Suddenly, there was a burst of excited voices, and stepping forward in the brush, Turk Madden saw a cluster of figures coming toward the house. One of them was dressed in white, and his heart sank.
“Got her, Chief!” Chino exclaimed, eagerly. “We found the dame. She was in the brush up on Traitor’s Head. Do I get the grand?”
Wissler stepped toward the girl, and grabbed her roughly by the arm, pulling her toward him. Then he stepped back again and let the flashlight travel over her from head to foot.
“Yeah,” his voice was thick. “You get the grand. You take her up to the house and lock her up. Make sure she’s there to stay.”
Turk wet his lips. Well, here it was. There was only one answer now. He slipped both guns from his waistband and clicked off the safety catches. Go out there shooting, get Wissler and Karchel, anyway.
He took a step, then stopped dead still, feeling the cold chill of steel against his neck.
“Hold it, buddy!” a harsh voice said. “And don’t get funny with that gun.”
The man reached out from behind with his left hand to get the right-hand pistol. Then Turk dropped the other gun into the brush, speaking quickly to distract the man’s attention so he wouldn’t hear the sound of its fall.
“Okay,” he said. “You got me. Now what?”
The man prodded him into the open and marched him across the small clearing to where Wissler and Karchel were standing.
“Got the guy, Chief. That Madden fellow.”
Wissler stepped toward Turk. “Tough guy, are you?” He slapped Madden across the face with one hand, then with the other. But Turk stood immovable. A wrong move now, and they’d kill him. If they did, then Angela and Tony were done for, to say nothing of the hundreds of innocent people on the Erradaka.
Wissler laughed coldly. “All right, tie him up an’ lock him up. I’ll tend to this guy and that dame when we come back.”
SOMEWHERE DOWN THE BEACH, the motor of a plane broke into a coughing roar. It wasn’t the Grumman. Probably one of the aircraft they were going to use for the attack on the Erradaka.
Three of the men hustled him away to the copra shed. He was hurriedly bound, then thrown on the floor. The three men left, and it was only a few minutes until Madden heard two planes roar away toward the sea. It would be dawn soon, and the Erradaka with several hundred passengers would be steaming toward a day of horror and bloodshed.
He rolled over, trying to get to the wall. Reaching it, he forced himself into a sitting position and managed to get to his knees. This done, his fingers could just reach the knot behind his ankles.
It seemed that it took him hours to loosen the knot, although as he realized afterward, it could only have been a few minutes. When the ropes fell loose, he staggered to his feet. It was growing light outside and it was gray in the shed. He moved the length of the building, searching for something he could use to free his hands.
In a corner of the shed, he found an old wood saw. By wedging it into the crack in the end-boards of a worktable, he managed to place the saw teeth in the right position. Then he went to work. Finally, a strand of the rope fell apart and he hastily jerked the loosened ropes from his wrists, rubbed them violently. Now—
“Pretty smart, guy,” a voice sneered.
HE TURNED SLOWLY. Chino stood in the door laughing at him, a gun in his hand. Turk Madden’s brain went hot with rage. Now, after all this struggle, to be deprived of escape? Chino was coming toward him, chuckling with contempt.
With one sweeping movement of hand and arm, Turk grabbed the saw and hurled it flat at Chino’s face. Chino leaped back with an oath, and the gun roared. Turk felt the bullet blast by his face and then he sprang. The gun roared again, but Madden was beyond all fear. Chino’s face was bleeding from a ragged scratch of the saw, and he lifted the gun to take aim for a killing shot when Turk dove headlong in a flying tackle. They hit the ground rolling, and Turk came out on top, swinging both hands at Chino’s face.
The gun blasted again, and he felt the searing pain of a powder burn, then he knocked the gun from Chino’s hand and sprang to his feet. The gunman scrambled up, his face livid with rage. Turk threw a punch, short and hard, to the chin. The gunman went down. Turk swept up his gun and started running for the door.
A man loomed in the doorway, and Turk fired twice. The man staggered back, tumbling to the ground. And another stepped up behind him, taking careful aim with a pistol, but Turk fired from the hip, and the man staggered, his bullet clipping a notch in a beam over Madden’s head. Then Turk fired again, hurled his now empty automatic after the shot, and grabbed another from the man in the doorway.
He made the house in a half dozen jumps, felt something tug at his clothes, then felt the whiff of a bullet by his face, the reports sounding in his ears, flat and ugly. A big man with a scarred face was standing in the door of the bungalow firing at him. Dropping to one knee, Turk fired steadily and methodically, three shots hitting the man, another taking a stocky-built blond fellow who came around the corner.
Then Turk scrambled through the door over the fallen man’s body and rushed inside. There was no one in sight, but on the table was a tommy gun, a Luger automatic, and several other weapons. Turk sprang past them, and seeing a closed door, tried it. It was locked. He shot the lock away and stepped inside, gun ready.
Angela Yorke was tied in a chair in the center of the room. Tony Yorke, his face white and battered around the eyes, was lying on his back against the wall. Hurriedly, he cut the girl loose, handing her the gun.
“You two watch your step. I think I made a cleanup, but if any more show up, shoot—and shoot to kill!”
ANGELA CAUGHT HIS ARM, her face white. He brushed something away from his eyes, and was startled to see blood on his hand. He must have been shot.
“What are you going to do?” the girl exclaimed.
“I’m taking the Grumman. She’s got guns that came with the ship, and I never bothered to dismantle them. I’ve got to stop those guys before they get to the Erradaka!”
“But you’ll be killed!” she protested.
He grinned. “Anything’s possible, but I doubt it.”
THE GRUMMAN TOOK OFF after a short run, and Turk Madden swung the ship out to sea. The gunmen would land somewhere and wait there for the psychological moment. Their best chance was when the crew and passengers were at breakfast. And the first thing would be to get the radio room. Then sweep the decks with machine-gun fire, board the ship from the yacht, and kill the passengers.
Turk climbed to six thousand feet and opened her up. The Grumman responded perfectly, her twin motors roaring along in perfect time, fairly eating up the miles. The other ships were well ahead of him, he knew, but they would be in no hurry, for the yacht had to come up before they could attack.
Switching to the robot controls, he carefully checked the tommy gun and the other weapons he’d brought along. His ship carried two guns anyway, and with the additional armament he wouldn’t lack for fighting equipment. He left Tanna off to the east, then swung the ship a bit and laid a course for Erronan.
Erronan! His eyes narrowed. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? It was the perfect base for an attack on the shipping lane. There was a good landing on Tabletop, the flat mountain that was the island’s highest point, nearly two thousand feet above the sea. From there it would not be much of a jump to the course of the Erradaka. No doubt the attacking ships had settled there to await the proper hour of attack. Well, he grinned wryly, it wouldn’t be long now.
He cursed himself again for letting the sending apparatus on his radio get out of whack. He slipped on the earphones and could hear the Erradaka talking to another ship near the coast of New Caledonia. He turned his head, watching the blue expanse of sea beneath him and searching for the yacht. Then, suddenly, he picked it up, and a moment later, the Erradaka.
The yacht was taking a course that would bring her up with the Erradaka, and he heard the passenger liner calling her, but the yacht did
not reply. Suddenly, a flicker of motion caught his eyes, and he turned to see two ships closing in on the liner. They were flying fast, one slightly above and behind the other.
Then, even as he watched, the first ship dipped a wing, and glancing down, he saw a tarp suddenly jerked from a gun on the yacht’s fo’c’sle-head. The Erradaka’s radio began to chatter fiercely, and then the gun roared and the shell crashed into the radio room, exploding with a terrific concussion. Fired rapidly, the second shell exploded at the base of the fo’m’st, dropping it in wreckage across the deck.
THEN THE FIRST SHIP DOVE, and he saw the mass of people who had rushed out on deck suddenly scatter as the plane’s machine guns began chattering. He had time to notice the ship was an older Fiat. Not so bad. At best they’d do about two hundred miles per hour, which would give him a little margin. The other ship was a Boeing P-26, somewhat faster than his own ship.
He swung her over hard and put the Grumman into a steep dive. He came down on the tail of the Boeing, both guns firing. The Boeing, seeming to realize he was an enemy for the first time, pulled into a left chandelle.
Madden let it go and swung after the Fiat. For just an instant, he caught the outlaw ship full in his sights and saw a stream of tracers streak into his tail. Then Madden swung up in a tight loop, missing a stream of fire from the Boeing by a split second. He wheeled the Grumman around in a skid, but the Boeing was out of range, and the Fiat was climbing toward him.
He reached for altitude, saw pinkish tracers zip across his port wingtip, and went into a steep dive. Suddenly, he realized the yacht was right below him, her deck scattered with figures and a cluster of them around the gun. He pressed the trips on his guns and saw a man stagger and plunge over on his face.
The others scattered for shelter, and his guns swept the yacht’s deck with a flaming blast of machine-gun fire. Three more of the fleeing gunmen fell headlong. One of them threw up his pistol and fired, then his body jerked, fairly lifted from the deck by the burst of bullets. Madden banked steeply and saw the topmasts of the yacht miss him by inches.
His stomach felt tight and hard. He was in a spot, and knew it. Only a few feet above the water and the Boeing above and slightly behind, closing in fast. There was no chance or room to maneuver. He saw a stream of tracers cross his wing, missing by inches, then he glimpsed the looming hull of the Erradaka dead ahead. He clamped his jaw and flew straight at the huge liner.
His twin motors roaring, he swept down on the big ship, the Boeing right behind him. Then, just as it seemed he must hit, he jerked the Grumman into a quick, climbing turn, saw the starboard davits of the ship slip away beneath him, and he was climbing like a streak.
He glanced around, but the Boeing pilot had lost his nerve and swung off. Now he was desperately trying to close on the Grumman before Madden could get too much altitude. The Fiat suddenly loomed before Turk’s sights and he pressed the trips, and saw a stream of tracers pound into the fuselage of the plane. He saw the Fiat’s pilot jerk his head back, saw the man’s mouth open as from a mighty shout, and then the Fiat swung around and plunged toward the sea, a stream of orange fire behind it!
TURK MADDEN SWUNG the Grumman around, driving toward the Boeing with all he had. The Boeing held, guns flaming, and steel-jacketed bullets punched holes in the Grumman’s wing, cracked the canopy and tore at the rudder. Then the other plane pulled up abruptly. In that split second the Boeing’s belly was exposed. Turk fired a burst past the undercarriage and into the body of the ship. Yet still the Boeing seemed unharmed.
Turk did a chandelle, brought himself alongside her even as he saw the pilot jerk off his goggles and hurl them from him. The ship was wavering drunkenly, and the pilot fell over the edge of the seat, arms dangling. With a long whine that cut across the nerves like a tight board shrieking in an electric saw, the Boeing spun and dropped, a huge pear-shaped flame stretching out and out as the plane fell into the sea.
Turk Madden swung the Grumman and headed toward the yacht. If only he had a bomb now. He shrugged—no use thinking of that. He saw the yacht’s gun was ready for another shot at the liner, and even as he went into a shrieking dive, he saw the flame leap from the muzzle of the gun and saw the gunners grab for another round. Then, he was spraying the deck with bullets, and he saw two men fall. Then something happened to the Grumman, or to him, and he jerked back on the stick and lifted the ship into a steep climb. But he felt sick now, and dizzy.
The ship wobbled badly, and he circled, let the ship glide in for a landing. It hit the waves, bucked a little. He cut the motor and tried to get up. The plane pitched in the sea and he slid to the floor.
He forced himself to his knees, startled to see the deck was red where he had rested. But he held himself there and pulled the tommy gun toward him. Even as he waited, he saw he was a little astern of the two ships, and about halfway between them.
Wissler wouldn’t sink him. He would need the plane now. His eyes wavered to the liner, and he saw she had a hole through her forepeak and another on the waterline. He wondered why she wasn’t moving, then looked aft and could see the steam steering-engine room was blasted. The splutter of a motor drew his attention and as the hull of the Grumman pitched up in the mild swell he saw a motorboat speeding toward him from the yacht.
He let the door swing open in case he fell and couldn’t lift himself to see, and then leaned against the edge. Below him the water was stained with a little red. He didn’t know where he was shot, and didn’t even believe he was. Yet there was blood.
This was going to be close. If Wissler wasn’t in that boat—but he would be. Leave it to Wissler to be there to kill the man who had hit so hard and fast. If he could cook Wissler, and maybe Karchel, there wouldn’t be any raiding of peaceful ships, nor any attacking of plantations. The others would scatter without leadership.
THE SPEEDBOAT SWUNG in alongside and cut the motor. Just beyond the plane. They’d ease her in slowly now. Maybe.
Turk Madden grinned. Puccini tried to get tough with him back in the States, and Puccini was a big shot. All right. Now let Wissler see what it meant to cut himself a piece of this cake. He felt sick, but he lifted the machine gun. Then Steve Karchel saw him and yelled, his face dead white and his gun coming up. As the body of the plane slid upward and the boat sank a foot or two into the trough of a wave, Turk grinned.
There was the roar of the gun, and suddenly Steve Karchel’s chest blossomed with crimson. The man sagged at the knees and sat down, his chest half shot away. Madden turned the gun and swept the boat. Flame leaped from somewhere, and there was a shocking explosion. Madden felt himself getting sicker, and he clung to the door. When he opened his eyes, the motorboat was drifting just beyond the Grumman’s wing, and all aflame.
Then he saw Harry Wissler. He was standing in the stern, and his face was white and horribly red on one side from the scorching of the flames that were so close. The man’s lips were bared in a snarl of hatred, and he was lifting his six-gun carefully.
Funny, what a fellow remembered at a time like this. That Wissler always stuck with a revolver. No automatics for him. Well, okay. Possibly he’d like this one.
The tommy gun was gone somewhere. Slipped out the door, maybe. But not the Luger. Turk lifted it. The gun felt terribly heavy.
He heard a report, and something smashed into the doorjamb. Then he began firing. From somewhere another boat was approaching, but he kept shooting until the gun was empty.
Slowly, the hulk of the speedboat tipped, and with it all that was left of Harry Wissler slid into the sea.
WHEN TURK OPENED HIS EYES, he was lying in a clean white bunk and a couple of men were standing over him.
“Live?” one man was saying. “Sure, he’ll live. He was shot, but it was mostly loss of blood from these glass cuts in his head.” The doctor shook his head admiringly. “He certainly made a grand cleanup on that bunch of would-be pirates.”
Turk smiled.
“‘Has-been’ pirates, now,” he murm
ured as he passed out again.
Flight to the North
Turk Madden nosed the Grumman down gently and cut his motor, gliding in toward the dark waters of the cove. A dead stick landing on strange water in the middle of the night, and no flares to be chanced—it was asking for trouble.
True he had been assured by the Soviet Intelligence that it could be done, that the cove was wide enough and deep enough, and there were no dangers to navigation.
“If I get away with this,” he muttered savagely, “anything can happen! And,” he added grimly, “it probably will!”
It was bright moonlight, and he swung in toward the still waters of the cove with no noise save the wind-wash past the plane. The dark water lifted toward him, the amphibian hit lightly, then slid forward to a landing.
He would turn her around before the ship lost momentum. Then if anything happened…
The shore was dark; ominously still. If Powell and Arseniev were there they were to signal with a flashlight, but there was no signal. Madden hesitated, fuming inwardly. If he took off and left them, it would mean abandoning them to death. But if something had happened, if the plot had been discovered, then it would mean his own death to delay.
Suddenly he found himself wishing he was back in the East Indies running his airline in person instead of being up here in a lonely inlet on the coast of the Japanese island of Hokkaido waiting to pick up two secret agents.
From a single plane flown by himself, he had built his passenger, express, and freight service to three ships operating among the remote islands of the Indies. Then, wanting a change, he had taken a charter flight to Shanghai. From there he had flown for the British government to Vladivostok, only to be talked into flying down the coast of Japan to pick up Powell and Arseniev.
The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Four Page 58