Hell's Gate Read online

  CHAPTER 1

  Who Goes There?

  Let us not go over the old ground,

  Let us rather prepare for what is to come.

  —MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO

  Trinidad, West Indies

  One month earlier

  January 19, 1944

  The wings of the great bird painted a shadow on the rainforest canopy. In the trees, a male capuchin monkey shrieked a warning and the members of his troop reacted instantly. While younger males mimicked the bitonal call, a dozen females knotted together and shielded their young. Juveniles that had lately begun to explore their arboreal habitat now clung shivering to their mothers’ hair with both hands and feet. The adults shifted position on the branches, craning their necks to see the jagged patches of sky that showed through holes in the ceiling of foliage. After reaching a terrifying pitch, the cries of the winged hunter faded quickly. The bird was moving off. There would be no attack. The juveniles braved a look upward, then scurried away from their parents, posturing and chattering to send a message that they hadn’t been frightened at all. The adults in the troop ignored them; they had already resumed their incessant search for fruits, nuts, and flowers.

  As the dual-engine Bobcat followed the Aripo valley south, the mountain forest of Trinidad’s Northern Range gave way to savanna, with its scattered assortment of shrubs and stunted trees. In the cockpit, and nearly five hours out of Havana, Captain R. J. MacCready gripped the controls of the camouflage-colored Cessna with aggravated impatience, unaware of the havoc his plane had caused for the capuchins living below.

  The C-78 Bobcat was a light personnel transport, with a cabin capacity of five, but on this trip there was only one passenger—a Major Fogarty, who seemed content to sleep through the entire flight. As a result, MacCready hadn’t spoken for several hours—which might have been a record, had anyone bothered to keep track of such things. Although zoology was his favorite topic of discussion, MacCready was known to range at a moment’s notice from the mechanics behind kangaroo jumps to what might have existed in the seconds before the birth of the universe. Whether he was debating the existence of the Loch Ness Monster with someone he had bumped into on the street, or lecturing a classroom full of sixth graders on the wonders of the new injectable antibiotics, it did not matter. It was all so interesting. But recently not everyone appreciated the breadth of MacCready’s knowledge or his oratory skills. “The man’s sense of wonder has been replaced by something darker,” said an anonymous academic, quoted in the press. The article went on to call him “an oratorical and conversational sniper.” Outwardly, MacCready referred to his new title as a strong aversion to bullshit. Inwardly though, he would have given up all of life’s triumphs and titles, including his Ph.D. from Cornell, if even one person he truly loved were still alive.

  As they began their descent toward Waller Field, MacCready radioed the tower for clearance. Fogarty was finally showing signs of life, pressing his face against the cabin window as the Army Air Forces base loomed nearer, eating up more and more of the horizon.

  To MacCready, Waller Field resembled a series of ragged scars torn into central Trinidad’s Caroni Plain. He wondered how long it would take for the savanna to reclaim the base once the war ended and the Allies went home. Too long, probably.

  MacCready received his landing clearance, but as he took the Cessna down for a final approach, something thudded against the starboard engine, splashing the cockpit window on that side with streamers of red. Simultaneously, the plane was yanked hard to MacCready’s right. He glanced over his shoulder, but his view of the struggling engine was partially obscured by blood.

  MacCready reacted automatically, feathering the starboard propeller. The blades angled into the wind, reducing drag, and he gunned the port-side engine, simultaneously slamming hard on the left rudder. The Cessna responded—pulling back to port until finally, it was holding a straight line toward the runway. The entire episode had occupied all of five seconds.

  “Now that’s something you don’t experience every day,” MacCready called back toward the cabin.

  There was no response, so he shot a quick glance at his passenger—and while he could not be absolutely sure, it appeared that Fogarty had somehow curled himself into a fetal ball.

  “Never mind,” MacCready said to himself.

  Crew chief Eddie Dykes knew that the wet season was ending because his men had stopped bellyaching about the rain and mud and started bellyaching about the heat and humidity. His ground crew at Waller Field had staked out the available shade around the landing strip and now the game was to see who could remain out of the sun the longest. Although it was only 10 A.M., the temperature at the base—a center for American military operations in the South Atlantic since 1941—had risen to 90 degrees Fahrenheit, with humidity to match. As the Cessna banked and circled the landing strip, Dykes had been alone on the tarmac, shielding his eyes against the glare.

  “Uh-oh,” he said to himself; then he whistled loudly to signal his crew. The Army’s “Bobcat,” known less affectionately as “Rhapsody in Glue,” or “Flying Formation of Cessna Parts,” was struggling. The drone from the starboard engine had suddenly shifted from a high-pitched whine to a sputter, and it appeared that the plane wanted to sway and stagger in its course. Keeping his gaze skyward, Dykes sensed someone approaching from behind.

  “Sounds like he’s comin’ in with a bum coffee grinder.” The drawl belonged to Private Redding, who had been stationed at Waller Field for a year but was still known as N.G.—New Guy.

  Dykes ignored the man and kept his eyes on the plane, which seemed to have straightened itself out. “N.G., who’s the flyboy?”

  Redding fumbled with a clipboard before pointing to a spot at the bottom of a sweat-stained sheet of paper. “MacCready, sir.”

  Dykes glanced at the flight manifest and relaxed a bit. “They’ll be fine.”

  A flash of movement caused him to look up. It was accompanied by the sound of another engine in distress. And this one was bearing down on them at unnatural speed.

  “What the—?” Dykes cried, and the two men dove off the runway and into the brush, barely avoiding being run down by a speeding jeep that blew past them.

  Rising to his knees, Dykes could see that he’d been right about the landing; the pilot had managed to ease his bird down. He touched the ground lightly, despite the engine trouble, and despite the vehicle that had lurched onto the blacktop and threatened to clip the pilot’s wings if he needed more runway.

  “Who’s the asshole?” Dykes asked, rolling his eyes again as the terminally puzzled Redding scanned his clipboard of papers for an answer. Yes, this was going to be a long war.

  The driver of the jeep was Corporal Frank Juliano, whose short stature and hangdog expression gave him an uncanny resemblance to comedian Lou Costello. Having scattered Dykes’s ground crew, Juliano brought the jeep to a skidding, gear-grinding halt, before running to intercept the plane’s passenger, who had flung open the cabin door and was racing away from the Bobcat as though it were on fire.

  Corporal Juliano held a large envelope in one hand and saluted with the other. He backpedaled quickly, speaking in a high-pitched voice: “Good morning, Captain MacCready. Welcome to Trinidad, sir. Major Hendry has been expecting—”

  The officer jerked a thumb over his shoulder and toward the plane. “You got the wrong guy, buddy,” he said, brushing past the puzzled corporal without breaking his stride.

  Juliano hurried to the plane, clutching the envelope. Struggling up onto the wing, he peered into the five-seat cabin. It was empty, so he backed up, slid to the ground, and turned toward the pilot. The man was examining one of the engines and whistling Bing Crosby’s new hit, “Junk Ain’t Junk No More.”

  “Captain MacCready?

  “That’s me,” the pilot replied into the seven-cylinder Jacobs engine. “Hey, have a look at this.”

  Juliano hesitated, glanced past the open cabin door a final time, and took a few
tentative steps toward the man, “Sir?”

  “Shit, that’s hot,” the pilot said, his face streaked with grease and something else Juliano could not identify. MacCready shielded his eyes against the sun and scanned the buildings nearest to the runway. “Hey, you haven’t seen the ground crew anywhere, have you?”

  Juliano glanced around, but the landing strip was deserted, except for two men, plastered with dirt and briars. They were walking away at a brisk pace, pausing only long enough to flip Juliano their middle fingers.

  MacCready smiled. “Friends of yours?”

  “No, sir,” the corporal replied.

  Returning his attention to the engine, the pilot reached into the air intake with a gloved hand and began wrestling with something. Grunting and cursing, he yanked out a glistening red mass and held it out to Juliano.

  “Corporal, meet Eudocimus ruber!”

  Juliano took a step back and grimaced. “Eudo-see-what, sir?”

  “It’s a scarlet ibis. My vote for national bird, once Trinidad shakes loose from the Brits.”

  The scent of engine-seared flesh and feathers was overpowering in the thick, humid air; the corporal could feel his breakfast shifting uneasily. “Gets my vote, too, sir. It’s . . . a beaut . . . a real beaut.”

  Juliano had been about to hand over a large envelope; but instead he hesitated, swallowing the gorge that was rising in his throat like a sour tide.

  “Yeah, but this one has definitely seen better days. Those papers for me?” MacCready asked, reaching for the manila envelope. But the corporal was either unwilling or unable to let go of the envelope, even as he held it out, arm extended.

  “Thanks a lot, Corporal.” MacCready tugged again, harder this time. Juliano finally relinquished his grip. With one eye on the corporal, MacCready tore the envelope open with his teeth and withdrew several sheets of paper. In one oil- and blood-smeared glove he still held the prop-shredded remains of the bird.

  He took a deep breath. “Good morning, Captain MacCready. Welcome to Trinidad, sir. Major Hendry has been expecting you. I’m supposed to drive you to the meeting room on the double.”

  MacCready looked up from the papers and acknowledged him with a nod, strolling to the far side of the jeep.

  “Say, you’re the explorer guy, aren’t you, sir?” Juliano said, before easing himself behind the wheel.

  The pilot tucked the papers into his field vest and climbed into the back of the jeep. “I’ve done some bushwhacking. But I’m really just a tropical zoologist, although was a tropical zoologist might be a better description.”

  “Why’s that, sir?”

  “Not much call for that kind of gig since they decided to throw another war.”

  Corporal Juliano punched the stick shift forward, jerking the vehicle loudly into gear. The jeep shuddered, then started to pick up speed.

  “You’ll wanna try out that clutch one of these days, Corporal. Some folks say it makes shifting easier.”

  Juliano shot MacCready a look in the rearview mirror, but any reply he might have made was lost in the metallic death throes of second gear.

  As the jeep lurched through the camp, MacCready noted that Waller Field was even larger than it appeared from the air. More like a small city than an airfield, he thought as they passed row after row of prefabricated buildings. Each had been elevated off the ground by a series of eight-foot wooden beams. There was a baseball field as well, and MacCready could have sworn he saw two officers carrying golf clubs. Strangest of all, though, was the fact that Waller Field appeared to have been built upon (and primarily of) asphalt. Runways, roads, even rooftops were tarred. Men, buildings, and mountains of crated supplies were shimmering in waves of late morning “mirage air.” MacCready guessed that the ambient temperature had to be fifteen degrees higher than the already tropical surroundings, and because of this, most of the soldiers were stripped to the waist.

  MacCready shouted over the sound of the jeep. “Jeez, they built this place outta tar, huh? I’d have never thought of that.”

  “Got it all for free, sir,” the corporal shouted back. “Pitch Lake—three hundred feet deep.”

  MacCready shook his head. “Now there ya go, Corporal, military intelligence at work. Lucky it wasn’t Dog Shit Lake.”

  The driver made no reply and so MacCready turned his attention back to the handful of burnt bird. He carefully separated several of the brilliant, though slightly singed, primary feathers from the bloody connective tissue—flicking the grizzle out the side of the jeep. Looking up, he noticed that the corporal was watching him out the corner of one eye but the driver quickly shifted his attention to the road and gripped the steering wheel ever more tightly.

  “Nice furcula,” MacCready said to himself, holding the wishbone between his thumb and index finger as if it were a miniature divining rod.

  Juliano took another peek backward, feeling increasingly uneasy as he wondered whether MacCready was complimenting his furcula?

  “And what the hell is a furcula, anyway?” he muttered.

  CHAPTER 2

  Missing Cargo

  Hell’s Gate, I think, is the most damnable place I have ever visited, and I’d willingly have paid ten pounds not to have seen it.

  —GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

  The land upon which Waller Field had risen was still British-owned, but as part of the Lend-Lease Program, the United States was allowed to construct a strategically located base in the Caribbean. In exchange, Churchill’s shell-shocked and grateful government had received fifty outdated American destroyers. In its largest, hottest building, R. J. MacCready found Major Patrick Hendry standing in a haze of cigar smoke beside a floor-to-ceiling map of Brazil. The room was sparsely furnished and uncomfortable. The dense smoke made it feel like hell warmed up.

  MacCready saluted. “Pat.”

  Hendry waved off the salute and extended his hand, which MacCready took. “How long’s it been, Mac?”

  “Eight months.”

  “New Guinea, right?”

  “Solomon Islands, actually. The canoe search for that rich Massachusetts kid.”

  “Found him, though, that’s all that matters.”

  MacCready winced. His right leg still ached from the spearhead the medics had dug out of his calf. “Yeah, kid’s got a brass pair. Reckless fucker, though.”

  Hendry laughed, “Reckless? That’s a hoot comin’ from you. But I’m glad you could squeeze in some R-and-R back home after that one.” The major hesitated. “I was really sorry to hear about your sister and your mom.”

  “Thanks,” he said, quietly.

  “If I’d have known—”

  MacCready held up his hand, “Save it,” he said firmly, feeling suddenly claustrophobic.

  “Any word about your cousins?” Hendry asked, gently. “I suppose that even behind the lines, they might have heard about—”

  “No!” MacCready responded, more forcefully then he’d intended. He shot Hendry a quick glance, then dialed it down. “But then again the Wehrmacht were never any good at sending Christmas cards.”

  MacCready moved toward an open window and, without thinking, removed the ibis wishbone from his pocket. After flexing the Y-shaped bone between his fingers like a spring, he held it up, inspecting it in the sunlight. “Not many people know this, but birds need a lot more oxygen than we do.”

  “All that wing flapping, huh?”

  “Very expensive—flying. Energy-wise, that is. The furcula works like a fireplace bellows. Helps to pump more air in and out. Incredible adaptation.”

  “I’ll remember that . . . next time my kid wants to use one to make a wish.”

  Major Hendry turned toward the map, letting his index finger follow the curve of the Amazon River from its source. “You know, Mac, I keep thinking about something you said last year when we were in London.”

  “About Marlene Dietrich and those GIs?” MacCready tucked the bone back into his pocket. “You think I made that one up?”

  “I’m
talking about that stuff you mentioned about injured or trapped animals . . . you know . . . being the most dangerous kind.”

  “Oh, that one. And?”

  “And, I don’t like it. In fact, I don’t like it a lot.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t take it personally, Pat, but you know as well as I do. Those guys are all on the road to extinction. Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito.”

  “What’s so bad about that?” Hendry asked. And even though he agreed with MacCready, right now that didn’t matter. What did matter was the carefully baited hook he’d just cast.

  “Of course it’s not bad,” MacCready replied. “But the point was—is—that the world’s a burning house now. And this one’s filled with carnivores. They’re wounded, pissed-off, and dangerous. And if we forget that—even for an instant—if we get complacent . . . we’re dead.”

  “So, complacency is the enemy?”

  “You got it. And now you’re a believer, right?”

  “Sure I am,” Hendry said. Then he set the hook. “That’s why you’re here.”

  MacCready realized at once what the major had done, and now there was nothing to do but wait for the real story.

  “Mac, we’ve suspected for a while now that the Jerries were up to something in the Brazilian interior. At first it was only a hint here and there. Never anything solid . . . until four weeks ago. That’s when a fisherman came across an I-400-class sub that had run aground. And that’s when we all started to believe.”

  “I read about it,” MacCready lied, tapping the manila envelope he’d withdrawn from his field vest. “But I don’t understand what the fuss is about. There are U-boats all over the Atlantic right now.”

  Hendry’s face suddenly brightened, but MacCready, who’d found his orator’s rhythm, didn’t notice. “Heck, you can practically walk across the Caribbean without getting your feet wet. Why, last year on Aruba, four Dutch guys on a beach got blown up by a—”