The Twisted Cross (31 page)

Krupp had also been monitoring the chopper's radio, listening for any report of them stealing the big Hook. But he heard nothing more than the routine chatter. As far as he could tell, the people back at Uxmaluna didn't even know they were missing-yet.

Krupp wrestled with a map, trying to fix their approximate location.

"I'd say we are five miles north of Coban," he said finally. "That means we are still about one hundred miles from Guatemala City."

Krupp knew they could get fuel in Guatemala City - you could get anything in Guatemala City. It was a regular refueling stop for all the Twisted Cross choppers transiting from Panama to the Yucatan and back. But at the chopper's current rate of speed, which was approximately 180 mph, and its remaining fuel, the calculations said they would wind up some 10 to 15 miles short of their goal.

"How can we make sure we get to Guatemala City?"

Krupp asked the pilot, nudging the man's ear with his Luger. "Will flying slower help?"

The pilot shook his head, feeling the cold sting of the pistol's muzzle against his neck as he did so. "No," he answered. "Flying slower actually uses more gas."

He pushed the pistol further into the man's ear. "Tell me how we can make it,"

Krupp said nervously. "There's got to be some way."

The pilot turned and gave him a gruesome smile. "There's only one way to do it," he said. "Lighten the load."

Krupp stumbled over a few words, but then realized exactly what the pilot was talking about. There were more than/ 350 pounds of gold in the Hook's cabin.

Getting rid of some or even all of it would mean they'd made it to Guatemala City.

Krupp returned to the rear of the chopper cabin to tell Elizabeth the bad news. But when he arrived there, he was stung by what he saw.

Not only was Strauberg untied, his pants were down around his knees. He was stretched out on a fold-down bench seat arrangement, his eyes closed^ his face red. And for the first time that he could remember, Krupp actually saw a smile on the creepy little man's face.

Elizabeth was on her knees beside the bench, her back to Krupp. She was fooling with her hair - apparendy she had tied it up in back and now was letting it down again. She stood up and turned around and when she did so, Krupp could see that Strauberg's private parts were exposed.

"What . . . what is going on here?" Krupp managed to yell above the thunderous din of the chopper's engines.

Elizabeth looked up at him, a strange smile spreading across her lips. Her shirt was unbuttoned all the way again and the top buckle of her pants was undone. It was obvious that she had just performed a sex act on Strauberg.

"What are you doing?" Krupp blurted out.

"Does it bother you?" she asked, stretching to reveal her beautiful bare breasts to him.

"Well, of course it does!" he exploded, noticing that her lips and mouth were extra moist.

She just laughed in his face, sat down and continued fiddling with her hair.

He felt as if his chest was about to cave in.

"We have a problem," he told her after a few moments. "We might not make the refueling station in Guatemala City."

She looked up, mild surprise on her face. He explained to her what the pilot had said. They were flying too heavy.

"He says the only way to make it is to lighten the aircraft," Krupp told her, eyeing the seven gold ingots, neatly stacked beside her.

"You are crazy," she told Krupp. "Don't even think about throwing them out."

"But why not?" he asked. "If your interpretations are correct, there'll be plenty of gold where we are going."

She shook her head and told him: "You just never get the message, do you?"

Then she got up and walked ahead to talk to the pilot.

In the meantime, Strauberg had sat up and was adjusting his pants. He had been listening in on their conversation. His eyes caught Krupp's and the two men stared at each other with equal amounts of embarrassment and hate.

Krupp started sweating. "When was the last time you took a bath?" he asked Strauberg the question that was on the lips of everyone who met him.

Strauberg took the comment like a knife in the heart.

"You know nothing about commitment!" he screamed at Krupp. "Or dedication. Or loyalty. I have served my High Commander faithfully - twenty-four hours a day.

I cannot let my own personal interests interfere with that!"

Krupp began looking for the rope with which to retie Strauberg.

"This is a fool's errand you are on, Krupp," Strauberg said acidly. "Do you actually think you won't get caught? Do you actually think you can get away from The Party. Or the Skinheads?"

The last comment ran a bolt of panic through' Krupp; the Skinheads were well known for their tracking abilities as well as their notorious interrogation techniques.

"You're out of your league, Krupp," Strauberg continued, with a snide laugh. "What kind of fool would actually consider getting rid of all that gold?"

Krupp sat down and tried to ignore the man.

"What did she promise you, Krupp?" Strauberg asked him. "A house in the mountains?"

"Shut up, you fucking weasel," Krupp yelled at him with all the gumption he could muster. "She's none of your concern."

Strauberg put his hands between his legs and made an exaggerated motion as if he were adjusting himself.

"She is now . . ." he said.

Krupp had the pistol up and pointing at Strauberg's temple before he even knew it. '

"I'll blow your fucking head off," he hissed at the little man. "You'll get yours just like Udet got his."

This statement gave Strauberg pause. "You want me to actually believe you killed your superior commander, Krupp?" he asked sarcastically.

Krupp didn't reply.

"You don't have the guts," Strauberg taunted him. "Not for that. Not for handling that gold. And certainly not for handling that woman."

Krupp drew back the hammer on the pistol.

"And you don't have the guts to shoot me either," Stauberg said with another snide laugh.

Krupp took aim. His finger felt the cold steel of the trigger. One squeeze away from eliminating yet another problem.

"Stop!"

They both turned and saw Elizabeth standing at the door to the rear compartment, next to the open cargo hatchway. The wind flooding into the chopper was blowing her hair around, making her look like a wild woman. It was also flapping her still-unbuttoned shirt.

"I've just talked to the fueling station in Guatemala City," she said to both of them. "We're ditching this helicopter and chartering an airplane."

Krupp was extremely upset that she wasn't talking directly to him. It was as if Strauberg was now in on their plan.

"But what about our fuel in this aircraft?" he asked, trying to appear that he had some control over the situation. "How

are we even going to reach Guatemala City?"

She walked over and took the pistol from him. "You know the answer, Colonel,"

she said. "The pilot said we must lighten the load."

Krupp was suddenly paralyzed with fear. "How . . . how do you intend to do that?" he asked, literally shaking in his boots. "We must throw out the gold?"

She walked back to the door entrance and motioned Strauberg to stand beside her. Then she turned the gun on Krupp.

"I still can't believe how stupid you are, Colonel," she said, putting her arm around Strauberg's waist. "All that time while you had me locked away in those caves, I thought at least you had some brains. I thought you were as calculating as all real Nazis are.

"But you disappoint me. You're actually very spineless. You have no appreciation for the finer things. You have no idea about the beauty of gold, and what it can do for you. And you are carrying so much sick and emotional baggage, I don't know how you can sleep at night."

She had the gun up and pointing at him. "And," she said with a pitying shake of head. "We do have to lighten the load."

She looked at Strauberg and smiled. Her free hand reached down between his legs, causing him to catch his breath.

"A little while ago, was it good for you, baby?" she cooed, her tongue flashing out and dramatically licking her lips.

"Oh, yes," Strauberg replied, the excitement welling up inside him.

"Do you want it again?" she asked, continuing to fondle him.

"Oh, yes," he exhaled. "Very much . . ."

She smiled and backed him up right against the cabin wall, all the while keeping one hand between his legs, the other holding the gun on Krupp.

"Do you think you can take it again? So soon?"

"Yes," Strauberg replied, now almost breathless. "Yes!"

She turned and smiled at Krupp. "Now pay attention, Colonel," she said. "Watch how I take care of a real man . . ."

With that, she grabbed Strauberg's belt buckle and in one swift movement, flung him out the open hatchway.

Krupp was stunned as Strauberg seemed to hang in midair for an instant, a look of pure, unadulterated horror on his face.

Then the outside pressure sucked him out and down. Even over the racket of the helicopter's blades, they could hear his terrified screams.

It seemed like a very long time before they finally died away . . .

It was noontime, but Hunter couldn't go to sleep.

All three of them on the Kingfisher had been up for 36 hours and now that there was some relative peace - floating in the middle of the Casa Casa canal, more than a hundred Tulum ceremonial warriors watching over them - he thought it would have been a good idea for them to get some shuteye before moving on.

He was wrong-at least in his case. Brother David was curled up at the far end of the fueselage compartment, lying in a position of peaceful repose. The commodore on the other hand was swinging in the midsection hammock, snoring loud enough to actually wake up some long-dead Mayans.

But for Hunter, stretched out in the crawl space just under the Kingfisher's pilot seat, sleep would not come.

Where is she? a voice inside him kept asking.

The irony of the question was not lost on him. In the past four years, he had heard it literally thousands of times. But then, he was wondering about Dominique.

Now he was wondering about this woman, Elizabeth.

He pulled out her photo and studied it for at least the 200th time in the past few days. Did his heart really skip a beat every time he looked at it? Or was it just his imagination? Was he being seduced by a simple photo? By her beautiful features? Of course not, he answered the inner voice. After all, he was a rational person. Calculating was a better word for it. It was demanded by his profession as a fighter pilot. Calculating, rational people didn't fall for women they've never met . . .

Did they?

Where is she?

Did his current situation -or better put, non-situation - with Dominique have anything to do with this? Had he really lost her for good? To a cult, of all things? Would she get his letter he left behind in Montreal? Would it make a difference?

Where is Elizabeth? Right now'' At this moment?

He tapped his breast pocket and felt the flag he also kept there. But he just couldn't bring himself to pull it out, unwrap it and look at Dominique's photo. What the hell was going on with him? Pining over photos of women? Had it really come to that? '

Was she safe? Was she even alive?

He shook away that disturbing thought -he knew she was still alive. Every sense in him told him so, and he had learned long ago that he, more than anyone, should trust his instinct. He tried to put his mind on the business of going to sleep. He still had work to do. He had to catch up with those Canal Nazis and soon. He had no idea just exactly what was going on up in Washington or down in Panama. Quite rightly, he felt like a man caught in the middle. And he knew that his overactive imagination had a tendency to take off on him -

sometimes with all the finesse and control of a runaway locomotive.

Will you kiss her when you finally find her?

Yes, work-that was the key! Finding the woman Elizabeth was acutally an intricate part of his job -her scatter-brained father was undoubtedly twisting some what-zit and powering up some doo-dad back in DC, getting that damn deactivator in shape. Then the real work would begin. And when the job was finished, he would go and find Dominique even if it meant he had to climb the Goddamn Canadian Rockies to do so. And he would hold her. And love her. And dream of her . . . Not some dame he'd never met.

And if he just kept on telling himself that, he might even start to believe it.

Three hours later, they were airborne. 281

It had taken a while to get understandable directions from the Tiilum on how to get to the aptly-named hidden valley of Uxmaluna. Even the Tiilum who could speak English had a hard time pinpointing exactly where the place was located.

Those ceremonial warriors who lived near the valley and who had journeyed to Chichen Itza from there, traveled only jungle routes - snake-like passageways through the dense forests that were invisible from the air and therefore of no use to Hunter as navigation points.

But finally, after much discussion back and forth, Hunter thought he had a fairly good idea where to find the hidden valley of Uxmaluna.

They took off to the cheers of the 650 ceremonial warriors, who threw feathers at them this time. Their departure was duly recorded by the commodore on his new toy, the mini-video camera. Brother David had accepted a large basket of food from the Tulum for them to eat on the way. After throwing out anything he'd never seen before, the three of them feasted on apples, dried corn, and some almond-like nuts dipped in honey. The smell and stickiness of this last treat reminded Hunter of the repugnant Jean LaFeet. Where was that slob of a human being now? he wondered. Chowing down in a prison cafeteria somewhere?

Then his thoughts drifted back to old Captain Pegg-he hoped the old sea coot was recovering all right. From there he found himself thinking about Jones and Ben and JT, Fitz and the others. What the hell were they all doing right now?

Still preparing for war?