The Slumber of Dragons

A Short Story by Joel Oberdieck  <joberdie@rhf.bradley.edu>

 The night in the city was going to be especially cold tonight.  The sky had been overcast for almost the entire day, leading to a brief although torrential downpour in the mid-afternoon.  The streets of the Bronx outside the third-story apartment window that Leonard Jefferson Bennings now looked out were saturated from the July rainstorm and shone with a glimmer he remembered seeing from his bedroom window in Massachusetts many years ago.  He wondered if he would ever get to see his childhood home again, and, if he did, would the world of his youth still exist even there?  Like the final beams of sunlight of the day, his hope was growing faint as he looked out on what had once been the metropolitan heart of his country.
 Leonard turned away from the window, looking back into his temporary residence.  It was a simple apartment, three rooms, furnished with trappings of a world that now existed only in memory.  Strewn about the living room were such memorabilia as a 1946 Bing Crosby Christmas album, a chess set that looked to be a family heirloom, an assortment of furniture and coffee tables, and a 1939 globe, showing the way the world had looked in simpler times.  Leonard could easily identify each country on the globe, a skill greatly useful to a high school geography teacher, and could just as easily identify how few of those countries still existed.  South America was still correct north of Brazil, and most of North America was still as the sphere portrayed it.  Europe, Asia, and Africa, however, would require the globe to be completely redone.  Leonard had studied the globe many times in his short stay in this house, and it never failed to bring him almost to tears.
 From the couch on the wall farthest from him, one of his companions awakened from a light nap.  After a few seconds, he identified the distinctive fiery-red mane of Christina Marlow, the silent, violent one of the group.  She rarely chose to speak to anyone, but this time she approached the Leonard and the globe, looking down upon it with burning hatred.
 "Some day, we'll make those Nazi bastards pay for every inch of land they have taken."
 She didn't seem to be talking to Leonard as much as to herself; a brief vocalization of a burning obsession.  Without even acknowledging the presence of any other human being in the room, she walked out toward the kitchen, probably either to get a drink of water, or to find Eric, the group leader.  Leonard had always wondered why it was that she was so consumed by hatred for the Germans.  Admittedly, few people in the world had any real reason to love the Nazis, especially with them burning their way across half of New England and in control of or allied with most of rest of the world.  Still, Christina's hatred seemed much more personal than pure patriotism; even those in the group who had lost family in the invasion didn't show the level of unbridled hate she did.
 The only clue she had ever given as to the source of her rage was one she never spoke.  On the extremely rare occasions that she was seen without a full sleeved shirt (an oddity in mid July), Leonard had seen scars, almost like whip marks across her back.  She had never spoken of them, or even acknowledged their existence, but Leonard had always suspected that perhaps she had been interned briefly in the now-famous Ryker's Island concentration camp.  How she had escaped, if she had ever been there at all, was another issue entirely; the German's weren't known for inefficient security.  Still...
 His thoughts were interrupted by a summons from the kitchen.  Leonard quickly recognized the dry, youthful voice of Eric.  Walking into the small kitchen, Leonard saw, as he had expected, Eric sitting at the head of the four-seat dinning table.  Joining him at the table was Emmanuel, a Cuban immigrant younger even than the twenty-something Eric.  As far as Leonard knew, the rest of the group was still lounging around in the apartment across the hall, another gift from Eric's shadowy associates.  In all honesty, they had earned every second of rest they could get today.  After all, the four partisans across the hall (he assumed, rather hastily he decided, that all four had returned alive) had been the ones sent to purchase the fireworks for there little party tonight.  He silently cursed himself- he was even starting to think in code.
 "Its getting to be almost 8:00, Professor," Eric said in his familiar, mellow voice.  "If we're going to make our rendezvous with the Fish Man, we'd better get going...its a long way from here to the docks."
 "Is it really that late already?"  Leonard, slightly puzzled, tilted his head to the side and rolled his eyes back into his head.  After less than a second in this odd position, he returned his focus to Eric.  "Yeah...7:48...now.  I'll be damned.  I guess I just lost track of the time with everything that has been going on today"
 As Leonard spoke the time, Eric looked at his pocket watch in awe, but not surprise.  "I really hate that, you know.  Rotten little freak ability, if you ask me.  Still, it has saved us on a few occasions, so it can't be all bad."
 "Don't know where it came from...just an incredibly accurate natural clock, I guess.  It helped me allot when I was teaching.  Not one year went by when the students didn't try to set the clock five minutes ahead to get out early.  Not one year went by when I didn't catch them, either."  A smile briefly crossed his face at remembering the looks he got when he spat out exactly how many minutes late a student entered his class or when he kept time of oral presentations without a watch.
 He just barely noticed the icy look Christina was giving him for that last statement.  She had never been a student of his, but was about the right age.  And she was probably one of the type that would do anything they could get away with.
 "Now the only thing we have to worry about is whether or not our explosives decide to agree with the esteemed Professor Bennings as to when they are supposed to detonate."  Eric spoke the words with great sarcasm, but no malice. A war zone was no place for animosity between soldiers, a fact which Eric knew thoroughly.  He was too good a leader to alienate any of his half-dozen followers.
 "Well, if it really is this late, we do need to go.  Did you get the message across the hall already?"
 "Yeah, they'll meet us outside in a few minutes.  They have to pack up the ‘presents' before we get on the move. Hiding that much dynamite takes time, and this'll all be for nothing if we're caught.  I've already sent word to Fish Man and his buddies; they'll be waiting to give us our final instructions when we reach the harbor.  So, shall we be going, Professor?"
 "Just let me get the bag.  We don't want to forget that, now do we?"  After a few seconds of rummaging around in the bedroom the four temporary residents shared, Leonard emerged carrying a brief case.  It looked perfectly natural on him; he could easily have been one of the few lawyers that was left alive in the New York area coming home from a hard day of work.  That was what he was supposed to look like.  No one would have any reason to search the brief case and find the home made detonator that would, with luck, liberate New York City.  With a lot of luck.
 As the party passed down onto the street, dressed in clothes fitting what limited fashion there was in occupied America, the second party arrived.  They were another group of four, consisting of an old Cuban man named Santiago(with whom Emmanuel had fled to America just before Cuba joined the Axis), two sisters from the suburbs who had apparently been trapped in the city when the attack began, and an old Chinese shop owner named Libin.  The second party was dressed in rags and dirty clothes that had gone out of fashion years ago.  They were to play the part of bums, traveling to the riverside meeting separately from Leonard's party.  Only one party carried the explosives, and the other carried the detonator.  If one party didn't reach the rendezvous, there would still be time to pass the assignment on to another set of partisans. The two parties said their goodbyes and parted company; Leonard's party traveling by the rich streets and subways, Libin's party (for he was the unofficial second-in-command) traveling via the ghettoes.
 Last year at this time, Leonard would have been relaxing over summer break, taking a brief vacation from the hell that was high school education.  Now, he was walking across parts of the city he had never been to before, preparing to launch an assault against a German battleship with little more than some homemade explosives that he would have had students expelled for designing.  The odds were very low that this attack would make even the slightest dent in the German war effort, and even if it did, the odds of any of this party living to see that dent were lower still.  As he walked down the now vacant streets, hoping to avoid questioning by SS patrols as to why he was not obeying curfew, he couldn't help but wonder, over and over, what the hell he was doing here.

---------------------------------------------

 Leonard had started teaching in the New York public high schools just out of college.  He remembered well how excited he had been when he was hired to teach at one of the innumerable facilities of education (he briefly digressed to wonder what new name the Germans had given that school) for the 1939-1940 school year.  It was just a trial teaching, to see if the administration liked his style, but it was something.  Apparently they had liked his style...they had kept him for another seven years.
 He remembered that first year, teaching to unfamiliar freshmen faces about the shape of the world and the lines man had drawn across it.  He remembered, too, how after only a week of school, he had to re-write his description of European political geography, eliminating Poland from the syllabus as Hitler's Germany eliminated it from the map.  Being a student a politics and history as well as geography, he had attempted to keep his students involved in the events unfolding around the world, especially the conflict in Europe and the under-covered conflict in Asia.  Second semester, his class read the reports as Norway and Denmark vanished from the map.  Then came summer break, during which Leonard learned he had been hired back for another 3 years at least.  Apparently his teaching style had been appreciated by the students, who had made a it a point to indicate this to the faculty.
 Another school year opened, this time with Leonard being forced to completely redefine half the globe.  France had fallen over the summer, and now the world was holding its breath to see if England could escape extinction.  Following the spectacular achievement of the Battle of Britain, it appeared as though the Axis had met its match in the ultra-determined Churchill.  President Roosevelt spoke of giving aid to the British and imposing further sanctions on Japan for its aggression in China.  It still looked like a long struggle, but the British might just be enough to stop the Nazis.
 Then, all of a sudden, everything changed.
 
 From outside of his mind, Leonard smelled smoke.  What was it?  Had the wind caught some air from Ryker's Island and blown in the smell of burning...no.  The smell was much closer.  He looked around his still moving party.  As he turned behind him, he caught sight of the offending odor.
 "Are you out of your mind," he said in a whispered shout to Emmanuel as he knocked a cigarette out of the immigrant's mouth. "Do you want to get yourself killed.  You know those are prohibited, especially for the business class.  If the SS happened to see the flame from that, they would be on us in a second!"
 "Speaking of the Sadists," Eric chimed in, "its late enough that we can't justify being out in the open anymore.  I say we make for the subway; there should still be plenty of people down there.  The leather-men may still patrol it in force, but they will only bother troublemakers or those that don't look ‘racially pure' enough for their approval."
 There was general agreement, and the group scurried underground for cover.
 As far as Leonard was concerned, the world had begun to end in March of 1941.  With only a month and a half left of school, Leonard had been anxious for the summer to begin.  Then came the gunshot heard around the world.  On March 15, those infamous Ides that all literary students know to avoid, a pro-Nazi Irish nationalist fired a killing blow into Winston Churchill's head during a speech at a Glasgow shipyard.  Within days, Lord Halifax had assumed control of the government, and with the aid of a conservative Parliamentarian named Clement Attlee and certain minor dukes whose names eluded Leonard at the moment, was in virtually total control of England.  Realizing the weakened situation of Britain and her colonies, Halifax sued Hitler for peace.  On May 1, 1941- a day Leonard would always remember- Halifax signed a very favorable separate peace accord with Nazi Germany and Italy and agreed to end all embargoes against Japan.  The transition from war to peace went relatively smoothly fro the British, despite the chaos of demobilization, the rebellion of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and the bloody retributive strike against the Irish Republican Army for its involvement with the Nazis.  In effect, Germany had won Europe, at least until the British rebel colonies could get allies and return to the continent.
 Those outposts would find little hope of allies in America in those days.  Most of America cheered at the Brussels Accord.  It had, after all, saved the last outpost of democracy in Europe from starvation or extinction, and had taken the German U-boat menace out of the Atlantic.  To the Americans, Brussels had just saved the free world and had protected America from another potentially devastating war.  Now, American ships roamed unchecked into repaired British ports and, while relations with Berlin were far from friendly, limited trade was reopened to continental Europe.  On the other side of the world, trade embargoes against Japan were judged to be too impractical for America alone to maintain and dangerously antagonistic.  Isolationism was on the upswing, and nobody wanted to inspire a war in to the west when they had just escaped one in the east; the embargoes were lifted, and Japan finished carving up China.
 Leonard's second summer break had been no less eventful than the first.  In June, 1941, the Germans and many of their continental allies invaded Russia.  What followed the initiation of Operation Barbarossa was the longest, most drawn-out struggle since the end of the Great War.  In the four years of war that followed, the Germans pushed across endless expanses of Russian steppe, only to have it taken from them again at the coming of the Russian winter.  The entrance of Japan into the conflict in July of 1942 had sealed Russia's fate, but the Great Bear refused to die easily.  Across cities that had once been named Leningrad, Stalingrad, Moscow, Irkutsk, and Vladivostok (Leonard didn't know the new German names of those places...the few of them that still existed, anyway), the Red Army fought until they ran out of bullets, then until their knives were too dull to cut.  In the end, though, the Axis powers were too much for the Russians to fend off.  On October 23, 1945, the headline ran across America "Last Red Stronghold Surrenders!"
 In America, the people had been divided over which side to cheer for during the Russian campaign.  Most people didn't want the Germans to gain the power it would acquire by beating the Soviet Union, but had no desire to see Communism stretch across Western Europe, either.  The hope of most Americans was that the two enemies of democracy would eliminate each other...then Britain and maybe the U.S. could go into Europe and Asia and pick up the pieces.  Above all, Americans didn't want to get into a war on either side; Roosevelt had lost re-election in 1944 to the isolationist Dewey for even proposing aid to the Soviets.  Looking back, Leonard realized how wrong America had been to let the Russians collapse.  America had learned all too well the price of turning a blind eye to the events of the world.

 "Hey Pedro, give me yur watch!"
 The shout was coming from nearby on the subway car, a large man wielding a knife, was motioning toward Emmanuel.  The train was crowded and moving remarkably slow, or at least seemed to be.
 "That's right, you.  Give me the watch or slit yur goddamn throat!"  The man seemed more confident, as several of his friends rose up to join in the intimidation.  Emmanuel sat unmoving, while Eric subtly reached for his gun.  Leonard knew that if Eric pulled the gun, the SS men everybody knew were here would be on the group in a second, and so much for the mission.
 Suddenly, a gunshot rang out and the lead thug dropped, his head spewing blood.  Two men stood up from opposite sides of the car, both casually pulling on black leather jackets while training their guns on the remaining two would-be muggers.
 "You will drop your weapons and prepare to disembark the train or you will be executed.  You have five...four ...three..."  Two knives dropped to the floor of the train.
 "But he's just a spic, he's an untermensch..." one of the goons attempted to justify himself as best he could with an SS man pointing a gun in his face.
 "... that is part of a people under the Reich's protection.  I would suggest you note that for future reference, you scum.  And do not dirty the language of the Reich by speaking it...ever again!"
 Leonard felt sure the next thing he would hear would be another gunshot as the annoyed SS man opened fire.  Instead, his partner turned toward the group and asked them to present their identification papers.  Some excuse that he had to make sure they were law abiding citizens and that those who had just attacked them weren't entitled to some bounty for the capture of fugitives.  Once the two SS men were satisfied by the fake ID papers Eric's group presented, they sat back down.  It took Leonard a few seconds to be disturbed by how few people on the train had even flinched at the whole incident.

 After January of 1946, the mood of the nation had changed dramatically.  Leonard remembered listening to President Dewey giving his New Year's chat on the radio, talking about how America was threatened by the dominance of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.  As Leonard recalled, just about everybody that he had talked to during this period knew that, sooner or later, the Germans would come for America, too.  It was just a question of how soon and whether or not Germany would deal with the persistent thorn that was the British colonies.  On the President's order, more resources began to be shipped to Australia, and a pact of continental defense was signed between the states of North America.
 The Germans had begun making treaties with Latin American states in March of that year.  First Argentina and Chile, then Cuba, then they got permission from Britain and Vichy France to use their Caribbean possessions as bases of operation.  The U.S. navy had been put on full alert, and the army was ready to fight any attack.  Even though the people had lost the confidence of having two oceans to defend them, they were still confident they could repel an assault.  After all, the Germans had never been very interested in amphibious operations.  That's why they hadn't invaded Britain in 1940...right?
 And then, on June 15, 1947, less than a month ago, now, the storm had broken.  It had been D-Day, the Day of Disaster.  Early that morning, waves of bombers had swooped in and caught most of the U.S. Atlantic fleet in harbor, decimating it.  Leonard had awaken exceptionally early that morning for one reason or another, only to turn on the radio and hear the reports of America being smashed in her own waters.  The Coast Guard was put on full activation, and a makeshift navy of anything that could float and carry weapons was put out up and down the Atlantic coast.  Army units and the National Guard were rushed into the coastal cities to deal with the expected follow-up invasion.
 At 2:17 am, on June 18, 1947, the invasion fleet was spotted, coalescing off the Virginia coast and moving north.  Every fighter and bomber that was in range was sent to engage the fleet, hopefully stopping some of the landing craft before they got to their destination.  Waves of improvised battleships attacked, but the escorting firepower was just too heavy to brake.  Many of the invasion fleet were stopped, but too many survived.
 That night, thousands of German and other Axis soldiers came ashore on Long Island and began moving inland through the half-empty city of panicking people.
 Through the fires and the chaos, as soldiers fought building to building, Leonard had hidden in the sewers as the front lines advanced over his apartment.  After the front lines had passed him by, he had spent several days figuring out what to do next.  He couldn't get out of the city, and he couldn't just count his losses and work with the Germans either.  One day, while purchasing some fish for dinner, the shop keeper, his old friend Libin, had asked him if he wanted a chance to help his family that was fighting outside of the city.  With no more hesitation than it took to see if there were German spies watching, he answered yes.  That was when he had met Eric in the basement, and the resistance cell was born.
 
 The four partisans stood outside a warehouse near the harbor.  The smell of the sea was enhanced into a knife-edge by the cold wind that carried it.  The area here was desolate, littered with bullet holes and puddles from the earlier storm.  Desolation was sort of the point, though; neither the Fish Man nor his associates liked to be seen when conducting business.
 Minutes after entering the grey wastes, the second partisan group appeared.  The only problem was, there were only three members present; Libin had vanished.  After the identities of the approachers were confirmed and both sides put away their weapons, Leonard approached one of the sisters.
 "What happened to Libin?  Is he ok?"
 "He's dead, Leo.  We ran into a goon patrol in the sewers.  We finished them off, but they got Libin before we could stop them.  I'm sorry, I know he had been a friend of yours.  If it makes you feel any better, he got two of those Nazi lackeys before they shot him."
 Leonard recoiled in shock.  Libin had been a good friend, almost a father to him after he moved to the city.  Now he was dead.  He would be mourned for, if the opportunity appeared ever again.
 As Leonard wrestled with his emotions, Eric proceeded in a businesslike fashion.  "You ran into a patrol, huh?  Great.  Just great. When that party doesn't check in, the Nazis'll start rampaging the city for any sign of odd activity.  And if they get near the docks before we are done..."
 "They won't.  My boys made sure oh tha..."
 Guns were drawn instantly and aimed at the shadow from which the thickly accented voice had originated.  "Hey, hey, its just me..."
 "On the hill of Har Megido, in the Fields of Jezebel..." Eric shouted.
 With a sigh, the shadows replied, "...forces black as night assembled, lo the hoary hoards of hell.  Jeez, you think you could come up with a better recognition phrase than the rantings of a street bum."
 "I always liked that poem, Michael."
 "You better have, corporal, seeing as how I wrote it," answered another, Midwestern-accented voice from the shadows.
 "We better take this little party inside now," stated Michael, "its cold out here."
 
 Moving into the warehouse, the now reunited group looked once again upon the faces of their patron saints, Don Michael Faradochi and the U.S. Army Major known only as Firefly.  Faradochi was one of the few Mafia Dons left alive after the Nazi blood purges, and an essential ally in any assault on the harbor, an area he claimed control of when all of his competitors were mysteriously shipped to Ryker's Island.  Some members of the group had always wondered if Faradochi had given his competition to the Nazis in exchange for power, but nobody really cared.  He kept the group alive and safe from most Nazi investigations, that was enough.  Firefly, so named for his blazing red hair, was Faradochi's government contact.  He and Eric had been ordered to stay behind and form resistance cells inside New York after the front lines shifted outside the city.  Any big plans of the government came down to the partisans through him.
 "Alright, seeing as how you are all here- you got all the gear here, right?- we will get started," began Firefly.  "As I am sure you are all at least vaguely aware, ever since the first landings a month ago, the Germans have maintained a nearly uninterrupted convoy system from Western Europe to New York City.  This place is, after all, to be the thorn in the side of the Reich's last great threat.  Anyway, our soldiers are fighting like mad against the Germans, but as long as those convoys keep coming, we're in trouble.  The Germans have the full resources of Europe and Asia backing them up, and we can't compete with any real guarantee of victory if those resources are all available to dump against us."
 " Now, we can't just take out the convoys, it isn't that easy.  If we still had a fully functional Atlantic fleet, we might have a chance.  But as you know, most of our fleet was destroyed on the Day of Disaster, and we haven't come close to rebuilding yet.  Its kinda hard to build ships when the harbors are bombed daily.  The fleet that survived and escaped has been attacking the convoys, but the Germans threw their entire Atlantic and Mediterranean fleets into convoy escort.  Nothing we got can get through that...nothing."
 "That's where you guys come in."
 Reaching into his briefcase, Firefly pulled out a picture of a magnificent battleship, anchored in a German harbor.  " This is the Tirpitz, last major German-built battleship on the high seas.  She has been running convoy duty for three weeks, and for tonight, the crew is being given leave in the city.  The ship should be mostly vacant.  This is your target.  We believe that this ship is one of the keys to liberating New York."
 "Excuse me, but how exactly is destroying one battleship going to open up the convoys to attack, if that is what you are proposing?  If we take out one ship, the Germans will just send more."  Emmanuel rarely spoke in military terms, but this time, he had expressed the collective thoughts of the entire group.
 "Oh, why not tell you, security be damned!  Its all part of the Philadelphia scheme, which has been coordinated..."
 "Philadelphia Scheme," blurted Faradochi, "Ha! Is that what they are calling it today?  I rather liked Operation Majestic...much nicer ring to it.  And who could forget Operation Roswell, God only knows where they came up with that one.  As far as I can tell, they named that one after the hometown of one of the tacticians' aunts..."
 Firefly cut him off with a stare that everybody there knew meant that, under different circumstances, it would have been replaced by gunfire.
 "Anyway, have any of you ever heard of the Maquis?"
 "The French Resistance movement," asked one of the sisters.
 "Yeah, them.  Well, our attack is being timed to coordinate with an assault by the Maquis on the main convoy staging area in Brest.  It will be enough for one of our ships to get into the harbor and open up on the escort fleet that British intelligence tells us is massed there."
 "I didn't think the British were supposed to have an intelligence division anymore," stated Leonard.
 "Well, apparently my family and I aren't the only ones in the world who are willing to ignore a piece of paper to do what is right," Faradochi smugly chimed in.  The looks that got silenced the room for several minutes.
 " Wait a minute," Eric blurted out, "one ship?  What good is one ship going to do against the entire German Atlantic Fleet?"
 "Trust me, corporal, with the some of the weapons I'm told our boys in Brazil have cooked up, one ship full of famliless crewmen will be more than enough to shut down the convoy escorts for a few months.  All we have to do is take out the main ships the Germans have over here and the Atlantic lifeline is cut, at least for a while.  Hopefully, long enough for our soldiers to recapture the city and prevent the Germans from keeping their little foothold.  That's all the higher-ups will tell me."
 "You guys better get going," Faradochi concluded, "the prime time for an assault is three in the morning, which is in an hour.  I've bought you a clean run all the way into the ship itself.  Past that, you need to put your charges in the armory and blow them...that should take out the whole thing.  Good luck, and hope to see you when you get back."

 As the Fish Man had promised, the group was able to work its way to the dock of the Tirpitz with little difficulty.  Apparently, the crew of the ship was out enjoying themselves, as the only Germans the group encountered en route was a trio of drunken sailors attempting to solicit a prostitute.  With any luck, Leonard thought, that prostitute was another partisan, and at least one of those sailors was going to wake up dead tomorrow.  Leonard paused briefly in his mind to consider how odd that thought really was.  None of the sailors looked more than 19; they were no different than some of his former students, and yet he sought to kill them.  The war really had changed him.  He wondered briefly, in the blink of an eye, if he would ever be able to teach again after this.
 Before the seven stood the behemoth that was the Tirpitz, last battleship built by the Germans.  She was monstrous, a great juggernaut of destruction.  How many American raider ships had she killed?  How many thousands of soldiers had she escorted safely across the stormy Atlantic?  It seemed a bit of an irony to Leonard that the ship would die, if all went well, in a land that even Hitler himself had claimed was not her destiny.  But, irony be damned, this had to be done.  If America was to survive, this had to work.  Leonard had always wondered how well he would do under pressure.
 "Alright, lets go."  Three simple words from Eric, but enough to make all seven people flinch slightly.  But go they did.
 Christina led the way in.  She had studied the layout of the ship on several scouting missions over the last two days.  Once onboard the ship, the partisans quickly scrambled below deck.
 "This way.  We need to get to the ammo room without being seen.  We'll use the ventilation ducts," she whispered.  One of the sisters opened the air vent and the seven filed in one at a time, with Eric going in last.
 "Time?"
 A brief pause. "3:09"
 "Ok.  Give me a time when we reach the ammo dump."
 Crawling through tunnels that led God-only knew where, Leonard couldn't help but feel like some sort of rat.  His brief case was being carried on his back, and he was now acutely aware of every crease in it.  His senses were going wild.  He could feel his heartbeat, he could make out each individual breath in that air shaft.  He only prayed that there wasn't a German left on the ship that had senses acute enough to pick up the sound of seven people crawling through an aluminum tube.
 Christina gave the signal for the group to exit.  As they did so, they found themselves in a room deep in the bowels of the ship.  The air was filled with the smell of gunpowder and smoke.  The room was filled with shells, thousands of them in racks, piles, or just lying scattered about.  This was the place where the breath of the dragon was stored.  But, as dragons often do when they become confident, this dragon slumbered.  There was no sign of movement in the room; the manning team had been put out on leave for the weekend.  This was a perfect opportunity.
 "Time?"
 "3:28"
 "Ok.  Set explosive timers for 25 minutes, to start on my mark.  Lets just hope the watches we stole are worth the fifty bucks the shop people wanted for them."
 Minutes passed as charges were set on every major cluster of explosives.  When this went off, it was going to be spectacular.  All the group had to do was somehow escape alive, and they were all set.
 The main door to the room opened, and a young German stepped into the door.  Upon seeing the group he called out something in German, but Leonard wasn't entirely sure what.  The answer was a poorly aimed gunshot from Christina that, while causing no damage to the night watchman, sent him scrabbling for the door as quickly as possible.  Christina pursued him, determined not to let one of her hated foes escape.  The sound of a blaring alarm coming from outside was followed almost immediately by another gunshot.  This, in turn, was followed by a series of profanities uttered by Eric as Christina ran back into the room.
 "Are the charges set," Eric shouted across the room.
 "Yeah, but we don't have timers set yet, and we can't just run and blow it manually either."
 "Shit.  That means somebody has to stay and detonate the charges here."
 "I'll do it," uttered Santiago.  "I'm old.  I'd just slow you down, anyway.  Give me the detonator.  They won't get into this room."
 "No, wait.  You can't slow them down enough by yourself, old man," shouted Emmanuel across the chaos.  "Give me a gun, and I'll stay with you."
 "No time to argue, we got to get out of here.  Give us as much time as you can.  We need at least fifteen minutes to escape."  The trade was made and Leonard, Christina, Eric, and the sisters departed out the air vent.
 Climb faster.  Must go faster.  Heart racing.  The crawl had been accelerated into a run.  The friction was painful, causing Leonard to wish he could turn off the feeling in his legs.  Must keep going.  Five minutes since departure.  Ten minutes.  The partisans had abandoned any hope of actually moving undetected through the pipes.  Eleven minutes.  Christina indicated they were close to exit point.  Thirteen minutes.  They were out.
 The group emerged into the hallway in which they had entered the ship.  A sailor stood in the hall, he turned as Christina exited the air shaft.  He managed to shout half of the word halt before his lungs erupted into a bloody spray under the force of a pistol shot form Eric's emerging gun.  In a full run, the partisans made for the deck.  Once on the top of the ship, Eric shouted out to the five who remained:
 "We can't climb down.  No time.  Make for the stern and jump!"
 No arguments.  The five ran.  As they neared the massive swastika painted on the deck at the vessel's rear, gunshots rang out from behind them.  They weren't pistol shots, more like a machine gun shot amplified a thousand times.  One of the sisters exploded, dropping to the deck in a pool of what was once herself.  The remaining four instinctively varied their running patterns into random swerves to prevent whatever was firing from locking on.
 "Christ! They're training AA guns on us!" Those were the last words shouted by Eric as he turned to see the source of the fire.  The gun trained on him, and he was no more.
 Diving for cover behind a small bunker on the deck, the three that remained sought a way to avoid the inevitable.  "Leo, how long do we have?"
 "Eighteen minutes since we left them behind.  Any time now."
 "Ok, you two go for the edge, I'm going back and try to take out that gun."
 "Christina, you can't! What good will it do?"
 She pulled out one stick of dynamite and a match.  "If I die, I'm taking some of those bastards with me.  Time to make them pay."  Without another word she had dashed off toward the gun.  After a second delay, the remaining sister and Leonard dashed off in the opposite direction without looking back.  Faster.  Faster than he had ever dreamed possible, they were preparing to leap the edge like it was a miniature hurdle.  He barely perceived the sound of gunfire in the distance.  He just barely felt a bullet rip through his back, piercing just below his left lung.  Then the jump.  And then, the infinite fall, broken only by the cold embrace of the Atlantic.

 Nineteen minutes since they had left the ammunition room.  Leonard floated alone in the water.  The other sister had been hit in the shoulder during the jump and had sunk when she hit the water.  He was sure he had heard a small explosion on the deck as he fell; Christina was dead, as was everyone else by now.  Leonard would join them soon.  He could do little more than float with the wound in his side.  If the explosion happened, he would be too close to escape.  If it didn't, he would drown when he got too tired to float.  He looked up at the ship one last time.  As he did, a pillar of fire erupted out of it.  In the light it cast, he could see the sky had cleared.  The morning would have sunlight.  He took one last, gasping breath, and sank beneath the waves forever.