Free Trail of the Twisted Cros by Buck Sanders

guaranteed safe passage to Algeria, within ten days. We begin counting down at 18:00 this date. In addition
     to his release, the Führer is to be provided one million American dollars worth of gold. Any resistance at any stage of his
     release and passage to Algeria will be answered by us in a manner demonstrated this morning in West Virginia.
    FAIRMONT, West Virginia
    While Tolson danced around him, occasionally asking questions like “Do you think that means something?”, Slayton riffled through
     the stack of papers recording the attendance records of mine crews working all shifts prior to the morning explosion, going
     back to twenty-four hours earlier.
    It took a few minutes to match absentees of today with those of yesterday, to see if there had been any suspicious patterns,
     any shift swapping, any lateness coming out of the pit—anything at all that might make some sense.
    He found nothing that needed asking about. He went back to today’s absentee list. Four men absent from the shift that had
     been more than likely killed en masse. Four very lucky men.
    “Darryl Easton?” Slayton asked. He looked at Tolson, waiting for an answer.
    “Good man. About to retire.” Tolson shrugged his shoulders, unsure as to how he could help.
    “Gene Ray Thomas?”
    “Drunk.”
    “Eddie Lee King?”
    “Same,” Tolson said. “Probably him and Thomas out together on a toot.”
    “Colin Hays?”
    The color drained out of Tolson’s face. He took a step backward and nearly fell down doing so.
    “Hays… he’s absent? Today?”
    “Says so here on your foreman’s report,” Slayton said. “What’s so special about Colin Hays?”
    “He’s the local head of that Nazi outfit—you know, the one that Johnny Lee Rogers runs.”

Chapter Seven
    NASSAU, the Bahamas, 8 September, 5:55 p.m.
    “Enough sun now for you, honey?”
    She said her words with the soft Bahamian lilt as she rubbed lotion on the fleshy shoulders of the large pink man sprawled
     on his stomach atop a blanket, to protect him from the heat of the sand. He gurgled a response, soothed by the touch of her
     long, cocoa-colored fingers.
    She moved her fingers slowly down the curve of his spine, making him wriggle with a sensuous anticipation of the manner in
     which she earned her living. She let her hand rest lightly at the edge of his European-cut swimsuit, which looked ridiculous
     on him, showing as much as it did of the decades-long accumulation of beer and Southern cooking.
    Skillfully, she buried two fingers down below the cloth of his briefs, massaging his buttocks, slipping her hand down the
     cleft between his cheeks. He moaned, then turned over to reveal the tent that his male member had suddenly made of the material
     struggling to cover it.
    She giggled at the sight, checked around to see if anyone was watching, then covered his erection with her hand, urging it
     into an even larger problem which could not have the most desirable solution at the height of the sunbathing hour on the beach
     outside Nassau’s Emerald Hotel. She covered her upper lip with her tongue, and he closed his eyes, hurt with the exquisite
     pain of not being able to receive her invitation right then and there.
    The light, pleasant sounds of a calypso steel band, provided by the hotel for the entertainment of its beach enthusiasts,
     floated through the warm, semitropical air. He enjoyed all his sensory input immensely—the sound of the music, the professionally
     erotic touch of this tall black island beauty, the smell of the salt air, the hotel… He was not a man accustomed to such comforts.
     To him, a drive-in movie and a six-pack was standard weekend fare, and then it could all be ruined if the kids in the back
     seat didn’t shut up and settle down.
    His wife was no better. She was the sort of woman who asked questions like “What are you doing down there?” when he decided
     to do something about the crashing boredom of his so-called sexual life.
    Now here he