Free Emerald Death by Bill Craig Page A

it harmlessly dissipated against a mystical shield that had sprung up between them. 
    That caught Ragnarok completely by surprise.  “How?”
                “My secret,” the thin man replied grimly.  Suddenly something slammed into Ragnarok from behind, arms like steel bands encircled his chest, squeezing with almost superhuman strength, driving the very air from his lungs.  Ragnarok struggled, but being unable to breathe, his struggles were weakening.
    The thin man was chanting again.  Ragnarok could feel the power building around him, but it wasn't enough... not nearly enough.
    How did they do this to me?  Who are these men?
    He focused his thoughts, sending out a blast of power that sent his captor flying back across the room and knocking the thin man to the floor. But the counterattack had done little more than stun the men.  He was too weak to keep fighting for the moment.  He had to escape!  He had to flee!
     
                           *****
     
                Ragnarok pushed the memories away.  He clenched his fist; it had taken several years for him to regenerate the missing fingers.  Human flesh was a prison that held him bound until death - and he was very hard to kill - but without corporeal form he was utterly powerless.  He had worn many coats of flesh throughout the ages, taking human form or putting it aside at a whim, but this body had been cursed with particularly bad luck.  His soul and this weakly flesh had been fused together by the disruption of his own power when Hawkins and his men attacked. He wondered if Captain Hawkins had emerged from his self-imposed exile to plague him once more. If so, this time the outcome would be far different!
     
                                        *****
     
                Mike Hannigan watched from beneath the tree canopy as the zeppelin floated past overhead, driven by the propellers of four enormous engines mounted around its prodigious girth.  They didn't dare attempt another flight.  Hopefully, the Nazis believed they were dead or stranded with mechanical difficulties.  He didn't think he'd be quite so lucky if they encountered more fighter planes.
    After it passed, Hannigan went to join Shotsky, who stood over Degiorno as he redrew the map to the lost city from memory.  He wondered what they would find there. 
    Hannigan was surprised by his interest.  He had never cared that much about such things - moldy old ruins and such - when he had been in school.  History had never been his strongest subject.
    But a lost city...?
    Mysteries hidden beneath the mists of time?  The prospect of possibly finding some long lost treasure was strangely exciting, like something out of a dime novel, and him the hero of the hunt.  It was stirring his blood in a strange way that wasn’t at all unpleasant.
    Hannigan glanced over a shoulder to where the copper-haired pilot was still tending to her plane. …Maybe it wasn't the treasure hunt that was stirring his blood after all.
     
     

Chapter Nine
     
    Niles McKenzie looked up as a shadow passed over the water.  The big silver cigar shape of the zeppelin floated past overhead, its altitude low enough that he could easily distinguish the red, white and black Nazi emblem on its tail fins.  McKenzie had a bad feeling about the airship.  It was a symbol of the new Germany - a nation built by a fiendish demagogue who had masterfully played on the fears and prejudices of Germans still hurting from economic collapse that had followed their defeat in the Great War.  There had been others like this Hitler - criminals and false messiahs, who had tried to seize power in the early days after the War, and some of them doubtless would have succeeded in their schemes if not for the bravery of Captain Hawkins and his men.  Now Hawkins was gone and there was no one left to battle this insidious enemy.  McKenzie felt almost as if the silvery