“And they knew where to look,” Madden said viciously.
HE MOVED SWIFTLY through the darkness toward the cliff. He knew where he was going now. He needed shelter, and there was the cave above. He climbed swiftly, and found his way to the cave. For a while he had been afraid he would not be able to find it in the dark, but he did. Then he crawled in and lay still.
They were searching down below, and he heard the voice of von Walrath as well as that of Farales. Something had gone wrong, apparently something more than the fact that he was gone. They kept searching, then finally gave up. But they remained below. He was bottled up, unable to do a thing.
Where was Shan Bao? Had Runnels been killed? And what of the others? Unable to sit still, he turned on his flashlight, shielding it with his hand, and went to the back of the cave. It was a steep, winding passage, and he went down, walking swiftly. It took a sharp turn, and suddenly he realized it was going toward the shore of the pool!
There was dampness here, and occasional pools of water. He walked on, then feeling the air moving against his face, he proceeded more cautiously. It was a large opening, almost concealed behind a fallen log. But he was looking over the pool—and there, not a dozen feet away, was the Goose!
How far had he walked? And what was the Goose doing here?
Considering, he realized he must have walked at least twenty minutes inside the cave. He could have come a mile, but probably it was no more than half that far. In his mind he ran his eyes along the edge of the pool. Then he knew. Somehow, some way, the Goose had been slipped away and hidden in this inlet at the extreme end of the pool.
It was only a delay, for with daylight they would find it with ease. And by daylight the Goose should be winging out to sea instead of lying here.
He crawled over the log, then moved ahead slowly, carefully. He was going to be aboard that plane or dead within the next few minutes. Suddenly, right ahead of him, something moved.
Turk froze. Then he saw a tall, lean form rise before him. Instantly, he grinned with relief. Shan Bao!
“Shan!” he whispered hoarsely, and saw the figure stiffen. Then the Manchu turned and beckoned.
“What is it?” Madden whispered as he came up. “How’d the plane get here!”
“Panola,” Shan replied softly. “Panola and me.”
“Panola?” Madden scowled. Then Panola wasn’t the one. Crawling out along a log to the door of the ship, he puzzled over that. Then he slipped in. The Italian moved, and touched his arm.
“Madden? Man, I’m glad you’re here! I can’t fly this thing good enough. We towed her down here with the rubber boat. Maybe we can take off.”
“We can!” Turk shifted his carbine. “Panola, who’s the traitor, Runnels or Winkler?”
“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “You mean one of them isn’t on the level?”
“That’s right. And I thought it was you! You, because of your rifle. Somebody fired on me that first day, and your rifle was the only one fired that day.”
Panola grabbed his arm.
“But Turk!” he said hoarsely. “I didn’t have my own gun that day. I got another by mistake. Major Winkler had mine!”
“Major Winkler?” Turk’s jaw set. “Then Winkler is Wilhelm Messner, the Gestapo agent!”
He turned sharply. “Panola, you stay with this ship. Stay with it and don’t let anybody aboard but Shan or me. I’m going ashore.”
“But what can you do?” Panola protested. “Only two of you?”
“Watch!” Turk snapped harshly. “Shan is worth a dozen. Watch, and you’ll see how it’s done. This isn’t cricket, but it’s business!”
He walked back to the gun case and took out a submachine gun, and slid in a magazine. He thrust three more in his belt. Then he went ashore. He went through the woods fast with Shan, also armed with a submachine gun, following close behind.
There was no effort at concealment when he stepped up toward the shelter. His very carelessness made the guard relax. Turk stepped out of the brush and saw the guard suddenly stiffen. Then he let out a low cry and grabbed for his gun.
He never made it. Turk opened up with the tommy and cut him half in two with the first blast of fire. Men scrambled to their feet and the two men mowed them down. Leaping into the open, Turk felt a gun blast almost in his face, and then he shoved the gun against the big man who lunged at him and opened up.
The Baron charged from a door, gun spouting, and Turk Madden cut down on him with his Thompson. The man went flat and rolled over, grabbing feebly at the earth, his hands helpless, his gun rattling on the rocks.
Then someone leaped from the shambles and made a dart for the outer darkness. It was Winkler!
Dropping his tommy gun, Turk sprang after him. Plunging wildly through the brush, the man charged at the cliff and began a mad scramble up its surface with Turk close behind him.
They met at the top, and Winkler, his features wolfish with fury, whirled to face him. He aimed a vicious kick at Turk’s face as he came over the edge, but Turk ducked and grabbed his foot. His hold slipped, but it was enough to stagger Messner, and before the Gestapo man could get set, Turk Madden was on top.
In the darkness there on the brink of the cliff, they fought. Messner, like a tiger at bay, struck out. His fist smashed Turk in the mouth, and Madden felt his lips smash and tasted blood, and something deep within him awakened and turned him utterly vicious. Toe to toe, the two big men slugged like madmen. There was no back step, no hesitation, no ducking or dodging. It was cruel and bitter and brutal. It was primeval in its fury.
Turk went down, and then he came up swinging, and Messner, triumph shining in his ugly eyes, smashed him down again and leaped in to put the boots to him. Turk rolled over and scrambled up, smashing Messner in the stomach with a wicked butt.
Relentless, ruthless, Turk closed in. He ducked a left and smashed a wicked right to the body. He felt the wind go out of the German, and he stepped in, hooking both hands to the head and then the body. He caught a long swing on his ear that made his head ring, but he was beyond pain, beyond fear, beyond doubt.
It was a fight to the death now, and he fought. He stepped under another swing and battered at the German’s body with cruel punches. Then he straightened and whipped up a right uppercut that jerked the German’s head back. Then a crushing left hook, and as the German went to his knees he smashed him again in the face.
The man fell back and then rolled over and got up. Turk started for him, and the man turned, gave a despairing cry, and sprang straight out from the cliff!
It was a sheer drop to the jagged rocks and upthrust roots and jagged dead branches below.
Turk stepped back, his chest heaving with effort, his eyes blind with sweat and blood. Then he turned, and slowly he walked back to the path and went down to the shelter.
Runnels met him, a tommy gun in his hands.
“Get him?” he asked.
Turk nodded. “Yeah.” He glanced toward the east where the sky was beginning to lighten. “Shan, fix some coffee. Then we’ll get the ship warmed up. We’ve got us a job to do.”
“Madden,” Panola said slowly, “I did some looking around myself. Rathow, the atomic scientist, and Miguel Farales are back at the house. The bomb that is to be dropped is there. One of them, anyway.”
“You saw it?” Turk exclaimed, increduously.
“I wired it,” Panola said, grinning. “I wired the blasted thing.” He added, then, “The other comes over the house about nine. It will be in a big bomber and guarded by a fighter plane. There will be another plane, a big passenger job, of scientists.”
“Then that’s our job!” Turk said. “We’ve got to get the fighter. If we can knock out the fighter, the others are sitting pigeons.” He turned to Panola. “How’d you wire that bomb?”
“The first person who opens the door on the back of the house will blow that whole cove into the mist,” Panola replied grimly. “It isn’t more than half the size of our Hiroshima bomb, th
ough.”
When Madden’s amphibian took off, all were aboard. Turk Madden scowled at the sky, and his hard green eyes searched the horizon for the oncoming planes. They should be along soon. He reached for altitude and squeezed the Goose against the low hanging clouds.
Getting a fighter was anything but simple, and he knew there was every chance it would end in failure. Of course, he could go ahead, observe the experiment, and return so they could report their findings.
Yet, if all could be destroyed, the experimenters who remained in Buenos Aires would be unsure of just what had happened and where the mistake had been made. It would certainly slow up experimentation and increase uncertainty and fear.
Shan Bao saw them first. The Manchu leaned over and touched Turk on the shoulder and gestured.
The bomber was flying at about six thousand feet, with the passenger plane and its observers on right and a bit behind. For a moment the fighter eluded him, and then he saw it high against the sky, flying at probably nine thousand, his own level. He eased back on the stick and climbed, hoping with all his heart that the fighter pilot had not sighted him.
IT WOULD BE touch and go now. There would be no such chance as with the other fighter, a few days before. He could not hope for such a thing twice. Even the maneuver was risky, and the chance of the pilot making a mistake was slight. The man in this ship would probably be tough and experienced. He had one chance in a million, and only one, that was to dive out of the clouds and get a burst into the fighter before he realized what had happened.
They were a good eight or ten miles from the house on the cove now. He leveled off at eleven thousand, thankful it wasn’t as heavily overcast as usual, and watched the planes below him.
Suddenly, the Goose seemed to jump in the air. Startled, he looked at his instruments, and then a rolling wave of sound hit him and he jerked his head as if struck, and at the same time the ship rolled heavily.
“Look!” Panola screamed, and following his outthrust arm and finger, they saw a gigantic column of debris lifting toward the sky!
“Somebody opened a door!” Runnels said grimly.
Turk was jolted momentarily, and then suddenly, he saw his chance!
“Hold everything!” he yelled, and swung the ship over into a screaming dive.
The fighter had been jolted, too, and the ships ahead were wavering. In the picture that flashed through his mind, Turk could see their doubt, their hesitation.
Something had happened. What? The bomb at the house had gone up, but how? Why? Would there be enough radioactivity at this distance to affect them? Who among them knew? And what had caused the other explosion? Might this one go, too?
The fighter pilot must have sensed something, or his roving eyes must have caught a glimpse of the plane shooting down on his tail. In a sudden, desperate effort, he pulled his fighter into a climbing turn, and it was the wrong thing.
Turk opened up. Saw his tracers stream into the fighter’s tail, saw the pursuit ship fall away, and then banking steeply, he sent a stream of tracer, stabbing at the fighter’s vitals like a white hot blade!
There was a sudden puff of smoke, a desperate effort as the fighter flopped over once and fired a final, despairing burst that streamed uselessly off into space. Then it rolled upside down and, sheathed in flame, went screaming away down the thousands of feet toward the crags below.
The other ships must have seen the fighter go, for they split apart at once. One flying north, the other south. With a gleam in his eyes, Turk saw it was the bomber that turned south. “We got ’em,” he yelled.
He rolled over and went streaking after the passenger ship. His greater speed brought him up fast, and he could see the other plane fighting desperately to get away.
In that passenger plane would be the men whose knowledge of atomic power could give the militarists of the world a terrible weapon, a weapon to bring chaos to the world. It was like shooting a sitting duck, but he had to do it. His face set and his jaw hard, he opened the Goose up and let it have everything it had left.
Swiftly he overhauled the passenger plane, which dived desperately to escape. It came closer to the hills below, and Turk swung closer. He glanced at the gigantic Dome of St. Paul, coming closer now, and then he did a vertical bank, swung around, and went roaring at the plane!
The pilot was game. He made a desperate effort, and then the probing fingers of Turk’s tracer stabbed into his tail assembly. The ship swung off her course, lost altitude, and the pilot tried to bank away from the rounded peak of the Dome. He tried too late. With a terrific crash and a gigantic burst of flame, the passenger plane crashed belly first against the mountainside.
For an instant the flaming wreck clung to the steep side, then it sagged, something gave way, and like a flaming arrow it plunged into the deep canyon below.
Turk shook himself, and his face relaxed a little, then he started climbing.
“Two down,” he said aloud, “and one to go!”
He went into a climbing turn. Up, up, up. Far off to the south he could see the plane bearing the atomic bomb, a mere speck against the sky now.
It was an old type plane, with a cruising speed of no more than a hundred and fifty miles per hour. With his ship he could beat that by enough. For the fiftieth time he thanked all the gods that he was lucky enough to have picked up this experimental model with its exceptional speed. He leveled off and opened the ship up.
Runnels had moved up into the copilot’s seat. He glanced at Turk, but said nothing. His face was white and strained. Behind him, Turk could hear Panola breathing with deep sighs. Only Shan Bao seemed unchanged, phlegmatic.
As the lean Manchu thrust his head lower for better vision, Turk glimpsed his hawklike yellow face and the gleam in his eye. It was such a face as the Mongol raiders of the khans must have had, the face of a hunter, the face of a fighter. There was in that face no recognition of consequences, only the desperate eagerness to close with the enemy, to fight, to win.
Turk’s eyes were cold now. He knew what he had to do. That atomic bomb must go. If his own plane and all in it had to go, the cost would be slightly balanced against the great saving to civilization and the world of people. Yet that sacrifice might not be necessary. He had a plan.
He swung his ship inland for several miles, flying a diagonal course that carried him south and west. The bomber was still holding south, intent only on putting distance between them.
Turk knew what that pilot was thinking. He was thinking of the awful force he carried with him, of what would happen if they were machine-gunned or forced to crash-land. That pilot was afraid. He wanted distance, freedom from fear.
Yet Turk was wondering if the pilot could see what was happening. Did that other flyer guess what was in his mind? And Turk was gaining, slowly, steadily gaining, drawing up on the bomber. It was still a long way ahead. But it was over Canal Ladrillero now, and as Turk moved up to the landward, the bomber followed the canal southwest.
Deliberately, Turk cut his speed back to one hundred and fifty. Runnels glanced at him, puzzled, but Turk held his course, and said nothing. At the last minute, the enemy pilot seemed to realize what was happening and made a desperate effort to change course, but Turk moved up, and the bomber straightened out once again.
There was one thing to watch for. One thing that might get the bomber away. He would think of that soon, Turk realized. And that would be the instant of greatest danger.
“Watch!” he said suddenly, “If he drops that bomb, yell! That’s his only chance now.”
Runnels jumped suddenly as the idea hit him.
“Why! Why, you’re herding him out to sea,” he shouted. “You’re herding him out there where his bomb won’t do any damage!”
“Yeah,” Madden nodded grimly, “and where he won’t have gas enough to get back.”
“What about us?” Panola asked.
“Us?” Turk shrugged. “I think we’ve got more gas than he has. He wasn’t expecting this. We had enough t
o fly us back to our mother ship. If we have to, we can sit down on the water and last awhile. This is a boat, you know. We could probably last long enough in this sea so that the ship could find us. We’ll radio as soon as we get this bomber out far enough.”
They were over two hundred miles out, and still herding the bomber before Runnels let out a yell. But Turk had seen the bomber jump and had seen the bomb fall away.
He whipped the ship over into a steep climbing turn and went away from there fast. Even so, the concussion struck them with a terrific blow, and the plane staggered, and then he looked back at the huge column of water mounting into the sky, and then the awful roar as thousands upon thousands of tons of water geysered up and tumbled back into the sea.
Turk banked again, searching for the bomber. It was there, still further out to sea, and Turk turned again and started after him.
“All right, Panola,” he said. “In code, call our ship. I hope they survived the wave caused by that bomb.”
The bomber was farther out now, and they moved after him, and in a moment, Panola leaned over.
“She’s all right. About two hundred miles north and west.”
Turk turned the amphibian, keeping the bomber in view, but angling away. “He may reach land,” he said over his shoulder. “But if he does he’ll crash on the coast of Chile. He’ll never make it back to the Argentine!”
Runnels leaned back and ran his finger around inside of his collar.
“For awhile you had me worried,” he said grimly. “I thought you were going to tangle with that bomb!”
Turk chuckled. “Not me, buddy! I’m saving this lily white body of mine for the one and only girl!”
“Yeah?” Runnels was skeptical. “And you’ve got a girl in every port?”
“Nope. I haven’t been in every port!”
Tailwind to Tibet
The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Four Page 69