The Twisted Cross (29 page)

"They're all along the riverbanks!" Brother David cried as I he crawled up onto the wing and into the compartment. He reached back out and lifted the commodore inside by the collar of the little man's jacket.

"They are millions of them!" the commodore cried out before he even hit the compartment's deck.

After taking another scan of the riverbanks, Hunter was almost inclined to agree with the commodore's estimation. Both banks of the river were crowded with the natives for at least a mile ahead.

"Jesus Christ!" he yelled. "Where the hell did everyone come from?"

He continued plowing down the canal, at times becoming airborne just for a few seconds to clear the occasional set of rapids. All the while, there was a steady rain of clunks on the airplane's outer skin, the result of the hundreds of spears being thrown at them. Most bounced off rather harmlessly, but Hunter knew that a spear in the wrong place could do a job on the Kingfisher's engine.

"I'd turn the gun on them," Brother David cried out, "but I can't bear to shoot them."

"I agree, Brother," Hunter yelled back to him. "After all, we were trespassing on their turf . . . Take pictures instead."

"Pictures?" the commodore asked. "Now?"

Hunter already had the small video camera up and turned on. He handed it the commodore. "Just press this button and point it out the window," he said. "We might be able to use the footage later on to figure out who these guys are!"

Timidly at first, the commodore held the camera up to the Kingfisher's canopy and started it whirring. There was no letup in the barrage of spears thumping on both sides of the airplane - if anything, it became more intense.

When one spear came within inches of crashing through the canopy, the commodore's career as a cinematographer came to an abrupt end.

"Cut!" he yelled out, ducking down and shutting off the < camera. "Cut . . ."

It didn't matter as the escape scene was drawing to a close anyway. Up ahead Hunter could see a large beam of light streaming through the jungle's green roof. It wasn't much of a hole, but it would have to do.

"Hang on, compadres!" he called out.

Having learned their lesson the last time, both Brother David and the commodore grabbed hold of something solid and became glued to it. Hunter

.gunned the Kingfisher's engine, pushing the throttle to the maximum. With an ear-splitting whine, he yanked back on the control stick. There was a rush of spray and smoke, then the seaplane roared up out of the canal and through the opening in the trees.

They were back down just twenty minutes later, Hunter finding a rare shallow lake about 45 miles from Chichen Itza. The plane was pulled to the shore and the commodore started a small fire and heated up some old coffee.

"Where did all those people come from?" Brother David asked. "They couldn't possibly live in the jungle around those ruins."

Hunter sipped the thick day-old coffee and shook his head. "No way," he said.

"They must have moved into the area after the Nazis moved out."

"Maybe they were ghosts," the commodore said in all seriousness. "The people from long ago, risen up to claim their

land back."

At that point, Hunter would have believed anything, including the rising of ancient Mayan spirits from the dead.

He walked over to the airplane and pulled out a long electrical extension cord. Then he retrieved the mini-video camera, plugged it into the cord and switched on the Kingfisher's auxiliary generator. A soft mechanical noise drifted out from under the engine cowling as electricity flowed into the video camera. Hunter then rewound the small video cassette, and with the other two leaning on his shoulders, they watched the playback of their escape on the tiny TV screen that also served as the camera's viewfinder.

"Look at them all!" Brother David exclaimed.

Sure enough, the replay clearly showed that there were many more of the mysterious natives farther back in the woods as well as on the banks of the narrow canal. But it was their style of dress that fascinated Hunter.

"Look at their get-ups," he said, freezing a random frame and pointing out the brightly colored feathers and body garments. "I tell you I have the feeling that they were there for some kind of ceremony. I mean, those outfits are pretty wild even for this nutty place . . ."

"Look!" the commodore said just after Hunter unfroze the video. "That one - is he dressed in a uniform?"

Neither Hunter or Brother David saw it on the first run. But turning the video back a way, they replayed it again. Sure enough there was a man who appeared to be wearing a uniform standing on the bank of the Canal with the natives.

Hunter froze the image and they studied the blurry frame. They couldn't key in on his face - the speed of the airplane and the resulting jiggling of the camera prevented that. But the uniform was more clearly defined. It was khaki in color and featured many pockets on the breast and sleeves. The pants were the same color. A holster hung from the waist and the man was wearing military-issue combat boots.

Hunter had seen this type of dress before. "It's a Twisted Cross uniform," he said. "Same as the jokers down in the Canal wear."

"Do you really think?" Brother David began.

"That this guy is a Canal Nazi, whipping up some locals?" Hunter filled in.

"No ... I don't think so. It's almost like that would be too convenient for us. Too easy an explanation . . ."

Hunter studied the ghostly image of the man in the uniform. He thought he could see some officer's rank emblems on the shoulders, but he couldn't be absolutely certain.

"Then what could the explanation be?" the commodore asked.

"I don't know," Hunter confessed.

It was a half hour before sun-up when Elizabeth left Krupp's command truck.

Remarkably, no one had come looking for Udet -yet. Those in the encampment just assumed the officer was deep underground in the gold chamber, and those in the gold chamber just assumed the officer was topside. The majority of soldiers in the recovery mission were more concerned about other things anyway. Half of the reinforced work party was involved in laying down a crude rail system that would, when completed, stretch from the entrance to the cave all the way down to the gold chamber itself. On these rails would ride small four-wheeled dumper cars, in which the gold would be placed and then moved from the chamber to the surface.

Those not working on this South African-designed system were laboring in the chamber itself. Marking each ingot, checking it for any inscriptions, weighing it and restacking it closer to the chamber entrance for easy moving to the mini-railway. In amongst all this was the TV crew, still trying to get a clear signal out to their dish and thus, back to Panama City. The problem was finding a still-functioning satellite in orbit off which to bounce their signal.

Also on hand were several of the High Commander's personal still photographers, they being responsible for recording the event in purely

"artistic" terms, and a slew of actual and make-believe Twisted Cross

"scientists," each one claiming to know more than the other about ancient Mayan sites

and how the gold happened to get so deep into the ground in the first place.

But in reality, only one person knew the true answer to that important question. And at that moment, she was calmly walking toward the gigantic Hook helicopter, Krupp at her side, struggling to carry the two inscribed ingots.

Just as Krupp had promised, the big Hook chopper was sitting at the far edge of the encampment, its generators turning, its engine just a pushbutton away from starting up. In its hold were five additional ingots - counting the ones Krupp was lugging, there were more than 350 pounds of pure gold in the chopper.

Elizabeth was the first to climb aboard. The pilot looked at her strangely, but the appearance of Krupp quelled his suspicions for the moment.

"Start the engines," Krupp told him. "We must get to Panama City immediately."

The pilot did as told, somewhat anxiously calling back over his shoulder: "Are we about to be attacked, Colonel?"

"No . . ." Krupp answered, adding hastily: "But this is an emergency."

The pilot continued preparing the big chopper for lift off, but still expressed concern. "My orders are to take off only if we are being attacked,"

he yelled over the growing noise of the copter's slowly-turning rotor blades.

"Has another aircraft been designated as 'the blitz?' "

"Well, of course," Krugg snapped at him. "Look out there, what do you see?"

The Hook pilot looked back toward the encampment and the grand pyramid. He saw dozens of people scampering around the cave entrance, technicians fiddling with the satellite dish, and scattered just about everywhere, at least two dozen Twisted Cross helicopters.

"Now get going!" Krupp screamed in the man's ear.

Convinced, the pilot pushed a few more buttons, threw a couple of switches and prepared to take-off. But just then, he saw a small figure running toward the aircraft.

It was Strauberg . . .

"Is Herr Strauberg also making the flight?" the pilot called back to Krupp, indicating the man running toward them.

Krupp froze; he had no idea what to do. Suddenly, the woman grabbed his shoulder and yelled close to his ear: "Let him come on board. He may be helpful to us."

"Yes, Strauberg is making the trip," Krupp instantly called to the pilot. "You can see he wants to lift off immediately."

It made sense to the pilot, so he actually pulled back on his control stick and lifted the big copter a few inches off the ground.

By now, Strauberg, his face red from a combination of anger, confusion, and just plain full-out running, reached the Hook's open door. He was screaming at the top of his lungs, but of course, no one could hear him over the enormous racket of the copter's now-whirring rotor blades.

In one swift motion, Krupp reached out and pulled the surprised Strauberg on board, yelling to the pilot to take off at the same time. The smelly little man found himself halfr way inside the copter, the vibrations of the old helicopter's take-off running through him like a dozen jackhammers.

"Krupp!" he was yelling, holding on for dear life as his legs were still dangling out of the aircraft's open door. "Krupp, pull me in, damn you!"

Krupp grabbed the man by the back of his belt and pulled him in another foot.

By the time Strauberg had rolled over and was up on his knees, the helicopter was 200 feet above the encampment and gaining speed toward the south.

Strauberg looked as if he were about to blow a blood vessel. "What the, fuck are you doing, Krupp?" he demanded in a voice so loud, it could be heard above the racket of the Hook's engines.

His answer was a pistol nuzzle in his face. Krupp was smiling at the Other end of the gun, and for the first time, Strauberg realized that Elizabeth was on board.

"Krupp! You fool . . . Turn this helicopter around!" Strauberg screamed. "This is desertion! You'll be shot!"

Suddenly a boot came out of nowhere and hit Strauberg hard along side of his head.

"Shut up!" Elizabeth screamed at him, kicking his face a second time. "We are in command here!"

The pilo^ was watching all of this over his shoulder, wondering what, if anything, he should do. Strauberg was a powerful member of The Party, but he held no rank in the army of The Twisted Cross. On the other hand, though Krupp was technically the pilot's superior officer, the man's actions were very strange at the least.

Caught in between, the pilot considered whether he should just stay smart and to keep his mouth shut, or speak up and ask what the hell was going on.

He decided to ask questions. But before he could get the first syllable out, Krupp had the pistol up against the side of his head. •

"Just shut up and fly!" the colonel yelled in his ear.

They were called the Tulum Dzibilchaltun.

Scattered throughout the upper Yucatan, they were tribes of rugged individualists-no more than twenty or thirty lived in the same settlement at one time. For years - centuries even -the Tulum Indians had kept to themselves. They avoided the so-called "civilized" areas of the peninsula and also the areas belonging to other Tulum tribes. It was not rare for first cousins to live just over the next hill from each other but never in their lifetimes meet.

When government-sponsored social workers came into the territory, most of the Tulum would simply melt away into the bush and wait for the strangers to leave. Those who did stay in the village would rarely talk to the outsiders, sometimes not even acknowledging their presence. It was in the makeup of the Tulum Dzibilchaltun to be left alone, a trait ingrained in them 1400 years or more before.

The Tulum were great believers in the underworld. Ghosts and devils were regular inhabitants of their everyday lives. They were also highly superstitious - a typical male of 30 years old would perform as many as 80 to 100 minor rituals a day, just to keep on the right side of the gods. They rarely carried weapons for anything more than ceremonial purposes-they were not meat-eaters, so they needed no clubs or spears or arrows.

Even in days past when battles would break out, their first line of weapons were nothing more than their eyes. The Tulum believed, with no small fervor, that by simply staring and thinking ill of an enemy, that enemy would be so af-flicted. It was an ancient form of mind over matter, one that for whatever reason, had worked for the Tulum. for more than a millenium.

But events had changed the Yucatan peninsula over the past season -invaders, more brutal, more destructive than the usual archaeologists, had appeared.

They had raped the land like no other conqueror since the Spanish. To these invaders, the Tulum did not exist any more than a barely seen set of pupils staring out of the woods and into the encampments in the dead of night, if at all.

It was these circumstances that led one Tulum village leader to take an unprecedented step. He walked over that nearest hill and asked to talk to that first cousin he had never met. Their discussion was about the new invaders, the ones who were desecrating the ancient sites at Coba and Chichen Itza. And these two men agreed something had to be done. So, together, they walked over the next hill, and spoke to that village's leader, and he went and talked to others, and they to others. And soon, all of the Tulum that were spread across the Yucatan knew that for the first time in 1400 years, they would gather and talk over what to do about the new invaders.