Barracuda

by Richard Turner

  “Thanks; I knew you’d have everything in order.”

  “Ryan, you’re heading to a pretty bleak and remote island.You never told me, what are you looking for?”

  “At this moment, I haven’t a clue. I’m hoping we’ll know it when we spot it.”

  “If we spot it,” threw in Jackson glumly.

  Yuri drove through the town to a small airfield, with an old wooden hangar on it, where his rented helicopter was waiting for them. A mechanic in stained coveralls was just finishing checking out the engine. Yuri parked the van and helped his friends to carry their luggage inside the building, immediately thankful to be out of the brisk blowing wind. While Yuri registered his flight plan, Mitchell and Jackson grabbed what they needed from their suitcases before boarding the helicopter. Both men had put on several layers of warm clothing underneath their newly bought Gore-Tex jackets.

  Yuri returned with all of the paperwork he required, filled out in triplicate. He handed a couple of permits to Mitchell. “Ryan, you owe me five hundred dollars for that.”

  Mitchell examined the permit. “I was told we had permission to fly over to the island.”

  “Da, permission but not permit. And just to be clear that’s five hundred each that you owe me.”

  “Sounds like a scam if you ask me,” said Jackson.

  Yuri disinterestedly shrugged his shoulder. “That may be, but no permit, no visit. No one has lived permanently on Roberts Island for nearly one hundred years. The local government has to make money somehow, and selling expensive permits to people like you two is how they do it.”

  Mitchell stuffed the papers into a pocket as he followed Yuri out to their waiting helicopter. It was an all-white Bell 205, a civilian version of the military’s UH-1. Capable of a cruising speed of two hundred kilometers an hour, the helicopter could quickly and easily take them to their destination ninety kilometers from the Argentine mainland.

  Mitchell yanked open the side door and helped Jackson stow their gear inside. “So what did you manage to get us?” he asked Yuri, as he eyed several hard-plastic containers strapped to the floor.

  Yuri moved past Mitchell and jumped up inside. He pointed at the cases. “You have a satphone for calling home, along with a laptop computer. My number and Mister Donaldson’s are already programmed into the phone. You also have several high-end cameras to make you look like real nature photographers. Just make sure you get a picture of the penguins for me. Anna, my little niece, just adores them.”

  “How many penguins are there on the island?” asked Jackson.

  “I was told that there are over fifty thousand of them, along with thousands of Antarctic fur seals,” answered Yuri.

  Mitchell said, “What else did you manage to scrounge?”

  “There a couple of GPS devices, a metal detector and a small, handheld, ground-penetrating radar in one of the boxes as well.”

  “Weapons?” asked Mitchell, pitching his voice lower to ensure his question didn’t travel.

  Yuri tapped one of the containers. “Hidden inside are two Walther P99s with six fully loaded magazines for each pistol.”

  “Considering I didn’t give you much of a heads-up, you’ve done remarkably well in getting everything I asked for.”

  “Without the usual cruise ships coming into port, it’s a slow time of the year down here. Obtaining things under the table when you flash around a wad of U.S. dollars isn’t all that hard to do.”

  Jackson’s stomach rumbled. “Food?”

  Yuri chuckled. “Along with your tent and stove, there are enough rations and water to last you a week should the weather turn bad and I cannot fly over to the island to pick you up.”

  “Good Lord, we don’t want to be stuck out there for a week,” moaned Jackson.

  Mitchell asked, “How about the satellite images of the island that I asked for?”

  Yuri reached over, picked up a file folder from the floor of the helicopter and gave it to Mitchell. “These pictures were taken a couple of days ago by a passing French satellite.”

  Mitchell studied the images, and couldn’t hold back a shudder. Roberts Island looked cold, rocky and barren. It measured just over five kilometers in length and was two kilometers wide at its widest point. In the center was a cove facing south, where ships used to anchor when it was used as a whaling station in the late-nineteenth century. Mitchell pointed to the bay. “You might as well drop us there. We can set up camp and begin our search from that spot.”

  “Da, all aboard,” said Yuri, as he climbed into his seat at the front of the helicopter.

  Jackson made himself comfortable in the back of the Huey, while Mitchell climbed into the co-pilot’s seat beside Yuri. Within seconds, the Huey’s engine began to whine as it came to life.

  Mitchell heard Jackson’s voice in his headset. “Captain, this wants to go better than the last time we spent a few days on an island in the middle of nowhere, right?”

  Recalling an event a few months back during a mission on Bouvet Island where one of their colleagues was murdered and they were lucky to escape with their lives, Ryan made a wordless sound in his throat. “Nate, anything will be better than that.”

  Less than a minute later, the helicopter was airborne. Yuri climbed up into the slate-gray, cloud-filled sky, banked over and headed out to sea.

  Mitchell sat back in his seat and studied the pictures in his hands. It didn’t make any sense to him why this particular island was so important to the enigmatic Kapitanleutnant Schur. He doubted that their search for the missing treasure would end on the island. But as long as it got him closer to solving the mystery, that was all that mattered, as far as he was concerned.

  Sitting in a parked car outside of the small airfield, the man with salt-and-pepper hair lowered his binoculars. He lit a cigarette before digging out a worn black book from his rental car’s glove compartment. The man wrote down the time the helicopter took off and its tail number, in case he needed to identify the chopper at a later date. The man figured that the round trip to the island and back again would take about two hours, so he decided to find a restaurant and have a meal while he waited. After the debacle in Madrid, he knew the only way he was going to find the looted treasure was to follow Mitchell and Jackson. If they found it, he did not intend to let them keep it. There were other interested parties involved, and they would pay millions for his services.

  17

  Abandoned Whaling Camp

  Roberts Island

  Mitchell and Jackson hurried to grab everything they needed from the back of the helicopter. As soon as they had all of their gear, Mitchell stepped off to one side so he could make eye contact with Yuri. He waved over at his friend, who waved back. With a loud whine from the Huey’s engine, the helicopter edged forward slightly before taking off into the air. Mitchell and Jackson stood on the rocky ground and watched as Yuri headed out over the cold, gray waters of the South Atlantic and disappeared from sight.

  “Come on; let’s set up camp and get a pot of water on the stove,” suggested Mitchell.

  With a cold, wet wind blowing over them, Jackson readily agreed.

  They set up their tent beside one abandoned building, using it to help block the wind. There were a dozen dilapidated wooden shacks still standing. Not too far from their camp were ten graves, white crosses keeping silent watch over the remains interred under piles of rock. It was a sad reminder of a time when men would risk their lives, hunting the whales who swam these cold waters to near extinction. A large fur seal lay on its side beside a wrecked longboat. It scratched its massive belly with one of its flippers while it watched Mitchell and Jackson nailing long metal pegs into the ground to secure their tent. As soon as their shelter was up, Jackson dug out a stove and put a pot of water on to boil. Mitchell opened up one of the plastic containers and tried out the satphone. It took him less than a minute to get in touch with Donaldson, sixty-eight hundred kilometers to the north of Roberts Island.

  “How are things?” asked
Donaldson.

  “We’ve arrived safely and are planning to take a look around before nightfall,” said Mitchell. “I’ll call as soon as we get back to our camp.”

  “You do that.” The short conversation ended. Both men knew the importance of preserving the phone’s batteries, in case an emergency flared up and they needed to call for help.

  “So what’s the plan?” asked Jackson, as he poured two cups of piping hot coffee.

  “I say we take a jaunt around the cove to get a feel for this place,” replied Mitchell. “We’ll take a camera with us and snap a few pictures of the wildlife, just in case we are being watched. After that, we can work our way south along the shoreline for a while. It gets dark really early this far south so we had best be on our way back here no later than sixteen-thirty, or it’ll be harder to make our way back to camp.”

  “Weapons?”

  “Yeah, I think it might be wise to carry them with us from now on.”

  Jackson popped open a box and handed Mitchell the camera with the telescopic lens that was inside. He then lifted up the foam from the bottom of the container and removed the two hidden pistols, along with the loaded magazines. Both men checked their weapons before inserting a magazine into the pistol grip.

  “I’ll grab us some food to snack on while we explore the island,” said Jackson.

  “Good idea. While you do that, I’ll fill up a couple of thermoses with the rest of the coffee. We may need them if the wind doesn’t die down. In this weather, it wouldn’t take long for a person to succumb to hypothermia.”

  An hour later, Mitchell and Jackson stood on a prominent rocky outcropping overlooking the old whaling camp. Spread out like a living black-and-white blanket were tens of thousands of penguins. They were huddled together on a rocky beach all the way up the side of a rolling hill. Mitchell remembered what Yuri had told him, and took a couple of pictures before placing the camera back in its bag.

  Jackson moved the handheld, ground-penetrating radar they had brought with them over the rocky terrain. “Nothing,” he reported. He replaced the GPR with a metal detector from the pack he carried on his back. “You know Ryan, it would help if we knew what we were looking for.”

  “Without the diary to tell us what the Nazis were up to, we’re just going to have to wander this desolate hunk of rock until we find something that can help shed light on this mystery.”

  The rhythmic sound of a helicopter’s rotor blades cutting through the air made both men stop what they were doing and turn their heads to look up at the leaden sky.

  Jackson pointed at a dark shape flying towards them. “I think we’ve got company.”

  “Looks that way, doesn’t it?” replied Mitchell, as he dug out his binoculars and focussed them on the approaching aircraft. “Looks like a Chilean Navy helicopter to me.”

  “I guess our arrival didn’t go unnoticed,” said Jackson as he borrowed the binos and studied the chopper. “You called it. I can clearly see the Chilean markings painted on the side of the helicopter.”

  Mitchell started to wave. “No point in not being friendly. They’re just checking us out. Let’s let them believe that we’re just a couple of wildlife photographers and perhaps they’ll leave us alone.”

  The helicopter flew over the two men. It was low enough that they could see the pilot waving back to them. A man sitting in the back of the chopper pointed a large camera at them. The craft hovered over them for several moments before turning to the south and disappearing from view.With daylight beginning to fade, Mitchell and Jackson decided to climb a nearby rocky hill before calling it a day. At the top, they looked down and saw a sheer cliff face that dropped straight down to the churning waters of the Atlantic.

  “Must be a drop of at least two hundred meters,” said Jackson.

  “I doubt they’d ever find the body if you fell down there,” Mitchell said.

  “Looks like today’s jaunt was a bust. Perhaps tomorrow’s won’t be.”

  Mitchell stood where he was and slowly turned in a circle. “You know, this is a great vantage point. You can see in all directions from up here. On a good day, with even a mediocre set of binos, I bet you could see all the way to the horizon.”

  “Yeah, probably.” Jackson could see Mitchell was deep in thought. “What are you thinking, Ryan?”

  “I’m thinking I want to start here first thing tomorrow morning.”

  Jackson agreed. They made their way down the steep hill when Mitchell spotted a circle of rocks. “Great place for a fire,” he noted. “It’s out of the wind and still near enough to the top of the hill that it could be used by a couple of men on sentry duty.”

  Jackson turned on the metal detector and slowly moved it over the long-dead firepit, as well as the ground around it. At first, it found nothing; however, when he ran it over a pile of rocks, the device sprang to life.

  “Found something?” asked Mitchell.

  Jackson placed the detector down and moved the rocks aside. He soon found a handful of old, rusted food tins. “Looks like someone was hungry.”

  Mitchell took one of the tins and held it up so he could examine it. If there had been any markings on the can, they had long since gone. He bent down and helped Jackson push more of the rocks away. A slender can with a few specks of paint still on it came into view. Mitchell picked it up and gently rubbed off some dirt on the side of the can with his thumb. He let out a chuckle.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Jackson.

  “Seems we’ve stumbled across a sentry position that was probably once used by a bunch of German sailors,” replied Mitchell, handing the can over to Jackson.

  Jackson saw the can had German writing on it. “Ryan, there could be a dozen reasons why that tin is here. Just because it was made in Germany doesn’t mean that it wasn’t eaten by sailors from other countries.”

  “You are correct. However, we were told this island has been uninhabited for a century. I bet if we ask Jen to look into it, she’ll find that this particular can dates back to the Second World War. Nate, I’m positive that Germans were here. Why, I don’t know, but I intend to find out.”

  Back at their camp, Mitchell took several pictures of the tin and sent them to Jen in an email. He asked her to identify it and to dig up any recorded activity by the German navy this far south during the Second World War.

  “How much time do we have left before the peace conference begins?” asked Jackson, while he prepared their evening meal.

  Mitchell glanced down at his watch. “If we take into account the time difference between ourselves and Portugal, I’d say we have just under four days remaining to find the treasure—if it exists.”

  “Then what? It’s not like a terrorist organization will play by the rules. You and I know that they’ll try to get their hands on the gold and attempt to sabotage the conference. It’s in their nature to do the worst things possible.”

  “You’re right. That’s why I’m hoping to find the treasure first. Perhaps by doing so we’ll piss them off so badly that they’ll do something rash. If they can be smoked out into the open long enough for the Greek authorities to crush them, then this will all be worth it.”

  “And if the treasure doesn’t exist, then what?”

  Mitchell let out a deep sigh. “Then I hope the Portuguese Special Forces live up to their reputation. Because if we fail there’s going to be a terrorist attack in four days’ time that will put an end to the peace process and kill who knows how many innocent people.”

  18

  Mitchell rose early and stepped outside of their tent. It was still dark outside. He glanced down at his watch and saw that the sun wouldn’t be coming up for a couple more hours. A cold splash of rain fell on his face. He turned his head to look up at the clouds and swore when more drops began to fall on him. He ran over behind one of the old buildings to relieve himself before sprinting back into his shelter.

  Jackson rolled over and groggily looked up at Mitchell. “What’s up?”

&n
bsp; “Looks like the rain is here.”

  “Wonderful. Wake me up when it stops,” said Jackson, putting his head back down. In seconds, he was snoring loudly.

  Mitchell was wide awake. He couldn’t rest even if he wanted to. He stepped back out of the tent and fired up the stove to boil some water. When he was done, he slipped back into the shelter, picked up the satphone and connected it to the small laptop computer that Yuri had supplied them. Before long, Mitchell had an Internet connection. He checked his emails to see if Jen had been able to answer any of the questions he had sent her. He smiled when he saw there was one from her. She wrote that her queries regarding Kapitanleutnant Schur had all been answered with the same thing—that he and his entire crew was reported killed in action when his submarine, the U-1309, was sunk in the Mediterranean. As for the tin, it was found on a military collector’s website. Jen said that it was a can of preserved meat from 1940s Germany, made by a company in Bavaria and used extensively in military-issued ration packs.

  Mitchell thought about calling her at home, but decided that it was too early and that he could catch her in the office in a few hours’ time. With the weather not likely to change, Mitchell put on some boil-in-the-foil food for breakfast and shook Jackson awake. While his friend reluctantly dressed, Mitchell filled him on Jen’s email.

  They ate their meal listening to the sound of the rain pelting the outside of their tent.

  “It’s going to be a long, cold, wet day,” said Jackson.

  “Just think about it this way. When we get back here later today, it’ll seem all that much nicer,” said Mitchell.

  “Yeah, whatever, Captain. Come on, let’s get to work.”

  With the hoods of their jackets pulled over their heads to keep the blowing rain out of their faces, Mitchell and Jackson made their way back to the spot where they found the buried trash. For close to an hour, they scoured the area for any more signs that someone had been there during the war. When their search turned up nothing new, Mitchell suggested that they follow a trail which led from the top of the hill down to the rocky beach below. The path was narrow and slick, made worse by the falling rain. A couple of times, Jackson almost lost his footing. A fall would have most certainly ended his life in the raging waters of the Atlantic that battered the island from all sides.