Harris was intrigued. He was also a little pissed that there were no secrets on a naval base. Despite the war, San Diego was still a small town full of gossips.
“Okay, son, what do you know about sabotaging trains?”
“Seriously, sir, I don’t know anything specific. But something strange did happen to me. Last weekend, some guys I know slightly offered me twenty bucks if I’d be a doorman at some kind of big-money card game. I was to keep unwanted people out and give a warning if the cops were in the area.”
Harris smiled. “Does the military really give a shit about card games?”
“Generally no, sir, but there was going to be a ton of money in this one, maybe thousands of dollars, so nobody wanted to take chances. Since I send almost all my money home, I knew I could use the twenty bucks. At any rate, I didn’t do a very good job. While I thought I was keeping watch, somebody sneaked up on me and knocked me cold.” He fingered the bandage on his skull. “The medics said I was lucky to get away with a few stitches and a mild concussion. When I came to, I was tied up and gagged. There was yelling in the room where the action was. I couldn’t hardly believe it, but the bad guys were telling the gamblers to strip. Finally, two guys came out with a bag that I later learned contained the money. Like I said, maybe as much as several thousand dollars.”
Harris whistled. “That is a good-sized haul and one hell of a poker game for a bunch of swabbies and jarheads to be playing.”
Eppler laughed. “Yeah. My so-called friends must have been pros in real life. The bad guys also had the players’ clothes with them. They talked among themselves for a second, and that’s why I thought of calling you.”
Harris leaned forward. “Really?”
“Yes, sir, they were speaking German.”
A few moments later, both Dane and Merchant arrived. Harris had summoned them since Eppler was part of the military and, therefore, under their jurisdiction. Also, he was likely to be impressed with their rank. He was right. Eppler seemed momentarily nonplussed but quickly got over it.
“How did you know they were speaking German?” Merchant asked.
“Both my grandparents came from Germany and my mother speaks it fluently. After a number of years talking to the old people, a little of it rubbed off on me, so, yes, sir, I did recognize it as German.”
“What were they saying?” Dane inquired.
“I really couldn’t tell completely, sir. I picked up a lot of words, but I don’t know all that much. It did sound like one, the older of the two, was telling the other guy, who was a little younger but bigger, to hurry up.”
Dane smiled. “Did you see them?”
“I pretended I was unconscious. They had guns and had already hurt me. If they thought I was listening and watching I was afraid they’d kill me, so I played dead.”
“Good move,” said Harris.
“But I did sneak a look as they were leaving. They’d taken off their masks so they wouldn’t look weird on the outside, and I got a decent look at the bigger guy.”
Merchant smiled happily. “Could you pick him out?”
“Don’t know, sir, but I’d sure as hell be happy to try.”
Dane opened a folder filled with photographs which he then spread on the table. “Is he in this group?”
Lance Corporal Eppler looked over the array, staring intently. He fingered several photos, paused, and smiled. “This is the big guy.”
Harris, Merchant, and Dane grinned at each other. The young Marine had picked out Wilhelm Braun’s associate, Gunther Krause.
Now what? they thought. First, Harris asked if Eppler had gotten his twenty and was told, no. “Hell no, sir, and I have no problem with that. After all, I really didn’t do my job very well, did I? Actually, the guys in the game first thought I was in cahoots with the bad guys until they realized that I was actually hurt. Then they drove me on base and dumped me at the hospital, right by the emergency room. I managed to stagger in under my own power.”
“What did you tell the medics?” Harris asked.
“That I fell and hit my head on a curb.”
“They believe that?” he continued.
Eppler grinned. “Not for a moment, sir, but a lot of guys get drunk, fall down, and hurt themselves. Also, they had more important things on their minds. There had been a couple of stabbings, so they patched me up, gave me some aspirin, and put me on light duty for a couple of weeks. I kind of like light duty.”
Harris continued. “Okay, Lance Corporal Eppler, here’s what’s going to happen. You are not going to tell anyone about this conversation or what you saw at the card game, or you will spend the rest of your life in a desert counting scorpions. I don’t think your gambler friends are going to be talking to you about it, so don’t worry about that. If they do, we’ll take care of them. Same thing with anyone else in your outfit, particularly your officers and NCOs. If they get too nosy or don’t believe that you got hurt falling down, Captain Merchant is going to give you a note on Admiral Spruance’s stationery saying that they are to butt out, only a little more polite. Big thing, young man, is that you saw nothing, remember nothing, and this conversation never took place, got that?”
Eppler swallowed. “Got it, sir.”
“Good,” said Harris and slipped him a couple of twenties. “Maybe the night wasn’t a total loss.”
When the Marine left, they looked at each other. Dane started. “For supermen, those two Germans aren’t too fucking smart, are they? Jesus, if Eppler had been better at security, the krauts could have gotten hurt, if not killed. Maybe the gamblers would have fought back as well.”
Harris disagreed. “If security at the game had been better, they wouldn’t have tried. It does show, however, that the two Nazis are getting desperate. Jesus, from crashing trains to robbing gamblers? What a comedown.”
“I think we are genuinely closing in on them,” Merchant said, “and they are running out of time and options. Maybe we can get them and roll up the whole bunch, including the people in Mexico.”
Dane and Harris looked at each other. They had a preposterous idea they’d been discussing between the two of them. Since Harris was the civilian and couldn’t be chewed out by Merchant, he responded. “Y’know, Captain, just maybe we don’t want to do that, at least not right now.”
Farris’s small company was one of several ordered out on patrol. They were out doing recon work even though they still didn’t know all that much about it. Fortunately, they were assisted by a dozen Alaskan Volunteers led by the large man named Bear, and the Alaskans’ tracking skills were immensely better than theirs.
The Alaskans wore white cloths over their regular clothing, which annoyed Farris since his men hadn’t been issued any winter gear like that. When he asked Bear about it, the Alaskan had simply laughed. “We took the sheets off our beds and cut them up. Beats the hell out of waiting for the army to come through with the right kind of gear.”
A chagrined Farris decided he’d have his men do the same thing when they got back to base.
The Americans were helped by the fact that a couple of inches of wet snow had fallen, which meant that anyone travelling through the area would leave tracks. A light snow continued to fall, rendering visibility poor, but that worked both ways.
Colonel Gavin did not think there were large numbers of Japanese too close to Fairbanks just yet, but he was not going to take a chance. Along with Farris’s troops, several other company-strength patrols had been sent out to probe and upset any Japanese scouts who were trying to assess American numbers. Gavin had openly wondered why the Japanese hadn’t coordinated an attack on Fairbanks with the carrier raid that had caused so much damage to their meager resources. Had Japanese infantry attacked during the chaos, the American force could have been forced to give up the city and the base, or at best, suffered serious casualties. Farris could visualize hordes of screaming Japanese emerging from the forests and chopping American soldiers with their swords and overrunning them while they cowered in their foxholes.
Now, supplies to replace what was lost were arriving in a thin but steady flow, and these included a new squadron of P47 fighters. Because of the need to ship material to supply existing forces, additional manpower was given a lower priority. A trickle of reinforcements, including more men from the 36th Infantry Division and a handful
