“Quick, kid!” he said. “Get a knife and cut these ropes.”
Sandy turned and raced back toward the Snorter without a word. He cupped his hands and shouted at Shorty that he had found Bill and Red and told him to bring a knife to cut them loose.
A few minutes later they were staring at the badly dressed cut on the side of Bill's head and at Red's battered face. They saw that Bill's face was white and drawn underneath its tan.
“What about those two mugs who were guarding us?” he asked weakly.
“I think they're dead,” Shorty said.
“Make sure!” Bill snapped at Sandy. He suddenly realized that with the exception of Bev Bates, and he knew where to find him, all of his men were with him again. He seemed to take a new lease on life as color flowed back into his face.
“What about the Lancer?” he asked Shorty. “Is it ready to go?”
“I'll check it,” Shorty said. “Go where?”
Before he answered him he said to Red, “Is your Snorter 0. K.?”
“I'll find out.” Red said and he started for the rowboat tied up at the dock.
“You've heard about Slip Ogden?” Bill said to Shorty.
“Plenty,” Shorty said.
“He's running this show,” Bill said. “He has our bomber and is boarding a gold-carrying steamer on the Yokohama-San Francisco lane four hundred miles south of here. We've got to stop him. He has Claw Lawson and his cutthroat outfit with him. That's the set-up. Where did you find Sandy?”
“At Flat,” Shorty said. “His radio went bad and he was afraid to try getting to Unalaska without it. After I got him I couldn't make contact with any one. He left the Eaglet at Flat to have one of his tanks repaired. We shoved for Unalaska and the bomber was gone. Some natives told us about the half dozen red-and-black fighters, like the one that attacked Sandy. We combed the islands as far as the Andreanof group and spotted Bev and the crew of the bomber. I——”
“They're all right?” Bill broke in.
“They're O. K.,” Shorty said. “Bev told me——”
“We haven't time to talk now,” Bill snapped. “We've got to get there be-fore Ogden gets that gold aboard the bomber. I'm going up to his quarters to see if he left a chart that will tell me where he is going to intercept the steamer. Get Sandy in your Snorter. We've got to go!”
He started running toward the building where Slip Ogden and his men had been quartered. The room was a wreck, as though some one had made a hasty job of packing by throwing the things they didn't want on the floor.
That was where he found the chart that told him where he would find Ogden and his men. The spot was marked with a tiny cross and was almost due south.
The twin Diesels in the nose of Bill's Lancer were blasting when he reached the little dock. Red taxied it around close to the shore and Bill waded out to climb into the front cockpit.
“She's all right?” he shouted above I the roar of the engines.
Red nodded his head and Bill blasted the tail around and waved a hand at Shorty. He took the big ship down the harbor and lifted it into the air with his old reckless abandon. He flipped his radio key and spoke to Shorty on the radiophone.
“Give her all she's got,” he said. “We have about an hour's run. If those six red-and-black fighters, try to intercept us, you'll have to keep them busy while I go on to disable the bomber.”
“Let her ride!” Shorty said.
X—RETRIBUTION
THE Bitsi Maru plowed steadily westward as the captain and his force of deck officers assembled on the bridge to take their eight-o'clock sight.
“Eight bells,” the captain called.
“Make it so,” the first officer said as the quartermaster struck the eight bells.
As the officers finished working up their positions and handed them to the master, the deep-throated drone of a twin-motored plane joined the throbbing of the ship's turbines. Startled, they shaded their eyes from the glare of the sun and gazed upward.
The first officer's eyes widened as he studied the shining monster. His interest in airplanes was second only to his interest in ships. He hurried into the chart room, came back with a powerful pair of binoculars, and turned them on the ship overhead.
“She's powerful and she's fast, sir,” he said. “And she's armed to the teeth. Five machine gunners' cockpits and a one-pounder besides her bombs.”
“What is she doing up here?” the captain wanted to know.
“She———“
“Get your hands in the air and keep 'em there!” a voice behind them said.
The voice was as hard as the sound of steel on steel. The captain thought about the cargo of gold they were carrying in their strong room as he raised his hands.
A half dozen shouts sounded from the decks below, followed by the jangle of the telegraph in the engine room. The steady, rhythmic hum of the turbines stopped as six red-and-black bi-planes roared out of the sun overhead and swept the decks of the ship with machine-gun bullets.
The big bomber circled back into the wind to glide downward as the Bitsi Maru came under the complete domination of the half dozen pirates aboard her.
Five minutes later Slip Ogden directed the lashing of the bomber alongside a cargo port that was opened. There was a dull explosion inside the ship and men began carrying little iron boxes from the strong room to the open cargo port and across the port wing of the big amphibian. A flat-nosed man with a voice like an angry bull sat on the saddle of a portable machine gun above the port. He roared occasional orders at the white-faced passengers lined up along the rail.
The six red-and-black fighters had settled down on the waters of the Pacific with their idling props and machine guns pointed at the steamer's sides.
Slip Ogden laughed softly as a man reported to him that no radio message had gone out from the Bitsi Maru and the wireless room had been demolished.
“We'll be away from here in forty-five minutes,” he said. “Make a check on all our men and be sure they are all ready to go when we're loaded.”
“Yes, sir,” the man said, and went back aboard the steamer.
The BT-4 was sagging low in the water as the last of the gold was stowed into her “bomb bay. The six red-and-black fighters were circling low over-head, ready to form a protective screen around the bomber when she left the water.
Four miles above the surface of the Pacific, Bill Barnes put a pair of binoculars against his eyes and studied the “six circling specks, the bomber and the steamer.
“All right. Shorty,” he said into his microphone. His voice was calm. “Stick your nose down. Get one of 'em on your first dive. Watch out for the one-Rounder on the BT-4. Don't give him a chance to get you under his sights; Let her go!”
Bill jammed the control stick forward and opened his throttle. The twin props of the Lancer whined in protest as a gale screamed and shrieked through the bracing struts. Down and down the two ships sped until it seemed they must fly into a million flaming pieces and dissolve into thin air.
Bill's mouth was a twisted slash across his face as he instinctively listened to the high-pitched whine of the motor “and tested the vibration with his own body. His knuckles showed white, so tightly were his fingers wrapped around the control stick—easing it backward ever so little to see how the ship responded, then slamming it forward again.
At ten thousand feet, as his Snorter reached terminal velocity. Shorty coaxed the stick back with the touch of a master, until the nose began to rise. Then he jammed it down again, racing neck and neck with Bill.
Slip Ogden's eyes became round with horror as the eerie scream of those four diving props permeated his consciousness and caused him to look overhead. For one instant the expression of cold ruthlessness was wiped from his face as those two harbingers of death roared down on him. Then he saw that his six red-and-black fighters were aware of the diving ships and were maneuvering to escape that first vicious attack.
“Have you picked your man?” Bill Barnes screamed into
his microphone at almost the same instant the smug expression of confidence came back to Ogden's face.
“Yes!” Shorty roared back.
They eased out of their power dive and shallow dived to make their guns effective. As one of the red-and-black ships whipped around in a fast Immelmann. Shorty pulled his Snorter up into a loop. At the top he centered his controls. The weight of his body sagged on his safety strap as he hung head downward and lined up the bi-plane in his sights. His guns belched streams of death as his finger clamped down on his trip. The pilot of the red-and-black fighter tried to skid away. Then his nose dropped and the ship began to weave downward, half out of control. Shorty rolled his Snorter right side up and poured burst after burst into it as it started its last plunge and whirled into a spin.
The pilot of the ship Bill had singled out tried to escape in a fast climbing turn as Bill fired his first tracer. He eased his stick over and tapped his rudder as his guns began their song of death. His bullets wove a pattern from the hub to the tail structure. The bi-plane slipped off on one wing and yawed wildly as Bill pulled out and whipped the Lancer upward. He poured round after round into the whirling ship as it plunged to its death. There was no pity or mercy in his heart as the plane struck the water, shooting a geyser high into the air.
As he straightened out, he heard Red's swivel gun chattering behind him. He scanned the air for Shorty and found him two thousand feet overhead, maneuvering to keep out of range of the one-and-a-half-inch shells from the bomber.
The four surviving red-and-black fighters had leveled off three thousand feet above Shorty and were preparing to attack. Bill watched the flippers of one of them as he instructed the others. He knew that before they tried to survive that attack he must silence the one-pounder in the circular turret in the top of the BT-4.
He cursed Slip Ogden again as he stuck the nose of his Lancer down. He had ever made a complete sucker of him, was some place aboard the bomber. And he knew that he must half wreck his own ship to prevent Ogden from taking it off the water. He could see men casting the lines away as he nosed down with his finger curled around his gun trips.
His tracers wove their pattern above the BT-4 and he eased his stick forward a little more. Machine-gun bullets pounded up through the wings and fuselage of his Lancer. But he held his guns straight on the tail—wide open. He saw the man in the after gun cockpit crumple up and collapse. Then his bullets tore into the bridge and the revolving gun turret above it. He saw Slip Ogden crumple over the one-pounder and he felt a tremendous surge of exultation.
He knew now that nothing could stop him as those four red-and-black fighters pounced on him from above. For a moment he took a terrific concentration of their fire. Then he hung his Lancer on its props and took it upstairs.
He saw Shorty slash across the rear of one of the diving ships and pump his bullets into the pilot. He saw the pilot jerk upward out of his seat and then fall back as his ship zoomed straight up and over on its back.
Then he was back in the fight with the fierce joy of fighting an enemy who should be destroyed. He saw the terror-stricken faces of the passengers of the Bitsi Maru as he brought the Lancer around on one wing tip and poured bullets into a red-and-black fighter that was going away. But he wasn't going away fast enough. Bill's stream of lead literally tore the pilot's head from his shoulders and the ship plummeted toward the sea.
There were only two of the biplanes left now. But they did not peel off and run as Bill had expected them to. They came storming in on Shorty to get him in a cross fire.
Shorty rolled his Snorter out of range as Bill got the first one under the sights of his cannon. He fired a burst of five explosive shells that detonated on the red-and-black fighter's engine housing. The ship became a ball of black smoke, streaked with orange flame, as it plunged out of the fight.
At the same instant Shorty came up underneath the sixth and last one to pour death into its vitals. The nose dropped and it joined its brothers in the Pacific as the passengers and crew of the Bitsi Maru screamed their joy to the heavens.
BILL BARNES, Red Gleason, Shorty Hassfurther and the irrepressible Sandy sat in the captain's suite of the Bitsi Maru an hour later. They had checked the bomber and found that they could fly it back to Alaska for repairs.
“That,” the captain of the Bitsi Maru said, flashing his white, even teeth, “was a most beautiful bit of flying.”
“It had to be,” Bill said. “But what does it get me? Both my ships and my men are wrecks. They're scattered all over the Aleutian Islands and Alaska. It will cost me a small fortune to fix' up the BT-4, the Lancer, and Sandy's Eaglet—to say nothing of my head.”
“Your head didn't hurt as much as your ego. Bill,” the grinning Sandy said. “You were afraid you were going to be taken for a sucker.”
“Well,” Bill snapped, “wasn't I?”
“Until the end—when it counted,” the captain said. “My owners will be only too glad to more than recompense you for your time and the damage to your planes.”
“That,” Bill said, “will help. But don't think we came out on the long end because of my efforts.” His eyes swept the faces of his men with an expression of pride. “I would have been a prime sucker if my men hadn't been behind me every minute. Shorty and Sandy pulled the fat out of the fire.” He got to his feet and his eyes were shining. “Now we can get back to our work and forget this thing.”
“Say, Bill,” Sandy said, his freckled face spotted with grime and smoke from his machine gun, “I haven't had a chance to tell you I've got to lay over a few days in Alaska. I got something to do up there.”
“You've what?” Bill said, looking at him suspiciously.
“I met a couple of Eskimos at Flat,” Sandy said. “They're going to take me up in the northeast, shooting.”
“Shooting what?” Bill growled.
“Reindeers from the air,” Sandy said.
“You better look out or your pal, Santa Claus, will give you hell!” Shorty Hassfurther said—when he could stop laughing.
Air Trails — March 1938
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Document ID: 0484c27d-5e9e-4bd6-ae97-279721c00d2b
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Document creation date: 21.10.2012
Created using: calibre 0.9.3, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software
Document authors :
George L. Eaton
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