The Balkan Assignment (21 page)

"He's aboard and the door is closed and latched."

I nodded and headed out onto the far runway, away from the main buildings, particularly the customs shed. Fortunately, this was a small airfield, more of an auxiliary field than anything else, and there was no radar, GCA or fog-dispersal equipment. If it snowed, everything came to a halt until it melted or was scraped away by a lone, jury-rigged farm tractor. Accordingly, I blasted the DC-3 straight down the runway and into the air. The radio remained blessedly free of identification requests. Airborne, I swung sharply around and headed out to sea, staying low to avoid the coastal radar net. I thought sorrowfully of Silvannia and the evening that would never happen. Klaus settled back and let his head sink down onto his chest, humming an old German children's song that was his favourite tune.

Rain streaked at us in long slashing streamers that set up a steady drumming along the metal fabric of the aircraft until she was vibrating with the force of the rain. The DC-3, being a lighter aircraft than the old PBY, rode the uneven air better than I had expected. This was the first time I had flown her in heavy weather, and I concentrated on familiarizing myself with her handling characteristics.

Mikhail stuck his head through the door after we had been airborne for an hour. He glanced around the dim, red-lit cockpit, saw that Klaus was asleep and retreated into the back without a word. I suppose that he thought he had found a new and temporary ally in Klaus, which was fine with me for the moment. I knew that it wouldn't last long no matter what happened.

By midnight, I was exhausted. There had been only a couple of hours of sleep the night before by courtesy of the storm and that damned Yugoslav patrol boat. I hadn't thought to bring along coffee and didn't know whether there was any left aboard or not. Finally, having Klaus comfortably asleep in the other seat was too much to take. I whacked him hard in the ribs which brought him upright with a grunt. He shook his head and glared at me.

"I would appreciate it if you would haul yourself out of that seat and go find out if there is any coffee available, before I fall asleep."

He muttered incoherently and struggled out of the seat and clomped to the back. I heard Mikhail's sleepy voice asking a question and Klaus's snarled answer. I just sat there grinning. The alliance was falling apart already.

I only wished there had been someway to contact Ley while in flight. Somewhere in Southern Europe he was still sitting by that radio waiting for a transmission that sure as hell was not coming, and I had no idea what he would think. Certainly he would know about the storm and if he was monitoring the police or marine wavelengths, and if he could put two and two together, would know that we had gotten hold of a boat and promptly been intercepted by Coastal Patrol. Details would be sketchy at best; he might not know about our escape or he might and assume that if I did not contact him within a certain period of time, that we had sunk in the storm. But, I doubted that he would give up without checking out every last possibility. Interpol routinely received stolen auto reports from all European member countries . . . I felt sure that they would also receive stolen aircraft reports. Sooner or later the report of the missing DC-3 would reach his desk, providing Pete did what I had asked, and he would be on the track again. And that would lead him to a dead end. Unless they had come up with some new wrinkles in radar monitoring that I did not know about, we were flying too low to be seen by the radar surveillance nets that monitored all military and commercial flights. Ley would have to search all of the hundreds of possible landing fields within the range of a DC-3 . . . some twenty-five hundred miles. Interpol was efficient, but not that efficient. By the time he located the landing field, we would be long gone, our tracks buried so deeply that it would take months of patient work to uncover another trail. Klaus would see to that.

I was torn, I admit, between Interpol and my own self. After all one million dollars has to be considered carefully. India might. not be such a bad place to live; it would be easy enough to lose oneself up near the Himalayan foothills where the uplands began to shade into mountain slopes. The pistol was nestled inside my shirt where I had transferred it from my coat pocket, and the .38 was safely hidden under the seat. I could, I think, have gotten rid of both Mikhail and Klaus easily .. . could have done it right then by putting the DC-3 on automatic pilot and stepping back into the cargo bay to shoot them both. But then I would have to dispose of the gold and that required an organization. The other problem was that I do not think I could have brought myself to murder, no matter how badly I wanted to.

No, I decided to play it straight . . . providing I could contact Ley. If not, well . . . that bridge would have to be crossed at the proper time.

Klaus came back into the cockpit with two steaming cups of coffee. We drank in silence for a moment. There are few things that I can remember having tasted as good as that particular cup of coffee. With the wind buffeting the aircraft and the rain hypnotically slanting against the windshield hour after hour, I was pretty well toward the edge. Klaus finished his cup and pushed it into the cubby hole under the seat for loose gear and sat back, folding his hands behind his head.

"How about letting me know where the hell we're going so I can set a proper course," I asked. "At this low altitude and these wind conditions, gasoline is pouring through the engines."

Klaus turned his head without moving his hands and stared at me. "This is difficult. I do not know how far to trust you," he said calmly, as if it were an established fact that brooked no argument.

His bald statement took me by surprise and it was a moment before I could come up with an answer.

"That's too damned bad, friend. If you can't trust me now, you never will be able to." Klaus nodded. "That is true, still, there are many questions."

"Such as?"

"Such as, how did Vishailly know where we were?" "Better to ask, how did he know what we were doing, and what we were after," I shot back.

"Did he know . . . ?" Klaus demanded sharply.

"Nuts," I snorted. "I suppose he just came out in the middle of the night and tracked us halfway around the island with a boat load of troops brought over from the mainland on the off-chance we were running in Japanese radios without paying duty. With thirty million dollars worth of gold somewhere under that mountain, anyone who goes near it is suspect. Since we arrived by aircraft with a half-phoney excuse about engine trouble, what would you think if you were Vishailly?"

"Yes, well that is all in the past now," Klaus sighed. "And you have to know where we are going because you are the pilot?"

"Hell, man, don't do me any favors just because you have to ..."

"What does that mean?" he demanded.

"It means that if you don't want me along, I'll find someplace to set this crate down, take my share and get lost. Then you and Mikhail can go to hell for all I care."

"That is obviously impractical for several reasons. We cannot afford to land anywhere and I could not replace you with a pilot who would . . . would . . ."

"Be trustworthy," I supplied sarcastically.

"All right then, trustworthy. You at least are a known quantity." Klaus sat up in the seat and pulled a map from his jacket pocket. He spread it on his knee and angled the red map lamp to light it. With a finger he traced a path from Brindisi deep into Egypt.

"This is our destination," he said. "A spot fifty miles south of Tunaydah in the El Wahat el Dakhla."

Oh brother, I thought, here we go again. This was obviously what Vishailly had meant by

"somewhere in Egypt".

Aloud, I said, "Just like that? How do we manage to avoid being shot down by Egyptian interceptors since we have no flight plan or visas for the country."

"Do not worry about that," Klaus smirked. "Everything is taken care of. You will be asked by Egyptian air defense to identify yourself when we cross the border. You will reply to the traffic controller that you are flying a special mission for the Egyptian Air Force and give him the code number 403-21. We will then have no further problems. Our destination is an oil drilling camp operated by Neufetzel, S.A. They are expecting us and can provide any of the facilities you may require."

So, I thought to myself, a German business concern was involved in spite of Ley's statements to the contrary. I wondered how many others in Germany had been bitten again by the fascist bug . . . or was this strictly a party Operation. The Egyptians had never put many restrictions

on ex-Nazis, so long as they left internal politics alone. A good many ex-Nazis had gone to Egypt from all over the world after Nasser took over in 1948. Many of them were combat troopers from the SS units with long experience, and the Egyptians had used them to train army commando units in the days before the Russians.

"Okay, then. It's up to you. Let me have the coordinates and we'll go upstairs and try and get out of the storm so that I can get some sleep."

"Sleep!" Klaus responded in surprise. "How can you sleep and fly at the same time?"

"Simple. 'If we can find clear weather, I'll turn on the automatic pilot. You sit here and watch the dials. If anything goes wrong, if the compass heading or the altimeter setting changes, wake me up."

"All right," he conceded reluctantly. "Then, we must follow air route UA-14." I looked at him in surprise. "You must be kidding," I laughed. "If we show anywhere in the vicinity of UA-14, the whole world will know we're the aircraft that left Brindisi three hours ago. Cairo control will notify the Italian authorities, and you can bet your bottom dollar that the Italian customs people will ask Cairo to scramble interceptors to force us down as soon as we reach Egyptian air space."

Klaus smiled. "Please give me credit for some intelligence. As you have already surmised by now, my organization for this project is quite a bit bigger than the three of us. Our flight plan has already been arranged. We will be logged only as a private aircraft on a filed flight plan from Rome. It took one phone call before I left your office." I didn't argue with him, just hauled out the map case that Pete always carried slung under the pilot's seat and rustled around until I found DOD Flight Information maps L-12 and 14. Pete was a member of the USAF Reserve and so had access to these world-wide maps published by the U.S. Air Force. They were a lot better for my money than the commercially available maps. For one thing, they were updated more frequently. As soon as we had left Italian air space, I had brought the DC-3 onto a southerly heading to parallel UA-14 air route at one thousand feet, but offset by fifty miles. By keeping my radio tuned to 122.4 kc, I was able to use

the faint signal from Brindisi control in conjunction with the compass to keep us on course. I had already passed two check points, altering course and radio settings successfully each time to pick up the next corridor until we had left the heavily traveled Athenai intersection well behind. Another three hours of flying would see us over Egyptian territory. In thirty minutes we would be crossing Checkpoint Mimi, marking the halfway point across the Mediterranean.

"We'll climb into UA-14 in about thirty minutes then. As soon as we hit the beacon I'll turn it over to you. We should be out of the storm by then and if any problems turn up, you can wake me."

Klaus nodded and I finished my coffee.

Klaus was right. No fighters rose to challenge us as we entered United Arab Republic air space . . . the jumpiest nation in the world when it comes to dealing with unidentified aircraft. They are known to shoot first and ask questions later. But we had sailed right in without a challenge.

By dawn I had recovered four hours of sleep. We had bored on into the night and now, just before dawn, before the sky to the east began to line its horizon with the red and gold trappings of sunrise, I was peering ahead into the velvet darkness of the desert night. We had passed over the scattered lights of Tunaydah some minutes before with Klaus searching the southern horizon for the lights of the oil exploration camp. The full moon was just touching the western horizon, but its cold, feeble light did nothing to help us at twelve thousand feet.

I checked the compass bearing that Klaus had given me once more, and we were smack on. If we didn't spot the lights in the next few minutes, I could then assume that we had missed the camp. I hadn't told Klaus, but we had just enough gas for a wide circle. Otherwise, down we went into some of the most desolate and inhospitable desert in all of North Africa. The country below us was fine, wind-blown and sand-dune country, mixed with occasional long stretches of coarse gravel marking the bed of some ancient, long, dry lake.

Klaus muttered something under his breath and leaned forward. "There, about twenty degrees to the left . . ." I did not see anything, but then, he had the glasses. I changed course accordingly, glancing anxiously at the fuel gauges at the same time. One tank was completely empty and the other was beginning to nudge over into the empty zone. Ten to fifteen minutes more flying time at the most, I guessed. Then I saw the lights. They lay clumped together in a semicircle that broadened outwards as we drew nearer. I throttled back and began to lose altitude until we were approaching the site at one thousand feet.

"Have you figured out how the hell I'm going to land this crate? We don't have enough gas left to wait for dawn."

"Yes. Fly in a small circle directly above the lights. On the first circle, turn off your running lights. Turn them back on for the second circle."

"Okay," I muttered. "I hope to God you know what you are doing because we have just about that much gas left."

Klaus ignored me and went back to studying the ground below. I tipped the wing down and dragged the DC-3 around in a tight circle, flipping off the running lights as I did so. Both engines wound up under the stress but I held the aircraft in a steep bank as we came around into the second orbit. The lights went back on and I straightened her out as we completed the last of the circle and headed north for a moment before turning east in a short circle that would bring us back across the camp below. As I swung out east, a series of tiny pinpoints of light began to blaze up, blossoming along a track that led straight off into the desert.