The Hydra Monster (8 page)

"Where are you going?" Gores wanted to know. The Phantom grinned and left them. ' Where's he going?" said the lieutenant again. "I'd guess," said Pronzini, "he's heading for Santa Florenza."

•J
''--F

CHAPTER TWELVE

Diana asked, "How long will you be gone?"

Setting his single suitcase down in the center of the living room of the borrowed house, the masked man answered, "I'm not certain, Diana."

She crossed to the bay window and stood watching the clear afternoon outside. "I'd like to come along," she said.

Joining her, he placed his hands on her shoulders. "I know you're capable of taking care of yourself in some pretty tough situations," he told her. "But I don't think you'd be safe in Santa Florenza. The devastation, the damage done by the quake, is massive. There's no way of telling whether or not there'll be other earthquakes."

"I know," the girl said out toward the afternoon. "I know."

"After a calamity of this size, with so many people killed and so many more uprooted, you've got the danger of disease and plague," he said. "Granted there are some precautions which can be taken, shots and such, but still . . ."

''It's not only the danger of quakes and illness." j Diana turned to face him. "You think Hydra may try to kill me if I go along to South America with ■;! you."

"They're a merciless bunch," he said. "With no
^!
more morals or ethics than the mythical monster ; they take their name from. In the few days I've ■ been on their trail, they've killed at least three men."

"And they've tried to kill you twice, Kit," Diana | said. "That's what concerns me. I don't know, I feel if I could be with you ... no, you're right. It's not safe, and I might get in your way, to boot."

The Phantom said, "I had to pull quite a few strings to get the powers that be to allow me to go into the quake zone by myself. I don't know if I could take you along even if I wanted to, Diana."

After a second, she said, "Is everything set for your chartered plane?"

"Yes, Devil and I are due out at San Francisco International Airport in two hours. The plane will set us down across the border of Santa Florenza. Then tomorrow morning, hopefully, a copter will come to take us to the temporary capital."

The dark-haired girl left the window, walked slowly toward the sofa, trailing her right hand along a lamp table as she passed it. "You really believe Hydra is operating down there?"

66

"I've been trying to remember something all morning," said the masked man. "Ever since I read the newspaper story about the quake looters. I even called a friend of mine with the local office of one of the wire services for more background on the scavengers."

"Have you succeeded in remembering?"

"Yes," he said. "It's something else from the Phantom chronicles. I wish I had them here to look for more details."

"You remembered reading about this particular kind of looter before?"

"They formed a special branch of Hydra, a cadre, an elite corps. One of my ancestors believed they might even be the controlling head, the central brain, of the entire Hydra monster."

"They wore black uniforms and had this V mark?"

The Phantom tapped the front of his scalp. "Each member of this particular Hydra faction shaved his head and had the V inscribed, permanently, there."

"What did the V stand for?"

"I recalled that on the way over here," he said. "It stood for Vulture."

"That's an appropriate name for looters," Diana said. Sitting on the edge of the sofa, she asked, "Do you think they're all coming back to life again . . . Hydra, all its branches, the Vultures?"

"I don't know, Diana. I hope to find out in Santa Florenza," he said. "Whoever's behind it, and for whatever reasons it's been revived, I have to crush Hydra."

"It has to be someone, or some group of people, with as detailed a knowledge of this particular branch of history as you have."

The masked man grinned. "I am something of an expert on the history of crime, now that you mention it."

"The piece of a letter you found in the factory last evening was signed with a V, didn't you say?"

"Right, and the memo made mention of V."

"Do you think V could be a single person, the one who heads this Vulture wing of Hydra?"

"A single individual, or a committee of them."

"How did they operate in the past?"

"According to the records left by previous Phantoms, there was always one man at the top."

"Perhaps, then, the same thing will turn out to be the case this time."

"It well could be." The masked man began to get into his covering civilian clothes.

"Maybe," said the girl.

"Maybe what?"

"Maybe when you return from Santa Florenza, we can have the vacation we're supposed to be taking."

"I guarantee it," the Phantom promised.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Santa Florenza is a country of some six million people. Its shape, on a map, resembles the lion in u box of animal crackers and it has an area of roughly 120,000 square miles. The little country lies on the Pacific side of the South American continent, between the equally small Ecuador and the considerably larger Peru. The capital city, liard hit by the recent quake, is Calavera, which bad a population of slightly over a million and a half. Santa Florenza's chief agricultural exports are coffee, cocoa and sugar. Little cattle raising is done, but some hogs and goats are produced. There is also some oil refining and, chiefly in the North, a flourishing textile industry.

Now that Calavera, the capital, is so extensively damaged, the offices of the central government have been temporarily moved to Lanza. This city of a half million is west of the capital, on the coast, and suffered much less damage. Half-way between Calavera and Lanza is the city of La Planta. La Planta houses the world-famous National Museum of Art. Over twenty five percent of its buildings were leveled by the quakes and nearly five thousand people died.

A jagged crack, several feet wide, runs down the principal street leading into La Planta from the hills beyond. The paving cobblestones are strewn everywhere, as though some huge beast erupted from below and tossed them every which way. A hospital stood at this end of the city and now, at dusk, men with cloth masks protecting their faces are still at work searching for bodies in the rubble.

A few brightly-colored birds, yellow, scarlet and green, are perched in the splintered, leafless trees which line the ruined street. From the direction of the hills comes a rumbling sound. The birds take flight, flapping up into the twilight.

The rumbling grows louder. Three heavy trucks, led by a dusty landrover, are rolling into the devastated city. They stop near the pole of debris which was once the hospital.

From the back of each truck climb men. It seems as though the same man is dropping down from the truck to the cobblestones over and over again. Because each man looks very much alike. Each is dressed in black . . . black riding pants, black boots, black tunic and high-crowned black sombrero. And each man has a similar expression on his face, a cold, detached look. They wear gun belts, with a revolver holstered on the right hip and a hunting knife on the left.

Every third man carries a submachine gun.

A dozen of the black-clad men wait at the trucks. The rest, thirty or more, move down the street.

A young man, working at the hospital ruins,

in dungarees and undershirt, lowers the cloth from his. mouth. "Look," he shouts. "Look, it's them!

The scavengers."

Three machine guns sound and he is cut down

dead.

The scavengers continue their march.

The National Museum of Art is in the next

block. Four members of the Federal Police, all that can be spared at the moment, stand guard in front of the cracked, marble steps. Two local policemen are inside.

Only one of the soldiers is able to draw his pistol before they are all gunned down by the machine gun fire of the advancing scavengers.

One of the men on guard inside manages to run, making his escape out a side window. His partner is killed inside the front entrance, near the statue of one of Santa Florenza's great liberators.

The men in black work quickly, fanning out through the domed rooms of the museum. Those without machine guns do most of the looting work. They use their knives to slash paintings from their frames, the butts of their pistols to smash in the glass of gem cases.

The entire raid takes under nineteen minutes. Then the trucks, loaded with the treasures of the museum, back up and wait for the landrover to turn around. They swing around after it and roar out of La Planta.

No one at the hospital tries to stop them. No one there says anything this time.

After a few moments, the last of the daylight

is gone. The bright birds come back to roost in the trees.

Captain Jose Silvera Miranda of the Federal Police was a tall muscular man of thirty-five. He had a small moustache and dark, curly hair. He was standing before a gilt-framed mirror in his temporary office in Lanza studying his hair. There was a power shortage and so the lamps didn't shine as brightly as they should. Even so, Miranda was certain he detected two grey hairs at his left temple.

He returned to the long carved dining table he was using as a desk to search for a pair of tweezers.

Someone knocked on the door.

"Come in," invited the captain.

"Any details?" asked the blond, young man in casual American clothes who came sauntering in.

"Details about what, Senor Sumter?"

Gig Sumter said, "The latest outrage."

Lowering himself into the padded, antique chair he was using as a desk chair, Miranda said, "There are a great many outrages going on in my country at present. Be more specific, Senor."

"I mean the scavenger raid on the La Planta museum."

The captain blinked. "They've struck at the museum?" He stood up. "How do you know this?"

Sumter perched on the edge of the long table. "My stringer in La Planta phoned me at my hotel over a half hour ago."

The captain snatched up the phone. "Put me

through to DaCosta in La Planta," he ordered. "How long ago did this happen?" he asked the blond, young man.

"Couple of hours," answered Sumter. "Right about sundown. The scavengers came into town in a half dozen big trucks, shot down anybody who moved and then walked right into the museum. Grabbed everything of value, including the Velasquez, the two Degas and that handsome Cellini teapot or whatever it is."

Miranda talked to Lt. DaCosta for a few minutes and hung up. "He was just going to call me," he told Sumter as he sat down again.

"You should have the kind of stringers
N
EWS
M
AGAZINE
does."

"I should have your budget."

The young magazine reporter noticed a cablegram on the table and read it upside down. "Who's this guy Walker?"

"Who?"

Sumter tapped the upsidedown message with his forefinger. "It asks you to give every courtesy to a Mr. Walker, who's due to arrive in Santa Florenza tomorrow morning. I don't recognize the name. He's not a reporter, is he?"

"I'm not certain who he is," replied the captain. He ran a thumb over the brass buttons on the front of his green uniform jacket. "I do know, however, that he has some very influential friends."

"Oh, so?"

"Yes, so."

"Like who?" "You'll have to wait until Senor Walker arrives and ask him yourself."

"Is he coming down here because of this scavenger business?"

"That I don't know," said Miranda. "Perhaps he's a another representative of a United States charity organization."

"They would have said that in the message," Sumter pointed out. "No reason to be mysterious about the Red Cross or UNICEF." He slid off the table and wandered around the living room office. "What did DaCosta have to say about the raid?"

"What you already know."