TRADER WOOLY & THE SECRET OF THE LOST NAZI TREASURE

TOM TOWNSEND

award WINNING AUTHOR

email: Tom@tomtownsend-toyland.com

Phone: 713-502-4377 3123 CR 2407 Rusk, TX 75875

TRADER WOOLY & THE SECRET
OF THE LOST NAZI TREASURE
By
Tom Townsend

Read the excerpt below

HISTORICAL FICTION

Trader Wooly is an "army brat" growing up in West Germany during the Cold War. His interest in history and collecting things keeps him constantly in trouble. There are two more in this series.
Reading Level 5^th grade and up.

Published by Eakin Press
ISBN 0-89015-893-2
$8.95 paperback

The tanks were coming!

     Wes McCaully felt them long before he heard their distant clanking and rumbling. A tiny vibration tingled
through the dark house. It grew quickly to a humming noise in the glass of his bedroom window. Then, the
model airplanes on the shelf above his bed began to rattle.
     He awoke suddenly and sat up, staring into the darkness. The green, glowing hands on his alarm clock said
that it was two o'clock in the morning.
     "Battalion's coming home," he muttered as he tried to wipe the sleep from his eyes. Still only half-awake,
he threw off the covers which landed in an untidy heap beside a toy steam engine. He bounced out of bed. Hung
open the upstairs window, and knocked over a pile of school books. Somehow, he managed to catch all but one
before they hit the floor. The sixth grade math book which he did not catch crashed into a half-built model
ship and scattered parts across the floor.
     A gust of cold air slapped his face as he peered out into the night. The houses along Officers Row were dark                                                               and a thin, wispy fog clung to the ground. The corner street lamp was only a dim, yellow glow.
     He cocked his ear to the night and listened. Yes, he could hear them now: a faint rumbling, like rolling
thunder, far away but growing nearer.
     "Dad's comin'!"
     In less time than it takes to tell, he had pulled on a pair of blue jeans and two socks which did not match.
Over his head went a red sweatshirt with "U.S. ARMY" printed in gold. Still without turning on a light, he man-
aged to get both of his sneakers on the correct feet and the strings tied in knots which only vaguely resembled
bows. From a peg by the door, he grabbed up his jacket and tiptoed quietly into the hall.
     Three feet from his bedroom door, he bumped solidly into his little brother. "Mikey!" Wes whispered, "get back
to bed!"
     "Daddy's coming. I heard 'em! I heard 'em!" said Mikey sleepily.
     "Yeah, so did I. Now be quiet; you'll wake Mother."
     "Where ya goin'?" Mikey wanted to know.
     "Down to the motor pool to meet them, now be a—."
     "I wanna go too!" Mikey demanded, starting to stomp his feet.
     "No, I don't have time." Wes pushed past him and glanced quickly in the direction of his mother's bedroom
at the far end of the hall.
     "I'm tellin' Mommy!" Mikey threatened.
     "No, you won't," Wes whispered threateningly over his shoulder and started down the stairs. Mikey was
six, just half as old as Wes. No one could ever be sure just what Mikey would do at any given time. Wes considered                                                    that there was a fair chance he would start screaming or throwing things and wake Mother. But, as he slipped out the                                                           front door, everything upstairs remained quiet.
     From the carport, he pushed his bike out into the street and mounted "Indian style," on the run. Only an occasional                                                         porch light burned in the long row of identical, two-story houses.
     As he neared the comer, another bicycle passed beneath the street lamps' dim glow and vanished quickly
into the darkness. Wes saw the rider only as a dark silhouette, wearing a hat and coat and pedaling very
slowly. He guessed that it was one of the German civilians who worked for the American army even though it
was unusual for anyone to be moving around at this time of night. For some unknown reason, a tiny chill
went up his spine. He might have given the matter more thought if the lights of a military police jeep had not
appeared suddenly out of the fog.
     Wes turned his bike quickly across Colonel Walker's front yard, left tire tracks in his flower bed, and vanished
into the back yards. There was a curfew on all army bases in West Germany, and Wes did not want to waste
time explaining why he was out at this time of night.
     Darting among the parked cars, he kept to the alley behind the houses. Halfway down the block, he side-
swiped a garbage can. This aroused General Braggston's big German Shepherd who barked a lot and chased him
for the rest of the block before losing interest.
     A half-mile later he crossed Patton Avenue and stopped beside a wide dirt road. This, he knew, was one
of the tank trails which led out onto the wide expanse of military training area beyond. To his right were the
bright floodlights and high fence of the 45th Tank Regiment's parking area, or "motor pool," as it was called.
    He listened again. The rumbling was louder now, growing with every second and rolling toward him in
the night like the thunder of a hundred summer storms.
     Then he saw them. Two pinpoints of pale light, like squinting eyes, glowed on the tank trail. The roar of
engines surrounded him, and a tank charged out of the darkness. Its huge gun barrel was leveled at the road
ahead, and dust clouds billowed up from behind it. As it turned sharply beside Patton Avenue, its steel treads                                                            kicked out chunks of earth which landed near Wes's bicycle.
     Then came a steady line of clanking, roaring, steel monsters which chewed up the earth as they passed.
Their roar was deafening and the ground vibrated all around him. Dust mixed with smoke from their diesel
engines covered him and made it hard to breathe.
     He strained to pick out Charlie-One-Seven, the tank in which his father should be riding. But the small,
white vehicle numbers were impossible to see in the night. There were fifty-six heavy tanks in the 1st Battalion                                                                  of the 45th Tank Regiment, and Wes waited until they all had passed by and entered the motor pool. But
just to watch the huge war machines charging by was always exciting—and more than a little bit scary.
     The noise, the dust, the smell of engine smoke and grease were all familiar things to Wes. His family had
always been "army." One of his ancestors had ridden with Light-Horse Harry Lee's Continental Cavalry in
1776. His great-great-grandfather had been a lieutenant in Jeb Stuart's Confederate Cavalry during the Civil
War, and his great-grandfather had fought in France during the first world war. His grandfather had been
killed in World War II. He had served under General Patton and, it was said, had driven the first tank into
Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. His own father had fought two long tours in Vietnam.
     Now, the world rested in a state of uneasy peace. His father was a captain and commanded a tank                                                                     company stationed just outside of the city of Munich, in West Germany.
     One hundred and fifty miles to the east lay the Iron Curtain and the armies of the Soviet Union. If war came
again, it would most likely come from there: from Russia. As Wes watched the last of the tanks pass him, he knew
that if that ever happened, his father and these tanks would be the first to fight and, almost certainly, the first
to die.
     The sun was up before the last tank was washed, the last muzzle cover in place, and the last piece of
equipment stowed.
     "I'm goin' home and get some sleep," his father said as he climbed into his jeep, "Thanks for the help. I'll see
you after school."
     "Bye, Dad," Wes echoed as the jeep drove away.
     He began pedaling his bicycle back down Patton Avenue in the direction of home. The Panzerwald, a
thick forest of tall pines, bordered the tank trail to his right. Near the forest's edge, the ruins of a bombed-out
building stood crumbling among the encroaching pines. It had been a factory of some kind, everyone said. Now
only the akeleton-like remains of some of the walls still stood among the trees. Weeds grew on piles of rubble
inside the walls, and one brick smokestack, broken and jagged at the top, stood out against the morning sky.
     Surrounding both the ruins and the forest was a twelve-foot high, chain-link fence with three strands of
barbed wire on top. It was marked with signs which read, in both English and German: "Danger, Keep Out,
Unexploded Mines."
     Wes had heard that during the last days of World War II, there had been a terrible battle fought near the
factory. When it was over, it had proved to be too hard a job to find all of the unexploded mines, artillery shells,
grenades, and who knew what else. The factory ruins and all the forest around it had been fenced off, and
now, forty years later, the Panzerwald seemed to have been forgotten.
     Ahead, Wes saw another bicycle going in the same direction as he was riding, but moving very slowly. He
realized suddenly that he had seen this same rider the night before on his way to the motor pool. As he approached,                                                        he could see that the rider was an old man. He wore the black coat and hat that Wes had glimpsed
last night. The bicycle was also black and appeared to be very old.
     Wes pedaled faster and offered a cheery "Guten morgen" (German for "good morning") as he passed. For
a second, he saw the man's face. It was old, timeless perhaps, and frowning at him. Haunted eyes stared fiercely
out from behind a bushy gray beard. The black hat was pulled low across his forehead, so Wes could see little
else about him. Again, a chill tingled up Wes's spine and he hurried on.
     He was fifty yards ahead when he looked back. Then he stopped his bike, blinked his eyes, and looked again.
The old man and his old bicycle had vanished.