At base headquarters, the SS-Oberstgruppenführer was in charge of the day-to-day operations at Oberkoblenz Military Installation and he was not happy.
He shouted with indignation, “Find out who is responsible for causing this trouble on my base. I want his head.”
“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Rangsdorf saluted the General.
Wayne sped the jeep along and turned south in a path opposite the main entrance of the base. The roads of Oberkoblenz were empty.
“Bingo,” Wayne said as he saw a large, grassy airfield with different types and sizes of airplanes parked on it. He swerved the vehicle sharply to the left, onto the airfield, and then drove it up beside a single-engine, two-seated airplane. Wayne climbed out of the jeep and into the plane’s open-air cockpit. Thirty-eight yards away was an equipment shed. “Go over there and see if you can find two parachutes,” he persuaded Linda.
“Parachutes?”
“I went flying in a small plane like this with a friend once. I think I can fly it, but I’m not sure about landing it.”
“Glad to hear it,” Linda said sarcastically.
“Hurry up! Let’s go,” Wayne urged.
“I’m going, I’m going.” Linda ran to the equipment shed.
“Let me see,” Wayne thought aloud as he viewed the cockpit’s instrument panel, “all I have to do is what I saw Joey do when he took me flying with him.” He pushed a button on the control panel. Nothing happened. “Shit!” He tried flicking a switch up on the instrument board. The propeller commenced spinning as the aircraft’s engine came to life. “Alright,” Wayne said with relief.
Carrying a parachute in each hand, Linda ran back to the airplane, “I found them.” She tossed them into the cockpit and climbed aboard and sat next to Wayne.
Wayne pushed a lever down. The propeller spun faster as the plane’s engine worked at its full capacity.
A young Nazi private approached the plane, “Where is your authorization?”
Linda stuck a gun in the private’s face, “It’s right here.” He raised his hands and backed away slowly.
The small plane started to taxi away from the other parked aircraft and towards an open area of field.
A caravan of five military transport vehicles, holding a squadron of elite Waffen-SS soldiers, led by SS Sergeant Rangsdorf, screeched up to the naive private.
Rangsdorf, sitting in the lead automobile, inquired, “Has anybody entered this area within the last ten minutes?”
“Two people,” the private nervously answered.
Rangsdorf’s right eyebrow twitched, which was its habit when he became agitated. He asked, in a strangely subdued manner, “What did they look like?”
“They were young, sir,” the private, avoiding eye contact with the SS Sergeant, said. “A big man and a woman of average height with dark hair, sir.”
“You idiot!” Rangsdorf shouted. He raised his favorite pistol, one his grandfather had passed along to him, and fired it. The young man dropped to the ground, dead.
The single engine flying machine approached takeoff speed.
“I should tell you,” Linda said, “I’ve never been in one of these things before.”
“Don’t worry, there’s nothing to flying,” Wayne assured her. “It’s safer than being in a car.” He pulled the cockpit flight wheel towards him.
The airplane, with its refugees, lifted off right above the heads of the seasoned Sergeant and his Waffen-SS troops.
“You can fly this thing, right Wayne?” Linda tensely asked as the plane elevated.
Wayne glanced at the flyer’s compass, without paying attention to the words his passenger had spoken, “Just have to fly east to the Atlantic, then head south.”
“You didn’t answer my question, Wayne,” Linda said with annoyance. “You can fly this thing, right?”
“Well, we’re up in the air, aren’t we? It is not going to do you or me any good if you work yourself into a tizzy about flying. Now, sit back and enjoy the view.”
Fifteen minutes later, Waffen-SS soliders loaded onto a large F-343. SS Sergeant Rangsdorf was the last one to board. The pilot fired up the aircraft’s two sturdy engines.
With the last of the sun setting on the horizon, the fugitives were soaring over a glimmer of lights. “Almost there, almost there,” Wayne said pepping himself up. He looked out of the airplane and at the terrain that he glided so high above. “Want to know something, everyone down there?” he raised his voice. “Soon you’ll be yuppies driving BMWs and Mercedes, instead of Nazis.” He paused. “Why doesn’t that sound right?”
Linda was quickly turning green in the face. “Wayne, can you please keep it steady?” she asked. “I’m getting really nauseous.”
“She’s as steady as I can make her. It shouldn’t be much longer.”
The F-343 neared the coastline of the ocean. Next to the pilot, Sergeant Rangsdorf became fidgety, “Can’t we go any faster? We should have overtaken them by now.”
“I’m flying her as fast as I can, sir. This airplane was not built for speed. I think we should radio for backup.”
Rangsdorf fixed his iron gaze upon the pilot and said, “Are you suggesting that I am not able to handle the situation myself, Corporal?”
“No, sir,” the pilot bit his tongue.
A bleep sounded from the airplane’s radar tracking system and a small red dot appeared on its screen.
“I think we’ve got them, sir,” the pilot stated.
The Sergeant, envisioning a promotion as a reward for his capture of the fugitives, nodded his head, “Good. Very good.”
Nestled beneath the compact, piston powered plane, the bright lights of New Berlin City shone in the distance.
“New York, I’m coming home,” Wayne joyfully said. “I think I can see Times Square from here, or what used to be Times Square. Dick Clark would drop a big apple from there every New Year’s Eve to ring in the New Year. The streets would be lined with loads of people, not to mention the bums, pimps, hookers, and peep shows. That’s New York, not New fuckin’ Berlin.”
Mocking a German accent, he added, “They probably call it the Big Weiner schnitzel now.”
Linda slung her head over the side of the plane, vomited the small amount in her stomach, and she went pale.
“Are you okay, Linda?” Wayne asked.
“I am never getting in an airplane again as long as I live,” she said firmly.
Wayne heard the roar of the F-343’s double engines, not far off in the clear sky. “Damn! Don’t these guys ever give up?” he grumbled. Wayne slipped on a parachute and told his partner, “Put on your parachute.”
“You mean right now?”
“Right now. Just in case.”
“In case of what?”
“Just in case.”
The pilot of the F-343 glimpsed at his radar-tracking screen. He informed his superior, “Sir, we are almost on them.”
“Almost is not good enough,” Rangsdorf snapped. “I want to be on their asses.” The large F-343 nosedived.
The SS Sergeant ordered his gunner, “Fire on them.”
Bullets flew in the direction of the small plane. “Duck down,” Wayne said. He pushed in his flight wheel, causing the airplanes to swiftly fall away from its nemesis.
“Keep on them,” Rangsdorf barked.
From his position in his cockpit, Wayne was able to see the F-343’s gunner, with machine gun in place, preparing to fire on him. “Hold on!” Wayne shouted above the noise of the engine.
“What are you going to–”
Wayne pulled his flight control wheel all the way out, making the plane loop in the sky.
“Whoa, shit!” Linda exclaimed.
The Nazi gunner fired a hail of bullets at Wayne’s small plane, piercing the window of the aircraft and nailing Wayne in the shoulder.
“OW!” Wayne screamed and the plane tipped downward. Struggling, he leveled out the plane. Fresh blood had splattered like paint onto the flight wheel and covered Wayne’s shirt.
“Are you okay?” Linda peered out the window, trying to get a read on the other plane.
“They got my shoulder,” Wayne said, regaining his orientation after the aerial acrobatic he had just performed. “And no, it’s not a flesh wound this time. I feel something lodged in there.”
“Let me take a look,” Linda offered.
“Can’t worry ‘bout it now,” Wayne retorted. The predatory aircraft buzzed along at only 200 meters away just off to his left. “Can you keep an eye on them?
Linda replied, “I have been but I think I’m going to puke again. Next time, I’ll stick with a car.”
Sergeant Rangsdorf had his face pressed up against the front window. “Clip him.”
“What?”
“I said,” Rangsdorf maintained his calm, “I want you to clip his plane.”
“But sir, that could be suicide… for us.”
The Sergeant put his hand up to his cap, with its proud SS insignia, straightened it out on his head, and, in his dark tone, said, “Need I remind you of the penalty for failing to obey an officer’s command?”
The pilot didn’t have to think twice.
“No, sir,” he reluctantly said. “Hold on, this might get tricky.”
As the web of lights of New Berlin City glistened a mile below, the Reich F-343 closed in on the propeller plane, flying toward it in a sweeping motion with its big wings tilted at a forty-five degree angle.
Wayne steered his little flyer away from the F-343, but couldn’t shake him.
“What the fuck are they trying to do?” Linda watched in amazement as the F-343 got closer and closer..
“Whatever it is, they are absolutely insane.”
“Can you land?” Linda, her hair ruffled by the wind, anxiously questioned her pilot.
“Not yet. Not in the middle of New York. I’m looking for an field or something. Maybe an interstate.” Wayne again attempted to break loose of the F-343. The horsepower of his weak engine, unfortunately, was no match for it.
A loud screech and a horrific bump shook the small propeller plane. The left wing bent significantly from the impact of the deliberated collision. In an instant, Wayne’s plane, with an out of commission wing, spun from its level position with the Earth’s surface to an off centered seventy degree angle. With its right wing almost lateral to the ground below, it quickly lost altitude as gravity sucked it down.
To keep from falling out of the airplane, Wayne and Linda clutched hard at their seats. “We’ve gotta jump,” Wayne hollered.
Linda glanced down. “Oh god. Oh god. I don’t know if–“
“Yes, you can, damn it! We made it this far. There’s nothing to it. After you jump,” Wayne pointed to her parachute’s rip cord, “pull this cord. Now come on, JUMP!” he pressured. “The plane’s going to crash.”
Linda inhaled a deep breath, “Here goes nothing!” She lept from the cockpit. Wayne immediately followed her.
They plummeted through the atmosphere downward to the polluted planet below. Linda looked around as they fell, mesmerized by the sight.
“Pull your cord,” Wayne screamed at her as loud as he could with the wind rushing by his face. Stunned, Linda yanked on her ripcord and her chute was released. Wayne jerked on his cord, too. They proceeded to gently glide toward the Hudson river. The echoing boom of a small airplane crashing into an office building and bursting into flames rang out.
“Land this aircraft at Karl Göring airport,” Sergeant Rangsdorf, who had seen the refugees’ chutes open, instructed his pilot.
“They think they have nine lives,” he gritted his teeth, “but that will soon change.”
The Doenitz River, named for the Grand Admiral of the Reich Navy during the war and the head of its successful, deadly U-boat campaign, was silent except for fresh, tiny air bubbles that rose to its surface, and the rustle of two rather large pieces of umbrella shaped nylon fabric floating on its water. Two people surfaced, gasping for air.
Wayne spat out a mouthful of brownish liquid. “See new countries, or the countries that you thought you knew, learn new languages, get killed,” he sardonically said. “All you have to do is call Doctor Hoffmann’s time travel services.” Eyeing the murky river that he dog-paddled in, he observed, “Well, this river is just as dirty under Nazi rule.”
“I actually jumped out of an airplane. My first time in an airplane, no less.”
Wayne said, “You did great, Linda. Except you should have pulled your cord quicker.”
Linda ignored him, “We’re sitting ducks here. Let’s head out.”
The two of them struggled out of the water with their chutes. They bundled them up and began to wring the polluted water out of their clothes.
“I need to get to New York Uni-,” Wayne stopped and corrected himself, “the Center of Aryan Studies.”
“This city’s going to be crawling with Nazis after our little escapade,” Linda said. “Trust me — it would be way too risky to go anywhere near there now. I know a place where we can hide out for the night.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Wayne stated solemnly. “I don’t want to wait; I can’t wait. What I have to do is too damn important.”
“Are you sure that Hoffmann lady will be there?”
“I can figure out how to work the time machine, if I have to.”
Linda looked at his wounded right shoulder, swelling badly. “You need to have that taken care of,” she said.
“I’ll worry about it later,” Wayne stubbornly insisted.
“It’d be best to stay off the city streets as much as we can,” Linda gave in and sighed. Her feet started to walk along the riverbank. Wayne trailed close behind her.
They had only made it half a kilometer when the bright illumination of a helicopter searchlight cut through evening sky and enveloped them. “This way,” Linda trotted off, away from the shore.
The fugitives meandered their way into the dim, shadowy city streets. The helicopter kept a close tab on them with its spotlight.
“Do you know where you’re going?” Wayne asked.
“All too well,” Linda replied. They moved deeper into the maze of concrete and steel mountains. The building exteriors were adorned with fat, colorful balloons strung together like precious necklaces of pearls and banners with propagandized slogans, such as the one that read: THE FUTURE-FREEDOM, FATHERLAND, BLOOD AND SOIL! The abundant swastika flags were softly caressed by the limp spring breeze.
Wayne leaned his body against the wall of a brick building. “Hold on,” he said, rubbing his throbbing shoulder and trying to breathe. He was lightheaded from adrenaline crash and exhaustion. “Why all this parade crap?”
“Tomorrow’s some bullshit holiday,” Linda said. “Victory Day. It’s nothing more than the Nazis telling themselves how great they are. We only need to go a bit further.”
The searchlight lit the former slave laborers up like a pair of well-decorated Christmas trees. Sirens could be heard in the distance, headed closer in their direction.
“This way,” Linda said and directed Wayne down a narrow, quiet street lined with small shops. The searchlight persistently followed. The owners had long since gone home to their households; most had closed shop early in preparation for the next day’s big celebrations. Linda stopped and nodded at a manhole. “That’s where we need to go. Create a diversion while I remove the cover.”
“What kind of diversion?” Wayne, still feeling dizzy, asked.
“I don’t know. Run around or something. Then, once I’m in, join me as soon as you can.”
Wayne, thinking fast, moved quickly down the street and flung his left arm in the air to get the attention of the helicopter controller. It worked. The bright spotlight kept on him like a cat on a mouse. He rolled his body under a parked Volkswagen, part of it shrouded, even with the powerful illumination that sliced through the sky, in pitch blackness, thanks to the shade thrown off by a nearby tall building.
Linda, having slid off the heavy manhole slab, lowered her body rapidly into the ground.
“I’m in, Wayne,” she said with just enough volume necessary for her partner to hear.
Wayne crawled out from underneath the vehicle on its dark side. The searchlight stayed fixed on the Beetle. Wayne ran to the manhole. He entered its opening and slid the manhole cover back in its proper place just in time for Gestapo vehicles to pull up.