Terror Flower (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 5) (23 page)

She didn’t reply, just looked at him for a long moment.

Tench laughed, “You and Stagmatter, what a pair.”

She said, “Can you blame him? He tells me the story and it is so much like mine.

“The attack came on August 21 1944. She was in the backyard watching the bombers when she heard the bombs start exploding several blocks from her house. She ran to the front gate and remembers closing it. Like the little girl that she was, she thought that closing the gate would keep out the bombs. She looked down the street. She could see the buildings on fire and the nearest tenement exploding, its walls falling into the street. She ran to the back yard and went into a small shed. Inside she knew a hole had been dug in the floor for her father to keep fertilizer to take to the farm.

“She heard her father calling her. She stood up and moved to the shed door. In front of her at the back door to the apartment, her father was standing. When he saw her, he shouted, ‘Get down, be safe.’ At that moment a bomb fell on the house and exploded knocking him inward and setting the face of the building on fire. Another bomb fell on the house next door and the yard was filled with flame and bits of wood. She ran back inside the shed and got down in the hole. Outside the shed the sky was completely covered with flames. At the same time the roof of the shed had heated up. The steel roofing was red in some places from the outside heat. She was the only survivor. All her family were burned to death.”

Tench stopped her by saying, “You found the perfect source of money in Mister Strake.”

She nodded. “It has taken us two years to prepare but we are ready.”

“What about Strake himself?”

“He will soon no longer be needed.”

“Your rationale for the attack is perfect. The bomber is over populated areas within a few minutes of takeoff.” He looked towards the noises outside. “I guess some of you will escape by that big yacht at the pier.”

She nodded. “So they can attack again later.”

She laughed. “Strake outsmarted himself. He took his money out of the banks where he thought someone could get it and put it into these cars. He thought it would be safe right here with him. Instead, we’ve been able to sell them as we needed money, and no one could track it. No one including all your fancy banks. He has very few left but our plan is complete.”

“Yes,” she said, “Strake was afraid of his past, of the money he had stolen so he built this fortress, surrounded himself with security and bought the officials in this local town to protect him. Unfortunately for him, the fortress itself is turned against him and he is held prisoner.”

Owerri laughed, “Americans are so predictable. They always go after the money.”

“So you’re going to kill off the evil of the west.” He thought for a moment and was almost afraid to say it. “I guess you’re going to hit the White House aren’t you? That is, if you make it that far.”

“Yes. What better than the white building that was built by slave labor, by my countrymen forced to come here so many centuries ago. I even know their English names, the ones your leaders gave them. Your history doesn’t honor them but mine does. Jerry, Jess, Charles, Len, Dick, Bill. All heroes that you enslaved for the stonework on the foundations of that building.”

“Yes.”

“Who’s going to lead after you are dead? Got to have someone with your brains to carry on.”

She smiled, “Many leaders with ideas and intelligence exist. The best value of the leader is to die as well as the followers. It sets the best example. That is why we will never be beaten and will win. You Americans have forgotten all your leaders. A great leader is one who can die and be remembered. “

“You really believe all that? When you are dead you are dead. You can’t control anyone’s future paths. For all you know they will forget you as they make money out of your death.” A song came into his head, why he did not know, and he hummed the melody of Moon River, adding words as he stared at her, feeling like a wise-cracking street kid again, taunting a bully,

“Two killers off to burn the world

There’s such a lot of world to burn.”

Infuriated, she climbed up from the steps, walked forward and kicked him. He slid back against the side of the airplane. Then she returned to the ladder and was gone.

Stagmatter came back to the bomb bay exit. Just before he climbed down the same ladder Owerri had just used, he stood in front of Tench.

Tench looked up at him, his head buzzing with the pain of Owerri’s kick.

“The Spaniard is dead,” he said, as his mouth twisted in its half grin.

Tench didn’t believe him. He had heard no shots. Smote was too good at hand to hand fighting to go down in the darkness. Stagmatter was bluffing.

“You screwed all of us,” Tench said.

“You of all people, I thought, would have at least been excited by what I did with the aircraft. I am disappointed in your attitude. You could have been with us. You have talent.”

Stagmatter reached above him and stroked the carefully repainted ceiling of the plane. He said, “All this work, and no one to admire it. Now it will be destroyed for a higher purpose.”

“Why should anyone admire the work of a maniac?” said Tench. Strake moaned a few feet away. “At least the Americans had the excuse that they were at war against a fanatic.”

Stagmatter looked at his former boss on the floor of the plane, a look of disgust coming over his face.

“Maniac, you say. I worked for years, years, I tell you, to get this plane here. Regardless of what you think, the Americans had no excuse for the evil they committed in the past. Now they pay.”

Stagmatter went on, “In a few hours, in your city, a young girl will be sleeping. Suddenly flames will come roaring through her house, burning the beds and the walls, incinerating the family pictures and peeling down the wallpaper with intense heat. She will run to escape, calling for her father and mother, but she won’t hear their replies. Outside the house she will look up to the sky and see only clouds of flame rushing by as in a whirlwind. The buildings around her will crack with red flames and pieces will fall all near her. She will run first one way and then the other trying to escape the heat. Then, she will find a culvert in the street, a place where the sewer water flows, only the iron grate will be hot. She will grasp the metal feeling her hands singe and when it releases she will tumble down into the darkness and smoke, hiding her little body in the foul smelling fluid. She will know what it was like in Germany.”

Stagmatter left then. He climbed outside. Tench heard him talking to himself about his mother in Argentina. His voice was high, emotional, as if he had taken drugs, ones that opened up his mouth and all his memories, all his hatred. Stagmatter slowly moved away into the darkness, his voice fading with the distance. Then Tench realized that the man was moving into insanity, something that he had been able to hide until this moment, this time of his triumph of his hatred, and that very triumph had released the gate of human reason that had been holding back his craziness.

Tench could see through the open aircraft door as Marengo, standing outside near the plane, lined up his guards and addressed them.

“As your captain I promised you that we would return to our country, that this mission would soon be over. Tonight, we are finished.”

The men murmured approval.

“You have finished loading the yacht and soon we will be casting off. We must finish the preparations for the bomber. Each of you knows what you are to do.”

Stagmatter came back in a few minutes. He was silent. He climbed aboard, with Owerri following and they returned to the cockpit. This time they moved by Tench and the other hostages without a look or a word.

Tench continued to work on his bonds. He had discovered a sharp section of fuselage frame after he was kicked into a new location by Owerri. The ropes holding his wrists were beginning to loosen up. Up forward, Stagmatter and Owerri talked in low tones going through the bomber checklist prior to takeoff.

Then Stagmatter cried out, “Someone has tampered with the controls.”

Owerri said, “You were supposed to guard the aircraft.”

Tench heard Stagmatter slap her. “Snake, you say. I am the strong one. You do not tell me, I tell you.”

A dog began to bark outside, close by the tail of the bomber. It was Abraham.

“Get that dog,” Marengo shouted from outside the plane. “Kill him. Then go to the yacht. No time is left.”

Chapter Twenty-three

6:15 AM Saturday August 21

Dawn was coming in the eastern sky. A slight breeze was blowing from the west, directly at the nose of the bomber. Tench could still see nothing. The plane had no interior lights and all outside lighting had been shut off when Marengo and his men left. He heard Julie and her father stir across the narrow catwalk from where he lay.

In front of the plane he could see a glimmer from the instrument panel. The large gasoline storage bladders obstructed much of the view. He could hear Stagmatter cursing as he struggled with the controls.

He tried to nudge Julie with his bare foot but she was still unconscious. Beyond her, turned on his side was her father. He also was out cold, drugged heavily.

He struggled with the ropes binding his hands. Then he had another idea, a desperate last chance at freedom. He forced himself to relax and breathe easy to build up his energy.

In a few moments, he slowly brought his legs upward, stretching them together and pulling his hands down behind the legs toward his knees. His breath began coming in spurts as he tired from the exertion.

He pushed again on his hands and one arm twisted the cord under his left foot. “Almost,” he thought to himself, realizing that he must not stop no matter how much the pain. He strained again and felt his legs ease as the cords passed through. The idea had worked. His arms were in front of him.

The aircraft shook slightly as the first engine was started. Then the second, third and finally the fourth. The big radial motors turned slowly at first building revolutions. The whole plane was vibrating with the horsepower exuded from the big propellers.

Tench was able to work the ropes more easily when they were in front. For one thing, without his arms behind him, the ropes were actually looser. Finally he pulled on the part that he had been chafing on the sharp metal and it eased enough to fully loosen around his wrist. He pulled the rope off and stretched his arms. Then he turned to his feet and quickly pulled the line from them. He was free.

He looked forward. Both of the enemy were busy with the controls. He crawled quickly over to Julie and stirred her awake. She looked at him with alarm. He whispered, “We get loose and then we take action, Julie,” he said as he began on her hands.

Julie was still groggy. “The bomber hasn’t begun its takeoff run yet,” Tench said, stroking her forehead. “Are you going to be able to make it?”

Tench knew that Strake himself was too drugged to wake up. The older man barely moved as his ropes were taken off. Julie turned to her father and struggled to rub his back.

“We got two choices,” said Tench.

“Stop this plane is one of them,” said Julie, becoming more alert as she had time to look around and to get blood flowing in her cramped body.

Tench glanced forward at the pilot’s compartment. “I agree. Stagmatter and Doctor Owerri are up there. They will be busy for a while getting her moving. That’s when we can do something.”

With the plane’s vibration the door to the pilot’s compartment swung shut by itself. “Until they get that panel open again, we have a chance.”

“What’s your other choice?” Julie asked.

At that moment one of the engines began to run rough, then slowed to a stop. Tench heard the pilot trying to restart the engine. Several times the machine was started only to stop after a few revolutions of the big propeller.

“I think Smote fixed some of the controls. Stagmatter has been swearing about something not being right,” said Tench. “I don’t know if that will help, though.”

“Smote must have done enough,” said Julie.

“A man of many talents,” said Tench. “Anyway, our number two choice is to get ourselves out of here through that back entry.”

The engine started again and ran but it was backfiring. Stagmatter began swearing. Tench and Julie could hear him through the door. “He’s still fighting with the controls,” said Tench. He could tell something was not working the way the big man had planned and the aircraft was not developing the necessary revolutions in one of its engine. The plane was vibrating hard from the port side but the starboard engines did not seem to be developing the same tremor. Tench tried to glance out the window. It was a small opening which had a transparent cover crusted with age. “Lots of black smoke from the exhaust,” he said.

“We have a way out,” Tench said, pointing to the rear of the plane. “Back there is the place where the gunner gets out. Smote used it to escape.”

Julie and Tench began to move her father toward the rear of the plane. Ahead of them they saw more of the large fuel bags which had been put into the tail space.

“Since Smote left, the Africans have loaded more gasoline tanks into the plane. They are smaller but they cover the doorway,” said Tench. He stood up and pushed at one of the bags.

He estimated the bladder bag weighed about two hundred pounds. “We can move them,” he said. “Takes both of us, though.” Julie helped him shift the large rubber tank to the side. Underneath it Tench pointed to the shape of a box like doorway panel that was half uncovered.

“One more try,” said Julie.

As the bag moved away, they felt the bottom of the plane begin to incline.

“Stop,” said Julie. “We’re shifting enough weight to tilt the plane.”

The pilots’ doorway opened and a streak of light came back through the aircraft body. Tench moved back against the side of the fuselage as the light played around the floorboards and over the rubber of the tanks.

In front Tench could see Stagmatter’s head. He could not make out his face but he knew the man’s eyes were sizing up the back of the plane, wondering what had changed the weight distribution.