Then she got up and walked ahead to talk to the pilot.
In the meantime, Strauberg had sat up and was adjusting his pants. He had been listening in on their conversation. His eyes caught Krupp’s and the two men stared at each other with equal amounts of embarrassment and hate.
Krupp started sweating. “When was the last time you took a bath?” he asked Strauberg the question that was on the lips of everyone who met him.
Strauberg took the comment like a knife in the heart.
“You know nothing about commitment!” he screamed at Krupp. “Or dedication. Or loyalty. I have served my High Commander faithfully—twenty-four hours a day. I cannot let my own personal interests interfere with that!”
Krupp began looking for the rope with which to retie Strauberg.
“This is a fool’s errand you are on, Krupp,” Strauberg said acidly. “Do you actually think you won’t get caught? Do you actually think you can get away from The Party. Or the Skinheads?”
The last comment ran a bolt of panic through Krupp; the Skinheads were well known for their tracking abilities as well as their notorious interrogation techniques.
“You’re out of your league, Krupp,” Strauberg continued, with a snide laugh. “What kind of fool would actually consider getting rid of all that gold?”
Krupp sat down and tried to ignore the man.
“What did she promise you, Krupp?” Strauberg asked him. “A house in the mountains?”
“Shut up, you fucking weasel,” Krupp yelled at him with all the gumption he could muster. “She’s none of your concern.”
Strauberg put his hands between his legs and made an exaggerated motion as if he were adjusting himself.
“She is now…” he said.
Krupp had the pistol up and pointing at Strauberg’s temple before he even knew it.
“I’ll blow your fucking head off,” he hissed at the little man. “You’ll get yours just like Udet got his.”
This statement gave Strauberg pause. “You want me to actually believe you killed your superior commander, Krupp?” he asked sarcastically.
Krupp didn’t reply.
“You don’t have the guts,” Strauberg taunted him. “Not for that. Not for handling that gold. And certainly not for handling that woman.”
Krupp drew back the hammer on the pistol.
“And you don’t have the guts to shoot me either,” Strauberg said with another snide laugh.
Krupp took aim. His finger felt the cold steel of the trigger. One squeeze away from eliminating yet another problem.
“Stop!”
They both turned and saw Elizabeth standing at the door to the rear compartment, next to the open cargo hatchway. The wind flooding into the chopper was blowing her hair around, making her look like a wild woman. It was also flapping her still-unbuttoned shirt.
“I’ve just talked to the fueling station in Guatemala City,” she said to both of them. “We’re ditching this helicopter and chartering an airplane.”
Krupp was extremely upset that she wasn’t talking directly to him. It was as if Strauberg was now in on their plan.
“But what about our fuel in this aircraft?” he asked, trying to appear that he had some control over the situation. “How are we even going to reach Guatemala City?”
She walked over and took the pistol from him. “You know the answer, Colonel,” she said. “The pilot said we must lighten the load.”
Krupp was suddenly paralyzed with fear. “How… how do you intend to do that?” he asked, literally shaking in his boots. “We must throw out the gold?”
She walked back to the door entrance and motioned Strauberg to stand beside her. Then she turned the gun on Krupp.
“I still can’t believe how stupid you are, Colonel,” she said, putting her arm around Strauberg’s waist. “All that time while you had me locked away in those caves, I thought at least you had some brains. I thought you were as calculating as all real Nazis are.
“But you disappoint me. You’re actually very spineless. You have no appreciation for the finer things. You have no idea about the beauty of gold, and what it can do for you. And you are carrying so much sick and emotional baggage, I don’t know how you can sleep at night.”
She had the gun up and pointing at him. “And,” she said with a pitying shake of head. “We do have to lighten the load.”
She looked at Strauberg and smiled. Her free hand reached down between his legs, causing him to catch his breath.
“A little while ago, was it good for you, baby?” she cooed, her tongue flashing out and dramatically licking her lips.
“Oh, yes,” Strauberg replied, the excitement welling up inside him.
“Do you want it again?” she asked, continuing to fondle him.
“Oh, yes,” he exhaled. “Very much…”
She smiled and backed him up right against the cabin wall, all the while keeping one hand between his legs, the other holding the gun on Krupp.
“Do you think you can take it again? So soon?”
“Yes,” Strauberg replied, now almost breathless. “Yes!”
She turned and smiled at Krupp. “Now pay attention, Colonel.” she said. “Watch how I take care of a real man…”
With that, she grabbed Strauberg’s belt buckle and in one swift movement, flung him out the open hatchway.
Krupp was stunned as Strauberg seemed to hang in midair for an instant, a look of pure, unadulterated horror on his face.
Then the outside pressure sucked him out and down. Even over the racket of the helicopter’s blades, they could hear his terrified screams.
It seemed like a very long time before they finally died away…
Chapter 55
IT WAS NOONTIME, BUT Hunter couldn’t go to sleep.
All three of them on the Kingfisher had been up for 36 hours and now that there was some relative peace—floating in the middle of the Casa Casa canal, more than a hundred Tulum ceremonial warriors watching over them—he thought it would have been a good idea for them to get some shut-eye before moving on.
He was wrong—at least in his case. Brother David was curled up at the far end of the fuselage compartment, lying in a position of peaceful repose. The commodore on the other hand was swinging in the mid-section hammock, snoring loud enough to actually wake up some long-dead Mayans.
But for Hunter, stretched out in the crawl space just under the Kingfisher’s pilot seat, sleep would not come.
Where is she? a voice inside him kept asking.
The irony of the question was not lost on him. In the past four years, he had heard it literally thousands of times. But then, he was wondering about Dominique.
Now he was wondering about this woman, Elizabeth.
He pulled out her photo and studied it for at least the 200th time in the past few days. Did his heart really skip a beat every time he looked at it? Or was it just his imagination? Was he being seduced by a simple photo? By her beautiful features? Of course not, he answered the inner voice. After all, he was a rational person. Calculating was a better word for it. It was demanded by his profession as a fighter pilot. Calculating, rational people didn’t fall for women they’ve never met…
Did they?
Where is she?
Did his current situation—or better put, non-situation—with Dominique have anything to do with this? Had he really lost her for good? To a cult, of all things? Would she get his letter he left behind in Montreal? Would it make a difference?
Where is Elizabeth? Right now? At this moment?
He tapped his breast pocket and felt the flag he also kept there. But he just couldn’t bring himself to pull it out, unwrap it and look at Dominique’s photo. What the hell was going on with him? Pining over photos of women? Had it really come to that?
Was she safe? Was she even alive?
He shook away that disturbing thought—he knew she was still alive. Every sense in him told him so, and he had learned long ago that he, more than anyone, should tru
st his instinct. He tried to put his mind on the business of going to sleep. He still had work to do. He had to catch up with those Canal Nazis and soon. He had no idea just exactly what was going on up in Washington or down in Panama. Quite rightly, he felt like a man caught in the middle. And he knew that his overactive imagination had a tendency to take off on him—sometimes with all the finesse and control of a runaway locomotive.
Will you kiss her when you finally find her?
Yes, work—that was the key! Finding the woman Elizabeth was actually an intricate part of his job—her scatter-brained father was undoubtedly twisting some what-zit and powering up some doo-dad back in DC, getting that damn deactivator in shape. Then the real work would begin. And when the job was finished, he would go and find Dominique even if it meant he had to climb the Goddamn Canadian Rockies to do so. And he would hold her. And love her. And dream of her… Not some dame he’d never met.
And if he just kept on telling himself that, he might even start to believe it.
Three hours later, they were airborne.
It had taken a while to get understandable directions from the Tulum on how to get to the aptly-named hidden valley of Uxmaluna. Even the Tulum who could speak English had a hard time pinpointing exactly where the place was located. Those ceremonial warriors who lived near the valley and who had journeyed to Chichen Itza from there, traveled only jungle routes—snake-like passageways through the dense forests that were invisible from the air and therefore of no use to Hunter as navigation points.
But finally, after much discussion back and forth, Hunter thought he had a fairly good idea where to find the hidden valley of Uxmaluna.
They took off to the cheers of the 650 ceremonial warriors, who threw feathers at them this time. Their departure was duly recorded by the commodore on his new toy, the mini-video camera. Brother David had accepted a large basket of food from the Tulum for them to eat on the way. After throwing out anything he’d never seen before, the three of them feasted on apples, dried corn, and some almond-like nuts dipped in honey. The smell and stickiness of this last treat reminded Hunter of the repugnant Jean LaFeet. Where was that slob of a human being now? he wondered. Chowing down in a prison cafeteria somewhere?
Then his thoughts drifted back to old Captain Pegg—he hoped the old sea coot was recovering all right. From there he found himself thinking about Jones and Ben and J.T., Fitz and the others. What the hell were they all doing right now? Still preparing for war?
Everything was moving to the brink. He could feel it…
Brother David saw it first.
“Good Lord and Savior!” he cried out so loud Hunter heard him over the roar of the Kingfisher’s engine.
His exclamation caused Hunter and the commodore to immediately scan the terrain below. They saw it at once—it would have been hard to miss.
“Jesus, that is incredible…” Hunter said, anger welling up in his voice. “Those frigging destructive bastards.”
It was still about twenty miles away—yet it was not in the least bit difficult to see. This part of the Yucatan was like an endless wave of rolling jungle. But in the middle of this pristine state, there was a rash, ugly scar.
“My God, it looks like they took a scythe to it!” Brother David cried out as Hunter put the Kingfisher into a slight left-hand bank.
It was an apt description. Cut into the jungle was a 12-mile long, quarter-mile wide swath. Like a bad blemish on a pretty face, or a masterpiece painting slashed by some kook, the blasted-out jungle passage looked evil in itself.
Hunter suddenly felt a particularly nasty anger explode in his heart. What kind of mentality would do something like this with simple greed as their only motive. Scarring a piece of the earth that would not grow back for decades? Was there no conscience left anywhere down here?
And if these people wouldn’t hesitate to turn something this beautiful to something this ugly, what would they do to an innocent victim like Elizabeth?
Hunter banked again and saw a thin column of smoke rising from the end of the passageway. Even that was more than he needed to know.
“They’re still down there,” he said to the others. “Now I can smell them…”
Chapter 56
“AND HERE’S THE LATEST on the negotiations in Washington…”
With that opening, the CATS radioman named Masoni began reading the most recent report to come down the secure line between Washington and the Panamanian jungle:
“General David Jones, commander of the United American Army, said earlier today that a ‘Mutual Security Pact’ is close to being worked out between his forces and those of The Twisted Cross.
“Jones congratulated the negotiating team of The Twisted Cross for their understanding and diligence in attempting to bring about a peaceful solution to the crisis here in Panama.
“He went on to say an official announcement will be made in Washington soon—and that a formal signing ceremony will take place in Panama City the following day…”
Masoni hit his cue button and faded up a Bob Marley record. Once he had switched off his own microphone, he reached for a handful of ice water and splashed it on his face.
“That was a tough one,” he said to the Cobra pilots Tyler and Baxter. “Toughest one yet…”
“You did great,” Tyler said. “Hardly a pause or anything. Real smooth…”
As his partner Gregg O’Gregg cued up another record, Masoni took a break and lit up a cigarette.
“Is it me?” he asked. “Or are things really getting tense in this whole situation?”
Tyler lit a butt of his own and nodded. “It ain’t just you,” he said. “Everyone’s feeling like that, me included.”
“Ditto,” Baxter said.
Masoni took a deep drag from his cigarette and guzzled a half of cup of cold coffee. “We’ve been out here in the bush almost every day for a year and a half,” he said. “Hiding from the Nazis. Moving around under that Goddamn flying monster, sweating off three, four pounds a night.
“But believe me, that was all child’s play, compared to this…”
Tyler used a little bit of the ice on his own forehead. “Look at it this way,” he told Masoni. “It won’t go on much longer.”
Masoni blew a long stream of smoke from his nose and mouth.
“Oh yeah?” he said in his two-pound gravel voice. “Can I quote you on that?”
Back on the CATS island HQ, Major Dantini was interrupted from studying his well-worn map of the Panama Canal by the sound of an approaching helicopter.
He had been around his own choppers so long, he knew the noise wasn’t coming from one of his boys. Instead, he recognized the sound as being from one of the Cobras.
He walked out of his tent and down to the beach just as Cobra Two was hovering in over the water for a landing. The pilot, Captain Bobby Crockett, gave him a thumbs-up as the chopper’s blades began to stir up a whirlwind of seaspray and sand.
Dantini liked the Cobras—both the helicopters and the guys who flew them. Just as the souped-up Cobra gunships were much more than the average chopper-for-hire machine, the Cobra Brothers were much more than just run-of-the-mill chopper jocks. They were involved—committed to the cause of the United Americans. As such, they had no compunction about flying at night or in bad weather or both. And Dantini, being somewhat of an expert himself on the machines, knew that most choppers were fair weather birds.
The Cobras had flown every night since coming to the CATS island, this in addition to ferrying messages to the radio station PDC. Dantini knew it was better not to ask too many questions, but he did know that the gunships were making a regular rendezvous with a ship of some sort about a hundred miles east of Panama. One night Cobra One would go out, the next night Cobra Two would make the trip. Each time they would come back with some kind of booty to share—a few bottles of booze, a carton of cigarettes. But each time, the pilots looked more worried than the time before. And Dantini had been in the military long enough to know what
that meant, which was another reason he didn’t ask questions.
This time would be different, though…
The Cobra’s rotors finally stopped spinning, giving a rest to the mini-sandstorm. Crockett climbed out, soon followed by Hobbs, the weapons officer.
“Hey, boys,” Dantini said by way of greeting. “What’s shaking today?”
“A lot,” Crockett told him point blank.
“More radio messages for my guys to read?” Dantini said off-handedly, assuming that was what the Cobras were talking about.
“Yes, we have another message,” Crockett said. “But it’s small potatoes.”
Dantini had already turned to lead them as usual to the mess tent for a cup of coffee. But now he turned back, sensing in their tone that something big really was in the offing.
“Okay, guys,” Dantini said. “What’s up?”
“Pack a bag, Major,” Crockett said. “And pick a temporary commander for your boys. General Jones has requested your presence up north immediately.”
The High Commander had just finished his morning aerobic workout and was pondering a report on the previous day’s revenues and activities.
It read:
1.) Four ships were challenged on the Pacific side of the Canal, two let through for a combined 300 bags of gold. Two sunk after failing to meet requirements.
2.) Twenty bags of gold were panned from the Canal over the past week.
3.) Another delivery of Argentina’s monthly “security payment” arrived via the usual route, i.e. Twisted Cross naval forces boarded the unsuspected courier’s ship off Chile, taking the payment, sinking the ship, liquidating the crew.
On the red side of the ledger:
1.) The King of Brasilia is behind on his payments for the second straight month.
2.) No reaction from the Cubans about their increase in payment plan.
3.) Unexpected expenditures for the day exceeded the limit of 20 bags of gold, due to increase in food costs for prisoners/gold panners.
The High Commander scribbled three notes at the bottom of the report: “Plan air strike on Brasilia’s fuel depots,” “Do same for Cuban electric plants,” “Trim food costs for prisoners and panners by most expedient means.”
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