Robert Williams: Ice Fortress

Even Sam listened intently as Coulson spoke.

They were all still assembled on the wet-dock while Muller and Leah argued. They couldn’t hear what the argument was about and they were speaking German anyway, but the word Glocke kept coming up. They appeared to be arguing about what to do with the bell shaped device they’d earlier unloaded from the U-Boat.

“We have to destroy that thing. No matter what the cost. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

They all nodded solemnly.

“If we take what I read in the U-2532 log, factor in these neo Nazi commandoes and consider where you found the U-Boat and its condition, then we have to assume, as crazy as it sounds, that this thing really does work and can, somehow, move through time,” Durand concluded.

He continued, “And if there’s only a small chance they could use it to go back in time and change the outcome of the war, then we have no option but to stop them, right here and right now. If they succeed, a Nazi ruled world would be…” He couldn’t find the words.

“Unthinkable.” Sam summed it up in just one.

“Could they really win, though?” asked Jameson.

“They were already so close,” Durand explained, “that it wouldn’t take much, in time travel terms, to change the world as we know it.”

“Man, there was a time I would have thought it was cool to hear those words in the same sentence,” Juan lamented. After being so close to so much death and mayhem, Juan wasn’t as enthusiastic about the theory of time travel as he once had been.

“Seriously,” Durand went on, “all they would have to do is start building these Type XXI U-Boats earlier and they would control the seas for one thing. Imagine if they produced more V2 rockets or even larger ballistic missiles to strike New York or Moscow. I don’t even want to think about how quickly a Nazi atomic bomb on one of those things might have turned the tide against us.”

Silence.

“Okay, everyone understand what’s at stake here?” Jack asked all five of them.

To a man, they nodded gravely.

“But how?” Dave spoke up at last and asked the obvious question.

“Bluey, are you ready to share your special skills with the rest of the class?”

“I think it’s time. You two,” he directed his attention to Durand and Jameson, “you said you found some crates of munitions. What were they and more importantly, where were they?”

“Over there, in some kind of grotto at the end of the dock. You can’t see it from here because the generators are in front of the entrance.” Durand pointed past the rusted shells of the disused generators. “I can read German but the stenciling on the crates has deteriorated pretty badly. I couldn’t really read much of it.”

“Well, what could you read,” asked Sam impatiently.

Jameson and Durand shared a look and shrugged.

“Panz… something or other, I think it might have said,” Jameson offered, “but I don’t think that’s right. Even I know Panzer is a tank and there sure as hell aren’t any tanks down here.”

“Panzerfaust? Could that have said Panzerfaust?”

Both men shrugged uncertainly. Durand stroked his chin, “Maybe.”

“Is that good?” Jack asked Sam. He had no idea what the big man had in mind.

“Good if they still work. We’re all dead if they don’t.”

“Captain, do you still have the cutters?” Sam asked Jameson. He nodded.

“Okay, I need to be cut loose so I can run like hell to the generators. To do that, I need a diversion. The kind of trouble only you can make, Jack. You haven’t pissed anyone off badly for, what, twenty minutes? You must be going stir crazy by now, right?”

“It’s like you read my mind, Bluey.”

Jack turned to face Muller and Leah.

“Hey Muller, are you telling your sister how you took me down with one punch? Did you happen to mention I was at gunpoint and you sucker punched me?”

“Why don’t you shut-the-fuck-up?”

“You’re right. I’ll shut up now. Unarmed and toe to toe, you wouldn’t last two rounds with me, anyway. You’re just a big kraut cheater. If you were as good as you thought you were, you might win in a fair fight.”

Muller’s chest puffed out and his eyes narrowed. Jack had read him right. The man’s ego wouldn’t let those words pass unchallenged. Especially not in front of his little sister.

Handing his machine pistol to Leah, he stomped toward Jack, tearing open the Velcro fasteners of his tactical vest as he walked. Jack wanted hand to hand and it looked like he was going to get it.

“You asked for a diversion, you got it,” he whispered.

“Geez, I said diversion, Jack. Not suicide.”

Countdown to impact: 1.25 hours.

The cold hard concrete floor rushed at Jack like a runaway freight train before it collided head on, jarring every bone in Jack’s already traumatized body.

All eyes were on the two men fighting dockside like a couple of ancient gladiators. None of them could see how Jack was going to be able to stop Muller tearing him apart. That hulk of a man seemed almost invincible.

Jack spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground. The stark white of a broken tooth stood out in the sea of red. So far, it was all going perfectly Jack thought as he pushed himself to his knees and closed his eyes to plan his next move. As far as diversions went, he felt the audience was getting their money’s worth.

Years of unarmed combat training had taught him many things that he now tried to recall, because his life depended on it. Quarter of the bones in the human body are in the feet which are a fragile collection of bones, delicate muscles and a bundle of soft tissue and ligaments. Kicking someone in the head Chuck Norris style is more likely to break a dozen bones in the foot than a do the other guy’s head any significant damage. If you can’t stand, you can’t fight. Which is why Kickboxers kick with their shins — one big piece of near indestructible bone that could be swung like a club at an opponent’s thigh or ribcage.

Same deal with hands, Jack recalled. 27 delicate bones in each. Boxers wear boxing gloves to protect the bones in their hands from breaking, more than to protect the other guy’s face. And that was a reason nightclub bouncers stood with arms folded. At the first sign of trouble, they’d have elbows ready to land a knockout strike. Again, the elbow was a very solid piece of bone that could dish out and take a lot of punishment.

But Muller was setting a new benchmark, even for Jack. The man was built like a nuclear fallout shelter, absorbing blows to his face and gut from Jack’s elbows and seemingly unharmed by Jack’s most brutal roundhouse kicks to the giant man’s thigh. Those kicks should have damaged his sciatic nerve to the point where he shouldn’t still be standing.

Yet he was.

Towering above him, the herculean figure simply smiled at Jack’s feeble attempts to bring him down.

Tensing his muscles, Jack prepared to launch himself up off the ground. As he sprang, he dropped his shoulder and clenched his fist, ready to deliver a brutal uppercut. Not to Muller’s granite like jaw, though.

Thump!

Jack buried his fist, with all the power of his body channeled through his legs and into his arm, right into Muller’s balls. This was a street fight, there were no rules. Nothing was barred. It was life or death.