Quintana Roo (20 page)

Prodded by the gun barrels, Hooker and Buzz trudged along the path and into the compact headquarters building. It was a single room, sparsely furnished — two desks, filing cabinet, map case, folding wooden chairs. Nothing dramatic like heroic portraits of Hitler or Nazi banners. Just plain, unfinished wooden walls.

The only decoration was on a calendar from a Mexican brewery showing the month of June 1939. On the upper half was a glossy illustration of a girl who looked like Dolores Del Rio. She stood in a grassy meadow holding a bottle of the brewery’s product and smiling seductively. On the opposite wall was a detailed map of Mexico and Central America, with ocean-depth charts and significant routes marked between the coast of Quintana Roo and the Panama Canal.

Buzz looked at the chart, then over at Hooker. “What’d I tell you?”

“You will remain silent until you are told to speak,” said the German who carried the flashlight.

Inside, where there was light, Hooker could see that he looked like one of those blond kids from the Hitler Youth propaganda posters who had grown into young middle age and gotten soft. Like all other personnel at the base, he wore unmarked coveralls, but he might as well have had
OFFICER
tattooed on his forehead.

The two riflemen were younger. One was thick bodied and muscular, the other angular and jerky in his movements. Both of them handled their weapons as though they knew how to use them.

The officer spoke to them in German. The angular one braced, looked as though he wanted to click his heels, changed his mind, and went out. The officer nodded toward a pair of folding wooden chairs.

“Sit,” he said to Buzz and Hooker.

They sat.

“You almost took us by surprise,” the German said. “Had the sentry not been slow in completing his rounds, you might have succeeded in … but what was it you planned to do, anyway?”

Hooker and Buzz stared at opposite corners of the ceiling.

“Ah, well, it is best we wait until the U-boat captain is present. A pity our base commandant is away. He might enjoy dealing with you.”

The angular rifleman returned with a gray-haired man in a black turtleneck sweater. The base officer’s posture stiffened. The older man waved him to be at ease and studied Hooker and Buzz while the base officer spoke to him in German.

“You have done good work, lieutenant,” the older man said in English. “I will bring it to the attention of your commandant at my first opportunity.”

To Hooker and Buzz, he said, “I am Captain Oskar Lentz. May I have your names please?”

“Hooker.”

“Kaplan,” Buzz said, pronouncing each syllable carefully.

Lentz did not react. He said, “Perhaps you will tell us the reason for your unauthorized presence on this base.”

“We were lost,” Hooker said.

“Fishing for sharks,” Buzz said.

Captain Lentz regarded them coolly. The lieutenant scowled.

“As you must know,” Lentz said dryly, “Germans have no sense of humor. I ask you again. What are you doing on the base?”

Buzz and Hooker looked at each other and shrugged. Hooker spoke. “We thought we might blow it up.”

“Amusing,” said Lentz. “How many of you are there?”

Buzz held up two fingers.

Lentz ignored him. “Where are the rest of your people?”

“There aren’t any rest,” said Hooker. “We’re it.”

The U-boat captain sighed and looked at the lieutenant. “Americans. Always it is with the games.”

The lieutenant nodded toward the muscular rifleman. “Ritter here is good at games.”

He said something in German, and Ritter grinned, his big hands tightening on his weapon.

“I do not like such methods,” said Captain Lentz. “It reminds me of the Gestapo.”

The lieutenant spoke briskly. “As you say,
Herr Kapitan
. I only thought we might hurry things along.”

The U-boat commander regarded the captives. “The lieutenant makes a valid point. Would you care to reconsider your replies to my questions?”

Buzz scratched his ear. Hooker gazed out the window behind the German officers, then off at the
señorita
with the beer bottle.

Ritter rolled his heavy shoulders and looked eagerly to his lieutenant.

The lieutenant looked to the captain.

The captain looked at the prisoners, then turned away with a sigh. “Very well. I leave them in your hands for — ” He pulled out a watch, looked at it, then at the lieutenant.

“Twenty minutes will be sufficient,
Herr Kapitan
. More than sufficient.”

Lentz looked at the two men in the wooden chairs with something like sadness, then turned smartly and left the building, closing the door firmly behind him.

“Ritter,” said the lieutenant.

The rifleman handed his weapon to the lieutenant and flexed his fingers like a concert pianist preparing to play.

“Erster, der Jude,”
said the lieutenant.

Ritter strutted over to the chair where Buzz sat and swung from the hip. His fist smacked into Buzz’s face with a sound like an ax biting into a tree. Kaplan managed to catch himself before he and the chair went over backward.

Automatically, Hooker started to rise. The other rifleman took aim at his head, and he sank back down.

Buzz spat out blood, most of which ran down his chin. “I thought you could hit,” he said.

Ritter punched him again, this time a roundhouse right that split the skin over Buzz’s eye.

Hooker breathed in and out deeply and withdrew into himself. It was a trick he had learned years before when he was in a situation where there was nothing he could do. He knew Buzz would take his beating, and then it would be his turn. When the Germans learned they could not beat out of the Americans information they did not have, they would begin the nastier business. Hooker put his mind off into the glossy meadow with Dolores Del Rio and the cold bottle of beer. He was concentrating on tasting the beer when the glass broke out of the window behind the Germans.

“Hands up!” Connie’s voice was somewhat unsteady, but she was very businesslike in pointing the German rifle at the head of the lieutenant.

“Throw down your guns!”

Ritter turned in dumb surprise from where he stood over Kaplan. He held his bloody fist out in front of him like a chunk of raw meat. The second rifleman started to turn. The lieutenant looked back over his shoulder into the muzzle of Connie’s gun and spoke rapidly in German. The weapon he held and that of the angular rifleman clattered to the floor.

Instantly, Hooker was out of his chair to pick them up. Buzz got up a little unsteadily and wiped the blood from his eyes. He walked over to the burly Ritter.

“Let me show you how to hit,
Kraut
head.” Kaplan’s big fists slammed Ritter in the face half a dozen times before the German hit the floor.

While the lieutenant and the other enlisted man watched in shock, Hooker slipped around behind them and put them both down with blows from a rifle butt.

He tossed the second rifle to Buzz, who caught it in the air, and both men stumbled out the door. They stood poised for a moment outside the building, waiting for some alarm to sound. The night remained quiet. They hurried around the corner to where Connie stood by the broken window clutching the rifle. She was shaking violently.

Hooker put his arms around her and held her close until she stopped shivering.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he said in a whisper.

“L-like you said, I was watching your rear. I saw the three guys grab you and march you over here, so I got down as fast as I could.”

“I love your dialogue — ‘Hands up! Throw down your guns!’”

“I went to cowboy movies a lot when I was a kid.”

He gently removed the rifle from her hand. “Uh, where did you get this?”

“I saw where you tossed it when Buzz cold-cocked the sentry. I thought you were crazy at the time, but it worked out pretty well, didn’t it?”

“Honey,” Buzz began, “there’s something you maybe ought to know….”

Hooker touched Buzz’s arm and shook his head. “You did great, Connie,” he said. “Just great.”

She smiled up at him. “Thanks, Hooker.”

“Now, let’s see about getting the hell out of here.”

Buzz said, “You don’t think we could maybe still give it a try?”

“Be serious, buddy. Captain Submarine will be back any minute, and when he finds his pals asleep, there’s going to be hell to pay around here. Let’s arrange to be as far away as we can.”

“Okay,” Buzz said reluctantly. “I guess we did the best we could.”

“Bet your ass we did. Come on; let’s head for the hills.”

• • •

The three of them took off for the perimeter of the base and the trail that led up to the top of the bluff. Connie went first; Buzz limped painfully along after her. Hooker came last, taking the first opportunity to drop the sentry’s empty rifle into the brush.

At the boulder where Connie had waited and watched, they paused to catch their breath.

“Still nothing stirring down below,” Buzz said.

“We’re lucky,” Hooker said. “There soon will be.”

“What do we do when we get to the top?” Connie asked.

“Use the raft to cross the river,” Hooker said. “Then head up the beach the other way like I wanted to in the first place.”

“Why don’t we use the bridge?”

“Too hard to find it in the dark, and the Germans’ll be looking for us soon.”

“What do we do if they catch us?”

“We don’t
let
them catch us.” He gave her a shove to start her up the trail, and the three of them scrambled on.

The night was black and moonless when they reached the top. Hooker was the first to pull himself up over the lip of the bluff; then he turned and helped up first Connie, then Buzz.

He stood back for a moment to draw a breath and heard Buzz go
“Huff!”
as the air went out of his lungs.

“What — ” he began, but never finished the sentence as something hard and thick as a fire hose wrapped around his chest and lifted him off the ground. His ears rang, and his lungs pumped vainly for air. He felt the German rifle plucked from his hand like a toy from a child.

A torch flared in the darkness. The pressure on Hooker’s chest eased enough for him to pull in a small breath. He pawed ineffectively at the bare brown arms that held him motionless. A few feet away, he saw Kaplan also fighting for breath in the arms of a
mueratero
. Another of them held Connie.

The light of the torch bobbed closer to them. Behind it, Hooker recognized the face of the Mayan chief, Holchacán.

“It has been an interesting chase, Hooker. But now it is over.”

Below them, lights blinked on and voices shouted.

“If you want to save your own ass, you’ll get us all out of here,” Hooker gasped. “Do you know what’s down there?”

“A German submarine base,” the Mayan chief said.

“I’ll be damned. You
do
know.”

“Of course. You were curious about where the money came from to restore the city of Iztal. Much of it came from the German government. Payment for keeping people away from this base. Few people knowing the legend of the
muerateros
would even enter the jungle of Quintana Roo. You are the first to get this far.”

“That won’t look too good on your record,” Hooker said.

“I don’t think we need worry about that,” said Holchacán. “By the time the Germans get up here and see what is left of you three, they will know their money is well spent.”

There was a rustling and shuffling back in the shadows, and more figures walked into the light cast by the torch. There were two separate groups. On one side, ranged behind Holchacán, were his Mayan warriors. They were armed with swords and the short, deadly spears. On the other, moving in nightmarish silence, were the
muerateros
.

“Nice crowd,” Hooker said. The heavy arms tightened their grip around his chest.

“I want your fate to be an object lesson,” said the Mayan chief. “Word will spread rapidly of what happens to those who challenge Quintana Roo.”

Through the ranks of the
muerateros
moved one who was taller and more pale than the rest. Patchy gray hair grew like fungus on his head. There was something different about his eyes — a light that was not quite extinguished.

“Nolan!” Connie cried. “Oh, God, Nolan!”

If the tall, pale creature showed a flicker of recognition, it was too faint for Hooker to catch.

“I see you recognize your husband, Mrs. Braithwaite,” said Holchacán. “Perhaps I should say your
late
husband. He has undergone changes, as you can see.”

“You bastard,” Connie said in a dull voice.

“Actually, he turned out quite well. He has already survived beyond the usual time for these creatures. I’m quite proud of him.”

Holchacán came closer with the torch and peered into the faces of Hooker and Kaplan. “It’s a pity I was not able to finish the job on you two. Both of you have strong constitutions. You might have outlasted them all.”

Hooker said nothing. He had to fight even to breathe.

“Now your value as subjects is destroyed. To satisfy the Germans, I will have to show them your dead bodies. But there will always be fools who venture into the jungle.”

The clamor from down on the beach grew louder. Lights could be seen starting to move up the trail as the Germans organized their search.

“It is time,” said Holchacán. He fixed his eyes on the
muerateros
, who held the three captives. “Kill them.”

Hooker felt the arms clamped around his rib cage begin to tighten. He put all he had left into a struggle for life, but his blows had no more effect than a baby’s.

From somewhere in the darkening world that closed in on him, Hooker heard a howl that was not quite human but was unlike any animal he knew. The crushing pressure on his chest gradually eased. As the torch-lit scene swam into focus, he saw Nolan Braithwaite, or what was left of him, standing in front of the motionless
muerateros
. His arms were outstretched in a gesture of command. His mouth gaped. The torchlight glittered in his unblinking eyes.

“What are you doing?” The voice, high and hysterical, was that of Holchacán. “Kill them, I said!” He barked an order in the old Mayan language.

The howl came again. It came from the mouth of Nolan Braithwaite. Into that terrible cry was packed more rage and pain and hatred than any one man should know.

Without warning, the powerful arms around Hooker let go. He collapsed on the ground and gasped for air. Beside him lay Connie and Buzz.

The pale
mueratero
gestured to the others. The sounds that he made were not words, but they had a pattern, and they brought a response.

Slowly at first, then with more purpose, the walking dead men advanced on Holchacán and his warriors.

The Mayan chief shouted an order. The empty-eyed
muerateros
did not falter.

“Back!” cried Holchacán in English. “Damn you, get back!”

But it was his own warriors, not the dead ones, who gave ground. The stink of fear was in the air.

Buzz crawled over next to Hooker. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” Hooker said, “but I think we better stay out of it.”

Holchacán turned toward his men, who were edging away toward the jungle. He spat out orders in the old Mayan dialect while gesturing toward the
muerateros
. It was not difficult for Hooker to get the drift:
destroy them!

To the credit of the Mayan warriors, they fought bravely. They walked into the advancing army of dead men, slashing at them with their swords and shoving their spears through the unfeeling bodies. Hooker could have told them that the
mueratero
is hard to hurt.

The scene was like a painting by Hieronymus Bosch. the Mayan warriors inflicted terrible wounds on the
muerateros
, slicing them open, hacking off limbs, and still the dead ones came on as long as they could drag themselves. When they reached the Mayas, they tore the Indians apart with bare hands. Hooker watched one of the
muerateros
, with his stomach laid open and a bloody mess of entrails dragging on the ground, crush the throat of a warrior, then fall on top of his victim, truly dead at last.

Hooker turned at the sound of weeping to see Connie Braithwaite hugging herself, staring dazedly at the battle. He put an arm around her and squeezed her shoulder. She looked at him. In her eyes, the horror dimmed a little.

“Let’s get out of here,” Hooker said. “Where’s Buzz?”

“I-I don’t know. He was here a minute ago.”

“Damn, I hope he didn’t get himself into the fight.”

“Wait!” Connie said.

She was no longer looking at him. Hooker followed her eyes and saw Holchacán, his face twisted in terror, holding the torch out like a fiery sword. Walking toward him, fingers bent into claws, was Nolan Braithwaite.

Holchacán thrust the flaming torch into his face. Hooker could hear the sizzle of flesh all the way over where he crouched next to Connie.

Braithwaite swatted the torch to the ground. Holchacán stepped back and drew his sword. He swung it in a vicious arc. Braithwaite raised an arm to ward off the blow. The blade sliced cleanly through his wrist and the severed hand flopped to the ground.

The Mayan chieftain lunged with the sword, sank it deep into Nolan Braithwaite, and heaved upward on the hilt. Something spilled out of Braithwaite’s stomach. Hooker moved in front of Connie so she couldn’t see.

Braithwaite’s body shuddered. With the sword still in him, he stumbled forward, reached out with his remaining hand, and seized Holchacán by the face. Two of his fingers went into the eye sockets, the thumb into the mouth, strangling the scream of the Mayan chieftain. Braithwaite used his ruined arm, with blood still running from the stump of the wrist, to encircle the Indian’s back. He hugged the body of Holchacán to his own while bending the head backward. The Maya’s neck snapped.

Nolan Braithwaite released the body of the Mayan chief, letting it crumple at his feet like a broken marionette. He turned slowly toward Hooker and Connie, who was now on her knees, staring at him. Braithwaite used his one hand to pull the Mayan sword from his body and drop it to the ground. Then he half raised the hand in a clumsy gesture of farewell and collapsed.

Connie lurched to her feet and started toward him.

Hooker put a hand on her arm, restraining her. “Let him be, Connie. He’s finished now.”

The remaining Mayan warriors, seeing their leader go down, gave up the battle and melted back into the jungle. The
muerateros
, maimed and mutilated, started to move toward the bluff where the trail led up from the beach.

Hooker yanked Connie to her feet and pulled her in the opposite direction. “I’d love to see how the Germans handle this, but we can’t stay.”

He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted “
Buzz!
” If there was an answer, he could not hear it over the growing commotion at the top of the trail. He called again without response.

Hooker waited until he heard the first shots fired by the Germans as they met the
muerateros
. Then he took a firm hold of Connie’s hand and ran for the river.