William Dietrich - Blood of the Reich

“You can’t escape, you blocked your own retreat. Come out, American, and we negotiate, eh? Do you want the girl hurt?”

Hood squeezed the shaft with his left hand, feeling the familiar jolt of power. His only hope was that he got a shot at the German before the German saw him.

Then the Nazi flashlight went out.

The staff glowed brighter. Amber illumination peeked from under the piping.

“Ah, there you are. You ran with the wrong man, Keyuri. He led you into a trap.”

Why not at least save her? She wasn’t dead yet. “I’m going to surrender in return for your life,” he whispered. “Raeder still wants you in his own twisted way. He may still spare you.”

She shook her head. “If he does, it will be to destroy me slowly. He needs to destroy people, Ben. You know that.”

They heard footsteps, a heavy tread, coming toward them. Slowly, cautiously, inexorably. “Don’t make me kill you!” the German called.

“Let him come closer,” she whispered. “Then erase him.”

Feisty for a Buddhist nun. Hood rose and braced, dreading to have to fire the painful thunder stick again. Would it bring everything down on top of them? Then the flashlight came on, blinding. Its cone of illumination fell directly on him, and then played over the pool of Keyuri’s blood.

“I see you! Stand, stand!” The stubby snout of the machine gun gleamed, dark and oily in the gloom. The German was nervous but excited. “Come out, come out, it’s your only chance! Come out or I machine-gun the girl!”

Slowly Hood put down the staff.

“No!” Keyuri groaned.

He didn’t care. The German was too far away. A thunderbolt could bring the whole tunnel down on them. He had to save her.

“Raise your hands! Climb over the pipes!”

He began to do so.

The German raised the submachine gun. “Now. We finish this and get out of here.” He nodded and aimed.

And then there was the crack of a pistol. Several shots rang out and the German jerked, a hole appearing in the middle of his forehead, and he slowly toppled backward. A tendril of blood ran down his face. His torso was punctured, too. His submachine gun fell with a clatter. He sat down with a woof, looking at where a new light blazed from the ceiling. His mouth opened, as if seeing an apparition.

And now a new voice came down, as if from heaven.

“This way, college boy. And bring baldy there with you.”

Eldorado Peak, Cascade Mountains

September 6, Present Day

Y ou can’t arrest us, Mrs. Clarkson,” Jake said patiently, eyeing the muzzles of Delphina’s double-barreled shotgun. “You’re not a police officer. And we’re not terrorists.”

“Which is just what Osama bin-Lunatic would say, I figure. This is a citizen’s arrest of two highly suspicious young people who seem to be mixed up with bombs and banks and who knows what all, and by the Grace of the Lord, my dogs could smell the evil on you when you came up that driveway! Now march, before my finger gets tired and sits down on this trigger.”

“But they bombed me,” Rominy exclaimed. “We’re the victims. We’re escaping from the terrorists, if that’s what they are. You have to help us, Mrs. Clarkson.”

“I’m helping you into a holding cell where you can sing your story to great big guys with buzz cuts and badges. Move, woman!”

Rominy was in shock. First the cave-in, and now this? She’d never touched a gun except for her great-grandfather’s old pistol, and now one was being pointed at her. The twin muzzles looked as big as manholes. Jake handed back her pack but kept the satchel and the backpack with the money on his own shoulders. Then he winked, as if this were all part of some game, part of his mysterious, irritating, admirable, enviable self-confidence. Was that supposed to reassure her? He could dig through bones and wink at a loaded gun? Who was this guy? Rominy led the way, the dogs flanking her, with Jake behind and Delphina Clarkson’s shotgun behind him.

“I’ll bet you Seattle people figured I wouldn’t have TV way up here on the Cascade River, didn’t ya?” their captor said as they retraced their route to the trail. “You think I never go into Marblemount for a buffalo burger and a beer? Oh yes, the Safeway bombing is all over the news, and Miss Rominy Pickett’s picture is getting more airtime than a politician with his pants down.”

“So I’m missing, right? That’s what the reward is for.”

“And you know what? Not one newscaster has said anything about some heir of Benjamin Hood. Not one newscaster talked about pretty-boy newspaper reporters, or musty old mysteries. You know what? I don’t think that’s your cabin at all.”

“So at least I won’t be scooped,” Jake murmured.

“What’s that?”

“I said I’m glad you’re a vigorous news consumer, Mrs. Clarkson.”

“Shut up with your fancy talk.”

They hit the trail again and started down it. No amount of reasoning seemed capable of getting the crazy old woman to lower her gun. The only good news was that she seemed to have no curiosity about what they’d found down in the mine or what might be in the decaying old satchel. She couldn’t think past the possibility of a payday. Rominy tried to calm down. Once they were in the hands of the police, they’d be safe, wouldn’t they?

Just get dotty Delphina to swing the muzzle away or take her finger off the trigger. How could she connect with her?

“Mrs. Clarkson, I’m impressed your dogs could track us.”

“My dogs could sniff out a Brussels sprout in a meatpacking plant.”

And then there was a hiss of something slicing through the air, a lethal whisper, and a soft thud as it hit. Damnation, one of Clarkson’s dogs, gave a sudden jerk, squealed, and flipped over. The shaft of an arrow jutted from his flank. Where it met flesh, the dog’s chest rose and fell, pumping blood.

Rominy whirled. There was a man in the forest who was dressed in camouflage and drawing back a bow. His head was shaved with a strip on top, like a Mohawk Indian.

It was the same guy she’d thought she’d seen in the cabin window. Another arrow loosed, and then both shotgun barrels went off with a roar next to her ear.

“Run!” Jake raced past and jerked Rominy like a rag doll, leaping off the switchbacking trail and straight down the forested mountainside, crashing into brush. With his hand on her arm they half ran, half plunged down the precipitous slope. There was a frantic yelping and cries of outrage behind. Rominy tensed for the sting of another shotgun blast but none came. The gun had swung at the skinhead, and then they were far enough downhill that the woods gave them screening.

“That crazy bitch is too old to follow us this way! Run, run, run!”

She leaped like a gazelle, heedless of obstacles, bounding over logs she’d hardly dare crawl over in normal times. A single misstep and she’d break a leg and yet their flight seemed charmed, magical, even exhilarating as they fell through the forest. They came to the trail again, which zigzagged the other way, but simply leaped it and continued straight downhill in a barely controlled plunge.

There was another gun blast, but far up the mountain. Faint shouts, too.

Step, leap, step, leap, as trees flashed past. She was not so much out of breath as breathless, stunned, afraid, excited.

They hit the switchbacking trail again and Jake pulled up, gasping. He was grinning, too, the bastard. “Geez, Rominy, what was that?”

“It was that man.”

“What man?”

“The man I saw in the window.”

That sobered him. “It’s them. Skinheads. Come on.”

“I thought you said he was a raccoon.”

“I thought wrong.”