AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"From there it was a routine run with full battle gear," Wittenberg continued, "until we arrived at the hangar and assembled before anyone turned and noticed us."
"It was touch and go, but Major Cleary and I managed to keep everyone's attention focused away from your end of the tunnel until you took up your battle position."
"Is this all of them?" asked Wittenberg.
Pitt nodded. "Except for several of their wounded back at the control center."
Cleary approached, and the two warriors saluted before shaking hands warmly. Cleary's smile was tired, but the teeth showed. "Bob, you don't know how happy I am to see your ugly old face."
"How many times does this make that I saved your tail?" Wittenberg said, humor in his eyes.
"Twice, and I'm not ashamed to admit it."
"You didn't leave much for me to do."
"True, but if you and your men hadn't shown up when you did, you'd have found half an acre of dead bodies."
Wittenberg stared at Cleary's men, who stood gaunt and weary but still vigilant, watching every move made by the Wolf personnel as they dropped their rifles on the ice floor and gathered in hushed groups near the wrecked aircraft. "It looks like they whittled you down some."
"I lost too many good men," Cleary admitted grimly.
Pitt gestured to the Wolfs. "Colonel Wittenberg, may I introduce Karl Wolf and his sisters Elsie and. .
." Not knowing Blondi, he paused.
"My sister Blondi," Karl intervened. He was a man in the middle of a nightmare. "What do you intend to do with us, Colonel?"
"If it was up to me," growled Cleary, "I'd shoot the whole lot of you.
"Were you given orders concerning the Wolfs after you captured them?" Pitt asked Wittenberg.
The colonel shook his head. "There was no time to discuss political policy regarding prisoners."
"In that case, may I ask a favor?"
"After all you and your friend have done," replied Cleary, "you have but to name it."
"I'd like temporary custody of the Wolfs."
Wittenberg gazed into Pitt's eyes, as if trying to read the mind behind. "I don't quite understand."
But Cleary did. "Since you were given no orders concerning the disposition of prisoners," he said to the colonel, "I think it only fitting and proper that the man who saved us from unimaginable horror have his request honored."
Wittenberg thought a moment before nodding. "I quite agree. The spoils of war. You have custody of the Wolfs until such time as they can
be transported under guard to Washington."
"No one government has legal jurisdiction over any individual in Antarctica," said Karl arrogantly. "It is unlawful for you to hold us as hostages."
"I'm only a simple soldier," said Wittenberg, with an indifferent shrug. "I'll leave it for the lawyers and politicians to decide your fate after you're in their hands."
While the newly combined Special Force teams secured the mining facility and rounded up the captives, eventually placing them in confinement in a workers' dormitory, Pitt and Giordino unobtrusively herded Karl, Elsie, and Blondi Wolf along the huge doors that covered one wall of the hangar. Seemingly unnoticed, they suddenly forced the three Wolfs through a small maintenance door that opened onto the aircraft runway outside. The sudden surge of cold air came as a shock after the sixty-degree temperature inside the hangar.
Karl Wolf turned and smiled bleakly at Pitt and Giordino. "Is this where you execute us?"
Blondi seemed as if she were in a trance, but Elsie stared at Pitt scathingly. "Shoot us, if you dare!" she spat savagely.
Pitt's face was masked by disgust. "By all that is holy in this world, you all deserve to die. Your whole despicable family deserves to die. But it won't be me or my friend here who will do the honors. I'll leave that to natural causes."
