Indiana Jones & the Sky Pirates

by Martin Caidin

  Indiana Jones & the Sky Pirates

  Martin Caidin

  In London, Indiana Jones is called to an emergency meeting. Mysterious sky craft have been ravaging the shipping lanes, making off with a fortune in diamonds, bonds, and raw materials. Unable to detect how the craft are powered, experts have come up with a frightening hypothesis—involving the use of psychokinetic levitation.

  To get to the truth, Indy must search through a labyrinth of archaeological information reaching back four thousand years. But as he and his team move from Africa to Tibet to the American Southwest, they discover something even more astounding. A clandestine organization is fast becoming an evil, world-dominating power—and the only way to stop it is in a high-tech, no-holds-barred battle on land . . . and in the air!

  THEY CAME TOGETHER TO SOLVE A DEADLY MYSTERY— AND STOP AN

  INVINCIBLE ENEMY . .

  INDIANA JONES —Whether slogging through steaming jungles, investigating ancient ruins, or chasing grave robbers, the worldrenowned archaeologist and adventurer has faced death many times. But he's never confronted anything quite so bizarre as the deadly "aircraft" terrorizing the skies.

  WILLARD CROMWELL—The portly, hard drinking former RFC fighter pilot is known for his quick wit and command of languages. Armed to the teeth, he vows to protect Indy anywhere he goes— from back alleys to the Tibetan mountains.

  GALE PARKER—The redhaired Ph.D. just happens to be the daughter of an English witch and is herself an expert in the black arts. Beautiful and daring, she has only one slight problem: taking orders from Indy.

  TARKIZ BELEM —A former professional wrestler and bodyguard, the huge, swarthy man was as alert as a cat and eager to work any kind of deal. This time, however, has he sold Indy out?

  RENE FOULOIS—The famed WWI fighter pilot ace had a dozen passports and his own personal arsenal. The darling of the international social set, he would find this mission "most amusing."

  1

  They watched the first train go by, laboring upslope, its wide stack spewing thick black smoke and glowing embers. It was a rolling fortress consisting of, first, an armored car built of inchesthick steel pierced with slits for machine guns, with a revolving turret on top mounted with a 57mm rapidfire cannon. Then came the roaring locomotive, and trailing that two flatcars built up with metal barricades and sandbags, behind which eight men manning machine guns scanned the heavy growth to each side of the train.

  It was a killer train ready for anything, an advance scout meant to assure the safe passage of the second train a thousand yards behind, maintaining the same speed along the southwestern coastal flank of South Africa. The second train held within an armored car a thick safe, triplelocked, bolted to the floor and wrapped with chains. Within the safe was a single bag, triplelined with waterproof sealskin and thick leather. A bag holding more than a billion dollars of diamonds. Almost a hundred incredible stones, huge, perfectly formed, their destination fortresslike shops within a walled enclave of Amsterdam.

  Diamonds were normally shipped directly from Cape Town. At least that's what the mine owners had everyone believe. But they might depart from Port Elizabeth or East London, or farther up the southeastern coast from the ports of Durban or Maputo. Troops of heavily armed soldiers always accompanied such shipments—again, so everyone was led to believe. Often the shipment was "rumored" to be gold, and attacking wellarmed gold shipments was an exercise in futility, if not stupidity, because of the defending firepower as well as the bulk and weight of the gold.

  The name of the game in diamond shipments was subterfuge. One man could carry on his person a greater value in diamonds than several railcars jammed with gold bars, and Christian Vlotman, the Afrikaner charged with the safe passage of such bounty, always moved in mysterious and deceptive ways.

  It was he who had sent the two trains rumbling northward toward Alexander Bay, edging the border of Namibia, what had been in earlier times SouthWest Africa. Alexander Bay lay at the spillage of the Oranje River.

  Vlotman had had a deep bay entrance dug long before this moment, and waiting for his train would be a powerful, heavily armed cruiser that would continue the shipment to Amsterdam.

  The warship captain would have a long wait, one that would not be rewarded.

  As the lead train, its armed guards with trigger fingers at the ready for the slightest interference, came about a turn and began crossing a trestle spanning a rocky riverbed several hundred feet below, a man nestled between boulders on a nearby steep slope twisted a Thandle in his hand. Two hundred pounds of dynamite, wrapped with cables about the thick wooden beams of the trestle, vanished in a blaze of violent light and a massive concussion. Thick beams splintered, tearing away from one another, and even before the glare of the explosion faded away, the trestle began its collapse from the explosion and the weight of the heavy train above.

  Thunder boomed down the riverbed and rolled between the flanks of the hills, and in a terrible slowmotion sunder the train twisted, rotating and shaking madly. Thin screams sounded above the growing roar of the downwardplunging trestle, pursued by the cars of the train now on their sides, still rolling, spilling bodies haphazardly in the fall.

  The earth shook from the blast, shook again from the roiling shock waves, and seemed to heave painfully as the locomotive and the massive armored car smashed against the boulders below. Smoke and dust spewed upward, and then new blasts tore between the hills as the steam boilers exploded.

  Well behind the catastrophic eruptions the ground rose and fell, moving the steel rails beneath the second train like writhing spaghetti. The train held, the shock waves passed through, but there was no mistaking the disaster that had taken the forward guard train. Immediately, the engineers slammed on the brakes, sending sparks showering away from steel wheels sliding along steel rails. The chief engineer tugged on the cord that blasted a steamdriven shriek to warn everyone aboard the train that disaster had struck and danger was immediately nearby. Moments later the train stood still, the engine puffing in subdued energy.

  Then the guards looking down the tracks behind them saw the trap closing, as a series of fiery blasts ripped apart the railbed over which they had just traveled.

  Now the train was caught. It could not go forward where there had been a trestle. It could not retreat, for its tracks were gone. It lay pinioned like some ancient dinosaur, its deadly spikes in the form of machine guns and other weapons. But like even the greatest predator it was frozen by its own mass.

  The guards waited for the attack they knew was imminent.

  No bullets; no mortar shells. No bombs. Instead, white smoke poured down from the high ridges inland of the railway. There was nothing to be seen at which they could shoot. Just . . . smoke? It made no sense as the smoke, heavier than air, rolled and flowed down the ridges to envelop the entire train.

  Men breathed in the smoke that was not smoke. They gasped and struggled, hands clutching at their throats and chests, as the phosgene gas spilled into their noses and mouths and savaged their lungs. The cloying sweetness of newmown hay was everywhere; the sweet fragrance of choking death as the gas spasmed muscles and nerves. Men fell, convulsed, and died.

  Phosgene poison gas in its persistent form dissipates in less than thirty minutes. But the men atop the ridges had no time to waste. Colonel Hans Stumpf spoke calmly but sharply to the men awaiting his commands; each man received the colonel's orders by radio through an earpiece clamped to his head.

  "Move out— now," snapped Stumpf. The men rushed from concealment, protected by bodysuit armor they no longer needed, wearing gas masks to fend off any inhalation of residual phosgene. They scrambled down the embankment in wellrehearsed and perfec
tly executed moves.

  Small packages of nitro blew open the heavy doors to the armored car. Inside, submachine guns at the ready, they found eight men in the twisted death agony of asphyxiation. They dragged one body aside, set explosive charges about the safe, and retreated outside. Again a handle was twisted and the muffled roar of an explosion sounded within the armored car. They went back inside immediately, ignoring the smoke boiling out the opened door.

  The safe door lay hanging by a single hinge. One man removed a steel box, pried open the cover. Inside, wrapped in velvet bags, lay their quarry. Dazzling, an emperor's ransom and much more in huge diamonds of various shapes and colors.

  The man kneeling by the safe with a fortune before him seemed transfixed. Not by the diamonds, but by a single cube, three inches on each side, and engraved with strange symbols. A cube of burnished copperbronze. Quickly he and another man placed the diamonds and the cube in sealed flotation bags. The leader gestured to one man, and the three men started down the hillside. At the water's edge Colonel Stumpf waited for them. He gestured at the flotation bag. "It is all there?" he asked, his usual hard tone pitched higher by concern.

  The men removed their gas masks. "Yes, sir. It is all here. Everything from the safe."

  "And the, ah, special item?"

  A gloved hand patted the bag. "It is here, too."

  The colonel managed a trace of a smile, then his lips tightened. "Excellent.

  Berlin will be pleased. Proceed."

  They moved quickly to a large rubber raft concealed in a cove. "It is getting dark," Stumpf remarked aloud, scanning the sky. "Have the men finish with the train. I want everyone aboard their rafts ready to move in twenty minutes."

  Along the railroad the men remaining with the train set new explosive and incendiary charges. Everything happened with practiced efficiency, and soon they joined their comrades along the shoreline. Night was falling quickly as Colonel Stumpf scanned the open sea with binoculars.

  "Ah!" he called aloud. "I see the blinker light. Move out! Everyone, move!"

  Four rubber rafts pushed the two miles across the sea to where they saw the dim silhouette of a submarine conning tower. Remaining low in the water, the submarine swallowed the killing team. Stumpf was the last to slip through the waiting hatch. He stopped, turned to look at the train barely visible in the gloom of early night, and jammed his thumb down on a radio transmitter. Huge chunks of train and bodies ripped upward from a series of powerful explosions. In moments the dry brush along the radio line was also ablaze. Stumpf nodded with selfsatisfaction, and tossed the transmitter into the water to sink along with the rafts that had been stabbed with knives and were also sinking into dark water. Moments later the submarine was gone.

  The rescue train appeared two hours later. Its crew stared in disbelief at the horrifying devastation that greeted them.

  The next morning . . .

  Seventyfour miles westsouthwest of Cape Dernburg, beneath a sky gray with rain squalls, the submarine rose to just beneath the surface. A high radio antenna rose below a balloon released from the conning tower. Two hundred feet high the balloon stopped, tugging at the antenna, holding it taut as a homing signal beamed outward.

  A lookout called to Colonel Stumpf. "The aircraft, sir! On the port beam. Very low over the horizon and he is coming directly to us!"

  Stumpf brought binoculars to his eyes. They were taking no chances. This would be the Rohrbach Romar of Deutsches Aero Lloyd or they would shoot it to pieces with machine guns and continue their voyage submerged.

  The big flying boat engines throbbed unmistakably, the sound of heavy propellers slightly out of synchronization. It circled the submarine in a low, wide turn, confirming by coded radio signal its identification.

  Colonel Stumpf turned to the sub captain. "The smoke, sir, if you please?" he requested.

  The captain nodded and called out to crewmen on the deck. "Smoke! Two grenades! Schnell!"

  Two men pulled grenade pins and placed the grenades on the sub deck. Flame hissed and thick smoke boiled out, marking wind drift and velocity. The flying boat turned in the distance for its landing run into the wind. Colonel Stumpf looked with pride at the great highwing monoplane, so perfect for this mission. Its rugged hull was flat on both fuselage sides above the contoured bottom, and its wings spanned more than a hundred and twenty feet from tip to tip. Three powerful BMW VLuz engines throbbed with a physical force. Those fourbladed wooden propellers, massive and thick, churned a heavy blow all about them. Stumpf knew that von Moreau was flying. He was the best, and to handle this fortythousandpound monster on the open sea demanded the highest skill. The Romar settled onto the water, skimming along as it felt gingerly for the surface, then lowering deeper as von Moreau came back on the power. The Romar taxied close to the submarine; close but safe. Deckhands lowered a raft into the water and held it by securing lines.

  Three of the men from the attack forces came to the deck, one carrying the flotation bag. Stumpf motioned them to wait for him in the raft. He turned to the captain. "Thank you, Captain Loerzer. Your timing, everything, was splendid."

  The two men shook hands. Loerzer smiled. "When I think of what this will do for our new Ger many . . . "

  H e shook his head, almost overcome with emotion.

  Stumpf offered a quick salute and climbed into the raft.

  "Go," he snapped. The men paddled steadily, powerfully, to the waiting Romar and climbed aboard as Stumpf turned back to the raft and fired several pistol shots to assure it would sink.

  He recognized von Moreau looking back from the cockpit. "Hello, Erhard!"

  Stumpf shouted. "Waste no time, my friend!"

  Von Moreau waved back as he nodded. Moments later deep thunder rolled across the darkened ocean surface. Flares from the submarine arced high overhead, their reflection providing von Moreau with the visibility he required. Well before the flares, drifting beneath their small parachutes, hissed into the sea, the great Rohrbach flying boat was in the air and climbing steadily. Von Moreau leveled off at seven hundred feet and swung into a turn that would keep the airplane at least one hundred miles off the coastline of South Africa. No one would expect a flying boat here at night, and certainly they would never expect a flying machine of any kind to be flying southward, a hundred miles out to sea from Cape Town. Only later would they begin the long journey eastward and then to the northeast.

  Stumpf went forward to the flight deck. "How is the fuel situation?" he half shouted to be heard above the engine thunder.

  "Excellent!" von Moreau replied. "Without full passengers and with no cargo, the extra tanks will give us a range of more than two thousand miles. We will meet the ship on time, but with plenty of reserve."

  Stumpf squeezed his friend's shoulder. "Thank you. Now, I will get some sleep. Call me if anything unusual comes up."

  Seventeen hours later . . . "The ship is approximately five miles ahead of us,"

  copilot Franz Gottler said to Flugkapitan Erhard von Moreau. "Bearing three five two degrees. I have already made contact and the ship is steering into the wind as our marker."

  Von Moreau nodded. He stifled a yawn, having been at the controls for most of the past twentyeight hours. Now he forced himself to again be alert, eased the Romar slightly left of his heading, and gently began to come back on the three engine throttles beneath his right hand. The huge flying boat began its descent, settled perfectly to the ocean where long gentle swells promised a good surface, and threw back a perfect bow wave and water plume as the hull went into the sea. Von Moreau taxied close to the merchant vessel, the airplane fended off from the ship by two lifeboats staffed with sailors working long rubbertipped poles. A hose snaked down and Romar crewmen quickly started refilling the tanks and the oil reservoirs. Other men passed along sealed containers of hot food and several kegs of dark beer. Finally a note was transferred to von Moreau from the ship's captain.

  "Take off as soon as you are fueled and ready. The moment you are airborne w
e will file a position report as having recorded the passage overhead of Aero Lloyd Flight 977 on its scheduled commercial run from Lake Victoria, with your machine on time for its run. Congratulations on your visit to the south. All hell has broken loose down there among the dogs. Hals und Beinbruch!"

  Von Moreau smiled. Break your neck and a leg. The captain must have been a pilot to know the final words of airmen just before they took off on their combat missions. He leaned from the cockpit window, saw the captain, and waved. Several minutes later they pushed back from the ship, taxied into takeoff position to accelerate into the wind, and thundered into the air toward the darkening sky. Now von Moreau went for greater altitude. The fewer people who had a close look at the Rohrbach as it closed the distance to Germany, the better. He climbed to fourteen thousand feet, near the limit for the heavy flying boat. He nodded to Gottler in the right seat. "You fly. I will sleep for a while. Wake me for anything unusual." "Yes, sir."

  In moments von Moreau was fast asleep. The flying boat thundered northward.

  Fourteen hours later, Flugkapitan Erhard von Moreau nodded in satisfaction and tapped the chart of the Mediterranean Sea on his lap. He glanced at his copilot.