Re: Blood and Iron

Chapter 639: Hypocrisy thy name is Democracy

The city sweltered under its eternal sun, golden-hazed and sluggish in the mid-afternoon heat.

Inside the fortified American consulate building, high above the street-level din, four men sat in a long, wood-paneled conference room, ceiling fans clattering overhead.

Colonel Frank Holloway of the OSS thumbed through a series of coded dispatches.

His uniform was loose, fraying, and stained with a week’s worth of West African dust.

But his eyes were sharp, too sharp for a man in a supposedly “civilian advisory” role.

“The Germans aren’t backing down,” he muttered. “They’re doing what they always do. Smiling with one hand extended while the other’s loading a magazine.”

A Liberian national, now on the American payroll as an intelligence asset, shifted nervously in his seat. “The Werwolf units are being reinforced, sir. More armor showed up in Lunsar last week. Heavy armor. The locals are starting to murmur that this ’transition council’ is just a new mask for the old Reich.”

One of the CIA’s embedded logistics men, Greene, young, cocksure, and far too loud, leaned back in his chair.

“So we hit ’em again. That convoy op two weeks ago was a success. Only two of the bastards made it out of the jungle. One of them blew himself to pieces just so he wouldn’t get captured.”

Frank grunted. “And he took several of our guys with him… The Germans have pride. Always have. They would rather die taking down others with them, then surrender…. It’s become a real problem.”

There was a silence. The only sound was the fan’s slow rhythm and the buzz of distant street vendors below.

Outside, children played soccer barefoot in the alleyways. Women hawked sugarcane and mangoes.

A preacher’s voice echoed somewhere far off, shouting in Krio about fire and salvation.

Then came a new sound.

A distant thrum, low, rhythmic, vibrating deep in the walls. One of the window panes began to rattle.

Greene paused, looking up. “What is that?”

The local operative stood slowly and walked to the window. He squinted, shielded his eyes against the sun, then froze.

“Something’s wrong,” he said quietly.

Frank joined him. Over the far western edge of the city, just above the coastal jungle, a black shape was forming in the sky. Several shapes. No, dozens.

“No flight paths approved today,” Greene muttered, already reaching for the radio.

But it was too late.

The first bomb hit five kilometers away, out past the sugar processing plant. A plume of fire bloomed in the distance like a volcano tearing through the earth.

The next struck the airport. Then the docks. Then the city power station.

Frank’s voice caught in his throat. “Jesus Christ.”

Dozens of Fernbombers screamed overhead. High-altitude turboprops designed for strategic strikes.

Engines roared like thunder. Their silhouettes were ghostlike, shimmering through the upper atmosphere.

But their payloads were real.

Hundreds of them.

Incendiaries. High explosives. Thermobaric cluster bombs.

The sky opened.

The bombs didn’t strike in a line. They fell in a pattern, an inward spiral.

From the outskirts inward, like a tightening noose.

The OSS safehouse shook. Windows shattered. Books fell from shelves. Radios went dead. Somewhere in the compound, a generator exploded.

Greene ran for the hallway. “To the bunker, now—!”

But the power cut out before he reached the door. And then came another blast, this one far closer.

Through the broken window, Frank watched in stunned silence as a market down the street vanished in fire.

Screaming civilians ran in every direction. Limbs and bodies were flung skyward like discarded dolls. The scent of roasted meat and fuel hit him like a wave.

Another wave of bombs fell, closer now. Roofs collapsed. The mission hospital disappeared into rubble. Flaming wreckage slammed into the street.

And still, the bombers kept coming.

Frank stumbled backward, grabbing the window frame to steady himself. The city was gone.

Whole neighborhoods turned to dust. Roads split apart like fault lines. Fires spread with unnatural speed, crawling over brick and wood and skin like liquid napalm.

A detachment of Liberian police, half-trained, scattered in panic as their barracks were flattened.

A nearby cathedral, a Gothic imitation of European faith planted in African soil, crumbled like sand.

Frank felt his knees weaken.

This wasn’t a strike.

This was a message.

A punishment.

He grabbed the radio and cranked the dial. Nothing but static. The whole spectrum was jammed.

“Frank!” Greene yelled from the corridor. “Frank, they’re—”

The building shook violently. Ceiling tiles collapsed. A support beam split and fell across the conference table. Greene vanished behind smoke and rubble.

Frank crawled to the doorway, coughing, ears ringing, face covered in soot. He saw people screaming in the courtyard, flames licking at their clothes, eyes wide with animal terror.

The next explosion struck directly behind him. The wall cracked open. Light and heat rushed in, a wave of white-orange fury.

Frank staggered forward, bloody, dazed. He reached the outer steps, limping toward the consulate gate, dragging one foot behind him like a corpse still trying to stand.

He looked up at the sky and saw another formation of bombers. A second wave.

And behind them?

A third wave….

The sky itself belonged to Germany.

Frank collapsed to his knees. Screams of children, the shrieking of burning men and women, the apocalyptic crackle of flame and steel—

He whispered, to no one in particular:

“God help us….”

—

The fire crackled gently in the hearth, but the room itself was cold. Stone walls, dark wood beams, and ancient iron chandeliers gave the study the solemn stillness of a cathedral.

A single window overlooked the snowy peaks, but Bruno wasn’t gazing at the mountains.

He was watching the sky.

A wall-sized projection glowed across the far end of the office, satellite footage stitched together in grainy infrared layers.

The once-living city of Monrovia now resembled a cratered wasteland.

Block by block, sector by sector, the coastal capital had been erased.

Ash still drifted from the skeletal remains of its government quarter.

On his desk sat a stack of fresh telegrams, each one a condemnation.

Commonwealth Office protests atrocities.

French Republic demands war crimes tribunal.

American envoy calls Germany “a threat to the civilized world.”

Bruno didn’t even look at them.

The statement he had drafted three days ago, before the bombers ever left Tyrol, lay folded beneath a silver paperweight.

He’d already memorized it. The phrases were neither elegant, diplomatic. History would not need the illusion of decorum. It would need the certainty of steel.

But tonight?

Tonight was not for history.

Bruno leaned back in the old leather chair. Its creak was the only sound besides the soft clink of his stein touching the desk.

He raised the beer, still cold, and took a long sip. The foam brushed his upper lip like a whisper.

Then his smirk widened.

He spoke aloud, not for anyone else, just for himself.

“When I gassed Belgrade, the world stood silent in horror.

The weight of my actions spoke for themselves… When I burned four Japanese cities to the ground, they said it was a necessary evil to end a war that had gone on long enough. Now… now they puff their chests and protest about Monrovia?”

He chuckled once, arrogantly.

“Hypocrisy… thy name is Democracy.”

“They don’t give a damn about Monrovia. Or the people who died there. They just care that I dared to respond to their provocation with overwhelming force. After nearly forty years of this, you would think they were capable of understanding my character.”

The firelight flickered across his face, casting long shadows over the old war maps behind him, Africa, Europe, the Atlantic.

His eyes didn’t blink. They stayed fixed on the smoldering ruins of a capital thousands of kilometers away, now rendered silent.

He took another sip.

And then, he began quietly rehearsing his public statement… Not to change what had happened, but to ensure the world remembered who had done it.