Twisted Cross

by Maloney, Mack;

  Pegg relit his pipe and through a swirl of smoke, began his strange story.

  Chapter 3

  EARLIER THAT YEAR, PEGG had been hired to pilot a medium-sized coastal freighter out of New Orleans down to the Amazon. Inside its hold were three tons of frozen shrimp—a birthday present, he had heard, for the Queen of Brasilia (the current name of Brazil) from her husband. While no self-respecting seaman like himself would ever be caught actually eating frozen shrimp, Pegg took on the job because it promised good pay for little work.

  The first leg of the trip went well. The shrimp was delivered and payment received from the King of Brasilia himself. But then the monarch had a proposition for Pegg and his crew: Would they carry another load of cargo down to Buenos Aires? Being an old merchantman, Pegg knew that this was how the hauling business usually worked: one job frequently led to another. In fact, he had anticipated such a thing and thereby had leased the trawler for three months.

  Pegg and his crew took on the King’s cargo—heavily-sealed containers with invulnerable laser combination locks—at the Brasilia port of Macapa on the mouth of the Amazon and made Buenos Aires six days later.

  “Now Buenos Aires is a very strange place these days,” Pegg said to Hunter, pouring out another couple of drinks for them. “Everybody—men, women, kids and grandmothers—wears a uniform. Everybody is in the army.”

  The Brasilian king’s cargo was off-loaded and again, Pegg was asked to take on another assignment. This one was to bring more sealed cargo to Lima, Peru. Pegg said he took three full days to think the job over as it entailed sailing around the southern tip of South America through the treacherous waters off Cape Horn.

  “I’d done it once before,” Pegg said. “Vowed then I’d never do it again…”

  But the lock-step military government of Buenos Aires promised a fortune (in gold, no less) for Pegg if he agreed to make the voyage. For despite their obvious military might, the Argentines no longer had sailable ships, much less anyone who had the skills to navigate the typhoon-like passage at the southern tip of the world.

  Pegg put it to a vote to his crew. Seven men agreed to go, four chose to jump ship in Buenos Aires. Pegg collected a third of his payment in advance and set out, his crew supplemented by a half dozen Argentinian marines, none of whom could speak English.

  The passage around the cape was predictably nightmarish, Pegg claimed. One crewman and a marine were washed overboard as the freighter was battered by hurricane-like winds and 25-foot waves. The sky was as dark as midnight even in the middle of the day. The waters were so churned up that Pegg claimed he and his crew saw all kinds of strange creatures—giant eels, serpents and squid—riding on the surface. Sharks were jumping out of the water like flying fish. Seagulls and albatross continually smashed into the hull of the freighter, content, according to Pegg, to commit suicide rather than to drown in the hellish sea. For three straight days, Pegg and his crew did nothing but bail water, both by hand and diesel-driven pumps. Two men dropped dead of exhaustion. Another went insane and jumped overboard—Pegg said they inexplicably heard his screams for more than an hour…

  Finally they made it to the southwestern-most islands at the tip of Chile where they docked and recovered for two days. Then they set out northward on the more placid waters of the Pacific.

  “That’s when the voyage started getting very strange,” Pegg told Hunter.

  The captain was asleep in his berth one night just as the ship was halfway to Lima when he was awakened by an ear-splitting crash. Quickly out of bed and into his boots, Pegg ran to the bridge to find that his ship was now dead in the water. Right off its bow was no less than a battle cruiser.

  “Looking back on it, if I had to guess, I would say it was of Italian design,” Pegg recounted. “It might have been a Veneto-class warship. Very sleek-looking. Very modern. It looked like it was very fast for a ship of its size.”

  But the cruiser’s crew was anything but a gang of friendly Italians. They had rammed Pegg’s ship on purpose, and before Pegg had a chance to tie his boot lacings, a 50-man heavily-armed boarding party was crossing over to his small ship.

  “Everyone of them looked alike,” Pegg swore to Hunter. “Tall, blond, all the same age and weight. It was the strangest thing, as if they were all first cousins or something…”

  No one in the boarding party said a word. They simply took up positions at various points on the freighter’s deck after having shot the two Argentine marines who had dared to raise their guns to them. After that Pegg wisely ordered his crew not to resist.

  On a given signal, the strangers commenced searching the ship. Under the light of the cruiser’s powerful searchlights, they quickly hauled up the 12 sealed containers that Pegg had taken on in Buenos Aires and one man, an officer in charge of the raiding party, was able to disarm the supposedly foolproof laser locks.

  To the surprise of Pegg and his crew, the 10 foot-by-10-foot boxes were filled to the brim with gold.

  “Not gold bars, either,” Pegg told Hunter. “Gold objects. Plates. Goblets. Crucifixes. Chains and necklaces. Rings. And coins. Thousands of gold coins…”

  “The Argentines put all that gold… on a freighter?” Hunter asked. “Why?”

  “Good question, Major,” Pegg told him. “And I believe the answer is this: It was all part of their plan. The gold, in fact, was a payment to these men on the cruiser, or more accurately, their superiors. Blood money. Protection money. Call it what you like. It was never intended to make it to Peru at all.

  “And neither were we…”

  Once the raiders took all the gold onto the cruiser, the boarding party shot one more of the marines, then returned to their warship.

  “We breathed a sigh of relief when that ship turned away from us and started heading north,” Pegg said. “But what fools we were!”

  The cruiser sailed away about ten miles, then, without warning, launched a Swedish-built RBS-15 anti-ship missile at Pegg’s freighter.

  “I saw it coming,” Pegg said. “I had just enough time to shout a warning to my crew. About half of us made it over the side before the missile hit…”

  The powerful RBS-15 hit the freighter just above the waterline and instantly obliterated the vessel. Pegg and another crewman—a man they all called “Goldie” because of his mouthful of gold teeth—were blown out of the water and landed in a sea of burning oil and debris.

  “We caught hold of a big chunk of wood that went floating by,” Pegg said. “Then we kicked our feet as fast as we could, just to get away from the burning wreckage.”

  Although they heard the cries from some of the other crewmen, they weren’t able to find any of them in the smoke and darkness and confusion. They paddled around until dawn and finding no other signs of life, set out for the coast of Chile, luckily just three miles to the east.

  The two men made landfall after 10 hours of grueling paddling, all the while, Pegg said, fighting off man-eating sharks with their bare fists. Once ashore they sought refuge in a nearby woods and soon met some villagers who gave them food and warm clothing.

  “We were near a town called Tongo, Chile, which is about seven hundred miles south of the border with Peru,” Pegg said. “The place was all but abandoned. Only old people and young women lived there. We asked them: ‘Where is everybody?’ But they couldn’t answer us very well because we didn’t speak their language and they couldn’t speak ours. We got the impression that all of the other villagers had been taken away. Maybe by slavers, I remember thinking at the time.”

  The small harbor at Tongo was filled with fishing boats and Pegg and Goldie offered to somehow buy one of the vessels. Instead the villagers told them they could have one for free, if they agreed to take part in a strange ritual.

  “They wanted us to make love to all of the young women in the village,” Pegg claimed. “Their men were long gone and the young females were getting themselves damp…”

  It took three weeks for Pegg and Goldie to fulfill their agreem
ent. Once done, the villagers indicated that the seamen should take the best vessel in harbor as none of the boats would ever be used again anyway. Pegg selected the largest one in the small fleet—a 30-foot tuna boat—and set out.

  “We decided to go north,” Pegg said. “Even though that was the direction that the cruiser took, we knew it was better than going back down around the cape.”

  Staying as close to the shore as possible, they sailed the tuna boat up the South American west coast, catching fish along the way to sustain them. Using their engines only when necessary, the favorable currents took them up past Peru and Ecuador.

  “We were going to sail it right up to California,” Pegg said. “But off the coast of Colombia our engine started acting up. Then it died completely. At the same time the currents reversed and started to drag us due west, out to the open sea.”

  They drifted for another two weeks, Pegg said, their only nourishment coming from eating the huge sea turtles Pegg said he caught off the top of the waves with his bare hands.

  Still, they had no water left and soon both men were near death.

  “Two angels floated down and landed right on our stern,” Pegg said. “Both Goldie and I were lying on the deck, too weak to move, just waiting for our Maker. I saw Goldie’s spirit lift right out of his body, I did. But then I pleaded with seraphs to send him back. And they did…

  “A day later we were picked up by a tramp steamer carrying a Japanese captain and a huge Filipino crew. They were carrying rubber—for tires—from Manila all the way over to Morocco. The captain told us he could make ten thousand bags of gold if he made the trip in two months. So he was shooting for passage through the Canal. The Canal! We thought he was crazy, especially with all the horror stories we had heard. But he knew we were both experienced sailors, so he kept us on.”

  According to Pegg, the Japanese captain thought he had it all figured out. He was confident he could handle any situation in the canal zone. And with seemingly good reason—the Filipino crewmen doubled as soldiers and there were no less than 150 of them. And the steamer itself was bristling with 3-inch and 5-inch deck guns, as well as a dozen heavy machine guns. It also carried a number of fast attack boats that could quickly be lowered over the side.

  “They were well-armed,” Pegg reported. “And the soldiers drilled and practiced on deck four hours a day and another two hours at night. They were a crack outfit by the time we made it to the islands that guard the entrance of the Canal.”

  The captain sent two squads of his soldiers ahead in two attack boats. The plan was for the craft to scout ahead of the steamer, checking for any hostile forces on either side of the waterway. The bonus was that the attack craft crews were also knowledgeable in the kind of water locks used in the Canal.

  “A lot of people don’t realize that more than half the length of the Canal is actually a lake and a river,” Pegg said. “You enter a set of locks from the one side. They gradually raise you up about eighty-five feet until you are at the right level. Then you sail for about twenty-five miles until you reach the other set of locks and they lower you back down and out you go.

  “The locks themselves are fairly elaborate, but the Japanese captain knew they required hardly any machinery or pumps. It’s all done with gravity. He didn’t believe the hoodoo stories and figured that there was an even chance the locks were still working, or at least could be made to work by his attack craft guys…”

  The scout boats made it to the first lock, and to their surprise, found it to be in working condition, manned by no more that a half dozen sleeping guards of undetermined but apparently non-cannibalistic origin. The scouts reported back to the steamer to proceed, and within hours, the ship was through the first locks and sailing on.

  “Everything was going smoothly,” Pegg said. “Too smoothly. Oh, we took a few sniper rounds along the way, but the steamer gunners would just open up with those five-inch guns and that would be the end of that!

  “The Japanese captain thought for sure he had outsmarted everyone, that he was making history! That is, until we were about halfway through the channel…”

  As Pegg told it, he had just finished eating breakfast when they heard the lookout give a yell. By the time Pegg made it to the bridge, he and the others saw that one of the attack craft had just blown up.

  “It was about a half mile ahead of us,” Pegg said. “And the bastard just blew apart. At first the captain thought it was a mine. Then the other boat got it, and after that, we knew it wasn’t no mine.”

  Pegg claimed that the second attack craft was shot at by hundreds of weapons, firing from both sides of the Canal.

  “It was unbelievable!” the sea captain said. “They hit that boat with rockets, surface-to-surface guided missiles, big guns, little guns, heavy machine guns. Everything but the kitchen sink. Whoever was doing the shooting was definitely trying to send a message…”

  That message was that the steamer was going no further. Soon after the attack craft were sunk, a small fleet of gunboats surrounded the steamer, and soon she was being boarded.

  “They were just like the guys that had blown us up off Chile after taking the gold,” Pegg said. “Same uniforms, same strange look on their faces. Tall, blond and no expressions. Like a bunch of first cousins.”

  Just like before, the boarding party shot anyone on the ship who looked like a soldier, as opposed to a sailor. In the case of the steamer, this was more than one hundred men.

  “Just lined them up on the bow and shot ’em all,” Pegg said. “One at a time… but not before they looked into each guy’s mouth. In fact, they yanked out a few teeth from a couple guys right men and there. Then they shot ’em.”

  The mysterious raiders then ordered the captain to move the steamer to a dockworks that had been built on the far edge of the waterway. Pegg said there were at least a dozen other ships there—all sizes, under different flags.

  “It was a floating graveyard; they had all fallen for the same ruse.” Pegg said. “Like a spider sucking a fly into its web, we sailed right into their trap.”

  Once docked, the steamer was searched thoroughly no less than five times.

  “They didn’t care about the rubber,” Pegg reported. “They were looking for only one thing… gold.

  “They didn’t find any, although they were convinced we had some on us. They tortured the captain until he finally died. Then they gathered up what was left of us—about fifteen in all—and started prowling around in our mouths, just like they did to the Filipinos they shot. It wasn’t until they came to me that I realized what they were doing. If you can believe it, they were looking for gold fillings!

  “When they got to poor Goldie, they yanked his mouth empty. Then they just threw him overboard, shot him and watched him die.”

  Why Pegg wasn’t shot then and there, he never found out. Instead the strange troops locked him and a few of the surviving steamer mates in a makeshift jailshack.

  “We was there for two days and nights,” the captain said. “No food. No water. Nothing. Like they had just abandoned us.

  “Then, on the third night, we heard a bunch of explosions. Suddenly there’s a hell of a gunfight going on right outside our shack. It went on for more than an hour. We heard mortars, big fifties, rocket-propelled grenades. Choppers flying overhead. People yelling over loudspeakers. Strange music blaring until it split your eardrums. It was incredible!

  “Then, something—I think it was an RPG—hit our building. Blew the side right off it. Killed three Filipino fellows, the poor bastards. Me and the others didn’t hang around to cry. We just lit out into the jungle.

  “I’m an old man and still I’ve never run that fast in my life…”

  Chapter 4

  THE BOTTLE OF HONG Kong brandy was gone by the time Pegg had nearly finished his tale.

  Jones had told Hunter that Pegg, being an old salt and all, might be prone to exaggeration. Yet the pilot knew that despite the story’s fantastic flourishes, there had to be a
kernel of truth underneath.

  “I haven’t got to the good part yet!” Pegg said, relighting his pipe for the umpteenth time.

  Hunter shifted around in his chair and said: “So tell me. What happened next?”

  Pegg gave out a hoot, then a long, raspy cough. “I crawled through that jungle all night,” he said. “I saw lots of soldiers running around. These guys in black, plus other guys in green jungle camouflage outfits. Choppers everywhere. They were shooting at each other and here I am, a man my age, clambering around in the bushes in the middle of them.

  “Morning came and I had made my way a good piece down the side of the waterway. I could see the east side locks and of course, they had these blond-haired goons crawling all over them.

  “I spent the whole day just watching them. They had a bunch of skindivers working for them and it seemed like they were planting things in the middle of the channel…”

  “Things?” Hunter asked. “What kind of things?”

  Pegg shrugged. “Long silver tubes,” he said, closing his eyes in an effort to remember. “Flashing lights on them. You should have seen the contraption they was carrying them in. It looked like a big gray box on a piece of toast. They had it fitted out like an egg crate. And they handled each one of those tubes just like it was eggs. Real careful like…”

  Hunter ran his hand through his hair, trying to make some sense of the story. “So how’d you finally get back, Captain?”

  Pegg began to say something, when suddenly a shot rang out…

  Hunter was down on the floor in less than a second, dragging the old man down off his chair with him. The shot had come through the flat’s single window, smashing the thick glass and catching Pegg square in the jaw.

  Hunter raised his M-16 and shot out the room’s only light. Then he lifted Pegg up on his knee.

  “Goddamn it… the dirty bastards must have finally caught up with me…” the old man managed to say, despite his wound.

  Just then another shot came through the window. Then another. And another.