Desert Run by Betty Webb Page B

remotely normal. The rehab clinics and prisons teemed with my less fortunate brethren. I left that part out, too.
    When he looked back up at me, his expression was puzzling. There was gentleness around his mouth, but his blue eyes had darkened with an emotion I couldn’t readily identify. “Jesus, Lena. You’ve managed to accomplish so much with so little, while I…never mind. My films should tell you all you need to know about me. The part that matters, anyway.”
    Then he smiled again and the darkness in his eyes lifted. His tone became flirtatious. “Do you know why I decided I had to know you better?”
    I flirted right back, in my own PI kind of way. “Because I made you sign a two-month contract instead of a day-to-day agreement?”
    He threw back his head and laughed. “Now that was a dart from Cupid! But, no. That’s not the reason. The very second you pulled onto the set with that ’45 Jeep I knew you were the woman for me.”
    I didn’t know whether to be thrilled or to run like hell. But when he leaned over and give me a quick kiss on the cheek, I didn’t flinch. Yes, I was making progress. So much so that for the rest of the evening I was able to push all my worries away, including those about Rada Tesema and Beth Osmon.
    As a wise man once said, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

Chapter Five
    6:10 p.m. December 25, 1944
    Hidden in a deep ravine a few miles east of the prison camp, Gunter Hoenig watched the sun slip behind a mesa. Soon the cold night would descend, but they did not dare light a fire to warm themselves. They would shiver, once again, wishing they were back in Camp Papago with their companions, enjoying Christmas dinner. Nothing had gone right for him and his friend Josef since the escape, not their attempt to join up with the more even-tempered Kapitan Daanitz, nor their plan to float down the Gila River to Mexico…
    River!
    If their situation hadn’t been so desperate, they could have enjoyed a big laugh at the joke. What were the American cartographers thinking, labeling that dry gully a river? Rivers had water! Yet when they reached it, they discovered that their so-called river was nothing but sand, sand, and more sand stretching away for miles—just like the Cross Cut Canal that ran alongside the prison camp. All dreams of floating to Mexico had vanished. Oh, how Kapitan Ernst had cursed when he realized their mistake, but as usual, Kapitan Daanitz had handled his disappointment with dignity.
    â€œMexico is little more than a hundred kilometers away and do not we have feet?” Daanitz had said with his philosophical smile. “We look ‘American,’ and if we split up into small groups of two or three, we can reach the border unmolested. Food will pose no problem as long as we develop a taste for rattlesnake stew.”
    â€œBetter than U-boat food!” Josef had joked.
    But Kapitan Ernst, who hated Daanitz as much as the other submariners loathed Ernst, put forth another idea. Why should they kill themselves attempting to make the border when they could double back and walk a few kilometers into the Superstition Mountains. There they could find shelter in one of the old mines marked on their map and hole up until the end of the war. Perhaps they would even find gold!
    â€œThe Fatherland will be victorious soon,” Kapitan assured them. “If we do not run, we will be in place to join our brave comrades when they arrive, and then we can play our part in founding the American Reich. There is yet great glory awaiting us!”
    â€œGreat glory?” Daanitz’s face contorted with something that, if Gunter had not known better, looked like disgust. “Do not be so certain, Kapitan Ernst. I have heard stories…” He looked up at the sky, from which a fine drizzle had begun to fall, but not the downpour they needed to make the dry riverbed flow. “If those stories I hear