“Got it!” he whispered hoarsely, and held it up for the others to see. “Now to take-off and get away from here fast. Only...”
Randall stopped and looked down at the dead man with eyes of sorrow.
“We can’t leave him like that,” he said. “The least we can do is give him a decent burial. I wonder if there is a shovel in this place? We can dig a grave, and...”
He stopped as Harry Chan touched his arm.
“No, my friend,” the Chinese youth said. “He would not want us to do that. It was his wish that we leave at once. To us he has entrusted his great secret. He would curse us in death if we were to delay because of him. He is with all the heroes now. You heard what he said, my friend. No one can harm the dead.”
“I know,” Randall said, “but...”
At that moment, out of the night darkness outside, came the shrill, sing-song jabber of Japanese. It came from quite a distance off, but to Randall it was as though the fiends of Nippon were screaming in his ears.
“Put out that flashlight!” young Joyce hissed, and slapped his hand over the lens a split second before Randall took his thumb off the button.
“That’s probably one of the patrols he spoke about. Come on, Red! Harry’s right. There isn’t anything we can do for him. It’s our job to get away from here, and fast.”
“Yes!” Harry Chan added breathlessly. “They may have already seen the light and are deploying to surround the place. If they find our plane, we’re lost.”
It was all cold, common sense, but for a second more Randall hesitated. He reached out a hand and reverently placed it on the dead man’s forehead. Then he stuffed the rag-covered packet inside his shirt and un-holstered his service automatic.
“Let’s go,” he whispered. “You lead, Harry. You’ve got the machine gun. Stick at his heels, Jimmy. And I’ll stick at yours.”
The three men stole across the darkened room, and eased out through the door opening. When they came outside they were greeted by the silence of night. A moment later, though, they heard muffled jabbering in the distance. Fortunately the sounds did not come from the direction of the parked Showa Sho. Glancing to the right, as he raced along, body bent well forward, Randall thought he saw the winking of many lights, but he could not be sure. There were Japanese way over there; that was certain. Whether or not they carried flashlights did not matter. The whole darn Japanese army could be stealing up on the farmhouse for all he cared, just so long as Jimmy and Harry and he got to the plane, and got it safely into the air.
The distance to the plane was only about two hundred yards, but it seemed to Randall that he had pounded the ground for two miles before they reached it. When he scrambled up into the pit, two unpleasant realizations came to him; he would not be able to use his wing lights on the take-off, as he had hoped, and also the long way of the patch of level ground ran straight in the direction of the jabbering Japanese voices. But there was nothing he could do about it, so he quickly strapped himself in and turned his head to look back and make sure that Jimmy and Harry were aboard.
“We’ve got to take off right toward them, fellows,” he said as he reached for the starter button. “Be ready with your guns, and give them the works. Chances are we’ll scare the pants off them and we’ll be in the air before they can start shooting...if they are soldiers. But give them lots of bullets just in case. All set?”
“Set!” Jimmy Joyce said in a low voice.
“Ready!” Harry Chan called grimly.
Randall turned front, snapped up the switches, opened his throttle halfway, and jabbed the starter button. The starter gears whined and growled, and the prop started around its arc in jerky jumps. Then the engine caught and blasted the night silence with its roar of power. Randall let it rev for a couple of moments. Then he kicked off the wheel brakes, sucked air into his lungs, and opened the throttle wide. The Showa Sho quivered violently for a moment, and then fairly leaped forward as though an invisible rope that held it tied to an invisible tree had been parted by the keen edge of an invisible axe.
The sudden lunge slammed Randall back against the headrest, but he quickly regained his balance and hunched low over the control stick, as they light bomber tore across the night-shrouded ground. Dead ahead of him for a distance of perhaps a quarter of a mile, a dozen or so flashlight beams sprang into being and were waved back and forth and around and around so that they looked like a mess of fireflies engaging in a general free-for-all. Randall smiled grimly, and held the Showa Sho’s nose straight toward those dancing lights.
“Go ahead, signal all you want, little rats!” he said through clenched teeth, “but we happen to be non-stop. Out of the way, you, but fast!”
As he spoke he pressed the electric trigger button for his guns. The Showa Sho trembled from the recoil. Ribbons of silverish yellow light zipped out from the wings and streaked through the night toward the dancing lights. The lights instantly went diving to the left and right, and winked out. But in their places were stabbing jets of red flame, and Randall faintly heard the whine of bullets passing high over the plane.
He slammed more bullets straight forward, but by now the Showa Sho was bouncing lightly on its wheels, and straining to lift itself up into the air. Randall eased back on the stick and pulled the plane clear, and sent it curving up and around as both Jimmy and Harry brought their guns to bear on the stabbing jets of flame on the ground. Presently Randall had the Showa Sho well out of range of the now very ragged ground fire, and leveled it off its climb.
“All okay?” he called into the intercom.
“Okay back here!” Jimmy Joyce replied. “Hope we got a million of the devils!”
“I’m all right, and I hope the same!” Harry Chan echoed. “That was nice flying, Red!”
“Thanks,” Randall said with a laugh, “but I guess most of the credit goes to their rotten shooting. Okay, Harry, give me a course as soon as you can, will you? Guess it can be a crow’s course this time. If anything gets in the way, we’ll just have to fly through it.”
“Yes, and...” the Chinese youth started to reply, and then cut himself off. “Quiet, everybody! They must have a portable radio with them. They’re filling the air with word about us. Wait a moment while I listen. Maybe we can outwit them.”
Harry Chan said “a moment” but it seemed to Randall that he lived a whole lifetime of tingling fears and doubts before he heard the Chinese youth’s voice again.
“The alert has been sent to every base for miles and miles around,” Harr Chan informed Randall and Jimmy Joyce. “They believe ours is the same mysterious plane that shot down two Zeros early this evening. They are ordering night fighter squadrons to proceed from Kanazawa at once. We can’t possibly fly that crow course now, Red. The air will be filled with Jap planes. And those devils don’t have to shoot us down, you know. It will be their joy to fly into us and kill themselves, too!”
Randall switched on his instrument light and looked at the fuel gauges. A worried frown creased his brows, and he licked his lips. There was fuel enough in the tanks to get them back to Kiaochow, but they could not afford to do much fooling around getting there.
“How much farther would it be, Harry, by way of Tokyo?” he asked.
“A little under two hundred miles,” the Chinese youth replied. Then with a little cry of surprise, he added hastily, “Tokyo? What in the world are you thinking?”
“I’m trying to out-think the Japs,” Randall spoke into his intercom mike. “We can’t go straight ahead because there will be too many of them looking for us. Why not do the very thing they’d least suspect? I mean, they must figure that we know they are hunting us, and that the logical thing for us to do would be to head out to sea as fast as we can. But, instead, we fool them. We bear southeast and go right over Tokyo. We get well south of it, and then cut over straight west. Can you keep us on a course home then, Harry?”
“Yes, I’m sure I can,” the Chinese youth replied. “But, Red! Tokyo! They’re sure to have a cons
tant patrol over Tokyo after yesterday’s raid.”
“Sure,” Randall replied grimly. “But they’ll hear our Jap engine and will think we’re part of the patrol. Don’t you see? They’ll be looking for us way to the west over the Sea of Japan, and not right over their own darn capital city. Well, what do you fellows say? Do we try to pull a fast one on them, or do we keep west and try to skip through what they’ve got out hunting for us? Make it snappy. We’re using up precious gas every second.”
“I say Tokyo!” Jimmy Joyce sang out. “I think you’ve got something there, Red. Besides, maybe we’ll see some of the fires still burning from the bombs Doolittle and his boys dropped. Sure, Tokyo is my vote.”
“And you, Harry?” Randall asked quickly. “What’s your vote?”
“Why Tokyo, of course,” Harry Chan replied with a little laugh. “If anybody is going to be crazy, then let us all be crazy together.”
“Our friend, the diplomat!” Randall chuckled. “Okay, Harry, give me the course. Tokyo, here we come!”
Chapter Fifteen – Eagles’ Roost
RANDALL SHIFTED HIS position in the seat, licked his dry lips, and squinted again out beyond the spinning propeller and strained his eyes to catch any flicker of light. But it was as it had been for the last thirty minutes. There was the same wall of black night in front of him.
“Shouldn’t we be over Tokyo soon, Harry?” he asked over the intercom.
“We should be there in another moment or two, Red,” the Chinese youth replied quietly. “After all, they must have the city blacked-out, you know. We probably won’t see it until we’re almost on top of it.”
“What about the fires from Doolittle’s bombs?” Jimmy Joyce interjected. “They must be burning still.”
“Look ahead, everybody, and a shade to the right!” Randall broke in excitedly. “See that faint glow in the sky? That’s from some kind of a fire, or I’ll eat my helmet. There’s Tokyo ahead, for certain. We didn’t see it before because we’re keeping low altitude. And, hey! There’s another glow to the left! Hats off to Doolittle and his boys! They really must have dumped a few on that place!”
“And that was only the beginning, only the beginning!” Jimmy Joyce shouted. “Just wait, you little rats! Just wait until they really start coming down!”
As though the Showa Sho had suddenly flown around from behind a mountain, the vast area that was Greater Tokyo stood out in bold relief against the waters of Tokyo Bay. Randall counted not two but six glows of red that were obviously fires, still raging unchecked almost forty hours after the raid. The rest of the city was blacked-out but the light of the flames made the darkened buildings stand out clearly. Randall tried to figure out what parts of the city were burning, but it was impossible to tell. There was only one thing that he did know definitely. Those fires were burning military objectives. He was sure that every one of the Yank raiders must have had a special target on which to dump his precious bombs. He was sure that those six glows of flame were evidence that the targets bad been bit.
“Boy, if we only carried bombs” Randall breathed as be stared at the fires. “If we only had one bomb. I bet that right now just one bomb would send those rats down there climbing up each other’s back, and...”
He cut off the rest with a strangled cry of alarm, and booted the Showa Sho hard over to the left. And just in the nick of time, too, because some other plane streaked by so close on his right that he thought he heard the roar of its engine. An instant later the shimmering white beams of half a hundred searchlights suddenly poked their way up into the night sky, and began to sway back and forth.
“Keep clear of those searchlight beams, Red!” Jimmy cried excitedly over the intercom.
“Give us all the speed you can,” Harry Chan broke in. “I can hear their defense area stations on the radio. They seem to suspect something. They are ordering all planes to pass through those beams, and then flash their signal number for identification. Keep clear of those beams, and give us all the speed you can. This is serious!”
“You telling me?” Randall grunted as he shoved the throttle open the last half inch, and nosed the plane down even closer to the ground. “Hold onto your hats, and keep your eyes skinned behind. Some of them upstairs may catch our silhouette against one of those fires and start piling down. We’ve got to keep low and just about knock their hats off as we go by. Watch it, fellows!”
Holding the control stick with both hands, Randall thundered the Showa Sho down until no more than three hundred feet of air were between him and the rooftops of Tokyo. Out of the corner of his eye he saw one of the fires real close as the plane streaked along. The searchlights were just ahead, and his job was to rip the plane between two beams of light, and be off before those manning the lights could crank them around. It was going to be touch-and-go; he realized that, and for an instant he was sorry that he had made the mad decision to try to out-fool the Japanese by making his escape right over their capital city. But whether he had been crazy or not did not matter now. He was over Tokyo, and the only thing left for him to do was to get away from Tokyo, right between two of those swinging searchlight beams just as fast as the prop-churning Showa Sho could take him.
And then he was racing through the space between two swinging beams, and in his spinning imagination it was as though the side reflection of the two beams lighted up the whole plane for all of Tokyo to see. He thought he heard Harry Chan shout something over the intercom, but he was too busy ducking the bomber down even closer to the rooftops to take the time out to call back.
Presto! He was through between the swinging lights, and plunging ahead through darkness once more. To play it safe, he eased up the nose for altitude, then leveled off. A moment later, as he heard the dull sound of anti-aircraft fire behind him, he swung the Showa Sho hard to his left, streaked across the shore line, and out over the waters of the Pacific. At that exact instant he heard the savage yammer of the Showa Sho’s rear guns. The yammer of other guns above and behind blended in, and then suddenly only the Showa Sho’s guns were firing. They ceased too, and off to the right rear a ball of fire came alive in the night sky. It hung there for a second, as Randall glanced back over his shoulder. Then it started moving down, gathering terrific speed with every foot it fell.
“That one yours, Jimmy?” Randall gulped into his intercom.
“That’s right!” young Joyce called back. “And the dirty rat darn near sneaked up on us. Just happened to catch him against the stars. Change course pronto, Red. That falling plane is a swell beacon for any of the others that are around. And I see a lot of exhaust plumes way up behind. Get this thing going.”
Randall followed Jimmy Joyce’s suggestion and promptly changed his course to due south. Twice more he thought he caught the sound of aerial gunfire behind him, but he was not sure. And then a strained, harsh laugh from Jimmy Joyce’s lips jerked his head around in a hurry.
“What...?” he began and stopped.
Far behind, and high up in the air just over Tokyo, was a great ball of fire. Even as Randall stared at it, the ball of fire broke in half, and the two halves went arcing down toward earth, leaving behind long trails of sparks and smoke.
“Go to it, you rats!” Jimmy’s voice rang in Randall’s earphones again. “Go ahead! Run into each other. I hope the whole lot of you break your dirty rotten necks!”
“You can say that again for me!” Red cried, and turned front again. Then, “You still with us, Harry? How’d you like Tokyo? And how soon do I turn off onto the road home? Boy! That was sort of something while it lasted!”
“For four years have I been a soldier in my father’s army,” the Chinese youth said. “And many things of war have I seen. But what has happened tonight will remain first in my memory always. My American friends, I salute you in the name of all China.”
“And we salute you right back, Harry!” Jimmy Joyce called back to him. “Don’t forget, Red was just the chauffeur, and I just the passenger. You were the one who got us
to Takahara, Harry.”
“Right!” Randall echoed loudly. “And you’ll be the one, too, to get us home. Let’s have a course, Harry. My guess is that we’re pointing toward the Fiji Islands, not China. So let’s have the course. Nothing can stop us now!”
Almost a thousand miles later, when the coast of China was under the leading edges of the Showa Sho’s wings, Fate flung up the last barrier against those three stout-hearted air eagles. It was Harry Chan who got the report on the radio, and his voice was tight as he spoke to Randall over the intercom.
“I have just contacted my father’s radio station!” he called out. “We cannot land there!”
“Can’t land there?” Red shouted. “What do you mean? We’ve got to land there! This engine’s practically running on pure air right now!”
“There is a storm in the mountains!” the Chinese youth cried back to him. “It will reach the field before we do. They suggest that we circle about until the storm passes. Then they will put out flares.”
“Circle, nothing, Harry!” Randall said. “We can’t! We haven’t got enough gas left. We’ll just about make the field as it is. Is there any other field close by that the storm won’t hit?”
“None,” came the answer. “There is one to the south, but it is in the hands of the Japanese. My father’s field is the only one we can land on, but we cannot do that now!”
“We’re right on course for the field now?” Red asked.
“That’s right,” the young Chinese replied. “Seven minutes, unless the storm stops us, and we should be there. But, Red…!”
Red Randall Over Tokyo Page 11