Raemy saw him first, and she started to run. “Oh, Turk! Turk! I thought you were dead!”
Her arms went around him and he felt her soft lips on his and through the fog of pain his memory came back and he looked over her red-gold hair at Ryan, who was grinning with relief.
“Go away!” he said. “Can’t you see she wants to be alone?”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
* * *
THE GOOSE FLIES SOUTH
More on mercenaries:
For thousands of years warfare offered a young man his best chance of advancement. Because of the rigid caste system that existed in Europe, the chances for an ambitious man were slight unless he went to war, where courage and a strong arm might win him riches, a knighthood, or a place among the great captains of his time.
In Ireland in the time of Queen Elizabeth, there was no future for a young Irishman of family, so many sailed away to Europe to take service in one army or another. Because they flew away to far lands they were called “wild geese.” Alexander O’Reilly, who commanded the Spanish army for a time, was one such. General McMahon, who served with Napoleon, was another. There were Irish soldiers in every army in Europe, as well as in Latin America.
Often such soldiers moved from war to war as long as they survived, renewing old acquaintances as they moved. Yet, often enough it was harder to collect the money promised than it was to win the war, if such wars are ever won.
It was a hard world, yet few such men knew any other, and nobody mourns for a mercenary.
Nor does a mercenary expect it.
THE GOOSE FLIES SOUTH
* * *
STEADILY THE MOTORS were droning away, in the thin upper air. “If I was a betting man,” Panola said grimly, “I’d give ten to one we never get out of this alive!”
“You asked for it!” Captain Runnels replied dryly. “This is strictly volunteer stuff. You could have ducked it.”
“Sure,” Panola shrugged. “But who wants to duck a job like this? I asked for it, but I’m not dumb!”
Turk Madden eased forward on the stick and felt the Goose let her nose down. In the heavy, cottony mass of cloud you could see less than nothing. Letting her down was taking a real chance, but they were almost at their destination, and they would soon be ready to land.
There were a lot of jagged peaks here, many of them running upwards of two thousand feet. He was already below that level and saw no sign of an opening to the world below.
The Goose dipped out of the clouds suddenly, and with a rush. A huge, craggy, and black mountainside towered above them. Turk whipped the Grumman over in a steep bank and swung away from the cliff, missing it by inches. He glanced at Winkler as the ship flattened out. The Major’s face was a sickly yellow.
“Close, that!” he said grimly.
“It was,” Turk grinned. “You don’t see ’em much closer.”
He glanced over his shoulder. Runnels and Panola looked scared, but Shan Bao, his mechanic and righthand man, a tall Manchu, seemed undisturbed. Death itself meant little to the Manchu.
“How much further?” Runnels asked, leaning forward.
“Not far. We just sighted Mount Stokes, so it’ll be just a few minutes.”
“Let’s hope the place is empty,” Panola said. “We’d be in a spot if some ship was lying there.”
“It’s pretty safe.” Turk said. “Nothing down here to speak of, and even less back inland. All this section of the Argentine and Chile is wild and lonely. South, it gets even worse.”
It was a cold, bleak, and barren country, sullen and dreary under the heavy gray overcast. Great craggy peaks lifted into the low clouds, and below there were occasional inlets, most of them edged with angry foam. Some of the mountains were covered with trees, and in places the forest came down to the water’s edge. In other places there were only bleak plains, wind blown and rain whipped.
Then suddenly he saw the mountain, a huge, black, domelike peak that shouldered into the clouds.
“That’s the Dome of St. Paul,” he said, looking over at Winkler. “San Esteban Gulf is right close by.”
* * *
HE SWUNG THE plane inland, skirting the long sandy beach on which a furious surf was breaking, sighted San Quentin Bay with its thickly wooded shores, and then swung across toward the mouth of the San Tadeo River.
The land about the river mouth was low and marshy and covered with stumps of dead trees, some of them truly gigantic in size. Inside the mouth of the river it widened to considerable breadth, and something like seven miles up it divided into two rivers. Turk swung the ship up the course of the Black River, flying low. The stream was choked with the trunks of dead trees, and huge roots that thrust themselves out of the water like the legs of gigantic spiders.
A few miles further, and then he swung inland above a barely discernible brook, and then eased forward on the stick and let the amphibian come down on the smooth surface of the small lake. He taxied across toward a cove lined with heavy timber, and then let the ship swing around as he dropped the anchor in compartive shelter.
“Wow!” Panola shook his head and grinned at Turk as the latter peeled off his flying helmet. “How you ever remembered this place is beyond me! How long since you were here?”
“Twelve years,” Madden replied. “I was a kid then, just going to sea. Incidentally, from here on we’d better go armed. I’m just giving you a tip, although of course, that’s up to Major Winkler.”
“We’ll go armed,” Winkler said. “And all of you know, we can’t take any chances on being found. We’ve got to get this plane under cover and stay there ourselves as much as possible. If we were caught here, there’s not a chance we’d get out of this alive.”
Turk watched Shan Bao getting out the rubber boat and then turned his gaze toward the mainland. The amphibian lay in a small cove, excellently sheltered on all sides. The entrance to the cove from the small lake was an S-shaped waterway, ending in a pool. The pool was surrounded on all sides by a heavy growth of timber. It was a mixture of fir, pine, and occasional beech trees. The beach was sandy and littered with washed up roots and trunks of old trees.
There was no sign of life of any kind. And that was as it should be. Not over two dozen men on earth knew that here, off the coast of Patagonia, was to be another experiment with an atomic bomb. An experiment kept secret from the world, and of which no American from the North, no Englishman, and no Russian was to know. It was an experiment being made by a few desperate and skillful German scientists and military men, working with power-mad militarists of the Argentine.
Turk Madden, soldier of fortune, adventurer, and late officer in the Military Intelligence, was flying his own plane, a special-built Grumman Goose with a number of improvements and a greater armament and flying range than the ordinary Goose. The trip was in command of Major Winkler, and with them were Captain Runnels and Lieutenant Panola, a recently discharged officer.
Runnels and Winkler were both skilled atomic specialists. Panola was the record man whose task it would be to compile and keep the records of the trip and of the secret experiments, if they were able to observe them. Shan Bao, the Manchu, was Madden’s own Man Friday, a hard-bitten North China fighter whom Turk had met in Siberia.
Turk, Winkler, and Runnels went ashore first.
“We’ve got to set up a shelter,” Winkler suggested. “And the sooner the better, as it may rain. What would you suggest, Madden? You’ve had more of this sort of experience than I.”
“Back in the woods,” he said instantly. “Find four living trees for the corner posts. Clear out under them and build walls of some of these dead logs we see around. If we cut trees, the white blaze of the cut will be visible from the air. You can spot ’em for miles in the right light. But there’s enough brush here, and we shouldn’t have to cut anything except under the four trees.”
The place he selected was four huge trees with wide spreading branches near a huge, rocky outcropping. There was nothing but brush between the tr
ees, and it was a matter of minutes for the five men to clear it away. Then they began hauling up logs from the beach. Several of them were large enough to split into four timbers. By nightfall they had the walls erected and a peaked roof of interwoven bows with fir limbs covering it. All was safely under the spreading branches of the trees.
* * *
TURK PACED THE beach restlessly, and his eyes studied the low hanging clouds. The whole thing had been too easy, and he was worried. The ship that had brought them south and heaved to on a leaden sea, and the amphibian had been put into the water. Then, with their equipment and supplies aboard, they had taken off. The whole process, planned and carefully rehearsed, had taken them no more than minutes.
On the flight to the mainland they had seen no one, no ship, no boat, nothing remotely human. Yet even on this lonely shore, it seemed too easy.
It was miles to the nearest port. The country inland was wild and broken, no country for a man to live in. Yet here and there were Patagonian savages, he knew. And there might be others. Knowing the cold-blooded ruthless tactics of his enemy, and their thoroughness, he could not but doubt.
When the logs had been moved from the beach, he carefully picked up any chips and covered the places where they had laid with as much skill as possible.
A spring flowed from the rock outcropping near the house they had built. They could reach it without going into the open. They had food enough, although he knew there had once been a few deer in the vicinity. Otherwise, there would be nothing except occasional sea birds, and perhaps a hair seal or two.
Runnels, a heavyset, brown-faced man who had been working with atomic scientists for ten years, walked toward him.
“Beastly lonely place, isn’t it? Reminds me of the Arctic. I hunted in Dawson once.”
Madden nodded. “Seems too good to be true,” he said thoughtfully, “I smell trouble!”
“You’re pessimistic!” Runnels said. His face grew serious. “Well, if it comes we can’t do a thing but take it. We’re on our own. They told us if we got caught, we couldn’t expect any help from home.”
“What’s the dope on this experiment?” Turk asked. “I don’t know much about it.”
“They’ve got two old German warships. Ships that got away before the rest were surrendered. They are in bad shape, but good enough for the experiment. They are going to try sinking them with an atomic bomb about two hundred miles off shore. Then, they are going to try an experiment inland, back in the waste of the plains.
“Our job is not to interfere, only to get information on the results so we can try a comparison with our own.”
Turk Madden nodded. He had his own orders. He had been told to obey orders from Winkler up to a point, beyond that his own judgment counted most as he was the most experienced at this sort of thing. Also, if it were possible, he was to try to destroy whatever equipment or bombs they had. But that was his own job and was to be done with utmost skill, and entirely without giving away his presence or that of his party.
A difficult, almost impossible mission, but one that could be done. After all, he had blown bridges right under the noses of the Japanese. This could scarcely be more difficult.
He walked toward the ridge and, keeping under the trees, climbed slowly toward the top. Now was the time to get acquainted with the country. There was one infallible rule for warfare or struggle of any kind—know your terrain—and he intended to know this.
There were no paths, but he found a way toward the top along a broken ledge, a route that he noticed was not visible from below, if the traveler would but move with reasonable care to avoid being seen. There were broken slabs of rock, and much undergrowth.
He was halfway up before the path became difficult, and then he used his hands to pull himself from handhold to handhold. Yet, before he had reached the top, he slipped suddenly and began to slide downward with rapidly increasing momentum.
Below him was a cliff which he had skirted. Wildly, his hand shot out to stay his fall. It closed upon a bush, and—held.
Slowly, carefully, fearful at each instant that the bush would come loose at the roots, he pulled himself up until he had a foothold. Then a spot of blackness arrested his eye. It was a hole.
Moving carefully, to get a better view, he found it was a small hole in the rock, a spot scarcely large enough to admit a man’s body. Taking out his flashlight, he thrust his arm inside, and gasped with surprise.
Instead of a small hole, it was a large cavern, a room of rock bigger than the shelter below, and with a black hole leading off into dimness beyond the reach of his light.
Thoughtfully, he withdrew his arm. Turning his head, he looked below. He could see the pool where the plane was, and he could see the lake. But he was not visible from the shelter. Nor, if he remained still, could he be seen from below.
He pulled himself higher and began once more to climb. Why, he did not know, but suddenly he decided he would say nothing of the cave. Later, perhaps. But not now.
* * *
WHEN MADDEN REACHED the crest of the hill he did not stand up. He had pulled himself over the rim and was lying face down. Carefully, he inched along the ground until he was behind a large bush. He rose to his knees and carefully brushed off his clothes. Then he looked.
He was gazing over a wide, inland valley. About two miles away was another chain of hills still higher. The valley itself led away inland, a wide sweep with a small stream flowing through it. A stream that was obviously a tributary leading to the Rio Negro.
North along the coast were great, massive headlands, brutal shoulders of rock of a gloomy grandeur but rarely seen elsewhere. The hills where there was soil were covered with evergreens and with antarctic beeches in thick growth.
Under those trees moss grew heavy, so thick and heavy that one could sink knee deep into it, and there was thick undergrowth also. Yet, a knowing man could move swiftly even in that incredible tangle.
Turk started down the ridge upon which he had lain, sure now that nobody was in sight. Indeed, there was scarcely a chance that a man had been in this area in months, if not in years. He walked swiftly, headed for a promontory not far away where he might have a better view up the coast.
He had dropped from a rocky ledge and turned around a huge boulder when he saw something that brought him up short. For an instant, his eyes swept the area before him, a small, flat plain leading to the foot of the bluff toward which he had been going. There was nothing. Nothing now. Yet there upon the turf of the plain were the clear, unmistakable tracks of wheels!
Turk walked swiftly to the tracks, yet careful to step on stones, of which there were plenty, and thus leave no track himself. Then he stopped, staring at the tracks.
A plane. A fighter craft by the distance between the tires, and the weight at indicated by the impression left on the turf. If not a fighter, then a small plane, heavily loaded. More likely, a fighter. The landing here would not be bad.
Yet why here?
Carefully, and with infinite skill, he began to skirt the plain, examining every nook, every corner. Finally, he found a dead fire. He touched his hand to the ashes. There was, he thought, a bare suggestion of warmth.
He looked around at the camp site. Someone had stopped here, picked up wood, and built the fire. They had warmed a lunch, eaten, and then flown away.
Four small logs had been placed side by side, and the fire built upon them, thus the fire was kept off the damp ground. One of the men, and there had been two, had known something. He was a woodsman. At least, he was not unfamiliar with the wilds. That meant even more care must be exercised.
He shifted his carbine to his left hand and studied the scene thoughtfully. Was the visit here an accident? Had there been a mere forced landing? Or was it by intention?
Squatting on his haunches, he studied the ends of the sticks the fire had left unburned. Several of them were fresh, white and newly cut. But several were older, older and yet as he dug into the bark with his thumbnail, he saw they
were still green.
It could mean but one thing. Someone had been here more than once. Someone had built a fire here before. Turning, he walked back to the tracks, and working carefully, he moved across the plain. He found two more sets of tracks.
So that was it. A patrol plane. A plane that flew along this bit of coast, stopped here occasionally while the pilot and his companions cooked and ate a warm meal, probably loafed awhile, and then took off again.
It meant more than that. It meant the Americans had slipped in but a short time after the patrol plane had left. That the fact they were alive at all was due to the fact that Turk Madden had touched the coast south of the San Tadeo River. Had he come right in over the coast they would have met the fighter plane! Or have missed it by the narrowest of margins!
Turk turned quickly, but even as he turned, something whipped by his face and hit the tree behind him with a thud!
* * *
MADDEN HIT THE ground all in one piece and rolled into the brush. Instantly, he was on his hands and knees and crawling. He made a dozen yards to the right before he stopped behind the trunk of a huge beech and stared out across the open.
Almost at once there were four more quick shots. Four shots openly spaced and timed, and Turk heard one of them clip through the trees on his left, and the second flipped by him so close that he dropped flat and hugged the ground, his face white and his spine chilled by the close escape.
The other two shots clipped through the woods some distance off.
“Smart guy, eh?” Turk snarled. “Two shots evenly spaced on each side of where I hit the brush! You’re not so dumb!”
Straightening up, he stood behind the tree and studied the situation. It was late, and it was cloudy. By the time he had skirted the plain it would be pitch dark, and he could find no tracks, while he was certain to make some noise and the chances of his being shot, if his assailant waited, would be great.
Collection 1986 - Night Over The Solomons (v5.0) Page 15