Quintana Roo (21 page)

It was a long, dark, terrible night.

Hooker and Connie Braithwaite spent it in a rocky niche between two boulders at the foot of the bluff on the other side of the waterfall.

After finding the raft and paddling it across the river by hand, they scrambled, half falling, down the bluff to the beach. Hooker decided it would be foolish to try to travel any farther over unknown terrain in the dark. The two boulders at least offered shelter.

The cries and the gunfire from the Germans’ battle with the
muerateros
had continued for an hour. When at last it was quiet, Hooker was almost sorry. The noise had kept him from hearing phantom voices in the wash of the waves. There had been no sign of Buzz Kaplan.

Gradually, reluctantly, the night retreated. Hooker disentangled himself from Connie, who had dozed fitfully, her head against his chest.

“Where are you going?” she said, her voice still blurred with sleep.

“To take a look around.”

He eased out from between the boulders and stretched his muscles. Everything ached. His stomach growled. His mouth tasted like old socks.

The dawn was a peaceful one, all baby blue and pink. There was no movement up on the bluff. No sounds other than the
shush
of the waves and the muffled roar of the waterfall. He could not see the German submarine base because of a hillock tufted with saw grass that rose between them and the rest of the beach in that direction.

Connie came out to join him. She used her fingers to rake twigs and sand out of her hair. When she reached his side, she ran a hand across his shaved scalp.

“Morning, baldy. You look terrible.”

It was not the first time Hooker had been amazed by the recuperative powers of the so-called weaker sex.

“I can’t imagine why,” he said. “You look swell.”

She cocked her head. “Do you hear something?”

“The waterfall.”

“No, besides that. A kind of buzzing.”

He held his breath and listened. “Yeah.” Shading his eyes against the sun and its reflection from the water, he peered at the sky. To the north of them was a moving dot. The dot came closer, and he saw it was an airplane.

“Son of a bitch,” he said.

The two of them ran down to the edge of the water and jumped and flapped their arms and shouted like a couple of kids.

The airplane, a high-wing cabin job, flew overhead, then circled back out across the water. The dazzle of the sun made its flight difficult to follow, but the drone of the engine told them it was coming lower.

“Do you think they saw us?” Connie said.

“Yeah.” Hooker was thoughtful.

“Something the matter?”

“I have a funny feeling about that airplane.”

Connie was jumping up and down again. “Hooker, I think he’s going to land!”

The plane banked down out of the sun and over the German base, heading directly at them. It dropped out of sight beyond the hillock. They heard the wheels hit the ground. The engine coughed and quit.

“Come
on
,” Connie said, tugging at Hooker’s hand. “Let’s go get rescued.”

There was a cold lump in the pit of his stomach, but Hooker blamed it on not having eaten properly for days. He followed Connie up to the top of the hillock, where they both stopped and stared down at the familiar red and white Stinson Detroiter.

“I don’t believe it,” Hooker muttered.

The cabin door opened, and Klaus Heinemann jumped down to the hard-packed sand. He was handsome and immaculate in a leather flight jacket and whipcord pants, a silk scarf at his throat. His fine blond hair ruffled in the sea breeze.

Connie ran to meet him. Hooker followed more slowly. Heinemann accepted her welcoming embrace, then set her gently to one side as Hooker approached. His right hand slipped casually into a jacket pocket.

“Hello, Hooker,” he said. “You seem to have lost your hair.”

“That’s not all I’ve lost,” Hooker said.

“No. I am afraid it isn’t.”

Connie moved away from Heinemann, looking puzzled. “What’s going on?”

Heinemann removed his hand from the pocket. It held the Luger pistol he had used in Campeche.

“Stand over by Hooker, please,” he said to Connie.

She hesitated. He gestured with the pistol, and she did as she was told.

“You had to come, didn’t you?” Heinemann said. “With all the warnings you received about Quintana Roo, with all the people who advised you to stay away, you had to come. Very stubborn, Hooker. And very foolish.”

“I presume,” Hooker said, “that we are talking to the commander of the Nazi U-boat base.”

Heinemann inclined his head in a slight bow. “Correct.”

“Him?” Connie said. Then, turning to Heinemann, “You?”

He ignored her and continued to talk to Hooker. “You always said you had no interest in politics.”

“I don’t,” Hooker said. “I got pulled into this by circumstances.”

“Too bad. I liked you, Hooker.”

“Thanks. Have you been a Nazi agent ever since you came to Mexico?”

“Of course. This base is very important to us, and we needed money to maintain it. In Mexico, one could make contact with wealthy men who were eager to invest in the future of the world.”

“Men like Nolan Braithwaite.”

“A prize catch, as you would say. But not an easy man to deal with. He insisted on inspecting the site, and also the Panama Canal, where our real work would be done.”

“I don’t suppose it was an accident that his plane crashed on the return trip.”

“We had no further use for him. It
was
an accident that he lived through the crash. Fortunately, he was picked up by our people.”

“The Mayas,” Hooker said.

“Those under the control of Holchacán. They have been very useful.”

“You may not have as many of them left as you think,” Hooker said.

“It is of little concern. Indians are plentiful in the jungles of Quintana Roo. And there is always a leader who can be bought.”

Connie’s frown deepened as she listened to the men’s conversation. She said, “Did you have Earle Maples killed?”

“Ah, the effeminate one,” Heinemann said. “He saw me at the airfield the morning we were to leave Veracruz and recognized me from the meeting with Braithwaite. He rushed off to tell his friend Hooker, unaware that I had seen him, too. A telephone call sent one of Holchacán’s
muerateros
after him.”

“Poor little man,” Connie said softly.

“By the way, where is your Jewish friend?”

Before Hooker could answer, the ground shook under their feet and a deafening
boom
slammed their eardrums. Exploding small-arms ammunition crackled like popcorn. Tracer bullets trailed white smoke streamers through the sky. Another explosion followed, and a black puffball of smoke streaked with red rolled up over the German base. There was a third explosion, followed by the distant clang of falling metal plates.

The three people stood frozen in position alongside the Stinson. Heinemann’s handsome face seemed to crumple, but the Luger was steady in his hand.

“Did you ask where Kaplan is?” Hooker said. “Try your munitions building, your diesel tanks, or your submarine.”

Heinemann’s lips were white with anger. “A small victory for your side, Hooker. Too bad you will have such a short time to enjoy it.”

He raised the Luger to eye level and shot Hooker in the face.

Dying was like the rolling black cloud from the exploding diesel tanks, all shot through with red streaks of pain. Hooker’s head ached something fierce. He tasted sand. And blood.

Tasted? Wait a minute. If he could taste and he could feel, then he probably wasn’t dead. And if he could reason that out, then his brain probably wasn’t blown away.

He opened his eyes. The world was blurred, but it cleared slowly like the reflection in a pool as it quiets after a stone has dropped in. He was not blind, either. Or deaf.

Someone was screaming. It was Connie Braithwaite. She had stumbled back against the airplane and was staring down at him.

Heinemann was still standing in the same spot, the head of a Mayan spear splitting the front of his chest. Blood and lung tissue spread around the wound, and the handsome jaw drooped. For a moment, Heinemann hung there, held erect by the spear through his body. Then he was pitched aside.

Buzz Kaplan limped forward and knelt beside Hooker. Gently, he rolled his friend’s head to one side. Kaplan wore his usual expression. The one that belonged to an angry bear.

“It looks like you won’t have much of an ear left on this side, Hooker, but you weren’t that pretty, anyway. The
Kraut
was a lousy shot.”

Hooker started to sit up, but things began to spin, and he lay down again. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “I thought you were back at the base blowing things up.”

“I blew it up, all right, but you didn’t think I was going up with it? While the Germans were busy with the zombies, I went through the ordnance building and found a load of dynamite and about a mile of fuse. I had time to hook it up, light it, then beat it over here across their pontoon bridge before the fireworks. Didn’t anybody ever tell you Jews are smart?”

Hooker spilled the necklace of tiny sea shells into the box on top of the skirt with the embroidered roses. He thought about the day he bought it for Alita and how absurdly pleased she had been with the small gift. Then he put the thought away. He knew the memories of Alita would come back frequently for a time. Then only once in a while, and finally, hardly ever. But they would never be completely gone.

In the same way, Alita would never be completely gone from this little apartment. He started to take down the bead curtain that closed off the bed, then changed his mind. He kind of liked the sound of it.

The package of Alita’s things was a small one. Hooker closed the cardboard flap over the top of the box and started to tie it with string. There was a knock at his door.

Connie Braithwaite stood out in the hall. She was wearing a pale blue suit and a little matching hat. Her hair had grown out some since their time in Quintana Roo, and she’d had it waved.

“Hi,” she said. “Glad to be out of the hospital?”

“Yeah. They kept me there a lot longer than they had to.”

“Not according to Dr. Morales. He said your ear was badly infected, and it’s lucky you didn’t lose the whole thing. Let me see.”

Hooker turned his head.

Connie touched his cheek with cool fingers. “It looks a little ragged, but not as bad as it might have been. I’m glad your hair is coming back.”

“It always did grow fast.”

“Can I come in?”

“Oh, sure. I was just packing some things.”

Connie did not look at the box. She sat in one of the wooden chairs.

“Have you thought any more about coming back to the States with me?”

“I have, but the answer is the same. Thanks, but I don’t think so.”

“Is it because of the old trouble you were in there?”

“Partly.”

“The Braithwaite name swings a lot of weight,” she said. “I’ll bet whatever the trouble was, I could get you out of it.”

“Maybe,” he said.

“No strings.”

“Thanks, Connie. I appreciate the offer, but I don’t belong there anymore.”

“It’s your home.”

He shook his head. “Veracruz is my home. As much as any place can be.”

Connie stood up. “I guess I knew you were going to say that. We talked about it enough while you were in the hospital. I just thought I’d give you one more chance.”

“More than I deserve.”

“No, it isn’t.” She reached around his head on the side of the undamaged ear and pulled his face down for a kiss. “So long, Hooker. I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning.”

“Why don’t you come with me tonight?” he said. “I’m having dinner over at the Kaplans’. We’re celebrating his new foot.”

“No, thanks, Hooker. I’ve said my good-bys to Buzz. And like you, I know where I don’t belong.”

She squeezed his hand once, then left without looking back.

Hooker closed the door gently after her. He returned to the box of Alita’s things and tried to get the string tied around it. He couldn’t get the knot right without somebody to put a finger on it.

The hell with it, he decided. He could do that the next day. He would go down to El Poche and drink some tequila. Paco would need somebody to talk to. The Browns were in last place, and the Yankees were going to the World Series.

This edition published by
Prologue Books
a division of F+W Media, Inc.
10151 Carver Road, Suite 200
Blue Ash, Ohio 45242
www.prologuebooks.com

Copyright © 1984 by Gary Brandner
All rights reserved.

Cover image(s) ©
123RF.com

Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

eISBN 10: 1-4405-5843-4
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-5843-6