ron Goulart - Challengers of the Unknown (9 page)

"Vultures," said Red after a glance at the distant, circling silhouettes.

The big ex-wrestler snorted. "It figures," he said. "This is the deadest, dullest stretch of country I've ever been in."

"You should try Glendale, California, on a Sunday." Both men were wearing their Challenger uniforms. Red stroked the hourglass emblem on his chest with his thumb several times before checking again the ordnance map spread across his knees. "Things may

liven up when we reach the Fortaleza area," he remarked. "We should be there before nightfall."

"Can't figure why this Escabar guy, whoever the hell he is, would want to live out here. This desert makes the boondocks look like Times Square on New Year's Eve."

"Cheer up, Rocko, we ..." A frown touched Red's face. "Slow up a minute." He was staring to his right, eyes narrowing.

"You spot something?"

"Can't be sure." He reached behind his seat for a pair of binoculars.

Rocky had let up on the gas pedal, was looking in the same direction as his Challenger partner. "Something moving over that way," he decided. "Unless it's one of them mirages."

"Mirages don't usually have wheels." Red had the glasses to his eyes.

Rocky stopped the jeep, "Ain't no road out there."

"So I notice. Whatever that thing is, it's coming straight across the desert at us."

"At us?" Rocky scowled. "Then maybe we oughtn't to sit on our duffs waiting for it."

"This is odd," said Red. "It's some kind of truck, but . . ."

"What's so odd about a truck?"

Red lowered the binoculars. "There doesn't seem to be anybody driving it," he said.

The name he was using was Gallegher and he would soon be dead.

Not dead on paper, as certain intelligence agencies in Europe and elsewhere had him, but dead in fact. A tall man, deeply tanned, not quite forty in appearance.

He wore khaki clothes, heavy hiking boots and his belt held both a pistol and a hunting knife. A powerful hunting rifle was slung across his back.

There were three other men with Gallegher. All moving closer to death, none aware of it.

A muddy green glow was spilling through the jungle as the day waned.

Gallegher had hunted almost every kind of game. He'd hunted men, too, a long time ago when he'd had a different name. Now he was searching for this monster which was supposed to haunt the jungle.

He agreed with General Cueipo. It was most likely a lot of nonsense. Shuster, and many of the others on the staff of the underground facility, worried too much. He held up his hand, his three companions halted.

Gallegher stood sniffing at the twilight air. "Over this way," he told the others. "Follow me; go carefully." Out here in the wilds he could speak German.

"What is it?" asked one of the others.

"Something dead." Gallegher worked his way through the underbrush, between the immense trees and into the new clearing the falling helicopter had torn out of the jungle. "Yes, a man it was."

Behind him Ortega, who'd got a look at the remains, was retching. "Awful, awful," he gagged.

The body was no longer a single entity. One of the hands Gallegher couldn't locate at all. The torso and head were, more or less, together.

"What happened to him?" asked another of the men, not coming closer.

"Animal got him," said Gallegher. "Clawed him to pieces."

"His insides," murmured Ortega, "his insides are ..."

Gallegher scraped his forefinger along one of the dead man's legs. A twist of slimy green material came off the shredded cloth of the pant leg. "Lake plant," he said, holding his finger out toward the others.

Ortega was retching again, the other two men trying to avoid him without stepping any closer to the torn body.

"PetroSur." Gallegher noticed the oil company name painted on the side of the mangled helicopter. "One of their troubleshooters ran into more than he could handle."

"There's no animal," said Ortega, panting, "there's no animal in these jungles does that to a man."

"Perhaps it did come from the lake." Gallegher slid his thumb over the shred of green water plant. He circled the torso and its impossibly twisted neck, scrutinizing the ground. "Yes, here are some interesting footprints."

"Night's almost upon us," said Ortega. "Let's get back to our truck."

"Not human footprints," said Gallegher. "No, these appear to have been made by the feet of a large, a very large, reptile."

"Plenty of time tomorrow," urged Ortega. "We ought to leave here now, right now, before darkness catches us.

"The pattern of these prints indicates the creature walked upright, on two of its feet." Gallegher detached a flashlight from his belt, clicked it on. "We'll follow his trail."

The other two men produced flashlights.

Ortega, after wiping at his sweating forehead with the back of his hand, did likewise. "All right, so long as we get away from this particular spot," he said. "The smell of . . . It's awful."

Gallegher laughed. "All these years of indolence in a warm climate have softened you, Ortega," he observed as he began to follow the tracks on the jungle floor. "You didn't used to be so fearful."

"I'm old," admitted Ortega. "Too old, inside. No more do I have the stomach for this kind of thing."

The lake was turning black when they reached it. Incredibly wide, its farther shores were lost in the dusk. On this side, trees and a multitude of plants grew nearly to its edge; some intricately twisting roots extended out into the black waters of Lake Sombra. Swirls of pale mist were rising from the darkening surface.

"If we're to believe the evidence of these very odd footprints," said Gallegher, the beam of his light shining on the mushy ground, "our reptile returned to the lake here after destroying the oilman."

Ortega said, "Then the stories are true."

"All we've determined is that some sort of large reptile came here from the site of the wrecked plane," said Gallegher. "We haven't yet proved—"

"What?" Ortega was staring at the jungle behind them. The daylight had abruptly gone. There were only stripes of darkness between the trees.

Gallegher asked him, "Now what's alarming you?"

"I heard . . . yes, listen!"

The beams of all four flashlights turned toward the jungle, crisscrossing.

There was a crackling and a thumping coming at them.

Ortega tugged his .38 revolver out of its holster. "It's coming to get us, it's coming to get us." The circle of light from his flash was dancing from side to side.

"Calm down, damn it," ordered Gallegher. He propped his light on the ground, unsnapped his rifle and settled the butt against his shoulder. He sighted through the nightscope, then exclaimed, "Good Cluist!"

Gallegher saw it before any of the others.

Another minute went by before the flashlights caught it.

A man, but not a man. The body was roughly hu-manoid, a green scaly skin covering it. Green, streaked with slashes of pasty yellow. Ropy veins ran along the creature's sides, twisted across the wide, powerful chest. The hands were yellowish, each scaly finger tipped with a vicious black claw. The head was not human at all; it was the head of a huge reptile. Some impossibly large lizard perhaps, with a quivering pouch of skin at the jaw and great popping eyes. The mouth cut halfway around the head; when it opened there were sharp, twisted teeth showing. It had been out of the water for a time; there were dry, blackening patches blotching its huge body. Walking like a man, moving rapidly toward them, it was nearly seven feet high.

"Kill it, shoot it," screamed Ortega, using his own revolver.

Gallegher planted his feet wide, took careful aim and fired the hunting rifle.

The others shot, too.

None of it did any good.

The small man knew the most.

Slumped in a chair in the back of the Challenger van, with the small gadget of Ace's devising affixed to the base of his skull, he was compelled to tell them what he knew. Wtih eyes shut, the jungle darkness pressing against the window behind him, he answered all the questions put to him by the three Challengers of the Unknown.

"This laser rifle you tried to use on us," Ace was asking, "where did you get it?"

"From the arsenal," replied the ambusher in a droning voice.

"Logical answer," said Prof. "Where exactly is this arsenal, old man?"

"Underground," was the answer, "at our base."

Ace Morgan asked, "Base near here?"

"Five kilometers."

"How many men there?"

"We have a staff of one hundred and eight."

"Who finances it, who's behind it?" inquired June.

"We brought the money with us."

"Where from?"

"The fatherland."

Blinking, June took a step back. "And when exactly did you arrive here from overseas?"

"I, myself, did not reach Ereguay," the small man recited, "until the summer of 1947. The underground base itself was constructed in 1944."

"Who built it?" Ace asked.

"They're all dead."

"You mean the workmen?"

"The safest way to keep it all secret. They were shot, buried in a trench they'd dug."

"Familiar story," said Prof. "Who designed your little hideaway?"

"The chief brain behind it was Otto Wenzler."

Profs eyebrows went up. "Wenzler," he said toward Ace, "was reported killed in an air raid on Germany in 1943."

"Is Otto Wenzler dead?" June asked the small man.

"No."

"Where is he?"

"He resides some distance from here, in a bleak territory known as Tierra Seca."

Prof snapped his fingers. "Would he be calling himself Escabar these days?"

"Yes, that's right."

"So Red and Rocky aren't on a wild-goose chase at all," observed Prof.

Ace rested one foot on the lowest rung of the chair the small man was sitting in. "What's the purpose of all this? Why do you have hidden heaquarters?"

"To stay alive," answered the man, "and to prepare."

"Prepare for what?"

"Someday it will be our turn again. Soon General

Cuerpo will effect his coup, the regime of President Chanza will topple and we will rule this country. Others will follow." "Tomorrow the world," said Prof. June was studying the brain-controlled man's face. "You say you came here thirty some years ago," she said. "But you appear to be a relatively young man. How old are you?" "Sixty-one."

"You don't look your age. Why?" "It is Wenzler's Process," replied the small man. "One of many brilliant achievements he has brought forth during his long exile."

"How does it work?" Prof asked. "I do not know the technical details; few of us besides Wenzler do. Every three months we receive a series of injections." "That keeps you looking and feeling young?" "It is a marvelous thing. But then Wenzler is a marvelous man."

"Comes up with a process the whole world would love to get hold of," said Prof, "and he restricts its use to rejuvenating a clutch of over-the-hill Nazis. Some genius." Ace said, "What about the Monster of the lake?" "We fear him."

"He's not a creation of yours, not an invention of

Wenzler's?"

"No. We know little about the creature, but if he is not stopped soon, too much attention will be drawn to Lake Sombra."

June asked, "Are you doing anything to find the monster?" "Yes." "What?"

"At this very moment a select group is hunting him."

"What about us?" said Prof. "How'd you lads know where to set up the ambush?"

"There are only two routes into this area. We had both watched."

"Who tipped you to expect us at all?"

"I do not know. I was merely ordered to carry out a mission."

"What do you suspect, though? About where the tip came from?"

"I never speculate." ^

Ace took over. "What were your orders about us?"

"To take you to our base, if you could be captured. Question you and then kill you there."

"Very efficient," said Prof.

Morgan moved away from the truth-controlled man. "This nest of Nazis," he said, "is more important than Zarpa. We have to check out this underground base before we do any monster hunting."

"I know that in the old World War Two movies one tough American took on a couple hundred Nazis barehanded," said Prof. "Do you think, though, the three of us can take on this whole bunch?"

"Alternatives?" requested Ace.

"Call out the law."

Ace shook his head. "General Cuerpo is high up in the military, and he's the one planning a coup. That rules out bringing in the troops," he said. "For all we know Cuerpo has the police in his camp, too."

"Add to that," put in June, "the fact that possibly even the local chapter of Uncle Sam's National Espionage Agency is working for Cuerpo, too."