The Saboteurs

by Clive Cussler

  Since he didn’t see anything around that looked like it had been delivered from the giant Zeppelin, he assumed they were smuggling matériel into the Canal Zone. Learning what, exactly, was one of the reasons he was here.

  He waited, without moving, as the sun went down and the moon rose. The men had roused themselves at dusk, finished eating their bush pig, and talked and joked until a sound emerged amid the background hum of insects. It was the beat of four large propellers thrashing the air as the massive dirigible wended its way up the valley, and when one of the pirates shined a flashlight into the night sky, it came to hover over the camp, and two thick ropes fell from the craft’s conical nose.

  Bell felt a small sense of triumph at deducing that Otto Dreissen had used an airship to abduct his wife. It had been a wild theory but correct nevertheless.

  Once the mooring lines were tied down, Court Talbot was lowered to the ground. Bell heard him say a few words to his men, but he was speaking in Spanish, leaving the detective frustrated and no closer to the solution to this mystery. The only thing he recognized was “Viboras Rojas.” Then from the airship’s black belly came the steel box. It was perfectly square, and featureless in the uncertain light, roughly six feet to a side. Bell didn’t know its function and finally settled on it being a cargo container. He followed that mental thread, which made him consider that the Viboras were real after all, and the Germans were supplying them with weapons smuggled in aboard the airship.

  He crept from his hiding spot. He had time to speculate later. With Talbot and his crew occupied, Bell slipped into their camp to search for clues, unconcerned about any sounds he made because the the airship’s props filled the sky with noise.

  Bell was well aware that someone approached the camp as he was halfway through what felt like a fruitless search, but he didn’t have time to hide. He pulled his boot knife moments before the man rushed into the camp.

  Raul charged straight at him, machete held high for a chopping sweep that could sever Bell’s head from his neck as cleanly as a farmer chopping the head off a chicken. Bell reversed his grip on the knife and threw it when Morales was four long paces away. The blade sank hilt-deep under his right arm where the pectoral muscles met the rib cage. The arm dropped instantly, but momentum carried Raul another two steps before he fully realized something was very wrong.

  His arm wouldn’t move, so he quickly grabbed the machete with his left before it dropped to the ground. He felt no pain.

  Raul saw his opponent was no longer armed and leapt for him, sweeping with the razor-sharp machete so that Bell had to leap back to keep his guts from being spilled. Raul kept up the attack, swinging the blade in cutting arcs that forced Bell to keep retreating. Raul was as good with his left hand as he was with his right. He adjusted his grip, in order to use the blade more like a fencing foil than a saber, and stabbed at Bell, extending just enough to slip the machete between Bell’s ribs and into the branching arteries and veins around his heart.

  Any good knife fighter knows the margin of victory is the width of a blade.

  Bell spun as Raul committed himself to the change of tactics, like a matador getting as close as he can to the horns of the bull. He physically brushed against Morales as he went around, reaching blindly over his shoulder to pull his knife from the man’s chest. Twirling like a flamenco dancer, he spun and plunged the dagger into Morales’s left kidney. Even as Raul opened his mouth to scream, Bell clamped a hand over it. Blood gushed from the chest wound because the knife had severed the major vessel that fed the arm. He held the man as his life drained from him and slowly let him slump to the ground, the sightless eyes glinting like two poker chips in the moonlight. Bell wiped his blade clean, looking over and seeing a second steel box about to touch down on the workboat’s aft cargo area. None of the men saw the silent fight.

  Morales had a key looped around his neck. Bell pulled it free and used it to open the little safe sitting close to the most comfortable-looking chair in the clearing, obviously Talbot’s. Inside was a chamois sack filled with coins heavy enough to be gold, a .38 caliber short-barreled revolver, and some papers. He took it all.

  Keeping an eye on the work going on on the dock, Bell dragged Raul Morales’s corpse a short distance into the bush in case anyone else returned to the clearing. His blood was already being absorbed by the jungle’s black soil.

  Bell went back to his original hiding spot. The second box was fully down now and its braided cable about to be detached. Court Talbot was at the stern, making sure the box was properly centered so its weight didn’t cause his boat to list. He motioned to one of his crewmen and the man climbed up the stairs to the bridge.

  Satisfied with the placement, Talbot nodded to the man perched atop the container to unhook the crate from the airship. When the hook swung free, Talbot sent two men to untie the mooring lines from around the thickest trees they could find and finally signaled the hovering dirigible that it was free. Its engine beat changed seconds later, and the airship began to glide away.

  As much as Bell wanted to rush back to the seaplane to chase it down, he had to wait to make sure he’d stopped Talbot and hope he could find the dirigible during its flight back to its floating base. He had already deduced its likely whereabouts and thought he could intercept her before it got there.

  If he was wrong, then he’d gambled with Marion’s life and lost.

  35

  The jungle’s nighttime cacophony resumed as the airship flew away, down the valley, and the roar of its engines and whir of its propellers slowly receded. The men busied themselves around the boat for a few more minutes, including topping off the tanks from the spare cans. Bell was relieved he’d thought ahead, because they’d poured in the water as though it were gasoline. Five minutes after the airship had gone, Talbot realized Raul had not returned, and he bellowed his name several times. When he still didn’t return to the boat, Talbot gave an order to a man in the pilothouse and jumped down to the dock, taking long-legged strides toward the camp.

  Unseen in the pilothouse, the crewman with the most mechanical experience took a firm grip on the crank next to the helm, which was connected to the engine below through a set of gears. He gave it a solid shove.

  The fumes had built to a volatile level inside the enclosed engine room, meaning Bell’s wick wasn’t necessary after all. The very air itself was explosive, and the moment the ignition kicked on it all turned to flame. The hatch blew off, and a column of fire rose through it like the Gates of Hell had opened. The pressure from the explosion blew the door off its hinges and shattered the glass in a couple portholes, tongues of fire shooting from them like cannons.

  That’s when the five-gallon gasoline bomb Bell had left behind detonated. The bridge rose six feet off the deck and came apart in a spray of wood and steel that peppered the water and scythed through the jungle. The fireball rolled fifty feet up into the canopy of trees, lighting up the scene in stark relief.

  The men on the boat were so close to the blast, their insides were turned into so much jelly, and they died instantly. Bell saw Court Talbot launched into the air when he was struck in the back by the concussive wave. There was a chance he was alive, but a very slim one.

  The workboat started to sink immediately, even as its deck was awash in flame. The dock too started to burn, and very quickly the few remaining gas cans went up in a successive string of bright explosions. Bell was close enough that he felt the heat of the conflagration on his face.

  Just as the workboat and its cargo slid beneath the water, and all the fires were extinguished, the night shattered again as two tons of experimental high explosives inside the naval mine went off in a sympathetic detonation.

  Bell was fifty feet away when it happened and still found himself flying through the air for a moment before skidding back to earth, his ears ringing from the acoustical onslaught. He looked back to see everything had been consumed by the blast, the
wreckage of the workboat, the dock, even the camp, ceased to exist. Trees had been blown flat in a wide circle of boles, and, farther out, everything else had been stripped of its foliage, leaving naked stems jutting up in a field of smoldering debris.

  Bell lurched to his feet, shaking his head to clear it. He staggered back toward the site of the explosion but quickly saw there was nothing to be gained. Around him was nothing but utter devastation. He was about to head off again when he spotted Talbot’s hat lying on the ground next to a burning shrub. It felt heavy when he picked it up. When he turned it over, he saw why and dropped it immediately. It still contained the top of Courtney Talbot’s skull.

  With no need for stealth, Bell jogged back to the canoe and launched it onto the lake as soon as he’d crammed his legs in around the two cans of gasoline. The oar he’d chosen had a blade at both ends, like a kayak paddle, so he could stroke with an efficient rhythm that had him gliding along the lake’s calm surface at a good pace. Occasionally, he saw the eyes of some creature on the shore, reflected in the moonlight, and heard others splashing in the water, but nothing paid him any heed.

  No matter how fast he dug his oar in the water, he felt the Essenwerks airship was getting farther and farther away. Even though the airship had left the camp by flying northwest, Bell was certain that their support ship lay to the east, past the busy Port of Colón. With so many ships coming into Panama from the Caribbean and America, the waters west of Colón saw a tremendous amount of seaborne traffic, while, to the east, there was virtually no shipping at all. He was certain their base was there. He figured the dirigible would make a beeline to open waters, from its inland rendezvous, and then curve around Colón at roughly twenty miles from shore.

  Bell reached the hidden seaplane much faster than his outbound journey, and would have passed it, had he not jammed some sticks in the water as markers before locating Talbot’s jungle camp. He eased under the overhanging branches that had shielded the plane and bumped gently against the central float. He retrieved the two cans and, hunched over, crawled out on his knees and set them on the float. He also dragged the lightweight canoe up and lashed it back where it belonged.

  He hadn’t remembered to bring a funnel, so he spilled almost as much gas as he managed to pour into the aircraft’s tank. The smell made his head spin, until the wind blew the fumes away. He had secured the plane to a tree on shore with a length of cord he’d tied inside the cockpit as a brace. He didn’t want to repeat Jack Scully’s ignoble scramble away from the prop once it started to spin.

  Using the oar, Bell paddled the seaplane from its hiding spot and turned it so that the nose was facing the lake and its tether was fully stretched. He primed the engine with fuel and set the ignition before climbing out onto the pontoon so he could spin the propeller. It was difficult to get much leverage standing right in front of the wooden prop, and it took five attempts to fire the motor.

  It died by the time he had jumped in the water and swam under the wing to climb up into the cockpit. So he altered the throttle’s setting to run at a higher rpm and climbed back around the engine to stand on the pontoon once again. This time, it took only three hard pulls to crank the motor to life. It ran louder and faster, thanks to his adjustment, and he had enough time to return to the cockpit and sit, in his sodden clothes, while the engine warmed.

  After a few minutes idle, Bell untied the tether and began to taxi the seaplane away from shore. Bell used the foot bar to swing the nose until it was pointed down the valley and toward the open lake. He eased the throttle to its stop and felt the familiar sense of exhilaration as the aircraft gathered speed.

  Because he was ready for it, Bell didn’t think his second water takeoff was as rough as the first. The plane shook as it neared rotation speed, yet not so much that he considered ditching the attempt. The vibrations ceased the moment the pontoon rose out of the water and he was airborne once again. As soon as he had enough altitude, he turned northeast and continued to climb. There were so many variables to factor in his attempt to find the airship, but he really knew it would come down to luck. And altitude. The higher he went, the farther he could see.

  He was at five thousand feet when he crossed over the lights of Colón. He could easily see the massive locks, lit for work to continue around the clock. President Roosevelt was due in a couple of days and they needed the locks functioning for his inaugural trip up from the Atlantic Ocean to Lake Gatun.

  Bell was frozen to the core. It had been eighty degrees when he’d taken off and at least a quarter of that temperature reading had been lost by climbing so high. And his wet clothes leached heat from his body, so that he was shivering in the cockpit.

  He flew on. He had no choice. Marion was in danger, and there was no force on earth that could stop him.

  He guided the plane out to sea and kept scanning the water below for moonlight reflecting on the dirigible’s skin. Bell knew enough about airships to know her topside hadn’t been doped black. It had to be a light color, to absorb less heat from the sun. While she was impossible to see from the ground at night, from above she should shine like a beacon. The moon was high and almost full, so the sea shimmered like mercury. Darker spots on its surface were caused by clouds blocking the light. Away from the moon’s aura, the night sky was full of stars.

  If the mission weren’t so dire, Bell would have found the view magnificent. All his attention was focused on finding the airship, however, not on the natural beauty of the scene below. He scanned all around, straining his eyes to catch the unnatural deviation in light from a large man-made object.

  Bell wasn’t certain about the seaplane’s range. He’d needed two hours to cross the isthmus and guessed the tank still had some gas in reserve. He’d been aloft for an hour already and assumed it would take him at least forty minutes to get back to Colón. His window of flight was closing rapidly, and as the minutes ticked away, his anxiety rose. He didn’t care about himself. It was Marion’s fate that gnawed at his conscience.

  He passed his self-imposed deadline without making a sighting. He knew he’d guessed correctly. The airship had to meet its support ship in these waters. He kept on, his neck and eyes in constant motion as he scanned either side of the aircraft and ahead through the whirling propeller blade for an otherworldly shimmer to mark the dirigible’s location.

  His faith withered as more time slipped through his grasp. He slid close to despair when he saw he’d passed his deadline by ten minutes. Even if he found the airship now and followed it back to its base and he rescued Marion, he likely didn’t have enough fuel to make it to shore, let alone all the way back to Colón. He realized the decision had been made without consciously thinking about it. He never planned to turn back at all. He was going to keep searching until the last drop of gasoline had sprayed into the engine, and, even then, he’d keep looking until he had to dead-stick the plane in an ocean landing.

  A minute later, he spotted his quarry. The airship was much lower than his plane, maybe only at a thousand feet, so it appeared small from his perspective, but there was no hiding its torpedo-like body knifing through the air. Bell dumped altitude and speed and was soon at a thousand feet and slightly behind the lumbering Zeppelin. The air was so much warmer that he felt the circulation returning to his hands, giving them back their normal dexterity, and he no longer needed to clench his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering.

  He looked far ahead and spotted the beam of a searchlight that hadn’t been there moments earlier. It was a signal from the ship to guide the dirigible home. Bell realized that when the Zeppelin came in for its final approach, all eyes would be on it, and the noise of its engines and props would drown out any sounds he made.

  He banked left and added some more power. He flew a wide arc around the ship, keeping far enough from her so they wouldn’t hear the buzz of his Hall-Scott motor. He went into a holding pattern as he watched the airship slowly approach its marine tender. I
t seemed to take forever, but, really, it was only a few minutes.

  He thought about how he would have to improvise his escape, then admonished himself for worrying about something so far into the future. He needed all his wits to land the plane on the open ocean under the noses of the German crew. He hadn’t allowed himself time to contemplate the vast quantities of explosives potentially smuggled into the Canal Zone either. That was a problem for . . .

  Bell snapped himself back to the present. The airship looked close to the tender now. He had to land. He eased back on the throttle and let the nose fall away. He’d waited too long, so he gave it more power for a few seconds. Soon enough, the ocean reared up under the pontoon, making waves under the aircraft, at what seemed a breakneck speed. From a few thousand feet up, it had looked like a sheet of mercury. Now it resembled the hide of a living, breathing creature whose skin rippled and heaved in unreadable patterns.

  The Zeppelin was almost to the metal mooring mast. Bell could see the bright glow of lights aimed up from the white-hulled ship.

  He cut more power as he came in to land aligned with the vessel’s bow. Anyone keeping watch would require the keenest of eyes and the best of luck in the world to spot him, but the odds of detection weren’t zero. He edged off more of the throttle until the engine felt like it was almost idling. The speed dropped quickly because of the drag of the heavy pontoon, and the nose of the aircraft kept wanting to drop. Water still flashed under the wing with the apparent speed of a white-water cataract.

  Bell pulled back on the stick ever so gently. The nose came up, and then the wings suddenly lost lift, and the plane stalled just a few inches behind the long ocean swell it pushed in front of it. She had kissed the water as gently as any landing Bell had performed and slowed in the dramatic fashion of all seaplanes. He’d done it. He’d snuck in right under their noses. The ship was just a quarter mile away, and he was down safely.