“Would you mind if I saw some identification, gentlemen?” The man’s smile broadened as he shot a quick glance at the train station.
The lead agent slowly lowered his shotgun and reached into his leather field jacket. He brought out a green ID card with “FBI” written in bold, golden letters.
“Looks real enough,” the man said, leaning closer to the ID card, “Agent Ferguson.”
Two of the agents suddenly turned as the doors to the station house opened and a small man with a long black leather coat emerged. He carried a satchel and his glasses reflected the light of the afternoon sun.
“Is there a problem, gentlemen?”
As Ben rounded the far side of the platform, he saw the small man who stood on it looking down at the scene below. Hamilton fumbled for his. 45 and at the same time he brought out the picture the OSS in Brazil had forwarded to him a day earlier. Ben smiled as he recognized General Heinz Goetz. The SS officer was even shorter than his description.
“No problems here, Mac, as long as you have the proper paperwork for these crates,” the lead agent said, placing his ID back into his jacket. “Why, you boys didn’t even have these things weighed in. I believe the Ecuadorian government requires the weigh-in of all freight.”
“I have a bill of lading and weight certificate right here, gentlemen.” Goetz half turned his head and nodded toward the interior of the station. Then he opened his satchel.
Ben saw movement and froze. Then he jumped forward toward the first truck.
“No!” he shouted loudly.
Just as Ben made his appearance, Goetz removed a Walther pistol and fired point-blank at the lead agent, then before the rest of the FBI team reacted Goetz slammed his body down onto the wooden platform just as the large glass windows behind him shattered as machine gun bullets started raking the three remaining agents and several laborers at the back of the truck.
As Ben ran around the blind side of the second truck, one of the agents was thrown backward into him. Ben saw that he was still alive and started pulling him back as bullets started to find their way back to his vulnerable position. Hamilton aimed as best he could with the wounded agent in his arms and then fired, but the agent’s weight pulled his aim off considerably. Not that it would have mattered. As he stumbled backward he saw ten men emerge from the station house and all of them had machine guns. They were raking not only the agents, but the Ecuadorian workers who were trying to flee in a panic.
Ben lost his footing and went down, pinned beneath the agent’s weight. Still, he was able to raise the. 45 in his right hand and start firing low to the ground. He managed to hit the feet and ankles of the two men at the back of the truck. As they hit the gravel-covered ground, the OSS man placed two rounds each into their heads and then he ejected the spent clip and inserted another. Hamilton then started pulling the wounded agent along as best he could as he heard men taking position around the first truck. He knew they would soon be surrounded.
“Don’t kill the American. We need him.”
Ben Hamilton heard Goetz shout at the remaining man who had accompanied the trucks. Ben shrugged the agent, who was now dead, off him and stood. He retraced his steps and then took quick aim at Goetz, who was standing on the platform looking as if he were Julius Caesar. Hamilton placed pressure on the trigger and that was when he was brutally pulled backward, hard enough that the. 45 flew from his hand. He lost his balance and fell, a strong arm pulling at him, his coat collar used like a suitcase handle to drag him through the gravel. Ben tried to warn whoever was pulling him that there was a man taking aim at them, and just as they reached the corner of the platform, the man pulling him to safety emptied a Colt. 45 into the assassin. Finally, as they rounded the wooden platform, Ben was pulled to his feet.
“What were you going to do after you shot Goetz?” a strong voice asked as he was pushed toward the open door of an idling car. “Take the honorable way out and blow your head off?”
Ben was pushed through the open door as the man hurried around to the driver’s side of the idling car and smashed the accelerator down. The car sped away.
“I thought I taught you better than that. You live to fight another day, dumbass!”
As Ben tried to get his breathing under control, the rear window exploded inward and the driver swerved as he twisted the wheel hard to the right. Hamilton risked a look up at his rescuer. All he could see was a large bandage. Blood was seeping through as Colonel Garrison Lee turned toward him and angrily looked him over.
“Are you hit?” he asked. He then turned the wheel in the opposite direction and slammed on the brakes, throwing Ben up against the dashboard. “Are you hit, Hamilton?” Lee asked again, looking through the rear window frame.
“They said you were missing,” Ben stammered, checking for any leaks he may have sprung.
“Not missing-just beat half to death and cut up some. Now, are you hurt?”
“I don’t seem-”
“Good, we’ll talk later about how there seemed to be just about an entire SS regiment in your country of responsibility and you not knowing about it,” Lee said. He removed the empty clip and inserted another into the handle of his. 45. He tossed Hamilton another ammunition clip. Then, as Ben watched, Lee laid his head against the steering wheel. He took some deep breaths. Blood had started a pretty good flow through the thick gauze across the right side of his face.
“Are you all right, Colonel?”
Lee laughed with his forehead still on the steering wheel.
“Do I look all right, Hamilton? I mean, I thought you were a Harvard grad.”
“What happened back there?” Ben asked, nervously looking through the windowless panel in the back.
“I don’t know, Hamilton,” Lee said, straightening as he heard the train pulling out of the station. “Do you have any idea what in the hell was so important to Goetz that he risked being shot or captured thousands of miles away from home?”
“Well, sir, there’s the crates-”
Lee looked over and finally a smile broke out across his shattered face.
“Really, Hamilton. You think so?”
Ben caught on quickly that the colonel was making light of his obvious observation and he felt embarrassed having made it. Lee, with blood starting to course down his right jawline, put the car in gear and sped off in the direction of the eastbound train. Hamilton saw how gingerly the colonel was working the brake and the gas pedals, then he saw why. There was another bloodstain on his right pant leg at the calf. So the report was true. The colonel had indeed been ambushed and almost butchered in Argentina. How he could be doing what he was doing was far beyond what Ben could imagine.
“Look, we have one chance at this. You have to get on that train and stop it. The only thing I would be good for is throwing the car in front of it,” he hissed. He turned onto the narrow gauge tracks and started riding the rail, with two wheels on and two off. The ride was bumpy and with each jolt Hamilton could see Lee grimace. “What has your training taught you?”
Ben charged a round into the. 45 and then thought about what he had to do. “Can you run the front bumper of this thing right into the ass end of the train?” he asked as he rolled down the right-side window.
“That’s my intention, Hamilton, and you can’t jump onto that damn thing sitting in here.”
Ben tucked the Colt into his waistband and then took off his thick jacket. As the car rumbled down the tracks its wheels were catching the ties, sending shockwaves through the suspension of the battered Ford. Hamilton slid easily if bumpily out of the window. He used his hands and feet and started to kick and pull.
“Hamilton? What in the hell are you doing?” Lee called out, trying to focus on ten things at once.
Ben glanced back inside as the car jumped once, then twice, almost throwing him from the Ford. He finally braced himself. “I’m getting ready to jump onto the train.”
“Damn it,” Lee said, shaking his head. Then he took the wheel with his left hand and with his right brought his own automatic up and fired three times into the windshield on the right side. Then he started punching the glass with the barrel of the gun until the glass was gone. “That may be a little easier, don’t you think?”
Hamilton slid back into the car and then, feeling like a scolded school kid, pulled himself onto the hood. Ben immediately saw that this wasn’t going to be like the serials at the movies. With the car being jolted first left and then right, and also up and down, he was finding it hard to stay in one place on the hood.
“Look out!” Lee shouted.
Ben turned and saw a man step out onto the back platform of the train to light a cigarette. It was one of the
