Behind the Lines
Chapter Eight: The Centre

The rest of the day was taken up with the routine of the day. Charles with Terry and Salina examined the troopers and their officers and found a corporal and two soldiers with Syphilis who were put on report and give sulphonamide tables.

When they were done the three of them had a complete tally of the troopers and knew how they operated.

Wesley held two church services and visited the elderly and the sick. He even gave an elderly woman the last rights as she slipped away.

Theo and Rex delivered the second load of slave workers to the holding area on the towns side of the electrified fence.

It was early evening at the priest’s house and Wesley sat comfortably in the winged arm chair his feet stretched out to the fire a glass of cognac in his hand.

He smiled as he heard the knock at the door. They were here as he dreamed they would be.

In a few moments later Charles, Terry, Salina and Alan were ushered in. Wesley was thankful that they hadn’t come in their uniforms.

As he got up to greet them he was aware of someone being let in via the backdoor. A few seconds later Rex and Theo had joined them.

“Did you have any luck with the guards Father?” Rex stuttered.

It was funny but somehow they couldn’t call each other by their real names and somehow that didn’t seem to bother them.

“Some.” Wesley told them as he pulled two rolls of drawing paper down and spread the first one out on the table. “This is the area within the electric fence. As you can see it contains six buildings. This one is the guards dormitory and barracks while this one here is the dormitory for the slave workers. Apparently there is an underground tunnel connecting it to the main building along which they drive the slaves.”

Wesley took a sip of the brandy and enjoyed its fire in his belly.

“What are these two Father?” Terry asked turning down Wesley’s offer of a drink.

“This one is an incinerator, while that one is a shed with the tools for the gardeners. As you can see the main building had extensive gardens. The guards patrol the area around the grounds and in all the buildings save for the research block where they are limited to the bottom two floors. There are a further four floors and two basements. This the last building houses the researchers and the high command. It is likely to be were their chapel is housed.”

Wesley with Terry’s help laid out the second map.

“This is made up from the composite of the six men’s memories so is not that accurate. It shows the three roads in via check points, on the East, West, South. There is another road in the North but is totally overgrown.”

“That could be our way in then.” Theo said. “What are these Father?”

He pointed at the mass’s of dots along each of the entrance roads and around the perimeter with other sections of dots seeming randomly around the grounds.

“Mine fields and dummies. Three types, anti personnel packed with ball bearings that are released at waist height, Anti Tank and finally an anti personnel bomb packed with high explosives, powerful enough to blow your legs clean off.”

“There has to be routes through otherwise the guards couldn’t get to the parameter. They were there I know because I saw them. They were guarding the breach caused but the British bomber crashing.” Alan said scratching his head.

“You are right there are routes through the mine fields but I couldn’t perceive any image of them, it was garbled and confusing.” Wesley passed a pencil over to Alan. “Show us where the troopers have their pillboxes and where the damaged section is?”

“This isn’t easy but I think you will find they are halfway between the entrance roads which have their own guard station. The breach is roughly about here.”

Alan circled a section of wiring.

“Thank you.” Wesley turned and looked at the others. “We have a problem.”

“What is that Father?” Alan asked a little confused.

“I will not be joining you after we have Rot Wang out and to the pick up point.”

“Why’s that old friend?” Charles asked worriedly.

“Once we have got him out all hell will break loose. If I suddenly disappear it will seem obvious I was involved and more importantly that Marta and Monique were too. I can’t take that risk. After a couple of weeks the real Father can return and I can fade away, all above board.”

“I can understand your concerns but how will you get out of the country? The Brits won’t put on another submarine just for one of us.” Charles persisted.

“I know that but I think you have a bigger problem. You have gotten too close to the Captain and the troopers. The fact that you fought to save the lives of four of them, creating a ad hoc operating theatre, show’s how you have become less dispassionate. You may have to use the troopers as scapegoats to protect yourselves but somehow I don’t think you can. Being that close compromises you.” To Wesley it was crystal clear, a statement of pure fact.

Charles went to refute it but changed his mind as the enormity of what Wesley had said sunk in.

“Yes.” He said eventually. “You’re correct as always.”

“Thank you. It brings me no pleasure old friend. I suggest we suit up.” Wesley took off his cassock to reveal the trousers and double breasted vest of his dark green almost black suit. He crossed over to a cupboard and pulled out a double breasted suit jacket which he slipped on. Before he turned round he pull over his head and face a British gasmask that had been subtly altered to make it look like a skull. A fedora finished the ensemble. “The guards were to remove the Troopers and make it look like the resistance had done it. They wanted to increase their presence at the centre.”

When he turned round all vestiges of Wesley Dodd’s industrialist was gone and standing in his place was The Sandman.

Salina took off her raincoat and laid it carefully over the chair. Underneath she was in a very dark brown cat suit made up of odd pieces of leather stitched together in a random pattern. She pulled up the hooded cat like facemask. She turned her coat inside out to reveal a leather raincoat with a bull whip as a belt.

Theo was dressed in a dark blue cat suit with a red symbol of a star on his muscular chest. In a holster on his hip was his Cosmic Rod that took the energies from the stars and turning them into blasts of raw energy and defied gravity as well as more subtle uses.

Rex was in his black grim reaper costume with an hour glass containing his Miracol capsule around his neck. The medication that gave him his power hour.

Terry was in a dark red costume with a dark green hooded mask. He wore a relatively short leather jacket emblazoned on the back and arms with the legend ‘Fair Play’ a philosophy he tried to live by.

Alan wore dark brown tight cycling shorts and a cream short sleeved body. A blue mask covered the whole of his face before becoming a short cape.

Charles was in his Doctor Midnite costume of a black cat suit over which he wore a dark red leather vest with crescent moon toggles. A dark red hooded mask with a crescent moon on the forehead became a dark green cape.

Wesley, Sandman, put the maps away and pulled out a group of satchels and back packs.

“Lets go shall we.” He said leading them out of the back of the manse and one by one they flitted into the woodland beyond each carrying a bag with them.

Once they had gone Marta and Monique tidied up and took away the glasses to wash.

Marta, surprisingly, didn’t question what she saw, after all it’s not everyday you see a group of high ranking Nazis leaving with your priest wearing something from a dress up box, she just carried on regardless. But something in her eyes twinkled.

Revenge was better served cold.

They slowly worked their way toward the electric fence, circling to find the overgrown road in. As they neared the fence Charles spied a section of the patrol being lead by the captain moving down one of the several paths through the woods. On Charles’s signal the hero’s froze.

The patrol came closer and closer and at any second would spot them.

Charles pulled out from his waistband pouch a slim black rod and deftly found the slight depression which was its trigger. At the last moment he triggered it creating a pitch black shadow over the hero’s. A darkness that only he was able to see in.

Holding their combined breath they waited until Charles turned off the device when the patrol was well out of sight.

Alan grunted.

“If that is what it is like to be blind I’ll give it a miss.” He said with a shiver.

“I could barely see them through it.” Salina said in awe.

“The rod was a present from a pair of Nazi spies Night and Fog, Nact and Webel. Mind you she, Night, didn’t realise she was giving it to me. They died in their own trap they had devised for me. The rod creates a total depriving of senses field. You can’t see, hear or feel when used at full power.”

“Remind me to be nowhere near you when you use it.” Rex stuttered.

A few moments later they were on the overgrown track to the fence. The bushes hid them from view as they neared the electric fence.

Carefully Alan removed from his pouch a length of wire with a crocodile clip at each end. He clipped one on to the electric wire where it was attached to an upright. He frowned and attached the other end to the next upright.

“There’s something wrong here. I don’t think they have reconnected the power at least not for the outer circuit.” He told Charles before gingerly reaching out his hand to touch the live wire. Nothing happened.

“That was a stupid thing to do!” Charles hissed.

“Yeah probably. We will still need to clamp them as we don’t know how long it will be down for.”

“Agreed, but no more daft stunts like that do you hear, my poor old heart can’t take the strain.” Charles rebuked jokingly with a grin.

Alan nodded with a grin of his own.

“Yes you poor old soul.”

It was hard to believe that they were all in their early twenties, all except Charles who was nearly thirty and considered as the old man of the group.

“Let’s get you inside little fellow.” Terry said with a smile.

Terry trotted over to the fence, turned and cradled his hand making a stirrup. Alan ran up and placed a foot into the stirrup. Terry drove his cupped hands upward propelling Alan up and over the two fences.

Alan twisted in midair and landed lightly on the other side of the two fences. Working quickly he attached a further piece of wire to the inner electric fence poles.

“Ready.” He whispered.

Theo undid the holster at his side and removed a slim control rod, the Cosmic rod, from it.

The Cosmic Rod was the seat of Terry’s power as Starman. The rod absorbed the energy radiating from the stars to create a powerful collimated beam or any number of effects including disrupting gravity in a small area.

Theo knelt and sent an energy beam into the wire links of the fence. Acting like a acetylene cutter it burnt through the first one as Theo slowly moved to the next, and the next. The others attempted to shade the light it created. Soon he had made a doorway in it large enough to get through. Once into the inner space he turned the rod on the inside fence between the wires that Alan had clamped.

In minutes the others were through, where Terry, with inordinate skill, closed the cut wire doors so know one on a casual look would think anything is wrong.

The group split up each with their own targets.

Theo took off and hovered in the air a moment to inspect the lay out of the grounds. From his lofty position he could see the mine fields by the disturbed earth. More importantly he could see the safe route through which was more that Charles and Terry could.

“Charles you’re in a mine field. Stay put and I’ll try and lead you out. Just do what I tell you. Right turn 180 degrees.”

While the three of them were involved in that Alan was approaching the incinerator.

In almost total silence he crept forward, his feet barely making a sound.

The closer he got the louder the sound of the flames were and he could feel the heat on his cheek.

The building resembled an old windmill tower with three massive chimneys where the sails should be bellowing thick black smoke. In the side were three windows. Hearing a screeching of a metal gate Alan peered in to see three emaciated slaves feeding the flames while two guards standing against the far wall trained their guns on them. The black garbed guards were taunting the slaves.

As he watched in horror he saw what was being fed into the flames. Corpses, human corpses. Dangling obscenely from the opening of the third furnace was the ankles and feet of a victim. He watched the feet drop to the floor as the flames burnt through the legs. A slave picked them up by the big toe and threw them in before shutting the squealing door.

Two other slaves had picked up a body that was obviously still alive, if only just, and fed it into the flames of the first incinerator.

Alan felt sick as bile burned at his throat as he noticed the body had three arms, the third one being from a woman.

Shaking himself he climbed up the rusty built in metal ladder to the roof where he took the bomb and timer out of his rucksack and checked them over. Satisfied he put them back. He carefully put the rucksack into a spot where it could be easily overlooked. With balletic grace he dropped to the ground as light as a feather to melt his way into the darkness.

Salina slinked her way along a wall that was the main accommodation block. Checking around her first she flicked her bullwhip out and around a light fitting. Swinging by the handle she landed on top of an overhang from where she could clamber over and onto the flat roof. She slinked across to a large skylight window set into its roof and peered in.

The room below was some sort of common room where off duty scientists came to relax with a beer and the papers. There was a small bar which an orderly served from. A backgammon game was in progress as was a chess match. A smattering of senior army officers were also present.

Leaving the window Salina clambered onto the roof and laid her explosive such that it would make the roofs of the two parts of the building collapse.

Skilfully she returned to the ground and like Alan vanished into the dark.

Wesley approached the main building, the research centre in a circular fashion skilfully avoiding the guards that patrolled the building.

He pulled out his grapnel gun pointed it at the roof of the building and fired it with a puff of compressed air.

It landed with a faint chink and with a click it’s bullet shaped head sprung open into a grapnel. It slid along the roof as Wesley reeled it in until it got caught in the railings around a vent and held fast. Seconds later Wesley was being pulled up rapidly to the roof as the pistol reeled the line in just as the guards came round the corner. Wesley hung there a moment until they had gone before clambering onto the roof.

Having made the roof he carried his briefcase full of gas canisters and hid it behind the ventilation shaft.

Unlike the others he didn’t stop there. He crossed to the doorway and slipped inside. He crept down the stairs into a laboratory that was by an operating theatre. In fact the scientist’s could see what was going on as the far wall had three large windows that looked into the operating theatre.

Along one wall was several side wards containing patients. Wes looked in. In the first bed was a woman who had macabre a male head grafted onto her neck. He didn’t need to see into the others, he had seen enough.

Tomorrow night this would be his target and he knew what he had to do.

Once outside he checked over his smaller bag of flares before hiding it in the vent itself.

He vanished into the darkness and was gone.

Rex guided by Theo up above eventually reached the slave workers compound.

Without a sound Theo dropped to the ground beside him.

“I have an uneasy feeling about this Starman.” Rex stuttered. “We are arming desperate people.”

Theo nodded.

“We are giving them a fighting chance.” Theo replied. “No I don’t like it either but it is the only way to look at it. And don’t forget the Unknown Soldier and his group of agents will be the main ones to use the weapons.”

Checking that the building was empty they took there rucksacks off and checked their contents. Rex’s had stun grenades, explosive and several hand guns with packs of bullets. Theo’s contained two deconstructed Sten guns or what were called in America, Tommyguns, a gangsters favourite.

They put the rucksacks in a cubby hole in what had once been the laundrette that was hidden from view.

Once done they slipped away.

Charles and Terry were the last to reach their objective, the elites quarters.

Terry took a set of lock picks from his utility belt and set to work on the door. With a soft click the door opened. Terry, with a satisfied nod, led the way in.

Standing in the entrance of a disused room was a painfully thin blank eyed teenager dressed in a sacking dress with a tight belt. On the right breast and the back was the Star of David, a Jewish symbol.

“I was told you would be coming tonight.” Her voice was a dead as her body. Hollow with every drop of emotion wrung out of it.

She lifted her dress up, exposing the bruised and cigarette burned white torso beneath. She reached up to her waist band and pulled out some papers She passed them across.

Theo glanced at them to find they were architects plans of the building and the rooms there in before passing them on to Charles.

“Thank you.” Charles said.

“I must go Heir Luft will be calling for me.” She told them.

“Are you his slave, child, his servant?” Charles asked gently.

“No, I’m his prostitute sir. His to whip, to burn and to rape as he wishes.

“How old are you girl?”

“Fifteen sir.”

“After tomorrow you will be free.” Terry said to reassure her.

“My body may be free sir but my mind will never be.” With that she left them too stunned to do anything to stop her.

The hero’s collected themselves and entered the room she had been standing at. It was a disused kitchen. The men stashed their rucksacks in one of the disused ovens. A bundle of flares and explosive.

They left as quietly as they had come.

Soon the hero’s were back at the electric fence.

“I want this place destroyed, raised to the ground, obliterated.” Alan said angrily after telling them what he had seen.

“Lets get back to the house. We’ll discuss what we have seen then.” Wesley instructed.

“Agreed Sandman. But I want to examine the breach in the fence that the bomber made. Will you come with me Cat?” Charles asked Salina.

“Yes of course.” She replied.

“The rest of you go back to the Fathers house and wait for us there.”

With that the pair of them disappeared into the darkness.

“I hope he knows what he’s doing.” Terry said before adding wryly. “I hope we all know what we are doing come to that.”

The bombers wreckage still smouldered as they neared it. They could see four black shirted guards patrolling the area.

The bombers breach of the wires seemed the obvious way to go if it wasn’t for the guards.

It was then that he saw in the bushes on the other side somebody waiting. Somebody with a shotgun. Marta!

It was imperative that they should reach her before her actions imperilled everything they were trying to do. But how?

If they were to move from the shadows to get across they would be instantly spotted.

An officer of some sort appeared with the relief guards.

While the guards were distracted Charles removed from a pocket in his gauntlet a loaded syringe. He slotted it into his air pistol, took aim and fired.

With a puff the syringe short across the intervening distance like a dart.

With a meaty thunk it imbedded into Marta’s neck, the impact activating the syringe to apply the full dose of sedative.

Marta looked down at the syringe in disbelief before slumping to the ground out like a light.

The officer walked away with the old guard completely unaware how close he had been to his own demise.

Once the officers were out of earshot the guards save one who didn’t smoke lit up their cigarettes.

Keeping to the bushes Charles and Salina approached the aircraft and waiting for their chance darted under the wing into its shadow.

Carefully working their way along the fuselage they reached the outside wires remains lying on the ground.

When the patrol was at it’s furthest point they dashed across into the bushes by Marta. They waited for a while to see if the guards had registered their movement. Once satisfied Salina took the shotgun as Charles got the limp form of Marta over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. They both scurried of.

When they got back to the priests house it was to find their colleagues back in their everyday clothes.

Monique came forward and helped Charles to lower Marta into a fireside chair before injecting her with something to counteract the sedative.

Marta shook her head to clear it as she came too.

Monique turned to the hero’s.

“Don’t think bad of her. When the guards first came to the centre they raped several of the women, and one of the men, when he had done with her, cut out her tongue as a macabre souvenir, and to stop her reporting him.”

“I see.” Charles said sadly. “But her action could have jeopardised everything we are striving to achieve.”

Marta watched them bleary eyed.

Terry turned to her and said clearly whilst signing.

“Before I leave I will have them punished for the harm they visited on you.”

She signed and mouthed two simple words that meant so much to her.

“Thank you.”

Tears welled up in her eyes. Monique sat on the arm of the chair and put a protective arm around her shoulder.

“Trust them mother. They will do what they say they will.”

“She is your mother?” Wesley asked as he dressed in his priests robes.

“She adopted me after my parents were killed.”

“I’m so so sorry.”

“Don’t be we are happy together.”

“Well what have we discovered?” Charles asked icily.

“They are doing experiments on the slave work force.” Alan said angrily. “I saw them putting the rejects into the furnaces. One was still alive, if only just, when they fed him to the flames. He had a woman’s arm grafted to his shoulder.”

Alan took a deep pull of his whisky in an attempt to remove the foul taste from his mouth.

“Spare part surgery.” Charles said irritated. “It’s a way of dealing with near critical combat injuries. If a trooper has his arm blasted off, say, you literally connect a new one. If it works all you need is donor limbs and organs.”

“You mean like the slave labour?” Terry asked in disbelief.

“Yes.” Charles snorted. “It is heinous. It is sacrilege, a vile travesty of the Hippocratic oath.”

“I took a quick look at the top floor of the medical research centre. It has a large operating theatre with glass walls for the scientists to watch through. There are also several hospital wards. I look into the side ward of one. Inside was a woman with a mans head grafted to her neck.” Wesley unlike the others didn’t show any anger just exasperation. “Why? Why do that? I don’t understand. What do they gain from doing that?”

“I believe the experiment was first carried out by a Russian scientist using dogs. It is an experiment to find out which head was the dominant one. Could the male one take over the females.” Charles told them. “I suggest we all turn in for the night as we are going to be busy tomorrow. Tomorrow night we will do the lift. Memorise everything you can that could be used to our advantage.”

“Tomorrow night are we going in, in costume?” Terry asked.

“Yes. Do you know I don’t care if it causes embarrassment to the government or not, I want it shouted from the roof tops that we stand against the Nazi government.” Charles bulled his right fist and thrust it out straight in front of him.

The others did like wise so they touched.

“May ‘Justice’ prevail.” Terry spoke the oath.

“‘Justice’ will prevail.” The others replied.

It looked like something a child would think up but it meant something deeper to the hero’s. Not having an official residence for planning and equipping the hero’s relied on ad hoc groupings when it transpired that each member has interest in the outcome.

The chant was created to give that feeling of combined purpose that a building would.

They gathered up their belongings and left as quietly as they arrived.

When they had gone Wesley gently called the women over to him.

“Please join me?” They crossed over unsure of themselves. “Please kneel?”

Once they were kneeling he gently cupped their chins in his hands and made them look up at him.

He smiled warmly and spoke to them gently.

“Lord God let me be brave enough to protect these two courageous women from the outfall, of what I must do tomorrow night. Give them peace and strength. Bless them in the name of your son. Amen.”

Wesley had started training in Holy Orders but changed his mind two years in when his father died leaving his business empire to him to control. If that reason appealed to his head the second one was from his heart. He met the DA’s daughter, Dian Belmont, and fell hopelessly in love. Dian was a strong willed woman who preferred to live in sin with Wesley than being married, a decision that sat well with him. He was just happy to have her in his life.

The two women crossed themselves before getting up. Their faces were set, their shoulders down. They had found a greater resolve, a hidden pool of courage, from those simple words.

“Monique contact England and let them know we strike tonight.”

The young woman crossed over to where the transmitter was hidden and sent the call.

The die was cast and only God knew who would survive the night.

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