The Hydra Conspiracy

by Len Levinson

  One of the guards kicked Butler in the ass. “Get moving!”

  Butler wanted to turn around and waste him, but the odds were too heavily on the side of the guards. So he stepped down the long dark corridor that smelled of terrible putrefaction. In the shadows he saw hands clasping the iron bars, and the outlines of bodies. His eyes adjusted to the dark and he saw that there were no windows at all back here. The only light came from little cracks in the ceiling and walls, for the building had been hastily constructed by men who weren’t very good carpenters.

  “Stop right here!” one of the guards said.

  Butler stopped, and the guards unlocked the door to a ceil. They opened the door and heaved Butler inside. Butler flew forward, tripped over somebody’s leg, hit the far wall, and dropped to the floor. The guards laughed as they locked the door and walked away.

  Butler felt like vomiting from the stink in the place. He blinked his eyes and could make out two figures in the cell with him. His mind buzzed with the thought that the world was on the brink of nuclear holocaust, and only he could alert the Bancroft Research Institute.

  “Who are you?” asked one of the figures in a voice that sounded familiar to Butler.

  “My name’s Butler, and I’m an American citizen”

  “Butler!” the man shouted in astonishment. This time Butler recognized the voice as belonging to Putney Wilson, the former CIA chief of station in Halvados.

  “Hiya, Wilson,” Butler said cheerily. “Fancy meeting you here. Who’s our other cellmate?”

  The third figure cleared his throat. “I am Juan Malpelo, the former president of the Republic of Halvados.”

  “My, my, my,” Butler said. “Politics certainly makes strange cellmates.”

  Wilson grabbed Butler by his shoulders. “They can’t do this to us!”

  “It looks like they have,” Butler replied calmly. “Say, what stinks in here?”

  “There are no toilets,” Wilson said. “If you’ve got to go, you go in that corner there. Once a month we get to shovel it all out.”

  Malpelo growled. “It’s simply disgusting in here.”

  “May I point out,” Wilson said, “that this stockade was constructed during your second administration.”

  “It was?”

  “Yes it was.”

  “I didn’t know anything about it.”

  “Sure you didn’t.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Liar!”

  “Gringo!”

  “Fascist!”

  “Faggot!”

  “C’mon,” Butler said. “Let’s not argue. Things are bad enough here as it is without having to listen to you two assholes.”

  Wilson moved closer to Butler. “What’s going on out there?”

  “You wouldn’t believe it. Noble is about to plunge the world into nuclear war. He’s leaving for the States today to make the arrangements.”

  “Nuclear war?” Wilson asked. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Noble is going to get an atom bomb and drop it on the Sierra Chorino Mountains. If the Russians and Chinese protest, as they most certainly will, the United States will hurl its entire nuclear arsenal at them and bomb them back to the Stone Age.”

  “Oh come on, Butler. Noble is only an American businessman. He doesn’t have that much power.”

  “Think about it,” Butler replied. “The military and the CIA will be overjoyed at having the opportunity to attack Prussia and China, and the businessmen will pick up the pieces afterward and sell them at inflated prices.”

  Malpelo held his head in his hands. “My poor country is going to disappear,” he wailed.

  “Probably,” Butler agreed.

  “But what can we do?” Wilson asked.

  “We’re going to break out of here,” Butler said. He took out his fountain pen that disguised his laser gun. “With this.”

  “They let you keep it?”

  Malpelo squinted at the fountain pen. “Why shouldn’t they let him keep his pen? We are not a nation of barbarians, after all.”

  Butler waved his pen in the air. “But the pen is mightier than the sword,” he said with a smile.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  It was midnight at the stockade in the Santiago del Pisco Air Force Base. Guards with vicious dogs patrolled the perimeter of the stockade, and in the towers other guards smoked cigarettes and watched for suspicious movements. Searchlights crisscrossed the exercise yard and spilled over the buildings where the prisoners were kept under lock and key.

  In the solitary confinement jail, Butler approached the door of his cell with his laser gun. The word already had been passed along that a breakout would be attempted at midnight, and all the other prisoners were waiting by their cell doors ready to go.

  Butler aimed the pen at the lock on his cell door and pressed the button on the clip. A bright light shot out of the pen and melted the lock. When it reached the consistency of warm butter, Butler pushed and the cell door swung open.

  Silent as a cat, he moved to the next cell door and burned that open. He repeated this feat with every other door in the cell block, and soon the corridor was swarming with prisoners with hollow eyes and grim mouths. En masse they crept down the corridor to the door that led to the orderly room where the guns and guards were. Butler bent before the door and aimed his pen at the lock. Pressing the button, he proceeded to melt the lock silently. Butler snapped his fingers; at that signal, the prisoners crashed through the door and spilled into the orderly room. The four guards were drowsing and were quickly overcome by the prisoners, who stripped off their uniforms, handcuffed them and gagged them. The keys were taken from the desk the rifle rack was unlocked. Soon half the prisoners were armed, and three of them were putting on the uniforms of the guards.

  Butler also put on a uniform and took a rifle. He led the three other uniformed, armed prisoners to the next solitary confinement building, where they entered and the orderly room and pointed their guns at the guards. One of the armed prisoners took the keys and unlocked the cells, while another unlocked the gun rack, and the third stripped uniforms off the guards and handcuffed them to the furniture.

  This process was repeated in every other solitary confinement building and all the other barracks within the perimeter of the barbed-wire fence. The guards on the towers suspected nothing because armed guards frequently went from building to building, harassing prisoners.

  Finally all the cells and barracks were unlocked and a sizable number of prisoners were armed. Butler gathered together all the armed prisoners in one of the barracks and, kneeling on the floor so they couldn’t be observed through the windows, outlined his plan.

  “We will try to storm the administrative buildings,” he said. “That’s where the prison armory is, and we must get more weapons. If we succeed, the next move will be to break out of the stockade, steal whatever vehicles we can, and try to make it to the Sierra Chorino Mountains. We’ll have a good chance, because they can’t use their airplanes against us at night.”

  He organized the men into squads, appointed squad leaders, and positioned them near the door of the barracks. He checked his M16 rifle; that was the standard weapon of the Halvados Army.

  “Is everybody ready?” he asked.

  They nodded or mumbled their assent. They were willing to risk their lives to get out of the notorious stockade. And they were anxious to kill those who’d locked them up and mistreated therm.

  “Okay,” Butler said. “Let’s hit it.”

  He opened the door and led the armed prisoners out of the barracks. The guards in the towers noticed a huge number of armed men rushing across the exercise yard to the administration building. They swung their searchlights around, but a special squad of prisoners attacked the guard towers with guns blazing. The guards ducked but the bullets ripped through the thin wooden walls of their posts and slammed home into squirming screaming bodies.

  Butler ran at the gates that separated the administration building
s from the exercise yard. Lights were going on in the administration buildings. He fired his M16, ripping apart the lock on the gates. The prisoners pushed the gates open and poured into the administration area.

  They headed directly for the armory. Half-asleep guards came out of the buildings but were cut down by the marauding prisoners. Butler led the way, machine-gunning everything that moved. Ahead was the armory, and its front door opened. Soldiers came out, opening fire. The prisoner next to Butler screamed and fell, but Butler held steady and pulled the trigger of his M16. It bucked and stuttered in his arms and a soldier went flying backward, gripping his bleeding face.

  The prisoners charged up the steps of the armory, kicking aside the bodies of the soldiers. They stormed inside and those who didn’t have weapons took them from the racks. They also took hand grenades, rocket launchers and mortars. There were over five hundred prisoners in the camp and now they were armed to the teeth.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Butler yelled.

  They left the armory, laden with weapons and ammunition; they swarmed toward the nearest fence, threw hand grenades at it, knocked it down. Rampaging through the holes in the fence, they soon were free, heading east across the camp to the Sierra Chorino Mountains, firing at soldiers coming out of their barracks, stealing jeeps and civilian vehicles, commandeering trucks. They soon came to the motor pool of an artillery battalion, stormed it and took all the trucks they needed. The weird military convoy sped to the gates of the air base, throwing hand grenades and shooting everyone who tried to stop them.

  The officers and troops stationed on the base didn’t know whether they were being attacked by rebels or whether the Russians had landed. No one had ever escaped from the stockade like this and they couldn’t deal with it. There was chaos as commanders called each other, trying to figure out what was going on.

  In the absence of organized resistance the prisoners were able to move quickly toward the east gate of the base. The guards ran out of the way and the trucks crashed through, and now the prisoners were free, speeding like mad toward the Sierra Chorino Mountains.

  Except for one of the prisoners, who had managed to steal a Pontiac Firebird that had belonged to one of the base officers. This ex-prisoner was Butler, who was speeding west toward Halvados City because he had better things to do than to hide in the mountains.

  Chapter Thirty

  Butler drove at top speed to Halvados City, smoking a cigarette that he’d found in the glove compartment of the car. He’d managed to get rid of the army uniform he’d been wearing and now wore his own suit and looked like an ordinary rich civilian of Halvados. Puffing the cigarette nervously, he felt knots of anguish in his stomach, because he seriously believed that the world might come to an end in a few days unless he did something to stop the horrible events already set in motion by Phillip Noble and the Hydra Organization.

  When he reached downtown Halvados City he saw troop carriers roaming the streets and armed soldiers on the street corners. Machine guns were set up at the tops of tall buildings. It was what he would have expected from a martial law situation.

  He parked the Firebird a few blocks from the office building where the Bancroft Research Institute maintained its local headquarters, and walked the rest of the distance. No soldiers stopped him for I.D. check because he looked prosperous, and people who were well off didn’t become rebels.

  He entered the building and took the elevator up to the appropriate floor. Entering the Institute offices, he approached the receptionist and said simply, “My name’s Butler and I want to speak with whomever’s in charge.”

  “Follow me.”

  She led Butler down a corridor lined with offices filled with people hard at work. Butler figured that although it was the middle of the night, the Institute people were trying to stay in touch with the swiftly changing political situation in the country.

  The receptionist opened a door and ushered Butler into the moderate-sized office of a man with a white mustache.

  “This is Butler,” she said.

  He arose from behind his desk and held out his hand. “Good to meet you, Butler. I’m Ames, the director of this office.”

  Butler shook his hand but didn’t sit down. “A very serious situation has developed in this country. Phillip Noble is on his way to the States, or he may be there already. He’s going to arrange to have an atom bomb dropped on the Sierra Chorino Mountains. He and the Hydra Organization hope it provokes some sort of hostile response from the Russians and Chinese, so they’ll have an excuse to unleash America’s full nuclear arsenal against those two countries. In other words, they want to strike first and win quickly in a nuclear war.”

  Ames closed his eyes and shook his head. “I must confess that I’m not surprised. Those Hydra people are crazy and are capable of doing anything.”

  “We’ve got to try to stop them.”

  “We’d better notify headquarters immediately. Come with me.”

  Ames led Butler out of his office and down the corridor, to a room where two men sat in front of an elaborate radio transmitter/receiver. Ames told one of the operators to send a coded emergency message to headquarters stating Noble’s intention of dropping an atom bomb in Halvados. The operator quickly sent the message via his code machine. Within seconds confirmation was received from California that the message had been received and a reply would follow.

  Ames and Butler stood a short distance from the radio, waiting for the reply.

  “Are you able to monitor the airports of this country?” Butler asked.

  “We’d know if anybody was bringing in an atom bomb, and we’ll be on the lookout for it.”

  “They’ll probably bring it into one of the military bases.”

  “We have our people there also.”

  “By the way, I forgot to mention something else that’s rather important. There was a mass breakout from the stockade at the Santiago del Pisco Air Force Base about an hour ago.”

  Ames looked shocked. “There was?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “There’s very tight security there. I wonder how that happened.”

  Butler took out his laser pen and smiled.

  Ames squinted at it. “Oh, that’s one of those CIA laser guns, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I was thrown in the stockade when they realized I was the only one who could have tipped off the political opposition that there’d be mass arrests yesterday morning. I used the little laser to burn through a few locks.”

  Ames looked impressed. “You’re a very resourceful man, Mr. Butler.”

  “I hope the people in California are resourceful enough to stop this bomb.”

  “We’ll give Hydra a run for their money; don’t worry about that.”

  “We have to do more than give them a run for their money; we have to stop that bomb.”

  A message started coming through the radio in Morse code. One of the operators wrote it down, decoded it into the letters of the alphabet, and further decoded that into the actual message. The operator took off his headphones and looked at Butler. “The Institute wants you to leave for California right away, sir.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Ames made a few quick telephone calls, then he and Butler left the office building. Parked outside was a Cadillac Seville with a driver behind the wheel. Butler and Ames got in the back seat and were driven to Halvados International Airport, about ten miles out of town in the opposite direction from the Air Force base. They passed the group of buildings that made up the airport and found their way to an obscure hangar in a remote part of the complex. A white Lear jet was waiting in front of the hangar, its side door open and a ladder leading down to the ground.

  The Cadillac stopped beside the jet plane; Butler and Ames got out and walked quickly to the plane. Two men ran out of the hangar to greet them.

  “Good luck,” said Ames, shaking Butler’s hand.

  “Thanks for everything,” Butler said.

  Butler climbed the ladder a
nd boarded the plane. A man in uniform, with a blond crew cut and a ruddy face, was waiting at the door.

  “I’m Captain Smiley,” he said. “Welcome aboard.”

  “I’m Butler.”

  “We’ll be taking off momentarily. Have a seat and fasten your safety belt, please.”

  “Right.”

  There were six seats in the compartment; Butler sat in the closest one. Captain Smiley closed the door and, outside, the two attendants took the ladder away. The captain walked quickly to the cockpit of the plane and closed the door. Butler strapped himself into the seat, the plane’s only passenger.

  The plane rolled away from the hangar and onto the runway of the airport. It received permission to take off, then thundered down the runway. Its wheels left the runway and climbed into the night sky, leveled off and headed for California.

  Butler loosened the seat belt and closed his eyes. He hadn’t slept at all last night or tonight, and he instantly fell into a deep slumber.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  At ten o’clock in the morning the jet plane landed at a small airport outside of San Francisco. Captain Smiley awakened Butler and led him out of the plane to a waiting helicopter that looked like the gunships Butler had seen in Vietnam. But this one had no guns inside and no cots for the wounded. There were only upholstered seats; it was a helicopter for business executives.

  The pilot introduced herself as Lieutenant Kelley. She told Butler to have a seat; the flight to Big Sur would take only forty-five minutes.

  “Where does the Institute find all you pretty girls?” he asked.

  “The same place it finds all you good-looking guys,” she replied with a wink. “Now fasten your seat belt, because we’re in a hurry.” Lieutenant Kelley turned around and walked lightly to the cockpit of the helicopter. Butler sat down and strapped himself in. On the seat beside him was a flimsy little box. He opened it and found ham-and-egg sandwiches inside, plus a container of orange juice. As he took his first bite, the motor hummed louder and the helicopter lifted off the ground. Butler chewed, looking out the window, watching the airport growing smaller and then seeing all of San Francisco down below.