Collection 2003 - From The Listening Hills (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  The door opened suddenly, and another Japanese came in. He was slim and wiry, his voice harsh. He merely glanced at the prisoners, then snapped orders at the three guards. Hurriedly, they cut the ropes that bound the ankles of the two Intelligence men, and jerked them to their feet. The officer and two soldiers walked out, and the guard behind shoved the prisoners into line and pointed to the door. Madden glanced quickly at Arseniev as the last of the men stepped out, leaving only the guard. “The table!” he snapped. Then he kicked the door shut with his foot, and lunging forward, struck the upright bar with his head. It fell neatly into the wide brackets.

  Instantly, Arseniev kicked the table over and the light crashed and went out. Powell had wheeled and kicked the remaining guard viciously in the stomach. The man gasped, and fell forward, and the Britisher kicked him again, on the chin.

  Turk, whose hands had not been tied, spun Arseniev around and stripped off the ropes that bound his wrists, then, as the Russian sprang to get the rifle, he did the same for Powell.

  “Come on!” he hissed sharply, “we’re going out of here.”

  Turk jerked the bar out of place and threw the door wide open. Outside, clear in the moonlight, stood the three Japanese, hesitating to shoot for fear of killing their comrade. Arseniev threw the rifle to his shoulder and fired, and they plunged outside. The officer had gone down, drilled through the face by the Russian’s shot, but the other two jerked their rifles up, too late. Madden’s automatic barked. Once…twice…One was down, the other fled, firing into the night.

  “Get their guns, and let’s go,” Turk said. “My plane may still be okay.”

  Running, the three men got to the beach and shoved off in the rubber boat. The amphibian floated idly on the still water where he had left it, and they scrambled aboard.

  Turk almost fell into the pilot’s seat while Powell got the boat aboard, and the Russian heaved in the anchor.

  The twin motors roared into life, and in a minute the ship was in the air. Turk eased back on the stick and began reaching for altitude. Glancing back they could see the flat space of the landing field.

  “How many planes took off?” Turk asked. “Did you hear?”

  “Twelve,” Arseniev said. He looked grave. “Where do they go? That is what I am thinking.”

  “It has to be Siberia,” Turk said, at last. “If to China, why the disguise? If to my country, they would be bombers. Pursuit ships cannot reach Alaska from here.”

  “If they go to make war,” Powell said, “they wouldn’t be in mufti. There’s more in this than meets the eye.”

  “Maybe,” Turk suggested, “a secret base in Siberia from which they could strike farther west and south?”

  Arseniev nodded. “Perhaps. And how many have gone before these? Maybe there are many. In the wilds of the taiga there are many places where hundreds of planes could be based.”

  “What’s the taiga?” Powell asked.

  “The forest that extends from the Urals to the Sea of Okhotsk, about twenty-five hundred miles from west to east, about seven or eight hundred north and south. I’ve been through part of it,” Turk said; “looks dark and gloomy, but it’s full of life. Miles and miles of virgin timber, lots of deer, bear, elk and tiger in there.”

  Turk leveled off at ten thousand feet, and laid a course for Vladivostok. His eyes roved over the instrument board, and he told himself again how lucky he was to have this ship. It was an experimental job, an improvement on the OA-9. No bigger, but much faster, with greater range, and capable of climbing to much greater heights. Also, it was armed like a fighting ship.

  THE MEN SITTING behind him were silent. He knew what they were thinking. If Japan had a base far back in the great forest of Asiatic Russia, they could strike some terrible blows at Russia’s rear while the Soviet was fighting a desperate battle with the invading Germans. It might well be the turning point of the war, and the three men—American, Russian, and British—had a like desire to see Germany defeated.

  “You know Ussuria?” Turk asked Arseniev.

  The Russian shrugged. “Who does, except in places? There are still wild lands along the ocean, and in the north. I am from the Ukraine, then Moscow, Leningrad, and Odessa. I have been all over Russia proper, but Siberia?” He shrugged once more.

  Turk banked slightly, skirting the edge of a cloud. He was watching for the coastline. “I lived there a year when I was kid.”

  Powell looked at him in astonishment. “Aren’t you a Yank?”

  Madden grinned. “Sure, I was born in Nevada. But when I was two my father went to the consul’s office in Cairo. Then to Zanzibar, then to Tiflis in Georgia. My mother died in Zanzibar, and when I was eleven the revolution broke out. About the same time the old man died of pneumonia.

  “Me, I lived around the towns of southern Russia, sleeping in haystacks and wagons, eating when I could. I lived a few months in the Urals, and then went to Siberia. I took up with an old hunter there, and lived and hunted with him for a year. He got killed, so I went south to Samarkand, and into India.

  “I got back to the States when I was sixteen. Stayed two years, then went to sea. I’ve been back twice since.”

  Arseniev rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “You know a place? Where planes could land?”

  Turk nodded. “I was thinking of it. Koreans used to hunt gold up in there. It might be some Japs came with them. It’s a small lake almost due north of Lake Hanka and back up in the Shihote Alin Mountains.”

  “Want to try it?” Arseniev suggested. “We could refuel at Khabarovsk.”

  “Hell,” Powell interrupted, “why get him into it? He’s a commercial flier. You can’t get paid enough for that kind of work, and taking a ship like this where it may get into unsupported action isn’t sensible!”

  “I agree,” Turk said, grinning over his shoulder, “so we’ll go. We’ll land at Khabarovsk, refuel there, and you’d better tell them at Vladivostok what happened. Then we’ll hop up there and look around.”

  In his mind, Turk went back over those Ussurian hills and forests, trying to locate the lake. He remembered those years well enough, and how he and the old Russian had hunted ginseng, trapped mink, and lived on the berries and game of the forest. They had gone west from the forks of the Nahtohu River, and come on the lonely little lake, scarcely a half-mile broad, and three-quarters of a mile long.

  Leaving their plane at the field, the three men divided. Turk drifted down the streets, then found a quiet bar, and seated himself. He was eating a bowl of kasha and some cheese and black bread when three men sauntered in. They sat down near him, ordering vodka.

  One was a huge man with a black beard, slanted Mongolian eyes and an ugly scar along his cheekbone. His nose had been broken, and when the man reached for his glass, Turk saw the man’s hands were huge, and covered with black hair. The other two were more average looking, one short and fat, the other just a rather husky young man with a surly expression. The bearded man kept glaring at Madden.

  He ignored it, and went on with his eating. Knowing his clothing set him off as a foreigner, Turk thought it was merely the usual curiosity. The big man talked loudly, and the three looked at Turk, laughing. Then the big man said something louder, still in Russian. Above the noise in the room Turk was unable to distinguish the words.

  It was obvious they did not believe he understood Russian, and it began to be equally obvious that the big man was seeking to provoke a quarrel. The crowd in the bar did not like the big man, he could see, but he himself was a foreigner. Finally, above the rumble of voices, he heard the big man use the words “dumb” and “coward.”

  Turk looked up suddenly, and something in his glance stopped the voices. He spoke to the man serving drinks. “Vodka,” he said, motioning to the gathering, “for those. For these—nothing.”

  There was momentary silence, and in the silence, Turk jerked a thumb at the big man, and said, contemptuously, “Gnus!” using the Russian word for abomination applied in the taiga to the swarms of
mosquitoes, flies and midges that make life a curse.

  The crowd roared with laughter. “Gnus! Gnus! Ha, that’s a good one!”

  His face swollen with anger, the big man got to his feet. Instantly, the crowd was still. From the expressions on their faces, Turk could see that most of them were frightened. Continuing to eat, he let his eyes slide over toward the men’s table. There was an eager light in the eyes of the other two men, and Madden was sure this was what they had been working up to all evening.

  The big man, whom he had heard called Batou, came toward him, and Turk continued to eat. When he was close by, the big man reached out suddenly. Turk’s head slipped to one side to avoid the clutching hand, and then he kicked the big Russian viciously on the shin.

  With a bellow of pain, Batou bent over, grabbing at his shin. Then Turk grabbed him by the beard with one hand, and jerking him forward, leaped to his feet and smashed a heavy right fist into Batou’s midsection. The big fellow gasped and Turk shoved him so hard against the wall that he rebounded and collapsed to the floor.

  There were audible gasps in the room, and then Madden quietly sat down and started to finish his cheese and kasha. Out of the corner of his eye he watched the two men at the table and Batou with apparent unconcern.

  He finished his meal as the Russian got up. Stealthily, he observed the other man’s rise. Batou’s face was vicious as he strode across the room. “So!” he roared, “you t’ink it iss so easy to—”

  Turk came up from the table, his left fist swinging.

  The blow missed Batou’s chin, slid along his face, and ripped his ear. With a cry of rage, Batou swung with both hands, but Turk went under them, and slammed both fists into the big man’s stomach. Then he straightened up and grabbing Batou by the beard jerked his head forward into a driving left, and kicked his feet from under him.

  Accustomed to winning fights by sheer size and strength, Batou was lost, helpless. He staggered to his feet, and in that instant, the other two men closed in. Adroitly, Turk sidestepped and kicked a chair in the taller man’s path, then he struck the other man with a wicked pivot blow and caught him entirely unprepared and knocked him staggering into the wall. Turk closed in on the big fellow, jabbed a left to his mouth, then three more hard ones in rapid-fire order, hooked a hard right to the fellow’s cheek and smashed his lips to pulp with a left hook.

  He wheeled at a yell, and the younger man was on his feet, a knife poised to throw. Wide open and off balance, too far away to reach the man, Turk Madden was helpless. He didn’t have a chance and he knew it. The man’s hand moved back to throw, then there was a swish and a dull thud. Turk stared unbelieving.

  The haft of a knife was protruding from the man’s throat!

  Turk spun about and Arseniev was standing in the door, another knife ready to throw. He smiled, lifting one eyebrow at Turk. “Turnabout is fair play, no? You save me, I save you. What is the trouble?”

  Turk turned, just in time to see Batou and the other man slipping out the back door. He shrugged, letting them go. Briefly, he explained.

  “I have heard some rumors,” Arseniev said gravely, “that there is treachery here. This Batou. He is a bad man, a renegade. He murdered and robbed during the revolution. Then he went away to Korea. Now he is back here, and for no good. I believe this fight was deliberate.”

  They returned to the plane, and as they approached, Turk noticed three soldiers were on guard around the ship. Arseniev spoke to them briefly, the men saluted, and marched away. Powell was waiting inside the ship.

  Turk slipped into the pilot’s seat, and took the plane out on the field. There he turned into the wind, and in a few seconds they were aloft. Madden banked steeply, and flew west. Arseniev and Powell were surprised at the direction taken.

  “If anyone’s watching, that may keep them guessing awhile,” he said, “even if not for long.”

  “If we find these planes, what then?” Powell asked.

  Arseniev indicated the two-way radio. “We’ll contact Khabarovsk, and they will send out a fleet of bombers. We’ll show them a thing or two. Besides,” he indicated the lockers, “we have a few messages for them ourselves, if necessary.”

  After flying a dozen miles due west, Turk swung the Grumman and started north, reaching for altitude. At twelve thousand feet he leveled off and soon left the hamlets and cultivated fields behind. He swung away from the railroad, and headed for the coast.

  “I’ll follow the coast to the Nahtohu, then follow it west to the forks. After that, finding the lake should not be hard.”

  He checked his guns. The Grumman mounted four machine guns forward; .30 calibers. Aft, there were three gun ports and two automatic rifles available.

  “What have you been doing with this crate?” Powell demanded. “I thought you were flying express in the Indies?”

  Turk grinned. “I was, but those East Indies are a long way from tamed yet. Lots of times I was flying gold, pearls, rubies, diamonds. Flying over wild country, over Moro, headhunter and cannibal country, and there’s lots of renegades. Sometimes I had trouble.”

  Below them a cold gray sea was running up on the shore, boiling among worn black rocks, and curling back in angry white foam along the huge cliffs that lined the sea. The forest below them did not seem green, it seemed black, lonely and forlorn like the woods of a dead planet. Here and there on the heights there was snow, and down below in the occasional clearings they could see it too.

  Turk studied the dead gray of the sky. “Storm making up,” he said, “but there’s plenty of time. That’s the Nahtohu coming up.” He swung the Grumman to cut over the woods and intersect the river trail.

  “Madden!” Arseniev’s voice was sharp. “A Nakajima fighter is coming down toward us!”

  “Okay,” Turk replied. “Get those automatic rifles and stand by aft. But don’t shoot unless I give the word, or he starts. Then pour it into him!”

  He flew right straight ahead. His mind was working swiftly. It would have to be quick, it would have to be surprise. The fighter’s armament was no better, but his speed and maneuverability were much greater.

  He glanced around. The fighter hadn’t offered to open fire. It must be that he was uncertain. Turk slowed up suddenly to let the Nakajima overtake him. It did, coming at such a terrific rate that when the Grumman abruptly lost speed the fighting plane drew ahead. Madden suddenly banked steeply toward the Nakajima, and at the same instant, opened fire with his full forward armament.

  The savage blast of fire caught the uncertain Japanese unprepared. A shell exploded against his instrument board, riddling his body with fragments. As he sprang up in the cockpit, a hurricane blast of machine-gun fire swept the ship from wing to tail assembly, and the Nakajima rolled over and started for earth, screaming like a dying eagle.

  Turk pulled the ship into an Immelmann and wheeled back over the spot where the plane had been. But the pursuit ship was a gone gosling. It was headed for earth with a comet’s tail of fire streaming out behind. Paralleling it fell the black body of the pilot, turning over and over in the air.

  He’d had no chance to think, let alone to act.

  “Nice work,” Powell said, coming forward. His eyes were narrow, and he was sweating. “You don’t gamble much, do you?”

  Madden looked up quickly. “Gamble? With a war at stake?”

  Powell laughed, his voice a little harsh. “Some would. You had me worried there for a minute!”

  Turk eased back on the stick and began to climb. He glanced at the altimeter. Slowly the needle left ten thousand behind, then twelve…fifteen…sixteen.…

  Powell looked uncomfortable, and loosened his collar. Arseniev, who had rejoined them, was watching Powell curiously.

  At twenty thousand Turk leveled off and continued west. “What now?” Powell’s breathing was heavy in the thin air. “Better land and look around on foot, hadn’t we? If they see us we’ll have a flock of pursuit jobs around us faster than we can think, and they’ll do what you do, s
hoot first, then talk!”

  “No,” Turk said. “If they are down there, we’re going to call Khabarovsk, then attack.”

  “Attacking twelve pursuit ships?” Powell said, his face getting red. “You’re no combat pilot! You’re mad!”

  “Didn’t you know that?” Turk grinned. “And that’s not true, I flew in Spain.”

  Powell turned, looking at Madden. “You flew in Spain?”

  “That’s right,” Turk nodded. “And I was a prisoner for a while during the siege of the Alcazar at Toledo. Remember?”

  “Remember…” Suddenly, Powell’s hand flashed for a gun, and Turk shoved the stick forward. The Grumman’s nose dropped and Powell, overbalanced, plunged forward, his head smashing against the wall. He slumped in his safety belt, and Turk eased the stick back and brought the ship to an even keel. Arseniev’s eyes were bright.

  “All the time he was a traitor!” he whispered hoarsely. “All the time!”

  “Sure,” Madden agreed. “I couldn’t place him at first. He’s a German, lived in England for several years, but he was with Franco. You’d better tie him up.”

  Arseniev glanced down as Turk banked the ship. On the shores of a small lake were lined a long row of planes. Half of them were in the process of being camouflaged with branches and reeds. The others still were uncovered. There must have been a hundred.

  Arseniev, his face white, bound Powell hand and foot, then he stepped over to the radio. “Calling Khabarovsk…calling Khabarovsk…enemy airdrome located…between the forks of the Nahtohu…position 138 degrees east, 47 degrees 2 minutes north.…Approximately one hundred planes.”

  Turk glanced down again. Below them the airdrome was a scene of mad activity.

  “Heard us!” he snapped. “Get set, I’m going down! Get on those bombs!”

  Turk pulled the Grumman into as steep a dive as she would take and went roaring toward earth. When the ship was built she had been fitted with a bomb rack, and he had taken her just that way. Now it would come in handy.