The Avenger 30 - Black Chariots (11 page)

Down below, the young blond Kurt smiled hopefully as Danker climbed down the ladder. “You have good news, Herr . . . that is, Mr. Danker, sir?”

“Idiot,” Danker said. He realized he was still carrying the binoculars. Snorting, he flung them at the nearest wall of the cavern.

“Something terrible has happened, sir?” asked Kurt, his smile dropping from his face.

“Where’s Cole?” asked Nellie. She and Jennifer, still tied, were against the wall with two armed men standing nearby.

“That, my dear Miss Gray, is a question I am not, unfortunately, able to answer.”

“What do you mean? Isn’t he coming here?”

Danker said, “He was supposed to, yes.”

“Has there been . . . a crash?”

“All I know is that there is a very formidable sand storm in progress outside now,” said Danker. “Dirks and your smirking associate were due to land within moments after we did. I do not know what has delayed them.”

“If they crashed—” began Kurt, slapping his forehead.

“See that these two young ladies are made comfortable in the barracks area,” said Danker. “I must make preparations for any eventuality.” He left them.

Jennifer rubbed her wrist. “You’re fond of him, aren’t you?”

The two of them were locked in a narrow room with two bunks in it.

“Of whom? You mean Cole Wilson?” Nellie sat down on the edge of one of the bunks and dangled her feet.

“Yes, I was noticing the way you two act together and I—”

“We’re part of a group, that’s all,” said Nellie quickly. “I’m equally fond of all the members in the Justice, Inc., team.”

“Oh,” said Jennifer. “Perhaps, being an outsider, I didn’t see what I was supposed to. Do you think Cole may have been able to take the ship away from Dirks?”

“That’s what I’m hoping,” said Nellie. She left the bunk and began circling, slowly, the room that was their prison. “If there really is a sand storm up there, well, I don’t know.”

“He knows how to handle a plane, doesn’t he?”

“Cole’s an excellent pilot,” said the little blonde. “Well, I mean, they all are. You have to be, to work with Dick Benson.”

“What’s he like, the Avenger?”

Nellie didn’t immediately answer. “It’s difficult to put into words,” she said at last. “He’s unlike anyone else I’ve ever met.”

“He may have received that message Cole sent out,” said Jennifer.

“Yes,” said Nellie, “so we can probably count on somebody getting here eventually to spring us from this joint.” She jabbed a fist into her palm. “I’d like, though, if you want the truth, to get us free and clear of here by myself.”

“How?”

“That’s the snag,” admitted Nellie.

Everything was a dusty chill blue.

“Banshees,” muttered Cole, managing to rub a hand over his face. “Is that banshees I hear howling out there?”

He opened his eyes further and took a deep breath.

“Come to think of it, I’ve never heard a banshee howl.”

Something was keeping him from rising. Something heavy, a dead weight atop him.

“I say, Dirks, old fellow, what say you grab your socks and get off your ox, as we used to say around . . . Oh, Lord.”

He realized that Dirks would never, of his own will, move again. The big man’s skull had an impossible dent in it, smeared with blood and hair.

“Excuse the rude remarks, old man.” Straining, Cole managed to roll the dead man off him.

Dirks thudded to the floor of the cockpit. His body was not yet stiff. It assumed a new, folded-in position.

Rubbing the side of his head, Cole said, “Well, now, let’s get our bearings, Captain Nemo.” He glanced up at the cockpit cover.

Everything looked very odd out there. And the howling went on, seeming to shake the fallen chariot with its intensity.

Cole checked his wristwatch. It said eleven, but didn’t seem to be working any more.

“It seems to be morning out there,” observed Cole, “which would indicate I was out all night.” He shifted and worked himself up into the pilot seat. “Wonder if they put radios in these things? Nope, not a sign of one. And all the other instruments seem to be in worse shape than my watch.” He fisted a bent compartment door until it fell open. “There seems to be a bit of rations in here.” He took out a packet of crackers and a Thermos. He jiggled the bottle and got a gurgling response. “Something liquid, anyway.”

The chariot gave a violent shudder and seemed to take a small hop across the ground.

“Ah, yes, Wilson, is your head sufficiently clear to take in what that is that’s going on out there?” he said to himself. “Yes, sir, it seems to be a fullblown sand storm.”

Sand, and wind worried the cockpit, buffing at it.

“Sooner or later, someone’s likely to spot this downed curiosity,” Cole said. “Of course, it might be some Air Corps boys, and then again it might be Danker. So the question seems to be, do I stay here and wait, or do I leave my cocoon and brave the elements?”

Frowning, he unscrewed the lid of the Thermos.

Val Hamblin noticed his hands. They were folded in his lap. The professor moved them and gripped the arms of the blue chair he found himself sitting in.

It was very odd. He knew where he was, and yet he didn’t. The here and now was somewhat blurry, not as vivid as the past—as the night they’d grabbed him on campus, in the grove of maples behind the faculty club.

By pressing down with his hands, Hamblin pushed up out of the chair.

That was a long time ago, when he was drugged and brought here. He realized that.

Weeks ago. No, wait. It was more like months. Yes, they’d kept him drugged, under their control for months here.

Until tonight.

Danker had rushed off, some emergency. No one had remembered to give Hamblin the injection that would keep him under their control. He’d been put in his room, as usual, but there had been no injection.

“Jennifer,” said the professor now, remembering more. “She’s here, too.”

He realized that although the effects of the drugs were wearing off, he was still not completely himself.

“Got to get out of here,” he told himself. “Get out and find Jenny.”

The door of his room, he remembered, was never locked.

No need to lock it. They were sure of him, sure that Professor Val Hamblin was docile and obliging.

Until tonight.

He turned the doorknob and pulled the door slowly inward.

There was a man out there. A large man with a pistol casually thrust in his belt. “Something wrong, prof?”

Hamblin put his hands to his temples. “Yes . . . it’s . . . you’d better come in to my room . . . at once.”

“Huh? You having some kind of fit, or what?”

The professor backed away, picked a heavy bookend up off the case behind him, and held it out of sight of the approaching guard. “Something terrible . . . has happened . . . in here.”

“What? What for cripes sake?”

“I’m myself again,” said Hamblin as he brought the bookend down on the man’s skull. “For you that’s terrible, for all of you.”

He was out in the now empty corridor before the guard finished collapsing on the floor.

MacMurdie replanted his feet and threw another punch.

“Ump,” said the underground guard who caught the blow in his ribs.

Mac followed with two jabs to the wobbling man’s jaw. “That should take care of ye, lad.”

It did.

Mac was free to continue on his way. The Justice, Inc., trio had separated once they’d gotten down under the Oasis complex. Thus far the Scot had encountered three members of Danker’s crew. Of Cole, Nellie, or the Hamblin girl he’d found not a trace.

“ ’Tis some setup these Axis skurlies have built for theirselves doon here,” he remarked to himself as he descended a ramp-like corridor.

There was another door at the ramp’s end. MacMurdie stopped there, listening.

From behind him came the sound of a piece of the metal wall sliding aside.

“Who the blazes are you, causing all this havoc down here?”

Mac turned to see who had asked the question.

Stepping out of the wall was a bearded man with an automatic trained on the Scot.

The giant Smitty tugged open the door he had found. To step through it he had to walk over the unconscious gunman he’d just now deposited on the floor.

“Holy smokes!” he exclaimed. “The black chariots!”

There were another half-dozen of the craft in this second underground hangar.

Walking softly, as he might in a cathedral, Smitty made his way across the hangar floor.

He stopped in front of one of the ships, hands on hips, and studied it, with slightly open mouth.

Then his mouth clamped shut and took on a grim expression. “This must be what killed Ralph, one of these babies.”

Curious, Smitty climbed up to the cockpit. He saw how to open it, and did so. “Yeah, pretty compact,” he observed after squinting in at the control panel. “You got to hand it to that Doc Hamblin. He knows his apples, that’s for sure.”

Smitty hunched his shoulders very slightly. Someone else was in the vast room with him. He could sense it.

Val Hamblin came around a turn in the corridor and stopped still.

Up ahead one of Danker’s men was stepping out of a door in the wall.

“But it’s not me he wants,” the professor realized.