The Twisted Cross (38 page)

explosives and their detonation being their specialty. They had been training for an undercover terrorist campaign soon to be launched against the Kingdom of Brasilia in retaliation for non-payment of debts. But then the call came all the way down from the High Commander himself, so the next thing the 'Head commander knew, his unit was jumping with full packs onto some barren dust bowl in Peru with orders to track down a wacko Cross officer who murdered his commanding officer ' and a woman who may or may not be his accomplice. It was not exactly a situation best remedied by a bunch of explosives experts, so he could understand how the majority of his troops would be a little disorganized at first.

As soon as the entire two dozen of his troop were gathered around the hole, he ordered them in. "If you find the woman, take her alive," he told them.

"Everyone else gets greased." The Skinheads responded with a particularly rabid chorus of "Yes, sir!" then, one by one, they lined up to go through the hole and into the tunnel.

But their shortcomings in equipment and training soon became apparent. First, each was loaded down with a full pack of explosives and detonators, and a rifle and full ammunition supply. The load of bulging equipment made it very difficult for each soldier to fit down the narrow hole in the limestone cap, but it was a canon of military practice that every soldier goes into every situation with the equipment he was trained in.

The next problem, as it turned out, was that only one Skinhead in three had a flashlight. So they had to organize in the near-dark into groups of five and proceed slowly down the pitch-black cave.

It was time wasted by the Skinheads - time that would give Hunter the breathing space he needed . . .

Hunter and Elizabeth made it back down to the chamber's portal in barely 20

minutes, running full out the whole way.

She was close to going into shock at this point, so Hunter put her against the wall 50 feet beyond the entranceway to the chamber, and took her bootlaces.

He had a plan, but it was based on one important assumption: that was that even a repulsive Skinhead would stop and gawk at the immense gold chamber.

Running back to the chamber entrance and using Elizabeth's already dimming flashlight, he took his HE grenade and tied it to the Super-Frag with half a piece of the bootlace. Then he placed the double-bomb just inside the chamber's portal, behind a cracked piece of limestone.

Next, he took his flash grenade, and using another bootlace, rigged it with a long pull cord and placed it just outside the entrance. Finally, he double-checked to make sure that his M-16 was properly loaded.

Then he hunkered down beside Elizabeth, pulled down his NightScope goggles and waited, hidden in the dark.

The first team of Skinheads arrived ten minutes later. One man holding a flashlight, four others huddled around him. Through his infrared vision, Hunter could tell right away that these 'Heads were out of their element. The heavy packs, the lack of illuminating gear, their cautious means of approach.

He had no idea what they were carrying or even what their specialty was. But right away he knew someone had made a big mistake sending these guys into the tunnels.

The enemy soldiers found the chamber and, as Hunter knew they would, stepped blindly through the portal. He heard their shouted exclamations as they found the bodies of first Krupp, then the Afrikaner pilot, then the gold.

Another group of five materialized out of the inky darkness. They too moved as if they were stepping on glass with bare feet. And like their comrades, they were also sucked into the gold chamber like bugs flying into one of those strange meat-eating plants.

A third and fourth group appeared soon afterward, and they automatically joined the rest in examining the bullion.

Throughout it all he could hear the refrain of "oohs" and "ahhs," as well an occasional "Damn!" One man called out: "Look at all this fucking gold!"

Hunter could also hear the senior man of the enemy soldiers bark out a couple of orders having to do with searching the bodies. It wasn't long before this officer was convinced that he had at least partly completed his mission: that was, finding the homicidal Colonel Krupp -dead or alive. In this case, very dead.

But if only he knew who popped the unit's advance scout back at the hole to the tunnel . . .

Suddenly there was a crash and an intense flash at the • entrance to the chamber. It was so bright, it blinded most of his troops, their retinas already wide-open in the low light of the cavern.

"Down!" the officer yelled. "Everyone down!"

There was a collective thump as the 20 Skinhead troopers hit the floor of the gold chamber, extinguishing their lights in the process.

"Anyone buy it?" the officer called out in the darkness.

Several men answered back "no,"-then another called out: "It was only a flash grenade."

"Okay, maybe it was just a leftover booby trap or something," he said.

They lay there in silence for five long minutes.

Then the officer in charge spoke. "Everyone stay down," he ordered. "We're going to crawl out of here, nice and slow, back up the tunnel fifty paces, with no lights. Got it?"

There was a round of "Yeah," and slowly, the Skinheads started to back out of the pitch black chamber and into the even darker tunnel.

Hunter waited until half of them were out before he detonated the double-bomb

. . .

Four Skinheads and their overall commander had stayed on the surface of the plain, guarding the entrance to the tunnel.

For them it seemed like an especially long wait - they had no way of knowing that their comrades had found the gold chamber and the two bodies, because none of the troops carried radios. This was because, like all modern-day sappers, they knew that a wrong signal from a radio could set off an explosive's detonator.

So the five Skinheads on the surface were waiting nervously while their main force was roaming around in the unknown underground. Just 100 feet away sat the Fokker airplane - they had already checked out the body lying in its cabin. Another half mile beyond that was the unmarked AV-8B Harrier jumpjet.

Just who that belonged to was unclear.

The sun was getting hotter on them and with each minute, the apprehension grew. The commander gave his four men permission to remove their packs as well as their standard-issue sleeveless black leather vests. The officer himself had just sat down and taken his jump helmet off when he thought he felt the ground rumbling. He stopped scratching his micro-inch hair cut and looked around.

"Does anyone feel that?" he asked.

But no sooner were the words out of his mouth when the whole ground started shaking for real. Then there was an enormous explosion, followed by a series of secondary bangs. Then, a whole section of the desert 100 feet from them suddenly blew up into the air in a tremendous burst of searing-hot red and orange fire.

Through the intense smoke they could see the Fokker suddenly disappear into the crater still being formed by the explosion. Two more blasts followed, opening up two smaller holes near the larger one. Then there was another. And another.

That's when it dawned on the commander.

"Jesus Christ!" he cried out. "It's a chain reaction. They're blowing themselves up down there!"

The explosions continued while the five Skinheads could only stand with their guns ready, feeling pathologically helpless.

Suddenly someone was firing on them, with tracer rounds yet! They took cover behind the mound of cleared-away dirt near the entrance to the tunnel, looking every which way for

the source of the incoming tracer fire.

It didn't dawn on them until two of their number had been picked off that the shooting was coming from the still violently smoking crater.

"Charge him!" the Skinhead commander ordered his two remaining soldiers.

Without a moment's hesitation, the two Skinheads leapt up and ran full speed toward the crater, screaming wildly as they fired their weapons. They were cut down in three seconds by a withering barrage of tracer fire.

Now it was the 'Head commander who froze. He saw first one, then two figures emerge from the smoking crater and run toward the Harrier jumpjet. He didn't follow-he had only a sidearm, and he had to stay by the tunnel entrance just in case some of his men made it through the earthquaking series of explosions.

Or so he told himself.

The Harrier was taking off before the commander was convinced that none of his troopers were coming back. His unit had failed miserably, thanks to the man piloting the jumpjet, he was sure. Just how the mysterious pilot with the tracer ammunition and the person with him survived the hell of blasts from below, the Skinhead officer never found out.

The Nazi commander could only watch as the Harrier gained altitude, and then, in a push of a button streaked off to the north, leaving him with no food, no water and no protection out in the fatal heat of the Peruvian sun.

The 737 airliner and its five F-4 Phantom escorts entered Panamanian airspace just after 0900 hours.

As agreed, a strict radio silence had been maintained by the aircraft since it left Washington, DC seven hours before. Now that it was only one hundred miles away from its destination, the only contact between the aircraft and the control tower at the Panama City airport was a corresponding electronic acknowledgment of its IFF identification signal.

The mood at the airport itself was one of frenzied festivity. In a matter of 48 hours, the place had been transformed from a gray, dull military installation to one festooned with multicolored banners, posters, streamers and even a few balloons. A large wooden platform had been hastily erected at the end of the airport's central runway and seats for 80 people nailed down.

An improvised sound system, complete with more than a dozen Marshall "stack"

amplifiers bordered this reviewing stand on three sides. Two lecterns, each covered with a gaggle of microphones, were set up in front of the gallery and these were surrounded by no less than 20 video and film cameras, all of which would record the historic signing ceremony.

Off to the side, a helipad had been installed. This would serve as the landing area for the High Commander, who would chopper over from his skyscraper headquarters at the proper time. And in an effort to play down the militaristic aspect of the ceremony, the only soldiers present were dressed in formal starched white Twisted Cross uniforms.

Having little experience at these things, the staff of The Twisted Cross High Command had agreed to the suggestion that the protocol necessities be handled by the United Americans. To this end, there were telexed a schedule of events the day before, a timetable which was copied over and over and distributed to the 40 top Cross military dignitaries lucky enough to be tapped to attend the signing ceremony.

This schedule was as follows: Once the airliner landed, it would roll to the end of the central runway and wait until its escort completed a ceremonial flyby formation of the airport. At that point, another aircraft, this being a C-141 cargo ship carrying support personnel for the United American signing delegation, would land and take its place beside the 737. Then its accompanying escort, made up of 12 United American jet fighters, would perform a ceremonial flyby.

At this point, the 737 and the C-141 would taxi over to the reviewing stand area, officials of the United American delegation and their support people would disembark and be greeted by their counterparts in the Twisted Cross delegation. Simultaneously, the combined F-20 and F-4 escort flights would fly over in a "linked formation," an aerial symbol of the new-found cooperation between the United Americans and The Twisted Cross.

Then die signing ceremony would begin . . .

The 737 appeared over the airport 15 minutes later. It circled the airport twice, then came in for a routine landing. As planned, it followed two ground support trucks to the end of the central runway, where its pilots would cut back its engines to idle and wait.

This done, a low-level Twisted Cross functionary named Klapk climbed aboard the airplane for a strictly-meaningless landing rights documentation. Once aboard he quickly took in the scene inside the airliner's cabin. All of its 212 seats were filled with members of the United American delegation-some in military dress uniforms, most in simple suits and ties. There was much luggage about -Klapk knew that many in the UA delegates had accepted the High Corn-341

Commander's invitation to stay on in Panama for several days as part of a

"working vacation."

Klapk then visited the flight deck where he was greeted by members of The Twisted Cross flight crew and a corresponding number of UA pilots. Klapk was struck by the fact that both sides were getting along very well with each other-almost like they .were all longtime friends. It was at that moment that Klapk felt the Mutual Security Pact between the Twisted Cross and the United Americans would be a workable agreement.

Just as Klapk was leaving the airliner, the five Twisted Cross F-4 Phantom escorts flew over in formation, the first pass of their ceremonial flyby. Off in the distance he could see the smoky brown trails of the huge UA C-141

support craft descending for a landing. Somewhere a band started playing and a couple dozen balloons were released. Even a dullard like Klapk could appreciate the gaiety of it all.

A half mile from the reviewing stand, the dozen or so technicians working inside the "Snowball" - that was the airport's sophisticated South African-made flight traffic control radar station - picked up the 12-aircraft United American escort formation right on schedule. Their crew chief passed this information on to the airport control tower, and then he told his workers to relax - for them, the hard part of the day was over.

The UA F-20s streaked over the airport, flying in three, four-point diamond formations. The Twisted Cross dignitaries, already seated in the reviewing stand, craned their necks and shielded their eyes in an effort to watch the high-tech Tigersharks flyover.