Free ron Goulart - Challengers of the Unknown by Ron Goulart

end of World War Two, but they weren't recruiting four-year-olds into the Storm Troopers."
    "He's probably," said June, "simply a Hitler bulf; had himself decorated the last time he was in San James."
    Ace frowned, rubbing at the faded tattoo. "This tattoo looks old, more than forty years old."
    "You don't often find people whose skin is older than they are," observed Prof. "I learned that from a mail-order biology course I once took."
    Shrugging, Ace said, "Let's look over the rest of the gang. After that we can ask some questions." "And, hopefully, get some answers," said June.
    Nothing.
    A vast, hot emptiness. Flat and dry, all the countryside the color of weathered brownstone. And a haze everywhere, a thin yellow haze hanging over the hot, flat Tierra Seca desert, making the declining sun a blurred, glaring disc.
    "There's a sign of life finally." Rocky let go the steering wheel of their closed jeep to point at the hazy, late-afternoon sky. "Some kind of birds flying around over there."
    "Vultures," said Red after a glance at the distant, circling silhouettes.
    The big ex-wrestler snorted. "It figures," he said. "This is the deadest, dullest stretch of country I've ever been in."
    "You should try Glendale, California, on a Sunday." Both men were wearing their Challenger uniforms. Red stroked the hourglass emblem on his chest with his thumb several times before checking again the ordnance map spread across his knees. "Things may
    liven up when we reach the Fortaleza area," he remarked. "We should be there before nightfall."
    "Can't figure why this Escabar guy, whoever the hell he is, would want to live out here. This desert makes the boondocks look like Times Square on New Year's Eve."
    "Cheer up, Rocko, we ..." A frown touched Red's face. "Slow up a minute." He was staring to his right, eyes narrowing.
    "You spot something?"
    "Can't be sure." He reached behind his seat for a pair of binoculars.
    Rocky had let up on the gas pedal, was looking in the same direction as his Challenger partner. "Something moving over that way," he decided. "Unless it's one of them mirages."
    "Mirages don't usually have wheels." Red had the glasses to his eyes.
    Rocky stopped the jeep, "Ain't no road out there."
    "So I notice. Whatever that thing is, it's coming straight across the desert at us."
    "At us?" Rocky scowled. "Then maybe we oughtn't to sit on our duffs waiting for it."
    "This is odd," said Red. "It's some kind of truck, but . . ."
    "What's so odd about a truck?"
    Red lowered the binoculars. "There doesn't seem to be anybody driving it," he said.
    The name he was using was Gallegher and he would soon be dead.
    Not dead on paper, as certain intelligence agencies in Europe and elsewhere had him, but dead in fact. A tall man, deeply tanned, not quite forty in appearance.
    He wore khaki clothes, heavy hiking boots and his belt held both a pistol and a hunting knife. A powerful hunting rifle was slung across his back.
    There were three other men with Gallegher. All moving closer to death, none aware of it.
    A muddy green glow was spilling through the jungle as the day waned.
    Gallegher had hunted almost every kind of game. He'd hunted men, too, a long time ago when he'd had a different name. Now he was searching for this monster which was supposed to haunt the jungle.
    He agreed with General Cueipo. It was most likely a lot of nonsense. Shuster, and many of the others on the staff of the underground facility, worried too much. He held up his hand, his three companions halted.
    Gallegher stood sniffing at the twilight air. "Over this way," he told the others. "Follow me; go carefully." Out here in the wilds he could speak German.
    "What is it?" asked one of the others.
    "Something dead." Gallegher worked his way through the underbrush, between the immense trees and into the new clearing the falling helicopter had torn out of the jungle. "Yes, a man it was."
    Behind him Ortega, who'd got a look at the remains, was retching. "Awful, awful,"