Twisted Cross

by Maloney, Mack;

  By the time the fourth Harrier got his plugs in, Brother David’s jumpjet was up and gone, and Hunter’s was taking off. The six VTOL aircraft didn’t fly very far—they came back down again in an old soccer field about 20 miles from the town. There, they proceeded to play a game of musical cockpits.

  First of all, Hunter prepared to take over the Harrier that had picked him up. His pilot took the rear seat in one of the other two-seaters.

  At this point, Hunter bid farewell to Brother David. It was hasty—it had to be. Time was of the essence.

  “Bless you, Brother Hunter,” the monk had said, firmly grasping Hunter’s hand. “I still feel I owe you for saving our mission.”

  “First of all, it is I that owe you, Brother,” Hunter had told him. “I could never have got this far without your help. Secondly, you act as if we’ll never see each other again. I promise you, Brother, we will.”

  That was all he could say. The Harrier’s cockpit snapped closed and the jumpjet took off, straight up, Brother David waving like mad despite the force of the jet’s vertical acceleration.

  The other Harriers also took off at this point—two would proceed to the lake near the Uxmaluna site to pick up the commodore, then they would all form up and head for the safety of Texas.

  Once Hunter was alone, he took off and headed west at full throttle. Off the coast of the most southern tip of Mexico, he met the first Texan aerial tanker and filled up. After breaking off contact, he headed due south, again at full throttle. Avoiding Panamanian airspace added 250 miles to his trip. About 400 miles off the coast of Big Banana, he met his second Texas tanker, which was actually accompanied by yet another tanker. Once Hunter took on his needed fuel, the tanker itself topped off its tanks from its companion, then turned for home.

  Phase three had Hunter taking on his third fuel load at 250 miles off the coast of Peru. Once that was done, the Texas tanker did a U-turn and headed back north, Hunter knowing that the weary crew would have to rendezvous two more times to get enough fuel to make it back.

  It had been a complicated operation, but it went off without a hitch.

  Now Hunter could turn to the business at hand…

  Chapter 64

  THE TWO CAPTURED FOKKER pilots had dug down five feet when they came to a hand-carved chunk of limestone.

  “Amazing,” Elizabeth said on seeing the soft rock. “Mexican limestone in the Peruvian highlands.”

  “Now what?” one of the pilots asked, wiping his brow.

  Krupp, standing by the edge of the hole, was wondering the same thing.

  Elizabeth looked at the two pilots, then ordered the one who had asked the question out of the hole. Like his partner, he was tall and blond.

  “Keep an eye on this one, Colonel,” she said to Krupp. “Don’t come near the airplane until I call you.”

  Mystified, Krupp nodded numbly and watched as Elizabeth led the pilot back to the Fokker.

  Ten minutes went by. Krupp was sweating buckets in the afternoon heat. The pilot still in the hole was faring no better, trying to whack away at the limestone with the now-dulled blade of his shovel.

  Then Krupp heard Elizabeth. “Colonel,” she called out somewhat breathlessly. “Come here…”

  Krupp half-heartedly told the man to keep on digging and walked to the airplane. Climbing inside, he got the shock of his life.

  Elizabeth was naked. So was the pilot. He was lying on his back and she was on top of him, riding him like a young girl rides a horse. Her hair was going wild, her breasts were bouncing crazily. She looked completely caught up in the sex act—completely out of control.

  “Jealous, Colonel?” she called to him, out of breath and laughing wildly. “Oh, but you like to watch, don’t you?”

  Krupp was absolutely speechless.

  Elizabeth turned her attention back to the young stud of a pilot who was exerting himself like a lead role player in a hard-core X-rated movie.

  “Give it to me!” she screamed in passion.

  Their love-making got even more heated—Elizabeth was lost in her passion, alternating between orgasmic screams and moans and delirious bursts of laughter. Krupp couldn’t move a muscle. She would occasionally glance over to him, flash a devious smile, then go back to her frenzied love-making. For his part, he had never seen such a display of obscenity.

  When it was certain that both of them were reaching their orgasm, Krupp could take no more. Why was she torturing him so? He turned and quickly left the cabin, leaning on the wing, trying to collect himself.

  Seconds later he clearly heard Elizabeth scream in utter delight, the pilot too cried out at his climax.

  Then, suddenly, a gunshot cracked through the desert air!

  Krupp spun around and ran back to the cabin, thinking that the pilot had somehow gotten hold of her gun.

  But when he reached the door and looked in, he realized he had it all wrong. The pilot was dead—a single bloody gunshot wound in his temple. Elizabeth, gun in hand, was just climbing off his limp body.

  She turned and wriggled her own naked body at Krupp and laughed. “I told you I could be dangerous…” she said.

  Chapter 65

  KRUPP WAS STILL SHAKING when Elizabeth finally emerged from the airplane.

  She was brushing back her hair and adjusting her clothes as if she had done nothing more than freshen up.

  “Have you broken through yet?” she asked the remaining pilot.

  Knowing full well the fate of his partner, the man was suddenly very accommodating.

  “I’ve got a peephole in it,” he said. “There’s a tunnel below.” Elizabeth smiled once again and looked at Krupp. “Makes the trip worthwhile, no?” she said.

  The pilot had kicked a larger hole in the limestone plate now, and with a few more whacks of the shovel, had an opening big enough to squeeze through.

  “There it is, ma’am,” he said. “Are we going in?”

  “We are,” she said, shining the airplane’s large battery-operated trouble lantern down into the tunnel.

  Krupp hesitated at the edge of the hole. Elizabeth turned and looked at him. “Colonel?” she asked, “Aren’t you coming?”

  He still hadn’t said a word to her since the incident in the airplane.

  “Problems, Colonel?”

  He shook his head half-heartedly. “No,” he finally managed to say.

  The pilot was the first to slip through the limestone cover and into the tunnel. He helped Elizabeth down, leaving Krupp to practically fall the eight feet into the tunnel beneath the limestone cap. Elizabeth got her footing and then played the big flashlight around.

  The tunnel was very similar to the one that led to the gold chamber at Uxmaluna, the only difference being that this passageway was musty and oddly damp.

  “Do you realize that we are the first people to come in here in fifteen hundred years?” Elizabeth said.

  But neither the pilot nor Krupp was in the mood to celebrate the historic event.

  They started walking, Elizabeth in the lead, the pilot beside her. Krupp bringing up the rear.

  “What’s your name?” she suddenly asked the pilot.

  “Karlon,” he answered.

  “And how many people does it take to fly that airplane?”

  “Just two,” he said, after thinking for a moment. “One behind the controls, one to do a few simple things before take-off and landings.”

  “Really?” she asked. “Could you teach me how to do those simple things?”

  The pilot didn’t quite know what she was getting at, but he knew he’d be a fool not to play along.

  “Yes, the procedures are very easy to learn,” he said.

  She instantly turned back to Krupp and held the flashlight under her chin for a moment to give her face an eerie look.

  “Getting nervous, Colonel?” she asked.

  She laughed and continued walking down the passageway, flashing the lantern from side to side in the neatly squared-off shaft.

  Meanwh
ile, too far up for them to hear it, Hunter’s AV-8B Harrier was passing high overhead.

  Thirty minutes later, the trio reached a sealed-off entranceway sculpted exactly like the portal to the gold chamber at Uxmaluna.

  “This is it,” Elizabeth declared. “Look familiar, Colonel?”

  Krupp was so jumpy he hardly heard her. Yes, it did look familiar—too familiar. Walking through the dark tunnel—so similar to the one at Uxmaluna—was like revisiting a nightmare. That, and the fact that he was trying to figure out just what she was up to, had him so taut, his muscles cramped when he moved.

  Elizabeth turned to the pilot and told him to hammer in the slim piece of limestone. Using the shovel once again, he proceeded to bash at the soft stone.

  “Excited, Colonel?” Elizabeth asked.

  Krupp somehow got up the gumption to say, “If you are.”

  She laughed again, this time right in his face. Then she turned back to the business of knocking in the limestone barrier.

  “Kick it in,” she told the pilot, seeing that he had already put several large cracks in the barrier.

  The pilot did as ordered. Three hard kicks of his boot and the pieces of limestone fell apart.

  Elizabeth pushed her way past the pilot and entered the chamber first.

  “I’ve done it!” they heard her cry out.

  Both men burst onto the chamber—and stopped in their tracks.

  “Jesus Christ!” the pilot said. Up until that moment he had had no idea exactly what they were digging for. Now, before him he saw more gold than he thought existed on the entire planet.

  Even Krupp felt a jolt of excitement. The chamber was at least four times larger than the one up in the Yucatan—and it held that much more gold.

  “There must have been a core of gold somewhere in the near Andes to the east,” she said, explaining it more to herself than the two men. “The Nazca people found it, mined it and stored it here. When the Incas or the pre-Inca people started to move into the area, the Nazca people must have somehow made an alliance with the Mayans, and they agreed to hide some of their gold up in the Yucatan.”

  Her scenario may or may not have been accurate—closer examination might have shown her that the appropriate dates didn’t match up. But this kind of scientific accuracy was irrelevant now—so bright was the shine of the tons of gold before her.

  “How will we ever get all this out of here?” Krupp asked, continuing to take in row upon row of the same bowl-shaped ingots.

  She suddenly turned and said: “ ‘We?’ Just what do you mean by that?”

  He began stumbling badly. “I thought… but you said… you asked what we’d do… together…”

  She shook her head in pity. “I guess you just don’t understand what’s happening here, do you?” she asked.

  Krupp immediately felt the tug of his instincts. One part of him wanted to break down and plead with her. Another part was slowly switching over to self-preservation. He was carrying a fully-loaded AK-47. She had the Colt automatic. In between them was the unarmed pilot.

  “Well,” she continued. “Let me show you exactly what’s happening.”

  She turned and faced the pilot.

  “Karlon? Come here.”

  The pilot did as told. She smiled and let her free hand roam all over his chest, stomach and, finally, his lower body. Her long fingers paused every few seconds between his legs.

  “Can you and I fly that airplane out of here?” she asked in a stage whisper, her hand lingering around his crotch.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said confidently. “Just say the word and we’re out of here.”

  She turned back to Krupp. “See, Colonel?” she said. “Are you getting the pattern here? Like I said before, it’s all about being a real man. Something you wouldn’t know very much about…”

  With that, she pulled the pilot’s pants off, then slipped out of her own. She fondled the man erotically for several long moments. Then, before an astonished Krupp, they got down on the chamber floor and furiously engaged in every known sex act for the next five minutes.

  The Nazi officer was on the verge of tears watching the display. He sank down into a corner and curled up like a kid about to be punished. He was shaking and having a hard time catching his breath. He tried to look away, but he found it impossible. His eyes were glued on her face, her body. As before, she was moving like a crazy woman—hair incredibly savage, her rear end jiggling, her breasts bouncing up and down wildly.

  Krupp felt a low whine start up in his eardrums. Why was she doing this to him? Was she crazy? Or was he?

  As with the pilot before, she mounted the man and started pumping maniacally. Krupp was crying openly now. But after only a minute or so of this, the Nazi officer saw her hand move up behind the pilot’s head. It was holding the .45 automatic: Time froze. Was she going to take out this pilot as she had the one in the airplane? In one instant, Krupp wanted her to do it—then there’d be no rival for him. But in the next he knew that if she did, how would they be able to fly out?

  The buzz in his brain got louder as she brought the gun up to the unsuspecting man’s head and pulled back the hammer. Climaxes approaching, Krupp saw her finger slowly pull the trigger.

  “Do it!” he screamed.

  She responded with a loud cry and a squeeze of the trigger…

  Click!

  Nothing happened.

  She threw her head back and laughed wickedly at him as they finished their final orgasmic sex act. “Wishful thinking, Colonel,” she said, out of breath and finally climbing off the exhausted, spent pilot.

  “You’re mad,” the Nazi officer told her. “Totally mad…”

  She stood and stared at him, not making any effort to rebutton her shirt or pull on her pants.

  “Yes, I am quite mad, Colonel,” she said, matter-of-factly. “But then again, so are you. Don’t you hear voices in your head? I do. Those tiny voices just won’t leave you alone, will they, Colonel? They just won’t let you function, properly, like a real man…”

  He put his hands up to his head. The buzzing got louder. He felt as if his brain was about to explode. How could this be happening to him?

  “You’re crazy!” he screamed at her. “You’re like… an animal. A Black Widow!”

  “Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” she said in a seductive whisper, taking a step closer to him. “Come on, Colonel. You know you’ve had this weird thing for me all along. I just wanted to make you jealous… Of course I’m not going to kill him—he has to fly us out of here! Don’t you think I know that?”

  She squeezed her breasts, her fingers lightly pinching her nipples.

  “Come on, Colonel…” she repeated, now right up against him. “Make love to me. Screw me. Rape me! Right here, in the middle of all this beautiful gold.”

  Her hand went between his legs and to both their surprise, she found it wasn’t as soft as usual.

  “So that did the trick, eh?” she said, encouraging him with her fingers. “Now’s your chance, Colonel. Come on…”

  Now it was another part of Krupp’s anatomy that felt as if it would burst.

  “Do you want me to take your clothes off, Colonel?” she asked him, seductively squeezing her own body. “The cave air feels beautiful when you’re naked. Believe me, I should know…”

  She took the rifle from his shoulder and laid it on the ground next to him. Then she undid his shirt, his belt buckle and fly. He could hardly feel the clothes falling off him. He was so mixed up, emotionally and physically, that he was trembling violently. He wanted to make love to her—and for once, all parts of his body were in agreement.

  But he was absolutely inexperienced in these matters. And despite the desperate situation, the strangest questions were running through his mind, ones he had last heard out in the schoolyard. What does one do first? What happens once a person is caught up in it all? Was it true that most people black out the first time? To be or not to be?

  Suddenly it seemed like the glar
e from the gold was blinding him…

  Just then, the pilot spoke up. “Yeah, come on, Colonel,” he said sarcastically, at the same time slyly reaching for Krupp’s discarded AK-47. “Give it to her. Can’t you see she’s begging for it? Let’s see if you can do it…”

  The buzzing in the Nazi’s head became excruciating.

  “Come on…” Elizabeth said, rubbing up against him.

  “Come on!” the pilot egged him on.

  “Now…” she said, digging her hands into his crotch.

  “Give it to her!” the pilot yelled.

  But Krupp couldn’t hear any of it. The buzzing in his head was now too loud to bear.

  He screamed and then he threw her roughly to the ground. In a second he was on top of her, exerting such a force that even she was surprised for a moment. Krupp clumsily started performing. In seconds Elizabeth was laughing madly. The pilot was screaming, “Do it! Give it to her! Give it to her…” all the while raising the rifle toward both of them.

  Although he could clearly see the pilot aiming the gun at them, something in Krupp’s brain wouldn’t let him stop what he was doing. Not now… The Nazi pumped Elizabeth furiously, his eyes closed, his mouth drooling the strange white foam. He was blacking out. He couldn’t stop. He cried out: “Don’t hurt me, Mommy!” That’s when Elizabeth put the gun up to Krupp’s head and pulled the trigger, literally blowing his brains out.

  Suddenly another shot rang out. Then another and another. The Afrikaner pilot was slammed up against the cavern wall by at least a dozen yellow-red tracer bullets. Someone standing in the doorway to the chamber had shot the pilot just as he was about to shoot Elizabeth.