Sekret Machines Book 1: Chasing Shadows

by Tom DeLonge

“No, no, no,” she muttered. “Not here. Not now.”

  But no matter how many times she turned the key, the car did not revive. The radio crackled on for a moment, spewing static and scrambled pop songs, and then died completely. So did her headlights.

  Timika sat in the sudden silent dark, flipping switches, turning dials, muttering pleas and prayers, but nothing happened. It was as if the car was no more than a piece of furniture.

  She was stuck.

  Reaching behind her, she manually locked all the doors, then fumbled under the passenger seat for a flashlight, but before she turned it on, her eyes locked onto her rear view mirror. If that car were to reappear, rolling up behind her with its lights off, she was dead. Hell, parked where she was, she wouldn’t need anyone to have a particularly sinister intent. They could come round the corner and plow right into her before they knew she was there.

  But no one came. That was almost worse.

  She was going to have to get out of the car and walk, and hope someone came. The right someone. It felt like a gamble because it was. Under other circumstances—perhaps if she lived through it all and could retell the story back home one day—it would be funny, this tale of a New York City girl lost in the Pennsylvania woods at night … She unlatched her door and put her shoulder to it.

  And in that instant, the darkness was torn asunder by a brilliant blue white glare that seemed to come from all around, a light so bright that Timika hid her head in her hands. The cars lights and radio both flickered back into life for a second, then went out, but the light outside, the light that painted the trees impossibly green and white so that they seemed to leap close and hard, packing in around the car, stayed constant.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, her head down. One second. Two.

  She opened her eyes again, and the world was rational again. Normal. The light was gone and she was alone in Dion’s crap-box car, marooned in the Pennsylvania woods.

  What the hell?

  She hadn’t imagined the light. Could it have been someone’s high beams weirdly bouncing off her mirrors, the sky-slashing searchlights of some car dealership display just the other side of the trees?

  She pushed the car door wide and slid out, registering a strange silence as if the world had been muted. As she did so she snagged the bridge officer’s coat on the seatbelt, and as she tugged herself free watched as a brass button popped off and felt to the road.

  Except that it didn’t land.

  It hovered in the air eighteen inches above the ground, spinning.

  Timika froze mid stoop, staring at it. She moved one hand through the air above the suspended button as if it might be snagged on some invisible thread.

  Nothing.

  And then she felt it, a strange pool of darkness like the shadow of something directly above her. Something vast.

  Slowly, reluctantly, she tore her eyes off the spinning button and looked directly up into the blackness of the sky.

  And then the Pennsylvania night tore open again, blasting her sight with the lightning glare of a thousand bursting stars.

  37

  JERZY

  Argentina, October 1946

  ONE MOMENT, THE MOONLESS SKY WAS CLEAR AND STILL, and the next, it was a mere backdrop to the one star that was in motion. I’d seen shooting stars in the mountains in Poland, and I knew immediately that this was not one of them. It seemed to drift sideways and then, as my attention fixed on it, it pulsed with a swelling, brighter light that doubled its overall size before shooting across the sky, flashing once more, and vanishing from sight.

  I got to my feet, staring open mouthed, trying to make sense of what I had seen, heart racing, muttering to myself in excited Polish. I was so fixated on the sky that I did not notice that I was no longer alone.

  “Jerzy?”

  It was Hartsfeld.

  “Did you see that?” I asked in a breathless whisper.

  “See what?”

  “A star. Or a plane. Something. It came from over there and then streaked that way.”

  “A meteor, perhaps,” said Hartsfeld.

  “No,” I said. “It changed speeds, maybe direction too. And it got brighter.”

  “I think you’re half asleep,” he said, with a little smile. “You should get some rest. Long day tomorrow.”

  “No,” I said. “I really saw it. Maybe if we wait, we’ll see another.”

  “Sleep time, Seaman,” said Hartsfeld, still smiling. “That’s an order.”

  I scowled, then nodded.

  “Are the others asleep?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

  The diplomat gave me a curious look, removing his glasses, and he seemed to read my concern about Belasco.

  “Does that matter?” he asked, and there was something hard in his face.

  “No, sir,” I said. “Good night.”

  He just watched me, saying nothing, and I had the distinct impression that he didn’t like me, though I didn’t think I had given him any cause.

  I crawled into the tent, careful to make no noise or brush up against the other sleeping bags. In the dark, I wasn’t sure which one was Belasco and which was Ignacio, so I unrolled my bag with the delicacy of defusing a bomb and slid inside. Only when I was secure on my side, huddled into a defensive curl with the sleeping bag pulled up around my head, did I permit myself to replay what I had seen in the sky. I feel asleep thinking about it, managing to forget Belasco and the other dangers of our mission until morning.

  I SAID NOTHING ABOUT WHAT I HAD SEEN THE NIGHT before as we ate our furtive little breakfasts and reloaded the jeep. Belasco must have gotten hold of a bottle of spirits somewhere. The tent smelled of his acrid breath, and he was surly all morning, shouldering me aside as he climbed aboard. It was warmer than it had been, and the further north we drove, the hotter it became. The road turned to a pitted track, overgrown with potholes deep enough to drown a goat, and the trees crowded in, until we were covered by a towering canopy. It still wasn’t the jungle of King Solomon’s Mines, but it was close, heavy with humidity and the cries of strange wild things. Once a troupe of peculiar, long-nosed, ring-tailed creatures the size of large house-cats came out onto the path in front of us and, when we stopped, crowded around the jeep, peering in with bright eyes, holding their sides with paws more like hands than any non-human creature I had ever seen. Ignacio called them coati. Belasco gave them a blank stare and shooed them roughly away.

  “Let’s just get wherever the hell we are going,” he muttered, closing his eyes and trying to sleep.

  We were getting close. Hartsfeld studied his map and twice ordered that we stop so he could listen for water. Eventually he consulted his compass and directed us off the main road, such as it was, and onto a still smaller path that crawled deeper into the forest to the northwest in a region he referred to as Corrientes.

  “There should be a village up here,” he said. “We will ask there.”

  I was forcefully struck by the strangeness of our mission, its seeming randomness. We had not been told how much Hartsfeld knew, or suspected, about the location of Kammler and the other Nazi officers. The idea that we were now going to start questioning whoever we found living in these remote woods seemed bizarre in the extreme.

  “Is that not risky?” I said. “Asking local people who may have been paid off already by the men we are looking for.”

  “I think I can manage, thank you, Seaman,” said Hartsfeld, not looking up from his map. “If I’ve learned anything in the foreign services, dealing with these people, it’s how to get what I want without actually asking for it.”

  His use of the phrase “these people” bothered me, and not only because I doubted the people he dealt with in the offices of Buenos Aires were the same as the ones up here in the rainforest. But it was also the kind of phrase the Nazis had used about people like me. I shaded my eyes from the glare and watched an unreasonably iridescent bird with long, trailing tail feathers.

  Soon, I was using my hands to protect my fac
e and arms from the great leaves pressing in on the car, and swatting at the constant buzz of insects around my head.

  “This,” said Belasco, confidingly, “is bullshit.”

  Something in his irritated grumpiness amused me, and for once I actually laughed so that he, surprised, grinned back, as if we were friends, united in misery.

  WE FOUND THE VILLAGE—OR A VILLAGE—AS WE PUSHED deeper into the forest, but our first attempts to get information from the locals met with an unexpected snag. The woman we found grinding maize, her children gathered around her on the dirt floor of her open house, did not speak Spanish. The other three jabbered away at her, but got nothing useful in return.

  “Guarani,” Ignacio pronounced with casual scorn. “Tupí.”

  Belasco demanded something of Ignacio—presumably whether he knew any words of these other languages—but the Argentine shook his head emphatically, and then a flicker of amusement at his employers’ stupidity.

  Hartsfeld scowled, then gave him another slew of instructions, whereupon the boy set the vehicle in motion again. Twice more, we stopped to talk to the natives, but made no headway, so that eventually we drove on, hoping for better luck at the next settlement we found.

  We were rewarded on the shores of a long sparkling lake, where, for a few coins, a Spanish-speaking fisherman agreed to serve as interpreter with the locals in the village. So we drove back, hot and irritable now, but at least with a sense of progress made.

  It was hard going, and I saw a lot of head shaking and blank looks. What I didn’t see, however, was deception. These people just didn’t know anything about the men we were looking for. They did, however, verify where we were, and when we got back into the car, Hartsfeld looked pleased.

  “Eight miles north of here,” he said. “We’ll get more information there.”

  “And when we find them?” asked Belasco. “What do we do then? Take down the map coordinates and drive back to Buenos Aires? What is the point, if you already know where they are?”

  “We don’t,” said Hartsfeld, not turning round. “Not precisely. We need a good fix on where they are, and how many of them there are, and what they have with them.”

  “So we can do what?” Belasco pressed. “Drop the US Airborne on them? Bomb the shit out of the whole area?”

  “That’s not your concern,” said Hartsfeld, haughtily.

  “If we’re gonna restart the Second World War in the goddamned jungles of Argentina, I’d like to know about it,” Belasco shot back.

  “Just follow your orders,” said Hartsfeld, “and we’ll have no problems.”

  Belasco said nothing, but I couldn’t help worrying just how far Hartsfeld’s authority would stretch out here in the jungle.

  WE CAME UPON THE NEXT VILLAGE THAT AFTERNOON. Despite offers of more money, our fisherman translator had refused to come with us, so we were faced once more with the prospect of trying to make ourselves understood. We found a Spanish speaker on our second attempt. Half the village gathered to hear what was going on, and there was a lot of arguing and pointing off into the forest as Hartsfeld probed them. Again, I saw no signs that anyone was keeping anything secret, and it struck me that the Nazis would want as few dealings as possible with people such as these.

  At last Hartsfeld seemed satisfied.

  “White people were seen going in this direction two weeks ago,” he said, pointing along a trail far too narrow for the jeep.

  “Two weeks?” Belasco scoffed. “They could be anywhere by now.”

  Hartsfeld shook his head.

  “That was only the most recent group,” he said. “Apparently they have been coming here for several years, bringing things with them. The boys in the village have been out to where they went and say there is something there. Something we are going to want to see. I think, gentlemen, that we’ve found what we came for.”

  WE UNLOADED THE CAR WHERE IT STOOD, OPENING UP THE equipment crates, but leaving the tent and all but a little of the food and water. We would carry no more than we needed and, if possible, would be back within a few hours. The crate included a .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun and an M1 Garand. Belasco took the sub, so I got the rifle, a weapon I hadn’t fired since Boot Camp.

  “Not to be used unless absolutely necessary,” said Hartsfeld, eying Belasco significantly. “This is a recon mission only. You shoot to keep yourself alive. That’s all.”

  Belasco gave me an unreadable look. He didn’t like Nazis. I didn’t either, but for all his machismo and swagger, I don’t think he knew what it was like to kill one. I did.

  “Keep the flashlights off unless absolutely necessary,” said Hartsfeld, as we began our trek along the path. For now, we didn’t need them, but after an hour’s hike, the sun was almost down and the jungle was giving itself over to a deep green darkness. Ignacio eyed the rifle slung across my back warily. I didn’t know why he was still with us, instead of waiting at the car, but Hartsfeld had insisted.

  “Wouldn’t want to walk into the jungle and vanish without trace,” he remarked to me.

  I scowled, but nodded. It made about as much sense as the rest of this mission.

  NIGHT CAME ON FAST IN THE RAINFOREST. HOWLER monkeys screamed in the treetops, and strange birds, with heavy-looking beaks as long as their bodies, flew off to their roosts. For all I knew, we were watched by jaguars, though I saw no sign of them. What we saw instead was far stranger and more unexpected.

  At first I thought it was a house, looming out of the darkness of the trees, but then I realized it was far larger than any house, and of a completely different style of construction than anything we had seen in the last few days. It was more like the curtain wall of a stone castle, with high shuttered windows that leaked light and a great barred door set in a heavy arch, and it was no more native to these steamy woods than I was. In fact, the building was so unlike the jungle around it that the whole felt more than imposing—it felt dreamlike, as if the structure had been picked up from somewhere else and dropped here.

  “What the hell?” breathed Belasco, dropping into a crouch.

  I moved to the other side of the path, unslinging the rifle and bringing its muzzle to bear on the uncanny door. Ignacio hung back, looking suddenly very unsure of himself.

  Hartsfeld, however, just smiled.

  “Cover me,” he said to Belasco, reaching inside his sweat-stained jacket as he approached the door.

  Hartsfeld moved casually, walking upright, no trace of caution in his gait, no attempt to make himself small in case gunfire erupted from one of those upper windows. It felt … wrong. As Belasco edged out towards him, I found myself almost overwhelmed by the urge to call him back.

  Hartsfeld reached the door, and I realized what he had drawn from his pocket.

  It was a key. I didn’t see it, not at first, but I heard the snap of a lock, and the creak of the door, and suddenly the darkness of the jungle was lit by a soft, yellowish glow from within. Hartsfeld spoke, and it took me a moment to process the significance of what he had said. The words—“I’m here, but I have brought guests”—were less important, perhaps, than the fact that he said them in German: “Ich bin hier, aber ich habe die Gäste gebracht.”

  And now I did call to Belasco, but Hartsfeld was already turning, pocketing the key, and drawing a black automatic pistol. He aimed it squarely at Belasco who, finally realizing what was happening, pointed the submachine gun at the diplomat in the doorway, and squeezed the trigger.

  There was a click, but nothing else happened, and silhouetted in the unearthly arch and with his Nazi comrades at his back, Hartsfeld gave a little grunt that was almost a laugh.

  “I’m afraid I took the liberty of removing the firing pins from your weapons last night,” he said.

  And then he started shooting.

  38

  BARNEY AND BETTY HILL

  White Mountains, NH, September 1961

  IT HAD BEEN A LONG TRIP, AND THERE WERE STILL SEVeral hours to go to before they reached Portsmou
th, but the New Hampshire roads were quiet, and the night was clear. Barney Hill checked his side view mirrors and shifted in the driver’s seat, feeling the weight of the pistol in his pocket. It would normally stay in the trunk, but they had picnicked near Twin Mountain, and Betty was afraid of bears.

  Niagara had been something to see. The height, the sheer volume of the water crashing down the cliff face. Just amazing, and alone worth the drive, even though the air pollution made it hard to see. The picnic at Twin Mountain had been his idea. He hadn’t said as much to Betty, but he was tired of the sidelong looks in the diners, the probing mixtures of curiosity and shock, gazes turned quickly away when he looked around. Betty didn’t seem to notice, though he wondered if that was a choice, a blind spot she had developed to get through the day. Every day, Barney was reminded that it was still unusual to see a black man with a white wife, but it wore on him like the teeth of a saw rasped along barbed wire. And that was just the polite folk, the ones who averted their eyes or forced a smile as if nothing were wrong, but there were others, the ones who stared, or waited for you to look at them before spitting pointedly on the ground. Sometimes it was worse. Betty ignored it, but the revolver in his pocket was there to keep more than bears away, and it was no accident that their vacations took them north, not south.

  Patsy Kline was crooning “I Fall to Pieces” on the radio, turned down so low that Barney could barely hear it, and then Bobby Vee singing “Take Good Care of My Baby.” Chicago White Sox second baseman Nellie Fox had driven in two runs to beat the Red Sox 5-1 earlier that day, the news said. Barney turned to his wife to see if she was sleeping and, as she smiled drowsily at him, took her hand for a moment.

  “Watch the road, lover boy,” she said in her flat New England voice, grinning before turning to the dark, wooded hills outside.

  “Just a couple more hours now,” he said. “You can sleep if you want.”

  “Okay,” she said. She sounded vague, as if she were already drifting off. In her lap, Delsey, their overindulged pet dachshund, shifted and looked up, tongue lolling and eyes hopeful. Barney wanted to get a few more miles under their belts before stopping to let the dog go out, but she was clearly getting restless.