Another three minutes went by before Janice was escorted back to the living room by a full battle unit of experienced warriors: Wieland, von Schenck, von Gerlitz and a new, rather ugly, fellow whom Mel hadn't seen before, boxed in the fiery explorer so she couldn't run off on her own again. Barney Talbott ran along a short distance behind the others like he was covering their rear.

"Come, Fräulein Pappas. The briefing is about to start," Wieland said and finally pushed the sliding doors out wide to reveal what was on the other side.

Getting up, Mel glanced into the room that had clearly been a dining hall when the mansion had been in civilian use. At present, the large dining table in the center of the room had been taken over by scores of maps, photos and other types of documents rather than the silver cutlery, crystal glasses and cloth napkins that belonged there. A strong lamp suspended above the table cast a harsh light down upon the various items so the papers were well-lit.

"I guess these fellas had a problem with the lone girl using their john," Janice said while sporting a lop-sided grin. "And I didn't even leave the toilet seat down or anything…"

Mel adjusted her glasses at the inappropriate humor, but she didn't have time to make a comment beyond that.

A pipe-smoking Gilroy Buchanan sat on a chair at the far end of the room, but he got up and moved over to the table as the members of his team assembled around it. He looked each of them in the eye to make sure they understood it was important. When everyone had quieted down, he gestured at the fellow Mel and Janice hadn't met yet. "This is Agent James Ericksson. He's on loan from our branch in Frankfurt am Main while Agent Gibson recovers."

"Hi de ho, bub," Janice said and tipped her fedora. "You look like a prize fighter I once knew back home in Noo Yawk. You from there or something?"

The field agent shot her a dark glare in return. His flat nose and square jaw didn't paint a pretty picture, nor did his low brow or his cauliflower ears. He wore a gunmetal-gray business suit over a black shirt and a gray tie, but the classy ensemble was utterly wasted on such a class-less bruiser. He kept his mouth shut and soon concentrated on the papers on the tabletop.

"Yeah, huh?  Nice talkin' to ya, buster," Janice continued before she received an ungentle elbow in her side courtesy of Wieland. "Hey, watch it, fella… I'm ticklish," she growled at the tall man.

Gilroy Buchanan took out his pipe and used the mouthpiece to point at Janice. "Doctor Covington, pay attention. This is important."

Knowing when the fun and games were over, Janice simply nodded at the section commander.

"All right," Buchanan continued as he held up a new photo of the leader of the communist cell they were to apprehend. "Close surveillance of the various meeting places known to be used by the radical left has revealed that Gerd Neumann is still here in Hamburg. We had expected him to flee to some of his like-minded comrades elsewhere, but he hasn't. That suggests he may be planning on carrying out the attack on Adenauer despite losing his original cell. Further surveillance shows increased activity by a cell down in the docks-"

"Damn!" Janice said in a tongue-in-cheek voice. "How many communist cells do you fellas have in your back garden, anyhow?  Seems to me they're all over the place!  Doesn't say much good about your effectiveness, that's for damn sure!"

Ernst Wieland provided another pointy elbow in Janice's side before he leaned in toward her to say: "Doctor Covington, do not outstay your welcome."

Janice opened her mouth to complain, but a quick glance at Mel's deeply concerned face made her keep quiet and settle for nodding.

"Like I was saying," Gilroy Buchanan continued in a pointed tone - he eyed Janice while he spoke, but even his steeliest glare wasn't enough to intimidate the tough adventurer, "the cell located in the docks has seen increased activity throughout last night and during the early hours of the morning. Sentries now patrol the perimeter around a large warehouse that we know the cell uses as their base. The sentries are disguised like regular watchmen so the dock workers and the uniformed police won't suspect them. We do, however."

While Buchanan spoke, he handed Schulze a high-contrast, black-and-white photograph of the warehouse. Once the panzer veteran had studied it closely, he handed it to von Gerlitz before he excused himself - with a brief salute - to return to his regular guard post at the front door.

The photograph eventually made its way around the table to Mel and Janice. To the untrained eye, it just seemed like any old warehouse made of red bricks. A pair of metal doors wide enough for trucks to fit through had been built into the end wall, and the company name Obermeier Schiffsversorgung had been stenciled onto the bricks above the gate to let the world know it was a warehouse for maritime supplies.

"Mista Buchanan, I have a question," Janice said; before she could go on, Wieland had already moved his elbow into position for another poke, but she held up her hands in defense. "Hold that thought, buster. This is a legit question… honest!"

"Go on, Doctor," Gilroy Buchanan said before he took an extra-deep puff on his pipe to be prepared for anything the Doctor could throw at him.

"My nose is picking up a certain stink here… how are we supposed to get anywhere near that warehouse when there's only one set of doors?  Don't you think the fellas inside will keep an eye on 'em?"

"Of course they will. There's an additional door on the far side of the warehouse that's used far less often," Buchanan said in a surly tone.

"I see," Janice said and pushed her hat back - a sure-fire sign that she was about to throw a barb or two into the conversation. "So the photo-guy you sent out there to eyeball the place could only be bothered to snap one side of the building?  That's kinda lazy if ya ask me, Daddy-O. Not that you have."

The comment earned Janice a string of very different responses: the section commander coughed hard which sent out a cloud of pipe smoke, Mel drew in a quick breath that sounded exactly like a gasp, Robert von Schenck grinned broadly at the Doctor's cheekiness, and Ernst Wieland let out an amused laugh that was even colder than usual.

Several seconds went by in a pregnant silence before Buchanan clenched his fist and slammed it down onto the tabletop. "Doctor Covington…" he said but didn't go on - the red blotches that appeared on his face seemed to prevent him from speaking.

Janice grinned at the sight but was soon silenced when an elbow was rammed into her side with the greatest force yet. "Ohhhhh," she breathed as she clutched her aching ribs. "That's three pokes I owe ya, buster… and I never forget to repay those kinda favors," she said in a breathless croak.

"Enough of this nonsense!" Gilroy Buchanan barked so loudly that glowing tobacco nearly escaped his pipe from the blowback alone. "We're here to plan an important operation that just might prevent the assassination of the German chancellor!  Doctor Covington, if you cannot control yourself, we have a nice cellar where you can rest for a few days. Miss Pappas, will you please see to it that your associate there acts like an adult?"

"I'll try, Mr. Buchanan… I'll try," Mel said and locked eyes with her partner. The non-verbal messages that flew back and forth between them finally convinced Janice to settle down and save the rest of her collection of witty repartee for a rainy day.

The section commander had to take several deep puffs from his pipe and loosen his collar before he could go on. He sent hard glares at all the people around the table, not just Janice, although he did reserve a special one for her. "Fine. Operation Dustpan will commence tonight at midnight. Everyone must be ready to leave the base at ten-thirty. Not a second later!  Do you understand?"

Everyone nodded - even Janice.

"I'll be there in person with Herr Wieland. Miss Pappas will join us," Buchanan continued as he once more looked at the people facing him, "Von Gerlitz, Talbott and Ericksson, you'll be Squad One. Call sign S-One. Von Schenck, you and Schulze will be joined by Doctor Covington on a special reconnaissance excursion. You'll be Squad Two. Call sign S-Two."

Mel gasped at the news that Janice would once more be sent into the worst of the action; her stomach clenched so hard she needed to bare her teeth in a worried grimace to let some of the fear our. It didn't even help when Janice winked at her and ran her fingers along the rim of her fedora to show that she was cool with the decision.

Not noticing the spooked reaction of the woman standing next to him, Buchanan turned to Hans-Martin von Gerlitz and continued: "Herr Leutnant, oversee the distribution of firearms, ammunition and radios for the two squads. Double-check everything. It needs to be one-hundred percent correct. Faulty equipment cannot be tolerated."

"Jawohl, Herr Buchanan!" von Gerlitz said before the former Wehrmacht lieutenant clicked his heels and saluted the commander out of sheer habit.

"Very well. And Agent Talbott…" Buchanan continued as he turned to the junior agent.

When Barney Talbott suddenly found himself at the center of attention, he snapped upright and stared wide-eyed at the section chief. "Y- yes, Sir?"

"No blunders this time. Please."

"No blunders, Sir. I guarantee it."

"Good." After a brief pause, Gilroy Buchanan softened his expression a little. "All right. I want you all to rest and get something to eat. It's going to be a long day and a difficult night."

Letting out a sigh of relief, Mel hurried around the table and grabbed hold of Janice's arm so she couldn't run off again. "Let's find somewhere we can be alone," she said in a barely audible whisper. "I'm dying for a kiss… I think I shall faint if we don't kiss soon… very soon!"

"Well," Janice said with a cheeky grin, "I sure don't want ya to pass out, Toots… and Big Daddy-O there just ordered us to kick back a little before the you-know-what will hit the fan. Besides, kissin' is in my job description, so… sounds like a plan!"

-*-*-*-

An upstairs room perfectly suited for the task of kicking back, living large and kissin' grand was found with little hassle - it seemed the members of the World Security Agency were only too happy to get a break from the occasionally abrasive Doctor of Philosophy. The room that had been commandeered into use had perhaps been a child's bedroom once upon a time, but now it was as devoid of life and quality furniture as the other rooms of the spy base.

The wallpaper was the same as down in the living room only with fewer of the grayish outlines. No carpet graced the floor, and the floorboards weren't in as good a state as those downstairs despite being more recent. Only three pieces of furniture could be found in the room: a chair with a cracked seat, a wooden table that Janice had shoved over to the door to barricade it - the lock didn't work - and finally a three-seater sofa that offered the perfect setting for the vital mouth-to-mouth resuscitation that went on for quite some time between the two women sitting in it.

When they finally needed to come up for air, they leaned their foreheads against each other's and simply basked in the presence of their loved one. An agelong moment went by that was filled by nothing but pure loving - there were plenty of little, pink hearts that seemed to float through the air around the sofa and the two women.

"Oh, I needed that," Mel eventually whispered as she drew Janice so close they only shared one seat of the three-seater sofa. Her heaving chest and frantic heart rate leveled off as she snuggled down in her partner's arms. "I wish we could stay like this forever… better still, I wish we were back home… then we really could do this forever."

"Yeah, we're in a real squeeze this time, that sure ain't no exaggeration," Janice said while her hands went on a lengthy tour of Mel's waist and other sweet spots. "How the hell did we get from wanting to explore Luneburg Heath and the Langobardi tribe to… to whatever-the-hell it is we're doing here?"

"I don't know, Jan. I simply don't know. And in such a short amount of time, too… my soul hasn't really caught up yet. Goodness me. Not to mention those terrible, terrible nazzies we need to rub shoulders with."

"Yeah. Those palookas take the cake, ain't no doubt about that. Well, I guess young Barney is okay, but the rest… Jumpin' Jehoshaphat, darlin'. If we had faced 'em during the war, it would have been through a set of crosshairs, not over a dinner table talking about wiping out a commie cell. And I still don't understand why they even need us in the first place!"

"Neither do I. There's no point in asking again… they'll never tell us," Mel said and rolled her eyes. "Oh, I simply cannot stand this hush-hush world of espionage, Jan… all this treachery and deceit. And death."

"I know what you mean, Toots. Once we're back home and safe, I'm never gonna complain about being up to my ass in mud at a dig site… or wade through ten thousand potsherds to find the special one… or-"

"Never going to complain?" Mel said with sparkling eyes. "Goodness gracious me, Janice Covington, I'm going to write that down!"

"Why, you cheeky so-and-so!" Janice said and promptly dove in to show that complaining wasn't the only thing her lips were good at.

---

The new round of kissing took up most of the next five minutes - it could have gone on for much longer than that, but someone felt a need to knock on the door to the small, former bedroom.

'Doc?  Miss Pappas?  The food's ready if you're hungry!' a male voice said from the other side of the barricaded door.

Janice had already drawn a deep breath to inform the person outside that he should come back a great deal later, but Mel placed a pair of tender fingers across the fiery lips before anything could be said. "It's Barney Talbott," she said in a whisper. "He could be an ally later tonight… it's better to stay on his good side."

"That's my Mel Pappas. Always thinking… and I'm always thinking of you, so that's a purr-fect combination, huh?" Janice said with a broad grin as she got up from the sofa. She turned to the door and let out a "Hold ya horses, pal. I'm almost there," in a stronger voice.

'Okay.'

While Mel straightened her clothes and tried to sort out her messy hair, Janice shoved the wooden table aside so the door could open. It was indeed Barney Talbott waiting outside. He was by himself, and he carried a tray loaded with several items: a pot of coffee, cups, spoons, a sugar bowl, napkins, two soup bowls filled with a thick, steaming-hot substance and finally two whole-wheat buns intended to mop up the last of the stew.

"That better not be Sauerkraut," Janice said with a grin as she led Barney over to the wooden table.

"No, it's some kind of hodge-podge stew. It's got potatoes, sausages and a few vegetables in it. I didn't understand the German name for it and I couldn't be bothered to ask again. It smells great so I'm sure it tastes great as well."

"Ah, just to be on the safe side," Janice said, eyeing the bowls cautiously. "Who made it?  I mean… that charming Mista Wieland might have dumped a pouch of arsenic in it or something."

"It was von Schenck," Barney said while he distributed the items like an old pro. "I think it's something they often ate in the Panzer Corps when they were behind the front lines awaiting orders."

"Okay… it smells kinda nice. Beats C-rations, that's a fact."

"So I've heard." Barney dusted off his hands and stepped away from the table. He briefly eyed Mel's messy hair and a brand-new, red hickey on the side of Janice's neck but chose not to make any comments. "Say, Doc… are you and Miss Pappas interested in a poker game later today?  It'll be me, Ericksson and von Gerlitz."

"Count me out, Mr. Talbott," Mel said and waved her hand dismissively.

Janice shrugged. "Maybe. Can't say yet. Now we're on that subject… where the hell did you people find that James Ericksson fella, anyway?  He looks like he's gone a round too many against the World Champ, if ya know what I mean."

"He's a veteran like the others. I think he was a paratrooper in the Eighty-Second US Airborne Division-"

"What the… really?  The All-Americans fought in the Ardennes against our German chums downstairs!  Mel and me spent nearly a week with those boys when we were there in 'forty-four… there was no love lost for the Krauts then, I can assure ya."

"That's how the world turns, I guess. I have no idea how he was approached by the W-S-A… and I know better than to ask him," Barney said with a grin.

Janice grinned as well before she turned to the hot food. "I see your point, friend. Well, thanks for the grub. Mel and me are gonna dig in now, so… we'll see ya later. Yeah?"

"All right, Doc. Miss Pappas," Barney said and once more left the small room.

---

Whatever it was called, the hodge-podge stew had been tasty and filling. After the soup bowls and the pot of proper coffee had been emptied down to the final drops, Mel claimed the wooden table for her own purposes: she found her journal that contained the initial, rough translation of Gabrielle's travelogue scroll that had been recovered in the lower tomb in Jelling. The chair's cracked seat meant it would never be able to carry her weight, so she conducted her work leaning over the tabletop.

To take her mind off the current dramas, she had planned to delve into the equally dramatic incidents that had taken place two millennia earlier to untangle a few grammatical knots that bothered her, but she only made it a couple of paragraphs into the text before she let out a "Hmmmm," and began tapping the pencil on the notepad in a thoughtful fashion. After she had done that for a short while, she reached for her reference works and began a lengthy search for several things.

While Mel's gray matter ran wild, Janice focused on a far more colorful activity: sprawled all over the sofa, she was presently engaged in the pulpy adventures of Sally Swackhamer, Private Investigator. Much to her relief, the pulp paperbacks had still been in her duffel bag, but they had dropped so far down into the clutter at the bottom that she had needed to take everything else out to get to them. Yet another 'Hmmm' uttered by Mel caught her attention, and she lowered the book to shoot her partner an interested glance.

The 'Hmmm' was soon repeated once more, so Janice put down the book and swung her legs over the side of the sofa. She had taken off her trench boots so she needed to stand up on tip-toes to even attempt to look over Mel's shoulder - she could just as easily have looked past the shoulder, but after being separated for so long, it would be criminal not to stand close. "What are you hummin' about, hummin'bird?" she said before she reached up to place a small peck on Mel's cheek.

Mel stopped chewing on the pencil and used it as a pointer instead. "The travelogue. I've just realized something, Jan…"

"Yeah?  And that would be…?"

"According to Gabrielle, the ancestral home of the Langobardi clan was called Leuphana. Possibly Leuphane, I'm not too sure… I think it's Leuphana," Mel said and resumed chewing on the pencil. Several seconds went by before she said: "Well, that doesn't matter now."

Janice narrowed her eyes while she glanced down at the notepad and her sweetheart's meticulous handwriting. Unfortunately, the lines of text didn't tell her anything beyond what Mel had already explained to her up in Jelling. "Sorry, Toots, but you've lost me completely…"

"No, no-"

"O-yeah you have!" - Janice's wide grin made Mel squint in her direction.

"Jan Covington, this may be important!  From later history, we know the Langobardi were nomads. Whether they had always been or if some kind of natural disaster forced them into a nomadic existence, I can't say. Perhaps a failed harvest. In any case, the people later became known as the Lombards… the Lombardy region in Italy is named after them because that's where they migrated to. I didn't make that connection until now. My old tomes explained it, though…"

Janice scratched her cheek. "Well… that's nice and all. But I fail to see the relevance…"

"Well, if the Langobardi were nomads when Xena and Gabrielle traveled through their kingdom… remember they met Chieftain Wulfgann, Yannberah's older brother… even a larger settlement like Leuphana wouldn't have been there for long. Perhaps only a few years. Perhaps less than that."

"Whoa… so… okay, but… Toots, you need to spell it out to me," Janice said and scratched her neck, " 'cos the light bulb up in my brain's kinda dim right now…"

"Like I said before, Gabrielle called Leuphana the ancestral home of the clan, but then I began thinking that an ancestral home might not be a permanent palace, a settlement, or even a stretch of land. What if the term ancestral home is to be understood metaphorically?  A sacred shrine that was brought along on their nomadic treks… or a gold icon or idol that held the spirits of their dead?  Or perhaps even a funeral urn like the one Gabrielle carried with her for years and years?  To paraphrase the old adage, 'home is where my ancestral shrine is.' "

Janice stood up straight; then she rubbed her face. "Hot-dang, Toots… you're onto something. Nomads move around the whole time… that's what they do!"

"Ah… quite," Mel said and adjusted her glasses.

Suddenly filled with energy, Janice began pacing. She stomped over to the room's only window - that had its heavy curtains drawn - before she returned to Mel's side. "Which in turn means we could have dug up half the damn Luneburg Heath to search for tangible remains of someone who… dammit, who might not have been there for more than… what, the winter months of any given year at best!  You know how long it takes kitchen middens and those things to be formed. Decades!  Being nomads, Yannberah and her chieftain brother, or even their parents, wouldn't have stayed for that length of time anywhere… dammit, I never even considered that!"

"Neither did I," Mel said and took off her glasses to rub her eyes.

Janice stopped pacing; a foul expression fell over her face. "Which means we could have avoided all this crap. If we had been on our way home to the States, we would have gone straight for the bus to the airport instead of looking for a hotel to spend the night. Wieland might not have picked up our trail."

"Perhaps, but I can't imagine the airport bus was still running at that time of the evening, Jan… and we're dealing with professionals. They would have found us regardless of what we did."

"Yeah, I suppose… dammit," Janice said and smacked a fist into an open palm. She let out a sigh and put her hands on her hips. "I should have listened to Olrickah. She told me most of the Heath was off-limits to civilians… the British forces use it as a tank and artillery range. I'll bet everything's blown all to hell, anyway."

Mel closed some of her books and got up from the table; she had soon wrapped her long arms around Janice's far shorter torso. "There's nothing we can do about any of that now, Jan. In fact, we can't do anything apart from making sure we both get out of Operation Dustbin in one piece… or whatever Mr. Buchanan called it."

"Dustpan. Yeah. I agree. Why the hell we always get mixed up in these things, I have no idea…"

"It's our lot in life," Mel said and placed a quick kiss on Janice's lips. "But we're in it together, and that's the most important thing. Why don't you head downstairs to see how things are coming along with Mr. Talbott's poker game?  I need to rest my eyes for a while."

Janice stood up on tip-toes to reciprocate the quick kiss. "Okay, Toots… I'll be downstairs if you need me. Just holler."

"Will do, dear. Jan?"

"Yup?"

"You better put on your boots first…" Mel said and winked at her partner who was far shorter than usual.

---

Janice whistled a jaunty tune as she strolled down the staircase and past the many sandbags that protected the machine gun nest, but she only made it a single step onto the Persian rug in the living room before the tune fizzled out and she came to a hard stop near the doorway. The hours she and Mel had spent snuggling in the small bedroom had been used to convert the living room into an armory worthy of any all-conquering battle force.

Stacks of wooden crates containing weaponry took up much of the floorspace, and every table had been drawn into use as a base for stripping, cleaning and assembling various rifles, pistols and submachine guns. Joachim Schulze glared back at her as he finished the assembly of a German machine gun from the war. He worked the action of the fearsome-looking MG42 - known as Hitler's Buzzsaw because of its high rate of fire - and pressed the trigger to test the mechanism. The metallic clink that followed seemed to be satisfactory because the Panzer veteran moved the weapon aside to work on preparing several MP40 submachine guns.

The massive amount of firepower was bad enough, but Janice could barely hold back a roar of indignation when she noticed the outfits worn by Schulze and von Schenck. The veterans had once again donned the black, double-breasted shirts and oddly baggy pants that were identical to those they had worn when they were Obersturmbannführers in the First SS Panzer Division back in the violent years, and to make matters worse, a few of the old insignia and ribbons had found their way onto the black cloth - von Schenck had even pinned an Iron Cross onto his uniform shirt.

Although Ernst Wieland merely wore a dark-gray business suit, his old leather trench coat had been neatly folded over the backrest of a chair. A pair of black leather gloves and a fedora in a color matching the suit had been put on top of the coat so his things were close by when the call came to leave. The former Gestapo man offered Janice a cold smile while he worked on cleaning his two pistols.

Janice needed to move aside as Hans-Martin von Gerlitz entered the room carrying another wooden crate. Like his brothers-in-arms, the former Wehrmacht Lieutenant wore dark clothing, but his outfit didn't resemble any of the old uniforms - it was simply a boiler suit with a long zipper on the front so the garment could be shed in a hurry in case he needed to disappear into a crowd.

The new crate revealed its inglorious past by having a German eagle and a swastika stenciled on the side. After von Gerlitz had used a crowbar to break off the lid, he reached into the crate, brushed aside some packaging twine and retrieved one of the characteristic German stick hand grenades. It was soon given a thorough inspection like he was back on a drill ground somewhere. "Die Granaten sind noch in gutem Zustand, Herr Wieland," he said before he moved the entire crate over to the last vacant table - it appeared the years of storage hadn't affected the hand grenades negatively.

"Sehr gut, Herr Leutnant," Ernst Wieland said as he finished servicing his primary weapon. After an eight-round magazine had been inserted into the Colt's handle, he held out his suit to slide the powerful handgun into a leather shoulder-holster. "Doctor Covington, what kind of weapon would you like for tonight's operation?"

"A Chakram," Janice said with a growl. "Then I could give you nazi goons a shave you wouldn't forget in a hurry."

"I am not familiar with that. How about the Colt instead?  It has been cleaned and is fully loaded," Wieland continued and held out the weapon Janice had already used at Die Traumfabrik.

Grunting, Janice stepped forward to take the pistol. After inspecting it, she stuck it down her waistband at the back. The various things and ugly symbols on display in the makeshift armory gnawed on her good mood - that hadn't been too good to begin with - and she let out a constant stream of grunts and even growls as she took in the chilling sights of the weaponry, the ammunition and the uniforms in the room. "Jeez, you fellas really got a nasty surprise comin' if you think the German public at large wants this so soon after the war," she said as she gave a box of 7.92mm cartridges meant for the Buzzsaw machine gun a poke with her knuckles.

"But they do, Doctor," Robert von Schenck said. The Panzer veteran scooped up three MP40 submachine guns and moved them over to the next table. Once his hands were free, he dusted them off and leaned his rear against the edge of the table. "Everyone knows the Bolsheviks must be stopped before they can grow too strong. We have the tools and the mindset needed for the task. We old veterans are not as despised as you seem to think. A support organization for former Waffen-SS personnel was established just last year… the MAWS. SS-Obergruppenführer Alois Klaussen and Willy Zittrich take good care of their Alte Kameraden."

"Oh, I'll bet they do. You were all sweet, little angels, weren't ya?" Janice mumbled in a dark tone. She cast a glance at the near-silent Joachim Schulze who continued to work on the MG42 - the other veteran just shot her a dark glare in return.

Ernst Wieland chimed in: "It goes beyond that, Doctor Covington. Hasso von Manteuffel, a highly decorated Panzer General in the Wehrmacht, is running for a seat in the new Republic's parliament in the upcoming elections. I am sure he will achieve it. And of course, another Wehrmacht General is Chancellor Adenauer's chief advisor on military and state security issues. In fact, Leutnant von Gerlitz served under Gerhard Graf von Schwerin in the one-hundred-and-sixteenth Panzer division… so you see, Doctor, we are everywhere."

Wieland's smug expression went straight to Janice's stomach and did its best to upset it. Instead of getting into a heated argument that would only produce losers, she spun around on her heel and exited the living room even faster than she had entered it.

---

She went into the kitchen intending to get something to drink to calm her down but found her path to the faucet blocked: Barney Talbott and James Ericksson sat on flimsy lawn chairs attempting to play poker on the flat underside of an upside-down beer crate.

The stakes used were toothpicks, matchsticks and a few one-dollar bills so the game was anything but a high-tension affair. When Barney noticed they had a spectator, he looked up at Janice with a thoroughly disgusted expression on his young face. "Hi, Doc. You want to take my spot?  Please?"

"Sorry, bub. I just came for a glass of water," Janice said and inched past the players to get to the kitchen sink. On her way there, she studied the cards held by both men - neither of the hands were good for anything.

Agent Ericksson let out an annoyed grunt at the interruption. Shuffling around on the hard-working lawn chair to glare at Janice, he bared his broken teeth that were as ungainly as the rest of his visage.

It was hard for Janice to tell if he smiled or sneered at her, but she leaned toward a sneer. She was about to add a stinging nettle or two to the cozy scene before she thought better of it and concentrated on getting something to drink.

After she had filled a mostly clean glass with cool water, she turned around and leaned her rear against the kitchen counter. She kept silent and observed the next few plays. When it became painfully obvious that the brutish Ericksson had zero idea how to play poker, she had seen enough and moved back out into the entrance hall after patting Barney's shoulder in a fashion universally known as 'better luck next time, bub.'

The thought of going back to the living room to watch the retired German soldiers engaged in a chilling homage to their good, old days - that happened to be everyone else's bad, old days - nearly gave her heartburn, so she climbed the staircase instead. Even if Mel had fallen asleep on the sofa, Sally Swackhamer would keep her company until the big moment came at ten thirty.

---

Reaching the door to the small upstairs bedroom, Janice opened it as carefully as she could. She peeked inside and spotted Mel stretched out on the sofa; the tall, graceful translator seemed to be sleeping, so Janice tip-toed inside as quiet as a field mouse on the run from a nasty kitten.

The pulp paperback was soon found and opened to the appropriate page; the lack of a suitable place to sit made her furrow her brow and think hard to find a solution. Shrugging, she moved over to the far corner, sat down on the floor and leaned her back against the old wallpaper.

*
*
CHAPTER 7

The high level of activity in the elegant mansion that acted as a spy base for the World Security Agency proved that Zero Hour had almost been reached. While German voices uttered various commands downstairs, the two women residing in the upstairs bedroom were quiet and reflective.

Mel had just returned from her fourth visit to the bathroom within the last hour so she needed a quiet moment to regain control over her rebellious stomach. Sighing, she removed her glasses to polish the lenses. Her hands were on autopilot as they carried out the familiar motion; she spent the time simply staring into the middle distance without even blinking.

Janice zipped her leather jacket all the way up before she moved the metal tab halfway down again. She reached behind her to tap the waistband that hid the borrowed Colt; it was ready. So was she, at least once she had donned her beloved fedora and had run her fingers along the rim to make sure it sat just right.

She broke out in a wistful smile as she observed Mel's oddly vacant gaze. The smile faded into a frown when she realized that, once again, she had dragged the other half of her heart and soul into a dangerous, unpredictable situation. It had happened far too often already. They had always managed to get out of even the worst mess unscathed, but she had a sense in her gut that the law of averages would catch up with them sooner or later. She snapped out of her dark thoughts when Mel spoke up:

"I think I made the men angry with me, dear," Mel said as she slid the black, horn-rimmed frame into position atop the bridge of her nose.

"Yeah?  How so?"

Before Mel answered, she put on the washed-out combat coat. Though she dearly hoped she wouldn't be involved in any kind of action, the tailor-made travel dress was simply too impractical for the type of evening they were about to have - thus, she wore boots, the pants with the reinforced patches on the knees and finally the double-breasted, long-sleeved shirt. "Well, Mr. Schulze threw a German expletive at me for occupying the bathroom for so long. I didn't understand it, but it certainly wasn't nice whatever its meaning."

"What did it sound like?" Janice said and put her hands on her hips.

"Schlampah. Or something similar. It doesn't matter now."

"You better believe it does, Toots!  That's like calling you a bi- ah, he used the B-word."

Adjusting her glasses, Mel let out a quiet "Oh…"

Predictably, Janice was anything but quiet. She punched a fist hard into her open palm at her supposed brother-in-arms' behavior. "I've had about all I can take!  I'm gonna kick that palooka's balls around the moon before this thing is over, I guaran-Goddamn-tee it."

'Doc?  Doc!' Barney Talbott suddenly shouted from the other side of the door. He knocked as well to make sure the people inside had heard him. 'It's time!  We're leaving in three minutes!'

Janice was at the door and whooshed it open in no time. The young agent outside wore the ubiquitous tan trench coat and a soft hat in a matching shade. His youthful features carried a clear expression of worry that even the Colt 1911 in his hand couldn't compensate for. "Yeah, all right, Barney. We're almost ready. Say, are you gonna clutch that thing like a baby-soother all the way there?  I'd holster the hardware if I were you."

Barney let out a nervous chuckle as he looked down at his firearm. "I had it holstered last night… and then I dropped it 'cos it snagged on the leather when I drew it. That's what fouled up the entire operation and got Andy Gibson wounded, remember?  No, I'm keeping it loose in my coat pocket tonight."

"Well, it's your gun. Just take care if you have to move fast, yeah?  The weight will pull your coat crooked and make it flap about in strange ways. Trust me on that one," Janice said with a smile - her advice made the young agent furrow his brow and look at the pistol again like he was reconsidering his approach.

Mel joined the two others at the door. Her jaw was clenched so firmly she was unable to speak. Instead, she put a hand on Janice's shoulder to show she was ready to leave.

"Okay, Mista Super-Secret Agent Man… now we're ready," Janice said as she guided a trembling Mel out of the bedroom and down the hallway.

---

The living room had been emptied of all the weaponry by the time the trio made it downstairs. Ernst Wieland and Gilroy Buchanan were finishing up the last details when Janice stepped into the dining hall. The section commander was on the telephone with someone and thus didn't have time for her; Wieland simply gave her a cold smile that she ignored.

A sour expression fell over Janice's face, and she turned away from the dining hall to look at something far more rewarding for her eyes - Mel's shapely figure. "Hey, Barney, please tell me we're sharing a car there…" she said as she slipped a hand around Mel's waist.

"I'm afraid not, Doc."

"Crap."

"Language, dear," Mel said out of the corner of her mouth, but Janice ignored her advice as always.

Barney Talbott chuckled at the exchange before he continued: "You and Miss Pappas are riding with the brass in the Caddy. I'm in the Benz with von Schenck and Schulze. Oh, and the knucklehead Ericksson." The young agent moved closer to Mel and Janice so he could lower his voice. "Between you and me, I think he's the missing link between us humans and the cavemen."

Chuckling, Janice patted Barney's shoulder. "I tend to agree with ya. Okay, head out to the others. Mel and me will be out in a moment."

Agent Talbott nodded a goodbye before he left the spy base for the black Mercedes that had already been started out in the driveway.

---

Another two minutes went by before four of the remaining five people inside the spy base left to stroll down the garden path. The sole remaining person was a German agent from the World Security Agency bureau in Kiel who had arrived in the nick of time - his task was to guard the outer gate and the front door until the main strike force returned at an unspecified time.

Hans-Martin von Gerlitz was behind the wheel of the midnight-black Cadillac. The yacht-sized vehicle had already been turned around so they wouldn't have to waste any time. Wieland sat down on the passenger-side of the seat up front while the section commander slipped onto the back seat. Dressed in an elegant, sand-colored camel-hair coat, a steel-gray business suit and his indispensable dark-gray Borsalino, Buchanan pushed himself into the corner to make room for Mel and Janice.

Janice put her hand on the small of Mel's back as the tall woman nearly folded herself in half to get in. Once she was comfortable, Janice jumped in as well and shut the door behind her. "We're all set back here," she said to make von Gerlitz understand they could leave.

Wieland moved up a large, clumsy walkie-talkie that took up so much space he needed to keep it down in the footwell. After pushing a button on the side, he said: "Öffnet das Tor!" The order to open the gate was quickly translated into action as the line of defense slid aside.

Up front, the black Mercedes - that was driven by Robert von Schenck - drove through the gate at slow speed. It was soon brought to a halt across the sidewalk. When nothing seemed amiss out on Helmut-Pönitz-Allee, it rolled on for another twenty yards before it stopped again to wait for the others.

Von Gerlitz let the heavy Cadillac take off at a crawl until it had reached the sidewalk. Like the Mercedes, they stopped to take in their surroundings. Everything continued to be quiet along the avenue, so the former Wehrmacht Lieutenant accelerated to make the large vehicle move off the sidewalk and onto the roadway itself - behind them, the cast-iron gate slid shut with a howling whine.

In the back of the luxury sedan, Janice shook her head at the grotesque nature of the cloak-and-dagger world the grown men around her lived in. It was a chilling glimpse into a way of life so foreign to her and Mel it seemed to be from another planet altogether.

Their own lives undoubtedly appeared odd to most other people since hardly anyone found digging through old dirt or translating ancient texts exhilarating, but at least something positive often came out of it in the shape of important historical artifacts or the recognition of long-forgotten tribes, religions or even entire nations. In the oppressively dangerous world of espionage, the general population would never learn of the successes, and the failures nearly always meant that some poor soul wouldn't make it back.

Janice shook her head again and sought out Mel's hand. When the elegant digits were entwined with her own, she gave them a little squeeze for comfort.

---

The two cars eventually reached the outskirts of the docks after an uneventful drive through the large city. Once there, the members of the strike team were surprised to find the connecting streets full of parked trucks as well as large groups of day laborers and regular dock workers.

The hard-working - and occasionally tough-looking - men were huddled around gangers and crew bosses who counted hands, issued orders and told the selected laborers which quay they needed to go to. At the same time, articulated trucks and delivery vans rumbled away from the docks spewing plumes of black diesel smoke to show they were heavily-laden with goods.

The cause for the unusual amount of activity was revealed when the black cars reached the first street that had a view of the quay reserved for the international connections, Am Ostkai: no less than two trans-Atlantic cargo ships had arrived at the same time. Powerful work lights illuminated the entire area as the tall cranes swung back and forth like oversized grasshoppers to keep up with the sudden demand for their services. Hundreds of pallets, crates and drums were moved from the cargo ships to the waiting trucks that had lined up in an arrow-straight line-astern formation on the quay to reduce the downtime.

Suddenly, a man who wore the uniform of the port's railroad services moved out onto the street in front of the Mercedes-Benz. The worker waved a red flag at the driver of the black car indicating the street was about to be closed for road traffic to allow a freight train clear passage.

Von Schenck knew they were on a tight schedule so he had no intention of stopping. Flashing the car's high-beams, he stomped his boot down onto the gas pedal and blasted across the pair of tracks that ran across Am Ostkai. The railroad employee was forced to jump to the side in an almighty hurry; he dropped the red flag as he landed on the sidewalk, but made up for it by shouting an enormous amount of obscenities at the black car in a very short amount of time.

The Cadillac maintained a fifty yards' gap to the Mercedes, and von Gerlitz mirrored his colleague's actions by accelerating so the distance wouldn't grow too large. Inevitably, a huffing and puffing steam locomotive arrived on the scene pulling so many box cars that the end of it reached all the way around the corner of the next street. The fully loaded freight train only rolled along the tracks at walking pace, but the free space in front of it diminished rapidly.

"Stop!  Brake, you maniac!  Brake!" Janice cried from the back seat. A second later, even von Gerlitz noticed they would never make it. He jumped onto the brake pedal which made the softly-sprung Cadillac nearly go into a nosedive. The people on the back seat flew forward until they were stopped by the seats in front of them.

All four wheels locked up at once; the clumsy Cadillac's mass and momentum continued to carry it forward on a direct collision course with the locomotive. The narrow tires lost all adhesion and made the vehicle go into a sideways skid across the well-worn and typically slippery paving stones - it didn't help that von Gerlitz spun the steering wheel in the wrong direction in an attempt to correct the slide.

The heavy sedan came to a rocking, creaking, groaning halt with ten inches to spare. A second later, the locomotive and the many box cars it pulled rumbled past right in front of the Cadillac's chrome bumper.

"Ohhhhhh, my heart," Mel croaked from somewhere down in the space between the seats where she had ended up. Janice and Gilroy Buchanan had been able to stay upright - mostly - by grabbing onto the doors' armrests, but the center-seat where Mel had sat offered no such luxury.

"Sonovabitch," Janice mumbled as she leaned forward to pick up her fedora. Once it was safely back on her wild mane, she reached down to give her sweetheart a hands-up so she could untangle her long arms and legs and crawl up onto the seat.

While everyone tried to return to something resembling order in the back, von Gerlitz reversed away from the train to give them room to maneuver in case they needed to make a quick escape.

'S-One to S-Two. S-One to S-Two, over,' Barney Talbott could be heard saying from the walkie-talkie down in the footwell.

An angry-looking Ernst Wieland picked up the heavy, cumbersome radio and pressed the transmit button. "Go ahead, S-One. Over."

'Are you all right?  What should we do?  Stop or go on?'

"Stop, S-One. Wait for us. Enter radio silence from now on. S-Two out," Wieland said before he put the walkie-talkie away.

The railroad employee who had needed to throw himself onto the sidewalk when the Mercedes-Benz had raced past stomped over to the Cadillac to give the driver a large piece of his mind. The irate man stopped dead in his tracks when he spotted the stone-faced former Gestapo officer on the passenger seat.

The black leather trench coat alone did the trick - those who had lived through the immediate pre-war years and then the war itself remembered those coats all too well. Nobody in their right mind would ever mess with the men wearing them, not even bruised dock workers who had a right to be angry. A few seconds went by before the railroad employee turned around and hurried away to catch up with the locomotive instead.

"Herr Wieland, we're fully exposed!  We need to get out of here!" Gilroy Buchanan said in a voice that proved he was already feeling the stress of having stopped deep in what could be enemy territory. His distinguished facade began to crack as he leaned forward and put a hand on top of the seat ahead of him. "Can't we cross over to another street?  Anything!"

"The railroad tracks intersect all the streets here. We simply have to wait," Ernst Wieland said over his shoulder. Like the section commander's, Wieland's voice also carried an undertone - only in his case, it was annoyance at the all-too apparent nervous state of his supposed superior.

"There must be something we can do…" Buchanan said before he fell quiet. Taking off his Borsalino, he used a white handkerchief to dab his brow that had already begun to glisten.

Mel and Janice shared a long look. "Hey, Big Daddy-O," Janice said, leaning forward so she could look past Mel, "if your shorts are this wadded up already, perhaps ya shoulda stayed at the base and just sent your foot soldiers to carry out your dirty operation."

"A commander's place is on the battlefield…" Buchanan mumbled while he continued to dab his glistening forehead.

Janice nodded like the Riddle of the Sphinx had just been explained to her. "Ohhhh, right. I get that… but I fail to see how acting like a kitten in a rocking chair factory can ever be called leading by example-"

"I beg your pardon?!"

Up front, Ernst Wieland let out a chuckle that sounded like he was genuinely amused by Janice's comments for once. Mel, who sat between the combatants, put her hands in the air to calm everyone down before tempers would flare for real and claim her as collateral damage. "Mr. Buchanan, Jan… please… there's enough tension to go around already!  There's no need to add to it with this petty bickering," she said before she adjusted her glasses.

"Always the voice of reason, Mel… you're right," Janice said and leaned back in the seat. A moment later, she pointed out of the windshield. "Oh look, the train's nearly gone past. It would have taken us longer just to turn this barge around!"

"Jan, please…" Mel said out of the corner of her mouth; Janice just grinned as Hans-Martin von Gerlitz selected a gear and drove off once more. The Cadillac's floaty suspension made the heavy vehicle sway as it drove across the tracks that crossed the street.

The black Mercedes-Benz had waited for them like Wieland had ordered them to, and the two cars were soon on their way once more.

-*-*-*-

By the time they reached what was to be their temporary base for the next part of Operation Dustpan, the cracks that had appeared in Gilroy Buchanan's elegant exterior had been smoothed out. Once the Cadillac had come to a halt at a safe spot where it would be well out of sight, von Gerlitz jumped out of the vehicle to hold the door open for the section commander.

Watching Buchanan climb out and ascend a metal staircase to get to the observation post itself, Janice mumbled "what a soft-boiled egg," before she reached for the lever that would open her door.

Ernst Wieland got out on his own and moved over to the black Mercedes to confer with the other agents. While he, Barney Talbott and James Ericksson went on a quick reconnaissance of the area to get a sense for the conditions they had to work under, von Schenck and Schulze readied the weapons and the ammunition that had all been stored in the Mercedes' trunk.

Janice soon helped Mel extract her long legs from the center of the Cadillac's rear seat. They didn't really know what to do now they had arrived, so Janice pushed her fedora back from her brow and performed a slow, complete turn to study their surroundings.

They had driven roughly six hundred yards further down Am Ostkai before they had crossed over to Wilhelm-Büsing-Strasse. There, they had continued on for another twenty yards until they had made the final turn into a smaller alleyway. The two black cars were parked behind a two-storey wooden barrack. The metal staircase that Buchanan had used led to a reinforced door on the upper floor some twenty feet above the paving stones; Janice surmised the observation post offered a clear, unrestricted view of their target across the street.

Because of the many brick warehouses and other types of storage facilities in the area, the noises created by the hectic offloading over at the international quay were muted and seemed almost ethereal. Trucks rumbled past out on Wilhelm-Büsing-Strasse at infrequent intervals, but the traffic was so light compared to the clogged-up state over on Am Ostkai that it almost appeared not to be there at all.

"Jan, dear…" Mel said and adjusted her glasses.

"Mmmm?"

Mel resolutely reached up to pull the fedora forward. "Your hat needs to be up here, not back there."

Grinning, Janice wrapped her arm around Mel's waist and gave it a little squeeze. "Yeah, huh?  What would I do without ya, Toots?"

"I'm sure you'd get by somehow," Mel said in the drollest voice she could muster given the situation they were in. Moving around a little, she sniffed the air - and promptly crinkled her nose. "Oh, the smell reminds me of Fisherman's Wharf back home in San Francisco…"

The air did indeed hold a whiff of fish that grew stronger whenever a gust of wind rolled over the streets from the open basins. The breeze made rigging clang against masts, and it was possible to hear the characteristic sounds of wooden ships creaking as waves slapped rhythmically against their hulls. The soundscape proved the observation post was close to some of the port's minor, inner basins that were typically used by privately owned pleasure craft and Hamburg's small fleet of fishing boats.

"Now you mention it… it actually does," Janice said while she sniffed the air. She was about to push her fedora back again when she caught herself in the nick of time. "Yeah. I wonder if we can buy lobsters anywhere around here?"

Mel let out a brief chuckle as she glanced around the empty alleyway. "I severely doubt it, Jan…"

"You're probably right. It also reminds me of the fishing village on that small island in the Aegean we visited a couple of years ago. What was the name of that place again?  Something with an E. Ah, never mind. I guess fish smells the same wherever we go, huh?"

"I wouldn't be surprised if it did," Mel said drolly while she adjusted her glasses.

Ernst Wieland and the two American agents soon returned from their brief recon patrol. While Wieland and Ericksson ascended the metal staircase to update the section commander on their latest findings, Barney Talbott made a detour by walking over to Mel and Janice.

Janice broke out in a grin at the sight. She stuck out her hand for the traditional greeting though less than forty minutes had gone by since they had last spoken with the young agent back at the spy base. "Hi de ho all over again, bub. So, what's cookin'?"

"Well, I better leave the briefing to the brass," Barney said as he shook Janice's hand, "but the lights are on in the warehouse and it looks like they have at least one sentry out on foot patrol. Armed, of course."

"Right."  Janice looked at Mel whose face had gained a worried expression at the mention of firearms. "Do you know if Mel and me should go upstairs and join the others, or…?  We need a little information before this thing goes down, you know."

"I can't say, Doc. I'll have to ask."

"Okay."

"It's only…" - Barney checked his wristwatch - "ten past eleven so we still have a little while to go yet. I know Mr. Wieland wants another recon before the main operation gets underway, so… tell you what, I'll go up and ask right away."

"Works for us, friend. Thanks," Janice said with a grin. Moving on autopilot, she pushed her fedora back from her brow - two seconds later, Mel pushed it forward again with a 'Tut-tut!' that made Janice's grin even wider.

Barney Talbott quickly ran up the metal staircase and entered the observation post - a short minute later, he came back out and waved Mel and Janice up to him.

---

The furniture inside the post on the upper floor of the wooden barrack was just as utilitarian as the exterior had hinted at: a central table, a pair of metal swivel-chairs and finally a smaller table that had been pushed up against a wall. The smaller of the two tables carried an old-fashioned Adler typewriter from the 1920s while the central table was buried under a vast pile of data sheets, black-and-white photographs and maps of the port.

A pair of windows had a good view of Wilhelm-Büsing-Strasse that ran below. The frames of both windows had been covered by sheets of double-layered cloth so nobody could look in from afar, but lense-sized holes had been cut in the cloth to allow an unrestricted view out for an advanced camera and a pair of strong binoculars that were placed on tripods. A W-S-A field agent, Derek Crosby, manned the binoculars and kept a running record of the people coming and going across the street at the warehouse.

Ernst Wieland and a pipe-smoking Buchanan were busy studying the latest intelligence reports at the central table. Schulze, von Schenck, Ericksson and von Gerlitz were in the process of giving their firearms the final check. The two American agents had settled for their Colts while the three Germans were all equipped with MP40 submachine guns over their shoulders, Walther P38s in leather holsters on their hip and finally two stick hand grenades each that were shoved down their belts like in the old days.

The long and thus unwieldy MG42 had been placed on the floor; the weapon's high rate of fire demanded plenty of ammunition, so no less than three boxes containing five-hundred rounds each had been lined up next to it.

"Jumpin' Jehoshaphat!" Janice said and promptly pushed her fedora back before she put her hands on her hips. "Grenades, machine guns and tight confines. Not a good combination, that. Hell, you'd think we were stuck in a pillbox on D-Day or something… no wait, that didn't work out for you guys, did it?  Sorry I mentioned it."

The bruiser James Ericksson shot an angry glare at the two women in general and at the leather-jacket wearing Janice in particular. "What the hell gives you the right to joke about D-Day?  I was there!" he growled while he tapped his Colt against his chest. "We jumped in before dawn and were under fire for the entire fuckin' day!  Do you know how many guys we lost there?  Don't you dare pull any jokes while I'm around, you dumb broad!"

Mel let out a mumbled "Oh, dear…" as she glanced down at her partner. Janice had remained remarkably silent until that point, but it was clear by her taut stance she was about to add her two cents' worth - or perhaps a bit more in case Ericksson didn't get it the first time around - to the one-sided conversation.

Before tempers could flare up and turn into a proper conflagration, Janice received assistance from an unlikely source: Ernst Wieland. "Doctor Covington and Miss Pappas are war veterans just like you are, Mr. Ericksson. They helped the early Greek Resistance in Crete in 'forty-one and followed the US Army through France, Luxembourg and Belgium in late 'forty-four and early 'forty-five."

Janice shot her supposed savior a dark glare that revealed she didn't appreciate being investigated so thoroughly - it was painfully obvious the former Gestapo officer had done his homework regarding the two adventurers.

It was equally obvious the answer didn't exactly appease Ericksson's confrontational stance against the two women in the room, but he eventually shrugged and returned to servicing his weapon. "All right. I was in the Ardennes as well at that time…" he said after a short while.

"Yep," Janice said and pointed at Robert von Schenck and Joachim Schulze, "and so were they. Only they were cooped up in Tiger tanks at the time. They had our asses in the crosshairs and their fingers on the triggers. Why don't you cuss at those fellas, pal?"

When no answer was forthcoming, Janice opened her mouth to add another barb or two, but Gilroy Buchanan stepped in:

"Enough of this nonsense," he said after taking out his pipe. He pinned the ugly bruiser to the spot with an angry glare that seemed to have little impact on the big fellow. "Agent Ericksson, focus on the task at hand. Doctor-"

"Yeah, yeah, blah-blah-blah," Janice said while she stuffed her hands deep down her leather jacket's pockets. A moment later, she had to grin at Mel when a slender, graceful hand moved the fedora back to her brow.

The section commander shot Janice a dark glare before he cleared his throat and put his pipe back between his lips - several puffs followed like he was trying to create a smoke screen so he didn't have to look at his female nemesis.

A piece of paper was soon held up to illustrate his next point. "Intelligence gathered by Agent Crosby over the past few hours shows there are twenty people inside the warehouse at present, plus a roaming sentry. Included in that number are Gerd Neumann and the leader of this particular cell, Lotti Grünwald. Every last one of them is armed and willing to use deadly force to evade capture. Our mission tonight is to make sure this cell cannot take over where the other one left off. That means-"

"Tötet alle und pisst auf ihre toten Körper," Joachim Schulze said. The comment sent a ripple of approving nods and chuckles through the veterans there; Buchanan and Janice had understood it but didn't agree with the sentiment. The two American agents and Mel furrowed their brow as the finer meaning had passed them by.

Janice let out a dark grunt as she eyed the German Panzer veteran. 'Kill everyone and piss on their corpses' reeked rather strongly of the evil tactics employed by the First SS Panzer Division on their murderous campaigns along the Eastern Front.

"Jan…?" Mel said out of the corner of her mouth.

"I'll tell ya later. In private."

"Oh… I see. That bad?"

"Worse."

Mel adjusted her glasses while shooting the Panzer veteran an offended glare.

Gilroy Buchanan held up his hands to restore order to the briefing. "Well, perhaps you shouldn't go quite that far, but we need to capture or eliminate every member of this cell. The leaders are obviously high-priority targets, but everyone over there must be accounted for at the conclusion of Operation Dustpan. Whenever an opponent has been captured, call it in at once so we can retrieve the prisoner. Oh, and like I said before, you must never lose sight of the fact that our opponents will shoot to kill. Stay alert at all times."

Janice let out a grunt as she ran over the details in her mind. There were too many unanswered questions for her to blindly follow orders, so she stuck her hand in the air. The gesture earned her groans from several of the other people present but she couldn't care less. "I got a couple-a questions, Mista. One, do we have a photo of wotshername… the leader of this cell?"

"Lotti Grünwald. We do and we don't, Doctor," the section commander said as he waved his pipe around. "Agent Crosby has taken several pictures of her over the course of the day, but they are still being developed. They won't get here in time."

"All right," Janice said and scratched her chin. "I guess the typical commie gal looks like a Bronx bricklayer so she'll be easy enough to spot. Two, even with all this firepower, they outnumber us three to one. What kind of hardware can we expect those fellas to be sittin' on?"

This time, it was the turn of the Germans in the small room to look confused at the odd phrasing; the Americans understood it and chuckled.

"Our agents on-site have been unable to determine that because of the roaming sentry. There wasn't any reason to arouse their suspicion," Buchanan said and put his pipe in his mouth before he tapped a stack of documents into order. "We'll know as soon as the reconnaissance has been completed, Doctor."

"Ah. Okay. Which is pretty soon, I hope…" Janice said and looked at her wristwatch. "Didn't you say this deal is gonna go down at midnight?"

"Yes. Like we agreed upon, von Schenck, Schulze and yourself will head over there as soon as the briefing is over."

"Works for me," Janice said and glanced at the two Germans in question - the Panzer veterans were both ready. "But that makes me think of something else… the sentry. What should we do-"

"Everyone over there must be captured or eliminated, Doctor. I thought I had made myself perfectly clear on that point," Buchanan said through a particularly impressive cloud of pipe smoke.

"Yeah, sure, I get that part… but here's what got me in a real dizzy kinda tizzy. We need to recon before we can strike or else we don't know what we'll be facing. Standard battlefield practice. Yeah?" While she spoke, Janice counted off using one finger at a time - the first was soon joined by several more. "During the recon, we have to take out the sentry so he won't blow the whistle. Yeah?  The commies will undoubtedly notice when their man goes missing and react on it. That'll force us to strike before we've completed the recon. Yeah?  And then we don't know what the hell we're up against. That means we might be ass-deep in trouble once the commies come out to play… which in turn means there's a risk our attack will fail. Yeah?  Hmmm. I don't know about you fellas, but it sure sounds like one of those conundrums to me."

Ernst Wieland let out an amused chuckle at the complex yet simple logic.

The section commander just looked annoyed and took an extra-deep puff on his pipe to get over it. "Perhaps you haven't understood your orders, Doctor-"

"Sure I have, but orders made at a desk will always fail in the field, Mista. Every single soldier of every single army since the dawn of time will tell you that. Okay, here's how I see it…" - Once more, Janice held up her hand to count off on her fingers - "One, we could create some kind of diversion that'll keep 'em busy elsewhere. Of course, if they're as jittery as those Joes last night at the Dream Factory, that might backfire. Two, we could plan the recon around the sentry's routines. Three, we could take him out and get someone to impersonate him while we do the recon and then analyze what we've found. That'll obviously have to be one of the Germans present. I'm guessin' von Gerlitz there fits the part best."

Wieland chuckled again. "Rather impressive, Doctor. Now you see why we wanted you to come along."

"Huh. No, I don't, actually. I'm just an archaeologist," Janice said and stuffed her hands down into her pockets.

Gilroy Buchanan kept silent like he expected one of the others to speak. When no one did, he let out a brief harrumph. "Very well, Doctor Covington. A diversion is too dangerous and we don't have time to plan around the sentry's pattern. Herr von Gerlitz, are you ready for such a task?"

"Jawohl, Herr Buchanan," Hans-Martin von Gerlitz said and clicked his heels - the fact he wore work boots rather than his regular officer's boots made the sound turn out dull and muted.

"Good. Carry out the recon," Buchanan continued before he turned his attention to the papers on the table.

As the Germans began to speak among themselves to hammer out the details of the recon, Mel grabbed hold of Janice's arm and pulled her over to the door. "Jan… we need… we… we need a private moment. Now," she said for Janice's ears only.

"I know, Toots," Janice replied before she grabbed hold of the door handle.

---

The Cadillac had been locked by von Gerlitz when he had left it, but the Mercedes was still open. Janice helped Mel climb onto the back seat before she sat down and shut the door behind her.

A deep sigh escaped Mel's lips. After taking off her glasses and handing them to Janice so they would be safe, she reached up to rub her face several times. Another long, tormented sigh followed as she slid the frame back up her regal nose. "Oh, Sweet Aphrodite, this is just tearing my soul to shreds. I haven't felt this miserable since my pregnancy. Not even the divorce made me feel this way inside. Jan, please… there must be something I can say or do that will stop you from taking part in this nonsense!"

"Toots… Mel, I don't-"

"There simply must!"

Janice shook her head slowly before she kissed Mel's hands. "I don't wanna be here either, sweetie. Buchanan has twice threatened to deport us and I have no doubt he would-"

"At least we'd be going home!  Jan, we can't… you can't go ahead with this!"

"Honey, Buchanan is an agent for our government. He and the people higher up the chain of command are capable of screwing us over so royally that Zeus himself wouldn't be able to untangle it. Hell, I doubt even Xena could!"

"But trying to capture a communist cell… it's not even our fight!"

"No. It's surreal, I agree. And we still don't know why the W-S-A people targeted us in the first place," Janice said and shuffled around so she didn't have to turn her head to look at her partner. "All we did was to wire the US Embassy and the British military headquarters to ask for permission to explore parts of the Heath. There wasn't anything in their initial reply that hinted at any problems… I mean, they gave us permission to travel to the army post and promised we'd get to speak with the base commander. But Buchanan told us he had agents board the train at the very first stop south of the Danish border. That was only a couple of hours later!  How could they have known about us so fast?"

"Maybe they thought we were spies?  You've seen what kind of jungle it is down here. I suppose that a spy will always think that everyone else is as well."

"But for whom?  The United Front of Xena?"

"No, silly. I doubt they've ever heard of the Warrior Princess and the Battling Bard," Mel said and swatted at Janice's thigh. "Some foreign power. After all, we've been on all continents… visited countless nations and territories from Alaska to New Zealand and back again-"

"We have, and that's exactly why we can't risk backing out. The suits would trip us up any chance they'd get… we need to be able to go wherever the quest for the Xena Scrolls takes us, Mel. Maybe those palookas would block us from getting visas, or maybe they'd invent some bogus international criminal charge against us like last night so we'd be arrested the second we set foot in a particular country. If we can't travel the world, we might as well call it quits and spend the next forty years or whatever giving lectures on how great everything was in the good, old days."

Mel opened her mouth to counter the claim, but she closed it again when she realized Janice was right. "Oh, I concede the point. But I can't shake the feeling there's something nefarious behind all this, Jan. They're like Bacchae. Once they get their fangs into our necks… and they already have… they won't let go until there isn't anything left of us. So why should we believe them when they say we're free to leave after tonight?"

Janice could only shake her head and twist her shoulders in a frustrated shrug. At the top of the metal staircase, the door opened to reveal a pair of black combat boots that could only belong to von Schenck or Schulze. "Baby, I need to go on this recon. I promise I'll be caref-"

Her attempts at speaking were cut off by Mel's soft lips that claimed her own in a long, heated kiss. Once they separated, Janice reached up to run a callused thumb across Mel's cheek; then she opened the door and climbed out of the black Mercedes-Benz.

-*-*-*-

Not a minute later, four shadows ran across Wilhelm-Büsing-Strasse to get to a brick wall that had been reddish-brown when it had been built - now, it was mostly black from the soot that was spewed out by the coasters, the trans-Atlantic freighters and the hundreds of trucks that rumbled past each day. Whatever its color, it offered the perfect cover for them so they crouched down and waited there for a while.

Sitting perfectly still, they listened intently for metallic sounds that could indicate weapons being readied among their opponents. The typical shouting, whirring of chains and bassy humming of engines originating at the large-scale offloading of the high-capacity ships continued to dominate the soundscape and made it difficult to pick out fainter sounds that might be closer to them.

When nothing relevant reached their ears, they continued toward the warehouse. The four shadows ran hunched-over to present as small a target as possible but it ultimately proved unnecessary because nothing untoward happened during the run.

As they reached a tall wire-mesh fence that marked the perimeter of a small open section adjacent to the warehouse itself, it soon became obvious that the roaming sentry had only just been in that area - the stench of fresh urine as well as a glistening discoloration on the wall proved he had needed to relieve himself. It was impossible to say which direction the sentry had gone from there, but at least nobody could be seen on the sidewalk immediately in front of the brick warehouse that nominally belonged to the Obermeier Schiffsversorgung company.

Janice studied the open section on the other side of the wire-mesh fence: it held a few empty oil drums, a pile of empty canisters of some sort, several stacks of spare bricks and finally a large, wooden thing that could possibly be the discarded framework for a roll of cables or a similar kind of flexible tubing. Tall weeds had claimed most of the items there indicating the open area was rarely, or never, used.

Their little recon unit was framed by the Panzer veterans. The highly experienced Robert von Schenck had taken the point holding an MP40 ready at all times; Janice was directly behind him but hadn't yet pulled her Colt from her waistband. Von Gerlitz formed the next link of the chain with Schulze bringing up the rear - the latter made sure their way back to safety was clear. Down on one knee; he kept his MP40 constantly moving from left to right to sweep the empty space behind them. Two hand grenades had been stuck down his belt, and there was no doubt he would use them if they were jumped.

Von Schenck leaned down toward Janice to whisper "Door," while he pointed at the side entrance they were to use. She nodded to prove she had understood. The gate in the wire-mesh fence had been padlocked, but it was nothing the Panzer veteran's bolt cutter couldn't handle; the metal tool soon bit through the metal chain. Working quietly, he pulled the remains of the chain out by hand so it wouldn't fall onto the ground and make an unwanted noise.

The four shadows ran into the open section adjacent to the brick warehouse. Von Schenck soon stepped aside to let the smaller Janice try the door first. Inches before she made it there, they could all hear someone whistling a tuneless melody through his teeth. It made them come to a halt at once. The whistling grew ever louder so the recon team dispersed into the deep shadows.

Since the street lights could only reach roughly halfway to the side entrance, everything was bathed in darkness. Von Schenck took full advantage of that by drawing a black trench knife from a sheath on his belt. He put a hand on Janice's shoulder to let her know she needed to stay down and remain hidden for the time being. Nodding, she pushed herself further into the shadows.

When the roaming sentry had gone right past the four people waiting for him, von Schenck jumped up and held the knife ready. The beret-wearing sentry carried a rifle over his shoulder, but it was an old, hopelessly obsolete Mauser that the experienced soldiers knew would mostly be for show.

Instead of burying the knife's cold steel into the warm body, von Schenck flipped it around and used the heavy hilt to give their opponent a hard thump over the head. As the sentry collapsed, von Schenck and Janice caught him so his equipment wouldn't make a racket.

The unfortunate man's beret, overcoat and rifle soon exchanged hands. Before long, Hans-Martin von Gerlitz carried on where the sentry had left off like nothing at all had happened - he even whistled through his teeth to maintain the illusion.

Janice let out a grunt at the typical Teutonic efficiency of her associates, but she didn't have time to reflect on the odd fact that some stereotypes were true as the side entrance beckoned. She slipped over there to see if she and her unit could slip inside undetected.

The metal door was less than ten years old as the devastating air raids during the war had left the docks as nothing but smoldering piles of rubble, but rust had already claimed it - no doubt a direct result of the salt water basins that surrounded it. All four hinges, the door handle itself and even the lock beneath the handle had turned rust-brown.

Although the metal would undoubtedly howl and whine once manipulated, the recon team didn't have access to another entrance. Janice clenched her jaw and reached for the handle while mentally preparing herself for the noises she knew would follow.

As expected, the hinges began to squeak pitifully, but she opened it at such a slow speed the metallic noises simply blended into the port's ambient soundscape. She slipped through the gap she had created and entered the warehouse itself. Reaching behind her, she drew the Colt from her waistband and quietly pulled the slider back to make it ready to fire.

She found herself in a dark corner of the warehouse surrounded by stacks of wooden crates not dissimilar to those she had seen at the spy base - there, such crates had contained weapons. The stacks were too tall for her to peek around, so she tip-toed along the row until she could find a better vantage point. It soon came, and she crouched down again holding the Colt ready. Many voices from the people present reached her ears; most were German, but at least one spoke an Eastern European language that could be Russian.

Somewhere, someone turned the dial on a radio. The question whether the person wanted to listen to the news or music was never answered because all that came out of the tinny speaker was static. After a short while, the person gave up and turned it off.

Janice peeked out a little further to get an impression of the layout. The central section of the warehouse had been held free of goods so the pale-gray Volkswagen Transporter panel van that was parked there could exit without needing to weave around any obstacles.

A foldable table had been put up behind the VW, and a brass lantern had been put on it to provide the light. The table seemed to hold a few maps or other types of large-sheet documents, but it was too far away to tell for sure. Several chairs of varying types had been placed at or near the table, but none were in use.

She counted six people standing at the table pouring over the documents. A further two were at the Transporter pushing something through the sliding door and into the cargo compartment. Most wore dark-blue outfits that resembled those worn by the regular dock workers - she couldn't tell if the people did actually fall into that category, but their weather-beaten, bearded faces seemed to suggest it wasn't beyond the realms of possibility. It didn't appear anyone was armed, but several old-fashioned Mauser rifles leaned against the wall not too far from the table.

Tall piles of crates, barrels and pallets loaded with smaller boxes that had been wrapped in canvas had been stored on either side of the central section. A further five people worked on something directly opposite Janice's viewing spot, but they obscured her view of what they were doing. Like the others, they wore coarse, dark-blue clothing fit for any kind of filthy work.

Thirteen people had been accounted for, but that still left seven. The limping man they were there to apprehend wasn't among the thirteen present so he and the female leader of the cell had to be somewhere else. It appeared an office had been built into the rear-left corner of the warehouse; the structure was equipped with a window and a metal door not dissimilar to the one Janice had used to get in. It seemed another lantern or perhaps a candle had been lit in there as an orange flicker played across the window from time to time.

Having seen enough to make an initial report, Janice inched back to the open door and waved her associates inside so they could conduct their own inspection of the crates. When von Schenck reached her, she pulled him down and whispered into his ear: "Thirteen people. One car. Check the crates. They might be weapons."

Von Schenck nodded and carried on with the surly Schulze in tow. Janice didn't feel like spending too much time alone deep in enemy territory, so she followed the Panzer veterans back to the spot where she had just been.

Schulze took down one of the boxes that was easiest to get to, but that only contained Italian leather shoes from a manufacturer by the name of Livio Calderari e Figlio, Torino. The next two boxes revealed more shoes. Plenty of furrowed brows were displayed before von Schenck finally discovered a wooden crate that had the typically Russian Cyrillic letters on it.

The veterans quickly re-stacked two piles of crates and smaller boxes until the special one had been freed. Von Schenck used the handle-end of his bolt cutter tool to break open the wooden lid and lift out one of the objects inside.

"Himmel, Arsch und Zwirn!" Schulze exclaimed quietly when they realized they had found a crate carrying twelve blocks of plastic explosives. The lettering printed on the green, putty-like material explained the explosives were indeed of Soviet origin.

Janice pushed her fedora back to rub her brow. She didn't fully understand Schulze's expletive, but the one she thought of probably wasn't too far off what the retired soldier had said.

She made a quick count of the crates and boxes nearest them - there were more than a hundred. Chances were there were Italian shoes in a great deal of them, but it would only take one or two more crates of plastic explosives to create unfathomable destruction wherever it would be detonated. She let out a grunt as a thought crossed her mind. "Detonators… are there any detonators?" she said as quietly as she could.

Von Schenck shook his head after checking the crate once more.

"Dammit… if they'd been here, we could have stolen them. This is just harmless plasticine without detonators," Janice mumbled and rubbed her brow again.

Schulze's attention was caught by another wooden crate a short distance away. It also carried Russian lettering, and a quick count revealed it was part of a set of twelve. While his associates spoke, he moved off on his own and eventually knelt next to one of the new crates. The MP40 got in his way so he swung the strap over his shoulder before he reached for the oblong container.

The lid was nailed shut, but his trench knife took care of business in no time. The crate was just long enough for a firearm of some kind, and that's exactly what it contained: three Soviet PPSh-41 submachine guns that he and his Kameraden from the Eastern Front knew all too well. The weapon wasn't equipped with its characteristic drum magazine, but a stack of boxes next to the oblong crates had the correct size for the accessory - comically, they were branded as Beluga caviar. He took out one of the submachine guns and held it to his nose. It was brand new and not a refit; the oil was fresh and it was ready to fire once the drum was in place. Grunting, he put the weapon on the floor before he sealed the crate's lid once more.

"Seht euch das an," he whispered once he returned to Janice and von Schenck. He held up the weapon to show what he had found.

Janice had only seen that type of submachine gun in old war-time news reels, but she remembered hearing of its accuracy in skilled hands - it was deemed to have been a better assault weapon that most of its American or German counterparts.

"A Papasha… the Popovs' favorite gun. How many?" von Schenck said darkly - he had spoken in English for Janice's benefit.

"Ein ganzer Haufen davon. Und auch jede Menge Munition."

Von Schenck let out a dark grunt before he turned to Janice to translate, but she cut him off:

"I got it, thanks," Janice mumbled. The news that there was an entire pile of the things and plenty of ammunition as well only heightened the tension. "Goddammit, we can't allow these things to be used. They're lethal in skilled hands… and those unscrupulous palookas won't hesitate for a second. We saw that last night over at the show."

Robert von Schenck nodded. "I agree, Doctor. When we strike, we need to take out the Papashas before the Bolsheviks can get to them. If we had timers and detonators for the explosives, we could rig up some very nice fireworks. But we do not. We must use our grenades instead. Schulze?"

"Es könnte funktionieren, aber wir haben nur eine Kiste mit Granaten. Zwölf insgesamt."

"I know. We only have twelve. So we must make sure each counts," von Schenck said before he turned to Janice. "Doctor, we should go back. We found what we came for."

"Almost… we're still seven commies short of the twenty that's supposed to be here. I only saw thirteen. The limping fella isn't here…"

Von Schenck had already set off for the side entrance when he came to a halt and looked back at Janice. "Wait, Gerd Neumann is not here?"

"Well, I haven't seen him. Of course, he might be over in that office there," Janice whispered and pointed in the general direction of the structure in the far corner. "But I guess informing the commander of the explosives is more important right now," she continued while she pushed her fedora forward again so it wouldn't snag on anything.

The square-built Panzer veteran slid back his black sleeve to look at his wristwatch - he let out a grunt at what the hands said. "We have no time to wait for Neumann to get here. It is almost midnight. We need to move out."

"Works for me, bub," Janice said with a grin. Hunching over, she inched past the men and made it to the door in double-time. The veterans followed her there, and they were soon back out in the open section adjacent to the warehouse. The sentry they had knocked out was still unconscious, so Schulze grabbed him and flipped him over his shoulder like he weighed nothing at all.

Von Gerlitz showed up a short minute later which meant the four shadows - and their first prisoner of the evening's raid - could return to the wooden barrack across Wilhelm-Büsing-Strasse.

---

Up on the first floor of the observation post, Mel had been issued a chair and told not to get in anyone's way. Her stomach had been a rock-solid knot of worry from the second Janice had left, and it hadn't even eased her affliction to talk to the friendly junior agent Barney Talbott. She had tried her damnedest to avoid speaking as much as a syllable to Wieland and the chain-smoking Buchanan, and Agent Ericksson's brutish presence and lemon-tart disposition toward women in general had only added to her misery.

The moment somebody knocked on the door, she jumped to her feet intending to race over there, but Ernst Wieland grabbed hold of her arm before she could move more than two feet from the chair. The agents present all drew their weapons in case it was a counterattack, but once the proper passwords had been exchanged, Ericksson opened the door to usher in the recon team.

A sigh of relief escaped Mel when she saw Janice walking in unharmed; the relief was short-lived as she noticed the somber look on the explorer's face. Once the brand new Soviet submachine gun had been put on the table next to the maps and photographs, Mel's mood took a turn for the worse and the knot in her stomach was given another painful twist.

"Plenty of hardware like that one. Von Schenck called it a Papasha," Janice said and pointed at the submachine gun. "Plenty of ammo for 'em, too. And get this, plastic explosives. Of Soviet origin."

Section Commander Buchanan took out his pipe that had been puffed on so severely while the recon team had been away that the wooden head had become discolored. "Excellent work. Do you still doubt our intelligence reports, Doctor Covington?"

"Well, let's say I have fewer doubts than before… however, we only counted thirteen people over there. The limping fella wasn't among 'em. Nor were there any women. They were all bearded guys dressed like regular dock workers."

"Oh, Neumann and Grünwald are there. Trust me," Buchanan said and put the hard-working pipe back between his lips. He shuffled through the papers on the table to find a specific one. Taking it, he briefly read a few paragraphs before he put it back. "Very well. With plastic explosives in play, there's no doubt the communist cell is fully prepared to commit an atrocity. Chancellor Adenauer's visit cannot be postponed. We've tried to persuade his staff to do so, but the old man is adamant it must go ahead as planned… and that means we have to increase our efforts. We must eliminate the threat tonight. Completely. As in no survivors."

Mel just had time to let out a gasp and press her hands to her bosom before Janice took a long step ahead; it brought her so close to the section commander that he shied back from her fiery presence. "Hey, wait just a damn minute, Big Daddy!  Firing back when fired upon is one thing, but going in with the intent to murder everyone in cold blood?  How the hell are you gonna explain that to the public-"

"Such a tragedy," Ernst Wieland said in a mocking tone before he pretended to read from the headlines in the morning papers: "An explosion occurred in the docks just past midnight. There were twenty fatalities. The police suspect a leaking gas main."

The comment caused a chuckle or two to ripple among the senior members of the World Security Agency - the young Barney Talbott just looked shocked. Mel and Janice failed to see the humor. The former adjusted her glasses a couple of times; the latter thrust her hands into her jacket pockets so she wouldn't accidentally slug anyone.

"We don't have time for bickering," Buchanan said as he moved back to the table to survey the Russian-built submachine gun; he was soon tapping a finger against the metal frame. Pondering the momentous decision he was about to make, he took out his pipe to fiddle with the tobacco. It was soon back between his lips and smoking merrily. "Gentlemen, Ladies. Operation Dustpan has hereby been authorized. Use the established squads. Search and destroy with extreme prejudice. Deploy at once."

Von Schenck, Schulze and von Gerlitz responded in the only way they knew: by snapping to Attention and saluting their superior officer. Agents Talbott and Ericksson responded in an altogether more American way by simply nodding. The five heavily-armed field operatives soon left leaving Mel and Janice with Buchanan, Wieland and Agent Crosby whose sole purpose was to take care of the observation post's camera and binoculars.

Ernst Wieland turned around and crossed his arms over his chest. "Doctor, were you not supposed to be in Squad Two with Herr von Schenck and Herr Schulze?  I believe you were. In fact, I had thought you would volunteer to join the operation."

"No. This is where I draw the line… where we draw the line," Janice growled and pointed at Mel. "You can threaten to deport us until your face turns blue, but unlike you, buster… and you, Buchanan… we take no pleasure from killing people just for the hell of it!"

Mel tried to let out a calming "Jan-" but before she could utter another word, Janice had already cut her off: "Wieland, your men are experienced enough to outsmart those commies without needing to kill anyone. All right, a few casualties among 'em probably can't be avoided, but von Schenck alone could round up the rest in no time flat. Force them into a paddy wagon, drive them to the cops and they'll be out of your hair. Why kill them?"

"Because they'll be back tomorrow if we don't," Wieland said coldly.

"Okay. But won't they become glorious martyrs among all the faithful if you kill 'em all tonight?  What if they inspire new people into getting organized?  Ain't that worse, buster?"

Gilroy Buchanan dabbed his glistening brow with his handkerchief while he kept a close eye on the two arguing people. His pipe and the corners of his mouth sent out columns of smoke that rivaled those produced by the steam locomotives at the Central Station.

When Wieland opened his mouth to counter the claim, the commander stepped forward. "No more of this. Doctor, once the operation has come to a successful conclusion, you and Miss Pappas are free to leave. Your obligations have been paid in full."

Mel adjusted her glasses twice as the meaning of the section commander's words dawned on her. "Oh!  Oh, Jan… that's wonderful…"

"Yep," Janice said while she continued to look at Ernst Wieland. When he seemed out of the conversation, she turned to Buchanan. "Of course, we were never told why we had those obligations. And I ain't too sure I like the phrasing 'come to a successful conclusion,' either. According to whom, Big Daddy-O?  But I guess it's good news all in all. Well… unless Section Commander Palooka here is lyin' to us. Again."

Wieland let out one of his trademark cold chuckles, but before Buchanan could respond in a more fiery way, an unnaturally bright flash was seen across the street. A violent, deafening explosion instantly rattled the wooden barrack to its foundations and made the furniture dance about - the lamp above the central table fell down, and the old Adler typewriter was thrown onto the floor where it disintegrated into a hundred pieces.

Not a split second later, the shockwave from the blast reached the two windows and smashed them to smithereens. As they shattered, hundreds of glass shards peppered the floor and walls of the small, upper-story observation post.

Before Mel could even finish the shriek that tore from her throat, Janice had grabbed hold of her arms and had dragged her under the table. There, the leather jacket was held out around both their heads while the shards of glass performed an evil tap dance on every flat surface around them.

*
*
CHAPTER 8

An eerie silence filled the battered observation post in the aftermath of the explosion. The shredded pieces of cloth that had been used to blank off the windows slowly fluttered to the floor. Once they landed, they turned into shrouds that covered the thoroughly destroyed camera, the pair of binoculars and the body of Agent Crosby who had caught the brunt of the flying glass. Someone coughed; someone else let out a strangled cry of pain and a few choice German curses.

Underneath the table, Janice moved her leather jacket aside. As she did so, at least thirty jagged-edged shards rattled onto the floor. Her beloved fedora had received several cuts in the blast, but it had to take the back seat for once as she was far more concerned about the state of her beloved Mel. "Sweetie… are you all right?" she croaked while she ran her hands all over her partner's body to check for blood or fractures.

Mel coughed several times. Moving her long legs around, she tried to sit up straight but found the table too low for her long torso. "Yes… yes, I am fine, dear. I don't have a nick on me… I don't think. Yes, I seem to be in one piece. Except my poor ears… what in the world could have caused that?  Do you think the plastic explosives detonated?"

"No. If they had, we wouldn't have been here at all… half the port would have been obliterated. It would have been a massive blast," Janice said before she crawled out of their makeshift bunker.

"Jan Covington, don't tell me that wasn't massive!"

Standing up straight, Janice finally located and picked up her battered fedora. After sending angry glares at the three holes that had been torn in the felt, she plonked it onto her wild locks. "That?  Hell, that was just a New Year's firecracker, Mel… damn, Mista Buchanan!  You're bleeding," she said once her eyes fell on the destruction inside the observation post.

Gilroy Buchanan slouched on the chair Mel had used while she had waited for the recon team to return. The section commander held a bloody handkerchief to his forehead that had received several lacerations. When he became aware he had been spoken to, he sat up straight like it befitted an important member of the World Security Agency. "I don't feel a thing… but I lost my pipe…" he said in a croak.

"Frankly, Mista, that's the least of our concerns right now!" Janice said as she waded through the debris to get over to the middle-aged man. On her way there, she noticed a pile on the floor resembling Ernst Wieland's black leather trench coat. The entire back of the characteristic clothing item had been torn to shreds, but no blood was visible.

Since Buchanan was able to sit up on his own, she changed direction and went over to the immobile Wieland. Her conscience was locked in a battle with herself - one part of it wanted the former Gestapo office to live, another part wished he had been killed as divine retribution.

A series of rattling coughs that emanated from Wieland proved he was still alive. After a few moments, he was able to move back and sit up on his knees - dozens of shards fell off the shredded remains of his coat. He bled from several cuts on the sides of his head as well as the backs of his hands. His neck had escaped injury by having been protected by the coat's high collar, but his soft hat had been torn by the shards.

Janice let out a "Mmmm," that didn't sound like she was too pleased with seeing Wieland safe and more or less sound.

The next drama occurred nearly at once: Mel suddenly let out a brief cry. Agent Derek Crosby had been standing by the windows when the blast had shattered them, and he hadn't been as fortunate as the others in the small room. Pressing one hand against her stomach and the other against her mouth, Mel quickly turned away from the hideous sight.

Before anyone else could react to the dead body on the floor, matters grew worse across the street. Within a space of ten seconds, the situation escalated from someone firing a few rounds at random to an all-out, full-scale shooting war.

Dozens, scores, hundreds of rounds of burning hot lead were sent seemingly in all directions at once as the terrorist cell inside the warehouse had taken up the fight after the sneak attack. Soon, the characteristic hard chattering of several MP40s answered the call and pushed back. It wasn't long before the MG42 Buzzsaw joined the party with its rapid rate of fire.

"Holy hell… the shit's really hittin' the fan now!" Janice croaked as she inched over to the empty window frames to look down onto the street. What she saw made her throw her hands in the air in despair. The sidewalks were bathed in darkness as the explosion had taken out the nearby street lights, and that enabled her to count three muzzle flashes from various spots outside the warehouse. At the same time, ten if not more people fired rifles and automatic weapons out of the warehouse's doors and windows.

Of the three flashes on the sidewalk, two were on the left-hand side, and one of those was the easily recognizable long flame that spewed out of the MG42 - it indicated that von Schenck and Schulze were both still all right, or at least in a condition to fight. Only seeing one muzzle flash on the right-hand side of the warehouse was far more of a concern for Janice since that had been the location of von Gerlitz and the two American agents.

Before Mel could utter a "Language, dear…" Janice had taken off for the door. Once she reached it, she spun around and pointed at Buchanan. "Mel, take care of the commander… he might be in a state of shock!"

"Where are you- Janice Covin'ton, will you wait a rootin' tootin' minute!" Mel barked loudly enough for her partner to come to a standstill in the doorway - as always when she became agitated, her voice gained a far stronger Southern accent than usual. "Where are you goin'?!"

"Over to help the others!"

"This isn't our fight, Jan!  You said that yourse-"

"It is now," Janice said and flew out of the door before Mel could add another complaint.

Mel slowly closed her mouth before a dark scowl fell over her face as she looked at the bleeding men in the room. How Janice had expected her to help anyone without access to a first aid kit of any kind was beyond her. She counted to ten on the inside as her temper began to boil. Ten wasn't enough but she didn't have time for more. Adjusting her glasses, she spun around and stormed down the metal staircase to follow her partner into war.

---

Across the street, Janice raced along at high speed so she would present an impossible target in case anyone inside the warehouse had a notion of sending hot lead in her direction. Once she reached the two Panzer veterans, she waved a warning at them. Schulze was too busy with the MG42 to have time to acknowledge her presence, but von Schenck waved back and even gave her a very American thumbs-up.

The belt-fed MG42 continued firing with the occasional break when it needed a new box of ammunition, but the lone MP40 on the right-hand side of the warehouse had fallen silent since Janice had peeked out of the upstairs window.

She kept the Colt aimed at the warehouse the whole time, but she saved her meager amount of bullets because she knew the chances of hitting anyone through the small windows were slim to none. As she tore around the far corner of the building, she came to a hard stop and stared wide-eyed at the utter destruction she found there.

The friendly, young agent Barney Talbott had been reduced to a pile of shredded and bloodied remains. James Ericksson bled from several wounds on his face, arms and upper body, and all he was capable of doing was to lean against the side of the warehouse holding his handgun that had run out of ammunition. Hans-Martin von Gerlitz was face-down on the pavement. The Wehrmacht Lieutenant was just as bloodied as the remains of Agent Talbott and it was obvious he was barely alive. His MP40 was lying on the ground next to his hand, and Janice picked it up at once.

"Hades and all his minions!" she croaked as she took in the terrible scene. "Ericksson… Ericksson, what the hell happened?"

"Tripwire. An APM… musta been a Bouncing Betty or something like it… it hit Barney head-on. Coated me in guts and shrapnel," the bruiser croaked. As he spoke, blood seeped from his mouth. "Then the Kraut caught one in the chest just now…"

"Crap!" Janice growled before she concentrated on the German war-time submachine gun. Though it had been more than seven years since she had last used a Schmeisser, she hadn't forgotten how it worked and soon ejected the magazine to check how many rounds were left. When she discovered it was only half full, she knelt next to von Gerlitz to search his pockets for spares.

Efficient as ever, the retired soldier carried an ammunition pack on his belt that held no less than eight spare magazines. Janice filled her pockets with six of them before she put the seventh into the MP40. After extending the metal stock to make it fit her arm better, she worked the action and aimed at the windows in the hope of seeing one of their opponents pop into view.

Before too long, Mel came running around the corner. She threw her hands in the air when she realized she had been a little too hasty in getting there: Janice had her weapon aimed directly at her. "Ohhhhhhh!" she cried, "Don't shoot, don't shoot!  It's me!  It's me!  Melinda Pappas!"

"Goddammit, Mel!  Please don't do that again!" Janice said and immediately moved away the Schmeisser. "Barney's dead-"

"Oh, God no…"

"-and von Gerlitz is badly wounded," Janice continued before she turned to the last of the three agents who had been sent to the right flank. "Hey James, can ya stand on your own, big fella?"

"I think so…"

Janice spun back to her partner. "Mel, help James get back to the barracks. I don't think we should move von Gerlitz… he might bleed to death if we do. Of course, chances are he'll die no matter what, but… yeah."

Mel stared wide-eyed at Agent Ericksson's blood-riddled state; she shook her head slowly. "Jan… can't… can't we call for help ins- instead?  I m- might faint… I'm… I'm not good with bl- blood… you know that…"

"I know you are, sweetie, but I'm sorry. It needs to be now-"

"But I want to stay with you, Jan!"

"Toots, that's not gonna happen this time… it's far too dangerous out here. Those palookas will shoot at anything that moves… hell, I watched them take a potshot at a damn seagull just now!"

"But… no-"

"Please, Mel… please," Janice said and quickly made her way over to the tall, graceful Southern Belle whose worried face was anything but graceful at present. "I can't worry about you as well. Please, help James back. Okay?  I love you."

"I love you too, Jan… please, duck when they shoot at you!"

Despite the desperate situation they were in, Janice couldn't hold back a manic laugh. "Huh!  I'll be sure to remember that!"

Mel soon took care of James Ericksson by wrapping a long arm around his upper body and allowing him to lean against her. Though the wounded man moved slowly and erratically, he and Mel were eventually able to get out of the firing lines by taking the long way back to the observation post.

Janice assumed a somber expression as she watched Mel disappear into the darkness. The people they were fighting had seemingly given up on her side of the warehouse as nobody had fired at her for nearly half a minute - however, the gunfire had increased a great deal over on the side defended by von Schenck and Schulze.

Sighing, she took a firm grip on her MP40 and ran over to the corner of the warehouse. After peeking around it, she took off in a fast, hunched-over sprint in the hope she would hook up with the Panzer veterans before the communists would think of playing with the plastic explosives.

---

Janice had only just made it to the warehouse's main entrance when the double-doors were flung wide open right in front of her. Yelping in surprise, she found herself fully exposed to the people who were undoubtedly about to escape from the building, so she continued forward rather than turning back - her only hope would be to take cover behind the door nearest to her.

Diving behind it and pressing herself up against the filthy bricks, she could hear the familiar sound of the Volkswagen's weak-chested engine revving inside the warehouse. Several coarse voices barked something in German, but she couldn't tell if it had been the two Panzer veterans or the supposed communist terrorists who were trying to make a run for it.

The question was answered a moment later when the Volkswagen Transporter raced out of the open double-doors. The sliding door on the right-hand side of the vehicle had been pulled fully open, and one of the men wearing dark-blue stood in the door with a Papasha submachine gun. After he had fired a volley into the darkness, he grabbed a hand grenade from his belt, pulled the pin and threw it - the explosion soon rattled the street and sent lethal shrapnel all over the sidewalk.

All of this had happened on the far side of the vehicle from Janice's position so she was still relatively safe. Jumping ahead, she squeezed and held down the trigger of the borrowed Schmeisser to punch an erratic pattern of little black holes into the side and rear of the pale-gray VW van as it bounced across the sidewalk to get onto Wilhelm-Büsing-Strasse.

Her initial burst didn't stop the van's progress so she took a lower aim and emptied the rest of the magazine into the wheels and the engine that she knew was mounted in the rear of the vehicle like in a regular Bug. The left rear tire deflated at once in a poppp and a cloud of dust, but the driver kept his foot buried on the throttle to keep the vehicle moving forward.

Another hand grenade was thrown from the moving vehicle but it was no more successful in finding soft targets to maim than the first had been. By now, Joachim Schulze had swung the cumbersome MG42 around and laid down a heavy barrage against the side of the VW. At such close range, many of the rounds blasted straight through the steel panels and continued on into the night - directly into the path of Janice who ran along the left-hand side of the VW and thus out of the line of sight of the men at the machine gun nest.

Howling wildly as the air suddenly turned rather leaden, she dove for cover at once and performed a sideways roll to lessen the risk of injuring any of her shoulders in the impact with the ground. She held onto the MP40 and soon rolled over onto her stomach so she could resume firing if necessary.

Schulze's next burst hit the man with the Papasha and the hand grenades - the slew of bullets nearly cut him in half, and he was thrown into the back of the Volkswagen like a broken rag doll. The grenade he had just prepared to throw rolled out of his limp hand and into the bag where it had come from.

Four seconds later, the resulting explosion blew out the roof and side panels of the Transporter and sent the burning remains ten feet into the air. Large and small pieces of shrapnel screamed in all directions and created spectacular light shows as they ricocheted off the brick warehouse and the paving stones all along Wilhelm-Büsing-Strasse.

Janice howled again and buried her head in her hands. Through a sheer miracle, the shrapnel didn't come into contact with any of her soft bits, but her beloved - and increasingly battered - fedora received a long tear when a sharp piece of something plowed a furrow across the crown.

Further parts were thrown off as the wreckage crashed back down to Earth: the gas tank had survived the initial blast but ruptured upon impact with the ground. A cascade of fuel sloshed out which only added to the inferno. Soon, the double-doors and parts of the brick warehouse's front caught fire as well.

There was no time for Janice to count her blessings - or even her fingers and toes to see if all were still attached - because a group of people dressed in the dark-blue outfits ran over to form a defensive line at what was left of the double-doors. After a few barked commands, they opened fire at anything that moved outside.

Finding herself in an even more precarious position that before, Janice grabbed her fedora and the Schmeisser, got up and took off along Wilhelm-Büsing-Strasse like an entire pack of Harpies was on her tail. While shots blasted the street and ricochets whistled through the air all around her, the impressive barrage of American curses she let out proved to von Schenck and Schulze that the person running toward them was an ally of sorts rather than an all-out enemy - in short, they didn't open fire until she had gone past them.

Once she was safely ensconced behind the Panzer veterans and their rapid-fire machine gun, she whipped off her torn fedora and frantically wiped her filthy brow on her even filthier sleeve. "Crap!  This is insane… what the hell are those crazy palookas doing?!  Hand grenades and plastic explosives and… Charon's balls!" she growled while plonking her hat back onto her locks that had gained a somewhat blackish appearance after all the heat and cordite smoke they had been exposed to.

"Doctor, what happened on the other side?" von Schenck said as he quickly swapped his MP40's empty magazine for a full one.

"The damn commies had rigged up booby traps on the far side. Talbott checked out and von Gerlitz is down for the count. Ericksson got more than his share as well. Mel is going back with him. We're it, buddy."

Being no stranger to suffering heavy losses in combat, the veteran grunted as he worked the action of his submachine gun to be ready for the next wave. Like it so often happened in such firefights, both sides paused at once to get a feel for the strength of the opponent - it was a mirage that would soon come to an end. "Schulze, wie viel Munition haben Sie noch für das MG?"

"Zwei Kisten. Das wird nicht ausreichen um die Ivans abzuwehren."

"We only have two boxes of ammo left for the-" von Schenck said to Janice, but she waved her hand to show she had understood.

An orange sheen spread over the section of the sidewalk occupied by the three combatants. Not only did the wreckage of the Volkswagen continue to burn merrily, the fire that had been flung everywhere when the gas tank ruptured had begun to consume parts of the warehouse's sloped roof. The woodwork already creaked, crackled and groaned like it was debating with itself whether or not to catch fire on a grander scale or settle down and wait for the fire brigade to arrive.

The decision was taken only a moment later when a tall flame found something it could chew on; the initial flame was soon joined by many more. Coagulating into a roaring fire, they had soon penetrated the roof.

As the orange sheen that lit up Janice and the two veterans grew in strength, it compromised their position and left them plainly visible to the people inside the warehouse.

"Scheisse!" von Schenck barked as they were suddenly peppered with a long burst from a Papasha. He and Janice returned fire at once with their MP40s which seemed to silence the shooter.

"You can say that again," Janice growled as she ejected the spent magazine and found the next full one in her pocket. She had soon slammed it into the weapon and worked the action.

"We need to fall back and regroup, Doctor," von Schenck said and gave Schulze a thump on the hip to make him aware of the situation. The other veteran moved into a kneeling position and began to collect the MG42 and the remaining ammunition at once.

"Yeah. How many of 'em do you think we've nailed so far?"

"Ah… nailed?"

"Killed."

Von Schenck let out a dark chuckle as he surveyed the carnage around them. "Eight. Maybe ten."

"Was Neumann among 'em?  Or the woman?"

"No."

"Dammit," Janice said as she wiped her brow on her sleeve all over again - each time she did it, more filth was added to her skin instead of removing some, but she didn't have time to notice it. "Mel and me ain't never gonna be free until we trap that sonovabitch… all right, how about we tried-"

A sudden metallic screech that reached her ears made her pipe down and whip her head around to look and listen for the source. There was so much going at the side of the warehouse it was almost impossible to make out single sounds, but she tried to focus in the hope the noise was repeated - she had heard it before.

The next moment, she and the two veteran soldiers had to duck in a hurry when they were fired upon from somewhere along the side of the warehouse - the shooter's firing position was a good forty feet into the open area, and Schulze couldn't cover that angle with the MG42.

While he tried to swing the machine gun around, another burst got too close for comfort and caught him on the upper arm. Crying out in pain, he clutched his bleeding member while crabbing backward to get out of the firing line.

This left the MG42 unattended, and the hidden shooter took full advantage of that fact by peppering his two remaining opponents while the heavy weapon was silent.

"Goddammit!" Janice barked as another volley of lead created a shower of sparks as it ricocheted off the paving stones. She moved up her MP40 and fired several short bursts at the hidden shooter. The continuous fire from the other side proved she hadn't hit anything. "How the hell did we get pinned down like this?!  Buster, can you get to the damn machine gun?"

Instead of answering, von Schenck rolled sideways to get out of his original spot, then once more to reach the MG42. Before long, he had the wooden stock against his shoulder and returned fire. The Buzzsaw spewed burning hot death all over the open area next to the warehouse and soon silenced the hidden shooter.

"Excellent work, Mista!" Janice cried before she raced inside the open area. A quick recon proved her hearing right - she had in fact heard the metallic screech before, and it had been the side entrance they had used on the recon mission. Jumping over the hidden shooter's bullet-riddled body, she reached the flapping door and peeked inside.

The crackling fire made it difficult to hear anything, but her attention was suddenly grabbed by a pair of headlights that were turned on down the other end of the open area. Squinting, she noticed the area extended into a narrow, overgrown path that ran all the way down to the next connecting street. She was about to turn back to von Schenck to inform him of her discovery when she found herself face to face with a fellow who came out of the warehouse's side door preparing to shoot at the attackers with a regular hunting rifle.

It was impossible to say which of the two was the most surprised by the unexpected encounter, but Janice reacted the quickest. Like she had said to Ernst Wieland, she had no intention of killing anyone just for the sake of killing, so she moved the MP40 around in a hurry and rammed the foldable stock hard into the man's gut. As he groaned and doubled over, she swung it once more and clobbered him over the back. The unfortunate fellow collapsed in a heap but was still conscious enough to grab hold of Janice's right trench boot - a third thump sent him on an express flight to dreamland.

"Buster!" she cried once she was in the clear. When von Schenck looked up from his hiding place, she continued: "The side door is open!  Clear out the plastic explosives so those palookas can't use it!  And there's a path here… I can see a car. I think someone is trying to escape!"

"Neumann?"

"Can't say. I'll check it out. Okay?"

"Okay!  Watch your ass!" von Schenck shouted before he became too busy returning fire against the next group of people who appeared in the windows and the doors of the burning building.

"Huh, yeah… that's the plan," Janice said before she took off down the narrow path to get to the headlights before the car in question could drive off. She ran hunched-over at a fair clip, but made sure she didn't go so fast she couldn't stop in time in case someone else would jump out at her - the trick was to find a golden compromise between charging in like a bull in a china shop and spending too much time peeking into the deep shadows.

The end of the overgrown path came up fast; the cobbled Dannebergstrasse ran beyond it. Like everywhere else in the vast port, grain silos, dome-shaped tanks and massive warehouses made of reddish-brown bricks lined the street. The one directly opposite the path had the company name Philamon's Aegean Imports painted on the wall in tall, white letters - the Greek connection made Janice let out a muted chuckle.

A pale-gray Volkswagen Bug had seemingly been abandoned in the middle of the street. Both doors were open, the engine was running and the dim headlights were on. Janice came to a screeching halt and knelt at the corner of the narrow path. She furrowed her brow as she moved the muzzle of her Schmeisser around in a slow sweep to keep the area covered in case something really was going to happen there.

It was inevitable the shooting war that had broken out in the docks had attracted plenty of attention from the authorities. Countless sirens could be heard approaching from many directions, but there were no police vehicles, ambulances or fire engines in sight anywhere. The night-time sky held a faint sheen of flashing blue lights in the distance, but the fire raging at the other end of the warehouse overpowered it with its flickering orange light.

The smoke that rose from the burning roof had a foul smell of wood, scorched canvas and the toxic chemical agent the roof tiles had been coated in to keep them free of algae. The large, dark-gray plume drifted slowly across the area to show something was severely amiss.

Remaining quiet as a mouse, Janice inched deeper into the shadows created by the corner of the warehouse she used for cover. She glanced up and down Dannebergstrasse without seeing any movement anywhere. The VW irked her simply by its presence. "No way that thing just happened to be there. No way," she said to herself in a quiet mumble. She made another sweep with the MP40 without spotting anything or anyone. "And if they forced some poor Joe out of it, why didn't they drive off?  Shoot, this is way, way too much of a coinciden-"

Across the street, a bearded man stepped out of the shadows and moved into the orange cone of light from the nearest light post. Dressed in a dark-blue outfit and wearing a fisherman's cap, he walked with a distinct limp as he approached the Volkswagen. A pistol was ready in his left hand; his right was wrapped around the upper arm of a woman wearing a chic hat, a tan dress and a loose overcoat. As the man hobbled along, he kept whipping his head around to take in his surroundings.

"Neumann… and the son of a bitch got a hostage. Swell. Just swell," Janice whispered as she took in the scene.

Gerd Neumann didn't seem to be dragging the woman over to the car against her will as such, but it was clear by her pained grimacing that she wasn't in the best of spirits.

When they reached the Volkswagen, he shoved the woman onto the passenger-side seat and slammed the door shut before he hobbled around the front. Stopping halfway there, he opened the trunk lid and rummaged around for a brief moment. After he had retrieved what appeared to be a cardboard box, he holstered the pistol to be able to shut the trunk.

That was all the opportunity Janice needed. Licking her bone-dry lips, she jumped out of the shadows and raced over to the VW with the MP40 aimed ahead of her and ready to fire. "Neumann!  Get your hands up!  Hände hock!  Hände hock, buster!  I'm not gonna tell ya again!"

Gerd Neumann spun around so fast upon hearing the American voice that his bad leg caused him to lose his balance. Falling against the front of the VW, he managed to cling onto the headlight so he could avoid ending up on the ground. With both hands needed to hang on, the cardboard box he had taken from the trunk dropped from his grip and landed hard on the cobblestones. The lid came off in the impact and revealed the box was full of cigar-shaped metal cylinders.

"Lose that hardware, buster!  Now!  Waffe fallen lassen!  Auf da Boden!" Janice roared as she closed the distance to the leader of the communist cell. Neumann let out a growl but complied with the barked command and threw his pistol onto the ground.

"Lady!  Lady, get the hell outta the car and get outta here!  Are you deaf or something?  Komm' raus und lauf weg!" Janice continued in her home-made semi-German.

By the time the woman finally opened the door and scrambled from the car, Janice had turned her full attention to the bearded Neumann. While she kept him covered with the MP40, she patted him down to search for concealed weapons but found none.

The gunshot that suddenly rang out made her jerk her head to the left; the slug that drilled through her leather jacket and slammed into the meaty part of her left shoulder sent her sprawling onto the filthy street. The MP40 fell from her hand and rattled across the cobblestones, but that was the least of her worries.

Groaning in pain, she tried to crawl away, but the woman from the car ran over to her to stop her progress. Janice rolled over onto her back to look up at the woman who towered above her. "Lotti Grünwald," she said in a groan as she took in the sight of a highly attractive lady in her early thirties. "Sonovabitch… a swell-lookin' dame… I shoulda known… crap. A Bronx bricklayer, my hairy ass…"

"Erschiess sie!  Wir können hier nicht länger bleiben!" Gerd Neumann shouted as he worked with frantic gestures to scoop up all the metal cylinders and put them back into the cardboard box. Once they were all present and accounted for, he hobbled around the Volkswagen and got in behind the thin steering wheel.

Nodding, Lotti cocked her revolver's hammer and aimed at a scowling Janice.

Before the fatal shot could ring out, the oddest of sounds reached the ears of the two women: a spooky, ululating war cry that echoed between the warehouses on Dannebergstrasse.

Janice whipped her head around to look toward the overgrown path she had used only minutes earlier. She had already opened her mouth to call for help when reality caught up with her by thrusting a glowing poker into the gunshot wound - the pain grew so intense her eyes nearly rolled out of her head. All she could do was to lie there and bleed with her jaw and her fists firmly clenched.

A split second later, a razor-sharp weapon whistled through the air on a direct collision course with the hand that held the revolver. As a black trench knife buried itself hilt-deep in Lotti's hand, the revolver went flying, bounced off the Volkswagen's fender and eventually ended up under the car where it could do no harm to anyone.

Lotti clutched her hand and tried to stagger away. A long scream that betrayed the raw pain that shot up from the horrible injury escaped her throat; it went on for so long she ran out of air which left it as nothing more than a grotesque hissing.

Inside the car, Gerd Neumann mashed the accelerator and began to drive off. The passenger-side door was still open, and it slammed into the staggering Lotti Grünwald at unabated speed - it made the injured woman tumble end-over-end along the cobbled street before she wound up lying stock-still in an unnatural position.

A tall and powerful figure with long, black hair burst out of the shadows and stormed over to the wounded Janice.

Behind her, Robert von Schenck ran out into the street carrying the MG42. A long burst from the rapid-fire machine gun rendered the escaping Volkswagen incapable of going anywhere. Every panel was punched through and every window exploded from the scores of rounds that hit them. The Bug eventually rolled to a steaming, ticking halt up against the curb on the other side of Dannebergstrasse. After scanning the street for other opponents and finding none, von Schenck ran over to the stranded car to finish the job.

Janice let out a few coughs as she looked up at the dark-haired woman who knelt next to her. A faint smile spread over her lips when she realized Mel Pappas wasn't wearing her black, horn-rimmed spectacles - she knew what that meant. "I swear, darlin'… you look more beautiful for each passing day," she croaked before another cough rolled over her.

"That's the pain talking," Mel said in a dulcet voice that didn't hold any traces of her regular Southern accent. She worked quickly and swept aside the bloodied leather jacket. The khaki shirt was soon torn apart so the wound would become visible.

"Hey, that was my good shirt," Janice croaked. She tried to smile, but it never made it beyond small twitches at the corners of her mouth. The pain was such she needed to swallow several times before she could go on. "Xena… gimme the truth. Is… is this it?"

"No. But you need a healer right away. Can you move your left arm?"

Janice tried; the pained groan she let out proved that although she could move it a little, it wasn't an enjoyable experience. She soon gave up and settled for using her right hand.

"Don't worry about it," Xena said in a kind tone. "Press your right hand against the wound… the hardest you can. The arrow wound is deep. It appears to have gone clean through, though. Was it a crossbow bolt?"

"Oh, it- it was a… never mind," Janice croaked before she finished moving up her right hand. The fierce pain produced by pressing against the wound created a red haze in her vision, but she did like she had been told.

"We've done this before. We'll probably do it again. At least we don't have to cauterize the wound this time."

"Cauter-?!"  Janice's eyes went wide for a moment before the pain caught up with her and she had to slam them shut. "Oh, sweet mother of Christ… just the thought… it already feels like I got a hot poker in there…"

"Oh, you remember?  That was so long ago."

Janice briefly opened her eyes to stare at the woman hovering above her. "Uh… what?"

While Xena and Janice spoke, von Schenck returned from the Volkswagen to check up on the condition of Lotti Grünwald. There wasn't anything he could do there except to take his trench knife and wipe it off on the woman's dress, so he was soon on his way back to his two female associates.

He had to scratch his neck at the peculiar change that had come over the tall translator like someone flicking a light switch. It wasn't really his concern - or even business - so he shrugged and knelt on the other side of Janice. His experienced eye had soon appraised the gunshot wound. "Doctor, I have a medical kit… lie still," he said and clicked open the button on a pouch he carried on his belt.

"Huh… everyone's a damn comedian. Lyin' still is all I can do right now… what's shakin' with those commies?"

"Sorry?" von Schenck said as he readied the medical kit and tore open a pack of sterile bandages. In addition to those, the kit held a pouch of disinfectant powder, a roll of elastic bandages, three syringes, a small vial of morphine and finally a vial of strong painkillers in tablet form. That every item in the medical kit carried a swastika and the SS-runes was less important to Janice than it would have been earlier.

"What's going with those two palookas?  The dame and Joe Schmuck over in the car?" Janice croaked through clenched teeth.

"Neumann and Grünwald are both dead. The woman broke her neck. Probably when the car hit her. I… ah… nailed the other one."

"Nailed… I'm beginning to rub off on ya, buster," Janice said through clenched teeth. She hissed several times when von Schenck's coarse hands pressed down on her wound. Ultimately, it became a little too much of a good thing. "Wait… wait, bub… it's not that I don't appreciate what you do, but I'd prefer if Xe- Mel did it. All right?"

"Of course," von Schenck said and handed the rest of the medical kit to the woman he believed was Mel Pappas.

Xena went to work at once and soon had the wound fully covered by the sterile bandages. After tearing off several strips of cloth from the ruined shirt, she used them to mop up some of the excess blood and to act as supports for the bandages. She smiled at the supine Janice who tried to mirror the expression - although her smile had improved from earlier, it was still strained and weak.

"Did any of those palookas in the warehouse surrender?" Janice said after a few moments of clenching her teeth.

Von Schenck had worked on removing the tiny lid on the vial of painkillers, but he looked up when spoken to. "No. The only one left alive is the sentry we knocked out."

"How are the others?  Ericksson and von Gerlitz?"

"Agent Ericksson will be out of action for a while. Old Schulze got a bee sting on the arm, but he is as stubborn as a mule so he will be all right. Von Gerlitz is dead."

"Crap."

"One or two pills?"

"Of cyanide?"

"No, regular painkillers," von Schenck said with a chuckle.

"Two. Make that one… I don't want to lose consciousness," Janice said before she was given a single tablet. Since no water was present, she had to swallow it dry.

For a short minute, an uneasy silence fell over the three people. Xena finished wrapping Janice's wound and took a moment to run her fingers down Janice's cheek in a tender caress - she even winked at her. Von Schenck continued to scan the street around them in case they had missed a surviving opponent after all; his eyes were too preoccupied with that to notice the change that fell over Mel once more.

Suddenly swaying like a reed in a breeze, Mel tilted forward and needed to put her hands on the filthy cobblestones as Xena left her to return to her own time - it wasn't long before she was back to being the only person inside her mind.

Her lack of glasses instantly became a problem as she couldn't see beyond the tip of her nose. After touching her face and finding nothing, she patted all her pockets for the black frame. She eventually found it in her liner pocket and slid it in place on her regal nose. "Goodness me… at least I didn't fall this time…" she said in her regular Southern accent. Panting, she let out an embarrassed chuckle before she shook her head.

"Welcome back, Toots," Janice said with a grin. "Ah… it is Mel, right?"

"Yes…"

Janice reached up to run her fingers down Mel's cheek. "Just checkin'. Thank you for… for saving my bacon. Again. I owe you another one."

"Oh, you're very welcome. Can we please have fewer such incidents in the future?"

"Works for me… the rest of the world seems to disagree, though. Anyway. How did you know I was in trouble?  Yeah, okay… I'm always in trouble. It's no real surprise…"

Mel shrugged. "Xena came to me. Somehow, she knew. I let her take control at once this time… and off we went." She offered her partner a smile before it registered she was still holding onto the bloody rags - she threw them away in horror and hurriedly wiped her fingers on the combat coat. "When I was back there, I was… I was… in a…"

"Fight?  Sounds like Xena, all right…"

"No, no…" Mel said and adjusted her glasses. "A hot tub."

"Oh!"

Mel broke out in an acute double-sided blush that turned her cheeks crimson. "With Gabrielle," she mumbled.

Janice couldn't stop a loud laugh from bubbling up from her battered frame. It hurt all the way up but still insisted on being let out. "Ohhhhh!  Why, Mel Pappas, you bird dog, you!"

Her improved mood soon bumped back down to Earth when the team's black Mercedes-Benz drove around the corner and rolled along Dannebergstrasse to find the right spot. When it had come to a stop, Gilroy Buchanan and Ernst Wieland stepped out.

Wieland's leather trench coat and original soft hat had both been ruined beyond repair in the explosion at the observation post, but he had apparently appropriated a new hat from somewhere because a dark-brown fedora covered his hair. The sides of his head and the back of his hands had been patched up superficially, but blood had already begun to seep through the torn handkerchiefs he had put into use as makeshift bandages.

Buchanan's forehead was marred by several bandages covering the lacerations he had received in the initial explosion - it looked worse than it was since none of the wounds were deep or bled too profusely.

While von Schenck went over to his superiors to make a full report, Mel helped Janice sit upright. The long groan that escaped the archaeologist as a different kind of pressure was added to the shoulder wound proved she was still feeling the glowing-hot poker rummaging around inside her despite the presence of the strong painkiller.

The debriefing over, Wieland paid the two women an unwanted visit. On his way there, he eyed the body of Lotti Grünwald who still lay where she had fallen - it didn't seem to interest him. "Ah, Doctor. Miss Pappas. I want to congratulate you on a job well done," he said and displayed his trademark cold smile.

Now that Gerd Neumann and his fellow insurgent had been taken care of so decisively, Janice was no longer in a mood to listen to any of the former Gestapo officer's comments. Scrunching up her face in equal amounts of anger and pain, she motioned to Mel to help her on her feet. The process was labored but eventually successful. "Yeah?" she said through clenched teeth. "You know what you can do, buster?  You can go scr-"

"Jan-" Mel said out of the corner of her mouth.

"All right, but we're done takin' orders from a butcher," Janice continued in a hard voice. "So why don't you be a good, little goose-stepper and take a hike back to the Führerbunker in Berlin, you rotten son of a bitch."

Wieland's cold smile remained. He nodded and stepped aside; Buchanan arrived in his stead. "Doctor Covington," the section commander said, "that was uncalled for. I have already told you Herr Wieland is an important asset to the World Security Agency. He's a US citizen now."

"Frankly, I don't give a flying f-"

This time, Mel interrupted with a sharp "Jan!  Language!"

"Yeah, all right. A fluttering fig leaf," Janice said and reached up to pat Mel's hand that held onto her so she wouldn't take another tumble. "Listen, Mista Buchanan… Neumann is dead. So is that woman over there on the ground. Unless I'm very much mistaken, our job here is done. Our obligations are paid in full… which is still a load of B.S. 'cos we never had any obligations to you or anyone else here in the first place!"

"Oh, you had, Doctor. You very much had," Gilroy Buchanan said as he glanced over at the thoroughly destroyed Volkswagen. "But never mind now. Yes, you are free to leave whenever you wish."

"Which is right this Goddamned minute!" Janice barked though it created another red mist swimming through her vision. "Gimme the keys for the Mercedes!  Me and Mel will go back to your damned spy base, pick up our luggage and head straight for the Goddamned airport!"

"But… the Mercedes…" Buchanan said and briefly turned to look at the black sedan he had only just arrived in.

"You can pick it up at the airport later. Von Gerlitz got the keys for the Caddy. You wanna dig through a dead man's pockets to find 'em?  No?  Wait, perhaps you should ask Wieland to do it. Yeah, that's a job for the slaughterhouse dog over there. I'll bet that's all he did back in the good, old days!"

The section commander took a deep breath like he wanted to complain bitterly about the unexpected development. Perhaps sensing it was a lost cause, he dug into one of his coat's pockets to find the car keys. He handed them over without making a comment.

"Thanks, Daddy-O," Janice said as she toyed with the silvery set. She glanced over at the former Gestapo officer who seemed to find it all rather amusing. "Hey, Wieland… you can wipe that smug grin off your ugly mug. Did ya forget I know the password?  Prince Albrecht, right?  Yeah, that torpedoed your plans, didn't it?  That fella you have guarding the door won't blast us to hell after all." - The news made Mel gasp, but Janice calmed her down by patting her hand.

Buchanan instantly whipped his head around to stare at his fellow agent. His eyes displayed concern rather than anger at having the password revealed. Ernst Wieland kept quiet.

Janice picked up on it at once. She took a step closer to the tall man, but her present condition meant the gesture wasn't as threatening as it should have been. "You're keeping something from us. Spit it out. Now. Now, you sonovabitch!"

Wieland continued his silent act. The cold smile grew wider.

"The password changes at midnight," Buchanan croaked as he tried to cope with the rapidly mounting tension. He needed to dab his forehead with his handkerchief, but not only was the cloth already full of dried blood, the sweat made the lacerations sting unbearably.

Janice's voice went into a lower register as she spoke: "Yeah?  So give us the new one."

"I don't have it. That's Herr Wieland's job!"

Mel and Janice both took a step closer to the tall agent. It didn't faze him, not even when Mel stretched out her long fingers and held them in a curious fashion. "What are you going to do with those, Miss Pappas?  Tickle me into revealing the new password?" he said coldly.

From one moment to the next, Mel jumped forward and applied the pressure points on Ernst Wieland's neck. He let out a gurgling groan and fell to his knees at once. Not even clutching his throat would remove the iron collar that seemed to have been placed around his neck.

Janice mirrored the cold smile Wieland had worn throughout the time they had known him. "We've cut off the flow of blood to your brain. You have twenty seconds left. Tell us the new password and we'll let you live… you bastard. Fifteen seconds. Ten seconds."

"Nordwind!  Nordwind!"

Mel manipulated the pressure points again which released the block and allowed Wieland to live on. Falling forward, he had to put his hands on the cobblestones to stop his face from getting introduced to the cold ground the hard way. A pair of scarlet lines ran down his upper lip from his nostrils, but it beat the alternative.

"Why, thank you, Mista!" Janice said and took the opportunity to give Wieland such a kick with her boot that he tipped over and fell onto his side. The pain that shot up from her shoulder was overwhelming, but the pleasure she got from finally giving the former Gestapo officer a little reminder of who won the war did its best to offset it. "Buchanan, you didn't see any of that. I'm sure a seasoned agent like you knows when to keep your trap shut. Yeah?"

"I saw nothing," the commander croaked while continuing to dab his glistening face.

Nothing more needed to be said, so Mel took a gentle hold of Janice's battered frame and helped her over to the black Mercedes. Once they reached it, Mel opened the passenger-side front door and made sure the fiery explorer was seated comfortably on the plush seat.

"Wait… Toots, can ya see von Schenck anywhere?  I don't wanna leave without saying thanks to the big lug… former enemy or not, he did help me several times," Janice said as she shuffled around on the seat.

Mel stood up straight and looked around for the familiar figure in the black uniform. She spotted him leaning against the wall of the warehouse lighting a cigarette - his Schmeisser had been slung over his shoulder on its carrier strap so he could respond in a hurry if more trouble would arise. "Yes, he's right there, Jan… I'll wave him over," she said and did just that.

When von Schenck noticed Mel waving at him, he moved away from the brick wall and marched across the cobblestones. Upon arriving at the black Mercedes, he had already reached for the pouch on his belt that contained the rest of the medical kit. "Doctor," he said as he leaned down toward Janice, "do you need another pill after all?"

"Naw, buddy. I just wanted to shake your hand and say thanks for not being as big a pain in my butt as some of the others here… oh, and for saving it a couple of times tonight, too," Janice said with a wide grin as she held out her right hand for the traditional greeting.

After shaking it - and deliberately ignoring the Iron Cross and the other insignia and ribbons Robert von Schenck had pinned to his uniform shirt - she winced as she moved her arm back down into her lap.

"You're welcome, Doctor. Are you leaving now?"

"Yeah. Stay clear of trouble, yeah?  That's probably a dumb thing to say considering what you guys do, but… you know what I mean. Hey, you wouldn't happen to have a cigarette you could spare, or-"

Mel cleared her throat in a somewhat insistent manner.

"On second thoughts, forget the cig," Janice continued; if she couldn't smoke, she could at least push her fedora back from her forehead, so that's exactly what she did. "Just stay out of trouble. See ya, Robert."

"Goodbye, Doctor," von Schenck said and stepped back from the Mercedes so Mel could shut the door. He was about to salute the two Americans but thought better of it at the last moment. Instead, he gave them a thumbs-up before he marched back to the warehouse.

Mel's final look at Dannebergstrasse revealed nothing but death, despair and destruction, so she quickly got behind the luxury sedan's large steering wheel and pressed the starter button - Janice had already put the keys in the ignition. "Jan… please tell me we're done here."

"We're done, Toots. Let's get the hell outta here before the cops show up. It can't be long… you know how efficient the Germans are."

"Quite."

Mel let out the clutch which allowed the black car to trickle along the uneven cobblestones. She took it very gently so the rocking and rolling wouldn't make Janice's wound worse than it already was - even so, the explorer let out several hisses as the inevitable jolts moved up through the seat.

"Nordwind… wasn't that one of the last Nazi offensives?" Janice mumbled. Using her left arm only produced pain, so she used her right hand to rub her filthy brow.

"I have no idea, Jan."

"It doesn't matter now. Dammit, I just knew that S.O.B. would pull a nasty one on us… learning the pressure points did come in handy after all, huh?"

Mel let out a concerned grunt. "Hmmm… yes… but I wonder what Sensei Wu Tan would say if he knew what I used his sacred teachings for. Goodness me, I had never imagined I would need to use them under such terrible circumstances!"

"Xena would have been proud of ya, Toots!  And so would your Sensei for that matter… martial arts is meant for self-defense and this definitely was. C'mon, let's pick up our luggage and take it from there."

Nodding, Mel squeezed the throttle a little more. A few hundred yards down Dannebergstrasse, the surface changed to regular asphalt which enabled her to speed up further.

They could hear sirens and see flashing blue lights everywhere around them, but they were fortunate enough to get through the port without finding any of the streets sealed off. The black sedan soon blended into the regular, night-time traffic and became one of countless vehicles driving on Hamburg's busy streets.

*
*
EPILOGUE

The early rays of the sun painted the morning sky a spectacular shade of orange by the time Mel and Janice were able to leave the super-secret spy base on Helmut-Pönitz-Allee. It had taken longer than expected to negotiate with the W-S-A agent guarding the door despite knowing the correct password, but they had finally been allowed inside.

The agent had no intention of helping the two Americans carry the massive amounts of luggage back out to the waiting Mercedes, so that part had taken much longer than expected as well. Mel's hands were burning hot after all the heavy work, and Janice was simply burning hot under the collar from the agent's complete lack of sympathy toward his fellow agents - not to mention his fellow human beings. She had tried to do her bit, but even carrying her duffel bag had caused the pain to flare up so she had been forced to sit out the largest part of the operation.

---

When the cast-iron gate with the spikes and the barbed wire finally rolled shut behind them to close that particular chapter of their lives, Mel let out a deep sigh and adjusted her glasses. After making sure the avenue was clear of traffic, she turned left and began to drive along the Helmut-Pönitz-Allee.

"Goodness me, what a terrible night this has been… oh, I wish young Mr. Talbott hadn't been killed. He was such a friendly fellow compared to the others. Can you remember a more fraught affair, Jan?  Jan?  Jan?!"

A quick glance to her right made Mel slam her boot onto the brake pedal and steer over to the curb. As soon as the black Mercedes had come to a halt, she bolted from the driver's seat and ran around the front. The passenger-side door was instantly swooshed open so she could attend to her partner. "Jan… how bad are you hurting?" she said in a trembling voice.

Within a space of three minutes, the color of Janice's face had gone from the tomato-red hue it had become when she and the agent had been in a shouting match - that had culminated in Janice telling him to kiss her posterior - to being whiter than a sheet. She clutched her wound with her good hand. "Well, it sure ain't ticklin', Toots," she croaked. As she moved her hand away, fresh blood had seeped through the bandages and onto her fingers. "Aw, crap… I think I musta pulled something."

"Oh no… we don't have any clean bandages. Maybe-"

"You're not tearing my last shirt, Mel!" Janice said and let out a sequence of croaks that was supposed to have been laughter.

Mel stepped back and rubbed her brow. She glanced up and down the avenue for help, but it was so early in the new day that no one had ventured onto the street yet - not even people out walking their dogs. "Oh!" she suddenly cried and stood up straight. "Didn't we drive past a hospital on our way here?  Why, I'm certain we did!  Jan, did you see it?"

"No… I'll have to take your word for it, Toots… do you think you can find it again?"

"I'm positive!  Watch the door," Mel said before she closed it. As soon as the lock had engaged, she hurried around the front of the Mercedes and jumped behind the wheel.

---

"There!" Mel cried as she pointed through the windshield. The corner onto a large parking lot was taken on two wheels, and the borrowed sedan was soon brought to a screeching halt in front of the hospital's main entrance.

It wasn't the largest hospital they had ever seen, but the Red Cross logo that was displayed above the glass doors was still a welcome sight. Janice let out a croaking chuckle when she realized the hospital was in fact a rehabilitation center for veterans - it mattered little what it was called as long as they had access to clean bandages. "Well, if that ain't fitting, I don't know what is," she croaked as she swung her legs out of the Mercedes once Mel had opened the door. "Toots, we need to look for-"

"A stretcher?  A wheelchair?" Mel said and began tearing around for the items in question.

"No, I can walk… simmer down, sweetie, you're making me dizzy!" Janice said while flashing her partner a weak smile. "What I wanted to say was, we need to look for a door or something that says Notaufnahme… that's the Emergency Room."

Mel came to a halt that was no less screeching than when she had landed the Mercedes in front of the entrance. "Oh… I see. All right. It must be around here somewhere… come, lean on me," she said and wrapped an arm around Janice's frail being.

---

The doctors and nurses in the veteran's hospital had all stared at the sorry appearance of the two women, and it had taken a lot of persuasion on Janice's part to keep them from calling the police. The bandages had eventually been changed and were as good as new. Janice had also been given a new vial of painkillers, and she popped two into her mouth at once to keep the worst aches and pains at bay.

Stepping out of the hospital's lobby and onto the dull parking lot beyond it, her gunshot wound and assorted other bruises and injuries told her in two feet tall, blood-red block letters that she ought to wait right there while Mel returned with the borrowed Mercedes. A groan escaped her while she tried to find something to lean against; a lamp post by the edge of the sidewalk seemed suited for the job, so she went over to it to do a little leaning.

The glorious sunshine made her look up to get a full dose of the warm rays. A smattering of clouds rolled in from the west, and their dark-gray tone seemed to suggest that it would rain later on. Snorting at the poor weather they had been plagued with ever since flying out of New York City, she made sure her battered fedora sat firmly on her filthy locks and that her even more battered leather jacket was zipped as far up as her wound would allow.

Mel soon arrived at the wheel of the black sedan. In the rear, the entire back seat as well as the footwell were filled to capacity with their luggage. The ex-US Army duffel bag that contained Gabrielle's scrolls and the other priceless objects recovered in the tomb in Jelling had been put on top of the pile so it wouldn't suffer any damage.

With Mel's steady hands guiding her over to the Mercedes, Janice took a quick glance through the rear window at the piles of suitcases. "Y'know, Toots… ain't it strange that a couple-a swell dames like us follow the old stereotype to the letter?  I mean, look at all that luggage… everyone knows that when women travel, they take all their clothes with 'em so they'll have two fresh dresses to jump into each day of the vacation. Right?"

"You have a point, dear," Mel said with a chuckle. "Except that I only brought one dress and you're down to your last shirt. And there's a big tear in your pants, too. I won't even mention your hat. When we get home, we really need to buy you new clothes."

"Ugh… that's gonna hafta be by mail order. Okay, I need to sit down now," Janice said and opened the front door. Before long, she lowered herself onto the seat as gently as she could. A long groan escaped her as her rear end finally came into contact with the cover; not that she was hurting down that end, but because she had to clench all her muscles to prevent the wound from being twisted too much.

Mel got back behind the wheel and let the Mercedes roll away from the entrance to the veterans' rehabilitation center. They only made it across the dull parking lot before a traffic light stopped them - it turned red just as they reached it, but at least it gave Mel a chance to pamper her sweetheart. "Are you comfortable, dear?  Do you need a pillow or something?" she said and put the back of her hand against Janice's forehead to check if she was running a fever.

"Do we even have a pillow?"

"No, but we could use my jack-"

"Oh, hell no. I'm just fine, sweetie. Don't fret."

Mel smiled at her partner and resumed staring out of the windshield at the traffic light. Like all the others they had come across during their time in Hamburg, it seemed to take five times as long before the lights changed as those they knew from back home.

"Jan, I've been thinking," she said after a short while. "I don't think the people at the airport will allow us to fly looking like this. Either we need to find somewhere to bathe and change our clothes, or-"

"Please, please, please tell me the 'or' is better than the notion of taking all this shit off and then putting it on again just to appease someone else…" Janice croaked.

Mel adjusted her glasses and let out a brief chuckle. "Well, I was about to suggest we take advantage of the full tank and drive-"

"We got a full tank of gas?  Toots, why didn't ya tell me sooner!"

The glasses were given an additional two adjustments that were accompanied by a pointed glare - the pale-blue orbs were exceptionally bright in the early morning light. "Janice Covin'ton, may I finish my sentence, please?" she said in a voice that held a sharper undertone than usual.

"Go ahead, Toots. I'll zip it, can it, quell it, pipe down and keep quiet…"

"How about-" Mel said, but she needed to concentrate on driving the large car through the intersection as the lights finally turned green. Once they were back on the street that ran in front of the rehab center, Bernhard-Waalkes-Allee, she continued: "How about we drove north?  Back to Denmark and Yelling?  I found a map of Northern Germany in the glove box while you were being treated. We're only, oh, ninety miles or so south of the border at, uh… Crusoe… and then there's another sixty miles up to Mr. Lindholm's inn. We could spend a few days there recuperating. Oh, those wonderfully soft beds… and Mrs. Lindholm's exquisite food, of course."

"Hell, except those Godawful cabbage things!"

"Ah, quite. You have a point there. But the rest was very good indeed."

"Yeah," Janice said and tried to shuffle around a little more. "We've got our passports and travel papers… and plenty of gas… and it's early morning… and this is a real long-distance tourer. We'd eat up those miles in no time. You're a great driver, sweetie."

"Oh!  Why, thank you…"

"You're welcome. Yeah. Olrickah was a great gal, too. It'd be neat to talk to her again. I'll bet she'll never believe what we've been through down here. Mel Pappas, I swear, you're a genius!  That's a deal!" Janice said, intending to lean over to place a quick kiss on her sweetheart's cheek. The second she moved, the sensation of having a glowing poker in her wound returned with a vengeance and made her let out a hiss rather than a kiss. "Crap…" she croaked in a strangled voice, "that wasn't the best idea I've ever had…"

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah. Sorta. Kinda… yeah. But remind me later on that I owe ya a kiss."

"I'll make a note of it," Mel said with a chuckle.

---

A reflective silence fell over the two expert archaeologists as they drove the Mercedes through the vast city to get to one of the major roads that led north. The early-morning rush hour traffic grew denser which meant they needed to go slower, but they were able to steer clear of the worst jams.

Janice kept her eye on the side mirror on the door to see if they were followed by any suspicious-looking vehicles or even the German police, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary behind them. It appeared Gilroy Buchanan had been true to his word for once by letting them get on with their lives. However, even if the confusing and frustrating world of international espionage was new to her, she had been in the game long enough to know that a word could be broken at the drop of a hat, especially a fancy one like the Borsalino. She let out a dark grunt while she snuggled down in the comfortable seat.

After a while, they struck gold and found the correct road north. Although the border station at Kruså was still too far away to be listed on the road signs, Mel was able to recognize the names of some of the smaller cities they would be driving past - it seemed they were on the right path for once.

"Jan," Mel said in an apprehensive tone after they had driven a mile or so on the northbound road, "I'm thinking about our next… well… adventure. Maybe it would be better for me if I stayed at home instead of coming with you."

"What?  We're a team, sweetie!"

"I know, but…" - A long sigh escaped Mel - "I've had a terrible time here, Jan. All that death. All that tension. The constant threats. You getting shot."

"I hear ya. 'Specially about gettin' shot," Janice said as she looked down at the jagged hole in her beloved leather jacket - not to mention the jagged hole in her flesh.

"Yelling was a far more positive affair for me. I translated several important scrolls there, we found ancient artifacts… all right, Professor Granfeldt was a source of anger and frustration, no doubt about that-"

"Yeah!"

"-but he was a harmless teddy bear compared to what we've experienced since crossing into Germany. I've only spent ten minutes on my work since we were told the train didn't go any further. I so dearly want to perform an in-depth analysis of Gabrielle's travelogue scroll… and even re-do all those we have back home, Jan. There is so much work to be done there… I haven't…"

Mel fell silent. Janice knew better than to force her partner into speaking until she was ready, so she folded her hands in her lap while she waited for that moment.

It came just over a minute later. Mel sighed again and ran a hand across her brow. When she spoke, her accent had grown stronger proving what she said came straight from the heart: "I'm never happier in my callin' than when I'm spendin' hours without end translatin' a scroll. When I have all my reference books, my compendium, a ton of notes an' a box of fresh pencils… when I look at old maps an' dig through dusty tomes for obscure facts that could help me translate a single word out of ten thousand. That's when my heart soars, Jan. None of that has happened here. My soul is sufferin' as a result."

"Oh, baby, I… I don't know what to say," Janice said and once more tried to turn around in the seat. The wound was too painful to even attempt it, but there were times when physical pain had to take a back seat to matters of the heart. Clenching her teeth, she forced herself around so she could look at Mel without getting a crimp in her neck. "Let me tell you something… I'm never happier than when I'm spending half a day on my knees in a muddy pit somewhere trying to get a scroll fragment free so you can perform your magic on it. That's why we're such a fabulous team. We complement the other's skills so damn well it's uncanny. A dig site without Mel Pappas just wouldn't be the same, sweetie…"

"I know. I'm not sayin' I'll never return, only that I need a break. A lengthy one."

Janice reached over to give Mel's long thigh a tender caress. "I understand. And I'll support your decision every step of the way… whatever it ends up being."

"Thank you," Mel said with a wistful smile.

Janice nodded and fell silent for a moment. She eventually let out a chuckle and began to toy with her battered fedora. "There's still so much of Xena's history left to be explored… I can't imagine retiring from digging just yet. It'll happen one day, of course. Some day, I'll be a cranky old bird bitchin' and moanin' from dawn to dusk about how everything was better in the good, old days. And you know what, I hope you'll be right there with me when that happens."

"I will be!" Mel said and let out a tired chuckle. "Oh, Jan, look at us… filthy, smelly, battered, bruised an' even wounded. Our clothes an' hair are covered in soot and we stink of cordite an' wood smoke… ain't we pretty?"

"One of us is… but then again, she always wuz," Janice said and attempted to kiss Mel's cheek again. She had more success this time and was able to place a tiny peck on the only spot that didn't carry a smudge of some unidentified substance.

"Charmer."

"But of course, darlin'!" Janice said with a grin that rapidly faded as the pain in her shoulder and upper chest blossomed once more. It compelled her to shuffle back to a more regular sitting position and hold her breath while the worst of it receded. During her brief moment of silence, she seemed to remember something. "When we get home to San Francisco, do you know what the first thing I'm gonna do will be?"

"No?"

"I'm gonna drive over to our supposedly dear friend Chester Coyne and present him with the biggest can of Amazon whoop-ass since the dawn of Man. That's what I'm gonna do. That miserable so-and-so…"

"Now, Jan… dear," Mel said and adjusted her glasses, "I seem to recall that I was the one who was rather skeptical about the whole project. And that your, ahem, wick was lit by the chance of perhaps discovering more about Xena and Gabrielle's journeys through the Norselands. Or was that an erroneous impression?"

Janice stared at her partner until she let out an embarrassed chuckle. "Ah… no. No, I think you pretty much hit it on the nose there, Toots… shoot, you always were the brains of our little family."

"I guess that makes you the mouth," Mel said and flashed Janice an impossibly wide grin.

The bold statement left Janice flabbergasted; nearly five seconds went by before she leaned her head back and laughed out loud. "It ain't the worst thing to be!  Hell, I could be the ass!  Sheesh, Mel… you've been around me for too long."

Mel reached over to put her hand palm-up on Janice's thigh. Once it had been grabbed by a callused hand, she gave it a strong, loving squeeze. "Oh, I'm planning on being around you for a fair while longer, Jan Covington… you can count on that…"

*
*
THE END.

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