Farris grinned. “No, sir.”
Baylor smiled grimly and held out his hand. “Oh, but you will, Lieutenant, you will.”
Once more unto the breach, thought Braun. Once again they were lying in wait for a train to come rolling by. Nor did it bother him that he was quoting Shakespeare. Even though he was English, the Bard was one of Braun’s favorite writers. Also, he wasn’t Jewish like so many so-called artists were, even the long dead ones.
According to the schedule, a passenger train from the town of Riverside would be along in half an hour. It was getting dark, which made their chances of success good in Braun’s opinion. Also helping them was the obvious fact that fewer Americans were patrolling the rails since the Japanese attack on the coast. If he saw someone, he would make a short piercing whistle, which would freeze Krause in place. Two and everything was all clear. Three meant run like hell.
Braun kept a careful watch as Krause crawled along the embankment with the explosives and detonator. He smiled. It was good to have Krause around to do the shit work. He was getting too old for that nonsense.
Since he knew where to look, he was able to follow Krause in the dark as he laid the explosives. Done, and the sergeant began to crawl back to Braun. In the distance they heard the sound of a train.
Once he got back, Krause grinned, his teeth white in the dark. “Damned thing is early. Less time to be discovered, eh?”
Braun agreed. They waited expectantly as the sound of the train drew closer. A few moments later, they could see the single bright eye of the light on the locomotive. Sooner than expected, the train, obviously speeding, was on them. Braun counted twelve passenger cars and he hoped they were all crammed with people and not running empty.
The train was going so fast that the locomotive had almost made it across the detonator before it went off, separating the locomotive from the coal car. The locomotive miraculously stayed on the tracks, while all the cars behind flew down the embankment and landed in a screeching, dusty, smoking jumble. The sound of tearing metal and breaking wood was quickly punctuated by the screams of injured and dying passengers.
All of the cars had toppled on their sides and one had flown on top of another in a ghastly pileup. People were scrambling out of doors and windows. The unhurt dragged the injured and laid them on the ground. Some were attempting first aid.
A success, thought Braun. “Time to go.”
He and Krause ran to the Ford wagon. As they approached, they saw motion. “Damn,” snarled Krause. Both men drew their weapons.
Three men were hunched over the back of the car. One had a jack and another held a length of hose. They were going to steal the tires and siphon his gas, leaving them stranded by the scene of a train wreck that they had caused.
The three looked stunned when the two armed Germans approached them. “Police!” snapped Braun. “Get on the ground.” The men complied. They were very young, in their teens, scared, and looked like they were Mexicans. Braun recalled reading in the paper that there’d been a lot of problems with thieves from Mexico. The prisoners looked at their captors. They were nervous and confused and gauging their chances to make a break.
Krause took a deep breath. “We got here in time. They did nothing.” In the background, sirens could be heard. “We have to leave now.”
Braun winced. Krause had been speaking in German and the three Mexicans were puzzled by what they’d heard. He looked in the back seat of the car and the trunk that the crooks had pried open. A couple of sticks of dynamite were visible. He’d brought extras and now regretted it.
“Lie on your faces,” Braun said in the bad Spanish he’d learned in Mexico City. They did as they were told. Braun shot the first two men before they realized what was happening. The boy in the middle started to get up, but Braun killed him before he could get to his knees. Krause looked shocked, but quickly accepted the necessity of killing them.
“Damn, damn, damn,” muttered Braun.
Krause looked toward the wreck. “Do you think the shots will attract attention?”
The noise coming from the wreck and the sound of sirens was very loud, almost deafening. “No, but like I said, we have to leave immediately.”
“And them?” Krause asked, pointing at the three wide-eyed corpses.
“We have no choice but to leave them. It will be a present for the FBI.” He laughed harshly. “Perhaps it will drive them crazy trying to figure out what these three had to do with the train.”
CHAPTER 14
AMANDA AND TIM HEARD THE POLICE SIRENS AND THE SCREAMS as they left the little restaurant. As they turned the corner they saw a crowd of sailors and a bunch of Mexicans dressed in exaggerated outfits that were referred to as zoot suits. The two sides were brawling with fists, clubs, knives, and broken bottles. The zoot suits were a type of uniform worn by young Mexicans to show they were tough. With extremely wide lapels, stuffed shoulders, and baggy pants, they were a caricature of a man’s business suit and, in Tim’s opinion, looked ridiculous. Amanda agreed and had laughed when she’d first seen them lounging on street corners.
Dane was in uniform and had a .32 caliber revolver tucked in a shoulder holster under his jacket. The gun made the jacket bulge and the waiter at the restaurant had looked in surprise.
Before dinner they’d gone to a movie and watched John Wayne and Claire Trevor in Stagecoach. He’d seen it before, but Amanda hadn’t.
Tim and the others had taken to carrying a weapon after the several confirmed acts of sabotage that had culminated in the destruction of a passenger train a couple of days before. He’d made a quick trip to the site with Agent Harris and discovered nothing new in the saboteurs’ modus operandi, with the glaring exception of the three young men who’d been shot to death.
As they decided and as he told Amanda, he and Harris felt that the three young men had probably stumbled onto the saboteurs and paid with their lives for their bad luck. She’d earlier teased him about carrying a weapon, but now, as the rioters seemed headed toward them, it seemed like a good idea.
Dane shifted the pistol so that it was visible and he could take it out quickly. A couple of young and nervous-looking members of the Shore Patrol trotted by. Armed only with billy clubs, the Shore Patrol had a reputation for being poorly trained, and this pair looked it. Dane hurriedly grabbed the closest one, who looked angry until he saw Dane’s rank.
“What the hell’s going on, sailor?”
The young man stopped and swallowed. “Sir, a rumor’s going around that some Mexicans caused that train wreck the other day. A bunch of sailors were killed, and apparently some of these fucking zoot-suiters—sorry, ma’am—were bragging about how great it was that Americans got killed.”
The sailor turned and trotted toward the brawl, which now included more than a hundred fighters. A number of men were already on the ground, bleeding and cut. It looked like the relatively few Mexicans were getting the worst of it. Sirens were howling louder and more sailors from the Shore Patrol were arriving along with San Diego police.
Amanda grasped his arm. “I’m a nurse. I should be doing something.”
He squeezed her hand. “Wait until they stop killing each other. It looks bad, but it’s happened before and unless someone goes crazy with a knife and guts someone, or uses a gun, it’ll mainly be cuts and bruises. Most of them are probably drunk, which means you won’t be able to work with them until they are either unconscious, strapped down, or at least partly sober.”
Amanda recalled a number of frantic Saturday nights in the emergency ward of the hospital in Honolulu. She’d seen the results of bar brawls and small drunken riots, but never the fight itself. It was hypnotic to watch grown men behaving so foolishly and dangerously. And Tim was right, sometimes injured drunks had to be strapped down so they could be helped.