Doc Savage: The Ice Genius (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 12) (26 page)

DOC SAVAGE was working on the Japanese captain, who was so stiff he could not be seated properly.

Olden sat across the aisle, wringing his hands, practically beside himself. The sudden reversal of his fortunes had only started to sink in.

“You should be dead,” he said petulantly.

Working to manipulate the Japanese officer’s spine, the bronze man said, “As a trap, your snare was rather obvious.”

“Obvious how?”

“When we flew over the camp, there were no signs of people moving about, nor any horses, and that was suspicious.”

“Mongols go to bed early. You know that.”

“There was also the fact that the clothes you are wearing were impregnated with a chemical that glows green under ultra-violet light,” added Doc. “Spying you lying on that hill gave the snare away.”

Cadwiller Olden looked down at his clothes, which were the same togs he had worn when he left Doc Savage’s strange institution in upstate New York.

“My duds gave me away?” bleated the little man, aghast.

Doc nodded. “All persons who are kept at the College wear such garb in case of escape. It stood to reason that if you were hiding on high ground, there was danger below.”

Captain Kan was coming out of his trance, or whatever it was. He tried to jump out of his seat and tear at the bronze man standing over him.

Showing no great effort, Doc Savage forced the Japanese officer into a seated position and held him there with one irresistible hand.

“We meet again,” said Doc Savage. “I see that you still hold the rank of captain.”

Captain Kan said nothing. He skinned lips off his teeth, which were clenched, hissing like an annoyed viper.

“Since we are so far from water,” stated Doc, “I am forced to conclude that you are now an intelligence officer, perhaps a member of the
Tokkeitai,
the Secret Service Branch of the Imperial Navy
.
This is a quite a fall in status after being commander of your own Naval vessel.”

The hissing ceased abruptly. That was the only outward sign the Japanese officer gave that Doc Savage had guessed correctly.

Finally, the Captain said, “It appears that I am your prisoner, Savage-
san
.”

“It would seem so,” agreed Doc. “My chief interest is in the whereabouts of the individual extracted from the ice.”

“I will never tell you that!” spat Kan.

Doc Savage called over, “Monk, fetch the truth serum.”

The Captain’s almond eyes popped into roundness.

Nothing was said until Monk Mayfair returned with a charged syringe, and Doc Savage jabbed the needle into the officer’s shoulder, not stripping the uniform sleeve back.

It took about two minutes for the serum to take hold, at which point the Captain started speaking in a noticeably slurred voice. He tried to fight it, but to no avail. Doc held him down with one hand, showing no effort in doing so.

In Japanese, Doc asked, “Where is the man from the ice cave?”

In slow, mushy words, Captain Kan replied, “Tamerlane-
san
is drilling his new army in the valley west of here.”

“How many men does he command?”

“Hundreds. More are being recruited every day. There are many Mongols or half-Mongols living in Manchukuo.”

“Why did you attempt to kill me and my men?”

Perspiration popped out on the dry, sandstone-hued forehead. “It was a directive from Tokyo. The generals understood that you represented as great a danger to their ambitions as the U.S. Pacific Fleet. I was given the task of liquidating you, in part to atone for my failure to best you during the lamentable affair of the Buddha of Ice, but also because of my experience in fighting you in the South China Sea.”

Doc Savage replied nothing to that. He reached out and did a further manipulation of the Captain’s neck. This produced a different effect, rendering the man senseless. His head nodding forward, his chin coming to rest on his uniform blouse buttons, the officer simply fell asleep in his seat.

Witnessing all this, Cadwiller Olden asked weakly, “What about me?”

“We will discuss that later,” Doc told him.

Lunging forward to the cockpit, Doc took the empty seat beside Renny.

The aircraft was equipped with dual controls. The bronze man seized the control yoke and expertly maneuvered the plane on a westerly heading.

“I guess we’re going after that Mongolian horse army?” asked the big-fisted engineer.

Doc Savage said, “Yes. With any luck, we can be out of Manchuria by midnight.”

Chapter XXXIV

BACKFIRE TRAP

DOC SAVAGE PILOTED the leviathan amphibian, navigating by feel as well as through infra-red flood-lamps distributed about wings and embedded in the streamlined boat-shaped hull. In the cockpit, he and Renny wore special goggles in order to perceive the darkened terrain below. The landscape looked like a black-and-white moving picture, with deep shadows and stark, high-contrast lights.

Renny rumbled, “Looks like a valley up ahead. I spy armies of horses picketed, too.”

Doc nodded. Wordlessly, he dropped the plane and banked in order to get a better view. What he saw caused his lips to part and his unearthly trilling issued forth, low and vague but distinctly surprised.

Renny boomed, “Holy cow! Look at the army he’s already assembled!”

It was true. Although the number of warriors was not great, the collection of horses reached into the hundreds. Not many men were moving about, but what could be seen suggested a significant number of warriors had been assembled.

Monk bustled forward, asked, “What do you suppose they’re up to?”

Before anyone could answer, Johnny Littlejohn offered an opinion.

“When Tamerlane expired, he was bent upon conquering China. Perhaps he is still of that mind.”

Studying the terrain, which consisted of lowland valleys, Doc Savage commented, “It may be possible to land.”

“Possible,” grunted Renny. “Sure. But where do we find that iron-featured gargoyle in all that crowd? More importantly, how do we go about it without getting riddled by arrows or hacked to pieces by scimitars?”

Doc Savage seemed not to have an immediate answer to that question.

Finally, he said, “We will land and see what can be accomplished on the ground.”

Doc wrestled the plane about, scrutinizing the ground below. It was scrubland. Not a lot of trees. Very few boulders. Landing seemed practical, if risky. Ideally, they would have dragged the field several times to be certain, but these were not ideal conditions. Even on this cloudy night they would be seen soon enough.

Carefully, Doc brought the plane in line, dropped the landing gear.

From the back, a hoarse voice could be heard asking plaintively, “Are we landing?”

“Pipe down,” said Monk. “You caterpillar.”

Cadwiller Olden would not pipe down. “Are we landing? We’re landing out here? Isn’t that dangerous?”

No one replied to that anxious question.

Olden had his concerned face pressed to a cabin window and was peering down. He could see very little, owing to the absence of landing lights and the fact that he did not have a pair of infra-red goggles.

There was enough light, however, to make out the sea of felt tents, and the unmistakable backs of shaggy-maned ponies.

Launching himself from his seat, the minute man charged for the cockpit, screaming at the top of his lungs, “Don’t land! Don’t land!”

“Why not?” thumped Renny.

“It’s too dangerous!”

Long Tom shot out of his seat, collared the agitated midget, and forcibly marched him back to his seat, planting him there. “You stay put, you buzzard bait,” he growled.

“But we could die!” Olden insisted.

Doc Savage was by this time concentrating on his landing. His flake-gold eyes shot back and forth, ready to pull back on the control yoke if he spotted any obstruction along the natural runway.

There would be little enough time to pull up, but the bronze man trusted in his piloting skills, which verged upon the miraculous.

So intent was Doc on the stretch of natural terrain standing out in stark contrast that he had little time to pay heed to what was transpiring on either side of his sweeping wings.

Renny and the others, of course, were watching from every angle with anxious attentiveness.

It was Ham who spotted the trouble first.

“WHY are oxen lined up out there?”

On the opposite side of the cabin, Monk Mayfair muttered, “I see a bunch of oxen over here, too.”

Doc Savage’s head shifted to the left and then to the right, and he saw that up ahead numerous oxen loitered in two lines, with their posteriors facing one another, spaced well apart.

By this time the landing gear had been cranked down, and they were hurtling along, only yards away from the strangely-grouped animals.

The positions of the oxen struck the bronze man as suspicious. Instinctively, he hauled back on the control wheel, seeking to regain altitude.

It was a prudent move, but it was too late.

Suddenly, men in Cossak-like Mongolian costumes jumped up from concealment and fell to beating the oxen, causing them to lurch forward.

The oxen charged in opposite directions, revealing long lengths of chain that had been buried in the dirt. These now jumped into view, snapped taut by muscular teams of oxen pulling in opposition. For the chains were yoked at both ends to the moving beasts.

With a mighty heave, Doc tried to pull up, but the landing wheels snagged the chains—with calamitous results.

The nose wheel simply snapped off. The sound of it being twisted off its mounting was nerve-shattering.

It was a mere prelude to what followed. The unfortunate oxen were yanked off their feet, to be dragged screaming in frightened consternation by the surviving wheels as they snagged taut chain and hurtled forward.

The combined weight of the oxen, as well as the smashing of snapping chain against hull, brought the aircraft careening around, shedding its wheels and striking the ground forcefully.

The aircraft was well constructed; it did not fall apart. It made a terrible screaming and screeching as it slid along the ground on its belly. The noise that filled the cabin assaulted the ears and made them think that their remaining lives were measured in seconds.

There was nothing Doc Savage could do. He held onto the control wheel by force of habit. The plane slid along, began to skew and then turn half around until it lurched to a tilting stop.

The shock of landing held them in their seats far longer than would have been normal. Even Doc Savage was a little slow to react. Possibly the bronze man was not certain until the last that they would also survive.

Then, he jumped from his seat and flung down the aisle, checking on his men.

Ham and Long Tom, the lightest members of the group, had been flung about until they were no longer in the seats they originally occupied. Monk and Ham had traded places somehow. Captain Kan had ended up in back, a tangle of limbs, with Habeas the pig splayed atop him. There was no sign of Cadwiller Olden.

Doc Savage hunted around and found the midget cowering beneath a seat. Doc reached down and pulled him free.

Olden was slightly dazed. But his eyes soon cleared.

“I told you not to land,” he complained bitterly.

Doc stated, “You knew about this trap.”

A weird wolfish grin crawled upon the midget’s countenance. “I figured in case you missed the first trap, it was smart to have this one in reserve.”

“Clever,” said Doc without emotion.

“I live by my cleverness,” declared Cadwiller Olden.

“One day you may become too clever for your own good,” warned the bronze man.

“That dark day,” retorted the little rascal, lifting his perfect chin defiantly, “will never dawn.”

Then, the air was full of excited war cries intermixed with the pounding thunder of horses’ hooves.

Cadwiller Olden’s weird grin grew foxy. “Here come Tamerlane and his pack. All fired up for the slaughter.” His hound voice grew shrill with anticipatory delight.
“Yours, you big brass monkey!”

Chapter XXXV

THE EMPTY BELLY

DOC SAVAGE RAPPED out urgent orders.

“Arm yourselves. We will make a stand here.”

Growling, Monk Mayfair checked his supermachine pistol, knocked out the broken glass from one mangled cabin windowframe. The others took a leaf from his book, and fell to punching clear windows out of which to shoot.

Seeing this, Cadwiller Olden said sneeringly, “You might as well give up right now. You’re outnumbered.”

Long Tom pointed out, “You’re in here with us, shaver.”

Olden winked mischievously. “Think again. That’s the rescue party. They’re coming to save me.”

No one said anything to that. They were too busy checking their weapons and preparing to open up on their attackers.

Mongol warriors came charging in the time-honored fashion of men of their breed. They lifted out of their saddles, virtually standing on their stirrups as they fitted arrows and prepared to let fly.

The first wave struck the hull of the crippled bird like the hammering of hailstones. The sound was nerve-jarring.

That was when Monk and the others began cutting loose. Supermachine pistols hooted and blared, stuttering relentlessly. In the dark it was difficult to pick out individual targets, but also unnecessary.

The weapons spit out slugs in swarms, like furious bees. Mongols began dropping into their saddles, then out of their saddles. This did not discourage the survivors in the slightest.

The grimly silent warriors charged them, forming a threatening circle of riders, much in the fashion of Comanches harrying an old pioneer wagon train, but without the bloodcurdling war cries.

Monk ran to the other side of the plane, dashed out window glass, and resumed firing. The others joined in. They did a pretty good job of whittling down their attackers. But there were too many of them.

Seeing the meager results of all the shooting, Doc Savage said, “Conserve ammunition.”