Dead Lock Read Online Free Page B

Prison earlier in the year, but was pardoned and released after serving only nine months.
    Claus could still feel the excitement of the rallies that marked the beginning of the Nazification of Germany. The patriotic songs continued to echo in his mind, and when the United States declared war on his native land on December 8, 1941, he vowed to do whatever was asked of him to serve the Third Reich.
    He joined the German Army where his intellect and his aptitude for weapons and hand-to-hand combat impressed his superiors. They were even more impressed by his command of American English. As a result, he drew what many of his countrymen considered one of the most important assignments of the war.
    He was in Sault Ste. Marie to see America’s precious Soo Locks destroyed and its military manufacturing brought to a dead halt.
     
     
     
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    I turned left onto Portage Avenue, and found myself almost directly under a group of those gigantic balloons. They were tethered on what appeared to be steel wires anchored around the four locks. The area looked dramatically different from the way I remembered it just two years or so ago. I pulled to the side of the road and took in the sight.
    As teenagers, we’d swim in the south canal just above the old Weitzel Lock. A couple of the boys rigged a plank off the deck of a barge moored there, and we used it as a diving board.
    You could walk up close to the locks in those days. A huge southbound freighter fresh from Lake Superior would sail into the tight space, with feet to spare on either side. The gate behind the freighter would close and water would rush out of the lock, lowering the boat twenty-one feet to the level of the waters of the St. Marys River. Then the gate at the opposite end would open and the huge boat would resume its journey south, carrying iron ore to Detroit, Cleveland or Pittsburgh.
    The War had changed the locks as it had affected everything else in America. It had made the cargo of the freighters that passed through them even more precious. A tall metal fence now ringed the perimeter of the grassy park between the street and the locks themselves. Civilian guards stood outside the fence, while MPs walked the grounds inside. From the road, the four locks looked like long, narrow cement swimming pools with giant wooden gates at either end. A dozen or so of the huge balloons I noticed when I first entered town floated above.
    I got out of my car and walked to the fence, pressing my face against it. A hundred feet in front of me I could see men and equipment at work on the new lock that would replace the old Weitzel. It was to be named after our famous General, Douglas MacArthur. The Poe, Davis and Sabin Locks lay on the far side of it. Plans called for the MacArthur Lock to be eight hundred feet long, large enough to accommodate the new breed of giant lake freighters. The other locks had taken years to finish; the Army Corps of Engineers vowed that the MacArthur would be completed in just 14 months. Its dedication was scheduled for July 11, and its presence, along with those huge tethered dirigibles, changed the landscape significantly.
    “Barrage balloons.”
    I turned at the sound of the voice to find a man of thirty or so standing behind me.
     
     
     
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    He stood a few inches over six feet and had blond hair and sky blue eyes. He was dressed in a plaid shirt and blue jeans and had the shoulders of a lumberjack.
    I must have jumped because he smiled and said, “Sorry; didn’t mean to startle you. I saw you staring at those balloons and thought you might be wondering about them.”
    “Actually you’re right,” I said, sticking out my hand. “My name is Kate Brennan.” A lot of men consider it too forward for a woman to offer her hand, but frankly that doesn’t bother me. And it didn’t seem to faze him either.
    “Scotty Banyon,” he said, grasping my hand. “Those barrage balloons are there to make it tough for any German planes to dive