Alpha Threat (25 page)

She dealt with threats to this dream ruthlessly and completely.
 
Over the years, very few jungle treks stumbled upon this isolated fortress.
 
All were swiftly and completely eradicated with no trace remaining.
 
The uninvited visit by the Finleys was merely another group to be “handled”.
 
But first she needed to know what they were there for and what, if anything, they knew of their location.
 
The existence of the group’s sophisticated GPS was the difference, the reason they were still alive.
 
It pinpointed their location.
 
One thing she had learned from her father and grandfather was that the secrecy of this complex was paramount.
 
It must not be compromised in any way.
 
That included reaching out anywhere in the world to protect their interests.
 
She thought of Klaus Nader back in Miami and his fate.
 
His death was due to his asking too many questions regarding the gold he brokered through Mr. Jackson and his group.
 
Nader became a threat, ever so slight but still a threat.
 
A threat of any kind or size was taken very seriously and eliminated quickly; thus Mr. Nader’s unfortunate demise.
 

Kaete Grimme ruled this complex.
 
She also ruled the entire program spread throughout the world, Miami, Hong Kong, Brussels and Moscow.
  
Gold was their tender.
 
Gold was man’s weakness.
 
Gold was Kaete Grimme’s power.
 
Kaete relished her power and loved to wield it when she could.
 
She also loved to use part of her treasures to bring comforts here to Brazil that she would have normally had in Europe.
 
Thus her tastes were exquisite and expensive.
 

While she was unable to travel throughout the world as she would have liked, when she did travel she traveled well.
 
Several times a year she left the arms of her life in Brazil to visit her minions who dealt gold for her Reich building goals.
 
Her grandfather and father built a massive but specifically targeted gold business to broker their holdings across the world.
 
She inherited that business and was determined to ensure its growth.
  

A new Germany was her goal.
 
When she thought of what the world did to her Fatherland, she bristled.
 
The Americans, British and Soviets in particular pounded the Third Reich into the ground.
 
They humiliated the proud German people and made their lives hard.
 
Only within the past few decades had Germany begun to flourish again.
 

Under her leadership, Germany is poised to regain its rightful status and rule the world.
 
She and her group would not make the same mistakes as Hitler.
 
Rather than taking the world by force, their plan is to regain power by taking over the financial world and easing into world dominance.
 

How can they do this? They possess the ultimate answer…gold.
 
Gold ruled the world for centuries.
 
It was the cause of so much death and pestilence second only to religion.
 
Following this historical lead, these neo-Germans planned to first flood the financial markets of the world with gold to drive the price down.
 
The world’s banks will careen out of control with the loss of capital.
 
Once the gold price is depressed, the Germans will slowly but surely buy back the low cost gold.
 
Germany’s banks will regain power by taking over the damaged financial institutions.
 
This will smash the gold markets and drive the world’s economy to ruin. The key is gold.
 
The key is an unlimited supply of gold.
 
And they had gold!
 
  

Throughout World War II, perhaps the most important secret of the Germans was their work in alchemy, not nuclear power.
 
Long tried since the middle ages, wizards and kings had dreamed of turning lead and other elements into gold.
 
Some had succeeded but the cost was enormous and thus prohibitive.
 
The Nazi scientists had discovered an easy and inexpensive way to produce gold.
 
Too late to influence the Second World War, they protected these vital secrets from falling into the hands of the Allies by secretly moving them out along with all of the scientists involved to this Brazilian complex late in the war.
 

Many thousands had died protecting this secret.
 
But the secret had been saved, so far…

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Finley Base Camp, Cotriguacu, Brazil;
 
8:00 a.m.

Ben Jamison was worried.
 
It was three days since the last short radio message from Randall Finley.
 
His last report said they saw men dressed in black with guns.
  
Ben checked with the local authorities and they knew of no army activity in that general area.
 
Ben believed the men dressed in black were trouble.
 
He reported the missing Finley party to the local police.
 
While mildly concerned the authorities informed Ben there was little they could do until they could prove the Finleys were in real danger.
 
Of course, Ben could not so the authorities took a wait-and-see attitude.
 
Ben couldn’t afford that kind of a wait.
 
He discussed the situation with his sister, Lee Watson.
 

Lee had joined Ben nearly a year ago after she had lost her husband, Daniel, of twenty years and their two children, Amy, 17, and Leigh, 14, in an airline crash returning from Austin, Texas.
 
The trio had traveled to Austin to visit her husband’s brother and to tour the University of Texas.
 
Amy had wanted to attend UT.
 

The loss of her entire immediate family at one time cast her into a deep depression for months until she rediscovered one of her childhood loves, archeology and anthropology.
 
Lee decided to take a few college courses at the University of South Carolina near her home in Lexington, South Carolina.
 
She poured herself into her studies.
 
With her previous psychology degree, she earned an additional degree in anthropology in three years.
 

Her brother Ben handled base camp operations for several Princeton anthropology expeditions in Brazil.
 
She asked Ben for a job after she graduated since she had no ties to her home in South Carolina.
 
Ben jumped at the chance to have his sister along.
 
She was one helluva hard worker.
 
He could definitely use her skills.
 
Now a few weeks shy of a full year later, Lee remade her life here in the Amazon.
 
She was thrilled with this new adventure.
 

“I’m concerned about this story about men dressed in black, Lee,” Ben said stepping out of the door and onto the wide front porch.
 
“It does not make sense.
 
We’ve heard of guerillas and, of course, native tribes in the area where the Finleys disappeared but I can’t say I’ve ever heard of men dressed in black.”
 

Lee got up slowly from her chair.
 
She left her notes and iced tea behind.
 
“I found something earlier,” she added in a perplexed tone.
 
“But I’m not certain what to make of it.”

“What is it?” asked Ben.
 

“I decided to do some research on the Internet regarding reports of men dressed in black in the Amazon,” Lee explained.
 
“I know it’s a long shot but I found some rather sketchy entries in the expedition papers of two groups in the same general area of the Finleys. One note was from 1963.
 
A Belgian group of eight scientists and several bearers went into the jungle and disappeared.
 
There was a search team formed but no trace was found.
 
They were old school.
 
They carried no radios and no way to communicate back to civilization other than courier.
 
When they vanished, no one really knew where to look for them.
 
Their trail led into the jungle but was lost after several days.
 
One of the natives in the group looking for the scientists reported seeing black-dressed men.
 

“The second set of reports was from 1972, similar yet different.
 
This time, four scientists led by Dr. Juan Perez of the University of Pittsburgh trekked a group into the same general area.
 
This group did carry radios but only checked in for a week or so.
 
One radio dispatch mentioned men dressed in black uniforms.
 
After that they vanished.
 
Neither report seemed to be taken seriously by the Brazilian authorities or anyone else for that matter.
 
But both of these expedition parties were lost and never found.
 
Each report mentions men dressed in black.”

“Two reports nine years apart.
 
I can’t say that that is a pattern,” Ben answered, rubbing his three-day-old beard.
 

“I agree.
 
That’s what I thought too,” said Lee.
 
“But I can’t help thinking there may be something to this since both groups reported men dressed in black, both groups disappeared without a trace and both were in the same general area of the Amazon in Brazil.
 
Additionally, only those two expeditions have gone into that area in the past forty years.”
  

“Really,” questioned Ben.
 

“The natives in that area aren’t even a major threat.
 
All are relatively docile and are certainly not cannibals.
 
Most are curious folks who have seen very little of the white man.
 
I would find it hard for them to kill visitors and get rid of all traces.
 
It does not make sense.”

“That does sound odd.
 
Do you think I should contact Princeton to see if they can get us more information?”
 

“It wouldn’t hurt,” answered Lee.
 

Ben decided to contact Dr. Edmund Dukes at Princeton and ask for his advice.
 
Dr. Dukes listened to Lee’s information but wanted to take a different tack.
 
He decided to speak with his contacts at the U.S. State Department and the Brazilian Consulate in Washington, D.C. to see if he could get some support from them.
 
If the local authorities in Brazil were not going to do anything, Dukes figured he would use his considerable influence in Washington to put pressure on the local Brazilian authorities to get them involved.
 

Several times a day Ben tried to contact the Finley party via radio.
 
For days now there was no answer.
 
He felt helpless.
 
He held very strong suspicions his friends were in danger.
 
But he had no immediate way to help them.
 
Ben decided to make preparations to mount a rescue mission.
 

After talking at length with Dr. Dukes and others back in the United States, Ben and Lee decided to contact Randall’s and Dana’s families.
 
Ben felt he must let the families know what had happened.
 
He did not want to raise any unwarranted fears, but the way he looked at it, if he was missing in the jungles of the Amazon, he would want his family to know, but know what?
 
He had no answers.
 
They knew their last known location from the GPS readings but beyond that, nothing.
 
And their last known location was nearly a hundred miles from nowhere in the deep Amazonian jungle.
 
Not an easy place to get to by a rescue team.
 

Either way, he had to make the call.
 

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Miami Beach Patrol Headquarters, Miami Beach, Florida;
 
9:25 a.m.

“Another day in Paradise…” sang Hugo Winsor as he half danced through the door.
 
He waltzed over and grabbed Sherrie around the waist and whirled her around.
 
Hugo just returned from the beach checking out some of the newer lifeguards on the stands.
 
Sherrie laughed as they danced across the room.
 
Dane poured a cup of coffee from a fresh pot, smiled and took a sip.