped down the highway at a tad under ninety.
“F-series engines have four-thousand horsepower,” she said,” I bet this ole’ boat could handle that.”
Johan smiled. He had been thinking about it for some time as it were. The F engine had two-hundred horsepower more than the W engine, and it was more modern so it had better fuel economy, but the W engine was an original piece. Removing it would undoubtedly give the vehicle a slightly enhanced performance, but it would lessen the value of the car. Even so, more horsepower and better fuel economy could do the vehicle some good, even if it was only a marginal increase. He decided that if Kurt Reynard, H. C. Reynard’s grandson, ever gave his crack team of designers and engineers the go ahead to make a diesel version of the thirty-eight-hundred series engines, he would be more than happy to convert. As it was, the engine hardly even knew that the car was there.
Being designed as a high-output engine for aircraft, the engine ran at little more than fifteen-hundred revolutions per minute at ninety miles an hour when married to the five-ton automobile. He usually was able to get more than forty miles to a gallon of fuel, a far cry from the original A-series engines that could drink an entire one-hundred gallon tank in a little over fifteen minutes. The manual transmission was something he would have liked to get rid of too; it took almost Herculean effort to shift gears. At the same time, Johan had never had such a reliable transmission in a car, Herculean shifting or not.
Up ahead, red lights began flashing alternately and ten big, steel pillars rose out of their housings. Four long red and white gates swung down out of their cowlings and blocked the road. Johan depressed the brake pedal and the car began to decelerate. They came to a stop just as four big black, white, and red locomotives blew through the crossing at track speed with their horns blowing loudly.
Being a rail fan all his life, Johan couldn’t help but smile as the giants thundered by at a hundred miles an hour. They were clean and new like most in their class. They were brand new Reynard Class F-4A diesels. He knew this because of a monthly magazine he read about all things that involved worldwide railroad networking. According to one of the articles he liked to read, these big steel beasts were seventy-seven feet in length, fifteen tall, fourteen wide, and had a weight of two-hundred-seventy-five tons. These locomotives were more powerful than any contemporary locomotive in regular European service like the British Railway Class-47, and it bested the promising Electro Motive Diesel SD-60 series of mainline freight locomotives in the United States.
Under the long, rear hood was an engine that easily displaced thirty-two liters, roughly, and there was nothing rough about the fifty-two mile per gallon fuel economy. It was a thirty-two cylinder X-formation engine, topped with a radiator that kept the engine temperature down to around one-hundred-thirty degrees Fahrenheit. The official designation from Reynard was Rey-7100HHP-32XC-D, but most grease monkeys Johan knew referred to it as the BFD, or Big Fucking Diesel. This hairy chested engine produced between seventy-one-hundred and seventy-seven-hundred horsepower depending on its configuration. It was the largest internal-combustion engine Reynard currently produced.
The four shiny and clean locomotives Johan watched cross in front of him were not clean from the factory up in Nuremburg, but clean from huge pressure washers in whichever yard this D-set had originated in. Case in point; the gaps between the front and rears of the locomotives were covered in grime, dirt, and other unsavory wear and tear. Locomotive thirteen plus zero-two-eight looked like it might have blown a turbo charger recently.
It was going to take a while for this thing to get past so he killed his engine and it began to spin down.
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Leona got out of the car first and started walking towards the officer’s living quarters a few yards away. She was dressed in blue jeans and a very simple short-sleeved shirt with a small floral pattern stitched into the front of it. Johan was in his BDU bottoms, a black short-sleeved shirt, his eight-point cap, and a shoulder holster with his modified Heckler and Koch USP .45 sidearm. Leona was going into her room to gather some of her effects and pack up for her train back to Berlin, so he figured he had a little time to kill.
He strolled into the OLQ building and was greeted by the usual desk Sergeant.
“Good afternoon, sir.”
“Afternoon, Sergeant.”
“I was told you weren’t supposed to be back for another two weeks or so, sir.”
“I figured everyone missed me. Is Luftennant Colonel Miller in today?”
The Sergeant, whose patch said his name was Hubel, checked through some things on his computer then said,” Yes sir, Miller is here today.”
“You know where he is?”
“The last I heard was that he was with a batch of new guys today, sir.”
“Okay, thanks.”
Snipers were usually in high demand in the military so Johan wasn’t surprised that Miller was checking out a new batch of men and women sent over from the regular Bundeswher. These men and women were usually small, wiry people who had kicked everyone else’s ass at their marksmanship training, but some of these people were also huge individuals like Johan and Miller. It was a general rule that people as big as they were shouldn’t be snipers, but Miller was too good of a teacher and too good of a shot to be relegated to something like training mortar teams, and Johan was widely acknowledged as being the best shot in the Bundeswher.
He hung a right at an offshoot of the corridor and nearly ran over First Luftennant Dominique Khole Fieseler. She was in her dark-green over light-green BDU bottoms and a black shirt. A shiny, silver SIG P220 was in a holster on her hip. She was carrying a thick file folder in her right hand and it nearly spilled its contents everywhere on collision. They both gathered themselves and exchanged a look to identify their source of annoyance, which was gone as soon as they realized who they both were.
“I guess the Heer is a small place after all,” she said.
“You didn’t salute me, Luftennant,” he replied,” I should have you drop and give me twenty.”
“Ha, ha, you smartass,” she said,” we’re indoors, you know, under cover.”
“True,” he said,” how’ve you been without me raising hell around here? Bored out of your mind?”
She waved the file in her hand like a fan,” Actually, while you’ve been on vacation I’ve been investigating a few civilian murders with enlisted men as prime suspects.”
“Murders?” He asked,” I didn’t know we had any crow divisions.”
She laughed,” You’re such a dill weed sometimes, Johan.”
“At least I admit it,” he said,” so, who are the victims?”
She opened the file folder and handed him a page with three pictures on it. They were of three men who looked nearly identical to one another. They were raccoon anthropomorphic beings all in their mid-forties and in nice business suits.
“Look familiar to you, Johan?”
He studied the pictures for a few more seconds and handed the paper back to her.
“In a vague sort of way, yes.” He asked,” Who were they?”
“These guys were the Hammond brothers,” she said,” They sound familiar now?”
“Third largest bank in all of Europe, right?” He said,” Born a year apart from one another in Scotland. Good college education, known to be swashbuckling swindlers to just about everyone with half a brain. Bastards, all three of them. Sold my best friend’s house from under him about a year ago.”
“Yup, those are they,” she pulled out another sheet of paper with one big picture on it,” and it looks like someone got a little angry at them.”
He took the picture and studied it for a few minutes. The Hammond brothers, Jasper, Jonas, and Jacob, were all lying on the ground of an empty parking garage staring up at the ceiling above their dead eyes. All three men had a single bullet hole through the exact center of their foreheads and each had a piece of paper taped to their chests.
Cheater. Liar. Fraud.
He handed the sheet back to Dom,” I was starting to wonder when their bad deeds would catch up to those fuckheads.”
She tucked the sheet back into the folder,” ballistics says it was a nine-millimeter full metal jacket. They also say that the ballistics evidence is completely fucked to hell and back. The rifling marks are all shot to shit, literally.”
“A suppressor?”
“You got that right,” she said,” what we can piece together of what little rifling was intact was that the murder weapon was a Glock Seventeen, or a really good hack of a Glock Seventeen barrel.”
“Suspects?”
Dominique fished through the papers in the folder and came out with another sheet with a big picture on it.
“Two women and a man,” she said,” all three are Furs. We can’t see their faces under the masks obviously, but we’ve compiled some fairly basic information about them.”
“Like what?”
“The tallest female is six-foot one-inch tall, cup size 36C, and her facial profile matches that of a border collie and the color of her fur would most likly be brown based on the shading in the photo. The smaller female is five-ten, 34C, and her profile is that of a vixen, very dark fur. The guy is easily six-foot five and he’s a wolf for sure.”
“So you’re looking for a collie a vixen and a wolf all roving around like a little pack?”
“It’s what we’ve got so far.”
Johan handed the picture back,” Well good luck, Dom.”
“Thanks, I have a feeling I’ll need it.”
He walked around her and said over his shoulder,” I’ll see you around, little sister.”
“See you too, brother.”
Johan continued walking down the corridor and hung a right at a blood red door that read “COMPLANCENCY KILLS” in white block letters. He shoved the door open and was greeted by a loud collective shout and the sounds of twenty men and women standing all at once.
“Platoon attention!!”
He took ten steps into the room then said,” carry on.”
“Carry on!!”
He walked through the dinning facility and into the kitchen. He was greeted by a small catlike Fur of about ten years vintage, wearing and apron with the sleeves on her shirt rolled up around her biceps. Her long, blonde hair wasn’t in one of her usual weird styles, but in a hairnet. She had on a belt thing with plastic squeeze-bottles in purpose-built pockets. He didn’t know much Japanese yet, but he knew that one of the bottles said soy-sauce.
“Hi, Johan!!”
“Hallo, Luna,” he said.
“Whacha’ doin’?”
“I need to talk with a friend,” he said,” what are you doing?”
She scooped up a glob of some sort of red-violet paste on to a tray and handed it back to a guy who looked a little confused by the small child serving him,” Oh you know, people have to eat.”
“Okay,” he said,” tell your mother I said hello.”
“Wait!!” she shouted at him, dropping a tray of food on the floor and leaping off of her stool.
She made a mad dash at him; nearly sending Sergeant Guggenmos and ten-dozen loafs of fresh bread to the floor. She held her arms out to her sides and jumped up at him. It was like something out of one of those weird Japanese cartoons that his friend Sarah liked, one where everyone carried a katana and could leap fifty feet straight up into the air. He caught her under the arms and hefted her up to his eye level.
“You’re not getting away from me that easy,” she said,” give me a hug.”
Johan was not known by anyone of the men to have a side softer than granite, but he liked this tiny girl, maybe even loved her, like she was his own flesh and blood. He gave her a big squeeze. He stopped after he was sure that her eyes were bugging out of her head.
“How was that?” He asked.
She giggled,” works for me.”
He set her back down on her feet and ruffled her head with his hand. She was a cute kid.
“I’ll come by later and you can tell me all about your day, okay?”
“Promise?”
“I promise,” he said and he stood back up,” see you later kiddo.”
He pushed through a door and turned left down a hallway that served as the main service corridor for the whole right half of the building. This was where little electric carts rolled through carrying food and equipment to the various rooms up and down the length of it. They rode on two steel rails that were inset in the concrete about three feet apart and were powered by a contact strip hanging from the ceiling. By being a little train-like, these carts could haul around quite a bit of weight for their small size. They only had twenty horsepower but they could haul around four tons at fifteen miles per hour.
You had to watch out for them. They were very quiet little things, if you didn’t pay attention you could get run over pretty quickly. They didn’t have drivers that rode on them. They were controlled by push buttons on their sides. At one end, you and your buddies loaded it up and stepped away and the loadmaster checked that everything was secure and no one was in the way, and then he pushed the left button then the right button. The cart would peep its peanut of a whistle and start on its way all by itself.
Once it was moving there wasn’t much that could stop it short of derailing. When it got to the other side a small computer chip started talking to another computer chip in a set of concrete ramps for unloading and the cart would slow down and come to a stop. Then a crew would unload the cart and another loadmaster would send the little thing back on its way and the whole process would repeat itself until all the cargo in question was where it was supposed to be. All in a long, S-shaped circuit.
Johan walked on the left side of the hall in the middle of the two rails that way he could see oncoming carts and not have to constantly check behind him for the ones on right hand track. He came to the door he was looking for and checked the right track and sure enough an unloaded cart was whispering its way toward him. He waited for it to pass, and it went by him like the hunk of metal that it was.
He pulled the door open and began down a long hallway towards Miller’s classroom. With any luck that’s where he would be. He pulled open door number thirteen and quietly stepped inside.
“Though intimidating at first,” Miller was saying,” the Lowen-Dawes telescopic sight picture is very easy and quick to use. It comprises a fairly standard crosshair with beads for elevation and windage, giving you point-and-shoot capability out to the range your rifle is zeroed to. Below the crosshair are a series of eighty dots arranged in a four-by-twenty pattern, allowing you to rapidly snap to a target and adjust in up to thirty mile per hour crosswinds at one-thousand yards.”
Johan leaned up against the wall as Miller gave his lesson on turret and sight-picture based scopes. Johan himself liked to use the sight picture method over the telescope turrets.
Miller saw him out of the corner of his eye but didn’t acknowledge him,” You’re all already familiar with your Mk-XVI scopes, but I will go on with the lesson anyway. Your Mk-XVI are based off of turrets. These are your controls for windage and elevation, and they are quite fast and very good for when you have to engage at ranges of less than eighty yards. But for all of their good qualities…”
Miller pressed a button and two images popped up on the screen behind him. They were blown-up pictures of a rifle scope taken from behind. To the untrained eye they looked the same.
“…There’s only a little white line to tell you that your elevation is off by fifteen inches at two-hundred yards. Can any of you see what the mistake is?”
“Sir,” a woman said from the back,” the turret on the left is a full rotation off of zero.”
Miller snapped his fingers, pointed at Johan, and said,” Bingo. The turret on the left is so far off zero that you’d have to aim at this guy’s testicles to hit him in the head.”
There were some chuckles in the rows of students.
“How can I help you, Major?”
Johan said,” I just came by to see if you were all board here without me raising hell.”
“Yeah right,” said Miller,” you raising hell? That’s the day that I’m immortal.”
“Alright,” Johan said,” in all seriousness I’m here with SINC and I’m just stopping by to make sure no one shits their pants when she walks in looking for me.”
Miller chuckled,” Ladies and gentlemen, the comedian, Johannes von Ackerman. But really; what do you need?”
“See you later, Miller.”
Johan turned and stepped out of the door, Miller called,” Drinks later?”
“Only if you get me back in a week ahead of schedule.”
“You live for the military, don’t you?”
“Depending on the gravity, yes.”
The door sucked shut behind him. It was almost like he planned it all out because Leona came strolling up next him a minute later. She was in a pair of black special operations BDU bottoms and a black T-shirt with a duffle bag slung across her back and one under her arm with her campaign hat. She had done her hair up into a ponytail and had her eight-point cap clamped between her teeth.
He asked, “Did you get the kitchen sink?”
“Funny,” she said.
He took the duffle from under her arm and the big, black campaign hat. He always packed as light as he could because of things like this. He liked having both of his hands free. He slung the bag across his back.
“You know,” he said,” a woman as important as you should really be treated better.”
She looked at him,” Would you care to elaborate?”
They started walking down the hallway towards the opening to the loading platform. They could have went through the building again, but this way was faster.
“Captains get guys in Jeeps and Land Rovers to drive them around,” he said,” Majors get desks, Luftennant Colonels get a bookshelf in a cozy office. What do you get?”
She smiled,” So you’re behind a desk now?”
“Hell no.”
“Then what do you mean?”
“I just think that it’s bullshit,” he said,” that you have no car of your own. You are probably even more important than CINC, but you have to take military flights and other woefully inadequate military accommodations. How the hell do they expect you to be calm and relaxed in the heat of battle when you’re sleeping on a piece of foam?”
She said,” If I wanted to be comfortable, I would have become a Staff Officer.”
Johan took that into consideration. Staff Officers and Combat Officers were two entirely different classes of officer. Staff Officers worked out of plush offices in the capital and advised the president on war and foreign policy. Combat Officers fought and died on the battlefield alongside the men and women they led. The Combat Officers were the people with legitimate experience in combat and therefore had more oomph than their counterparts in regards to authority.
“Point taken and considered,” he said,” but you need to be at your best all the time. I think you should have a little more in the way of pampering than those Staff pukes.”
“Then write a nasty letter, Major,” she said,” but I’m not going to be pampered like some princess.”
He wasn’t going to press the issue any further. If he did, he’d probably end up in the hospital again. They eventually ended up outside next to a long loading and unloading platform for the electric cargo carts. They hung a left and followed the jogging track for about half a mile before coming to the front of the building. Johan was mildly perturbed that his car seemed to have vanished.
“God damn that man,” he said.
Leona asked, “Where the hell did it go?”
Johan knew of only one person other than himself and Dominique who could operate his car.
“Rickenbacher,” he said.
Second Luftennant Manfred Rickenbacher and his twin brother Seamus were not snipers for the 425th they were convoy drivers for the 300th Mechanized Marine Corp. They weren’t on the base often, but Johan always knew when they were if he couldn’t find his beloved Sabre or if his tiny pick-up was running better than usual. When the 300th was in town it turned into a party pretty quickly, and when the 300th threw a party they threw a big one that usually caught the attention of First Luftennant Dom Fieseler, Military Police.
“Follow me real quick,” he said,” I think I know right where to find our ride.”
Johan saw a guy in a Land Rover and he and Leona headed in his direction. The guy saw them both and he stepped out of the driver’s side door with his hand on the grip of his pistol. Johan and Leona had their eight-point caps drawn low over their eyes, which would worry a civilian, but in the dead center of their caps were oak leaves or a big horizontal bar with five stars underneath it. If anything the guy should have snapped to attention. As it was the guy was violating rule 20.6.9 of the driver’s code.
Do not leave the vehicle unless in immediate danger of serious harm and/or death.
The guy said,” Can I help you?”
“Yes, you can, Corporal,” said Johan,” we need to borrow your vehicle for about five minutes.”
“I’m afraid not, sir.” He said,” I have explicit orders from General Lantirin to wait for him right here.”
“It won’t take longer than five minutes, we just need a lift.”
“I’m sorry, sir, I can’t help you”
“Listen shithead,” Leona piped in,” do you take orders from that pathetic excuse for a general, or do you take them from me? I outrank him by four rungs, and I outrank you by fifteen rungs. Get the picture?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I can’t drive either of you anywhere.”
“You can’t,” said Leona,” but he can.”
“It’s a simple choice, Corporal,” said Johan,” you either let us use this vehicle or we get rid of you. And think about it this way. He told you to wait for him, not the car.”
The guy looked around nervously as if Lantirin would show up at any second.
“Oh man,” he said,” this will get my ass busted back to scrubbing toilets for sure.”
The guy stepped away from the door.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Johan,” if that dick wants to screw you over, tell him that Doc needed it to get out to the rifle range because someone blew himself up with a plugged-up barrel. Doc is a good man; he won’t let you take the fall for this.”
Johan got in the driver’s seat. He had to move it all the way back to fit himself in, but even then he still didn’t have much room to unfold himself. He shut the half door and pressed the button to start the engine.
“Do the lady a favor and put her bags in the back,” he said to the Corporal.
“Major, this is going to get me in so much trouble if you’re not back here in five.”
“I know. We’ve already established that, and the sooner you load those bags, the sooner we can get out of here, the sooner we can get back.”
Leona hopped into the passenger seat. The little V-6 burbled away politely. The guy threw the duffle bags on to the rear seat like he probably had a thousand times before for the asshole in question. He stepped away and saluted and Johan pressed down on the accelerator with his toes. He had the Rover up to about thirty miles an hour and he threaded his way between two steel posts and on to the jogging track. It would take them to the motor pool quicker than the actual road would.
“I’ve got a question for you,” he said.
“Shoot.”
“A mere First Luftennant gets promoted to Captain,” he said,” so how am I now a Major?”
“The importance of the mission,” she said,” and your success, and your injury. They all fell into place just right, and all at the right time.”
“So,” he said,” you had sympathy for my position.”
“Not really,” she said,” I would have preferred that you didn’t jump a rung, but ultimately it wasn’t my decision.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” he said.
A minute later they were about two miles away and coming up on one of the new buildings that had been finished less than a week ago. They were a lot shorter in length than the main building, but quite a bit wider and taller. They were so new in fact that only half of building number one was painted, the rest was all bare sheet metal and concrete. Johan had already decided that he didn’t like them. Not only were they too big to camouflage, they glinted in the sun, and they were on what once was part of the advanced training grounds.
They came up to a break in the line of bushes between the track and the huge mass of concrete that the buildings sat on and he turned the vehicle off of the track and through the gap. He pulled up to the first building and saw that its huge door was open at the far side. He got out of the vehicle and Leona followed him to the opening. They walked inside and sure enough Johan’s Sabre was sitting right there in front of them.
“Some moron parked this in a white zone,” said a voice from underneath the car. It had been jacked up from the rear,” Too bad to. This is a beauty.”
“Manfred,” said Johan,” you son of a bitch.”
A big wolf pulled himself out from under the car on a little wheeled cart. His hands face and arms were totally covered in grease and oil. He sat up a little so he could see over the top of the car’s long hood.
“Johan,” he said.
He took a rag out of his pocket and wiped his hands with it. He stood up a little awkwardly and made his way up to the front of the car. Standing, he was about six foot five inches tall and a little over two feet wide across his chest. He weighed around two-hundred-fifty pounds. There was a black line under each of his eyes; they looked very harsh against his light grey fur. He was wearing a white T-shirt that was the trademark of mechanics everywhere and dark-green over light-green Disruptor pattern BDU bottoms. He had a bandana on his head and one around his neck.
“I thought you had guys who did this type of stuff for you,” said Johan.
“I do,” said Manfred,” but I didn’t think you’d want them working on your baby.”
Johan smiled. Manfred smiled.
“How the hell are you, buddy?”
“I’m just peachy, Manfred, how are you?”
“I’m fantastic,” he said,” I just got back a few days ago.”
“Glad you made it back safe.”
“Safe?” He asked,” You’re kidding, right? The only thing more dangerous than driving a truck that could explode if it gets shot at is driving a truck that could explode in Russian traffic.”
“Well, safe, other than that,” Johan chuckled,” but I think I need my car back now.”
“Take it,” said Manfred,” I changed the oil and topped off the tank for you. I also changed the air filter, oil filter, and fuel filter. And your radiator was a little low.”
“Manfred, you’re too kind.” He said,” And I have no doubt that you did some other things that’ll keep me from having the privilege of working on my own vehicle.”
Manfred smiled. The man was only nineteen, and he was already a master mechanic. But in his line of work, you had to be. Manfred had never been put out of commission by bad maintenance crews. Manfred was the maintenance crew.
When in doubt, the crankshaft is going to brake.
Manfred had been driving the same truck for over sixteen months, which was like an eternity for any supply convoy vehicle. Most vehicles were destroyed or overhauled within a month or two of entering convoy service due to poor maintenance more than enemy ordinance. So it was a dedicated crew member like Manfred that was a hot commodity. Manfred was not a mechanic by MOS, but because he didn’t want to get caught in an ambush with a thrown piston or an overheated engine block.
“If it doesn’t run like new,” he said,” then I didn’t do my job right.”
“Manfred,” said Johan,” there’s no need for you to beat yourself up over something so stupid. It won’t matter. This is a Reynard engine; it’ll run with four cylinders missing.”
“Nonetheless.” He said,” I topped it with one-eighty proof aviation fuel.”
Johan’s eyes widened a little,” That’s a little much, man.”
“Don’t worry about it, that’s what this thing was designed to suck in the first place.”
Manfred produced a steel tube about three feet in length. He stuck the end of it into a port on one of the jacks and the car touched down on the right side. He repeated the process on the left side and the car settled on its suspension.
“So,” he asked,” who’s your friend?”
Johan turned around and looked at Leona. She was standing in awe of an aircraft engine hanging from a harness.
“If you can believe it,” he said,” that’s SINC Leona F. Hughes.”
“Bullshit.”
Johan grinned his best shit-ass grin,” How did I know you were going to say that?”
Leona’s attention quickly snapped back to the two men who were by the car once she heard her name. Johan was beginning to wonder if their romp the night before had given her the attention span of a goldfish. She walked over to them with a look on her face that said I have no idea what’s going on.
“Leona,” said Johan,” this shithead is Second L. T. Manfred Rickenbacher. He’s a good friend of mine.”
Manfred stuck out his hand, said,” Nice to meet an officer of your stature, ma’am. At least you know how to get things done.”
Johan laughed at the unsubtle poke at a certain Luftennant General Briggs.
Leona clasped his hand and asked,” Aren’t you the guy who’s been busted down to Second Luftennant four times?”
Johan laughed at the even more unsubtle poke at the fact that Manfred had indeed been promoted and demoted four times over the past two years of his service career.
Manfred kept a hold of her hand and said,” Why yes, yes I am.”
He lifted her hand a few inches and bent forward and kissed the back of her hand, like some twenties cabaret from the United States.
“Johan taught you a few things,” she said,” didn’t he?”
Manfred dropped her hand and stood back upright. Smiling, he said,” Only a few.”
If they would have dropped right then and there and wound up as a sweaty pile on the floor it would have made a great movie.
Johan smiled at the thought of his porn-director friend complaining and whole heartedly wishing that some girl would take an interest in him. Poor Cookie didn’t have what it took to ever have a successful relationship with someone of the opposite sex, however, so all he had left was to film other people screwing like minks. Johan also smiled at that thought because a fair proportion of Anthro porn-stars were minks.
“I’ll go get the bags,” he said,” Manfred, you think you could drive that Land Rover out there back to the front of the main building?”
“Not a problem,” he said,” I need to get some chow anyway.”
Johan went out to the car and got the two duffle bags. He had to make a second trip to grab Leona’s campaign hat. Manfred got in the driver’s side and sped off without even saying goodbye. Johan would not be risking his Sabre on the jogging path. He would stick to the asphalt.
Leona was ready this time. Johan pulled the trigger and there was a thunderous boom from under the hood, and a drawn out clackety-clack start-up sequence, twenty-eight puffs of un-burnt carbon belched out of the pipes, and the engine settled into a high idle to get the oil pumping. He checked all of the lights and gauges. There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, so he took it out of neutral and got going. Johan noted a high pitched whine from the pipes and made sure to consult his owner’s manual about it.
“You have a nice friend.” Leona said,” Keep him around. I like him.”
“I’ll try to remember that,” he replied,” So where to?”
“I have a train to catch.”
“Okay. To the station it is.”
It took a minute to pass back out through the gate because some fool decided it was a good idea to park his Unimog in the way, but someone towed it out of the way for them. After clearing himself through, Johan turned out on to the main drag and to make up for lost time he topped a hundred-ten miles an hour until he got into town. Leona loved it. The Sabre wasn’t convertible, and only a crazy person puts down the top in the winter, but they had their windows all the way down and the wind whipped at them for the whole ten minutes.
In town again they rolled up the windows and he turned on the heater. Leona had a smile plastered on her face, the type of smile that a little kid gets when he opens up his first Daisy Redrider BB gun on Christmas morning. A smile of total contentment. The day after new year’s, traffic was always a little hectic, but for some reason it was a little more hectic than it normally was. And he found out why about half a minute later when he saw a train rolling through the middle of the street.
The problem with Steinherring was that it was in the bottom of a narrow valley. The problem with the two railroads that ran through Steinherring was that both of them were fierce rivals and both were fiercely independent. In the case of the JC&H and the SRA, both charged a hefty fee to other roads that wanted to run trains over their tracks. The JC&H had hoped to gain a profit from the SRA by effectively crowding into Steinherring and not allowing the SRA to build their own tracks because of space issues.
The SRA countered by street running. Two rails were imbedded in the road and the SRA ran a train through the street once a week to collect huge one-hundred-thirty ton grain hoppers on the other side of the town. It all came down to the principal that if the railroad could save itself a buck, they would. Even if that made things a little more difficult than it needed to be.
The town finally got sick of it and was now essentially filing a lawsuit against the railroad for being such a bothersome entity. Johan had to admit that he was getting a little sick of it too, even though he liked to watch them hustle their trains around like millipedes. The town was simply too small to have three tracks running through it, and having twenty trains passing through, one every hour on the hour, didn’t help the situation at all. But for now the railroads ran their trains through without fail.
This little specimen was a new type of locomotive from the JC&H Shops in Frankfurt. A Class I1A-DEL diesel electric made for switching and industrial rail work. The SRA had bought a few of the strange looking “goats” to run trains through urban areas and areas with pollution problems. They had a cab at the very front with no walkway across the bottom of it and a long, low hood that covered up three ten-cylinder Reynard-built Electro-Motive diesels that could be operated independently of one another or in any combination. Three vertical stacks carried the exhaust up and through cylindrical filters before the caustic fumes were cast away into the atmosphere. Two of these stacks had little grey smoke trails coming from them, indicating that they were doing the work. In total the locomotives made four-thousand-five-hundred horsepower.
The bright green and black train tooted its horn as it made its way through an intersection. It had twelve cars in tow. The twin ditch-lights flashed together for a few seconds then remained at constant intensity.
“These things are everywhere,” Leona said.
“Yes, they are.”
The train passed at twenty miles per hour and bright yellow script scrolled below the cab announced that the locomotive was equipped with remote control capability.
“But why?”
“Faster than a truck,” he said,” more capable than an airplane.”
The last car, a bright yellow box car with black lettering and a red flag in the rear coupler, passed by and he nudged the Sabre back into traffic.
“’More capable’ meaning what?”
“Well,” he said,” would you rather move twenty-thousand pounds by air, or twenty-thousand tons by rail? Sure, a train can’t fly, but it can haul around more cargo than a plane, and with less fuel. On a gallon of fuel, a locomotive like the one we just saw can move one ton of freight fifty-six miles. A truck can move that same ton only twenty miles. And, let’s face it; a big jet can’t even get to the runway on a gallon of fuel.”
“Doesn’t mean that I have to like them.”
“No,” he said,” no it doesn’t.”
He nosed the car between two trucks and flew through the intersection right as the light was turning red. He kept his speed within the posted limit, but he wasn’t about to make this woman miss her train. They got to the little depot right as a German Federal Railways class 218 painted in DB colors was arriving with six passenger coaches. They had less than five minutes. Johan shut the engine down and got out.
They both opened the boot and took a duffle bag each. Leona unzipped hers and took out a set of BDU tops. She put it on quickly and dawned her campaign hat like she had a thousand times before. In all grey, her tangerine fur looked even brighter and even more beautiful. She hefted the bag over her shoulder and walked towards the umbrella of the depot. Johan closed the boot and followed her.
They walked up the five steps and out on to the concrete platform towards the end car. The train would be backing out of the depot because it was heading back to Berlin. Leona dropped her bag. Johan dropped his bag. She turned and faced him. Johan snapped to attention and saluted her. She returned his salute and they dropped their arms together.
“I guess this is goodbye,” she said.
“I guess so,” he replied.
All the formality was dropped and Leona hugged the big man. It was a little awkward because of his height, but he made it work and returned the hug as best he could. It lasted a long time. By the time they were done, a man in a uniform was announcing that the train was departing in one minute and that anyone going to Berlin was to be aboard. Leona slung her bag over her shoulder and took the other one from his arms. She turned around and boarded the car. The door slid shut and sucked itself in to fit flush with the side of the coach.
Through the tinted window, he saw her sit down and remove the campaign hat from her head. She looked out at him and smiled a genuine smile of affection. The cab car tooted its horn twice to announce that it was about to move, then there was a whoosh as air was sucked back into the airbrake system, and the engine in the locomotive ramped up. The train began moving a few seconds later. Johan watched as it reversed its way through a pair of turnouts and rejoined the mainline.
He turned around… and walked back to his car… and thought about the one who got away.