Robert Williams - Ice Fortress

But when his knuckles hit something solid, Jack realized his mistake. The guy was prepared. He should have known that about him by now.

Muller was wearing a box. The cheating bastard had a groin guard in his pants.

Reaching down, Muller wrapped his thick arms around Jack’s torso. The muscles in his forearms bulged and rippled like steel cables as they lifted Jack off the ground like a doll and started to crush the life out of him.

Flashes of light passed across Jack’s eyes like dust motes. Oxygen deprivation. The man was suffocating him to death. Jack didn’t want this giant’s ugly face to be the last thing he saw before he died.

Think Jack. Think .

He’d never tried it before, but he remembered something he’d been taught long ago. His asphyxiated brain scratched away the edges of the memory… something about the arch being one of the strongest engineering structures. That was it!

With the last glimmer of strength, Jack stretched his neck and upper back, angling his head away from Muller’s face. Through his blurred vision, he tried to focus on the little vertical cleft on Muller’s top lip, just below his nose — the philtrum.

Then, like a whip, he cracked his head forward explosively, the arched crown of his skull colliding with the desired target — the sensitive cluster of nerves under Muller’s nose. The satisfying crunch as the nose shattered was a bonus, one Jack gladly accepted.

Muller bellowed like a wounded beast and released his grip enough for Jack to wriggle free and catch some much needed air.

Blood spurted from Muller’s broken nose and his eyes watered profusely, but the fight wasn’t anywhere near over.

As big and well-muscled as Muller was, Jack knew that there were a couple of places a man, no matter how many pounds he could bench press, would always be vulnerable. Now it was time to seize the advantage.

Jack slid his hand over Muller’s wrist and executed a perfect and very painful wrist lock. Even a man Muller’s size couldn’t handle the pain of having a joint twisted cruelly beyond its normal range of rotation and he quickly dropped to his knees to relieve the force on his wrist joint.

Jack applied more pressure.

Muller screamed.

But still he struggled. He wasn’t broken yet, but his wrist almost was.

Lining up for a strike to the wailing man’s throat, another area that remained vulnerable no matter how many hours spent in the gym, Jack prepared to finish him off once and for all. He’d choke on his own crushed larynx, slowly enough that Jack’s smiling face would be the last thing he’d see before the lights went out.

Schlick. Schlick .

The smooth metal on metal sound of an automatic weapon chambering a round rang out.

Leah didn’t speak. She didn’t have to.

Jack lowered his hand and stepped back from Muller.

“Lucky you’ve got your sister to stand up for you in the playground, tough guy.”

Muller’s face was etched with pain and unbridled hatred as he began to stand, ready to launch himself at Coulson.

A booming voice from behind caught their attention, including Muller’s.

“I know this isn’t exactly a who’s-got-the-biggest-dick contest, but if it was, I think I’d win, don’t you?”

They all turned.

He’d done it.

Sam stood astride two of the old generators, looking almost like a statue of some kind of Roman war god. Over his massive shoulder rested a long metal pipe with, from what Jack could see, looked like an overinflated football stuck on the end of it. The football-like warhead was aimed directly at The Bell. At that distance, Sam couldn’t miss.

So that’s a Panzerfaust , Jack thought.

Countdown to impact: 1.00 hour.

Sam’s special skillset was anything to do with demolition and munitions or “blowing shit up,” as Sam usually described it.

He’d scuttled ships, destroyed bridges, deployed sea-mines and generally had a field day with every type of munition there was. But one thing had always eluded him — the Panzerfaust or ‘tank fist’ as it translated in English. Another groundbreaking design from the Germans during the Second World War, the one shot, recoilless ‘tank destroyer’ was light, easy to shoot and cheap to manufacture. The design principles of the Panzerfaust influence similar RPG weapons to the present day.

During the war, the Panzerfaust proved highly effective against even the most heavily armored Allied tanks. It was one of the first weapons to use a ‘shaped charge’ in the warhead, which would detonate on impact, concentrating the blast in the direction of travel and punching a hole in armor up to 2 inches thick with a plasma jet that would kill the tank crew.

Today, Sam hoped it would prove just as effective against the device on the dock.

“You won’t fire that,” Leah challenged. “If you don’t blow yourself up with that antique, you’ll kill all your friends.”

Muller herded the submariners, scientists and Jack closer to the shrouded bell at gunpoint.

“We all know the score,” Sam countered. “We’d rather die than let you Nazi nutjobs use that… monstrosity.”

“I’ll give you three seconds to lower that weapon,” Muller called to Sam.

Sam remained unmoved by the threat. He had the Panzerfaust . What did they have?

But Muller didn’t look as fazed as Sam had expected, given the threat he posed to what he’d been treating as a holy relic.

He felt it before he heard it.

The bullet tore through his shoulder, shattering bone and slicing through muscle and sinew before he heard the shot ring out.

The Panzerfaust clattered to the ground and Sam watched the bloom of crimson spread across his chest before he followed the Panzerfaust down to the concrete floor.

“I’ve stopped the bleeding but he’s lost a lot of blood,” Jameson said, his voice betraying that he didn’t think Sam would make it. “I might have done more aboard the Barracuda, but here, the medical supplies are rudimentary and that’s putting it politely.”

“They want the Barracuda for themselves. That I get, but why have they locked us up in here?” Jack pondered.

Coulson was still beating himself up over being outflanked by Leah. Again. The cunning bitch had a sniper hidden in the conning tower of the U-Boat the whole time. She always seemed to be one step ahead.

Juan and Dave sat at the two planesman stations, the only place they could sit without getting in the way of Jameson’s first aid efforts. Krupsky was laid out on the floor so they could work on him before moving him to a bunk in the crew quarters. There was no sick bay aboard the U-2532.

Durand and Jack stood by the periscope.

“Hey Coulson, do you think this still works?” Durand asked rubbing his hand over the well-worn periscope handles.