The New Adventures of the Eagle Page 13

  Taking full advantage of the flinch, The Eagle snatched the gun away, delivered a swift punch to the man’s stomach, then, getting up, landed one strong kick to Il Gufo’s head. The man was prone now and The Eagle trained the gun on him.

  As if on cue, The Eagle saw the lights from the patrol boat and heard the amplified noise of the cavalry that Joan had alerted.

  “Il Gufo,” came the booming voice, “you are about to be boarded by the Greek Navy. Surrender now and you will face justice in an international court.”

  The Eagle gave a tight smile. “It’s over, Owl. Go quietly and I may go easy on you. Besides, it sounds to me like the Greeks are boarding your vessel as we speak.”

  The villain spat on the deck.

  “I would rather die.”

  “Unfortunately, that cannot be arranged. You, your sister, and the good Doctor here, are all coming with us.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Mission Accomplished

  Between kisses from Joan, The Eagle attempted to thank Nico.

  “Without you, my friend, none of this would have been possible. Your brave impersonation of me. Your kind loan of your lighter.” He proffered the device to his friend, who shook it off.

  “Keep it as a souvenir.” The Eagle nodded. “And thank you, Jeff,” the Greek said, the Christian name of The Eagle sounding odd on his tongue. “I am just grateful we retrieved the man I lost in the first place. It was my mission to assist you in whatever fashion you needed.”

  “And you did that. As did you, Joan. Thank you for calling for backup, and for preparing that item for me.”

  She smiled. “I’ve got no idea why you’d want a lipstick tube filled with iron filings, but I’m glad I could help.”

  Nico interjected. “I am not sure about our victory here. Certainly capturing Il Gufo and his sister will lead to valuable intelligence. But Dr. Pappas and the weapon he will work on. That worries me.”

  As part of the arrangement with the American government, Dr. Pappas was cleared of his actions against The Eagle and allowed to defect to the West. He was to be given a role in a new project, one of the highest secrecy, tasked with creating a doomsday super weapon. The Eagle had vouched for him wholeheartedly. After all, his true love, his Agape, was already in the UK. They would be reunited again, and Pappas could continue with his work unencumbered.

  “We live in interesting times, Nico. The world is on the brink of a larger and deadlier war even than the last. Our enemies are ruthless and cruel. Perhaps this weapon will allow us to usher in an era of peace. Perhaps the threat of it alone will be enough to deter aggression from our enemies. The fire from the sky will be like Zeus’ thunderbolt, keeping us mortals in line.”

  Nico shrugged in response. “I hope you are right, my friend.”

  “And I,” interjected Joan, “hope that we can get back home, as quickly as possible. Because you promised me a vacation, Jeff Shannon, and I am going to hold you to it.”

  And, smiling, Jeff agreed.

  THE END

  THE COMING STORM

  by Teel James Glenn

  Chapter One

  The Pursuit of Life and Liberty

  “The dog is this way,” the German voices proclaimed in clipped tones, “he will not escape us.” The cries were followed by the heavy stamp of boots and guttural curses in the dense, dark woods.

  The quarter moon danced in and out behind dense cloud cover, making the night jet black. The object of the frantic search was huddled down in a tangle of bramble. It was a man.

  He was wounded. He had tied a crude tourniquet around his left thigh where the bullet had gouged a deep furrow across it. He had lost a lot of blood but with the tie around his leg at least he had stopped the flow. His pursuers had no dogs, and in the dark they couldn’t track him by the blood trail. That would change with the dawn, and that was only an hour away.

  He had to move, but his body was exhausted. When the sliver of the moon dodged out from its cover, the wounds on his bruised face, his broken nose, and a gash along his jaw line were visible. They had been interrogating him for a full day and thought him incapable of escape. They had underestimated his will to live, and his need to alert everyone.”

  “The road,” he thought, “it can’t be far.”

  But even if it were not far, he knew it would be sheer luck to find it in the inky night. He was completely lost.

  ‘This way.” A voice in the darkness called out to others. “I found a footprint.”

  The wounded man forced himself to rise and he ran, stumbling into brush that tore into his skin, away from the voice… and the boot steps.

  They had stomped him with their boots, smashing his fingers, breaking his ribs. He had not told them who he was.

  They had kicked him in the face breaking his nose. He had not told them why he was in their midst, pretending to be one of them.

  And when the guard had thought him unconscious, he had freed his hands and mashed his chair over the guard’s head.

  Now he had to get out of the camp, out of their clutches, and get the word back to his superiors. People had to know what they were doing. They had to be stopped.

  “There!” a voice off to his right broke through his reverie.

  It was followed by another to his left.

  “They’ve found me!” He thought. He put on a burst of speed, the brambles ripping him as if they were claws, tearing at his flesh as he raced forward.

  Suddenly he burst through the tangle of underbrush just as the moon peeked out again from its cloudy prison. Before him was revealed the road.

  He staggered out to the center of the gravel road and realized he didn’t know which way lead back to the camp, and which way went back toward town.

  He had no time for indecision when the undergrowth parted and two brown shirted figures stepped out onto the thoroughfare. They had jodhpurs and jackboots on, gun belts at their waists, and Nazi swastika’s emblazoned in red-on-white armbands.

  “Did you really think you could ever escape from the power of the Aryan future?” one off the blond men said. “You and all your mongrel kind are destined to fall beneath the heels of our boots!”

  The two men moved toward the panting, wounded man, with wide smiles on their faces.

  The exhausted escapee turned to head away from them, but two more brown shirted men leapt onto the road with a sinister laugh.

  “No!” the fugitive moaned. He tried to head back into the bushes, but the Nazis were upon him before he could exit the road again.

  F.B. I. Special Agent Jim Gallagher fell to his knees in utter exhaustion. The pain of his wounds was incidental to the certain knowledge that he was going to die for what he believed in, and that he had failed in his mission. His eyes fell on the sign at the side of the road and he felt his last ounce of resistance leave him. He felt utterly defeated.

  The sign said: Welcome to Camp Nordland Sussex County, Andover Township New Jersey. “We are the hope of America!”

  Then the moon went behind a cloud and the night was as dark as the grave.

  Chapter Two

  When your Uncle Calls

  “I just don’t see why you would come to me for this sort of thing, Mister Bennett,” Jeff Shannon, the master of espionage, known as the Eagle said. “I would think your own men would be more suited?” He was seated in an office of the US Customs House at One Bowling Green in lower Manhattan.

  It was a clear September day and Shannon looked past the government agent seated behind his impressive oak desk. He could see out the windows of the well-appointed office enjoying the sight of the Statue of Liberty across the harbor.

  From behind his desk Secret Service Agent Rex Bennett noticed the eye line of his visitor and smiled. “I like this office because the view usually distracts the casual guest.”

  “I do try to stay casual,” the Eagle said. “But you still haven’t told me why you had me flown into New Jersey, and had a couple of your boys bring me in that government jalopy all the
way to this place, instead of the FBI office up town.

  “If we brought you in your usual transportation or to those offices uptown it might have drawn attention to this little meeting. There are people who we would prefer did not notice we were talking to you.”

  “Quite a few of those I would suspect,” The Eagle said. “But I’ve always been able to pull a disappearing act as far as observers are concerned, Mister Bennett.”

  “It is because of that I think you can help your government, Mr. Shannon,” Bennett said. “That and your-uh- unique college experience.”

  “This isn’t about that time I broke into the deans office is it?” The Eagle said, “ten years is a long time for him to hold a grudge.”

  “No,” the government man said with a smile, “The fact that you completed an engineering course, speak fluent German, have a background in explosives, and that you used to perform an amateur magic act at parties as the “Spectacular Shannon!”

  The master spy laughed. “You have to be kidding,” he said, “What, you need somebody to entertain at the department Christmas party?”

  “Actually,” Bennett said as he rose, “it is something like that.” He turned his back to look out at the harbor.

  “You see that great lady out there? She is holding that torch to light the way for freedom… but it’s also a beacon to draw every kind of fanatic who seems to want to snuff it out, using the very freedom it guarantees to do it.”

  He turned to face the master spy. “FBI Director Hoover has tasked his department and ours to protect those freedoms and investigate those groups of fanatics; the Communists, the anarchist, the Klan, the separatist and the Bund.”

  “I’ve been reading that series of articles on the Bund by that Donovan guy at the Daily Star,” The Eagle said, “that’s what this is about, isn’t it?”

  Bennett sighed. “Yes; it’s raised the profile and the fears about them, so many of them have gone to ground like roaches when the light goes on.”

  “But you have regular agents and undercover agents-” the espionage master began.

  “-And we have used them,” His tone darkened and he lowered his voice, “And lost them.”

  “Lost? You mean-”

  “Special Agent Jim Gallagher was found in a ditch outside Camp Nordland in Sussex County New Jersey two days ago. He was beaten to death. He was a friend of mine.”

  “I’m sorry,” The Eagle said, “I hadn’t heard anything about it.”

  “No one has,” he said, “We had the Sheriff list him as John Doe because we have another agent undercover, and we don’t want to jeopardize his life.”

  “That still brings me back to what I am doing here.”

  “I know you normally work outside the country, Mister Shannon,” Bennett said, “ But I’ve known of your work for some time. And you have some strong supporters on Capital Hill, as well as the department of the army who agreed with my suggestion to call you in.”

  “Oh, I have you to thank personally then for—whatever new way you have to risk my life?” He had a slight smile when he spoke, but there was no doubt he took the call by his government seriously. “Why not just sweep in there and search the place?”

  “There’ nothing I would like more,” Bennett said, “but we are a country of laws and must be seen to be one.” He looked down at his desk and touched a small snow globe of the Whitehouse on his desk and shook it. “I’ve been known to bend the law now and then in the interests of justice, but I can not break it or I’d be no better then that breed.”

  “You’d be handing them a propaganda victory to just bust in there.”

  “And they know it. They use the very protection of the laws they say they hate to attack us from within. I am bound by those laws.”

  “And as an independent agent-” the master spy said, “I’m a little more flexible in serving the cause of Lady Justice.”

  Bennett smiled, “Just don’t tell me about it.” Then he sobered and continued, “We can’t move against the Jersey Camp yet, because we know that in one week the Bund will have a large gathering out on Long Island at a place they run called “Camp Siegfried’—a summer camp for families that’s just ending its season. They have a very exclusive club they also run out there called “Club L’Equine” modeled on a night club in Berlin and Paris; one I’ve been told you have infiltrated before. We want you to be at that gathering.”

  “Oh, Just walk in and say, ’hi I’m here to help you hate some Jews?” The Eagle said. “Its true I got into the club in Paris but it took two weeks of carefully laid groundwork to build up my false identity.”

  The government man smiled, “Actually, I thought you might be able to pull a bouquet of flowers out of your hat, or wave your magic wand to get in.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “We intercepted their request to a talent agency to hire entertainment for their party. They engaged a German speaking magician named Sternherz-”

  “I see,” the Eagle said, “time to pull the Spectacular Shannon out of mothballs?”

  “Yes,” Bennett said. “He has primarily worked in the far east and the west coast. A little coloring of your hair and skin will make you the image of the real performer. At least, as they say, close enough for showbiz.”

  “ Did you just call me a Nazi poster child?” The Eagle said… his blue eyes sparkling with wit, “You sure know how to endear yourself to a guy. Not a Nordic bone in my body though; a bit of French, but mostly Irish.”

  “Didn’t the Vikings visit at least one of those places?” Bennett sat at his desk and opened a folder. “There is a second reason why you are the right man for this job.”

  The spy fighter picked up the folder and read the typescript sheets in it.

  “This is a patent application for some sort of sounding device,” the Eagle said. He examined the forms in detail. “It is a first patent for a machine for locating oil and gas deposits based on sound waves. Like a bat uses echo-locating. It’s a simple concept, but the nuts and bolts of it make it hard to do; people have been talking about it in concept for years.”

  “Yes, I guess,” Bennett said, “But that machine apparently works. Frankly that is why your engineering experience makes you the man for this job twice over. The man who invented the sounding device also disappeared last week, and Jim’s last report said that the inventor Herman Schultz would be at the gathering at Camp Siegfried.”

  “So I would be there to spy on him?”

  “No,” Bennett said, “He was kidnapped a month ago from a naval base in Maryland; the military applications of a reliable way to find new oil deposits—well, with the way the world is-”

  “You don’t have to tell me, there is a storm of war coming.” The Eagle said, “I’ve seen what Japan is doing to get its hands on oil and raw materials in China; the next war will be a mechanized one.”

  “So, if Schultz is at the Camp, you just get word to us and we’ll take the place. He is a government employee, so it is a federal case if they have him.”

  “I thought you said you had an undercover agent-”

  “We lost contact with him last week. He’s a good agent, he would never be out of contact for so long unless things were very bad.”

  The espionage master stood up and reached across the desk to offer the government man his hand. “I guess I’ve been drafted then,” He said, “I have a lot to do to get a descent magic act together by next week.”

  “Your country is relying on you to pull a rabbit out of your hat,” Bennett said, “but be careful… we’d like you to come back in one piece.”

  “Nice to know my Uncle Sam cares,” The Eagle smiled, “I’ll do my best not to disappear.”

  “That and don’t let anyone saw you in half.” Bennett said.

  “You are a cheery fellow, Agent Bennett; but I will do my best, I always do.”

  Chapter Three

  Into the Hinterlands

  The week that followed was a busy one for the Eagle. He took over a storeroom
in the back of the “Club Knockout” to set up equipment for his magic act. He spent each day perfecting his act so there would be no doubt about at least that part of his ‘cover’ being legitimate.

  “Pretty good,” Lefty Kovaks said after he watched a private performance of the show at the end of the week. He was the owner of the small supper club just off Broadway and Forty Second Street. “You are a thousand percent cleaner on all of them tricks, boss. And you have the patter down clean.” The little ex-boxer had seen a performance of the same act once a day as an ‘outside eye’ for his friend. Lefty had been in a tight scrap not too long before in Algiers, and the master spy-fighter had saved his life on that occasion as well as several other times. Kovaks was determined to pay the debt back ten-fold.

  “I still think you’re crazy going into that nest of snakes all by yourself,” the club owner said, “I hate sitting nest to them brown shirted clowns on the train, let alone sitting in a room full of them.”

  “Somebody has to go into the snake pit,” the spy come magician said, “And more often than not these days I seem to be the one.”

  “Well Jack Armstrong has help getting out of his snake pits,” the ex pugilist said as he walked up to help fold a concealing screen so it could be crated for transport.

  “That’s why I have you as back up, Lefty,” The Eagle said, “As much faith as I have in the Federal Government I’d rather have you watching my back than a boat load of G-men.”

  The wiry club owner blushed. “Thanks, Jeff. I won’t let you down.”

  They had already agreed that while the Eagle flew to Chicago to board a train for New York to appear as if he were coming from the West Coast, Lefty would head out to take up residence in a bungalow colony near the Suffolk County camp.

  “I know you will, pal,” The Eagle said. “Bennett says his guys will be nearby, but they don’t work the way we do, and I can’t rely on them.”