Quintana Roo

by Gary Brandner

  “Blowing the fucking place up, that’s what.” He pulled out of Hooker’s grasp and stood up again, steadying himself by leaning on the boulder. “Look, see those big tanks at the base of the dock? That’ll be diesel fuel. And one of those buildings has got to be ordnance, where they keep the ammunition. What we do is we go down there and blow the place to hell.”

  Hooker yanked him back behind the rock. “Let me see if I understand this. You’re suggesting that two men, one with a chewed-up wooden foot, and a woman charge in through the German navy and blow up a submarine base.”

  “You got it.”

  “When those Indians shaved your head, they must have dug out some of your brains.”

  “Like hell. I’m the only one here thinking straight. Do you know what’s south of here?”

  “Honduras.”

  “Don’t play dumb, Hooker. Panama is south of here. And the Panama Canal. Do you have any idea what kind of hell a Nazi U-boat could play with the shipping through the Panama Canal? They could probably put the whole thing out of commission for months at least.”

  “That’s not our problem.”

  “Who says it’s not?”

  “Buzz, calm down. We’re not at war with anybody. Not you, not me, not Mexico. Not even the United States.”

  “That’ll all change damn soon.”

  “Not for me. Hooker looks out for Hooker.”

  Buzz gave him a long look. “Okay, amigo, then this is where we say adiós. You go on, do whatever you want to do. I’m going down there and kill me some fucking Germans.”

  “Listen to me, Buzz,” Hooker said. “This is personal with you, isn’t it?”

  “You mean because I’m a Jew?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe it is. You must have heard something about what those bastards are doing to Jews.”

  “I’ve heard propaganda on both sides.”

  “Propaganda, my ass. Those people are killing Jews, and not one at a time. They’re wiping out whole families. Maybe more.”

  “Where are you getting your information?”

  “From an organization I belong to.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Don’t give me ‘uh-huh’ in that tone of voice. This isn’t politics; this is the murder of a whole race of people.”

  “When is it my turn to talk?”

  Both men turned in surprise. They had forgotten Connie Braithwaite was there.

  “I think I’ve earned a vote,” she said.

  “Sure,” Hooker said. “I’m willing to go with the majority. How about you, Buzz?”

  “I guess.”

  “So far,” Hooker said, “we’ve got one vote for being idiots and declaring a personal war on Germany and one vote for sensibly getting our asses back home where they belong. What do you say, Connie?”

  She waited several seconds before speaking. “I’ve done some serious thinking lately about my life up to now. I’ve done pretty well looking out for myself and not much caring about the other guy. This trip to Quintana Roo has changed my mind about a lot of things. People have got to take care of each other. Sorry, Hooker. I vote with Buzz.”

  Both of them looked at Hooker.

  “Oh, well, count me in, then. Nobody lives forever.”

  “Hooker,” Buzz said, “you’re a patriot.”

  “Up yours,” said Hooker.

  CHAPTER 33

  They worked their way back up the trail to the top of the bluff. There they lay on their stomachs and watched the activity below in the submarine base. The crew of the U-boat disembarked, the officers first, then the enlisted men. The officers were taken to one of the smaller buildings.

  “Headquarters,” Hooker guessed.

  The enlisted men from the sub joined the men from the base and headed for a long building with smoke curling out of a tin chimney at one end.

  “Mess hall,” Buzz suggested.

  While they watched from up on the bluff, a long, deadly-looking cylinder was carried out of one of the buildings. Then another, and another, until eight of them were lined up outside. There they were strapped on to low-wheeled carts and rolled out onto the dock, where men from the base began to load them gingerly aboard the submarine.

  “Torpedoes,” Buzz said. He instinctively spoke in a whisper, though there was no possibility that their voices could carry to anyone down below.

  “Yeah,” Hooker agreed unhappily.

  “That must be the ordnance building where they got them. All we have to do is hit that place and torch the tanks while they’re pumping diesel fuel into the sub, and the whole place goes.”

  “That’s all we have to do, is it?” Hooker said dryly.

  “Quit sulking, Hooker,” Connie said.

  He glared at her for a moment, then said, “All right. Let’s keep our eyes open and watch for the best way to move in. We’d better plan to do it about sundown.”

  Buzz grinned at him. Hooker tried to hold onto his frown but eventually had to give up and grin back.

  After all eight torpedoes were loaded aboard the submarine, a heavy hose was unreeled from the onshore diesel tanks and fed out along the dock. The nozzle end was shoved into the fuel port in the deck of the submarine.

  “They’ll probably get underway sometime tonight,” Hooker said.

  “It doesn’t look like they worry much about security,” Buzz said. “There’s no observation posts, no fence around the base, and only one sentry that I’ve seen.”

  They watched the lone man strolling around the perimeter of the base. He carried a rifle slung comfortably over one shoulder and seemed more interested in the submarine than in walking his post.

  “They’re not expecting an attack from the jungle,” Hooker said. “The camouflage will hide them in the unlikely event that a plane flies over. They haven’t got a worry in the world, which should make it easy for us to take the sentry.”

  “How do we do it?” Buzz asked.

  “We know his route now. How about if you and I get down there in that clump of palmettos, and when he comes by, I distract him and you take him out?”

  “Sounds okay.”

  “Wait a minute,” Connie said.

  The men looked at her.

  “What am I supposed to do? Stay home and knit sweaters?”

  “You’ll cover our rear,” Hooker said.

  “Oh?” She did not sound convinced.

  “You can watch from behind that big rock halfway down the trail and see that nobody surprises us from behind.”

  “What am I supposed to do if I see somebody?”

  “Use your initiative.”

  “You’re just getting me out of the way, aren’t you, Hooker?”

  He took Connie by the shoulders and looked deeply into her eyes. “What I’m asking you to do is very important. If anything happens to Buzz and me, we need somebody to tell the story back in civilization. That has to be you. I know it isn’t easy to be the one who waits. It’s probably the hardest job of all, but I think you can do it.”

  She searched his face. “All right, Hooker. I’ll do the waiting. But if I ever find out you were just trying to get me out of the way …”

  He pulled her to him and kissed her hard on the mouth. “It’s time we all get moving, honey.”

  When they reached the boulder halfway down, Connie took her place behind it. They whispered good-bys, and Hooker and Buzz eased carefully on down the trail to the bottom. They concealed themselves as comfortably as possible behind the palmettos and waited for the lone sentry to come around.

  “Will she really do us any good back there?” Buzz asked.

  “Nah. I just wanted her out of the way.”

  • • •

  Ten slow minutes ticked by. Buzz moved one of the palmetto leaves a fraction of an inch and peered through.

  “Where is that son of a bitch? He should have been here by now.”

  “Probably down looking at the submarine, listening to sea stories.”

  Kaplan let go the lea
f and eased back down beside Hooker. “Here he comes,” he whispered.

  “You know what to do?”

  “What am I, an amateur?”

  Being as quiet as he could, Hooker crawled to the far edge of the palmetto clump, a few feet away from where Buzz waited, muscles tensed. As the casual sentry drew near, Hooker stepped out into his path.

  “Hi, Fritz. What’s new in Berlin?”

  The German stopped and stared, forgetting even to reach for his rifle.

  “How’s all the little Katzenjammers?” Hooker said.

  The German was young. He had cropped brown hair, hazel eyes, and a bad complexion. “Wer ist Sie?” he demanded when he found his voice. He had the rifle off his shoulder now.

  Hooker saw Buzz come up out of the palmettos behind the sentry. He was holding a rock the size of a grapefruit.

  “Sorry,” Hooker said, spreading his hands so the young sentry could see they were empty. “No comprendo.”

  Buzz moved surprisingly fast on his wooden foot and smashed the rock against the side of the sentry’s head before the young German could bring his rifle around to a challenge position. He fell hard and without a sound.

  Hooker stepped forward quickly and picked up the rifle. He cranked the bolt back and peered into the chamber.

  “Shit.”

  “What’s the matter?” Buzz asked.

  “It’s empty.” He pitched the rifle off into the palmettos.

  “Those sons of bitches,” Buzz said. “Can you imagine sending a kid out to walk sentry with an unloaded gun?”

  “You can’t trust anybody,” Hooker said.

  Kaplan looked down at the young German. Blood trickled from his ear. His breathing was very shallow.

  “Should I kill him?”

  Hooker considered. “I wouldn’t bother. If he comes to again, we’ll either have finished the job or we’ll be dead.”

  “I suppose,” Kaplan agreed. He tossed the rock away and limped alongside Hooker toward the German base.

  When they came close to the building they figured to be the mess hall, they dropped down and crawled on their bellies. From inside, they could hear much laughter and loud talk in German.

  “Must have brought out the schnapps,” Hooker said.

  At the sound of booted feet approaching, Hooker and Buzz rolled into the deepening shadows alongside the mess hall. They saw the officers from the submarine and those from the base coming down the path from the headquarters building. They clomped up the wooden steps and into the mess hall.

  “Fun’s over for the troops,” Hooker said. “I guess we better get to work, too.”

  “Which one do you want?” Buzz asked. “The munitions or the fuel tanks?”

  “You know more about explosives than I do,” Hooker said. “I’ll take the tanks.”

  “Okay. Afterwards, we’ll all meet back up where we left the raft.”

  “Sure, afterwards,” Hooker said.

  The two men clasped hands for a moment, then started away in opposite directions.

  “Hahlt!”

  The command rang out like a gunshot in the gathering darkness. At the same instant, a light hit Hooker in the eyes. It switched for a moment to Buzz, then back to Hooker.

  “Kommen Sie hier!”

  Hooker stared into the light. He could make out the dark shapes of at least three men and the definite glint of two rifle barrels. He was willing to bet these were loaded. Neither Hooker nor Buzz moved.

  “Englanders?” said the voice behind the light. “Amerikaners, maybe? Move closer together and take two steps this way.” The accent was heavily Teutonic.

  Hooker and Buzz glanced at each other and did as they were told. The light played over their faces.

  “Ja, Americans, I think.” The light lingered on Buzz. “And a Jew, nicht wahr?”

  “Fuck you,” Buzz said.

  “Americans,” the voice confirmed. “You will march to the small building you see to your right. Go.”

  The voice of the unseen man with the flashlight snapped a command in German, and two husky young men with rifles prodded Buzz and Hooker along the path toward the building they had picked out as the base headquarters.

  “Satisfied now?” Hooker said.

  “So something went wrong. No plan is perfect.”

  “You call that a plan?”

  “Silence!” said the voice behind them. “March!”

  They marched.

  CHAPTER 34

  Prodded by the gun barrels, Hooker and Buzz trudged along the path and into the compact headquarters building. It was a single room, sparsely furnished — two desks, filing cabinet, map case, folding wooden chairs. Nothing dramatic like heroic portraits of Hitler or Nazi banners. Just plain, unfinished wooden walls.

  The only decoration was on a calendar from a Mexican brewery showing the month of June 1939. On the upper half was a glossy illustration of a girl who looked like Dolores Del Rio. She stood in a grassy meadow holding a bottle of the brewery’s product and smiling seductively. On the opposite wall was a detailed map of Mexico and Central America, with ocean-depth charts and significant routes marked between the coast of Quintana Roo and the Panama Canal.

  Buzz looked at the chart, then over at Hooker. “What’d I tell you?”

  “You will remain silent until you are told to speak,” said the German who carried the flashlight.

  Inside, where there was light, Hooker could see that he looked like one of those blond kids from the Hitler Youth propaganda posters who had grown into young middle age and gotten soft. Like all other personnel at the base, he wore unmarked coveralls, but he might as well have had OFFICER tattooed on his forehead.

  The two riflemen were younger. One was thick bodied and muscular, the other angular and jerky in his movements. Both of them handled their weapons as though they knew how to use them.

  The officer spoke to them in German. The angular one braced, looked as though he wanted to click his heels, changed his mind, and went out. The officer nodded toward a pair of folding wooden chairs.

  “Sit,” he said to Buzz and Hooker.

  They sat.

  “You almost took us by surprise,” the German said. “Had the sentry not been slow in completing his rounds, you might have succeeded in … but what was it you planned to do, anyway?”

  Hooker and Buzz stared at opposite corners of the ceiling.

  “Ah, well, it is best we wait until the U-boat captain is present. A pity our base commandant is away. He might enjoy dealing with you.”

  The angular rifleman returned with a gray-haired man in a black turtleneck sweater. The base officer’s posture stiffened. The older man waved him to be at ease and studied Hooker and Buzz while the base officer spoke to him in German.

  “You have done good work, lieutenant,” the older man said in English. “I will bring it to the attention of your commandant at my first opportunity.”

  To Hooker and Buzz, he said, “I am Captain Oskar Lentz. May I have your names please?”

  “Hooker.”

  “Kaplan,” Buzz said, pronouncing each syllable carefully.

  Lentz did not react. He said, “Perhaps you will tell us the reason for your unauthorized presence on this base.”

  “We were lost,” Hooker said.

  “Fishing for sharks,” Buzz said.

  Captain Lentz regarded them coolly. The lieutenant scowled.

  “As you must know,” Lentz said dryly, “Germans have no sense of humor. I ask you again. What are you doing on the base?”

  Buzz and Hooker looked at each other and shrugged. Hooker spoke. “We thought we might blow it up.”

  “Amusing,” said Lentz. “How many of you are there?”

  Buzz held up two fingers.

  Lentz ignored him. “Where are the rest of your people?”

  “There aren’t any rest,” said Hooker. “We’re it.”

  The U-boat captain sighed and looked at the lieutenant. “Americans. Always it is with the games.”
/>   The lieutenant nodded toward the muscular rifleman. “Ritter here is good at games.”

  He said something in German, and Ritter grinned, his big hands tightening on his weapon.

  “I do not like such methods,” said Captain Lentz. “It reminds me of the Gestapo.”

  The lieutenant spoke briskly. “As you say, Herr Kapitan. I only thought we might hurry things along.”

  The U-boat commander regarded the captives. “The lieutenant makes a valid point. Would you care to reconsider your replies to my questions?”

  Buzz scratched his ear. Hooker gazed out the window behind the German officers, then off at the señorita with the beer bottle.

  Ritter rolled his heavy shoulders and looked eagerly to his lieutenant.

  The lieutenant looked to the captain.

  The captain looked at the prisoners, then turned away with a sigh. “Very well. I leave them in your hands for — ” He pulled out a watch, looked at it, then at the lieutenant.

  “Twenty minutes will be sufficient, Herr Kapitan. More than sufficient.”

  Lentz looked at the two men in the wooden chairs with something like sadness, then turned smartly and left the building, closing the door firmly behind him.

  “Ritter,” said the lieutenant.

  The rifleman handed his weapon to the lieutenant and flexed his fingers like a concert pianist preparing to play.

  “Erster, der Jude,” said the lieutenant.

  Ritter strutted over to the chair where Buzz sat and swung from the hip. His fist smacked into Buzz’s face with a sound like an ax biting into a tree. Kaplan managed to catch himself before he and the chair went over backward.

  Automatically, Hooker started to rise. The other rifleman took aim at his head, and he sank back down.

  Buzz spat out blood, most of which ran down his chin. “I thought you could hit,” he said.

  Ritter punched him again, this time a roundhouse right that split the skin over Buzz’s eye.

  Hooker breathed in and out deeply and withdrew into himself. It was a trick he had learned years before when he was in a situation where there was nothing he could do. He knew Buzz would take his beating, and then it would be his turn. When the Germans learned they could not beat out of the Americans information they did not have, they would begin the nastier business. Hooker put his mind off into the glossy meadow with Dolores Del Rio and the cold bottle of beer. He was concentrating on tasting the beer when the glass broke out of the window behind the Germans.