While official Mexico declared war on Germany, the average Mexican cared little about a European conflict and many totally despised the United States for being the greedy gringos who’d stolen her northern provinces.
In the First World War, the Kaiser had tried to take advantage of those hatreds by inducing the Mexicans to invade the United States. A shame nothing had come of it, Braun thought, although it had been a primary cause of America’s declaration of war on Imperial Germany and had led to the shameful Treaty of Versailles. Even though the Mexicans were squat and ugly, nearly subhuman as the Jews, their hatred of the United States could be channeled to Germany’s advantage.
Braun held the SS rank of Obersturmbannfuehrer, which was equivalent to a colonel in the American army. When word came that a landing on the American east coast was planned by German saboteurs, he thought it was insane and was quickly proven right. The would-be saboteurs had all been captured or killed. He was sadly confident that the ones captured would be hanged. Thus, when the request came down for Germany to take the war to America’s west coast in support of Japan, he was delighted to volunteer. He knew he could do far better than the buffoons who’d been landed by sub on the east coast. Anything that aided Japan would help keep America’s growing military forces from aiding Britain or Russia in their war with the Third Reich.
He recognized the irony that he would be helping apelike little yellow subhumans defeat the Jewish-dominated United States. Well, he thought, one can’t always choose one’s enemies any more than one can choose their own relatives, like his fat cousin Eva. Sooner or later, the Jewish-controlled United States would fall into the gutter of history, and he would be a part of that glorious effort, whether he did it directly for Germany or indirectly in behalf of Japan. He would do anything to destroy America and the Jews. While he wanted no part of Russian weather, he did envy others in the SS who were wreaking bloody havoc among the Jews as they advanced.
A handful of other staffers were fluent enough in English to function in the U.S., but he rejected them for the time being, instead keeping them in Monterrey and Mexico City, literally watching the store and prepared to relay reports. Braun was concerned that their accents would cause suspicion at the border, while his very slight accent could be explained away as Midwestern, or Swedish, or Danish. He would go alone, at least initially. He liked that idea. The Americans at the border would not suspect a middle-aged and slightly overweight man who walked with a little limp and drove a truck filled with junk. If he later decided he needed more help, he would send for it. If he decided he needed help, he would send for Gunther Krause. Although not an SS man like him, Krause had combat experience and possessed good English speaking skills and had been a loyal Nazi party member for some time.
He bought a decrepit junk-hauling truck, and, instead of junk, loaded it with weapons, ammunition, and dynamite bought with money provided by the German embassy before it was closed. In a couple of weeks at the most, he would cross the border even though he had no clear idea what he would do then. He did not think there would be a shortage of targets, however.
CHAPTER 6
THE MASSIVE PBY FLYING BOAT TOOK OFF FROM SAN DIEGO BAY with a crew of eight and Lieutenant Commander Tim Dane along as an observer. Built by Consolidated, the flying boat initially looked as if it would never leave the surface, but her powerful Pratt and Whitney engines soon lifted her off the bay’s protected and gentle waters.
Dane was along for what he hoped was a long but pleasant ride. The idea had been Merchant’s. Dane was along not just to see the ocean below, but also the large numbers of ships traveling the Pacific coast, and try to get some idea of the difficulty involved in tracking any vessel that might be carrying enemy soldiers or contraband for enemy subversives already in place. Merchant and Spruance also wanted him out of the office for a while. The report he’d written about Japanese-Americans not being threats to American security and the abuses they were suffering at the hands of cops and the army had ruffled some high-ranking feathers. General DeWitt had gotten a copy and he was furious, as was Governor Olson. Olson was a politician who was in deep trouble with the electorate, but John L. DeWitt was a three-star general in charge of the Fourth Army and the western states. Even though he was in the army, he had to be respected until he calmed down.
The PBY could fly at over ten thousand feet and her top speed was a hair under two hundred miles an hour. Her pilot was an ensign named Ronnie Tuller who appeared to be a teenager, although he insisted he was twenty-two.
“There’s a whole boatload of ships out there,” Tuller said, laughing at his own bad joke, “and we have to check them over visually. If we fly at a conservative speed, say one hundred and twenty-five miles an hour, we can stay out here for a very long time. We’d likely run out of food and toilet paper before we ran out of gas.”
Dane was seated in the co-pilot’s seat. “Could you fly this thing to Hawaii?”
“Stripped down, stuffed with fuel, and with a lot of luck, yes. Realistically, we’d probably get close, and then have to land in the ocean because we’d probably hit a headwind or have to detour around a storm. Why?”
“Just thinking of all the people trying to get off the islands,” he said. Thoughts of Amanda kept intruding. Where the hell was she?
“Understood,” Tuller said. “I have heard that the Japs have a seaplane that is even larger than this baby and can fly twice as far. Too bad we don’t have some of those. Maybe we could run a shuttle to Hawaii and back.” Too bad indeed, Dane thought.
Tuller banked the massive plane. A freighter was in view, heading north, and he skillfully turned toward it.
“Just so you know, Commander, the idea of using our seaplanes was kicked around, but it just wasn’t feasible. Filled with refugees, it would be too heavy to make it back. Getting there we’d doubtless have to land short and refuel, and that’d be a mess what with Jap ships and planes all around. That and the fact that there were so many people on Hawaii who’d want to leave, and so few planes, kinda nixed the idea.”
Dane nodded and reluctantly accepted the logic. The people on the Hawaiian Islands were trapped. But was Amanda?
Observers on the PBY checked out the freighter. It was flying an American flag and several of her crewmen waved at the plane. No one in the PBY was taking chances, however, and guns were trained on her. Memories of an innocuous-looking ship unloading Japanese troops at the Panama Canal were still too fresh.
Tuller waved back. “We’ll attempt to contact them by radio and try to determine that they are what they say they are and that no one’s being forced to do anything bad because there’s a gun to their heads. Odds are, everything’s okay, but you never know. Even if we do make radio contact, we can’t always believe what they’re telling us if we’re to do our job. They may not be saboteurs but they could be smugglers.”
Dane smiled tightly. “I suppose if they start shooting at us, we’ll know everything isn’t on the up and up.”
“Absolutely, Commander. If they do, we get to shoot back. It hasn’t happened yet, but we’re ready.”
The Catalina carried three .30-caliber machine guns and two fifties. She could also carry two tons of bombs, but had none on this flight. If the bombs weren’t dropped, landing with them still on their racks was dicey at best and could result in an explosion. The other alternative was to dump them into the ocean, which was a waste of good bombs.