Doc gathered up the pistols and Tommy Gun, while Vic continued to cover the two conscious ones. The first was holding his knee and moaning, while the second still struggled to breathe. They looked like typical New York thugs, the kind that had become all too easy to hire since Prohibition was repealed.
“Who hired you?” Doc caught the eye of the one he had punched in the stomach. He looked about thirty, heavy set and sallow skinned.
“Why should I tell you?” The thug replied. “You're just a mug.”
“Because I want you to.” Doc pulled out his pocket watch and lowered the crystal fob so that it hung in front of the man's eyes. A twist of his fingers set the crystal twirling as Doc continued talking.
“You don't owe the man who hired you anything; you were just a disposable tool to him. I'm not your enemy, I'm his enemy, so why are you doing him a favor?” Doc kept his voice low and smoothly modulated as he spun the crystal in front of the thug's face. “You did what you were paid for, why should you be stuck in the middle of things? Just tell me who he was.”
As Doc talked, the thug's eyes widened and his jaw dropped open a little as his whole face relaxed. His breath came slowly as he entered a trance state.
“I don't know his name,” the thug said quietly. “Less I know, less I can spill. Job was to kill anyone who came back to the store. Then he gave me a number to call once it was done. Card’s in my breast pocket.”
“Thank you,” Doc said, deftly extracting the card from the man's suit pocket. “I think you should just lie quietly for the moment and wait for the police to collect you.” He looked around at the other three, who had regained consciousness while he had been interrogating the first one. “All of you.”
The blank stares on their faces told him his message had been received.
Turning his attention back to the others, he saw Vic falter a moment, and then Ming was up to catch her.
“I've got you.” She helped Vic to a bench and swept the mess off its surface, grimacing when it joined the rest of her inventory on the floor. Doc moved towards them, only to be warded off by a look from Ming. “I'll take care of her, you watch the others.”
She gently moved Vic's fingers away from her blouse, and then started undoing the buttons.
“Don't watch,” she told Doc as she quickly removed the garment. Leaving Vic's bra on, Ming examined the wound. It looked to be a fairly shallow gash, the bullet must have just scratched the surface, but Ming bit her lip as she worked. After rustling around in the mess for a moment, she found a small jar that seemed unbroken. Ming opened and smelled the jar, before smearing a yellow ooze all over Vic's wound. “Don't worry, it's only a scratch. This should help you heal faster.”
She reached into her own purse, and pulled out a small roll of gauze, which she wrapped around Vic's ribs. Vic winced, but it didn't seem to slow Ming down at all. “There won't even be a scar.”
Vic nodded, looking straight ahead, keeping her arms up so that Ming had full access to the wound.
“I should take care of that?” Doc asked. “I am a doctor.”
Ming shook her head without stopping the winding. “You're probably one of those silly city doctors; cut out the problem all the time without thinking of the patient as a whole. I've got this, you just watch your prisoners.”
She fastened the gauze, and handed Vic the ointment. “Change the dressing tonight before you go to bed. Keep using this until it's completely closed over. The scratch should be healed in a few days. Don't let him near it or you will take twice as long to heal.”
“Thanks,” Vic said, stretching experimentally. She winced once or twice, particularly as she moved her right arm, but otherwise seemed to have a full range of motion. “You wouldn't have a blouse I could borrow?”
Ming laughed. “You want to borrow a blouse? My whole apartment fell on top of this room and you think I know where my clothes are?” She shook her head. “You really do need a keeper. Now just sit there and I will try to find something for you, though I don't think I have anything in your size.”
There was a dresser sitting on top of one of the counters, with clothes spilling out of it. Ming made her way over to it and started digging through it, muttering to herself. “Silly woman. Nothing but trouble.” The tone of her voice belied the harshness of the words, though, so Doc wasn't surprised when she came up with a blouse after just a minute or two of searching. It was silk with brocade embroidery, and Doc was sure it wasn't the first one Ming had found.
“Try this,” Ming ordered. “But be careful of the silk.”
Vic nodded, and extended her arms for Ming to dress her. Ming opened the blouse, it looked almost like a jacket, and slipped it over Vic's right arm and then her left. Vic went to button it up, but her fingers had hardly reached the first toggle before Ming slapped her hand away. “Don't stretch your arms, let me do that.”
She fastened the blouse and then stood back. “It fits you pretty well, better than me.”
Vic smiled, and then stood, turning as if trying to get a better look at herself even though there wasn't a mirror in the room. The blouse did fit her very well.
“Are you taking her to Batavia?” Ming asked him suddenly.
“Yes, she's the pilot.”
“Then I'm coming, too.” Ming crossed her arms.
“What?” Doc and Vic said in unison.
“Do I need to repeat myself?” Ming asked. “Since she is going with you to Batavia, I'm coming too.”
She held up a hand, and started ticking off points. “She destroyed my life, I have nowhere else to go.”
Ming pointed at the jar of ointment Vic still held in her hand. “She just got shot, and I treated the wound; that makes me her doctor. As her doctor, I’m not letting her out of the country without me until it heals. Also, I'm from Java, and have relatives in Batavia.”
She stood like a queen in the remains of her store, as if daring Doc to protest.
He gestured at what looked like a bundle of dried lizard tails. She might know some herbal remedies, but they only went so far. “When you say you're a doctor, what kind of a doctor are you? Chinese folk medicine?”
“It's traditional medicine, not folk medicine,” she said icily. “I learned from my grandfather ever since I was a little girl. I also graduated medical school sixth in my class.” She walked delicately over to the counter, and pulled a frame off the wall. There was a diploma behind the shattered glass, naming the holder as Dr. Li Ming, M.D., GHS class of ‘33.
“I do this because it's easier to get people here to accept a Chinese woman as an apothecary than as a “real” doctor.” There was no humor in her laugh. “I'm even licensed in this state, not that it matters.”
“Well, if you're coming to Batavia,” Vic said. “You'd better get anything you need from here. I don't think there's any point coming back unless there's something we can't take with us.”
Ming picked up Vic's bloody blouse and folded it carefully. “Give me a couple of minutes.”
Doc fingered the card he had taken from the thug. “Take your time, we have to wait for the boys in blue to pick up the trash.” He slipped the card into an inside pocket. Best to call the number from home where they might be able to trace it, and where the police wouldn't overhear. In the meantime, it looked like they'd picked up another doctor.
A knock on the door caught his attention; now all they had to do was deal with the police. He let the two women deal with Ming's possessions and headed to the door.
CHAPTER TWO
Batavia
Vic’s hands rested lightly on the controls as the three big radials droned softly, pulling Flying Cloud through the air. She'd been flying for over six hours, and was glad Batavia was less than an hour away. The remnants of Krakatoa lay off to the left and she banked toward the islands. For all that Flying Cloud was bigger and faster than her predecessor, Vic still didn't feel quite as comfortable at the controls of the new Trimotor as she had at Sky Cloud's. The yoke felt a tiny bit looser,
and she could feel the bigger tail with her feet; working the rudder pedals took twice the effort. Rakata's peak grew in the windshield, rising from the green.
“Ming, look at that.” She nudged the woman in the co-pilot's chair. “I wish I'd seen the volcano erupt.”
“Where are we?” Ming stretched. She had taken over the seat while Doc was meditating in the main cabin. Gilly was asleep and neither of the gorillas fit comfortably in the cockpit; so Vic had invited Ming to join her.
“About ten miles from Krakatoa; that's it off to the left.” Vic gestured towards the trio of islets through the windshield. The peak on the big island's called Rakata, and the two smaller islands are Verlaten and Lang. We're a bit far away, but there's a new islet growing in the middle there.”
“I heard about the eruption when I was a girl, but I've never seen the island before.” Ming pointed to a flash near the peak. “What's that?”
“I don't know, but we can find out.” Vic advanced the throttles and accelerated toward it. “Better strap in, just in case.” She had two or three thousand feet in altitude over the flash, so she dropped the nose and brought the airspeed up to 250 knots. The engine drone rose to a dull roar as Vic felt Flying Cloud come to life beneath her hands. Everything felt a little smoother as they picked up speed.
At over three miles a minute, the source of the flash quickly came into view. A great wing over five hundred feet across; it wasn't an airship, it was the flying wing from the newsreel and it was rising to meet them. Twenty engines filled a small upper wing, ten each front and rear. A pair of forward gun turrets grew from the tops of the two massive pontoons, along with another pair at the tips of the upper wing.
Flame leaped from all four turrets, and Vic banked right out of the line of fire.
“Are they shooting at us?” Ming sounded breathless, rather than frightened, which Vic thought was a good sign given the situation.
“Looks that way.” Vic grinned, and reached for the throttles, pushing them forward to the first stop. “Time to see how much faster she is than the last one Doc gave me. Though to be honest, he was driving when it crashed, not me.”
“Don't you mean flying?”
Vic banked left to avoid the another burst of fire. “When I do it, it's flying. When Doc does it, it's more like driving. He doesn't take enough joy in things.” She had less than a thousand feet on the flying wing now, but the air speed indicator had finally passed 300 knots.
“In getting shot at?” Ming's voice had risen, but only a little.
“In anything,” Vic replied. “He's too serious for his own good.”
She scanned the skies, her eyes flickering from her instruments to the flying wing, and all around. The wing was growing bigger and bigger before her eyes. There were three rows of windows along each of the pylons, and a command deck bigger than Flying Cloud between the central pair of engines on the upper deck. It was climbing, but they would be past long before it made altitude.
As they closed, the wing banked right, circling back around Rakata. They weren't quite high enough for the bank to mask the guns completely, but Vic would take anything she could get. Even as they closed, the wing nosed up, clawing for altitude. Vic glanced left, then slammed the throttles through the gates to maximum power and headed for the deck.
“Why is he doing that? Shouldn't he be trying to get closer?”
“He can't catch us, so he's going to try and get some altitude before dropping his pursuits.” The airframe shook as they passed through 400 knots. “Doc said this airframe was good to hold together up to 500 knots, looks like we're going to find out.”
“Find out what?” Doc said from the back of the cockpit. He must have finished his meditation at just the right time.
“Just how many knots this frame can take, and whether those pursuits we saw can catch up.”
Vic fell silent as she brought the plane down within a wing's length of the waves. Flying Cloud was singing to her; the roar of the engines in perfect harmony with the vibrating main spars. She gave the ship a little rudder, feeling out the controls. The fuel gauge had gone into free fall as three eleven-cylinder radials sucked gallons of aviation gas over ten times as fast as they had at cruise.
Java was a green blob on her right, jungle hurtling past in her peripheral vision faster than she could process the images. An islet to the left, another to the right. The airspeed indicator bounced off 420 knots, came back briefly to 418, and then started winding down towards 400. Flying Cloud shook its way through 400 knots as Vic fought to keep momentum. She glanced in her mirrors, but they were vibrating so much it was hard to see anything.
“What're they doing?” The wing probably wasn't a danger at this point, but that didn't mean they were home free.
“Dropped three pursuits,” Doc answered. “Low wing monoplanes, diving after us. Looks like the wing's falling back.”
Vic grunted. “How fast are those pursuits coming?”
“The first one's closing fast, not sure if the others are going to be able to catch us.”
A red light flashed on the control panel as number three blew a cylinder. A second one went before Vic managed to yank back the throttle, and feather the prop. Flames flickered around the cowling, but a blast from the extinguisher put them out for the moment. “Well, they'll catch us now.”
The airspeed indicator responded instantly, plummeting down towards 300. Vic fought the controls, crabbing along the Java coast. With number three out, Flying Cloud kept wanting to pull to the right, and even with the rudder pedals jammed hard over, Vic was having trouble holding a straight course. Her legs throbbed from the strain, and the control yoke vibrated in her hands. Doc really needed to do something about that rudder.
A spasm of pain hit her right leg, forcing Vic to let up on the rudder for a moment. Flying Cloud nosed toward Java, just as a spray of tracers slashed past the cockpit window. “Get someone on the guns.” Vic gritted her teeth, fighting the pain.
“Can I help?” Ming spoke up for the first time in what felt like forever.
“Yeah, you can help with the rudder.”
“What do I do?”
“Just put your feet on the pedals and help me hold it steady. I'll handle the rudder, you just move your feet with mine and take up some of the strain.”
“All right,” Ming said, and a few seconds later Vic felt the pressure on the rudder pedals slacken. They still felt heavy, especially having to wait for Ming's response, but they weren't fighting her anymore.
Flying Cloud rocked as a burst of tracers drilled a line of holes down the left wing. The tip dipped within inches of the water before Vic hauled it back level and pulled back on the yoke. That was too close, with one engine out she needed more height. “Shoot back!”
A long burst of gunfire from the dorsal mount was the immediate response.
Now that they were down under 300 knots, and above 50 feet, the mirrors had stopped shaking as much, so Vic risked a glance at what was coming. She saw two pursuits, both with fixed landing gear hanging like boots below the wing. Flashes from the top of the landing gear showed they were still firing but this time they missed.
There was another burst from the dorsal mount, and this time flame blossomed from the nose of one of the pursuits. It peeled off as Vic kept Flying Cloud kept in as straight a line as she could manage. At least the speed had leveled off, 273 knots with two engines firewalled and the third prop feathered. By her next glimpse in the mirror, the second had peeled off, too and both were heading back in the direction of Krakatoa.
“Doc, what happened to the third one?” She called over her shoulder.
“Gilly caught it with the rear gun.”
“Thanks.” Vic couldn't help grinning but there was still more to do. She feathered the prop on number one, and shut it down, then throttled back on two. One engine gave her about 120 knots at three-quarter throttle, but the balanced thrust was worth it. A little more altitude, and a direct course for Batavia and she could relax.
Nothing like a little excitement to liven up a flight.
#
Doc was the first one off the plane at Tjililitan Airport. Flying Cloud was definitely going to need repairs before they went anywhere. Except for engine number three, the plane looked in pretty good shape. There were a few holes in the wing, but they could be patched easily. The real problem was going to be getting replacement cylinders. It would take at least a week just to get the engine parts from the US, even if they could be shipped the same day.
“Problem?” It was Vic, leaning against Ming.
“Just figuring out how long it will take to get parts for Flying Cloud. I don't think we can find any locally.”
“We have good smiths and machine shops, maybe they could make the parts you need?” Ming suggested. “I can ask around once we get settled in.”
“That's a possibility, but in the meantime let's find somewhere to stay.” Doc said, as Gus and Kehla made their way out of the airplane. Gilly waved from the dorsal gun mount.
“Give me an hour or two and I'll see what I can find. How many rooms?”
“I'd say get a suite, at least four or five bedrooms. It depends if you and Vic are sharing a room. Don't worry about the cost, I brought plenty of money.”
“I won't.” Ming smiled. She indicated Vic with a sideways nod of her head. “You can keep an eye on her for me while I'm gone.”
Vic sighed, and immediately stood up straighter. “Or maybe I'll keep an eye on him.”
“Just try not to destroy anyone else's life before I get back,” Ming told her.
Doc nodded, it was unusual to see someone who could actually put Vic off-balance. Normally she had an answer for everything. “I'll look after her for you.”
“There's a good coffee house outside the gate; I'll meet you there once I've arranged for rooms.” Ming headed off to the customs office as the others waited for the inspector. A man stopped her for a moment, but she waved her passport and he let her go.
Air Pirates of Krakatoa Page 4