The Twisted Cross (35 page)

Hunter put his still-smoking AK-4 muzzle up to the man's nose.

"Okay," he said. "Talk or we finish you right now . . ."

The man gulped hard. He was still shaking badly. "Jesus Christ, what do you want to know?"

"Did you fly that Hook here?" Hunter asked him.

"Yes," the prisoner answered immediately. "But I wasn't in on it. They made me fly them."

"Who is 'they?' " Brother David asked.

"This nutty colonel," the man answered. "Krapp or Krupp or something like that. I don't know, my base is in Panama. I was just assigned to blitz duty that day, right after they made the big gold find."

"Who else was with him?" Hunter asked. "The woman?"

The man shook his head. "Yeah, she was with him all right."

Hunter couldn't quite place the reason for the man's sudden insolent tone.

"And this guy, Strauberg?" the monk asked. "Him too?"

The man shook his head. "No, he's dead," he replied. "He went out the door at about four thousand feet."

"Where are they now?" Hunter demanded, pressing the gun muzzle in even closer to the man.

"They took a big plane out of here," he said. "They snatched two Afrikaner pilots at gunpoint and shot everyone else ... I got away after they made me load the gold on board their plane."

"Well, ain't you the lucky guy?" Hunter asked the man sarcastically. "You've dodged the bullet twice today."

"Don't blame me," the man said defensively. "This colonel is really nuts. He forgot I was even here. So I hightailed it into one of the buildings. Until your pals here found me."

He looked back out at the remains of the firing squad.

"I didn't mean nothing by that," he added quickly. "I don't give a flying fuck who you guys are."

"Hey, watch your language in front of the monk." Hunter said. "And listen up.

You better know what kind of airplane they took. Or you're going to need a priest -to bury you."

"Okay, okay!" the man said. "They've got a Fokker F-27M. It's an old cargo carrier these guys down here converted to an inflight refueler."

Immediately a profile of the airplane popped up in Hunter's mind: Pre-war West German manufacture. Two-engine propeller driven, converted medium-range airliner. About 300 mph as top speed. Max height at 30,000 feet. Most important, its range was about 2800 miles. With the extra gas on board for inflight refueling, the range might be up by another half or more.

Hunter put the rifle's nose right between the man's eyes. Unlike Jean LaFeet, this guy had no idea who Hunter was, and therefore had no doubt that he would pull the trigger.

"Okay," Hunter said to him. "The most important question of all: Where were they heading?" /

Despite the circumstances, the prisoner managed a smile. "That I know," he said. "And I'll tell you just like I told those guys over there before you iced them. But first we make a deal."

Hunter didn't want to quibble. "Tell us and you get to live," he snarled at the man. "How's that for a deal?"

"Just fine," the prisoner said. "Okay, they're heading for a place in Peru, called Nazca . . ."

"This is called 'appeasement!' " Masoni, the Radio CATS announcer said.

Cobra Captain Bobby Crockett shook his head. "Calm down, man," he said. "I don't make the rules."

Masoni looked over at his partner, O'Gregg, who could only shrug.

"I just feel like a traitor reading this," Masoni said. "I mean, we've been out here sucking jungle gas for almost two years, man. Do you know what that can do to you?"

Crockett held out his hands as if to say there was nothing else he could do.

"Orders are orders," he said.

It was almost midnight and the CATS clandestine radio station was about to go off the air and be moved to another location. But before that happened, there was another message from Washington that had to be read.

"Do you guys remember your world history?" Masoni asked Crockett and his gunner, John Hobbs. "Remember Munich? And Chamberlain waving that piece of paper that he and Hitler signed? 'Peace in our lifetime' is what he said. It was actually a sell-out! They sold the Czechs and the Poles down the river.

The Nazis ate 'em up for breakfast and the fucking world was at war two years later anyway."

"Things are different now," was all that Crockett could say.

"It's still called 'appeasement,' " Masoni repeated. "Dealing with the Nazis might be okay with you guys way up there. But how about us down here? The people who've been fighting those scumbags? And the people who live down here who

have lost people in their family? Who gives them a say in this?"

"Does this mean you're not going to read it?" Crockett asked him. "Because if not, I will."

Masoni let out a derisive laugh. "You know, I get a kick out of you guys," he said. "You fly around in your kick-ass machines like you're Batman or Robin or Green Lantern or someone. But when it comes down to dirty work, all of a sudden, there's no more capes and masks and derring-do, you know? We've been reading this bullshit over the air now day and night, thinking there was more behind it. But now I know who the dupes are. It is us . . ." *

He threw the piece of paper at Crockett and said: "So, sure, be my guest. Let the people down here get the news right from the source. Right from an authentic superhero. I want no part of it."

With that he got up and stormed out of the PDC.

Crockett picked up the paper, sat down and adjusted the broadcast microphone.

The song that had been playing was just finishing up.

"Turn it on," Crockett told O'Gre,gg, pointing to the microphone.

"Fuck you," O'Gregg answered him. Then he too stormed out the door.

Crockett flicked a few switches and saw a red light blink on. He knew from this the microphone was "live."

"To the people of Panama and surrounding areas," he began in a deep southern-tinged monotone. "Here is an announcement from the United American Army headquarters in Washington, DC.

"At six PM, eastern time today, an agreement was signed between the United American Army and the forces of The Twisted Cross. This agreement states that both sides recognize and respect the sovereignty of the other and that neither side will commence hostilities against the other for a period of five years, at which time this agreement will be renewed.

"This means for the people of Panama and for the people of North America that there will be no war. I repeat, there will be no war. Both governments wish to express the fervent

hope that peace will be a benefit to all whose interests lie in this important region.

"An official signing ceremony will be held in Panama City within forty-eight hours. Residents along the Canal and in the Panama City area are hereby notified that a twenty-four-hour curfew is in force in your area starting immediately. It is the responsibility of those listening now to tell any neighbors who don't have access to a radio. They should know, as should you, that failure to obey this curfew will be dealt with in the harshest means possible."

Crockett reached up, turned off his microphone and let out a long whistle.

"That was tougher than I thought," he said.

Hobbs fiddled with a few control buttons. "Should I put on a record?" he asked.

Crockett thought for a moment, then said: "Don't bother. I can't imagine anyone out there wanting to hear music right now."

An hour later, Mike Fitzgerald walked into Jones's Pentagon office.

The room was dark except for one dim lamp. The general was sitting behind his desk, no less than a hundred different documents piled in front of him.

Fitzgerald was struck by how old the man looked at that moment.

"Just got confirmation, general," Fitz told him. "The Tex-ans monitored the CATS broadcast. The word is out."

Jones wiped his face with his hands. "There's no turning back now, is there .

. ." he said.

Fitz shook his head. "No, sir, there isn't."

Jones sat up and shuffled some of the documents on his desk.

"No word from Hunter, I suppose?" he asked.

Again, Fitz shook his head. "No, sir. Nothing."

"Damn," Jones whispered. "This thing would have been a hell of a lot easier to do if he had been here . . ."

The southern coast of Peru is made up of a range of low hills that run north to south. Squeezed between these coastal highlands and the first steps of the mighty Andes is a long low basin called Pampa Colorado, or, to North Americans, the Plain of Nazca.

Nazca is a strange place -a mystical plateau that people were known to frequent as far back as prehistoric times. Most of the top covering material on the plain is made up of rocks, ranging in size from pebbles to good-sized boulders. These rocks, tumbling down on the basin through years of runoff from the Andes' foothills, were a strange shade of deep red-this the result of morning dew being burned off in the hot South American afternoons, thereby oxidizing the rocks.

But it was what lay underneath these rocks that made Nazca so odd. If one moved a rock or even scratched the surface under Nazca's top layer, they revealed another layer of fine-colored, almost luminescent soil beneath.

The archaeologists called it a "natural blackboard" and determined that Nazca had been like this for tens of thousands of years.

But these scientists weren't the first to discover this secret about Nazca.

Fifteen hundred years before, a group of people, their origin unknown, carved out huge drawings on the plain's surface simply by displacing the top covering of red oxidized rock and sand and revealing the luminous soil underneath.

This alone had taken great insight on the part of those unknown Peruvians. The people at Nazca "drew" animals - monkeys, spiders, eagles, lizards - thirty enormous drawings in all. And these were intersected and surrounded by literally miles of straight lines, criss-crossing back and forth over the plain. To say that it must have taken an enormous effort in manpower to "dig"

the figures and the lines would have been a gross understatement.

But it wasn't so much what the mystery people drew as to why, that had puzzled the experts ever Since.

Because, the simple fact at Nazca was that the drawings on the absolutely flat plain can only be appreciated when viewed from the air ...

Elizabeth knew the animal glyphs on the Uxmaluna gold ingots were the exact figures that were drawn on the Plain of Nazca. In doing so she had stumbled upon a startling "missing link" in the study of ancient peoples of Central and South America. That contact had been made between the mysterious people at Nazca and the Mayans, some 2500 miles to the north in Yucatan, was in terms of the accepted notions of archaeology, absolutely astonishing. The fact that the Nazca people had, for whatever reason, moved tons of pure gold over those 2500

miles to be hidden underneath the Grand Pyramid at Uxmaluna was even more mind-boggling. In her heart as a scientist, Elizabeth knew that should books ever be published again, then all the volumes on the Mayans and the ancient pre-Inca Peruvians would have to be rewritten.

But, sadly, other thoughts - deeper, darker-were circulating in Elizabeth's brain at the moment . . .

It was not lost on anyone inside the Fokker -not Krupp, or Elizabeth or the two captured pilots -that the Plain of Nazca, with its miles of straight lines, looked not unlike a present day airport.

The transport airplane had made the 2200 mile journey in less than eight hours

-good time considering that they had

to fly out and around Panamanian airspace, which added another 90 minutes to their trip. The pilot set the airplane down right near one of the drawings -

that of a monkey with a long, curlycue tail. The landing was rough, bouncing the airplane as its speeding wheels hit the loose red rock covering of the basin. But the Fokker had substantial short take-off and landing capabilities, and the pilots were able to stop the airplane in a very short amount of time and space.

Yet this didn't satisfy Elizabeth. She ordered them to taxi here and there, all the while checking their location in relation to the carved out figures and those on the ingots. Finally, she told them to stop and to shut down the engines. They had arrived.

Krupp was the first one to climb out. He was instantly hit with an extremely hot gust of wind, typical of the waves of heat that swept the plain. Elizabeth was the next to disembark. She was holding another gun by this time -a .45

Colt automatic. They were also able to get a half dozen AK-47s when they had first landed at the Guatemala City refueling station. It was one of these weapons that was used to kill the station's crew in the hangar where they dumped the Hook helicopter.

Elizabeth motioned for the tv/o pilots to climb out of the airplane also.

These men were, like so many of the scum roaming Central America these days, fascist South Afrikaners. Under different circumstances, they and Krupp would no doubt be allies.

But not now . . .

Before landing she had had the pilots circle the plain six times. This allowed her to match up the ground drawings with those on the ingots. Once this was done, she alone knew that the lines on the Plain of Nazca were not dug out at random or for some kind of religious reason. Actually, they were a very elaborate puzzle, the key to which could be found on the ingots. What she had read from those gold imprints was simply the code with which to figure out this puzzle. The prize for doing so was finding a treasure of gold at least twice the size of that which sat underneath the pyramid at Uxmaluna.

"You, bring the equipment," she ordered one of the pilots, flashing the Colt around with some authority. "And you, carry the water bags."

The pilots had no choice but to obey her. With Elizabeth leading the way, the foursome walked about 100 feet from the airplane. She held up her hand when they had reached a point just off one of the larger "runways." It was close by the only point on the entire plain where eight lines intersected. It was as simple as that.

"Dig," she said to the pilots. "Right there where all the lines meet."