CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

Entre Lagos, Chile, Ruta 215-CH, late evening the same day.

Six hours after finally clearing Chilean customs and leaving the Paso Cardenal Antonio Samoré, the Gebirgsjägers—Serge Rounsavall, Hugues Beauchamp, Jérôme Christophe Mailhot, and Jérôme Movius—on the Pullman bus pulled into the small bus station in Entre Lagos. They were famished, tired from the strain, and sleepy from the tedium of the long bus ride. All passengers and the driver alighted from the bus. The women ran for the toilets, and the men had a leisurely look around before going into the separate bathroom building for men. Considerably relieved, they all converged on the small café which served the many travelers passing through the main town of Puyehue commune in Osorno Province. It was a beautiful, tranquil evening in the Los Lagos Region of southern Chile, and a good chance to relax and stretch one’s cramped legs. There was just time enough to grab a bowl of the café’s signature arroz con leche.

Shortly after the arrival of the Pullman bus, a Via Bariloche bus pulled up to the station. Soon, the café was crowded with passengers clamoring for food and drink. Serge and Hugues made a visual inventory of the passengers from the second bus. There were the usual backpackers, trekkers, and sightseers, and about a dozen rural Chileans in family groups. Without being obvious about it, their eyes and minds concentrated on another dozen—more accurately, eleven—men who seemed somewhat out of place among the usual passengers. They were young to middle-aged, appeared to be European or Slavic or perhaps Semitic; and they seemed to be making an effort not to look at the Gebirgsjägers.

Nothing about the newcomers shouted ‘law enforcement’ or ‘military,’ but nothing about them whispered ‘regular tourists’ either.

“It’s too crowded in here,” Serge whispered.

“I know what you mean,” Hugues responded. “Time to finish up and get back to the bus.”

“Um hmmh, before the rest of the passengers. I’ll start out and give a nod to the rest, and you hang back a little and see if anybody takes notice or gets up.”

Serge nodded, and the two men got up slowly and sauntered towards the door, being scrupulously careful not to make eye contact with anyone in the room. The rest of the Gebirgsjägers followed suit, paid their bills from their small cache of Chilean pesos, and made their way out of the building and into the growing darkness. Serge was the last to leave, and noted that nobody seemed to be paying attention to them.

As soon as the last of the five men left, Moises and Lev signaled the other Project Save the Generals agents by twisting their mouths in the direction of the door leading to the kitchen, and they all got up one by one and made their way to the kitchen. The mouth movement was a little Argentinian custom Davido had taught Moises to indicate a direction of interest. It was usefully discreet. Lev had already reconnoitered the entrance to the kitchen and found that the work area also had a door to the outside where the workers could deposit garbage and have a smoke. The kitchen workers were not too happy to be bumped aside as the agents pushed their way through the crowded and smoky kitchen, but they were too busy to make a point of it.

Outside, the eleven men became a disciplined commando force. Lev took half of the men and circled around through the trees and back to their Via Bariloche bus where they extracted an Uzi from each bag—one for each of the agents. Along with the handguns each of them carried in the waistband of their pants or in an ankle holster, the team was quickly well armed for whatever eventuality presented itself. The lights of the café provided the only illumination on the buses, and the agents worked their way along the shadows until they came to the Pullman bus. There were no men by the bus; so, the agents fanned out separately to try and locate the men who had left the café ahead of them. They moved silently and without speaking. This was the type of operation and the kind of conditions for which they had trained. The tension and level of alertness among the agents was electric.

Serge became aware of the agents when they got out of their Via Bariloche bus.

He whispered, “Keep down, and stay away from the bus until I give a signal. They have to be Mossad or some other set of hostiles. Be quiet. If you have to fight, do it with your knife and kill, don’t wound anyone. We can’t have a wounded man calling out to his friends.”

They were about fifteen yards from their Pullman bus. It was standard practice for bus drivers to leave the keys in the ignition, and there was a free road in front of the bus which would allow a fast escape. The Gebirgsjägers moved in nearly absolute silence and with glacial celerity towards their bus, keeping their eyes and ears fully trained on the surrounding grounds to locate any enemies.

The agents had lain flat on their bellies in wait for movement from the Nazis. Their patience was rewarded by the sound of shuffling feet moving through the gloom of the moonless night. The occasional dark figure moved from one shadow to another, and it was soon evident that all movement was in the direction of the Pullman bus.

First contact came when Willibald Movius crawled on his hands and knees over a patch of grass located in a pitch-black corner of the parking area, almost crawling right on top of Yachin Gottesman and Manny Levin who were lying motionless in the darkness. As Willibald made his slow way past, Yachin sprang onto his back and applied a mata leao sleeper choke hold around his neck and rendered him unconscious in five seconds. There was a little stir as Willibald made his futile attempt to struggle which alerted Jérôme, who spun around to see what was happening. His motion carried the point of his chin into the hard fist of Manny. There was a sharp crack, then silence. Yachin and Manny trussed up their victims and began crawling on their bellies in the direction of the bus for which their opponents had been heading.

Serge made it to the bus and slid up the steps through the open door before anyone saw him. He waited until he heard a soft hiss come from Hugues before making any kind of move. He reached out and took Hugues’ hand and helped him aboard. The two men crawled along the aisle until they came to their seats. They opened their escape bags and found a handgun and made ready for an attack.

“I heard some rustling a couple of minutes ago,” Serge whispered. “I think we lost at least one man, maybe two. Those guys out there—whoever they are—are very good. We’re in for a fight.”

Hugues whispered back, “I’m sure of it. How long should we wait before revving up the bus and taking off without Willibald and Jérôme do you think?”

“If they’re not on board by the time, I get to the driver’s seat, they’re on their own. If we wait any longer, those guys after us will realize we’re here and trapped in the bus with no place to run. It’s now or never.”

The two men made their way back to the area of the driver’s seat as quickly and quietly as circumstances allowed. Serge twisted his way into the driver’s seat and maintained a low profile. Hugues held a gun in each hand, tapped Serge on the shoulder to let him know that he was ready, then quickly reached out and pulled the door of the bus closed.

The noise was like a rocket went off there in the silent night. Hell broke loose as soon as the sound made it to the ears of the agents. The ignition on the powerful bus engine roared into action; the Israeli agents advanced on the bus with guns blazing at the area of the front of the coach compartment; and Hugues returned fire out the windows without any thought of having an actual target. Eban and Micah pounded on the front entry door, and Eliot and Enos attacked the rear door—without success. Haggai and Aaron ran to the opposite side of the bus and fired a heavy fusillade from that side with equally disappointing lack of success. Lev, Moises, Gavriel, and Ezra all gathered near the front of the bus and opened fire from protective positions behind nearby trees and vehicles, all to no avail. The ponderous bus roared straight ahead, scattering all of the agents. Ezra was too slow, and the bus ran over his left leg, crushing it. He was the only casualty in the opening gun battle.

Before they could do anything to halt the Pullman bus’s progress, it careered out of the parking lot and back onto Ruta 215.

“Pick up Ezra and the two prisoners and everybody get to our bus!” Lev ordered.

It took time to do that. They were also briefly hampered by curious Chileans and tourists coming out of the café to see what the commotion was about. Moises and Gavriel covered the rear as the agents hauled their human cargo onto their bus. The two rear guards were obliged to fire a few rounds into the roof of the café to discourge the onlookers, who scrambled back into the relative safety of the well-lit room.

Lev took the driver’s seat of the Via Bariloche bus and started the engine. It was sluggish and took two turns of the ignition before getting going, which wasted precious seconds.

“Which way?” asked Eliot who sat in the front row behind the driver.

“Fifty-fifty chance, but I’ll bet on south,” Lev answered and pulled out onto Ruta 215 and floored the accelerator.

Lev calculated that they would have just enough fuel to make it to Puerto Varas before they had to stop. Every agent on the bus strained his eyes looking at the darkness along the gravel road to see if there was any sign of the other bus or of any men walking. They actually stopped twice and frightened an ebriated husband headed home from one of the several small drinking establishments along the way. Nothing more than that was accomplished; the Pullman bus had too great of a head start on them to be seen, let alone be caught. The Via Bariloche bus had a much smaller and slower engine than its Pullman counterpart.

Manny, Aaron, and Micah worked to stabilize Ezra’s obviously fractured leg. The knee was bent at an obscene lateral angle from his thigh. Haggai and Enos assumed the role of interrogators of the two captured Nazi criminals; but even with not-so-gentle persuasion, they were unable to learn anything about the plans or present location of the leader of the group, the man known as Antoine. In fact, neither man knew the answers to either question. After a few good kicks just to vent anger, the agents left the criminals alone.

Chilean Dessert Recipes

Arroz con Leche de Chile—Rice Pudding with Milk and Raisins

Ingredients

-1 cp white rice, 2 cps water, 1 cup whole milk, 2 large eggs, ½ cp gran. sugar, 1 tsp vanilla extract, 1 tsp grated lemon peel, 1 tsp butter, 1 cp heavy cream, 1–2 cps raisins (dark, golden, or mixed), cinnamon for dusting.

Preparation

-Put rice and water in a med. saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and cook rice until soft~15–20 mins. Stir milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla, raisins, and lemon peel in a medium bowl until blended. Add the rice and stir until all ingredients are well mixed.

-Butter a 9 in. pan and spoon the rice mixture into it.

-Bake in a preheated 350^° F oven for 25 mins. Remove rice pudding from oven, stir well, and allow to cool~15 mins. Whip cream to soft peaks with an electric mixer. Fold the rice pudding into the whipped cream. Transfer to a serving dish, dust with cinnamon (and maybe a little nutmeg).

-Serve warm or chilled.

Dulce de Leche

Ingredients

-1 qt whole milk, 12 oz sugar (~1 ½ cps), 1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped ½ tsp baking soda.

Preparation

-Combine milk, sugar, vanilla bean, and seeds in a large, 4-qt saucepan and place over med. heat. Bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally, until sugar has dissolved. Once the sugar has dissolved, add the baking soda and stir to combine. Reduce the heat to low and cook uncovered at a bare simmer. Stir occasionally, but do not reincorporate the foam that appears on the top of the mixture. Continue to cook for 1 hr. Remove the vanilla bean after 1 hr. and continue to cook until the mixture is a dark caramel color and has reduced to~1 cp~1½—2 hrs. Strain mixture through a fine mesh strainer. Store in the refrigerator in a sealed container (for up to a month).