Previously on Jake Hammer:  As agreed, Jake delivered the package requested by Madame Zhu, but his deep suspicions about its contents and purpose were not allayed by the appearance and behavior of the crew at the airfield.  At the hangar after Jake’s flight home, Miguel shared some disturbing rumors.  But a phone call from earlier in the day finally dispelled the gloom.  Jake had a photographic mapping job scheduled for the next day.  Now,

 

     As promised, two representatives from the US Mapping and Geographic Agency showed up first thing in the morning to install a bulky automatic camera, complete with a huge magazine of film, in Lady Luck’s ventral cargo bay.  With the bay doors locked open, the camera had a clear view of whatever was directly below.  The rapid-fire trigger Miguel had devised also seemed to be working perfectly.  A quick fill-up, a final check of the mechanicals, Jake thought, and I’ll be on my way.

But Penny Landers evidently had other ideas.  Seemingly out of nowhere, she galloped up on her favorite horse, Racer, and quickly dismounted.

     “Hi Jake, beautiful morning isn’t it?”

     “Hi Penny, it’s great flying weather for sure; I should be able to get a great set of photos for the mapping agency.” Jake pretended to fiddle with a clamp holding the camera in the cargo bay, not really wanting to get caught up in a conversation with her.

     “Oh, you have a job huh?  That’s great.  Um, I was just wondering about something, like if you are going to the Ranchers’ Ball, and if you’ve given any thought to, you know, a date?”  She smiled at him brightly.

     Jake got his head out of the cargo well. “Can’t say that I have actually.”

     She cocked her head at him, her pursed lips showing her frustration.  At a loss he mulled it over, before finally realizing what was implied.

     “Oh.  Ok, well, would you like to go with me?”

     “Thought you’d never ask!”  She barely hid her exasperation.  “You know a girl needs a little time to make sure she has something nice to wear.”

     “Something tells me you already have that picked out,” Jake chuckled.

     “Could be.”  Her head tilted, and her clear blue eyes darted to the side as a wistful expression came over her deeply tanned, and beautiful face.

                                                                          *     *      *

     Oberst Karl Englemann was feeling satisfied as he stood on the bridge of the nondescript tramp steamer.  The mission was going well; their destination was no more than a day away.  He thought back to the morning in the Reichstag some months ago when Der Fuhrer had selected and briefed him on this once-in-a-lifetime assignment.  In a stern voice Hitler delivered the particulars:  His command, Sondersturmgruppe 100, would consist of a small unit of the latest panzers, accompanied by specially trained infantry.  In the air, the local forces would be supported by the heavy fighter prototype that was now tied down on the deck below him.  Too big for the cargo hold, the Kriegsmarine crew had disguised it with fake shipping crates and barrels, covering some of them with tarps of different colors and sizes.  He glanced briefly at the ship’s forecastle where there was another arrangement of bogus shipping crates.

     The only irritant was the aircraft’s pilot, Hans Dietrich, a war ace, but now a civilian on loan from Dornier, and technically, not under his command.  Dietrich’s status as a civilian was the only reason Englemann permitted him to uncover and inspect the aircraft on this morning.  That had been their only security risk.  No one was in uniform.  All insignia from the vehicles had been removed.  Except that Dietrich had foolishly insisted on marking the plane.  Was fur quatsch war das!—what kind of rubbish was that!  Just then Englemann’s reverie was shattered to pieces when he heard the sound of an aircraft too close for his liking.

                                                                         *     *      *

     Jake was flying over international waters 100 miles south of San Diego when he noticed the ship below him, far off any known shipping lanes.  And then something else:  A plane on the ship’s deck.  Perfectly cruciform, wingspan and length identical.  Two props, one conventionally mounted in the aircraft’s nose, the other facing rearward directly behind the plane’s four-bladed tail structure.  And big: 45 feet long.  He had never seen anything like it in design or appearance.  Let me get just one photo, he thought as he banked down and passed over the ship’s axis, bow to stern, snapping away.   He wanted to make another pass when he saw something that shocked him even more than the sight of the plane.  A crew ran to the ship’s bow and pulled the tarp off the crates stored there to reveal an anti-aircraft gun!

     Looks like a Krupp 7 centimeter, Jake thought.  I’ve dealt with them before.  But, he thought as his brain raced, I was in a Spad then.  Not something this big.

     Jake banked around hard aft of the ship, and above the roar of Lady’s Luck’s engines, heard the characteristic “boompa” as the gun got off a round.  He rolled his plane sideways to create the smallest profile he could as he dived in for a closer look.  His lift vector was zero, and Lady Luck immediately began to lose altitude and pick up speed.  Jake stayed with the dive until he was low and directly aft of the ship where he knew they wouldn’t be able to fire over the stack and the bridge.  Pushing his throttles forward, Jake came in at 350 mph, 50 feet over the deck, snapping photos as fast as the trigger would let him.  The crew pivoted the gun and got another shot off as soon as Jake passed over the bow, but he swooped down almost to the water surface and banked again hard starboard.  The crew frantically swung the gun around, but now Jake climbed at full throttle, slapping the pedals and wildly juking the plane as he pulled around again aft of the ship, and safely out of range.

     On the ship’s bridge, the Officer of the Day, and the fuming Englemann watched the whole episode.  The OD cleared his throat and ventured to speak:“We didn’t get him.  But you must admit Herr Oberst, the pilot’s flying was magnificent!”

     But Englemann could not contain his anger any longer.  He turned to the now quaking OD and responded:  “How dare you speak of his flying!  When I see that pilot again, do you know what I will do?  I will kill him!”

                                                                          *     *      *

     At his base, Jake described the entire episode to a plainly horrified Miguel and two astonished officials from the USMGA.  Late the next day, Jake watched as an unmarked black sedan made the long climb to the airfield from the highway.  The car came to an abrupt halt outside the hangar.  Two men in suits and fedoras got out.  One carried a brief-case; the other one flashed a badge.

     “Thomas Compton, Special Agent, Department of Defense, and my associate, Gene Murray.  We’d like to speak with Jake Hammer.”

     “That’s me.  We can talk inside.”  Jake cleared some room inside his make-shift office, and the three men sat around Jake’s well-worn desk.  Both men had removed their hats to reveal military-style haircuts.

     “Mr. Hammer, we’ve had some of the photos you took yesterday blown up, and we’d like you to examine them, just on the chance you might see something we missed.”  Compton handed Jake a glossy eight by eleven.  It was a photo of the ship taken with the boxes and tarps covering the deck gun.

     “That’s the ship alright.”

     “Ocean Arbiter.  Tramp steamer for charter.  Liberian registry.  They’re not talking.  Went through the Canal more than a week ago.  Demise charter.  Do you know what that means Mr. Hammer?”

     Jake shook his head.

     “Mind if I smoke?” Compton lit up without waiting for permission.  He took a long drag and exhaled slowly.  “It means that the charter company put up the ship alone—no crew, no captain, no return date.  We know nothing about this ship, who’s aboard, where it’s from, or where it’s going.”

     “I don’t see how that concerns me.”

     “Maybe it doesn’t.  How about this one?”

     Jake looked at the next photo.  It was a grainy color close-up of the aircraft taken on his final pass.  He turned the photo at an angle to get a better look at something on the side of the plane’s fuselage.  Stenciled below the cockpit glass was a stylized, but unmistakable image. “I think that’s a blue wolf,”

Jake said.

     The agents immediately shot each other a look.  “Thank you, Mr. Hammer, that’ll be all for now.”  Compton reached for the photo.

     “I don’t get it,” Jake said, “Do you think it’s really the Blue Wolf?  When the war ended, he had 30 kills for the German air force, and the Pour le Mérite.  What’s he doing off the coast of Mexico?”

     “We’re looking for answers, Mr. Hammer.  But before we have them, it would be better if you didn’t go flying off anywhere too far away.  We’ll let ourselves out.”

     Jake heard the crunch of tires on the gravel driveway as the two agents sped away.  He sat hunched over: An aircraft of a type he had never seen before.  Lashed to the deck of a mysterious ship whose unidentified crew tried to shoot him down.  And to top it off, the Blue Wolf.  From the bottom drawer of his desk he retrieved the bottle of bourbon he kept there.  “Hey Sparks,” he called out to the hanger, “care to take a break with me?”