The sensation was like plunging from a poorly lighted room into the inky darkness of night. Randall clenched his teeth hard, held the control stick with both hands, and struggled grimly against the efforts of the gusts of wind to tip the Vultee upside down, if not to tear it apart into small pieces. It took perhaps three minutes to race through those piled-up storm clouds, but to Randall, and to Jimmy Joyce, too, it seemed like three years before the aircraft poked out into clear air.
“Still with us, Jimmy?” Randall called out as the roar of the wind died away. “Don’t you think I’m wonderful? All in one piece, just as I promised.”
“That’s only because the manufacturer of this job makes good airplanes!” young Joyce grunted. “You had nothing to do with it. Okay, get me to Davao in a hurry, Throckmorton!”
“Yes, sir, very good, sir!” Randall laughed. “Even sooner than that, maybe, because it’s getting darker by the minute.”
They were now in clear air, and the raging storm was behind them, but there was a thick layer of cloud scud above them that darkened the sky all about. This did not add anything to Randall’s peace of mind. He had expected to make the last part of the flight in darkness. It had been planned that way so that they would not run into any Japanese planes that might be patrolling the Philippine waters. But to make at least half the flight under the cover of darkness, and no stars for them to check their position, was something else again. However, there was nothing to be done about it, except concentrate all of his attention on flying.
For a little under an hour the Vultee prop-clawed its way across the overcast Pacific sky, and then, suddenly, without warning, it happened!
There was the savage yammer of aerial machine gunfire in Randall’s ears. Impulsively he banked the Vultee sharply, twisted around in the seat, and glanced above and behind. Jimmy Joyce was doing the same thing and, at the same time, swinging his rear guns around into firing position. Like a bolt of lightning a Jap Zero was streaking down from the gray overcast, its wing guns spitting jets of red flame, and the tracers making silver paths in the air
For one instant Randall stared openmouthed at the Zero rocketing down, then he snapped out of his trance and slammed the Vultee into a roll and a dive that brought it back under the plunging Zero. The Japanese pilot tried to steepen his dive to the vertical and drill the Vultee, but Randall was too quick for him. The redhead kicked the two-seater around in a dime turn, hauled the nose up and let fire with his own guns at the Zero. He missed by inches, and the Japanese pilot arced up out of his mad dive and came around. However, Jimmy Joyce was waiting for him, and let drive with his rear guns.
Like a bird that has suddenly flown into an invisible net in the sky, the Zero seemed to stop abruptly, and then went skating off to the right. Grim-eyed, Jimmy Joyce hung right onto him with his guns. A moment later the Zero started spitting smoke.
“Got him, Jimmy!” Randall cried out. “Pretty shooting, fellow. That rat’s finished.”
But this was not quite true. With certain death only a few moments away, the fanatical pilot banked around and streaked straight in at the Vultee. His guns blazed and Randall just managed to swerve off quickly as the glass hatch over his cockpit broke up. Then the Japanese guns suddenly went silent. Perhaps they had jammed, or perhaps the mad pilot could not be bothered with them. Anyway, with smoke spewing out behind, the Zero twisted in the air once more and headed straight for the Vultee.
“Watch it, Red!” Jimmy Joyce shouted. “He’s going to try and ram us. Keep clear of the rat!”
“You telling me?” Randall echoed, and hurtled the Vultee through a full snap roll. “Not if I can help it! Not a chance!”
For the next few seconds, it was a game of touch and go with that mad dog who was trying to take them down to a watery grave with him. He tossed his ship all over the sky, and twice Randall felt the Zero practically brush wing tips with the Vultee. Then Jimmy Joyce got it in his sights again. A full two-second burst from both his guns caught the Zero cold and knocked it about in the air like a chip of wood on a raging sea. And then the Zero exploded in a great sheet of flame, came apart at the seams, and went showering down.
“Boy, thanks!” Randall breathed, and wiped sweat from his forehead. “That guy was nuts, but could he fly! He darn near smacked us sweet a couple of times. Thanks, Jimmy boy!”
“And thank you for keeping us out of his way!” young Joyce shouted back. “Thank the Lord there weren’t two of them. But he sure was pretty far out for a Zero. Wonder if he came off a Jap carrier by any chance?”
“We’ll never know, not that it matters,” Randall said with relief. “Anyway...”
He choked off the rest. Rather he cut it off with a yelp of alarm.
“What’s the matter?” Jimmy Joyce called through the intercom. “Did he hit us, after all?”
“He did!” Randall replied grimly. “Confound his dirty black heart. The compass, Jimmy. He made a hunk of junk out of it! Now isn’t that just ducky! Here we are in the middle of nothing, night coming fast, and no compass, not even any stars to look at. And after twisting all over the place with that bum, I don’t even know which way we’re heading. You got any idea, Jimmy?”
“Not a very good one, I’m afraid,” young Joyce replied in a tight voice. “But I think it’s west dead ahead. But with this darn overcast and the bad light, anybody’s guess is good. Junk, you said? You can fix it up, maybe?”
“Not a chance, kid, not a chance!” Randall groaned, and stared at the shambles that the Japanese bullets had made out of the compass. “It’s beyond all possible repair. It’s by guess, and by gosh, for us now, Jimmy. Maybe one of the other planes will come along, and we can tag onto it. We can’t be far from land, unless that Zero did come off a Jap carrier. Keep your eyes skinned, Jimmy, for one of the others behind us. I’m going to throttle to save as much gas as possible. And I’ll keep her headed as she is. Maybe your hunch is the right one.”
Two hours later, though, Randall’s stomach was full of little cold lumps of lead, and his brain was filled with countless tormenting fears. It was really dark now, and for two hours they had not seen a sign of anything. For two hours they had drilled on and on, hoping that their course was westward, hoping that they might spot an island that they could recognize from their charts, and hoping for all kinds of things. True, the Vultee carried ten hours of gas, and if the engine kept on ticking over, they could fly a considerable distance. But where to? To the north, the south, the east, the west? For all they could tell in that darkness, they might well be headed straight for Japan itself. Two hours gone! How many more to go?
Chapter Eight – Crash Landing
THE NIGHT WAS like a solid black wall through which the Wright “Cyclone” powered Vultee V-12C was prop-clawing its way like something lost in an utterly strange world. Red Randall snapped on the tiny instrument light for the dozenth times took a nervous flash glance at the dial readings, and then snapped off the light and plunged the cockpit into darkness again.
He waited a moment or two to let his eyes get accustomed to the inky darkness, and then stared sharply out in all directions. But there was not so much as a single flicker of light to be seen. Not even the twinkle of a star, for, as though the gods of war had decided to make this night the blackest of all, a thick canopy of clouds blotted out the night heavens. Red sighed and put his lips to the intercom mike.
“See anything yet, Jimmy?” he spoke into it.
“Nothing but pitch darkness, and more of it!” Jimmy Joyce answered him from the gunner-observer’s pit. “I thought I saw the flash of a ship’s light down off to starboard a moment ago. I don’t see anything now, so I guess it was my imagination. How are we making out on fuel, Red?”
“Not so good,” Randall told him. “Maybe half an hour and maybe forty-five minutes. It’s hard to figure exactly. By the way, you’d better check that rubber life raft, Jimmy. There’s an awful lot of water down there under us.”
“You’re telling me?” Joyce gr
oaned. “Nothing but water. We can’t sit down in it, though, Red. We’ve got to keep this old baby boiling along. Daylight will be here in half an hour at the most. Then maybe we can spot land and a place to sit down.”
“Yeah,” Randall grunted and gave a little shrug. “This neck of the world is filled with islands, so here’s hoping we spot one with a place big enough to land on. Oh-oh! Now why did I have to go and say that?”
The last burst from his lips as the engine began to spit and sputter a little. He snapped on the cowl light again, and his eyes flew to the fuel gauge. What he saw sent a chill down his spine. The needle was fast against the zero peg!
“Just forget what we were saying about daylight, Jimmy!” he called into his intercom mike. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to admire it from the rubber life raft. No more soup for the Cyclone, Jimmy. Sit tight, and hold your hat, and don’t try to leave until the train stops!”
“Cut the wisecracks!” young Joyce snapped. “You really serious? I thought you just said...?”
“But I was wrong,” Randall groaned, as the Cyclone gave one final hollow gasp, and then went silent. “Sorry, kid, but this really is the end of the line. Is the rubber life raft set to be released in a hurry?”
“All set,” Jimmy Joyce echoed. “What a sweet dish this is! Just a great big help to our country we turned out to be. What happened to our fuel, anyway?”
“Didn’t you see?” Red grunted sarcastically. “I dumped half of it over an hour ago. Decided to make it a really sporting flight. Nuts! How the thunder do I know? She just drank up too much of it, that’s all. Or maybe there’s a leak in the tank. And maybe you’ve forgotten the important item?”
“Sorry I let fly, Red,” Joyce said quietly. “Keep your shirt on. I didn’t mean it that way. Yeah, I know. The compass smacked to a fare-thee-well. And we’ve been lost for goodness knows how long. Just forget I sounded off.”
Randall’s flash of anger winked out instantly, and his lips pulled back into a grin.
“Well, Lady Luck just gave us the standoff, Jimmy. I’ll sit us down as easy as I can, and maybe it’ll be near some kind of island. A flare dropped will…”
“No, Red!” Jimmy Joyce yelled excitedly. “No landing flares! I just happened to think. If there are islands near us, maybe there are Japs on them. And a flare would light us up clear as day. No flares, Red. You can belly us in in the dark. Besides, a bump or two is a lot better than maybe some Japs coming out and slitting our throats. You agree?”
“One hundred per cent!” Randall replied as he jerked his hand back from the flare release lever. “You got something there, Jimmy. But it’s dark as ink, and I can’t see a thing. I’ll have to feel her down. So don’t be too sore if you wake up playing a harp.”
“Cheerful lug, aren’t you?” Joyce growled. “Never mind that stuff. Just sit us down okay.”
Randall muttered something and inched, forward in his seat. Every bit of his attention was concentrated on the Vultee easing down through the inky darkness in a long, flat glide that Randall kept just a little on the safe side of the stalling point. And every inch of the way down he kept his gaze fixed below for the first glimpse of the darker moving shadows that would be the rolling swells of the water.
Downward inch by inch, foot by foot, they glided. And then suddenly Randall’s eyes blinked as he made out what seemed to be a milky streak in the darkness off to his right. The thought flashed through his mind that the milky white streak was waves breaking over a coral reef. Or it might be breakers smashing to foam on the shore of some island. Maybe one of the Philippines? Maybe Borneo? Or just some lonely bit of land miles out in the Pacific? He had no idea, because it seemed that for years and years Jimmy Joyce and he had been flying through a black, trackless world.
A coral reef, or a real honest-to-goodness shore, line? No more than a moment after the line of milky white caught his eye, Red picked out the moving darker shadows dead ahead and below that were the rolling swells of water. In a brief instant wild temptation to let go a flare seized hold of him, and almost instinctively his trembling hand found its way to the release lever. Instead of releasing the flare, he started to ease the Vultee out of its flat glide and prepared to mush it belly first into the water that was now but a few feet beneath him.
Maybe a hundred other times he would have accomplished the tricky night forced landing in the water. But this time it was not to be. A half-sized comber came rushing up out of the darkness. It caught the stalling Vultee by the belly and flung it forward on its crest like a helpless chip of wood. Randall let out a yell of alarm, and tried to lift the Vultee clear if only for an instant. However, the aircraft’s gliding speed was long since spent, and now it was nothing more than a dead weight in the grip of that surging, thundering wave.
There came a mighty lunging ride forward that threw Randall against the back of the seat and drove the air from his lungs for a moment. The next instant the Vultee was spinning like a top. Then suddenly it cart-wheeled over to the left. Tons of water seemed to rise up and pour through Randall’s open hatch to smash him in the face. Foaming water was in his eyes, his nose, and gurgling down his throat. He gasped and coughed and sputtered like a drowning man, and struggled furiously to get free of his safety straps before the Vultee capsized completely and took him under with it.
Somehow he managed to get rid of his safety straps and to unclasp his parachute harness. He tried to push up on his feet and call out to Jimmy Joyce. But he might just as well have tried to stand up and yell at somebody riding with him on the fire-spitting tail of a roaring, zooming comet. Instinct told him that the Vultee must have crashed into something, but why should he now be sailing through thin air? An instant later the whole black world seemed to explode inside his head, and he went tumbling down a great yawning hole of darkness and silence.
When he next opened his eyes he could not see; that is, he could not see a thing except a dazzling yellow glare that seemed to scorch his very eyeballs. He closed his eyes, tried not to think about the pounding in his head. But, instead, he began to think of who he was, where he was, and what had happened.
He did not get very far with that line of thought for the next few seconds. Instead, he had the growing impression that he was inside a blast furnace, or at least on top of a red-hot stove. Without realizing it, he rolled over on his side. The burning heat slid off his face, and when he tried opening his eyes again, he saw a long stretch of hard-packed, glittering white sand. He shut his eyes and opened them again. Now his cleared vision made out a tangle of virgin green tropical growth that ended abruptly at the edge of the strip of sunbaked white sand. By shifting his gaze a little he was able to note that clear blue water was lapping the other side of the strip of sand.
Sight of the lapping water touched off something in his memory. Smothering a groan, he pushed himself up to a sitting position. And there he remained rigid for a long minute, while the world whizzed past him. Then the world came to a stop, and he was able to open his eyes again without losing his sense of balance and falling over on his side.
The first thing he saw was a well-chewed and twisted tail of a Vultee V-12C sticking up out of the water about sixty yards from shore. And the second thing he saw was the slumped-over figure of Jimmy Joyce a dozen yards away to his left. Even as he blinked and started to turn all the way around, young Joyce pushed up on his hands and knees, stared at him like a punch-drunk boxer for a moment, and then began shaking his head slowly from side to side. Randall scrambled over to him and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Jimmy, you okay?” he cried.
Young Joyce looked up at him, closed, then opened his eyes, and then recognition appeared in his gaze.
“Yeah, I guess so,” he mumbled. “What happened? Did those Jap bombers come back? Boy! That bomb sure must have landed close. Hey! This is sand! Look!”
“Take it easy, Jimmy,” Randall said, helping his pal to sit up. “This isn’t Darwin base, kid. Matter of fact, darned if I know wh
ere it is. An extra big wave caught us as I was trying to sit down. Remember? It must have tossed us right up here on this beach. I just came to a couple of minutes ago. How do you feel, Jimmy? Legs and arms all okay?”
“Guess so,” young Joyce grunted, and rubbed his face with his hands. “I can move them, anyway. Oh, yeah, it all comes back to me now. You’re grounded, Lieutenant! That landing was very stinko. An extra big wave, you say?”
“Sky high, it seemed,” Randall said with a heavy sigh. “Caught us cold. There wasn’t a thing I could do about it. There’s her tail out there. See it? Boy, do I feel low for wrecking her. That’s one less now. Nuts.”
“Skip it,” Jimmy Joyce said. “Not your fault, Mister. My fault, I’d say. If I’d nailed that damned Jap we wouldn’t have had our compass smacked. We’d...”
“And if I’d smacked him, too!” Randall cut in quickly. “So it’s fifty-fifty, Jimmy. Anyway we’re still alive, even if we don’t know where we are. Being alive always helps, you know.”
“Maybe,” Jimmy Joyce murmured and gazed sadly at the battered tail of the Vultee sticking up out of the blue water. “Maybe...if you can get hold of something to eat. I wonder if that’s the tail only, or if the rest of the ship is underneath? And how deep? Maybe we could swim out and salvage some of those emergency rations from the rubber life raft...if the darn thing hasn’t cut itself loose and gone floating off.”
“It’s worth a try,” Randall grunted, and got slowly up on his feet. “But not right now. I feel as weak as a kitten. Let’s head for the shade up there and rest a bit, and sort of talk things over. Want a hand getting up, kid?”
If young Joyce did need help he certainly did not get it from Randall. For at that instant he stood frozen stiff, staring popeyed at a spot in the tangled growth that edged the beach. Maybe a trick of the eyes, but he was willing to swear that he had seen swift, stealthy movement behind the tangle of green leaves. Impulsively he moved his right hand to his holstered service automatic. Only there was no automatic there. The belt, holster, and gun had somehow been torn off during the Vultee’s crash.
Red Randall on Active Duty Page 5