so yeah, once more and update... hopefuly I can finish this story being as its not too long and should not take much more. Ive mapped out a total of eight chapters so hopefully I can reach that goal before the summer ends and school starts and blah blah blah.
I tourture Vogel to much, but thats because I love him
enjoy
- Euro

edit: So, I think I nearly died when I found a site that had actual evidence of Vogel's first name. SO according to research, Vogel's official first name is Ernst (Not Albert as I had put it because I thought he was enver given any) So from now on, its Ernst Vogel not Albert Vogel.

Chapter 2
Salvation

Vogel’s eyes fluttered open and he was almost instantly blinded by white light. His mind felt as though it was a thousand miles away from his body and for all that he knew it was. He felt nothing; everything seemed detached from his mind as though his body did not exist. Am I dead? Was the only thought that sprung up in his clouded mind as he tried to see through the blinding radiance that seemed to encircle him. He paused as he realized that a dull throbbing echoed in the back of his head, a low rhythmic pounding that sounded like drums being played in the deep bowels of some never-ending caver. Vogel slowly came to the conclusion that he was not dead, his eyes were staring straight up into the blazing white sun of the desert.

Suddenly a rush of fiery pain flooded into his body as shock filled his eyes. He abruptly remembered everything that had happed prior to his awakening, the tank, the struggle, the cliff and the plummeting he remembered it all vividly. The sickening feeling of the ground dropping out from under his feet and the ten seconds of free fall where there was nothing between him and the teeth of the jagged rocks down below. He could remember it well. No, he was not dead; it was by some stroke of luck that he had lived, or perhaps some curse that he survived. Nobody was coming to look for him. Everyone had seen the tank fly over the edge and they could have safely assumed that he had been killed. But yet he had lived, and in the back of his mind he foresaw that though he wasn’t dead by the fall, the claws of the desert would soon destroy him.

He lay on his left side and tried to roll over onto his back but a sharp ache run the length of the let side of his face. He grimaced as he brought his right hand stiffly to his face and touched it gingerly. Something wet came off on his fingers. As he brought his hand into his sight, he saw that it was blood. His own blood. Vogel cringed, he had no way to see how extensive the damage was, but by the way the dull twinge kept flaring up every time that he blinked it must be horrid. He cringed for it stung, but that was the least of Vogel’s concerns.

The colonel then tried to move his legs but nothing happened. There was a long pause as his mind failed to comprehend why, his eyes just stared blankly in front of him. He tried again but he only succeeded in creating a strange sensation in the small of his back. Vogel came to the conclusion that his back was broken, rendering his legs useless and sharply decreasing his already slim chances of survival. Rage and fury flooded into his being and to his surprise he felt tears well up in his eyes as he started to cry. “Curse you, Indiana Jones!” he shouted in despair as he blinked away salty tears. Jones. Jones. Jones. Jones, his voice echoed off the towering cliffs that hung over his head.

A sharp stinging in his side became apparent as he gasped for breath in between sobs but this one was not as intense or as dire as his other injuries. He shook his head trying to clear his mind; He could move his right arm and the upper half of his body. Now he tried to move his left arm. The German tried, but nothing happen. Instantly his mind started going into over drive, had he managed to lose his arm too? He tried once again, but once again nothing happened. No, he could feel his fingers, he could move them, by why was the arm suddenly paralyzed? A pressure was keeping it pinned to the ground just a few inches below his elbow. Vogel turned his head painfully to find that he was caught underneath the tank’s top that had dislocated from the body that lay a few feet away.

He tried to pull his arm out but it still remained trapped. Grimacing in agony, Vogel became conscious that he was stuck there. The colonel cursed to himself first silently in his mind and then swore out loud as he kept struggling fruitlessly like a fish caught on a hook. He finally stopped fighting and just lay there trying to find someway out, something that he could do that would allow him to free his arm. What seemed like hours passed, before Vogel came to a sickening conclusion about his trapped limb. It was his arm or his life and he was willing to take his chances with the desert than to merely wait here and die from dehydration. Staying there trapped could spell instant death and he felt that he should try at least to get out before he died.

The German reached for his feet, causing courses what felt like white hot knives burn into his damaged back. It took him almost ten minutes into a position where he was able to reach the switchblade that he always kept in his boot. That knife was awarded to him when he was much younger and a mere sergeant of the SS and he always kept it with him as a sort of good luck charm. Although it would have normally been ceremoniously given to a boy of eighteen, he received it because he had never gotten a chance to graduate from the HJ. Up until now, the Colonel had never found much use for it. Vogel finally managed to slip that knife out of his boot. He brought it up to his eye level and worked the scabbard off the blade. He paused before he did anything, watching it glint in the sunlight almost as good as the day he received it, the slogan Blut und Ehre etched upon its side. The ‘new’ beauty of the knife was soon to be tainted as he positioned it right where the tank caught him and held his breath.

He sliced the knife into his skin as a torrent of pain fired up his arm. He gritted teeth together as he tried to contain the noise of hurt that came bubbling up in his throat like bile; He kept on cutting into his arm. Minutes passed as blood spurted from the incision that kept growing larger and eventually Vogel hit the bone. At this point he could not contain it any more; a shriek fell from his mouth and his eyes clamped shut as tears once again found they way up. He did not stop cutting; the awful sound of the bone being sawed through would stay with him forever. With a final snap and slash, the remainder of his arm was freed. Blood darkened the sand as the stump of his arm bled openly. Holding his arm to his chest, he tried to find some way to stop it. For some reason he had not accounted for bleeding as actually being a by product of that action. Eventually, though, Vogel managed to wrap the tattered shreds of his uniform’s sleeves around the remains of his arm.

Pain, that was all he felt as he threw the blade away; the colonel had no use for it anymore. The hurt kept coming that it only took Vogel a few minutes to accept is as a constant feeling. He still kept grimacing and moaning as he managed to flip himself over onto his stomach. A jolt shook his legs from the action, but he ignored it. Digging his one good hand into the sand he used it as an anchor and slithered forward a few feet. He repeated the same action and managed to pull himself out of the cover of the tank and into the blazing heat of the sun. From now on, Hell’s fire was only going to get worse. He knew that his time was slowly waning with every pull ahead he dragged himself.

--

The sun’s rays beat down mercilessly on the parched earth and had not ceased since it’s rising that morning. The cliff’s faces had started to smooth out and had started to reflect the sun even more harshly because the wind did not delve down into the canyon. An almost invisible line was drawn out across the base of the rock walls as though something had been dragged across the sand floor. The line traced it way around and every so often a splotchy maroon line could be seen broken in spots and placed at strange intervals through out the line.

Suddenly, the line ended at something that looked chillingly like a human splayed out across the desert sand. Vogel lay face down in the sand, his body unmoving as though he was dead. But he was, however, alive. Just barely, though. He had been dragging himself through the accursed desert for almost a day and a half and already the sun had taken its toll upon his body. His fair skin had been scorched but the sun and was painful to the touch; it now had turned a nasty crimson color and was starting to peel off his face. His lips were cracked and dry, he had the constant taste of salt upon his upper lip and he knew that the loss of salt was slowly killing him. He was panting heavily.

He made one more grasp ahead and stopped once again to rest, the sore muscles in his right arm were screaming in agony. They had been his only mode of transportation for the last 36 hours and he had been giving them almost no rest. Vogel couldn’t breathe; he needed water. He needed water badly. He was slowly weakening from lack of blood; the stump of an arm refused to stop and it still was draining a pretty decent amount of the red fluid. The gashes on his face had long since started to scab over; he could feel the dry blood but made no motion to try and wipe it away. Once again he drove his right hand into the sand and dragged himself forward a few feet. The Colonel felt sick. He knew that it was from the heat, but there was nothing he could do about it and he was prepared to take it.

He had dragged himself away from the tank. The true length he did not know, but he was sure it was far less then he thought it was. Vogel had kept close to the cliffs because he reckoned that the best chance of his survival was to be near the rock face, some extra sense told him that it was there that any rescue party would start looking. He pulled himself forward another few feet and than stopped to rest again, his face down in the sand. Suddenly something that sounded remarkably like an engine met his ears. Instantly adrenaline rushed into his system as the German raised his head in a newfound hope. A new glimmer of light seemed to shine in his eyes that had gone dull with despair. The sound seemed to grow louder. He rolled himself on to his back so that he could up at the rock face.

“I’m here!” he shouted at the top of his lungs trying to draw attention to him. Vogel paused and listened, the engine sound kept growing. Once again he shouted, hoping that someone would hear him. Again and again, until his voice grew hoarse, he shouted. And even after that he shouted more, no way was he going to let this chance slip away from him. This could be the moment of his salvation and he was going to make it happen. He let out one final shout, his voice cracking the process and then fell silent. Listening once more, the colonel heard the sound starting to fade away. Fear rose in his eyes as the echo of the engine started to come to him, “Nein!” he hollered “Don’t go! Please!”

The engine sound slowly faded away into the desert sands and a few moments after that the echo disappeared too, it was if it had never existed. The Colonel was in utter shock as his lower lip quivered with emotion. “No,” Vogel cursed to himself as he slammed his right fist into the sand rather weakly spraying sand into the air. “Please,” he pleaded to no one in particular. “Come back!” The sound was replaced with nothing but silence that was broken only by the light whistling that echoed off the cliff face. “Come Back!” he commanded, once more his voice cracking. “Don’t leave me, I am here!” he screamed. His only response was a haunting repeated refrain: Here. Here. Here. Here. The sun now seemed to grow fiercer and seared into Vogel’s already far sunburned skin. He had let his chance go. Never again would fate smile upon him concluded. “God Damn You, Dr. Jones!” was the only thing that tumbled from his mouth as he threw his hand forward and slithered ahead a few more feet.

A few minutes later the colonel had to stop once more, his head had suddenly started spinning again. He drove his right hand into the desert floor to try and get an anchor to steady his world. The German finally had to place his head upon the desert floor and close his eyes to regain some sort of composure. “Is this a punishment?” he cried out. The cliffs threw the word punishment back, like they were laughing at his agony the way a crowd would at a caged circus animal. Punishment. Punishment. Punishment. Punishment. “Why?” he asked the echo, “What have I done?” Done. Done. Done. Done. They answered him back, this made him wonder. What had he done? “I was only following orders, it was Jones’ fault. It was Jones!” Jones. Jones. Jones. Jones. Once again the cliffs echoed that hated name.

Rage and anger boiled up within the colonel’s core. It was the American’s fault alright. At that moment in the desert Vogel swore an oath to himself: He was going to kill Jones, if it was the last thing that he ever did. The sick feeling in his stomach had started to rise and a sour taste rose in the back of his throat, but that was the least of his worries. Vogel threw his hand in front of his body and pulled himself forward a little more.

--

The desert’s temperature had risen and the heat swam over the dunes like a great, yellow river. The rock face glistened a fiery red color in the sunlight. A great crevasse broke the face in two and plunged into the desert floor, opening up a shallow ravine in the sands that stretched off for what seemed like an eternity in a northwestern direction. The lack of wind was stifling, for without the air movement the heat draped itself over the landscape like a deadly blanket. A small out cove opened up where the crevasse met the terrain and in the small opening Ernst Vogel had dragged his battered body to die silently. Three days had passed and the German Colonel had long since started hallucinating among other things that a doomed being does. He had managed to drag his legs toward his chest so he could curl up in what little shade the cave had to offer to him. His battered body was shaking despite the smothering warmth of the desert. Vogel’s eyes were closed and he had no intention of opening them ever again.

Suddenly the German felt something tap his shoulder. He did not move, partly because he was hesitant to react to something that might not be more anything more than a fragment of his imagination. There was another tap on his shoulder, this time a little harder. “’Ello?” a voice with a thick British accent came. Vogel’s eyes snapped open and instantly his pulse began to race as adrenaline and excitement rushed into his body. Could it really be that someone or something had found him. No, that was impossible; it would be like trying to find a single pin in a haystack. His chances were slim, but he was going to take it. He struggled to turn over to get a good look at what might be his saviors. His blue eyes squinted through the veil of delirium that had long since been placed over him.

He caught sight of a man who was fully dressed in the garb of a desert nomad, save for that his eyes slits revealed light skin instead of the dark, almost ebony, color of a local. “Ah!” the man exclaimed in surprise. “’akim! ‘e’s alive!” He called over his shoulder as a second man cam into Vogel’s sight. This one was a local obviously by the name of Hakim and because of the dark skin that was visible on his hands. The foreigner leaned in closer to the German’s face. “You’re goin’ to be alrigh’. Ok?” He tried to reassure the man that he had just discovered dehydrated, disorientated and badly burned. It was then and there that the British man was able to get a good look at what the man was wearing. This surprised him for he pulled his head back.

It was the uniform of a Nazi, and by the number of badges that were on it; this man that he had just found was of significant rank. “Bloody ‘ell, you’re a bloody Boche…” the British man said as he pulled away from the German sheltered by the cave cover. Vogel quickly lashed out and managed to wrap his right hand around the Brit’s forearm and pull him back down to his level. “Please…” he wheezed, “Don’t leave me…” “You speak English?” the other exclaimed in surprise, he did not struggle against the German’s grasp. The colonel nodded his head as an answer to the man’s question. The Brit used his free arm to pull the face cover away from his mouth to reveal a freckled, rat-like face with slightly bucked teeth. There was a long pause before he spoke, “Wha’s your name?” “Colonel…” Vogel had to stop for he started to cough; his throat was exceedingly dry for he had not had water for days. The Brit did not press him to continue, finally when the German regained his breath he continued, “Standartenfuhrer Ernst Vogel, 1st Waffen-SS…” he rasped, “and that is all I am required to tell you.”

“I won’t push you for more…” The rat-faced man broke loose of the colonel’s grasp and put his hands up in submission. He quickly threw a glance over his shoulder to the local who had been flitting in and out of Vogel’s vision through out his dealings with the Brit. “Are the ‘orse’s ready?” The answer was in a nomad’s tongue which the German could not understand. Turning back, the Brit cracked a smile to try and lighten the situation, “The name’s Wesley Shepherds, you were lucky enough to come across a caravan trail.” He said matter of factly. “Can ya move?” The colonel shook his head, “I can’t move my legs,” He gestured toward his useless legs with an equally useless, non –existent hand. ‘Christ, Wha’ ‘appened to your ‘and?” Wesley asked. The Vogel looked at what remained of his once perfectly good left arm. “It got caught under the tank,”

Once more silence fell between them. Shepherds drew in a breath through his teeth as he surveyed the damage that had been done. “Alrigh’, Give me your other ‘and.” The colonel offered his right hand to Brit who dragged him, painfully, from the opening of the cave out into the open sunlight. He then proceeded to help Vogel sit up. “This may ‘urt a bit,” Wesley warned, but before the German could protest or say another word the Brit had lifted him clear off the desert floor. Pain shot through his legs as the Brit picked him up. Vogel was surprised that this fellow who looked like he could not carry anything of substantial weight was transporting him with ease. Holding him by the back with one arm and having his legs draped over the other, Shepherds brought the colonel over to where the horses were. There were two of the magnificent black creatures waiting there; they pawed the ground in impatience, they were eager to depart from this place.

A dull fire pulsed down his back as Wesley helped him into the saddle; he folded over on the horse’s neck as though his spine had suddenly disappeared. The Brit quickly mounted behind him. He held Vogel to his chest so that he would not fall off when the horses started moving. Shepherds proved to be quite the horseman, navigating with only one hand on the reins. In a few minutes both horses dashed off along the ravine causing a jolt to the colonel’s legs with every hoof fall, but even with the constant pain, Vogel finally let out a sigh of relief. He was blessed with fate once again.