GOLDEN REICH

by Mark Donahue

  The group’s enthusiasm was still high despite a fruitless morning of searching. But looking at the area they had spent hours combing, compared to the utter vastness of the surrounding desert, made each one realize that even if tons of gold were buried in the desert they could see, it could take several lifetimes to find it. Nonetheless, they kept to their schedule, and after another four hours of digging up more junk in the afternoon, they had completed scouring the area where Ben had found his piece.

  The next day they went to the area where Tom and Jon had found their bar of gold. Except for uncovering a fender from a 1948 Plymouth and sixteen beer cans, they found nothing of value.

  By Sunday evening, and after two full days of metal detecting, the group was tired but content. While no gold was found, and most likely would not be, the idea of being alone in the desert with no prison bars, no schedules, no phones, and no immediate responsibilities created a mellow atmosphere that both Tom and Jon had never experienced. Ben and Sam knew the feeling well from their trips to archeological digs, and both hoped that Jon and Tom understood that sometimes the search was the best part of such an expedition.

  Surprising Tom and Jon with large T-bone steaks that Ben had kept in dry ice, the five gold miners ate steak, whole potatoes, and beans cooked on an open fire. For dessert they had instant chocolate pudding and Oreo cookies. Tom and Jon could not remember a meal that tasted better.

  That night around the campfire the group exchanged stories of their collective experiences, favorite books, travels, likes, dislikes, and hopes for the future. Sam was particularly interested in what it was like being in prison. Tom and Jon told her.

  After that ice-breaking conversation, Tom felt he could ask Sam a delicate question. “So Sam, I see no wedding ring, and you’re what, thirty? Any prospects on the horizon, or are you flying solo indefinitely?”

  “Actually, I’m thirty-three, and if you’re asking if I’m a lesbian, the answer is no, although I’ve thought about it after my latest experience with a man. I’m “solo,” as you call it, because I don’t like relationships that are confining, oppressive, one-sided, or unnecessary. Does that answer your question?”

  “Wow, your bitterness is so sad,” Tom said sympathetically.

  “Bitterness? Just because I don’t like relationships that…”

  “You’re right, she does sound really bitter, and obviously pre-lesbian,” Jon offered.

  “Failure with men? Pre-lesbian?” Sam asked, incredulous.

  “Yeah,” Tom said. “It’s in all the books. A woman that’s been dumped by ten or fifteen guys really changes. Usually end up dating women who wear comfortable shoes. Really sad.”

  “That’s the most infantile, condescending, ridiculous…”

  “No need to be defensive, Sam.” Jon said gently. We still like you.”

  “Defensive?! Are you two completely out of your…”

  It was then that Sam saw the smiles on Tom’s and Jon’s faces and realized she was being man-pimped.

  “Okay…now I owe you guys one.” Sam said with a smile.

  The rest of that second evening around the campfire, four people and one sleepy dog became friends.

  Up before dawn on Monday, the group kept to its schedule and headed for the Vega mine using an undulating creek bed that meandered haphazardly across the desert floor.

  Pointing out rock formations and erosion markings, Ben explained how the creek, or “wash” as he called it, could contain enormous quantities of rainwater and how the narrowness of the bed would allow the rushing water to reach great speeds and with it create tremendous power. Therefore, even a metal as heavy as gold could be moved miles downstream pushed by tons of water, rock, and mud. “The gold you guys found and what I found could’ve come from hundreds of miles north of here and might’ve ended up somewhere in Mexico if we hadn’t found it.”

  Ignoring such a depressing prospect, Sam, Jon, and Tom kept their Hondas pointed toward the Vega, the mine that had kept Tom and Jon locked out a week earlier.

  As they moved northward, the terrain became steeper. Having to negotiate the ever-changing landscape, the group spent the entire morning making their way in crisscross fashion over rocks and sand until they saw a huge rock formation looming directly in front of them. Jon and Tom knew the fortress-looking structure was the Jasper. They saw its 300-foot face towering above them and the break in the rock roughly a third of the way up that the men recognized as the area that contained the cavern opening.

  When the group moved to the west of the rock face, they noticed that the creek bed appeared to abut the vertical face of the Jasper for at least a mile. It then followed its contour until it split into two beds, one heading east behind the Jasper and one north toward the Vega.

  Only two miles north of the Jasper as the crow flies, it took the group and their Hondas nearly half an hour of bone-rattling riding to finally see the outline of the Vega. Far smaller than the Jasper at least on the surface, the Vega looked like nothing more than a hill in the desert, dwarfed by other rock formations and mountains that were now clearly visible in the distance.

  Deciding they had worked enough for one day the team set up camp before sunset, ate an early dinner, and turned in for the night soon after sunset. As the desert rapidly cooled and the stars exploded overhead, Jon wondered how many men would have this kind of experience in their lives. Not having time to answer, he fell into a deep sleep. not really caring.

  In the half-light and half-consciousness that came with sunrise, Tom could hear Jon whisper his name. “Tom, don’t move.”

  Certain he was dreaming, Tom didn’t move; in fact, he tried to go back to sleep although he felt a very real need to pee.

  “Tom, there’s a tarantula on your left shoulder about an inch from your ear; don’t move.” Jon whispered, apparently believing the large arachnid had acute hearing and understood English.

  Thinking this was another one of Jon’s early-morning performances Tom growled, “Why don’t you save this crap for your girlfriends that...” Stopping in mid-sentence, Tom felt the gigantic spider move from his shoulder onto his left cheek and hoped this was some sort of practical joke being played by Jon and Ben. As he slowly opened his left eye, he could see the hairy legs of the beast, one of which was on his left nostril.

  Barely opening his mouth, Tom whispered, “Do something.”

  “Okay.” Jon whispered again, apparently not wanting to tip off the desert monster as to his plans, “I’ll get the shotgun.”

  Seeing through the legs of the killer spider that sat comfortably on his left cheek with no immediate plans to move, Tom could see his protective but clearly visibly-shaken partner carrying a twelve-gauge shot gun back toward his sleeping bag.

  Despite what could be imminent death by massive amounts of spider poison, Tom quickly deduced that a spider bite, even by one the size of a BMW, which had moved to his forehead, would probably cause considerably less damage than a shotgun blast from two feet away. But before he had to make the final decision between receiving a fatal spider bite or having his head removed by a Remington, Sam appeared from behind Jon and calmly reached down and deftly plucked the spider off Tom’s face then cradled the velvety creature in her palm.

  “Ah, the poor baby, he’s just a little cold that’s all. He was probably in your sleeping bag most of the night, and you moved around too much so he decided to leave.”

  Letting out his breath, Tom stared ashen-faced at Sam and stammered, “Are you crazy, those things are poisonous.”

  “Nonsense,” Sam said. “No more than a little bee sting if they get riled up, but they don’t normally bite. Here, want to pet him?”

  Recoiling in his sleeping bag, Tom looked like large eight-year-old watching a scary movie.

  “By the way, I wouldn’t move around too much in that bag, his mate’s probably still in there,” Sam casually mentioned. />
  Seeing Tom somehow leap vertically out of his sleeping bag from a sitting position and land on his feet while emitting a high-pitched sound of fear and loathing was humorous to Jon, who said while laughing, “I thought you were going to die of a heart attack before that damn thing bit you.”

  Standing up in his underwear and t-shirt, Tom looked at Jon and yelled, “And why in the hell would you grab a fucking twelve-gauge shotgun to get a spider off my face?”

  “Because I didn’t have a fucking howitzer, that’s why. Besides, I figured if that big bastard did bite you, your face would swell up like some Black Lagoon Monster and you would’ve probably become permanently disfigured; and that’s assuming you didn’t suffer some painful noisy death over the next twenty-four hours that would’ve kept the rest of us awake all night hearing you go through your death throes. In other words, I was about to perform a fucking mercy killing to save you, and us, a lot of aggravation.”

  For several seconds, the three men, Sam, and a now-interested Pax, stared at one another in silence, with Jon’s ad-lib performance still echoing in the hills. Then all four began laughing, their noisy guffaws made the area around the Vega mine sound like a sitcom laugh track.

  Sidling up next to Sam, Ben whispered, “That wasn’t nice.”

  “He moves pretty well for big man, doesn’t he?”

  It was going to be a good day.

  Chapter 39

  Jasper Mine—1943

  With Rolle tied up and gagged in the darkened office, Lester and the three remaining guards decided to work together before the first truck arrived. Their biggest problem was that they didn’t know what the incoming drivers knew about Operation Rebirth. Nor if the drivers were part of Becker’s cabal to steal the gold, or if they would side with Rolle’s plan to return it to Germany.

  Given the unknowns of the situation, Lester and his new partners decided their safest option would be to act as if nothing was wrong. If all went well, each truck would arrive, take thirty minutes to unload and stow the gold in a shaft in the back of the mine. The two drivers would then leave in the truck they had arrived in, and according to the plan, go to a predetermined location to await further orders, which would never come. Simple.

  Lester assigned Willy, a not very bright but imposing six foot six, 270-pound former Olympic weightlifter, to guard the road that led to the cavern with orders to give the alert when he saw a truck approach.

  Willy, Eric, and Victor were the three surviving guards of the twenty who had been recruited by Becker months before. The group had made their way from Germany to Italy, into North Africa, then across the Atlantic by air to Venezuela. From there they moved by rail through Central America, Mexico, and finally by foot across an unprotected border into Arizona on what had proved to be a circuitous and deadly mission for the rest of their comrades.

  The group was not aware of the Operation Rebirth scheme. They also knew nothing of the twenty-four guards who had escorted the gold from Berlin to Brest by train, across the ocean, and who were now only hours away from delivering the gold by truck to the Jasper. All they had been told by Becker was they were “serving the Führer.” For most of these twenty men, that was all they needed to know.

  Willy was told to direct the trucks down the dirt road that led to the cavern. Victor was assigned to join Lester in the cavern, and Eric would greet each truck and oversee the unloading process. If asked where Becker and the rest of the guards were, Eric would tell the drivers that they were scattered throughout the mine and at that very moment, several rifles were pointed at them.

  At five minutes before six, it dawned on Lester that after everything that had taken place over the previous forty-eight hours—all the death, all the pain—that there was a chance there was no gold at all. It could have been a fable like the other stories of lost gold in the desert. And even if it was real, maybe the drivers, if they knew what they carried, might have decided to take it for themselves and live as millionaires in America.

  At three minutes after six, the first truck lumbered up the dirt road from Route 60. Following the signal from Willy, the thirty-foot white Ford dual-axle panel truck made the sharp left turn into the Jasper. As he watched the truck make the quarter-mile trip from the gate to the mine’s entrance, Lester marveled at German efficiency, audacity, and balls in carrying out such a monumental plan. This seemed to him to be more difficult than winning the damn war. Yet here came the first of twelve trucks that contained a meaningful chunk of a nation’s wealth.

  Victor motioned for the driver to pull the truck into the cavern. In doing so, the driver had to maneuver around the charred remains of the trucks and cars that Lester had blown up the night before. Staring at the wreckage, the young man behind the wheel gaped like a driver looking at a three-car crash on Route 66. But he eventually followed Victor’s directions to the rear of the cavern where Eric directed him to back the Ford into a position near the shaft Lester had selected to store the gold.

  Deep inside the vastness of the Jasper, Lester could barely see the activity in the back of the cavern. He could make out shadows of men walking around the truck and in its headlights but couldn’t make out Eric or the drivers. As he stared through the half-light, he could hear muffled voices engaged in conversation. Within a few minutes the tone of the voices increased until shouts could be heard. Something had gone wrong.

  Keeping close to the cavern walls, Lester moved along the west wall and stayed in the semidarkness. As he edged closer to the Ford, he could see Victor, who had also heard the voices and had come to Eric’s aid. They had their rifles drawn, facing the two drivers who had also pulled their weapons and were pointing them at Eric and Victor.

  As they shouted to each other in German, Lester couldn’t understand everything being said, but he did pick up a few words like “Becker” and “Rolle” that indicated not all was well with Lester’s plan. But more disturbing was the sound of another voice that Lester could tell was not German, but not American either.

  The voice was that of Jean Dubois, the Frenchman who had picked up Rolle in the Lincoln in Phoenix days earlier. He had come in the first truck with the two drivers. Dubois had been forgotten by the three young guards, and Lester didn’t know him at all. Yet Dubois was well aware of both Rolle’s and Becker’s involvement in Operation Rebirth and was demanding to know where those men were before the gold was unloaded and turned over to German guards he didn’t recognize.

  Dubois had been sent by Becker to meet each truck outside Phoenix at a truck stop seven miles to the east and direct it to the Jasper. He would then return with each empty truck, ride back with the next, and continue that procedure until each truck was emptied.

  Jean Claude Dubois was part of the French Vichy Government that helped the Nazis overtake and control his native land. Despised by his French countrymen and never trusted by the Germans, men like Dubois were betting that Germany would win the war. For if the Germans lost the war and lost control of France, the leaders of the Vichy government would be hunted down and killed by the French as the traitors they were.

  Dubois liked to think of himself as a realist rather than a traitor, but he also knew he took great risks in dealing with the Germans. That is why when he was approached by Becker to become involved in Operation Rebirth, he saw it as a way to leave Europe and become very wealthy. Dubois was basically nonpolitical; he didn’t really give a damn who won the war as long as he could make some money out of it and stay alive.

  As Lester neared the standoff, he was able to get within twenty feet of the truck since everyone was pointing rifles at each other, unclear what to do next and not paying attention to much else. Lester had clear shots at the two drivers. He could have also easily picked off Dubois, who was unarmed as he continued to demand to see Becker and Rolle.

  From the shadows Lester walked up behind the two drivers and placed his .45 behind the right ear of the taller one. Without be
ing told to do so, the driver dropped his weapon. The clatter of the rifle hitting the floor finally made the Frenchman stop shouting as he turned and saw Lester standing behind the driver. The second driver was unsure where to aim his weapon. He kept moving it from Eric to Lester and back again. Not liking the rapidly changing odds, he too dropped his weapon.

  Shock on his face, the little Frenchman began stammering in a mix of German, French, and English that Lester found both unintelligible and irritating.

  “I can’t understand a word yer sayin’ there, partner, maybe you should talk some German so my friends here can interpret.”

  “Ah,” Dubois said in English, as he tried to regain his composure. “An American.”

  “Born and raised.”

  “Is it safe to assume that you are not involved in our little project?” Dubois asked.

  “Well, not sure it’s safe to say I ain’t involved, given the present circumstances, but it’s safe to say I ain’t German, don’t give a damn about Hitler. And after I leave here, I won’t give a tinker’s dam what you all decide to do with the rest of the gold.”

  Dubois looked at Lester, and then to Eric, who was now smiling behind his retrieved rifle, and came to a rapid realization that he was likely going to be dead in a few moments and the gold he was only inches from was gone forever. Obviously, his only option was to try and switch alliances again. Quickly.

  “Thank God, you have come here and discovered this plot. I never wanted to work with the Germans. I was forced to do it and was just looking for an opportunity to escape.”