Red Inferno

CHAPTER 18

Sirens went off just as the sound of machine guns shattered the night. Logan jumped off his cot and tried to orient himself. Yeah, he was in the bunker and it was the middle of the night.

More gunfire, and it was coming from the lakefront. It was in their rear. Dear God. Had the Russians gotten behind them?

Dimitri burst in. “Logan, I’ll take over here. You find out what’s happening. The radios are in chaos with everybody yakking away.”

Logan dashed out of the bunker and grabbed a bicycle. With gas and vehicles at a premium, many civilian bikes had been confiscated. He pedaled as quickly as he dared. The roads were cratered and the only light came from the sky, although explosions improved visibility as he got closer to the waterfront.

Searchlights from both sides of the Havel swept the area and illuminated scores of small boats heading toward him and coming from the Russian side. The Reds were attacking what they hoped was the vulnerable American rear. A lot of people had said the Commies wouldn’t attack across the water, and they were very wrong.

Logan spotted a very anxious General Miller giving orders. Several of the Russian craft had been hit and were either sinking or burning, but the remainder were pressing on. In the inconsistent light, it was impossible to figure out how large an attack it was. A Sherman tank rumbled beside him and stopped. The main gun fired and the shell landed between two boats filled with Russian soldiers, spilling them into the water. The tank’s machine guns raked several other boats. Logan gulped, recalling his crossing of the Elbe. That could have been them when they’d crossed that river an eternity ago if the Germans had tried to contest the crossing.

More American tanks arrived and joined in, while additional infantry with machine guns and BARs began to rake the Russian boats. There weren’t as many as before and the survivors were turning back. It was over.

Jack pedaled back to the bunker and his captain. After hearing the brief report, Dimitri nodded. “We were lucky. We were able to send our reserves to the water rather quickly. What do you think might have happened if the Reds had been smart enough to coordinate that attack with a land one?”

Logan told the captain that he really didn’t want to contemplate that. Instead, he again went looking for Lis and told her what had gone on.

She started to shake. “One of these days they will succeed.”

Jack held her tightly until she calmed down. He told her everything would be all right, but he knew that was a lie. Food was becoming short and so was ammunition. A few more attacks and they’d be defending Potsdam with rifle butts.

And when was the last time they’d seen an American plane? As the Soviets moved westward, they made the flight from the American lines ever longer and more treacherous. Hell, it’d been a long flight for American fighters when they’d crossed the Elbe, and that river had been crossed by the Reds a long time ago.

“We’ll make it, Lis, I promise.”

“How can you say anything like that?” she asked with a tentative smile. She wanted to believe his brave words but knew better. “Are you telling me you have a plan?”

“Sure. Actually, I have several plans.”

This was a true statement. He spent much of his free time devising plans. The only problem was, none of them appeared workable. He kissed her quickly and headed back to his platoon.

He had the sinking feeling that Goddamn Potsdam had been forgotten by the rest of the world.

General Marshall shifted in his chair and looked at Steven Burke. They were surrounded by boxes and other evidence that, once again, SHAEF headquarters was going to be moved in deference to the Soviet air force, whose planes were constantly searching for it.

“You requested five minutes of my time, Colonel; well, you’re in luck. I can give you fifteen.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now sit down and tell me what went on at Bitburg.”

Burke was just a little surprised that the chief of staff would have known of his trip to the Russian POW camp. But only a little. Marshall had a reputation for knowing exactly what was going on, particularly regarding members of his staff.

“Sir, one of the reasons I went there was to talk with the so-called average Russian POW and find out how he felt. A second reason was to try to confirm or refute a rumor that a great number of recent prisoners were not Russians; that, instead, they were Asians from places like Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan, or even Siberia.”

“Yes,” said Marshall, “we had picked up on those rumors as well.”

That statement somewhat deflated Steve, who had hoped he had stumbled onto something new. “Well, sir, I can confirm the presence of the non-Russians in large numbers. I can also say that those Russians we have in custody are very confused and not particularly enthused about the war against the United States.”

“Few prisoners would be,” Marshall said drily.

“General, based on my own interrogations and, after reading the reports of others, I believe the Russians may have suffered far greater losses in the last offensive against Germany than we first believed. I heard too many stories of depleted units, massive casualties, fuel and ammunition shortages, and lack of food for all these rumors to be lies. They all fit too well together. Simply put, they are running out of good manpower as well as supplies.”

“So are we,” Marshall said, “which is why we are drafting eighteen-year-olds. And I suppose it explains the use of Asians by the Reds. They’ll make good cannon fodder until the Russians reconstitute their army.”

“Yes, sir. Or at least that’s part of it. I believe that the Soviets are letting their second-echelon troops both inflict and take heavy casualties in an effort to wear us down. When the time comes, I believe the Reds will use their remaining elite Guards to great effect, but not until the second-and third-rate soldiers, the Asian rifle divisions or penal units, have bloodied us very badly, even though they would have destroyed themselves in the process.”

Marshall nodded. “That pretty much confirms what the others have been saying. Now, tell me what’s going on in Stalin’s mind as a result of all this.”

“Sir, it is totally unlike him to do anything impulsive or irrational, so I think he’s thought this out very clearly. He has a dread of being surrounded and attacked simultaneously by non-Communist, or capitalist, countries. This would include a resurgent Germany and an American presence in Europe. By taking all of Germany, he can eliminate at least one of his major problems. If he forces us out of Europe, he will have eliminated the second. The other countries of Europe will fall to him like dominoes.”

“A charming picture.”

“He would then be free to incorporate the resources of a Communist Germany as a military ally.”

Marshall arched his eyebrows. “What makes you think Germany would become Communist? Would the people do that after experiencing fascism?”

“Sir, they would have no choice. In one of his speeches he said something to the effect that an occupying or conquering power will always impose its own economic or social system on the occupied. This would be consistent with his stated aims of exporting the Communist revolution to all corners of the globe. Sir, give him a decade and every good little German will be a good little Communist, instead of a Nazi.”

Marshall stood and leaned over the desk. “But what if we stop him, Colonel? What if our defenses hold, as I believe they ultimately will?”

“Sir, this is where his ruthlessness and his ideology meet. Let’s say we stop him before Antwerp, which is his obvious goal, and he is also unable to cross the Rhine. Well, we then have a stalemate and he is the winner because he will still have conquered the lion’s share of Germany.”

Marshall’s eyes were hard. “But Burke, what if we attack and drive him back to Russia?”

Burke managed a small smile. “General, despite what I’ve heard about General Patton’s recent quotes about burning the Kremlin with Stalin inside, I don’t think that’s going to happen and neither does Stalin, and I don’t think you do either. It’s all rhetoric.”

This time Marshall’s voice had an edge to it. “Go on.”

“Sir, we still have Japan to finish off. In the event of a stalemate, we would be on the horns of a dilemma. Either we negotiate an armistice with the Reds and then invade Japan, or we sit here with our army and ignore the Japs. Sorry, sir, but I don’t see the American public standing for a long-term stare-down between the two armies while the Japs go scot-free. I also don’t see the American public permitting its armies to suffer hundreds of thousands of casualties so we can liberate a bunch of ex-Nazis from the clutches of a man we just recently called ‘Uncle Joe.’ I don’t know the figures, but I would guess we have suffered a lot of dead and wounded in the last few weeks. Rumor has it at a hundred thousand. I hope to God it’s not true.”

Marshall sat down. A look of sadness crossed his face. “Burke, it’s more like a hundred and fifty thousand. About forty thousand more are missing and most likely prisoners of the Reds and will be pawns in any peace negotiations. And that doesn’t count those surrounded in Potsdam.”

Burke was shocked. “I didn’t know it was that bad.”

“If it’s any consolation, the Russians are suffering far worse, but then, that was their plan, wasn’t it? They have the numbers and the will to absorb all we can give them and keep on coming, don’t they?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Stalin’s a cunning and ruthless bastard, isn’t he?”

“Yes, sir. I should also add that he probably thought of the previous war between the Allies and Germany as little more than a civil war among capitalist nations. The fact that he had been dragged into it was fairly irrelevant, although very inconvenient. Again, sir, he is willing to throw away lives in the taking of an objective now because he feels it might not be achievable in the future. Why he feels that way right now, I do not know.”

There, thought Steve, once again there was that almost imperceptible flicker across Marshall’s face. He decided to try something. “Sir, it would almost seem that he fears we have some sort of secret weapon, just like the Nazis were always bragging about.”

Marshall’s mouth twitched and the facade of stoniness quickly returned. “Thank you, Colonel, that was well presented and has given me much food for thought. I will be returning to Washington in a day or so. I think you would be a valuable addition to Eisenhower’s staff, so you will remain here. Contact Beetle Smith regarding your duties.”

Burke saluted and left. He had done his best. He had hoped to return to the States and Natalie, but that would have to be put off for a while. He would write her and, without giving away too much detail, let her know that he had just delivered another lecture to the chief of staff.

But he did still think there was something funny about Marshall’s reaction to his comments about secret weapons. Could there actually be one?

Stalin was outraged, but this time Molotov and Beria knew where the anger was directed. This served to calm them, but they knew that the direction of Stalin’s fury could change at any moment.

“De Gaulle,” said Stalin, “is a fool. A big, oafish lump. It has been almost a week since Vyshinsky’s meeting with him and there has been no response to our demands.”

Molotov took the tirade in stride. Stalin and de Gaulle had met briefly a couple of years earlier and had formed an instant dislike for each other. Stalin thought de Gaulle was an arrogant snob and Molotov concurred with that opinion. What de Gaulle thought of Stalin was of no concern to Stalin.

Stalin puffed on his pipe, sending yet another blue-black cloud toward the high ceiling. “When we have finished with the Americans and the British we will take care of France. I will have de Gaulle shot, or, better yet, spend the rest of his life freezing his nuts off in a Siberian camp. Comrade Beria, when will your revolution of French Communists topple him?”

Beria looked furtively about the room before he spoke. Stalin did not like to hear of failure, and he knew that was what he had to report. There was no second French Revolution. “Comrade Stalin, I must report that the enthusiasm of our French brothers for supporting us is nowhere near as high as I had been informed it would be.”

“Why?”

Molotov thought he could smell the odor of Beria’s perspiration and tried not to look at the man. “Comrade Stalin,” Beria said, “while there were some initial attempts to interrupt the French transport system, these were very few and far between; therefore, the French police and army were quickly able to put them down. Further, we have now confirmed that French troops are beginning to ride the trains and protect the highways, as well as the oil pipelines that the Americans have laid across France. While our brothers in France might have been willing to assault the Americans or the British, there is a very real reluctance on their part to attack their brother Frenchmen.”

Stalin nodded. “But that means our intelligence reports are correct; the French armies are being pulled out of Italy and Austria.”

Beria’s head bobbed. “Yes, comrade, it does. Although it does not appear to be occurring in any great numbers yet, the withdrawal of the French has begun.”

“Comrade Stalin,” said Molotov, “it would appear that the time for any diplomatic initiatives is not yet at hand. The military aspect of this war must play itself out a little longer before anyone will be willing to negotiate. We have been deeply involved in the French question and have been out of touch with the military. How does Zhukov progress?”

Stalin placed his pipe in an ashtray with a sound that made a distinct crack. “Slowly, far too slowly. The Allies are putting up too good a fight, particularly in the air. However, we are bleeding them and we will prevail.”

The admission concerned Molotov. He had often heard Stalin say that the democracies were weak and would not fight either hard or long. Now he was granting them a grudging level of respect. In that regard, there was no other choice. The Russian armies had not yet broken through the Americans.

“Zhukov,” Stalin said, “predicted a war of three to six months. He is confident that the Allied lines will crack under our pressure and this current war of small gains will soon become one of movement and great leaps.” Stalin chuckled. “Zhukov also reminded me that the Red Army is now without its greatest general, Adolf Hitler.”

Molotov and Beria laughed along with Stalin. It was common knowledge that, but for the incredible military blunders ordered by Hitler, the battle against the Germans might have had a different ending.

“The Americans and British fight, give ground, and fight again,” Stalin said. “Sometimes they throw us off balance with counterattacks and bombing raids. I have to give them their due; they are much better and more determined than I thought they would be. We will, however, still win.”

With that, Stalin dismissed them. Alone, he pondered the information he’d received through his intelligence services. For almost a year, the German-born scientist Klaus Fuchs had been working at Los Alamos, New Mexico, and had been passing American nuclear secrets to Russia. Prior to that, Fuchs had been living in England and passing British secrets to the Soviet embassy. It was amazing, Stalin thought, just how much damage one man could do if he really tried. Incredibly, it seemed to be a matter of ideology for Fuchs, as he had refused all offers of money.

Normally never one to look back on past decisions with regret, Stalin wished that he had ordered the development of an atomic energy program such as the Americans had. From all of Fuchs’s accounts, the project was titanic. Worse, if Fuchs was correct, it would soon be successful. He wondered if Soviet physicists and other scientists would have been able to develop an atomic weapon as rapidly as the Americans had. At least they now knew that the bomb was feasible. That would save them from making so many wrong turns into scientific dead ends as the Germans had done with their nuclear program under Werner Heisenberg. When the time came, Russia would develop an atomic bomb much faster than the Americans were now doing.

Before that, Stalin knew he needed two things. First, he needed to establish hegemony in Europe to protect the Soviet Union and enable him to project the revolution. Second, he needed time to develop his bomb. The information Fuchs had provided would shave years off the task.

Although everyone in the Soviet Union knew that their nation was at war with the United States and Great Britain, the implications of that fact did not affect everyone’s thinking in precisely the same way. Baku, a city south of the Caucasus mountain range and on the edge of the Caspian Sea, was literally on the border between Europe and Asia as defined by geographers who felt that such a distinction was necessary. Baku itself was only about a hundred miles from the border with Iran, which was now under British control after having flirted with the Nazis. Somewhat as a result, portions of Iran’s oil-rich northwest had been occupied by the Soviets at the start of the war. Despite the drama of the Barents Sea convoys, Iran had long been the main entry point for Allied Lend-Lease supplies to the Soviet Union. Supplies entered at the Persian Gulf port of Abadan and were shipped overland from there.

Baku and the surrounding oil fields had been the target of Germany’s 1942 offensive. The German goal was to either take the area or seal it off from the rest of Russia. Either way, they wanted to deprive the Soviets of a major and critical source of petroleum.

The Germans had failed, although they had come very close. They had directly threatened the oil fields around Grozny before being pushed back. The defenses of both Baku and Grozny logically faced northward to where the German menace been launched. As the war had drawn away from the Caucasus, so too had a large number of the implements of war. Many of the antiaircraft batteries had been removed, as had most of the defending aircraft. The war was far away. The oil fields were safe.

If the fact that a new war was raging over the horizon was any concern of Major General Vassily Guchkov, he did not show it. If he wondered why he had been left behind with a rump section of the Fourth Air Army, consisting of five hundred obsolescent fighter planes, it was no concern of his. What did concern him was that he hated Baku. It was full of black-ass Muslims whose faith was the Koran and not Lenin, who spoke a hideous Turkic type of language, and who hated Russians with an unspeakable passion.

It was not yet midmorning and he was already thinking of the private session he would have with the big-breasted blond typist from Kiev who functioned as his daytime mistress. As usual, she would serve him a light lunch in his office and then perform oral sex upon him. He felt it refreshed him for the rigors of the rest of the afternoon, which invariably concluded with bouts of heavy drinking. His adjutant would then drive him to his palatial quarters and turn him over to his night mistress, a plump local woman with very basic tastes who hated oral sex. She was also afraid she’d have her throat cut by her fellow Muslims if she ever left Guchkov’s employ, and she was right. Left alone on the streets she wouldn’t last thirty seconds.

All in all, he thought, it wasn’t a bad life. Let the others get shot at by the Yanks. He, Vassily Guchkov, would enjoy life despite the vulgarities of Baku and its people. The weather was nice, the women pliant, and he had several thousand men who saluted him.

His reverie was jolted by the distant sounds of low-flying aircraft and attendant explosions. Belatedly, the air raid sirens started to howl, sending civilians and noncombatants running frantically to the shelters.

What the hell is going on? Guchkov thought. He ran the few dozen yards to his combat command center, huffing badly, and received word that strange planes were overhead and dropping bombs. He looked out the window just as one of the planes flew past and was horrified to see the insignia of the United States Air Force on a P-51 only a few hundred feet above him. The fighters were bombing and strafing his airfields and the antiaircraft defenses.

“Scramble the planes,” he yelled, and he was informed that it was already happening, but too late. Most of the planes he commanded were being destroyed on the ground, as were the antiaircraft guns.

The fighter attack lasted only a few minutes, then there was blessed silence and the sound of the all-clear. He wondered who had decided it was safe, but his thoughts were again interrupted when the sirens shifted to the danger sound, sending the civilians screaming and running back to the shelters. The planes were returning.

“Where are my fighters?”

His adjutant, a slim young major named Brovkin, shrugged and looked at him with something bordering on contempt. “Either destroyed on the ground or unable to fly because of craters in the runways. Those few who did make it up appear to have been shot down. Oh yes, General, they’ve been strafing and bombing our antiaircraft positions.”

Guchkov sat down hard in a chair. He was fifty years old and had been in the Soviet military for more than thirty of those years, and never had anything like this occurred to him before. Even when the Luftwaffe was slaughtering the Red air force in the early days of the Great Patriotic War with Germany, he had been safe in a training command near the Urals.

“This time it’s their bombers and we can’t stop them,” Brovkin practically sneered.

The sky was clear, and overhead they could see the sunlight reflecting on the American planes. The effect was a silver twinkling of what looked like scores of tiny flying fish. He fervently wished they had been fish. Guchkov knew he was safe where he was because he now understood what was happening. The Allies had built up an air army of their own near Tehran and were going to use it to do what Hitler and his Panzers could not-destroy the oil fields!

All day long, the bombers came in waves, and he could see, hear, and smell the effects of the bombing. He could also see the fires where the wells and storage tanks had been set aflame. Dozens of dark, greasy fingers of smoke searched for the sky and many more fires must have been unseen in the distance.

At night the fighters returned, vectored in by the flames. They crippled attempts to repair the runways and hit anything they could see. They also denied sleep to the exhausted Russians and the terrified people of Baku. In the morning the bombers returned. Communication lines were damaged so Guchkov had no detailed information, but he did manage to find out that the bombs were falling all over the Caucasus region.

In his frustration, Guchkov got roaring drunk and beat up his night mistress, while the blonde stayed prudently out of his way. As the communications situation improved a little, he managed to find out that virtually the same thing was happening to the refining center at Ploesti and the oil fields in Romania. Although the battles for those areas were not as one-sided as the devastation around Baku, the reports of destruction mirrored his.

It didn’t matter. His command and his career had been destroyed. If his planes and guns had inflicted any real damage on the American tormentors and their airplanes he was not aware of it.

When, after a couple of days, there was a real lull in the attacks, he took a quick tour of the area. Most of the wellheads had been destroyed and were burning furiously, as were the refining and storage areas. The main rail lines from Baku to Rostov had been severed in a score of places and would require major reconstruction before any oil could be shipped. That is, if oil could ever again be brought from the ground in the first place. The totality of the disaster appalled him.

There were very few reports of bombers being shot down, and when he did find one crashed on the ground, he went to it and stared at the scattered rubble of the giant plane. It was a B-29. Soviet intelligence had said they were in the Pacific. This meant they were coming to Europe to join in the war. He calculated the range. Based in Iran, they could hit most of southern Russia. The cities of Odessa, Sevastopol, Kiev, Kharkov, and Stalingrad could be bombed, perhaps even Moscow.

“Did we get any prisoners?” Guchkov asked.

“Half a dozen,” Brovkin replied.

“Kill them.”

Brovkin disagreed. “I would like to interrogate them first, comrade General.”

“Of course,” Guchkov said. He didn’t see the look of relief on Brovkin’s face. No prisoners would be murdered if he could help it.

Stunned, and in a drunken near-stupor, Guchkov allowed himself to be driven back to his office. There were radio messages from Stavka on his desk asking for information about the disaster. How badly were the fields hit? they asked. Would the flow of oil be interrupted? If so, for how long? When will oil be shipped again?

What they didn’t directly ask was who was to blame. Everyone knew who was to blame. Major General Vassily Guchkov, that’s who. Guchkov sobbed. He sent a coded message that the fields had been destroyed, as had all the supporting facilities and the transportation lines. Yes, he said, the fields could produce oil again, but not in this year of 1945. Maybe in 1946, but he doubted that.

Guchkov knew he was to blame and would be punished brutally. They had left him five hundred planes and he had failed. That the planes were shit, the pilots were poorly trained, and that the best mechanics had left as well, so that at least a third of the planes had been grounded for mechanical problems at the time of the assault, was no excuse. That he had no radar and his inherited antiaircraft guns faced north and not south was his fault as well. He was doomed.

Guchkov told his staff he did not want to be disturbed. He went into his office and closed the door. He took a seat behind his desk and pulled the Tokarev automatic pistol from its holster, stuck it in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.

Outside Guchkov’s office, his staff jumped at the sound of the shot. A couple of them rushed for the office but were stopped by Brovkin. “Why bother hurrying?” he said. “Just another of his messes we’ll have to clean up.”

Later that night, his nighttime mistress tried to make a run for it. She got about a hundred yards before she was caught and had her throat slit.

Tony sipped his thin potato broth and looked across the small fire they’d lit to warm their food. If he lived to be a hundred, he would never forget the feel of that knife alongside his throat. The man on the other side of the fire had said his name was Joe Baker and would give neither his rank nor his branch of service. But he did say he was with the Office of Strategic Services, the OSS. To Tony, the OSS was the stuff of legend. Cloak-and-dagger boys trained to kill and destroy. They made movies about the OSS, and here he was with one of those people. It was even more comforting than the bombing attack during his captivity at the work camp that had gotten him into so much trouble in the first place.

Baker was the man who had been watching him in the Russian camp, and now looked innocuous enough. Like Tony and the others, he was a little on the small side and thin, although unlike the two Poles who were now Tony’s only other companions, Baker looked like he was in fine shape, like an Olympic distance runner.

After Baker had been convinced that Tony would not betray him, they had located Vaslov, who then found the other Pole. The remaining refugees had already scattered.

Baker, it turned out, had also been rounded up by the Russians and forced to work and had chosen that same evening to make his break. He had suspected Tony was an American by the fact that he looked fairly healthy, and then had confirmed it by reading Tony’s lips when he was trying to communicate with Vaslov.

Baker had assumed leadership of the little group. No one had argued. Baker could be lethal when he wanted, as the incident with the knife had proven. He had told them that it was better they remain few in number so as to not attract either attention or people who might talk under torture. When Tony had told him about the two Jews, Baker had been deeply touched. Tony, who didn’t think Baker was his real name, now thought that the OSS man might be Jewish.

Baker said he had a job to do and he could do it either alone or with the help of a handful of others. Too many would get in the way. His assignment was to cause as much harm as possible to the Russian transportation system. Specifically, he was to find their local oil stores and call in air strikes on the small shortwave radio he’d parachuted in with and hidden. As a last resort, he would try to destroy the targets himself.

To Tony, it seemed like a wonderful idea. He was now firmly convinced, if there ever had been a doubt, that he would never see home and family again if the Russians weren’t defeated. Oh, they had talked about trying to gain the relative safety of the Potsdam perimeter, but that had been decided against for some very good reasons. First was the fact that they would have had a helluva time getting through the Russian and American lines without being shot. Second, what would they have gained? Baker had said it best: “All you would be doing is changing one prison camp for another.”

Baker was right, of course. While they would not have been alone in Potsdam and the sound of more American voices would have been nice and comforting, Potsdam was surrounded and there was little he could do in there to help the war. Potsdam was also possibly doomed. Out here he was free. Sort of. Tony kind of liked that better than being sort of not free.

Baker had earlier been out scouting and had reported the location of a couple of tanker trucks hidden nearby. Hardly enough to call in a flight of bombers, but something that should be taken care of.

“Hey, Joe, what are you gonna do about them trucks?” Tony asked. “Can’t leave ’em there, can you?”

Baker smiled slightly. “Haven’t decided.”

“You speak Russian?”

“Maybe.”

“Bullshit,” Tony laughed. “I’ll bet you speak it real good.”

Baker took out his knife and began to sharpen it. “I’ll bet you’re right, Tony. I’ll bet I speak German too, and maybe a little French. Why? You got an idea?”

Now it was Tony’s turn to smile. He knew Joe didn’t think much of Tony’s brainpower although he did respect him as a survivor. “I was thinking, Joe, why don’t you just walk up to them trucks and blow them up.”

Joe shook his head and grinned tolerantly. “And what would you put on my tombstone? That the dumb shit thought he could get away with it?”

“Joe, what if you were wearing a Russian uniform? One of their NKVD things that seems to scare the shit out of the regular Russians.”

“Tony, if I had one of those I could cause so much damage it would make your head spin.”

Tony laughed and told him about the uniform they’d taken and hidden, along with the weapons. Joe’s jaw dropped. Then he too started laughing.