Chapter 18: Operation Oak
Fear clamped his teeth onto his tongue as the DFS230 glider he shared with nine other
men broke free from its transport aircraft. His hairy knuckles were whiter than usual as he
gripped the bars on either side of his seat.
“Calm down, Fritz,” Pain muttered behind him. “It will only hurt a little.”
“Thanks,” Fear grunted.
Theirs was the third glider in a line that crossed the sky like a beaded necklace. Fear
watched the glider ahead of them dip down toward the base of the slope as it approached the red
brick building that was Campo Imperatore.
Lower down the mountain, a group of Italians guarded a blockade. The End watched
them from a low precipice, his rifle ready if they spotted him. The Italians smiled and joked and
leaned on their rifles like soldiers do when there is no immediate danger. One saw the gliders
coming nearer and pointed. Another man grabbed a radio, but before he could finish lifting the
mouthpiece, he fainted into the road with a tranquilizer dart in his shoulder blade.
“Brace yourself for a rough landing,” the glider pilot said calmly.
Fear closed his eyes and loosened his body. He felt Pain’s gigantic hand press his
shoulder as the wind near the ground tossed the glider. With a thump, they hit the ground, and a
ripping sound tore past his ears. Fear tumbled forward, his limbs tangled like a spider’s legs
after it dies. Finally the glider crashed to a stop, and Fear snapped his limbs back into place.
“Everyone okay?” the pilot asked, climbing out of the cockpit.
Skorzeny marched down the rocky slope with his hand firmly around Soleti’s arm. The
Italian looked irritable but unharmed.
“Bruno!” Skorzeny shouted. “Are you hurt?”
Fear turned to his comrade and saw that his right arm hung limp and twisted.
“I’m fine!” Pain answered. “Never felt better!”
“Your arm broken?”
“Maybe, but it’s not like I need it.”
Skorzeny shrugged. “If you’re alright, get down here and clear the way for us.”
Given the option of ambushing the guards at the blockade, Fury took it. Nothing like a
good ambush. The End watched him intently as he charged up the hill toward the Italians with a
flamethrower on his back. Joy had told the End to shoot Fury if he did anything stupid, so he
monitored his comrade’s progress through his sight.
“Grandpa! Watch out!” The End’s parrot landed on his brush-covered shoulder.
He turned his rifle back to the Italians. One tried to revive the man the End had already
knocked out while the rest scanned the crags for the person who had fired the dart.
“Down there!” the End saw a man mouth. He pointed down the road at Fury and the
Germans.
Fury dashed ahead, wielding the flamethrower like a toy. He dodged gunfire from both
sides as the End put one man after another to sleep. Fury stumbled once as a bullet tore a hole in
his pants, but he reached the blockade where he torched first the radio, then the vehicles. The
remaining Italians surrendered as the Germans overwhelmed them, and then the End saw Fury
fall, clutching his shoulder. Blood ran between his fingers. All the End could hear from his
position were the echoes of gunshots and vague voices, but from the look on Fury’s face, he was
screaming. The End shot a tranquilizer dart into his comrade’s arm and the Fury slept.
“Preparing to circle the target,” Joy called to Sorrow who sat in the back seat of the
Storch light aircraft she was flying. “How are the others doing?”
“Fury and the End seem to have overcome the – I think Fury’s hurt.”
“His own fault. I’m sure he ran in there like a hero.”
Joy dipped the plane to one side and turned toward Campo Imperatore. Through her
window, she saw the Pain talking with Skorzeny on the slope outside the main building. Even
from a distance, the two enormous men were easy to spot. She hoped they had the intelligence to
stay down once they were in sight of the hotel.
“Oh, Joy! This is not good!”
“What?” Joy asked, but Sorrow did not hear. One moment, he was staring through
binoculars at an Italian machine gunner on top of the hotel. Then the black fog covered
everything again, and he stood before a clean-shaven old man with mischievous brown eyes in a
tough face.
“You must be the Sorrow,” the man said in a low and reedy voice.
“This is not a good time.” Sorrow tried to concentrate on returning to the world of the
living, but that man’s voice distracted him. It was familiar, a little lower but still so similar to
Joy’s voice.
“I know the timing is bad, but we don’t choose when we die, Sorrow. Part of me just
wanted to see if you really had the powers she wrote about.”
The man smiled sadly in the way Joy sometimes did when Sorrow saw her alone.
“Sorrow! What the hell’s wrong with you?” Joy’s voice floated from far away. Her
father looked around as if he would see her with them in the darkness.
“Sorrow, we have serious problems!” Joy yelled as she faded back into focus. Sorrow
was sitting in the Storch again. Bullets cut the air around the tiny aircraft as Joy tried to dip and
turn.
“Joy! Something just –.”
“I don’t care right now. The gunner almost saw Pain coming down the hill, but I’m
distracting him now. The plane’s too heavy to maneuver. One of us has to bail out, or we’ll get
hit. God, I wish we had guns on here!”
Sorrow heard Joy’s father’s voice, clear above the gunfire. “Tell her that you’ll drop her
on the roof and take the controls.”
I cannot - .
“No, but I can.”
If Sorrow could have seen the man as he spoke, he imagined the man’s eyes would have
gleamed the way Joy’s did when she struck upon a particularly clever plan.
“Joy, I will take the controls,” Sorrow said.
She laughed bitterly. “It’s really no time for jokes.”
“Let me try,” Joy’s father said, and Sorrow allowed him to take over his voice.
“I’m not joking, Bitty,” Joy’s father said. “I will fly low, and you will jump onto the
roof.”
Joy stiffened at the sound of her childhood nickname. “That’s downright suicidal!”
“Not for you. You’ve done this before. At Wright Field.”
“I-I understand, Sorrow,” she whispered. “Take over for me.”
She squeezed out of the cockpit and let Sorrow take her seat. As Sorrow brought the plan
low over the brick building, Joy climbed over the side, ready to jump. The engine slowed. She
would have less than a second to do this safely.
The machine gunner turned toward them, and Sorrow flew low over his head. Joy
glanced back at the cockpit for a moment before she threw herself out onto the roof. The landing
was hard, but nothing was broken. Joy flung her leg under the machine gunner who buckled and
fell to his knees. Before the man could recover, Joy slammed the side of her hand into his
temple. As the man collapsed, she hoped for Sorrow’s sake that he was unconscious and not
dying.
Several minutes earlier, Skorzeny was organizing the occupants of the first three gliders.
Besides Pain’s broken arm, there were only minor injuries.
“Our group will go first,” Skorzeny was saying. “Those in the other gliders will surround
the place after we’re in. Bruno is an imposing figure, so he will go in front with us.”
The group fanned out and marched down the slope toward Campo Imperatore. The
gliders had come in silently, and the Italians seemed entirely unaware that an invasion was
imminent. A hundred yards from the brick building, they heard a string of echoing bangs as
bullets hit the rocks just ahead. Then Fear looked into the sky as he heard the engine of the tiny
Storch overhead. The plane flew toward the hotel and then circled.
“What the hell is she doing?” Skorzeny shouted.
“Distracting them, sir,” Pain said simply.
“Oh, damn her to hell! If she gets shot down, we may not get Mussolini out of here.
Impulsive woman…”
“Sir,” said Fear, “I mean no disrespect, but she’s giving us a chance to get in. I suggest
we run like hell.”
Skorzeny and his commandos tore across the last hundred yards to the brick building
where Benito Mussolini stood waving on a balcony. Three Italians guarded the doorway with
rifles raised. Skorzeny shoved Ferdinando Soleti in front.
“Don’t shoot!” Soleti cried.
The men lowered their rifles for a moment, then raised them again. Suddenly, they were
surrounded by a swarm of bees. While the guards ducked and swatted, Skorzeny dragged Soleti
inside.
Fear glanced up at Mussolini and grinned. A look of revulsion crossed the former
dictator’s face, and he stepped back against the railing. Fear cackled inside. This man looked
like a lot of fun. Fear stepped out of Mussolini’s view and climbed like a lizard to the roof. He
saw the machine gunner sprawled beside his gun. Sorrow must have shot him from the plane or
something.
Fear slinked along the parapet until he was looking down on Mussolini’s bald head.
From here, the Fear could drop down onto Il Duce’s shoulders like a gigantic version of a spider
falling from the ceiling. He lifted one long leg over the parapet.
An arm clamped around his neck, and he was knocked back onto the roof. Fear clawed at
his attacker who caught both of his wrists and landed a knee in his chest. He blinked and saw the
Joy’s livid face through his blurred vision.
“What in the hell are you doing up here?” she shouted. “Give me a good answer or I’ll
throw you over the side.”
Fear smiled weakly. “I could ask the same question of you.”
“I’m not going to play that game, Fear. Answer me.”
She bent his wrists back.
“Ow! It… I came up here to get the gunner. Yeouch! I-I thought it would help and –
aargh! Okay, fine. I wasn’t going to hurt him or anything. I just wanted to have a little fun.”
Joy dropped his wrists and stood.
“Get up,” she said calmly.
Fear shuffled to his feet. Joy stared at him for a while with such an expression of despair
that Fear could think of nothing clever to say.
“You have disappointed me,” Joy began. “Just this morning… this… morning… I was
saying how proud I was of you last night and… I must have gotten carried away because I…
I…”
She turned quickly and opened the tiny door that led into the hotel. “Let’s find
Skorzeny.”
“Don’t shoot!” Soleti shouted to everyone they met inside. “I beg you not to shoot!”
Confused Italians dropped their weapons which were then picked up by their German
assailants. Skorzeny found the radio operator immediately. He pulled the young man away from
the equipment and crushed it with the butt of his rifle. The bees followed Pain into the building.
He guided them covertly by tossing tiny vials of the pheromones he had shown Fear and then
attracting them back before they could kill anyone.
Skorzeny, Soleti, and Old Boy met Joy on the stairs to the second floor.
“Frieda!” Skorzeny cried. “Did the Storch go down?”
“I had to take care of something, sir. My husband is flying.” She saluted. “Il Duce is
through here.”
Soleti ordered the last of the guards to drop their pistols, and Skorzeny embraced the man
he had come to rescue.
“Duce,” Skorzeny said, holding the much shorter man’s shoulders, “the Fuhrer has sent
me to set you free.”
Mussolini smiled triumphantly. “I knew that my friend would not forsake me!” He
clapped one arm around Skorzeny and the other around Soleti, who spat sourly at his feet.
Skorzeny’s men cheered as their commander marched Mussolini down the stairs. Joy
smiled, but deep in her mind, she was horrified. Here she stood in a Luftwaffe uniform freeing a
man the Allies would have executed in a few days. The bitterness of the entire mission stung her
again as it had in Marquise. What would her father think? Her father. Joy’s mouth went dry,
and her smile disappeared.
“Lieutenant!” Old Boy whispered in her ear. “One of your men was injured.”
She pushed the thoughts of her father away as two of the men who attacked the blockade
brought Fury into the hotel.
“Shit!” Fury moaned. “God damn! It was a fucking hollow-point, Joy, uh, Frieda.”
Blood covered the right side of his uniform, and no one had done anything to stop the
bleeding.
“I’ll take care of him,” Joy said as the men laid a cursing Fury on a table.
Skorzeny laid a hand on her shoulder. “Frieda, I’ll need you to fly us out of here. Leave
him to someone else.”
“Fine. Anyone here know anything about medicine?”
“I do,” Old Boy said without hesitation.
Joy gazed at him, and he smirked.
“Good,” she said, and she left with Skorzeny.
Sorrow had landed at the end of what was established during planning as a good runway.
It was more like a slightly flatter strip of rock than the others on the mountain. Joy reached up to
help Sorrow out of the cockpit, and when their hands touched, the world burst into cold white
light.
Historical Notes:
(1) The tranquilizer darts described in the story are not historically accurate in the least. In fact,
they don’t even exist in the way they’re portrayed today! This is something from the Metal
Gear universe that is serious wishful thinking, but since this is fanfiction, I can use them.
(2) Most of my account of the ambush at Gran Sasso, except for a few things I will mention later
in the notes, is fiction. I read several accounts from different points of view, but in the end, I
decided to make up my own. Please pick up the book My Commando Operations: The
Memoirs of Hitler’s Most Daring Commando written by Otto Skorzeny himself. It has the
man’s own account of what happened, probably rather embellished.
(3) Believe it or not, flamethrowers, while not practical, were used occasionally during World
War II.
(4) The real aircraft that came to pick Mussolini up was a Fieseler Fi 156 Storch (or Stork) flown
by Captain Walter Gerlach. The Joy has taken his place in this story. It was only meant to
hold the pilot and one passenger.
(5) All accounts of the raid say that Skorzeny crushed the radio with his rifle.
(6) The words spoken between Mussolini and Skorzeny are from Skorzeny’s account of the raid.
(7) Hollow-point bullets were outlawed for use in war in the first Hague Conventions, signed in
1899. Use of expanding bullets is a war crime.