Von Klaas almost bowed before forgetting that Americans didn’t do that. At least he hadn’t started to give the Hitler salute. It was something he’d avoided as much as possible in Mexico and would have been more embarrassing than bowing.
“Sorry, but no. The messages were in English, not German, which makes sense. Anything in German would have attracted undue attention.”
Harris smiled. “It also means I don’t need you to translate, Herr von Klaas.”
“Then send me to Brazil, Agent Harris.”
“Soon,” Harris replied. “Now, what was in the messages?”
“First, let me say that Braun and his comrades are very clever. Like I said, they transmitted in English, which would not have attracted any attention unless we were looking, and the messages were not coded. They are hiding in plain sight. The messages are extremely short and we’ve been unable to track them to any specific location.”
“No surprise.”
“The messages contained symbols and vague terms like objectives and resources, which would mean nothing to somebody not looking. If we weren’t looking at that frequency and those times, the verbiage would be totally innocuous and appear to be conversations between the representatives of a couple of businesses. However, we are looking and I believe Braun and whoever might be with him north of the border are beginning to run out of money.”
Harris laughed. “Bloody marvelous. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of Nazi swine.”
“Although Braun is clever, I think that the men Braun left behind in Monterrey and Mexico City may have pretty well spent all they were given, which was about fifty thousand dollars. Perhaps it was too much money and too much temptation for them to resist. Braun was lamenting that things were getting tight where he was, and that they should send him more of what he referred to as resources. Their response was that things were tight for them as well and reminded him that he had not fulfilled his end of the contract, whatever that was, and that he shouldn’t expect more until he does.”
Harris nodded thoughtfully. “Either more sabotage or, more likely, he’s to provide information on the location of the Saratoga’s task force. Do you really think they’ve run out of money?”
Von Klaas shrugged. “Braun is a very smart man and I believe he took at least one other man, likely Krause, with him. Krause is not stupid and he would not be profligate. As to the ones he likely left behind in Mexico, as I said, they are idiots and could easily have gone through the money I gave them.”
“Then what will they do to get more?” Harris enquired.
“Agent Harris, I haven’t the foggiest idea.”
The five sailors were engrossed in their game, high-stakes poker. The pot was at several hundred dollars and might go higher, which fixated them. A couple of them had never seen that much money all at one time.
What they were doing was illegal and might get them court-martialed if caught, but the chance at heavy action was worth more than what they considered the remote risk of punishment. If the police or shore patrol burst in on their basement room, they could expect time in jail or the brig, and be busted in rank, but that was a chance they were willing to take. It was also why they’d posted a guard outside the door.
Thus, they were stunned when two masked and armed men burst in, guns pointed at them.
“Put your hands on your heads and stand up.”
It was awkward, but they complied, almost too shocked to speak. One, a sailor whose cousin had been standing guard, was worried and asked about him.
“Your friend at the door is taking a nap. Whether he wakes up or not is largely up to you. Now, turn and face the wall and disrobe completely.”
“What?” one of the gamblers exclaimed.
“Shut up and do as you’re told. We could kill you all here and leave you and no one would notice for days, but we won’t unless you force us to.”
Sullenly, the men stripped down. They were told to stand naked and facing the wall with their hands stretched up as high as they could. While one robber held a gun on them, the other scooped up the money and stuffed it into a cloth laundry bag. The second man then rifled through their clothing and found a little more money along with a small cache of weapons.
“I guess you don’t trust anybody,” the first man cackled. “Can’t say as I blame you.”
“We’ll get you, you prick,” snarled one of the gamblers.
“Actually, you won’t. First, you have no idea who we are and where we’re going and, second, you were performing an illegal act. What are you going to do, run to the police and admit that you got robbed while committing a crime? What do you think they might say when you asked them to get you your money back? That would not be smart. No, you will write this off as a cost of doing business. You might want to get a better man as a guard. It was very easy to take him down, although I don’t think he’s badly hurt.”
The second man gave the money bag to the first and then scooped up the gamblers’ clothing. “This will ensure that you don’t leave for a while,” the first gunman continued. “We’ll leave your clothing just a ways down the alley.”
With that, Braun and Krause departed. They were laughing and almost exhilarated. They took off the bandannas that served as masks and turned the reversible jackets they’d been wearing inside out. They got on a San Diego bus and sat separately, even going past where they’d pulled off the holdup. No one was in sight. Braun thought the gamblers might still be looking for their clothes. It would be a while before they found them in a trash container, and they would not wander around naked for the same reason that they would not go to the cops.
Two hours later, they were in the apartment above Swenson Engineering. Braun laughed and held up a wad of cash. “A little over two thousand dollars. Well, along with the other heists we’ve pulled, this ought to keep us in money for at least a little while.”
The two men had spent time scouting out a number of such high-stakes games and in a two-night period following a payday, they’d hit four of them. They now had more than ten thousand dollars to keep them going.
“Yes,” said Krause, “but we can’t do it again. The next time they’ll have real guards on lookout and others watching the guards. They’ll catch us and we’ll have our asses kicked and then we’ll be thrown into the ocean as shark bait. The next time we’re short of cash, we’ll have to come up with something new.”
“Suggestions?”
Krause grinned. “I suppose we could always rob a small bank in a small town.”
“Those are Japs,” yelled Stecher. Farris took half a second to confirm that the planes screaming only a few feet overhead were indeed Zeros before throwing himself prone and beginning to crawl to a culvert.
Machine guns chattered and bullets ripped into the American camp at Fairbanks. Men ran in all directions, stunned by the suddenness of the attack. Some were chewed by bullets and left sprawling. Farris could hear screaming.
“What happened to our radar?” yelled Stecher. “And where the hell are our planes?”
Farris saw that the handful of American fighters and transports lined up along the still inadequate airstrip were being shot to pieces. So too were fuel dumps and other storage facilities. He didn’t bother telling Stecher that radar was inadequate and maybe pointed in the wrong direction, but he did wonder just why no American planes or spotters had caught sight of the oncoming Japanese horde.
Plane after plane swept over the base, strafing and bombing without much in the way of resistance. A few antiaircraft guns opened up, but they didn’t stop the Japanese. A couple of enemy planes were hit and one crashed into a warehouse, resulting in an explosion and fire that quickly consumed the entire building. Farris wondered if the Japanese pilot, his plane damaged, had directed his plane there.