King of Valley Junction
Chapter 6
Johnny struggled to come to grips with what had transpired. The OSS was a department of the government Johnny had never heard of before. He was going to doubt the sergeant who knew a hell of a lot more than he did about what was going on. America had a clandestine force of guys, dressed in casual business attire, interrogating Nazis, dressing as monks, to escape through the Vatican. “That is crazy. Why are we having them sent to South America?” Johnny asked the obvious question to the sergeant. He noticed the sergeant wasn’t wearing a name tag on his uniform but said nothing.
“We’re not. That is where they thought they were escaping to. What we are doing now is their same exact play, except the Nazis that we actually want we are keeping and sending them to America.”
“Then we just mow down the rest, like those guys lying up there?” replied Johnny as he looked in the direction of the bodies lying on the ground. The guys in uniform that just executed them were now walking directly at him.
“This here is only phase one. After that, it is not my problem,” the sergeant shrugged and looked in the direction of the demolished gate, inspecting the damage.
Johnny tried to imagine Nazis in America. He was unaware there were thousands of German prisoners of war already back in his home state in the small town of Algona. “I wonder what they know that is so valuable?”
“They don’t speak English, I know that. We have a few translators, but the Swiss guys all speak German. The Swiss are neutral in the war.”
“Neutral? What does that mean?”
“They are not in it. They are not on any side.”
Johnny furled his brow at the answer. He had heard there were places the war had never touched, but he imagined Antarctica, not the center of Europe in the middle of the war. “How is that even possible?”
“I don’t know, but it is. All these escaping Nazis are fleeing through Switzerland and trying to make their way through the church to South America before they get caught and the war ends, just like those guys up there,” he pointed in the direction of the deceased.
“Wow,” was all Johnny could say. “How did you get involved in it, Sarge?”
Before he could answer, Kryliter spoke up unexpectedly from behind, “Hey, I drove one of the two trucks you guys requisitioned from our motor pool an hour or so ago. How am I going to explain to our command that we left our post if that colonel is leaving with those guys?” Kryliter pointed to the officers getting into the jeeps with the men in suits.
“Let me talk with the colonel. He might cut me loose to show you guys the way back. Jump up there in the saddle and get this thing up there with those bodies. Salute the guy and listen to what he says. I am pretty sure he is going to have you dig a pit big enough to bury the bodies. They got what they came for. They won’t be staying around,” said the sergeant as he threw his cigarette on the ground and walked behind the dozer to speak with the remaining officers.
Johnny climbed up in the bulldozer and started it back up. Kryliter watched the Sergeant walk off.
“I think that guy was a bullshitter.”
Johnny shook his head in disbelief. “What are you talking about?"
“Really, how are we getting back? We don’t know how to get back,” whined Kryliter.
“What happened to your faith in Jesus, Kryliter? We got the maps in the trucks. We can find our way back,” Johnny remembered. He pushed the bulldozer towards the bodies strung out on the ground up ahead of him, carrying Kryliter holding on to the back.
As Johnny pulled the bulldozer closer, he could see there was only one living man standing. The remaining bodies were silent and motionless. As he drew nearer to the bodies, he could see the blood on their exterior of their clothing where they had been shot a few times each. The man standing in the middle was taking pictures of the faces and then stripping the bodies naked and taking another picture of them one by one. Johnny was stunned by the execution. He had seen men take bullets up close during firefights. This was different. Twenty-two people shot wearing monks’ tunics—it was just something a person didn’t see every day. Johnny did not jump down from the bulldozer. He watched silently with Kryliter and waited until given an order. The photographer obviously knew he was there but paid no attention to the D7 idling loudly beside him. After the third or fourth body, the guy changed his camera to another that was dangling from a lanyard around his neck. He continued the process one by one in no particular hurry. Halfway through the bodies, Johnny noticed the bloodied breasts of a woman revealed when he stripped the tunic off one of the bodies. Copious amounts of blood had already streamed from her neck and abdomen. The man laid her out flat on her back and spread her legs open, revealing her genitalia. He then rolled her over and took another picture of her back side.
“Man, did you see her pussy?” Kryliter spoke up from behind.
“Yeah, I did. I wasn’t expecting a woman.”
“He spread her legs out and took a picture of her hairy pee hole. I swear he did,” a curious Kryliter stared at the photographer as he moved on to the next body.
“I saw it too. That was pretty weird,” confessed Johnny.
“What is he going to do with the pictures?” asked Kryliter.
“I have no idea. Maybe trying to identify who they are. He is probably stripping them to see if they have any scars, birthmarks, or tattoos that can help identify them later. I can’t believe he is going to identify her by her beaver.”
“Oh, yeah, they do. It is just like a fingerprint. Every baby maker is different. There ain’t two of them the same on the planet.”
Johnny turned his head and stared in disbelief at Kryliter. “Kryliter, where the hell did you hear that?”
“It’s true. If they don’t have fingerprints, they can identify them by their twats,” Kryliter was convinced of this female anatomical analysis surely by someone equally as dumb or dumber than him.
“Have you ever even seen a twat?”
“Hell, yeah. Maybelle Martin, Helen Anderson, Betty Tinbaum….I made all them girls before I found my way to Jesus, that is. How about you? You ever get a little of that Iowa beaver out there in the cornfield?”
“Kryliter, not only do I not believe you. I think you are a phony. If it were true, they would have to be the dumbest and ugliest three girls in your school to let you even look at them naked, let alone get your pecker anywhere near them.”
Kryliter laughed, “I guess that means the answer is no.”
“Alright, boys. I need a hole dug big enough and deep enough for all these bodies. Throw the bodies in and push the dirt back over them, then report back to your units.”
“Yes, sir.” Johnny and Kryliter saluted the young officer that was taking the photos. He returned the salute and walked past them and continued walking outside the demolished gate until he disappeared.
Johnny revved the engine on the bulldozer and lowered the bucket to the earth and engaged the transmission. The bucket dug into the earth as the bulldozer pushed until the bucket was half full of soil. Johnny put the machine in reverse and dumped the load along the side to start a pile. One by one, the bucket loads created a pit the width of the tractor bucket about four feet deep and thirty feet long. Johnny and Kryliter grabbed each naked body by the hands and feet and cast them into the pit.
“I’ve seen a lot of crap in this war. This has to be the weirdest shit imaginable,” Johnny was trying to piece together what the sergeant told him and what had just transpired on the ground.
“All of these guys got skin over the heads of their cocks. That is just weird. I wonder why they do that?” a confused Kryliter mentioned as they cast another bullet-ridden body into the shallow grave. Johnny didn’t bother answering but also thought it was strange none of the men were circumcised as they were heaved into the pit. They came to the body of the only female still lying face down. They flipped over her lifeless body and for the first time the two looked at a fully naked woman. She was in her twenties or thirties from her development. She had dark hair and eyes. The blood covered half her torso. There were bullet holes in her neck and above her left breast. Johnny wondered if she was a mother or wife of one of the dead Nazis. The men could not help but look at her crotch. There was no cock. It was just a mound of pubic hair. It would be impossible to identify a woman by her twat Johnny thought to himself. The two threw her in the pit and moved on to the next body then the next until all were thrown in. Johnny pushed the dirt back over the pile and drove the bulldozer out of the compound towards his trailer with Kryliter catching another free ride on the back of the bulldozer.
“We can follow those maps back to where the colonel originally found us,” Johnny said loudly.
“That captain is going to be pissed if we are not there when he gets back,” Kryliter responded as he thought of the consequences for disobeying an order. How could they prove the entire story of what just transpired without an alibi?
Johnny chained down his bulldozer to his corresponding flatbed and then climbed into the cab of the truck. He started it up and engaged the transmission and steered behind Kryliter’s rig.
Johnny and Kryliter were not permanently attached to their current makeshift quarters, and he had nothing to hide. It was then that he realized he didn’t get the sergeant’s or the colonel’s name. It would make his story sound less believable without a name for an alibi. Johnny didn’t want to draw any unnecessary attention to himself. He just wanted the war to finish and return home alive. He left his truck running, jumped down from his cab, and walked up to Kryliter’s cab. “You know where we are?”
Kryliter adjusted his glasses and turned the map sideways as he stared at it. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Swell,” sighed Johnny, not having a lot of confidence in Kryliter’s response.
“This spot here is where we were, and this road here is the highway we were on for a little bit, I think. We cut here over on this Via del’…whatever in Italian, and it takes us right back to the river. We follow that all the way back to where we were.” Kryliter felt confident, Johnny less so.
“Fantastic. I am following you,” Johnny replied and walked back to his rig. He jumped back in the cab and waited for Kryliter to begin moving in the direction of their destination.
Johnny continued following Kryliter’s rig, slowly exiting the main road and entering the maze of streets that led to the heart of Rome. The roads were cobblestone and very little pavement entered the city. The trucks rumbled along the streets with two lanes of traffic avoiding the narrow streets only large enough for a single car driving in one direction. When they crossed a bridge over the Tiber River, Johnny caught the word Via Lungotevere on the corner of some of the buildings. He forgot about his map and shoved his hand in his shirt pocket to ensure it was still there. He felt the paper and sighed. He was completely trusting Kryliter’s directions, but if he failed, he would need to figure it out on his own. If the sergeant was gone and the other trucks were gone. He and Kryliter would still need to be able to get back to their temporary unit by themselves and possibly would be considered absent without leave. That was a bit concerning because the sergeant driving the colonel in the jeep was the only one who could testify to what had just happened.
Kryliter’s rig slowed and came to a stop. Johnny recognized it was where they were before. Kryliter jumped out of his cab and came back to Johnny’s rig. Johnny rolled down the window. “You see our unit anywhere?”
“No, I don’t,” shrugged Kryliter as he looked around.
From the opposite side of their rigs, the captain in charge of the original four bulldozer drivers from the morning rolled up in his jeep. “There you guys are. Where in the hell have you been? I have been looking all over for you.”
“We were ordered by a colonel in a convoy to follow them not long after you left. He was riding in the front seat of the jeep. The sergeant driving them around got out and told us to abort whatever mission we were on and immediately proceed with their convoy. They needed the dozers on the double.”
“Hey, there he is,” cried out Kryliter as he noticed the other sergeant driving up in the colonel’s jeep with the flag waving without the colonel.
Johnny looked in the direction Kryliter was pointing. “Wow, it is him.”
The sergeant noticed them and pulled up alongside the rig. He could see the captain was dressing them down about disobeying his orders. “Hey, Captain, they were with me. Orders of Colonel Paulsen. We needed your dozers.” he yelled as he saluted.
“What?” The captain was confused. He had no idea who the sergeant was, but it was obvious he knew Kryliter and Johnny.
“Just making sure you fellas found your way back.”
The captain was pissed. “So any random officer can just confiscate my men and equipment whenever they see fit without telling their direct supervisor? You guys make that up on your own?” The captain replied. He had obviously been driving around for a while trying to find the two lost bulldozers in Rome.
“I don’t make the rules, sir.” The sergeant from Colonel Paulsen’s command replied. “If you got a problem with it, I can bring it up with Colonel Paulsen, sir.”
The captain just shook his head in frustration. “Forget it.”
“Thank you, fellas. Best of luck to you and yours,” the sergeant said and drove off.
“What a war,” the captain replied as he watched the sergeant drive off with the colonel’s flag waving from the jeep. “Who the fuck does that guy think he is? Colonel Paulsen? Yeah, he can kiss my ass, pal,” yelled the captain to the cloud of diesel from the jeep’s exhaust.