Rolf's smoky eyes were alert, and his small, pale lips were pressed together. That, too, had been part of his training. He had worked hard to control his blinking. A warrior waited for an opponent to blink, then attacked. He had also learned to keep his mouth shut while drilling. A grunt told an opponent that a blow had worked or that you were struggling. And if your tongue were extended, a punch under the chin could make you bite it off.
Rolf felt strong and proud as he listened to the sluts and gays and moneymen beyond the hill on the movie set.
All of whom would die in the flames of Feuer. Some would perish today, most of them later. But eventually, through people like Karin and the famous Herr Richter, the world vision of Der F?hrer would be realized.
The young man's head was covered with a black stubble which barely concealed the fire-red swastika cut into his scalp. Perspiration from a half hour in the mask gave the hair a bristly, boyish shine. It also dribbled into his eyes, but he ignored it. Karin was big on military formality, and she would not approve if he wiped his brow or scratched an itch.
Only Manfred was permitted such liberties, though he rarely took them. Rolf enjoyed the discipline. Karin said that without it he and his comrades 'are like links which are not a chain.' She was right. In the past, in gangs of three or four or five, Rolf and his friends had attacked individual enemies but never an opposing force. Never the police or anti-terrorist squads. They didn't know how to channel their anger, their passion. Karin was going to change that.
To Rolf's right, behind the oak, Karin Doring finished removing Werner's uniform while the hulking Manfred Piper put it on. Once the corpse had been stripped to its underwear, the twenty-eight-year-old woman dragged it through the soft grasses toward a boulder. Rolf didn't offer to help. When they'd finally gotten a close look at the uniform, she'd told him to stand guard. And that was what he was going to do.
From the corner of his eye, Rolf saw Manfred squirm as he dressed. The plan required Karin and one of the men to get close to the movie set, which meant that one of them had to look like a Sichern guard. Because the guard had been so barrel-chested, the clothes would have looked ludicrous on Rolf. So although the sleeves were short and the collar was tight, Manfred got the job.
'I already miss my windbreaker,' Manfred said as he struggled to button the jacket. 'Did you watch as Herr Dagover came toward us?' Rolf knew that Manfred wasn't addressing him, so he said nothing. Karin was busy hiding Werner's body in the tall grasses behind the boulder, so she also didn't answer.
'The way he adjusted his badge and hat,' Manfred went on, 'took pride 9n his uniform, walked erect. I could tell he was raised in the Reich. Very possibly as a Young Wolf. In his heart, I suspect he was still one of us.' The cofounder of Feuer shook his large, bald head. He finished with the buttons and tugged the jacket sleeves as far as they would go. 'It's too bad that men of his pedigree get comfortable. With a little ambition and imagination, they could be of great use to the cause.' Karin stood. She said nothing as she walked to the limb where she'd hung her weapon and backpack. She was not the talker that Manfred was.
Yet, thought Rolf, Manfred is right. Werner Dagover probably was like them. And when the firestorm finally came, they would find allies among people like him. Men and women who were not afraid to cleanse the earth of the physically and mentally deficient, of the foreign-colored, of ethnic and religious undesirables. But the guard had tried to signal his superiors, and Karin was not one to forgive opposition. She'd kill him if he questioned her authority, and she'd be right to. As she'd told Rolf when he dropped out of school to become a full-time soldier, if someone opposes you once, they'll do it again. And that, she'd said, was something no commander could risk.
Karin picked up her Uzi, slipped it in the backpack, and walked to where Manfred was standing. The thirty- fouryear- old wasn't as driven or well read as his companion, but he was devoted to her. In the two years that Rolf had been with Feuer, he'd never seen them apart. He didn't know whether it was love, mutual protection, or both, but he envied them their bond.
When Karin was ready, she took a moment to slip back into the girl-on-a-lark persona she'd used on the guard.
Then she looked toward the hill.
'Let's go,' she said impatiently.
Putting his big hand around Karin's arm, Manfred led her toward the set. When they were gone, Rolf turned and jogged back toward the main road to wait for them.
CHAPTER FOUR
As he looked at the short stack of comic books on his bed, General Mike Rodgers wondered what the hell had happened to innocence.
He knew the answer, of course. Like all things, it dies; he thought bitterly.
The forty-five-year-old deputy director of Op-Center had awakened at 2:00 and had been unable to get back to sleep. Since the death of Lieutenant Colonel W. Charles Squires on a mission with his Striker commandos, Rodgers had spent night after night replaying the Russian incursion in his mind. The Air Force was delighted with the maiden performance of their stealth 'Mosquito' helicopter, and the pilots had been credited with doing everything possible to extract Squires from the burning train. Yet key phrases in the Striker debriefings kept coming back to him.
'…we shouldn't have let the train get onto the bridge…' '…it was a matter of just two or three seconds…' '… the Lieutenant Colonel was only concerned with getting the prisoner off the engine….' Rodgers had done two tours of Vietnam, led a mechanized brigade in the Persian Gulf, and held a Ph.D. in world history. He understood only too well that 'the essence of war is violence,' as Lord Macaulay put it, and that people died in combat— sometimes by the thousands. But that didn't make the loss of each individual soldier any easier to endure. Especially when the soldier left behind a wife and young son. They were only beginning to enjoy the compassion, the humor, and— Rodgers smiled as he thought back on the too-short life— the unique savoir faire that was Charlie Squires.
Rather than lie in bed and mourn, Rodgers had driven from his modest ranch-style home to the local 7- Eleven. He would be going to see gangly Billy Squires in the morning and wanted to bring him something. Melissa Squires wasn't big on candy or video games for her son, so comic books seemed like a good bet. The kid liked superheroes.
Rodgers's light-brown eyes stared without seeing as he thought once more about his own superhero. Charlie had been a man who cherished life, yet he hadn't hesitated to give it up to save a wounded enemy. What he'd done enobled them all— not just the close-knit members of Striker and the seventy-eight employees of Op-Center, but each and every citizen of the nation Charlie loved. His sacrifice was a testament to the compassion that was a hallmark of that nation.
Rodgers's eyes fogged with tears, and he distracted himself by thumbing through the comic books again.
He had been shocked that comic books were twenty times more expensive than when he was reading them— $2.50 instead of twelve cents. He'd gone out with just a couple of bucks in his pocket and had to charge the damn things. But what bothered him more was that he couldn't tell the comic-book good guys from the bad guys. Superman had long hair and a mean temper, Batman was a borderline psychotic, Robin was no longer clean-cut Dick Grayson but some brat, and a cigarette-smoking sociopath named Wolverine got his jollies ripping people apart with his claws.
If Melissa doesn't approve of SweetTarts, these sure aren't going to go down real easy.
Rodgers dropped the stack of comic books on the floor, beside his slippers. He wouldn't give these to a kid.
Maybe I should wait and buy him a Hardy Boys book, he thought, though he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to see what had become of Frank and Joe. The brothers probably had lip rings, choppers, and attitude. Like Rodgers, their father Fenton was probably prematurely gray and dating a succession of marriage-minded women.
Hell, Rodgers decided. I'll just stop at a toy store and pick up an action figure. That, and maybe a chess set or some kind of educational videotape. Something for the hands and something for the mind.
Rodgers absently rubbed his high-ridged nose, then reached for the remote. He sat up on his pillows, punched on the TV, and surfed through vividly colored vacuous new movies and washed-out vacuous old sitcoms.
