And Hast Thou Slain the Jabberwock

*****

For this to work, we had to land as silently as possible. So, I was throttled back, with full flaps cranked on, almost in a glide. I was working hard to maintain our attitude since any mistake at stall speeds would be lethal. It was completely dark and it's tricky landing on water with a low-winged aircraft. You have to do it by feel because you can't see where you're trying to set down.

Before tonight, I'd made exactly three practice landings with pontoons. So, I had my fingers crossed as the Cherokee searched for the water. Luckily it was a big lake. There was a skittering sound beneath the pontoons and I hauled back on the yoke and cut the power. There were a thrilling couple of seconds as we skipped across the surface and then we slowed and came to a stop. The game was indeed afoot.

I think everybody in the cabin exhaled. We sprang into well-rehearsed action. There's only one exit on the Cherokee which is opposite where the pilot sits. Bernadette was next to that door and King was in the right rear seat to balance the weight. Bernadette hopped out and jumped down onto the pontoon, nimble as a squirrel on a tree limb, while King debarked.

We had an inflatable raft in the cargo area behind the rear seat. Bernadette opened the hatch and King wrestled the big raft out. Then he unloaded the rest of our stuff while Bernadette inflated the raft. Meanwhile, I anchored the plane with a simple mushroom anchor.

The raft was almost swamped by the four of us and all of our gear. But we were only about fifty yards from shore. I would call our near perfect arrival great airmanship. But I knew that it was truly just dumb luck. King and I pulled the raft up onto the rocky shingle while the women unloaded.

Some very brave people in a RCAF Mosquito had taken detailed photos of the facility and we had poured over them all the prior four days. So, we knew exactly what we were looking at. We had ended up just southeast of the bomb assembly building, which was hidden in the trees perhaps thirty yards distant. We couldn't see any guards. But that didn't mean there weren't any.

King silently disappeared into the forest and for the next fifteen minutes we heard a series of small noises that sounded like men dying. I counted six, but there may have been more. King re-emerged cleaning a wicked looking knife and looking as nonchalant as a fellow who had just wandered into the woods for a crap.

He said, "Everybody outside the building has been neutralized." I thought that was an interesting choice of words.

The building itself was no doubt alarmed. That was when Cat surprised me. She slipped past us and did something with a metal box with lights and leads. We were all in tight black clothing with balaclavas over our heads. I couldn't resist staring at her perfect round butt as my wife opened an access panel and exposed some wiring. Cat fiddled some more and then whispered, "The alarms are off."

She'd also apparently unlocked the door. Because King simply opened it and walked right in. He disappeared for a couple of minutes. When he returned and whispered, "All clear." I didn't want to ask how many more bodies there were in there.

The building was like a small factory. There was equipment everywhere and it was confusing. But Cat seemed to know exactly where to go. She headed decisively for an area with overhead hoists and big trollies, using a pen light to make her way around things -- one of which was a body with its neck at an impossibly odd angle.

The objects my wife was walking toward looked like big aerial bombs. They were hanging on hoists with odd cylindrical items on trollies underneath. Cat was wearing a tool belt and she began to unbolt the access panel on the first cylinder. Inside was a shiny metal sphere which she removed with the help of King and placed in a backpack.

She then moved to the next cylinder and repeated the process. When she was done, she had four little spheres in two separate packs. This was all done with the precise efficiency that's always been my wife's trademark.

At the same time, Bernadette was busy climbing up things and under things, placing a puttylike substance that I was lugging around for her. I also had a spool of wire with me. She would yank out a length connect something that looked like a pencil and then embed it in the putty. The woman was gently humming "Sur le Pont d'Avignon" as she worked. Bernadette was one cool customer.

The entire exploit took no more than fifteen minutes. Then King, who was carrying both backpacks as idly as if they were shopping bags, walked over, and handed me one. It was so heavy it nearly buckled my knees. Those little orbs weren't bowling balls, or cannon balls. They were a lot weightier than that.

I said, "What's in here?" He said blandly, as if we were passing the time of day, "Oh... those are the U235 fission triggers. Don't drop them." OH MY GOD!! I was holding a bag full of nuclear holocaust and he tells me to not drop it!!

We walked back to the raft, loaded in the packs containing the fission triggers and King paddled them out. They were so heavy that they almost sank the raft. Then he came back and picked up Cat and me. We got the Cherokee ready for takeoff while King paddled back to get Bernadette, who had lingered by the shoreline holding another little metal box.

I had the engine warmed up as King and Bernadette scrambled into the cabin. There were a few muffled booms in the building while we taxied out - not loud enough to raise much alarm in the camp on the opposite shore. Then just as we got to lift off speed, I could see the entire place beginning to implode.

I circled and turned back over the facility and it was lying there in a heap of masonry and bent steel. The Nazis wouldn't be making any bombs in that place for a long time. Even better, we had their existing fission triggers.

We were somber on the ride back to Mistissini. For one thing, I had to keep my concentration on the job of flying around trees and mountains. We were right down on the deck because the Luftwaffe would be out in force just as soon as they got the word. And my poor Cherokee wouldn't stand a chance against a Me 262.

Nonetheless, there was another factor as well. King, Bernadette, and Cat had been convinced that they'd volunteered for a suicide mission. Now, they had their lives back. Even more poignant, Cat had a husband who she'd thought she'd lost forever.

As for me, my beloved wife was still alive. I don't know whether you can envision how heartbreakingly gratifying that was. Just visualize how much crying I'd done sitting on that lonely bench in Michigan and perhaps you'll get the idea. Trust me, it was a feeling beyond mortal comprehension.

The landing at Mistissini was as perilous as the one at Lac Koch, because I still had nothing but moonlight to guide me down. Still, it was a big lake and I was so inspired by the thought of having my dear woman with me that I could've landed on wings of love - carrying the Cherokee on my back.

We parted company at the Knoxville airport. King and Bernadette's quest would not end until the last Nazi was dead and Cat had to go back to Oak Ridge to quit her job. Her life as a commando research scientist was over for good. She was my wife and I was her husband.

Me and my faithful Cherokee?... Well, we just disappeared into the mist. It was like we had never existed. There would be far too many questions if I'd stayed around. And who cares about glory when you have all of the things in life that you would ever want.

EPILOGUE

I was poolside watching Piper swim laps. She was nearly eleven and she had the same smooth and powerful stroke as a person who'd existed long ago in another dimension. Knowing that you've passed along a special part of yourself to one of our children gives you a rewarding sense of immortality.

Speaking of love... my beloved Cat was lying face down in a modest bikini, which did nothing to hide her stunning butt. Her thick sheaf of wheaten hair was bleached nearly white by the sun and the rest of her gorgeous body was a rich golden tan.

My wife has the catlike ability to sense when she is being looked at. She raised her head and gave me a secret smile. There was a lot of carnal promise there. As the dude in the bible once said, "My cup runneth over."

The war had ended nearly twelve years ago. Our exploit was a footnote in history, like the Telemark raid was in my dimension. But it was decisive. That's because it let the U.S. win the nuclear weapons race.

Shortly after we returned, the Manhattan Project scientists perfected a warhead that could be delivered by an Atlas rocket. The Atlas was America's own version of a secret weapon. It was created at Cape Canaveral and the secrecy surrounding its development no-doubt explains why my sudden appearance downrange had freaked out the military.

The Atlas let us hit a target that was thousands of miles away, in a matter of twenty minutes. So, although the Nazis controlled the Atlantic and they had air superiority on both continents, there was no stopping the delivery of instant Armageddon from the far reaches of the exosphere.

The first nuclear warning was broadcast to all of the occupied territories in October of 1962. Oddly enough that coincided with the beginning of the Cuban Missile Crisis in my dimension. The deadline for unconditional surrender was set at the following week.

Of course, the demand was ignored, which led to a fiery mushroom blossoming on an uninhabited part of the Greenland ice cap. The demonstration of physical capability should have convinced the Nazis that we meant business. But they stubbornly refused to even discuss surrender.

As a result, the next strike was on their primary logistics hub on Iceland. Most of the population was concentrated in Reykjavik. As a result, there were few civilian casualties. But the Wehrmacht in Quebec quickly discovered that they were out of food and ammunition.

That was when the U.S. and Canada launched a sweeping "left hook" north of the Saguenay Line, led by the M4s of Patton's 3rd Army. Old Blood and Guts successfully pocketed two entire German Armies in a cauldron between Baie-Comeau and Bradley's forces on the Saguenay. It was Stalingrad on steroids and that coup de main pretty much ended the German presence in North America.

Once more... there was a call for unconditional surrender, which was ignored by the leaders of the Third Reich. Their spies had told them that we only had two bombs. So, the Germans thought that we'd used them all up.

That was the reason why the Nazis were so astonished when the quaint old city of Dresden disappeared in a nuclear fireball. The loss of life and destruction was appalling. But there were actually fewer fatalities in this dimension than the 200,000 that were lost to the firebombing of Dresden in mine.

That was when the Nazi's realized that the four triggers we'd seized in our raid had changed the equation. Once more, there was a call for unconditional surrender and the Nazi leadership all scuttled off to Berlin to try to decide what to do.

The decapitation strike over the Reichstag settled the question. Hitler and his entire gang of homicidal maniacs were vaporized in a nanosecond. Paradoxically there were, once again, fewer civilian casualties then during the final battles around Berlin in my dimension.

After the cataclysmic grand finale... the Germans managed to scrape up Alfred Jodl and Albert Speer to sign the surrender documents. That was in Bonn, which would be the capital of the German Republic while Berlin was being decontaminated. The estimate on that was around 40 years.

The surrender guaranteed that all lands seized by the Nazis would revert to their former owners and that all of the loot seized by them would be returned. Oddly enough, the German people themselves celebrated in the streets, as if they'd also been liberated. Life under the heavy hand of the Nazi party was no different for them than what it had been for the citizens of France, or England.

The threat of the remaining two bombs was enough to convince the Japanese that it would be a good idea to also pack up their stuff and go home. The terms were simple. The Japanese would promise that they would not stray from their original territorial boundaries. In return the two great cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would continue to thrive and do business.

After the war, American society boomed. And the construction industry went nuts, as more and more Americans enjoyed the good life on Miami Beach. That was the reason why I was sitting -- as a very rich and relatively young man - on a pool deck in a mansion in Coral Gables.

I was no longer running the company. I had people to do that now. Instead. I was devoting my life to making Cat and my two daughters happy. I'd learned a few things over two lifetimes. First and foremost is the fact that you are nothing without your family. It's a lesson I planned to never forget.

My exceptional wife managed to raise two kids and keep me happy while doing groundbreaking research in string theory and interdimensional interactivity. Any woman can do that... if she's brilliant enough. The scientific community was utterly amazed at Cat's almost otherworldly grasp of supersymmetry. It was as if she'd actually observed the phenomenon herself.

Once in a while Cat would take trips to visit the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. I mean... a girl has to keep her hand in, in the particle physics game somehow - doesn't she? Of course, our two daughters and I would come along. My wife would do pioneering experiments in bosuns and fermions and the kids and I would ski or tour the beautiful cities of Provence. All-in-all, your average family vacation.

Piper, my oldest, was a natural athlete, just like I used to be. She was daddy's girl and she went everywhere with me. It was exactly the same intense bond that I had with another little girl in another dimension. I sometimes wondered if Piper's sweet soul had crept across dimensions with me. I don't think you could love a kid more than I did my oldest daughter.

On the other hand, Brooklyn, who was eight, was a mirror of her mom - tiny and very beautiful. She was the idealist in the family - passionate about the environment. It was odd to see a child so young so tuned into the big picture. But my little girl was born with an old soul, one that reflected the wisdom of lifetimes of experience.

Brookie was also the same kind of patriot that my wife Cat was. Cat, of course, was a "Hero of Lac Koch." So, she was always in demand for patriotic festivities like the Fourth of July. Brooke went along with her mother dressed in Air Force Class A's, just like Cat wore. Except Cat's had a couple of gold stars on the collar.

Bernadette and King became key players at a little Company in Langley, Virginia. King might look like a Yeti in a bespoke suit. But he is one of the primary planners at the sharp end of the spear in a world of subterfuge and deceit. He seems comfortable there. His exquisite little wife still likes to blow things up.

King and Bernadette are both nearing retirement. So, they split their time between their house in McClean and her hereditary Chateau near Avignon. The latter is where their vast vineyards are located. The two had come a long way from the little garden that they were planting when I first met them.

The fourth member of that heroic group just vanished into the mists of time - like the Lone Ranger. His identity still remains a puzzle that the historians are struggling to solve. It was precisely the way he wanted it since he had the greatest reward of all.

I am here to tell you that I'd come a long way from weeping beside two graves in the dark and dreary place that I'd originated in. I was the husband of a special person and the father of two remarkable young women. That's really all a person can ever expect out of life -- or LIVEs as the case may be.

Author's Note:

Before you ask... King and Bernadette's origin story is "In The Shadow of the Night" and it continues with "The Baltimore Bitch." I hope you enjoyed these little stories.