Chapter 15 — The Forest

The woods ate noise. The only sound was boots on old ice and the huff of men pretending not to breathe. Zill counted ten—maybe twelve—left in the group. Mostly British, but with Sergeant Haverchuck and Corporal Smith moving up the line, both wearing the grim, constipated faces that said “expect trouble, get more trouble.”

Haverchuck walked point. He didn’t look back, not even to check if anyone was still behind him. He held the rifle loose, muzzle low, but the knuckles were white on the stock. His eyes flicked from tree to tree, left-right-left like a metronome wired for mines. Every fifty yards he’d slow, raise a hand, and everyone would stop. Zill hated it. It felt like a teacher making you line up for the school bus just to show who was in charge.

Smith limped along next to Zill. The limp was a mystery: sometimes real, sometimes gone. When Haverchuck watched, Smith favored the wounded leg, leaning heavy on Zill’s shoulder, making himself extra pitiful. When he thought nobody was looking, he walked just fine.

“You all right?” Zill asked.

Smith smiled, wiped sweat from his lip. “Oh, I’ll live. Blood loss is good for the complexion.” He scanned the trees, eyes darting like they had secrets.

Zill didn’t laugh. He adjusted Smith’s grip so it didn’t strangle his own windpipe, then pressed on.

The group marched single file. Two British NCOs behind Haverchuck, then a pack of privates—pale, raw kids with their helmets loose and their nerves shot through. One had lost a glove. He cradled the bare hand inside his armpit, skin already purple at the knuckles.

Sunlight filtered through the pines in strips, never warming the ground. Zill tried to ignore the stench of his own sweat under the borrowed wool, and the sharper, sourer smell coming off Smith’s bandaged leg. Behind them, the rest of the squad moved slow, boots crunching on snow and last autumn’s pine needles.

Every time Haverchuck stopped, the tension ratcheted up. Nobody wanted to be the first to talk, so they didn’t. They just stared into the woods, every one of them convinced that the next shadow would be the last. Sometimes, when the wind died, Zill could hear a soft clicking from Smith’s teeth, like he was shivering on the inside.

After the fourth or fifth stop, Zill couldn’t take it. “You think we’re being followed, Sarge?”

Haverchuck’s eyes never left the treeline. “I think if we were, we’d be dead already.”

Smith chuckled, but the sound didn’t fit his mouth. “Good odds, then.”

The British NCO, Taylor or maybe Tyler, whispered, “Maybe it’s just the trees.” He said it like a prayer.

Haverchuck motioned them forward. The group picked up the pace, weaving around fallen trunks and drifts of dirty snow. The path narrowed to a slush-filled rut—remnants of a logging road. Zill slipped, caught himself on a branch, and nearly pulled Smith over. The corporal’s weight was real, but the limp vanished for a few paces.

Smith muttered, “Almost there. You feel it?”

Zill shook his head. “Feel what?”

Smith grinned, teeth gleaming, and said, “The tension. It’s like a wire.”

Up front, Haverchuck stopped again. This time, he crouched, raised a closed fist, and everyone went dead still. Zill strained to hear, but there was nothing, just the crackle of ice as someone shifted their weight and the faint, distant caw of a bird that could’ve been a crow or maybe just a chunk of sky falling apart.

Haverchuck knelt, studied the ground. He motioned for the NCO — Taylor, Tyler, whichever it was — to join him. The NCO crab-walked over, eyes wide. They whispered, heads nearly touching.

Smith leaned close to Zill. “He knows,” he said.

Zill didn’t answer. He adjusted his rifle, just in case, but the cold metal bit his palm.

After a minute, Haverchuck straightened. “Keep moving,” he ordered. “Double time, now.”

The squad lurched into motion. Zill felt Smith’s fingers dig into his shoulder, pulling him a half-step off-balance.

“Easy,” Zill hissed. “Don’t need to be first to die.”

Smith laughed. “No, but it’s nice to set the pace.”

The woods began to thicken, the pines so dense they blotted out the sun. The logging road pinched into a narrow chute, barely wide enough for two men. Haverchuck moved faster, weaving left and right, ducking under branches.

Somewhere behind them, a branch snapped.

Everyone stopped. Zill’s heart hammered up into his throat.

Smith turned, eyes bright as struck flints. “We’re not alone.”

Haverchuck drew up, signaled the squad to fan out. The men did, moving off the trail, crouching behind trees and rocks. Zill tried to do the same, but Smith clung to him, refusing to let go.

The forest went silent. Even the wind quit.

For a second, Zill thought maybe it was a false alarm.

Then, from deep in the trees, came a hiss. Metallic. Inhuman.

Haverchuck whispered, “Down!” and everyone hit the ground.

Smith let go, rolled away, pulled his sidearm and aimed into the trees. Zill dropped flat, eating a mouthful of snow and needles.

The hiss came again, closer. Zill saw movement—a flicker of gray against the black pines. Gas masks, just like the ones in every nightmare since Verdun. Big, round eyes, glassy and blank. There were maybe five. Maybe ten. Hard to tell.

Zill turned to call out to Haverchuck, but Smith was gone, vanished into the trees, moving smoother than any wounded man should.

From up ahead, a click—the sound of a safety coming off.

Haverchuck yelled, “Contact left!”

The world exploded.

Zill’s world went white, then red. The crack of rifles tore the air in half. Tree bark and frozen dirt detonated up around him—one, two, five of the British went down in the opening volley. The rest scattered like rats on a sinking ship, diving behind whatever cover the woods offered. Bullets whined. One hit a pine trunk right next to Zill’s head, showering him with splinters.

Haverchuck roared, “Return fire!” but his voice chopped off mid-word, replaced by a wet, animal grunt. Zill turned just in time to see the sergeant spinning, arm useless at his side, blood painting the snow. Haverchuck staggered, then belly-flopped behind a deadfall, fingers digging into the slush.

Smith cackled, eyes wild, and scuttled behind the log with Zill. “Keep your head down!” he barked, but there was a glee in his face, a junkie’s joy at the next fix. Zill barely heard him over the chaos.

He pawed for his rifle, found it, and popped up long enough to spot the shooters. They were gray shapes, moving parallel in the trees—masks, coats, gloves, and no sound but the mechanical *click* of their weapons. No shouting, no cursing, just cold, synchronized murder.

Zill squeezed off a shot. The recoil hammered his shoulder, but the bullet bit deep—he saw one mask snap back, then tilt sideways. The man (was it a man?) dropped, but another moved up to replace him, same motion, same silent glide.

A Brit to his right tried to break cover, but he got ventilated before he’d gone three steps. His helmet spun away, scalp attached.

Zill ducked as bullets chewed the log. Smith fired blind, three shots in rapid succession. “Eat shit, you Nazi fucks!” he hollered, face twisted in rictus.

“Shut up!” Zill snarled. “You want to draw fire?”

Smith just laughed, teeth bloody, and slammed in another clip.

Across the clearing, Haverchuck crawled for cover, dragging his wrecked arm. Zill watched, bile rising, as one of the gas-masks stepped out from the trees, stalking with the patience of a wolf. The mask’s lenses caught the sun, black and hungry.

Zill yelled, “Sergeant—move!” but Haverchuck already saw it. He rolled behind a stump as the bullet passed through the spot where his head had been.

More gunfire. It was one-sided now. The Brits who weren’t dead were dying, either screaming or just lying in the dirt, trying to hold their insides in. Zill counted the Eisen Verfolger: at least six left, maybe more behind. They moved like a drill team, leapfrogging position, never exposing themselves for more than a blink.

“Flank left!” Zill shouted. “Cover Haverchuck!”

Smith nodded, instantly on the same page. He popped up, fired twice, and ducked as bark and bullets filled the air.

Zill took the opening. He broke from cover, sprinted in a low crouch, ignoring the stitch in his gut and the numbness creeping into his feet. He tackled Haverchuck, dragging him back behind the stump.

The sergeant’s face was pure agony. His shirt was black with blood, shoulder shredded. “Goddamn—” Haverchuck gasped. “Goddamn them—”

“Hold still,” Zill grunted. He tore the sleeve off his jacket and wadded it against the wound, then yanked Haverchuck’s collar tight for a makeshift tourniquet. The sergeant’s whole body shook.

Behind them, the woods rattled with gunfire.

Smith called, “Zill! Two coming up right!” Zill peered around the stump. The Eisen Verfolger were closing in, one laying down suppressing fire, the other circling wide.

“Got any grenades?” Zill asked.

Haverchuck fumbled, eyes rolling, and passed a pineapple grenade from his webbing. Zill yanked the pin with his teeth, counted “one, two,” then chucked it hard. It bounced off a tree and landed in the snow at the feet of a mask.

The explosion was like a hand clap at the world’s end. For a second, the air filled with dirt and pink mist.

Zill didn’t waste it. He grabbed Haverchuck and pulled him deeper into the brush, Smith falling in behind them.

They reached a gully—shallow but deep enough to disappear in. Zill hauled Haverchuck down, then ducked low, scanning the woods for movement. He could see the remaining Eisen Verfolger regrouping, not flustered, just recalibrating their approach.

Smith lay beside him, panting, eyes glittering with excitement. “We’re not getting out, are we?”

Zill checked the mag on his Lee-Enfield. “Not unless we turn the tables.”

Smith licked his lips, then flashed that weird smile again. “I’ve got an idea.”

Before Zill could ask, Smith rolled over, popped up, and fired a burst straight into the oncoming Verfolger. He caught one in the chest, another in the thigh. Both fell, but the rest kept advancing, relentless.

Zill’s world shrank to the space between his heartbeat and the next bullet. He sighted, fired, sighted again. For a second, he thought maybe they could hold out. But then he saw movement to his left—two more masks, closing in, almost invisible against the trees.

Haverchuck groaned, “It’s a trap. They want us alive.”

Smith looked at Zill. “That makes one of us, at least.”

The shooting slowed. The Eisen Verfolger closed in, weapons up, but they didn’t fire. The tension was worse than the bullets.

Zill gripped his rifle, blood pounding in his ears.

In the silence, Haverchuck whispered, “You do what you have to. Don’t let them take us.”

Zill nodded, understanding. He chambered another round, aimed at the mask closest to him.

Smith whispered, “Wait for my mark.”

Zill watched. The masks kept coming. Ten paces. Five.

Smith said, “Now.”

Zill fired. Smith did too. The nearest mask exploded in a wash of black and red. The others ducked, but not fast enough.

It was chaos for five seconds. Zill emptied his mag, heard Smith screaming, “Come on, come on!” as they poured fire into the woods.

Then it was over. Three Eisen Verfolger down, two limping away, one still standing—calm, unhurried, as if the ambush was going exactly to plan.

Zill saw Haverchuck’s eyes flutter, rolling white. He tried to shake the sergeant awake, but Haverchuck didn’t move.

The lone mask stepped forward. “Drop your weapon!” The voice was guttural, piped through rubber, but the English was perfect.

Smith, cool as ice, turned to Zill. “We can’t win. Might as well hear them out.”

Zill wanted to smash something. But he dropped the rifle, let it hit the ground.

The mask gestured. “Hands up. You will come with us.”

Smith obeyed. Zill hesitated, then did the same.

The rest of the British squad was gone. Only him, Smith, and Haverchuck—barely alive.

Zill tasted metal in his mouth. This wasn’t a match. It was a slaughter.

He knew then: the real pain was just getting started.

It took the Eisen Verfolger less than a minute to herd the survivors. Zill and Smith, hands laced behind their heads. Haverchuck, barely conscious, on his knees in the snow. The masks moved in silent formation, rifles raised, boots crunching with the precision of a firing squad on parade. One checked the pulse of each British casualty, finishing off the still-breathing with a quick, businesslike shot.

Zill watched all of it. He didn’t say a word. He kept one eye on Smith, who had that loose-limbed, alert posture Zill had only ever seen in men who lived for moments like this.

There was a cold lull. Then, from behind the line of masks, a shape emerged: tall, black leather trench coat gleaming, boots polished, face drawn and pale as paper. The mask was off, and that made it worse. The man’s eyes were ice, mouth cut too thin, the kind of face that could watch a dog drown and take notes.

“Hold your fire,” the man said. The accent was crisp, academic, bored. “No more sport. We have what we need.”

Zill stared, and for a moment, time skipped.

Dr. Viktor Metallgeist strode into the clearing, hands behind his back, as if he were greeting guests at a museum. He circled the Eisen Verfolger, inspecting their work, then turned to Haverchuck.

“So this is the famous American resistance,” Metallgeist mused. “Impressive. I expected more mustaches.”

The masks didn’t laugh, but Smith did, just a quick chuff, then silence.

Metallgeist crouched to look Haverchuck in the eye. The sergeant spat at his boot. The phlegm froze before it hit the leather.

“A real soldier,” Metallgeist said, admiring. “They do not make them like you anymore.” He straightened, dusted invisible lint from his sleeve. “We will have a proper talk, you and I.”

He looked at Zill. The gaze stabbed right through. “And the All-American. I’ve seen your work. The suplex. Very dramatic. But ultimately? Ineffective.”

Zill clamped his jaw. “You want to finish this, do it yourself.”

Metallgeist nodded. “Eventually. But not yet.” He cocked his head. “Where are the others? The Wildman, the Luchador, the woman with the iron knee?”

Zill said nothing.

Metallgeist shrugged. “No matter. We will collect them too.”

He motioned to one of the masks, who stepped forward and yanked Zill to his knees. The force knocked the air from his lungs. “You Americans are fond of spectacle,” Metallgeist said. “Allow me to return the courtesy.”

He turned to Haverchuck. “Did you know, sergeant, that your superiors offered you up like a pig for slaughter? That your little fortress was always a decoy?” The words hit like body blows. Haverchuck grimaced, but kept his eyes up.

Metallgeist leaned in, almost gentle. “They have already signed the surrender. You are fighting for a country that does not want you. How does that feel?”

Haverchuck stared past him, unblinking. Metallgeist slapped him, not hard, but with surgical precision. “You will answer.”

Zill, head down, saw Smith shift in the snow. His hand crept toward his hip, slow, sly, like a cat stretching after a long nap.

Haverchuck said, “Go to hell.”

Metallgeist smiled. “Every day, I make it a little bigger.” He straightened, turned away.

That’s when Smith moved.

He palmed the pistol and raised it, quick as a conjuring trick, aiming not at Metallgeist but at Haverchuck.

Zill opened his mouth to shout, but the shot rang out first.

Everything stopped.

Haverchuck slumped, a perfect red dot in the middle of his forehead. He toppled, face-first, into the snow.

Smith exhaled, rolled his neck, and said, “Told you. He’d slow us down.”

The masks turned, but Metallgeist laughed—a raw, honest bark. “Excellent! I did not expect the double cross to happen so soon.” He pointed at Smith, nodding like a proud professor.

Zill was moving before the echo died — not at Smith. At the body. He made it two steps, dropped to his knees in the red snow, and turned the Sergeant over with hands that had gentled a thousand worked falls and never one real one. Haverchuck’s eyes were open, still not believing in the mission. Zill closed them with two fingers, and his other hand found the chain at the dead man’s throat. The dog tags came free with a snap just as the first gas mask seized his collar and hauled him up, arms pinned, rifle jammed into his spine. Zill’s fist stayed shut around the tags. Nobody thought to open it.

Smith shrugged, almost apologetic. “Sorry, Frank. That’s show business.”

Metallgeist clapped his hands. “Bring them both. The rest—dispose of them.”

Zill stared at the hole in Haverchuck’s head. All the war, all the training, and it ended in the dirt, with a traitor’s bullet and a scientist’s smirk.

He looked at Smith. “Why?”

Smith grinned. “Pays better. Always has.”

Metallgeist patted Zill’s shoulder as he passed. “I look forward to seeing what you do, All-American. Maybe you have a surprise left.”

Zill spat at the doctor’s boots and missed. The cold had taken even that.

The masks hauled him up and marched him away.

The snow covered everything in minutes.

They marched Zill and Smith through the woods with hands wired behind them, boots sinking in bloody snow. The sky was low and gunmetal, the air thick with cordite and the smell of spent ambition. Every fifty yards, a mask prodded Zill in the back with a rifle, like herding a stubborn cow to slaughter.

Smith walked with an easy lope, the limp now a ghost. He grinned at Zill, then at the masks, as if he’d just been given a promotion. “So. This is what it feels like to be on the winning side,” he said.

“Eat a bullet,” Zill muttered.

Smith chuckled. “Maybe after a hot meal. You want to go back to being the babyface? Or do you want to see how the business really works?”

Up ahead, the trees broke into a clearing. There was a truck, camo netting draped over the back, engine running. Two more Eisen Verfolger waited by the cab, smoking thin German cigarettes, their breath fogging the rubber of the masks.

Metallgeist stood by the tailgate, hands behind his back. He looked up as Zill approached, not at all surprised to see Smith strutting at his side.

“Wonderful!” Metallgeist said, voice warm as a fresh corpse. “I trust there were no further complications?”

Smith shrugged. “None that matter.”

Metallgeist nodded, then motioned for the masks to search Zill. They did, rough and efficient. One patted him down, found a photo in his shirt pocket—his mother, faded and creased. The mask stared at it for a moment, then tossed it into the mud.

Zill snarled. “Hey! You want a fight, we do it like men. One-on-one. No dogs, no guns.”

Metallgeist smiled. “Ah, the American spirit. It dies so hard.” He gestured for the others to step back. “If you want a match, Herr Zill, you will have it soon. But first, you will watch. You will see how real power is exercised.”

He motioned to Smith, who leaned on the tailgate, arms folded. “Payment, as agreed?”

Metallgeist produced a thick envelope from his coat. “You were very effective, Herr Smith. The Reich is always grateful for initiative.” He tossed the envelope. Smith caught it, rifled through the contents—currency, IDs, a passport stamped with a new name.

“Pleasure doing business,” Smith said.

Metallgeist fixed his gaze on Zill. “And you, Herr Zill? Do you have any last words before you are rendered irrelevant?”

Zill looked at Smith, then at the masks, then back at Metallgeist. He shook his head, and laughed. “Yeah. You think you got the All-American beat? You think you can just roll into the squared circle and take the belt without a fight?” He puffed out his chest, even trussed. “Let me tell you something, brother. You might have the numbers, you might have the money, but you don’t have the one thing that makes a champion—heart. And you never will.”

It was stupid, but it worked. The masks actually stopped, for a second, and looked at Zill like he was an alien.

Metallgeist rolled his eyes. “Pathetic.”

Smith snorted. “You just don’t know when you’re done, do you?”

Zill spat at Smith’s boots. “Never liked you anyway, turncoat.”

Smith wiped his boot on the tailgate, then motioned to the masks. “Put him in the truck. Make sure he’s tied tight.”

The Eisen Verfolger shoved Zill into the back of the truck, face-first into the oily canvas. Someone yanked the ties even tighter, until his hands went numb.

Smith climbed in after, sitting on the bench across from Zill, legs crossed. He held the envelope of cash like a favorite pet. “Here’s the thing, Frank. Loyalty is just another word for slow suicide. I picked the winning team. You—well, you picked the wrong side of history.”

Zill said nothing. He watched the world go by as the truck rattled up the trail, watched the blood from Haverchuck’s head mix with the slush and disappear. Watched the trees swallow everything that mattered.

He was a prisoner, a prop, a washed-up act in a show no one would ever buy a ticket for again.

The truck bounced, hit a pothole, and Zill’s head smacked the bulkhead.

He bit down on the pain.

Somewhere in the woods, the rest of his team was either dead or running. Either way, it was out of his hands now.

Smith smiled, eyes bright. “Chin up, champ. At least you’ll be famous.”

Metallgeist’s voice came through the truck’s window, clear and precise: “Next stop, Hammerfest.”

Zill thought of the ring, of the roar, of the moment before the bell.

He closed his eyes and waited for the next match.

Chapter 16 — Sprengstoff

Oscarsborg Fortress smelled like a wet dog rolled in gunpowder and left to rot inside an old aquarium. The stone corridors twisted in on themselves, echoing every bootstep, every half-whispered curse, until it sounded like the place was crawling with invisible rats. The Turnbuckle Brigade picked their way through the dark, casting long, gangly shadows that jostled for space on the walls.

Dottie Betts led the way. She walked with the pissed-off authority of a foreman on overtime, her steel-capped prosthetic clanking with every step. The glass eye she'd swapped for a fresh one at breakfast caught the dim yellow light and threw it in weird, predatory angles. She stopped at a fork in the hall, cocked her head, and rapped the leg on the floor three times: tap-tap-tap.

"Let me get this straight," she said, voice low and flat. "We're following a map hand-drawn by a guy who just defected to the Nazis, and the plan is what, exactly? Find a magic belt and save the world? Or die like morons in a basement?"

Benjamin "Breathtaking" Bradley, his gold-plated championship belt draped casual over one shoulder, snorted and wiped a fleck of dust from his nose. "That's not just any guy, sweetheart. That's Frank Zill, and if he wants to switch teams, who am I to judge? I'd do the same for less than half the offer." He paused, checked the shine on his boots, and made a face. "This place is killing my suede, by the way."

Elston Fowler—the Borneo Wildman, though he now looked less like a jungle animal and more like a construction worker after a coal mine collapse—trudged in the rear. His tribal paint had streaked with sweat, dirt, and what might've been dried blood. He dragged his fingers along the wall, feeling for soft spots, eyes never still. "The Germans wouldn't waste man-hours on fairy tales," he muttered. "If the artifact's here, it's worth more than a hundred fortresses. And if it's not—"

"Then we torch the place anyway?" Dottie said.

Fowler shrugged. "No reason not to."

Jose Rivera brought up the middle. He wore his luchador mask as if it grew from the skin, and though the red-and-gold glitter had faded to something you might see in a pile of dead leaves, he walked tall. He hadn't so much as gestured since the last firefight, just stalked along, hands flexing like he was fighting off invisible ghosts.

Dottie stopped so abruptly the others nearly walked into her. She hissed, "Listen."

They all froze. The silence was deep as a grave, and for a moment the only sound was the slow drip of water from somewhere overhead.

Fowler closed his eyes, inhaled, then said, "No pursuit. Either the Nazis think we're dead or they have other priorities."

"Yeah," Dottie said. "Like blowing us all to hell."

Bradley rolled his eyes. "Now who's the optimist?"

Dottie wheeled, jabbed a finger at him. "You ever think maybe Haverchuck was right? That we're just cannon fodder for a story nobody even believes?"

Fowler laughed, no humor in it. "If you want out, find the nearest exit. But you won't get far. The only way out is forward."

Bradley checked his reflection in a rusted sconce and frowned. "I'm just saying, for the record, I'd like my remains shipped to Chicago. Not that I plan on dying here. But, you know, if."

Rivera, still silent, wandered into a side chamber. The door was half off its hinges, the brass knob cold in his palm. Inside, the air was stale, heavier with the faint, greasy stink of ancient explosives.

He rapped a knuckle twice against the doorframe — soft, but sharp enough to turn every head — and beckoned.

They piled in, Dottie and Fowler first, then Bradley, who hesitated to step over the fallen door like it might bite him. The room was bare except for a desk, an open filing cabinet, and a single battered chair with stuffing poking out the sides like gray intestines.

Rivera knelt at the desk. The drawers were swollen shut from age, but he rocked them loose with careful, practiced effort. The top drawer held nothing but a crusted pen and a cracked magnifying glass. The second was jammed, but he forced it and found, buried in a drift of blackened papers, a map.

He unfolded it on the desk. The paper was brittle and yellowed, edges burned in places, but the lines were crisp: corridors, staircases, chambers, and—marked in thick red pencil—dozens of Xs.

Bradley whistled. "Looks like Santa's hit list."

Dottie ran a finger down the map, tracing the Xs. "What the hell is all this?"

Rivera squinted at the German scrawl beside each mark, then tapped one word twice and looked up.

"Sprengstoff," Fowler read over his shoulder. "Explosives."

Dottie eyed him. "Since when do you read Kraut?"

"Worked a tour through Berlin. The promoter made us learn the lingo, in case we got caught in a police raid. ‘Sprengstoff’ was on every damn crate backstage. Means 'blow the roof off.'"

Bradley grinned. "Never took you for a linguist."

Dottie didn't laugh. "They're planning to level the whole fortress."

Fowler nodded. "If they're losing ground, they leave nothing behind. Makes sense."

Rivera traced the wires drawn on the map, eyes narrowing, then stabbed a finger down on a spot near the center marked 'Befehlzentrum' and mimed driving a plunger home with both fists.

"Command center," Fowler translated.

Dottie pulled her lips tight, then spat on the floor. "So we have a ticking clock."

Bradley hoisted the belt onto his chest, face going blank. "Remind me why we're still here, instead of sprinting for the back gate?"

Fowler grinned. "Because somewhere under all this rock, there's a myth with enough juice to make the Nazis burn their own fortress to keep it secret. We're not leaving until we find it—or make sure they never do."

Dottie nodded, glass eye reflecting the tiny desk lamp like a searchlight. "Then we’d better move. If the maps are right, this place is wired worse than my Aunt Mildred’s boudoir."

Bradley blinked. "Do I even want to know?"

"Not if you like sleeping at night," Dottie deadpanned, then folded the map and stuffed it in her pocket. "Let's go. And, Fowler—if you ever tell anyone I hesitated, I'll feed you your own teeth."

Fowler's paint creased with a lopsided smile. "Wouldn't dream of it."

They filed out, single file, the echo of their boots still mixing with the old, dying sounds of the fortress. The air felt colder now. For the first time, even the stone seemed to shudder.

As they turned the next corner, Dottie slowed, checked the map, then looked back. "If we’re going to die," she said, not unkindly, "might as well do it spectacular."

Bradley winked. "That's the only way I know how."

Fowler brought up the rear, hands loose, eyes alert. "Keep talking," he muttered. "Means you're not dead yet."

Rivera said nothing, but for a moment, his eyes caught Bradley’s. There was something like agreement there, or maybe just the mutual recognition of men who’d learned to live with impossible odds.

They moved deeper into the belly of the fortress, the map like a curse in Dottie's pocket.

Behind them, the dark stayed quiet. But ahead, the walls squeezed closer, and the stone felt less and less like protection and more like a trap.

And above it all, the ticking—not of a clock, but of distant, patient explosives—began to count down.

The first X on the old map was marked in thick black pencil, right up against the east wall of the fortress. According to the map, there’d be a hollow behind the parapet, maybe a weapons cache or maybe just a trick of perspective—cartographer’s whimsy. Dottie Betts tromped through the snow, leading the four, her gait more confident than the ground deserved. The wind bit the exposed strip of her neck, but she wore the cold like a badge, her glass eye blank and unblinking.

Bradley trudged behind her, boots sinking with every step, championship belt hugged to his chest like a newborn. Elston Fowler moved up the line, every movement measured. El Aguila de la Muerte lagged, head down, gloved hands jammed into armpits for warmth, mouthing silent Spanish curses with every blast of wind.

They reached the wall. It rose above them, scarred by shelling, every brick a shade of frozen blood. At the base, the snow was churned and muddy, but a patch of earth had been disturbed—recently. The mound was darker than the rest, a clot on the white. Dottie knelt, brushed at it with a bare hand, ignoring the cold.

“Feels soft,” she said. “Fresh dug.” She started digging, nails biting into dirt, then rock. She worked fast, the way a dog unearths a bone it buried the night before. Bradley watched, face set in a rictus of distaste. “You want a shovel, Dottie?” he offered.

She looked up, dirt already streaked across her cheek. “Only if you’re volunteering to be the handle.”

Bradley shut up, cradled the belt tighter.

Elston knelt beside her, his own hands working more careful, slow. “Let her do it,” he murmured to Bradley. “She’s better at graves.”

After a few minutes, Dottie’s fingers hit something not dirt. She pulled back, wiped the grit on her pants, and reached in with her good hand, tugging until something gave. The thing slid free with a crack. It was a block of dynamite, red wax paper shredded and dirty, wires coiled tight around the sticks.

“Hello, sweetheart,” Dottie said, voice low. She set the bundle on her knee, then dug for the rest. Another stick, another, then a coil of wire, then something like a clay brick wrapped in a black bag.

Bradley whistled, then said, “Enough boom here to level half this place.” He edged back.

Dottie looked up at Wildman, grinning. “You want to light it? Or just throw it at the Krauts and see what happens?”

Wildman didn’t smile. He squatted beside the hole, peered at the wiring. “Don’t touch it. Look.” He gestured, fingers tracing the mess of colored wires. “This runs along the wall. And here—” he pointed to a thin, almost-invisible copper line “—there’s a trigger loop. If it’s tripped, kaboom.”

Dottie looked at him, eyebrow raised. “You think it’s a booby trap?”

Wildman nodded. “I think the whole wall is.”

El Aguila crouched beside them and told it with his hands: the hole, the wall, then a fist pressed down on an invisible plunger somewhere far over the horizon. Detonated from a distance.

Bradley ran his thumb along the brass of the belt, eyes darting. “So what do we do? Sit on it?”

Dottie shook her head. “We find the other end.”

Wildman nodded. “Exactly. The wire’s the clue.”

For the next hour, they tracked the line around the fortress, across the yard and through the half-collapsed entryway. Sometimes the wire was above ground, running between shattered stones, sometimes it dipped under ice, but always it pointed back toward the main keep. The snow crunched under their boots. Every step, Bradley lagged further behind, distracted by the weight of the belt and the way the wind seemed to find every gap in his uniform.

Inside, the air changed. Gone was the taste of burnt cordite and blood. Here, it was just stone and cold. The line ran up a crumbling stair, through what used to be the officer’s lounge. The carpet was gone, but the rows of empty whiskey bottles survived, some upright, some broken.

Dottie grinned. “Classy joint.”

Bradley, trailing, scooped a bottle with his toe. “Better than the shitholes we worked in Memphis.”

They followed the wire through a narrow hall, past what looked like a converted torture closet, then up another stair. The wiring got thicker here—more lines, some fatter and older, some new and bright. It all snaked toward a door at the end of the hall, a room papered in Nazi propaganda and reeking of urine and spilled coffee.

“Command center,” Wildman said.

Dottie didn’t wait. She kicked the door open. It banged off the wall, echoing down the corridor.

Inside, the place was chaos. Paper everywhere—maps, blueprints, a chessboard knocked over mid-game. The room stank of desperation.

El Aguila pointed to the far corner. There, under a battered desk, was a small wooden box, the kind you saw in cartoons with ACME written on the side.

Dottie pushed past, went straight for it, ignoring the risk. She hauled it out and opened the lid.

“Classic,” she said, holding up the plunger. “Straight out of the funny pages.”

Bradley peeked over her shoulder, eyes wide. “Does it work?”

Dottie laughed. “Want to test it?”

Wildman traced the wires leading into the box. “It’s armed. One push, whole fortress goes up.”

Dottie set the box on the desk, next to a pile of half-burned cigarettes and a photo of Hitler on a horse. She spat at the photo, then turned to Wildman. “So what now? We pull the wires? Try to disarm?”

Wildman crouched, eyes darting over the connections. He held up a hand, fingers fanned. “Too many lines. Need to figure which one is the dead switch.”

El Aguila peered out the window, scanning the yard, then snapped his fingers twice — sharp, urgent, the signal every wrestler knows means the marks are in the building.

Bradley moved to the window, nudged El Aguila aside. He squinted, then went pale. “Shit. It’s them. They got Zill.”

Dottie joined him, looked down. Her face twisted. “That’s Smith with a gun to his head. That rat bastard.”

Wildman stood, tension in his shoulders. He walked to the window, peered through a pair of ancient binoculars. He didn’t say a word, just stared as the enemy lined up at the gate.

Dottie looked at the plunger, then at Wildman. “You got a plan, genius?”

Wildman didn’t answer. He stared, motionless, then set the binoculars down. “We might have to blow the place anyway.”

Bradley’s eyes darted. “With us in it?”

Dottie grinned. “Wouldn’t be the worst show I ever played.”

They stared out at the gathering storm, four against an army, hands tight on the only hope they had.

Wildman looked at the detonator, then at the others. “If we’re gonna do it, we do it right. We wait for our shot.”

Outside, the line of masks closed in, Zill stumbling at the center.

Dottie cracked her knuckles. “Let’s give them a show.”

Wildman kept the binoculars pressed to his eyes until the glass fogged from his breath. He wiped them on his sleeve, then raised them again, elbows resting on the shattered stone sill. Through the double lens he saw the landing craft nosing through the broken ice, headed straight for the fortress dock.

At the prow, Zill stood upright, hands bound, battered but unbowed. Smith had a pistol jammed behind Zill’s right ear, his other hand holding the man by the shoulder as if posing for a photo. Behind them, a rank of Eisen Verfolger in long coats and gas masks. And standing a head above the rest, chin high and coat snapping in the wind, was a man who looked like a vulture that learned to walk upright: slick black hair, leather gloves, the kind of smile that belonged on a dental ad for carnivores.

Wildman said, “They’ve got Frank.”

He passed the binoculars to Dottie, who peered through with her good eye, glass one glinting off the window’s light. “That’s Smith with him,” she said, voice flat. “Little shit. He sold us out.”

Bradley didn’t ask for the binoculars. He just sidled up to the window and looked with his own eyes, a slow smile stretching his lips. “You see what I see?” he asked.

Wildman turned, still crouched. “They’ll be here in under five.”

Bradley looked at him, eyes sharp. “Then we got five to figure out how to sell this.”

Dottie spat on the floor. “I say we let ‘em in, then blow the place sky-high.”

Bradley shook his head. “They expect that. They expect us to die like good little soldiers.” He tapped the belt, fingers drumming on the faceplate. “What they’re not expecting is the work.”

El Aguila, perched by the door, turned one open hand over — the work being what, exactly?

Bradley grinned, a little wild. “We give them a finish so big they’ll talk about it in hell.”

Wildman stared at him. “They’ve got guns, they’ve got numbers, and they’ve got Frank. You want to wrestle them?”

Bradley shrugged. “What’s one more match?”

Dottie rolled her eyes, but there was a flicker of respect. “You get us all killed, I’m haunting your ass.”

Bradley’s voice went hard. “They’re bringing Frank here because they want to parade him. Make an example. But we don’t play to their script—we flip the booking.”

He looked around the room, saw the detonator box, the coils of wire, the stacks of dynamite. “We make it a show,” he said. “Let Smith get cocky, let them drag us all together in the command center. Play it up. Give them what they want to see.”

Wildman nodded, catching the drift. “We give them the work—then shoot the gap.”

Bradley’s grin showed teeth. “Oldest trick in the territory.”

Dottie snorted. “Only works if Frank’s in on it.”

“He’ll know,” said Wildman.

El Aguila flexed his hands, then pointed one finger at the box in the corner and raised an eyebrow behind the mask — and the bomb?

Bradley walked to the box, flipped open the lid, and ran his thumb over the plunger. “We hold it back. Last possible second.” He glanced at Wildman. “Can you rig this to pop on a timer?”

Wildman eyed the wiring, calculating. “Maybe. Could use the signal wire as a deadman’s switch. Thirty seconds, tops.”

Bradley looked back at the window. The craft was docking. The men in gas masks fanned out, quick and clean. Smith shoved Zill forward, gun never leaving his head.

Dottie’s fists balled. “I want the first crack at Smith.”

Bradley didn’t argue. “Just don’t break him until he’s out of the way.”

They watched the column approach, boots leaving trenches in the snow. Metallgeist led, hands behind his back, never looking down. He walked as if he owned the world and everyone in it.

Outside, the column reached the gate. Boots on stone, in lockstep, like one animal with forty legs.

Bradley watched them come — and then his gaze drifted sideways, down the hall, to the quartermaster’s stores the Nazis had never finished looting. To the two dead couriers of the Sicherheitsdienst laid out under a tarp since the landing, dress uniforms still creased. To a high-backed chair, and a silk dress on a costume rail, and a fortune in gold braid.

He smiled the smile that had sold out armories in eleven states.

“Anybody here speak German?”

Fowler cracked his knuckles, one at a time, and grinned like a man remembering Berlin.