Red Randall Over Tokyo

by R. Sidney Bowen

  He shouted the last as he drew in close alongside Joyce and give him a questioning stare. Young Joyce shrugged and gestured that he did not know what it was all about. He pointed to his face, and pointed at the pilot of the Zero, then waved a go-ahead signal. Randall caught on at once, and fed his engine enough power to take him up alongside the Zero. When he glanced at the face turned toward him he caught his breath. The Zero pilot’s face was covered with blood. His hair was jet black, but something about the shape of his head made Randall feel that the wounded pilot was not Japanese.

  “Well, he’s heading for shore,” Randall grunted as he dropped back to take up escort position alongside Joyce. “And it’s time for us to be heading back anyway. We’ll just go along and maybe we’ll find out what all this screwy business is about. Doggone! Jap chases Jap and smacks Jap. There’s one for the book, I’d say. And nuts to that radio order. I’d sure like to know what Jimmy thinks about this.”

  The radio order was an order, however, and Randall did not break it. He simply flew along with Joyce and talked sign language with his pal. The most Randall made out of their silent conversation, however, was that Joyce was just as much puzzled as he was. Presently the coast line of Australia came rushing up over the eastern horizon. And at just that time fate seemed to add its bit to jumble things more.

  The Japanese Zero suddenly started staggering all over the sky. The wounded pilot lowered his up raised hand, and both Randall and Joyce could see that he was using it to try to hold himself up in the pit. But he was not meeting with much success. His body slumped forward, and the Zero dived toward the water below.

  “Don’t! Don’t do that!” Randall shouted impulsively. “Hang on! Just a little longer! You can sit her down on the beach. Hang on, whoever you are. Hang on, will you?”

  As though the wounded pilot of the Zero actually had heard Randall’s shouted words, he straightened up in the seat and managed to haul the plane out of its dive no more than fifteen feet above the surface of the water. And, miracle of miracles, he held it level and steady as it streaked forward toward a wide strip of sandy beach.

  “Just a little more!” Randall breathed, his eyes glued on the Zero. “Just a little more and then you can sit her... No, don’t!”

  But shouted orders were of no help. The Zero was less than fifty yards from where the lapping waves met the beach, when suddenly it lurched crazily off to the left. Its nose dropped slightly, but came up again before a wing could crab in the water. But it did not come up enough. The belly smacked the top of a roller rushing in. The next instant the Zero was like a crazy-looking surfboard racing toward shore. Then the roller broke into fountains of foam and spray. The tail of the Zero pointed straight up toward the sky. To Randall it seemed to remain that way a full minute, before it went cartwheeling end over end to pile up in a twisted heap of junk on the beach!

  Chapter Three – A Strange Message

  RED RANDALL WAS able to take one flash look at the piled-up Zero at the water’s edge, and then it had passed out of sight under his roaring plane. It was not until several seconds later that he could twist around for another look. He had been watching the Zero so intently that he had forgotten all about his own low altitude. As a result, when he did look forward, a wall of shore trees seemed on the point of being chewed into toothpicks by his whirling propeller. In the nick of time, he hauled back on the stick and shot the P-40 toward the sky.

  “Bright lad, very bright!” he grated to himself, as he leveled off from his climb and swung around. “Now let’s see if you can land on that beach without wrapping your wings around Jimmy’s plane.”

  Cutting the throttle, he swung around and down toward the wide strip of beach, after first making sure that he was not getting in Jimmy Joyce’s way. As he slid down lower and lower, he stole a look at the wrecked Zero that was ahead and well to his right. He saw no sign of movement. And then he was giving all of his attention to putting the fleet fighter plane down right side up. He made good, braked to a gentle stop, unflipped his safety harness and legged out of the plane.

  He started to run toward the wreck, but checked himself and stood still by his plane until Jimmy Joyce eased down to a landing not far from him. As soon as Jimmy’s plane had rolled to a stop, Red ran over.

  “Did you start to crack that guy, and he quit cold, or what?” he yelled as his flying pal leaped down to the sand.

  “No!” Joyce replied. “He quit even before I swung in at him. But skip that now. Maybe he isn’t dead. Let’s go take a look.”

  “Hold it!” Randall cried and grabbed Jimmy’s arm as he started to run up the beach. “The whole darn business is too screwy to take chances. Get your service gun in your hand, Jimmy. If he’s not a dead Jap, he might try to pick us off.”

  “Right, and thanks for the reminder,” Joyce said as he unholstered his gun. “But I don’t think anybody would feel much like shooting it out after that kind of a crash. It pays to be careful, though. Set? Then let’s go.”

  The two young men, service automatics drawn, ran part of the way to the wrecked Zero, then slowed up a bit and went the rest of the way at a cautious pace, their eyes probing the heap of junk every foot of the way. No blood-curdling screams of Japanese anger hit the air, however. And no death-dealing bullets came zipping out of the wreck.

  Caution, however, was still the watchword. Part of the left wing had folded back so that it completely covered the cockpit. Switching their guns to their left hands, they used their rights to pull and tug the section of crumpled wing clear. Underneath it they saw the black-haired figure huddled in a heap half in and half out of the split cockpit. Both hands were empty, but what caused both men to start and impulsively tuck away their guns was the fact that the Zero pilot wore no uniform. His clothes could best be described as a bundle of dirty rags tied about the middle with a length of cheap rope.

  “For cat’s sake, what is this?” Randall gulped. “I... Hey! He’s not dead. He just moved. Give me a hand, Jimmy, and we’ll get him out of the thing.”

  The huddled figure in the wreck lifted one hand slightly and let it fall back. As Randall and Joyce moved in closer, a faint moan slid off the Zero pilot’s lips.

  “Easy does it, Jimmy,” Red grunted as he tugged aside a piece of the fuselage. “You get him by the shoulders. I’ll take his feet. Here’s hoping his back isn’t broken. Okay, here we go.”

  Taking firm hold, the two pilots lifted the figure up inch by inch until they had him clear of the wreckage. Then, moving backward, they carried him out to the sand and eased him down. It was then that they both got a good look at the blood-smeared face. They gaped in startled amazement, and then glanced quickly at each other.

  “He’s no Jap!” Jimmy cried.

  “I wondered about that,” Red said with a frown. “No, you’re right. Only the hair is Jap—the face isn’t. But they’re close, if you get what I mean.”

  “I don’t,” Joyce said, dropping to his knees beside the prostrate figure.

  “I mean it wouldn’t take much fixing up to make himself look Jap,” Randall said, as he knelt beside Jimmy. “I wonder who he is? Look, he’s opening his eyes!”

  Blood-smeared lids fluttered open, fluttered closed, and then opened again. Brownish black eyes stared into Randall’s eyes. They were vacant and listless for a moment. Then lights seemed to be switched on in their dark depths, and the man’s thin lips moved and twitched.

  “Colonel...Denton... Quick...dying…tell him...!”

  The lips stopped twitching, the sounds stopped, and the eyes fluttered closed.

  “Jap heck!” Randall shouted and leaped to his feet. “This fellow’s Yank, or English. I’m going to get some water. Maybe if we bathe his face and hands we can bring him to again. Be right back.”

  Darting past the wreck, Red plunged out into the water where it was deep enough to dip his helmet. When he had filled it he hurried back to the wounded man. The pilot’s eyes were closed and his lips were still.

  “Th
is salt water will sting that gash on his head plenty,” Randall said as he pulled out his handkerchief. “But it’s the best we can do. Sure wish we had a canteen so we could give him some to drink.”

  “The poor devil looks too far gone for anything,” Jimmy murmured. “He’s stopped at least half a dozen bullets. Too bad we didn’t get in to save him from that shooting sooner.”

  “Yeah,” Randall grunted as he began bathing the wounded man’s head and face with the sea water out of his helmet. “For a while I thought it was some kind of a trick. This is helping. It stings, and he’s feeling it. Come on back, Mister. Just hang on, and come back. We want to help you if we can. Do you hear me? Do you hear me talking to you? We’re Yanks. Who are you? Who...?”

  Randall stopped short and something inside of him seemed to turn over. Two big tears oozed out of the wounded man’s eyes and trickled down his blood-smeared cheek.

  “Yanks!” the thin lips moved to whisper. “Never...thought I’d...I’d ever hear...a Yank…again. I’m...I’m Yank...too. I...”

  The man gasped as though in fear, and one of his hands jerked out to touch the right sleeve of Jimmy Joyce’s tunic.

  “Listen to me!” the man said hoarsely. “Get Colonel Denton. Yank Far East Intelligence. In my shoe...papers... Number Six. Colonel Denton. Takahara! Takahara! Farmhouse...by river bend. My shoe! Number Six...waiting. I...got through...too late. Only month! Maybe...maybe not even...that. Takahara! Number Six. My shoe! Number Six. Repeat! Repeat! Pearl...!”

  The last ended on a whisper. The wounded man clawed at Joyce’s tunic sleeve. Then his whole body shook as though a charge of high voltage had passed through it, and he fell back on the sand limp and still. His eyes were open, but as Randall looked into them he saw what he had seen many times at Pearl Harbor and in the Philippines. The stamp of death!

  For a long minute the two pilots simply stared silently at the death-chilled face. Then presently Randall raised his eyes and looked at Jimmy Joyce.

  “If only we had nailed that other plane sooner!” he said with a groan. “This poor fellow would be alive now and able to tell us what it’s all about. Did you make any sense out of what he tried to tell us?”

  Young Joyce frowned and licked his lips.

  “Not a great deal, I’m afraid,” he replied. “That Colonel Denton he mentioned is Chief of Far East Intelligence. Maybe this poor fellow was one of the Colonel’s agents. He was trying to reach the Colonel, I guess. Number Six is probably one of the Colonel’s agents, too. Or maybe that was this chap’s code number. The rest of it was pretty much mixed up. But that funny name he used certainly sounded Jap to me.”

  “Me, too,” Randall nodded. “Maybe he’s some Jap this fellow had tangled with on Timor Island.”

  “Timor Island?” Jimmy Joyce echoed sharply. “What do you mean?”

  Randall jerked a thumb at the wrecked Zero.

  “That ship came from some Jap base, that’s a cinch,” he said. “And the Japs have Timor. It’s only a little over five hundred miles from here to Timor. A Zero could make it.”

  “Oh, I see, and I guess you’re right,” Jimmy Joyce murmured. “Maybe that Takahara was the pilot of the Zero you shot down.”

  “Maybe a lot of other things, too,” Randall grunted and frowned. “I wonder, though, what he meant by ‘my shoe’? This fellow is barefooted. Unless he calls all that dirt caked on his feet shoes. We could hash this thing over all day and get no place, Jimmy. I think the thing to do is get an ambulance down from the field to pick this fellow up, report to Major Clarke, and have him get in touch with Colonel Denton...if the Colonel is anywhere around.”

  “Yes, we might as well,” Jimmy Joyce nodded, and got to his feet. “You fly down to the field, Red, and I’ll stay here with this chap. We don’t know how important this thing may be. I think one of us should stick here, even if he is dead. Right?”

  “Right,” Randall said. “But I’ll stick around if you’d rather hop down to the field.”

  “No, go ahead,” Joyce said with a shake of his head. “I don’t mind staying. Do you have a pencil on you? Give it to me, will you?”

  “Sure,” Randall said, and fished one out of his pocket and handed it over. “What do you want a pencil for?”

  “I want to write down all I can remember of what this fellow said,” Joyce told him. “If Colonel Denton can be located, and he wants to talk with us, it might be a good idea to get everything down on paper.”

  “You’ve got something there,” Red said instantly. “A darn good idea—I’ll try to remember all I can, too. Well, I’ll shove off for the field and get the ambulance up here on the jump. See you later.”

  Jimmy nodded, and suddenly looked down at Randall’s right hand. Red glanced down and was startled to see that he had unknowingly picked up a stone off the beach. He lifted his eyes to meet Jimmy’s, and quickly dropped the stone as though it were red hot. Both youths thought of the same thing, but neither spoke a word. When you were standing in the face of death you just didn’t talk of lighter moments and horseplay.

  “See you later, kiddo,” Randall mumbled and hurried over to his P-40.

  Chapter Four – Dead Man’s Shoes

  IF ONE WERE to describe what an intelligence officer looks like, the last person in the world to be described would be Colonel C. C. Denton, Chief of American Far East Intelligence. He was not tall and broad-shouldered. Nor did he possess a chiseled-out-of-granite face, with a pair of steel blue eyes that could see through a brick wall at five hundred yards. On the contrary, he was short and very much on the thin side. He had very little hair and what little he had looked as though it had been stolen from a bird’s nest. His eyes were a mild brown, and neither sharp nor dull. His nose was on the button side, his cheeks rather baby pink, and his mouth was just a very ordinary mouth. And, to top it all, his uniform, though neatly pressed and made of good material, looked as though he had put it on in the middle of a cyclone.

  In spite of his appearance, there was something about Colonel Denton that made one suppress the desire to chuckle or grin. There was a magnetism about him that attracted one to him at first glance. Somehow he gave one the impression of possessing terrific inner power. And that was true. Colonel Denton was small and did not look like much, but so is a drop of TNT small, and it does not look like much. Touch off either, and things happen with a bang!

  At the moment, and it was the day after Red Randall and Jimmy Joyce had their twin Zero experience, Colonel Denton stood staring down at the dead, rag-garbed pilot of the crashed Zero. The Colonel had been located by Major Clarke at G.H.Q. in Melbourne, and he had flown across to Broome in the fastest plane available. He had arrived only ten minutes ago and had come straight to the squadron’s sick bay where he was now. Major Clarke, Randall, and Joyce were there, too. As yet the Colonel had not spoken a word. He simply stood staring down at the dead man with pity, sorrow, and burning anger written on his face.

  Presently he turned around and faced the two young pilots.

  “Tell me about it from the beginning!” he spoke in a voice surprisingly deep and commanding for one of his stature. “Don’t leave out a thing. Tell me all of it.”

  Red and Jimmy exchanged glances. Jimmy nodded, and Red began the story of their experience. He started with the take-off for the patrol, which eventually had washed out the scare rumor, as not a single ship had been sighted by any of the pilots, and recounted everything up to the present moment. When he had finished speaking, he offered the combined efforts of Jimmy’s and his memory, which they had written down.

  Colonel Denton listened to his story without change of expression. He accepted the paper silently and studied it long and intently. When he looked up there was a frown on his face.

  “He wore no shoes?” he asked sharply. “Not even sandals? You searched the plane?”

  “Yes, sir, we searched the plane, but didn’t find a thing,” Randall said. “He was just as you see him now, sir.”

  The Colonel�
�s frown deepened and he turned again to look down at the dead man. He slowly walked about the hospital table on which the body had been placed. And Randall, watching him, saw the man’s eyes fairly dart a hundred different places at the same time. A million questions crowded to Randall’s lips, but he held them back. If he was allowed to ask questions, the time definitely would be later, not now.

  And so he simply watched the Colonel in silence and stared at the body, too. He stared mostly at the feet, as though the caked dirt and mud that covered them could give him the answer about the mysterious missing shoe. Suddenly something caught his eye. He started slightly, made as though to reach out his hand, but quickly checked himself. Colonel Denton must have had eyes in the back of his head, for he spun around and looked at Randall.

  “Yes?” he clipped out. “Something you forgot to tell me?”

  “No, sir,” the redheaded air ace said, and swallowed quickly. “Nothing I forgot to tell you. Something I just happened to notice, sir. His right foot. The instep, sir. It looks like a bit of dirty cloth, or paper, sticking out through that caked mud.”

  “Where?” Colonel Denton barked sharply, and sprang around the table. “Show me!”

  Randall walked over to the end of the table and pointed at the caked dirt on the dead man’s right foot at a point about two inches up from the tip of the big toe.

  “There, sir,” he said, and as excitement mounted in him, he added, “and it is a bit of paper or cloth, or something. Something buried in that caked mud!”

  Colonel Denton leaned over, and everybody heard him suck in his breath sharply. He took hold of the dead foot with one hand, and with the fingers of the other he began to crumble and pinch off the caked mud. The bit of paper or cloth that was stuck in the mud grew longer. Colonel Denton crumbled off the last of the caked mud, took hold of the end that stuck up and began to pull. Gradually it came loose, and then suddenly a square flat pad came free of the foot. It was crisscrossed by two strips that were obviously adhesive tape. With the pad pulled free a two-inch square of clean instep skin was revealed.