The Twisted Cross (23 page)

"You're right," he said. "You're absolutely right." "I will go back and tell the others!" one man announced. "I will tell all of them to get down here.

Now!"

"No!" Krupp yelled, turning on the lowly private. "No, you will all go back .

. . And each one of you will carry one ingot. We must show proof of this place. And while you are out there, you will radio headquarters and tell them to send the helicopters immediately, every one of them they can spare! And then come back down here and bring one hundred of the others. We will do this in shifts . . ."

Although the order didn't make much sense in a logical way, the troopers nevertheless rushed forward to grab one bowl of gold apiece.

"They are much heavier than I would have thought," one trooper said.

"The heavier the better," Krupp told him, the thought not entering his mind that the trooper would have to carry the 50 pounds of metal nearly a mile in the dark through the twisting, \ovg-ce\\mged ca^e.

The seven men, holding their gold ingots like children would hold large bowls of candy, each stepped through the opening and back out into the tunnel.

"And you, my colonel?" a sergeant asked. "You will carry two?"

"No," Krupp answered. "Someone must guard this place. I will stay here until you return."

The sergeant looked concerned. "And the woman, sir? shall we take her with us?"

Krupp turned and looked at her. It hadn't even entered his mind what to do with her.

"No," he said again. "She will stay here with me . . ."

"They were here," Hunter said, picking up a handful of dirt at the base of the grand pyramid of Coba. "Not too long ago . . ."

Brother David nodded in agreement, himself inspecting an area to the left of the pyramid. It had obviously been used as the Canal Nazis' mess area as it was strewn with hundreds of pounds of litter. "The Fourth Reich appears to be as messy as the Third one . . ."

Hunter walked over to the spoi. "I guess I'm not surprised that they wouldn't pick up after themselves," he said, looking at the mess. "What a bunch of fucking slobs . . ."

The ride from the Fighting Brothers' abbey to the ruins of Coba had taken just an hour by truck. Brother David and the commodore made the trip with him, along with a dozen of the biggest, toughest soldiers in the Order.

"The food they left behind has not been eaten completely," Brother David pointed out. "Maybe the animals won't touch it."

"Look over here," the commodore shouted at them, standing on the other side of the mess area. "Here was where they fueled their vehicles. See the oil spots?

Still moist. I say four weeks ago at the most."

"And they brought this fuel in by barrels," Brother David pointed out.

"Probably delivered to them by chopper . . ."

"Damn," Hunter spit out. "Four weeks is still long enough to leave a cold trail."

They walked the area three times, looking for any clues, any possible indications, of where the Canal Nazis had gone next. All that time, Hunter was working on a theory. After a while, he began to spell it out for Brother David and the commodore.

"Maybe it's too logical," he said. "But try this: We know they're moving by truck. Judging from those tire tracks, they look like R75-18s, I'd say they're driving ton-and-three-quarter rigs. Probably six-cylinder diesels. Fuel tank of, maybe, thirty gallons . . ."

"You have an idea, Brother Hunter?" Brother David asked.

"Well, what's the fuel range of a truck like that?" he asked. "I can't believe they get more than a. couple, three miles a gallon, loaded down. More likely two, don't you think?"

Both David and the commodore nodded in agreement.

"So, we assume they just fuel up at their next destination, as opposed to along the way. All we have to do then is figure out what their vehicles' fuel range is and look for the next logical Mayan site within that radius."

"Say no more, Brother Hunter," David said, his moon {ace brightening. "Chkhen Itza . . . That \s where they went, I'm sure."

Hunter recalled the name as another spot on his map. "It's about sixty miles from here, straight," he said. "How many by rpad?"

"Twists and turns, some mountains," Brother David said. "But no more than eighty-five miles . . ."

"My heart tells me this is where they are, Hunter," the commodore said.

Hunter nodded, still fuming at the extent of the desecration of the Mayan site. "Mine, too," he said.

Hunter took a few photos of the site and then they all loaded onto the truck and headed back to the mission, hoping to reach the abbey before dark.

He spent the ride back squeezed in the truck's cab between Brother David and the commodore. Not five minutes into the trip, Hunter heard the commodore commence snoring-he was fast asleep, using the hood of his monk's robe as a pillow. Brother David too was quiet, murmuring his evening prayers as he drove carefully and slowly along the jungle road.

Hunter used this quiet time looking at the photo of Sandlake's daughter, Elizabeth. It was almost spooky for him to think that she had been there, at Coba, fairly recently. If only time and space weren't so damned connected, he could have saved her. Now, he just had her photo. She had lovely features, pretty hair, pretty smile. And educated too. Someone he'd like to know . . .

"Hang on, Elizabeth," he thought, almost speaking the words out loud.

"Someone's coming to the rescue."

In the next instant he heard a tremendous crock! He looked up and found himself suddenly staring right into the bloodshot eyes of a man who had somehow jumped up onto the hood of the truck. This person had landed with such a thud, his face was pressed up against the windshield, grossly distorting his features. But Hunter recognized one part of his makeup. The man's head was shaved . . . "God help us!" Brother David yelled. "Skinheads!" In a split second, Hunter's M-l&was up and cocked. He squeezed the trigger and instantly both, tne windshield and the man pressed against it were blown away in a glass-splintering stream of yellow-red fluorescent bullets.

The commodore was awake in a shot, his pistol out and firing into the left eye of a Skinhead who had leapt up on to the truck's running board.

"Boot it!" Hunter yelled to Brother David. He could hear crashing and banging in the back of the truck as the soldier monk put the vehicle's accelerator pedal to the-floorboard.

In a matter of two seconds, Hunter was crawling over the commodore and out the door and onto the truck's running board. He picked off two more Skinheads who were clinging to the side of the truck's canvas covering, shooting blindly at the soldiers riding inside. Two more were following close behind the truck on a large motorcycle with a sidecar. Hunter sent a tracer barrage their way, causing them to veer across the road and fall back a little.

Hunter would learn later that the reason the soldiers riding in the back of the truck didn't respond quickly was that they, like Brother David, had been saying their evening prayers together, an act that called for them to put down their weapons, if only for the time being.

But now the soldiers realized they were being attacked and they all started firing out of the canvas covering at once. Confusion reigned as the covering was quickly shot away. There were a number of Skinheads who were actually hanging on to the top of the truck's roof.

With one hand locked around the commodore's arm for balance, Hunter leaned out of the truck as far as possible and opened up on the rooftop Skinheads. He got one in the legs, the burning tracer rounds scorching the man's knees and ankles to the extent that he fell over backward and was caught in the truck's frame. Hanging there upside down no more than three feet from him, Hunter got too upclose a look at the Skinhead. The man was wearing a black leather, cut-off vest, a camouflage T-shirt and regular-issue black jungle pants.

The 'Head actually smiled a toothless grin at him while raising his rifle to shoot. Hunter simply reached over and pulled on the man's collar, ripping him from the truck and throwing him to the speeding ground below.

Meanwhile another Skinhead had a bead on Hunter and was ready to pull his AK-47's trigger when suddenly the man's crotch exploded like a balloon filled with blood. The Fighting Brothers inside the truck were now firing their weapons straight up at the Skinheads on the roof, and this particular Nazi paid as a result. Hunter then turned his attention back to the motorbike, firing off a long spectacular barrage that surprised the driver. Instead of zigging, the driver zagged right into the deadly tracer stream and was blown out of the seat of the bike. Now driverless, the motorcycle careened off the road, slamming the bike's side compartment passenger full-force into the side of a large tree.

In the course of a few more seconds, the Fighting Brothers soldiers had shot off the four remaining attackers. Hunter continued to hang out of the truck cab as far as he could, checking the road behind them for any signs of vehicle pursuit. There was none. He climbed back inside the truck cab and settled down, much to the relief of the commodore who had been in danger of dislocating his shoulder while trying to hold Hunter steady during the action.

"Jesus Christ!" Hunter swore, the adrenaline from the brief but violent clash pumping through him at the speed of sound. "Excuse my language, Brother, but those guys are about the craziest fuckers I've ever run into!"

David looked into his rear view mirror and, upon catching a last glimpse of the smoke and fire left back down the road from the ambush, turned to Hunter and said: "Amen to that, Brother ..." /

Colonel Frankel had just finished his second cup of tea.

"So that's the story, Colonel," the High Commander was telling him. "We think that we may be able to make a deal with the United Americans and we think you're the guy who can do the job."

It had been a very strange few hours for Frankel. The High Commander, who Frankel thought looked like some pre-war American politician whose name escaped him, couldn't have been more congenial to him. He had systematically laid out nothing less than the Twisted Cross's entire strategic plan - from occupation of the Canal to the plundering of the ancient Mayan sites and everything in between, using several charts and an overhead projector to illustrate his talking points.

"It's all business" is what the High Commander had said to Frankel over and over. "The Canal, the revenues, the protection money we get from the surrounding countries, the gold recovery units out in the field. Even the gold panning operation. It all flows back to one thing: Business."

Frankel hadn't uttered a word once during the presentation. Instead he just sat back, amazed at the charts showing not only the Cross's troop strengths, number of airplanes, tanks, gun emplacements, and SAM sites, but also projections for the organization's expansion for the next year, the year after that, five years hence and a full decade in the future. By that time, the High Commander had made it quite clear that the Cross would be running the entire world.

A chart showing the Twisted Cross's projected revenues for the next five years wrapped up the presentation.

"We hope that, five years we'll have a gold reserve totaling one hundred and forty-one tons," the High Commander told him. "It will be at that point that every working country in the world will have to deal with us. Not as manufacturers or agribusinessmen, but as the world's financial brokers. When we control almost half the processed gold in the world, we'll control how much the rest of the world's gold is worth. So, Colonel Frankel, when you hear all this talk about 'The Cause' and 'Our Cause,' well, hell, now you know what we're talking about." .

Frankel was still speechless.

"And if anyone gives us any static," the High Commander went on. "And I mean at all, we come down on them like a ton of bricks. Because, along with our financial growth, we expect a simultaneous growth in our armed forces. If all goes according to the plan, the day we reach one hundred and forty-one tons, we will also have the world's largest standing army. Am I going too fast for you?"

"No, sir . . ." Frankel said, by-force of habit. "But if I may, where do the nuclear mines in the Canal come in?"

"Well, Frankel, they're our ace in the hole, you see," the High Commander answered. "They provide leverage. We want their existence to be the worst kept secret in the world. Get it? No one in this hemisphere will screw around with us if they know we've got this nuclear underwater capability thing. And once the economy really gets chugging in this part of the world, they'll be backed up and taking numbers-itching for a chance to get through the Canal.

"Of course we have a fall-back position. Should a hostile takeover seem imminent, well, we'll just pull the plug."

"Pull the plug, sir?"

"Sure, Frankel," the High Commander said, sipping a glass of mineral water. "I mean, push the button. Light 'em up. Liquidate our assets along with half of Central America, cut our losses and, well, start all over again."

"It is brilliant, sir. Simply brilliant . . ." Frankel heard himself saying.

"So, you agree then that we should move at a constructive, yet conservative pace for now?" the High Commander asked, walking over to the edge of his desk and sitting down. "That would be solidifying our position here in the Canal, working the Mayan sites, and keeping the United Americans at bay with some long, protracted -oh, what shall we call them? - discussions of mutual security interests. How does that grab you?"

The man leaned forward, eager for Frankel's reply.

"Brilliant!" Frankel repeated, not knowing what else to say again. "A very workable plan!"

The High Commander put his suit jacket back on and sat down behind his desk.

"Well, I'm glad to hear you say that, Frankel," he told him. "Because, for us to pull this off, we have to cut a deal with the United Americans, just to decoy them. And to do that, we have to send the right person to talk to them.

Someone who looks convincing, acts confident and knows how to deal."

The High Commander leaned forward on his desk for emphasis and smiled tightly.