The Twisted Cross (13 page)

Hunter was way ahead of him. He knew the deck crew's suits might be anti-radiation suits, the same kind worn by workers in nuclear power plants.

And if this were true, it was a good bet the diver's suits were at least partially protective as well. But what was going on? Pegg had told him that he had observed a similar operation - silver tubes being lowered into the water -

though he put the location as closer to the lockworks.

Hunter didn't want to jump to conclusions. But something inside him was saying that the biggest threat the Canal Nazis posed was not their overabundance of weaponry along the banks of the waterway, or their apparent overflowing gold coffers, or their well-stocked F-4 Phantom air force. Something told him that the real threat lay inside those long silver tubes.

And it was up to him to find out just what they were . . .

"Here it comes!" one of the CATS lookouts yelled excitedly.

Within moments, Hunter, Dantini and Burke joined the other soldiers out on the beach of the small island. It was the middle of the night, two days after their daring reconnaissance mission to the canal. Soon after they had returned to the island, Hunter put in a coded call to a receiving station in Texas, using his miniature radio set. The Texans relayed the message up to General Jones in Washington. It had said, in effect, that Hunter needed some "special equipment."

Hunter would learn later on that it was his old friend Mike Fitzgerald who had come up with the equipment he needed. Fitzie was a businessman first, a fighter pilot second. He was one of those guys who seemed to be able to put his hands on anything at anytime, no matter how rare or obscure it might be.

In this case, Hunter had radioed Jones that he needed a lead-lined diver's suit. Somehow Fitz was able to produce one inside of three hours.

Now as Hunter and the others watched from the beach, one of the New York Hercs C-130s appeared out of the darkness from the north. The big cargo plane was flying very low and without the usual navigation lights. With its heavy green camouflage scheme, it was barely discernible against the dark ocean.

It made one pass, and picking up on the coded flashlight signal from Hunter on the beach, turned around and came in low again, not more than 25 feet off the surface of the water. Suddenly they could see a small package drop out of the side cargo door and hit the water with a splash.

Within seconds, a team of CATS soldiers were madly paddling toward the floating package.

The big C-130 turned out to sea, did a wide arc and came back across the shoreline once more. By this time, the CATS soldiers had retrieved the package and had indicated it was still intact. Hunter flashed another coded light signal to the C-130 as it roared past, this one telling them the drop had been successful. The message received, the cargo plane' wagged its wings twice then disappeared into the night.

"This is the craziest idea I've ever heard of," Dantini was saying as he and Hunter unpacked the bundle the CATS soldiers had hauled in. "How can you expect to just dive down there right under their noses?"

"Sometimes you've got to take chances," Hunter told him as he concentrated on cutting the many holding lines around the package. "Also, I was hoping you guys could provide a little diversion for me should I get in trouble. Just a bunch of noise would do . . ."

"Damn, you know you can count on us, Hawk," Dantini told him. "We'll blow their fucking eardrums out if we have to. It's just that you don't know exactly what's down there and neither do I. No one does, probably except the high mucky-mucks of the Cross. For all you know, they could have boobytrapped those damn things . . ."

"I hear what you're saying," Hunter told him, finally breaking through the last seal holding the package together. "But I'm down here on a recon mission.

My job is to gather as much intelligence as possible. Somehow we've got to find out what the hell they are putting down there and I can't think of any other way to do it."

At that moment he had stripped away the top layer of the bundle's waterproof packing. He reached inside and with some effort, hauled out the large, rather outlandish diving suit.

"Jesus . . ." Hunter murmured, somewhat astonished at the size and bulk of the one-piece outfit.

"It looks like a costume from a bad science fiction movie," Burke said, helping Hunter lay out the beast on the sand. "A very bad science fiction movie."

Hunter had to agree with him. The suit looked like a cross between the outfits worn by the Apollo Moon astronauts and a beekeeper's nightmare. It was heavy, due to its lead lining and the two enormous air tanks attached to its back.

Its front plate was covered with dials and switches, none of which he had any idea how to operate. The attached boots alone looked like they could fit a size 20 foot.

Hunter could only shake his head. "Where the hell did Fitz get this?" he wondered out loud.

Colonel Krupp took another look at his map, then motioned for his driver to stop.

The 27-vehicle, heavily-armed convoy screeched to a halt behind his lead truck. It was the fourth time they had stopped in the past hour and each time the blazing sun and the oppressive humidity took its toll on the soldiers as well as their vehicles' radiators.

The convoy had left Chichen Itza more than five hours before, Krupp sending out one last token search party to look for the long-missing Heinke. Since then it had been winding its way south, rumbling over cratered jungle roads and speeding up whenever it reached a rare open stretch of highway.

Still, the pace was too slow for the colonel. He had drawn up a precise schedule for the move, estimating the convoy could make at least thirty miles an hour. But by checking the terrain against his map, it appeared they had yet to travel even sixty miles.

Either that, or they were lost . . .

"Call back and tell them to bring the woman up here immediately," he said to his driver.

The man quickly got on his radio and did as ordered. Soon two more soldiers appeared, leading the hooded woman between them.

"Pass the word down that this is not a rest stop," Krupp ordered the two soldiers. "We'll be moving in less than five minutes . . ."

The two soldiers saluted and quickly ran back to relay Krupp's orders.

Meanwhile the colonel lifted the woman up and into the back of his command truck. Only when the rear curtains were drawn and tight did he remove the black hood from her head. A tiny battery-operated lamp was the compartment's only illumination.

She instinctively shielded her eyes with her manacled hands, wincing against the dim light.

"Look at this map," he said to her authoritatively, while still letting his eyes wander over her breasts. She was wearing a multi-pocket field blouse, a short khaki skirt and once-white tennis sneakers, the same clothes she was wearing when they first came into possession of her. But even though her blouse was tattered, her skirt soiled and her hair a bush of dark brunette tresses, she was still beautiful.

"Look at this map," Krupp said again, nudging her into the small chair that was pulled up against his planning board. She was groggy, the result of both the many injections of sodium pentathol they had given her over the past few weeks and her nearly constant confinement. Still, she was the only one in the convoy who really knew the territory.

"I need water," she said wearily, moving her wrists in her handcuffs. "I need to go home . . ."

"You're not going home," Krupp told her matter-of-factly, surprising himself by stating the apparent death sentence. "Now just look at the map and tell me if we are on the right track."

"Not unless I get some water," she said quietly but defiantly.

Krupp hastily ripped the canteen from his utility belt and shoved it in front of her. She grasped it between her bound hands and drank a few sips.

"How can you people be so inhuman?" she asked him, still shielding her eyes away from the weak light. "Have you no conscience? No dignity?"

He grabbed her shoulder roughly.

"Read the map!" he hissed at her between clenched teeth. "Tell me if we are going in the right direction."

"How . . . how can I?" she asked in a voice barely above a whisper. "I don't even know where I am. Or even who I am ..."

"You will be on your way to a firing squad if you don't cooperate," Krupp snapped back at her. Every minute this went on was another minute off his schedule. In his mind it was imperative that they reach the next site before darkness fell and the countryside came alive with God-knows-what.

He nudged her again, holding her face just inches from the map. "I think we are following this road," he said, indicating a point on the map just south of Chichen Itza. "But according to the map, we should be seeing mountains off to our west and a river to our east. I have seen neither."

She studied the map as best she could, taking greedy sips of the water as she did so.

"The river is deep in the forest," she said finally. "You cannot see it from the road . . ."

"And these mountains?" Krupp asked. "They, too, have disappeared?"

She wiped her eyes and said: "They aren't mountains. They are merely hills, no more than two hundred feet high. You probably won't be able to distinguish them anyway."

"So you are saying that we continue on this road?" Krupp asked.

"Yes . . ." she said with a heavy, congested sigh, adding defiantly: "Follow it all the way to Hell for all I care . . ."

Hunter couldn't remember a time when he had felt more uncomfortable.

His face, neck and upper back were covered with scrapes and bruises. Both his shoulders ached, his hip muscles were strained and the blisters on his feet ran from heel to toe. His nose was runny from the dirty oxygen and it was all he could do to suppress sneezing inside the restrictive helmet.

Still, he had to admit, being at the bottom of the Panama waterway was a unique experience . . .

He had been at it for two hours now, having gone into the waterway just south of the point where they'd seen the Cross divers working. He wasn't swimming

-the suit was much too heavy for that. It was more like what he imagined walking on the moon would be like.

When he first tested the diving suit in a small lake near the CATS temporary camp, he found it was so bulky and weighty he was afraid that should he fall over, he might not be able to get back up. For this reason he had brought along a sturdy metal rod to use as a staff. It would help him keep his balance and should he topple over, he could use it to right himself again.

About a foot of silt covered the waterway's bottom in some parts, but there were surprisingly few plants and even fewer fish. Instead the floor was covered with all kinds of unimaginable litter. Small sunken boats, pieces of metal

construction, a hundred different things made of wood. There were cargo crates, some smashed open, others still airtight. Incredibly long lengths of chain and rope and rubber hose. Automobile tires. Tractor wheels. Car batteries. Shattered windshields. There was even the remnants of some long ago crashed airplane - it looked like a Lear jet with its side blown out, possibly downed sometime during the Big War. And everywhere, hundreds of barrels. It was like some vast underwater junkyard - some of it rotting away, some of it brand new. There was so much of the stuff, Hunter wondered how anything of any size floating through the Canal could miss hitting some of it.

It was amongst all this waterlogged debris that he had to search for the silver tubes.

He had found a short note from Fitz inside the suit after unpacking it -a brief explanation on how the thing worked, what the air limit was and so on.

Despite the feeling that he was walking around in a pair of concrete longjohns, he could also appreciate the fact that Fitz couldn't have done any better getting him the exact piece of equipment he needed.

The suit was designed to be used by US Navy submariners, specifically those on nuclear boats. As part of routine maintenance, divers would don the suits and check the underside of the nuke's hull for any radiation leakage. Thus, the suit was not only lead-lined for safety, it also came with a built-in radiation detector (an advanced Geiger counter), a searchlight, a radio intercom and even a stethoscope-type device which would allow divers to listen for any telltale sign of rad leakage. The suit also carried a small, still camera in the visor of the helmet which Fitz had smartly loaded up with film before shipping. All these devices were regulated by the dials and buttons on the breast plate of the suit, controls that Hunter had schooled himself in during his test dives in the small lake.

It was only after three hours of laborious walking-and infernal chafing-did he spot his first silver tube. He was still more than 50 yards away from the mysterious cylinder when his radiation detector started beeping, slowly at first. But the closer he got to the tube, the more rapid the pulse of the warning device. By the time be was within ten feet of the cylinder, the warning beep had changed to one long buzz.

He started snapping photos of the tube from 15 feet out. Now that he was close enough to touch the thing, he made sure to check his radiation level indicator every few seconds. The needle, which moved in relation to the amount of radiation coming from an object, was almost in the green zone of the dial-still far enough away from the red zone which would indicate that he was receiving too much of a rad dose.

He slowly danced around the tube, snapping pictures and memorizing its shape.

It was anchored to the cluttered canal floor by way of a concrete block and chain. Its form was smooth and seamless except for the small panel of three lights that was located at its midsection. Of the three lights - green, orange and red -only the green one was illuminated. Hunter was sure to get as many photos as possible of the panel display.

Then he put the stethoscope on the cylinder and listened for five minutes to the ominous sound of microcircuits whirring, humming and buzzing. Something electronic was alive inside the tube. And that was bad news . . .