The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Four (60 page)

Then, even as he watched, the first ship dipped a wing, and glancing down, he saw a tarp suddenly jerked from a gun on the yacht’s fo’c’sle-head. The
Erradaka
’s radio began to chatter fiercely, and then the gun roared and the shell crashed into the radio room, exploding with a terrific concussion. Fired rapidly, the second shell exploded at the base of the fo’m’st, dropping it in wreckage across the deck.

T
HEN THE FIRST SHIP DOVE
, and he saw the mass of people who had rushed out on deck suddenly scatter as the plane’s machine guns began chattering. He had time to notice the ship was an older Fiat. Not so bad. At best they’d do about two hundred miles per hour, which would give him a little margin. The other ship was a Boeing P-26, somewhat faster than his own ship.

He swung her over hard and put the Grumman into a steep dive. He came down on the tail of the Boeing, both guns firing. The Boeing, seeming to realize he was an enemy for the first time, pulled into a left chandelle.

Madden let it go and swung after the Fiat. For just an instant, he caught the outlaw ship full in his sights and saw a stream of tracers streak into his tail. Then Madden swung up in a tight loop, missing a stream of fire from the Boeing by a split second. He wheeled the Grumman around in a skid, but the Boeing was out of range, and the Fiat was climbing toward him.

He reached for altitude, saw pinkish tracers zip across his port wingtip, and went into a steep dive. Suddenly, he realized the yacht was right below him, her deck scattered with figures and a cluster of them around the gun. He pressed the trips on his guns and saw a man stagger and plunge over on his face.

The others scattered for shelter, and his guns swept the yacht’s deck with a flaming blast of machine-gun fire. Three more of the fleeing gunmen fell headlong. One of them threw up his pistol and fired, then his body jerked, fairly lifted from the deck by the burst of bullets. Madden banked steeply and saw the topmasts of the yacht miss him by inches.

His stomach felt tight and hard. He was in a spot, and knew it. Only a few feet above the water and the Boeing above and slightly behind, closing in fast. There was no chance or room to maneuver. He saw a stream of tracers cross his wing, missing by inches, then he glimpsed the looming hull of the
Erradaka
dead ahead. He clamped his jaw and flew straight at the huge liner.

His twin motors roaring, he swept down on the big ship, the Boeing right behind him. Then, just as it seemed he must hit, he jerked the Grumman into a quick, climbing turn, saw the starboard davits of the ship slip away beneath him, and he was climbing like a streak.

He glanced around, but the Boeing pilot had lost his nerve and swung off. Now he was desperately trying to close on the Grumman before Madden could get too much altitude. The Fiat suddenly loomed before Turk’s sights and he pressed the trips, and saw a stream of tracers pound into the fuselage of the plane. He saw the Fiat’s pilot jerk his head back, saw the man’s mouth open as from a mighty shout, and then the Fiat swung around and plunged toward the sea, a stream of orange fire behind it!

T
URK
M
ADDEN SWUNG
the Grumman around, driving toward the Boeing with all he had. The Boeing held, guns flaming, and steel-jacketed bullets punched holes in the Grumman’s wing, cracked the canopy and tore at the rudder. Then the other plane pulled up abruptly. In that split second the Boeing’s belly was exposed. Turk fired a burst past the undercarriage and into the body of the ship. Yet still the Boeing seemed unharmed.

Turk did a chandelle, brought himself alongside her even as he saw the pilot jerk off his goggles and hurl them from him. The ship was wavering drunkenly, and the pilot fell over the edge of the seat, arms dangling. With a long whine that cut across the nerves like a tight board shrieking in an electric saw, the Boeing spun and dropped, a huge pear-shaped flame stretching out and out as the plane fell into the sea.

Turk Madden swung the Grumman and headed toward the yacht. If only he had a bomb now. He shrugged—no use thinking of that. He saw the yacht’s gun was ready for another shot at the liner, and even as he went into a shrieking dive, he saw the flame leap from the muzzle of the gun and saw the gunners grab for another round. Then, he was spraying the deck with bullets, and he saw two men fall. Then something happened to the Grumman, or to him, and he jerked back on the stick and lifted the ship into a steep climb. But he felt sick now, and dizzy.

The ship wobbled badly, and he circled, let the ship glide in for a landing. It hit the waves, bucked a little. He cut the motor and tried to get up. The plane pitched in the sea and he slid to the floor.

He forced himself to his knees, startled to see the deck was red where he had rested. But he held himself there and pulled the tommy gun toward him. Even as he waited, he saw he was a little astern of the two ships, and about halfway between them.

Wissler wouldn’t sink him. He would need the plane now. His eyes wavered to the liner, and he saw she had a hole through her forepeak and another on the waterline. He wondered why she wasn’t moving, then looked aft and could see the steam steering-engine room was blasted. The splutter of a motor drew his attention and as the hull of the Grumman pitched up in the mild swell he saw a motorboat speeding toward him from the yacht.

He let the door swing open in case he fell and couldn’t lift himself to see, and then leaned against the edge. Below him the water was stained with a little red. He didn’t know where he was shot, and didn’t even believe he was. Yet there was blood.

This was going to be close. If Wissler wasn’t in that boat—but he would be. Leave it to Wissler to be there to kill the man who had hit so hard and fast. If he could cook Wissler, and maybe Karchel, there wouldn’t be any raiding of peaceful ships, nor any attacking of plantations. The others would scatter without leadership.

T
HE SPEEDBOAT SWUNG
in alongside and cut the motor. Just beyond the plane. They’d ease her in slowly now. Maybe.

Turk Madden grinned. Puccini tried to get tough with him back in the States, and Puccini was a big shot. All right. Now let Wissler see what it meant to cut himself a piece of this cake. He felt sick, but he lifted the machine gun. Then Steve Karchel saw him and yelled, his face dead white and his gun coming up. As the body of the plane slid upward and the boat sank a foot or two into the trough of a wave, Turk grinned.

There was the roar of the gun, and suddenly Steve Karchel’s chest blossomed with crimson. The man sagged at the knees and sat down, his chest half shot away. Madden turned the gun and swept the boat. Flame leaped from somewhere, and there was a shocking explosion. Madden felt himself getting sicker, and he clung to the door. When he opened his eyes, the motorboat was drifting just beyond the Grumman’s wing, and all aflame.

Then he saw Harry Wissler. He was standing in the stern, and his face was white and horribly red on one side from the scorching of the flames that were so close. The man’s lips were bared in a snarl of hatred, and he was lifting his six-gun carefully.

Funny, what a fellow remembered at a time like this. That Wissler always stuck with a revolver. No automatics for him. Well, okay. Possibly he’d like this one.

The tommy gun was gone somewhere. Slipped out the door, maybe. But not the Luger. Turk lifted it. The gun felt terribly heavy.

He heard a report, and something smashed into the doorjamb. Then he began firing. From somewhere another boat was approaching, but he kept shooting until the gun was empty.

Slowly, the hulk of the speedboat tipped, and with it all that was left of Harry Wissler slid into the sea.

W
HEN
T
URK OPENED HIS EYES
, he was lying in a clean white bunk and a couple of men were standing over him.

“Live?” one man was saying. “Sure, he’ll live. He was shot, but it was mostly loss of blood from these glass cuts in his head.” The doctor shook his head admiringly. “He certainly made a grand cleanup on that bunch of would-be pirates.”

Turk smiled.

“‘Has-been’ pirates, now,” he murmured as he passed out again.

Flight to the North

T
urk Madden nosed the Grumman down gently and cut his motor, gliding in toward the dark waters of the cove. A dead stick landing on strange water in the middle of the night, and no flares to be chanced—it was asking for trouble.

True he had been assured by the Soviet Intelligence that it could be done, that the cove was wide enough and deep enough, and there were no dangers to navigation.

“If I get away with this,” he muttered savagely, “anything can happen! And,” he added grimly, “it probably will!”

It was bright moonlight, and he swung in toward the still waters of the cove with no noise save the wind-wash past the plane. The dark water lifted toward him, the amphibian hit lightly, then slid forward to a landing.

He would turn her around before the ship lost momentum. Then if anything happened…

The shore was dark; ominously still. If Powell and Arseniev were there they were to signal with a flashlight, but there was no signal. Madden hesitated, fuming inwardly. If he took off and left them, it would mean abandoning them to death. But if something had happened, if the plot had been discovered, then it would mean his own death to delay.

Suddenly he found himself wishing he was back in the East Indies running his airline in person instead of being up here in a lonely inlet on the coast of the Japanese island of Hokkaido waiting to pick up two secret agents.

From a single plane flown by himself, he had built his passenger, express, and freight service to three ships operating among the remote islands of the Indies. Then, wanting a change, he had taken a charter flight to Shanghai. From there he had flown for the British government to Vladivostok, only to be talked into flying down the coast of Japan to pick up Powell and Arseniev.

Arseniev he had known in China. He had been flying for Chiang Kai-shek when the OGPU agent had been working with Borodin and Galen.

He liked the Russian, and they had been through the mill together; so he accepted the offer.

Madden glanced shoreward again, tempted to take off. Then with a grunt of disgust he heaved his two-hundred-pound frame out of the pilot’s seat, let go his anchor, and got his rubber boat into the water. “This is asking for it,” he growled to himself, “but I can’t leave while there’s a chance they’re still ashore. If the Japanese found them now, a firing squad would be the best they’d get.”

The moonlight was deceiving, and the rocky shore was dark. Filled with misgiving, he paddled toward a narrow strip of beach. He made the boat fast to a log, and stepped out on the sand. Again he felt the urge to chuck the whole business, to get out while the getting was good. But he walked up the beach, stepping carefully.

It was too quiet, too still. Where were the men? Had they been captured? Had they merely failed to make it? Or were they here, without a light, unable to signal?

Loosening his gun in its holster, he stepped forward. He was rounding a boulder when he saw a shadow move. Instinctively, he crouched.

“Move,” a cool voice said, “and I’ll shoot.”

Turk knew when to stand still and when to move. Now he stood still. A dozen men materialized from the surrounding shadows and closed in. Swiftly, they took his gun and shoved him up the trail between them.

“Well,” he told himself, “this is it.” The Japanese had no compunctions about their treatment of foreigners under any circumstances, and spies—well, death would be a break.

Ahead of him was a low shack, barely discernible against a background of rocky cliffs. A voice challenged, and one of the Japanese replied, then a door opened, and they were revealed in a stream of light. Shoved rudely forward by his captors, Turk Madden almost fell through the door.

Two men were lying on the floor, bound hand and foot. One was a slender, broad-shouldered man with the face of a poet. The other was short, powerful, his face brick-red, his eyes frosty blue. The latter grinned.

“Sorry, old man,” he said, “we couldn’t make it. These blighters had us before we reached the cove.”

Madden turned around, squinting his eyes against the glare. There were six Japanese in the room, aside from one with the attitude of an officer who sat at a table studying a chart. There was a coal oil light on the table beside him. None of the men were uniformed, or showed any distinguishing marks. All were armed with automatics and rifles. One carried a light machine gun. Their behavior, however, was definitely military.

The officer looked at Turk, his eyes narrow and heavy-lidded. “An American?” The Japanese smiled. “You sound like one. I am Colonel Kito Matasuro. I once lived in California.”

“That makes us pals,” Madden assured him, grinning. “I was a deckhand once on a San Pedro tugboat.”

“But now I am a soldier and you are a spy,” Matasuro murmured. “It is most unfortunate—most sad—but you must be shot.”

He indicated Arseniev. “He will mean promotion for me. We have wanted him for some time. But like a shadow, he comes and goes. Now we have him. We catch three—we eliminate three.”

Turk was acutely conscious of the flat hard butt of his .380 Colt automatic pressing against his stomach. It was inside his coat and shirt, but in his present predicament it might as well have been on the moon.

Despite the harsh realization that his time was only a matter of minutes at best, Turk found himself puzzling over the situation. Why were these men, obviously military, on this stretch of lonely coast in civilian clothes? Why were they here at all? Only a short time before it had been reported devoid of human life, but now there were signs of activity all about him.

Matasuro turned and rapped out orders. “Sorry,” he said, getting to his feet, “I would like to have talked to you of California. But duty calls—elsewhere.”

With three of the men, he went out. From somewhere a motor roared into life, then another, and still another. A plane took off, and then the others followed. They sounded like pursuit jobs.

For a few minutes they stood in silence. Then Madden said, without looking around, “Fyodor, I’m taking a chance at the first break.”

“Sure,” the Russian said. “We’re with you.”

One of the Japanese soldiers stepped forward, lifting his rifle threateningly. He spoke angrily, in Japanese.

The door opened suddenly, and another Japanese came in. He was slim and wiry, his voice harsh. He merely glanced at the prisoners, then snapped orders at the three guards. Hurriedly, they cut the ropes that bound the ankles of the two Intelligence men, and jerked them to their feet. The officer and two soldiers walked out, and the guard behind shoved the prisoners into line and pointed to the door. Madden glanced quickly at Arseniev as the last of the men stepped out, leaving only the guard. “The table!” he snapped. Then he kicked the door shut with his foot, and lunging forward, struck the upright bar with his head. It fell neatly into the wide brackets.

Instantly, Arseniev kicked the table over and the light crashed and went out. Powell had wheeled and kicked the remaining guard viciously in the stomach. The man gasped, and fell forward, and the Britisher kicked him again, on the chin.

Turk, whose hands had not been tied, spun Arseniev around and stripped off the ropes that bound his wrists, then, as the Russian sprang to get the rifle, he did the same for Powell.

“Come on!” he hissed sharply, “we’re going out of here.”

Turk jerked the bar out of place and threw the door wide open. Outside, clear in the moonlight, stood the three Japanese, hesitating to shoot for fear of killing their comrade. Arseniev threw the rifle to his shoulder and fired, and they plunged outside. The officer had gone down, drilled through the face by the Russian’s shot, but the other two jerked their rifles up, too late. Madden’s automatic barked. Once…twice…One was down, the other fled, firing into the night.

“Get their guns, and let’s go,” Turk said. “My plane may still be okay.”

Running, the three men got to the beach and shoved off in the rubber boat. The amphibian floated idly on the still water where he had left it, and they scrambled aboard.

Turk almost fell into the pilot’s seat while Powell got the boat aboard, and the Russian heaved in the anchor.

The twin motors roared into life, and in a minute the ship was in the air. Turk eased back on the stick and began reaching for altitude. Glancing back they could see the flat space of the landing field.

“How many planes took off?” Turk asked. “Did you hear?”

“Twelve,” Arseniev said. He looked grave. “Where do they go? That is what I am thinking.”

“It has to be Siberia,” Turk said, at last. “If to China, why the disguise? If to my country, they would be bombers. Pursuit ships cannot reach Alaska from here.”

“If they go to make war,” Powell said, “they wouldn’t be in mufti. There’s more in this than meets the eye.”

“Maybe,” Turk suggested, “a secret base in Siberia from which they could strike farther west and south?”

Arseniev nodded. “Perhaps. And how many have gone before these? Maybe there are many. In the wilds of the taiga there are many places where hundreds of planes could be based.”

“What’s the taiga?” Powell asked.

“The forest that extends from the Urals to the Sea of Okhotsk, about twenty-five hundred miles from west to east, about seven or eight hundred north and south. I’ve been through part of it,” Turk said; “looks dark and gloomy, but it’s full of life. Miles and miles of virgin timber, lots of deer, bear, elk, and tiger in there.”

Turk leveled off at ten thousand feet, and laid a course for Vladivostok. His eyes roved over the instrument board, and he told himself again how lucky he was to have this ship. It was an experimental job, an improvement on the OA-9. No bigger, but much faster, with greater range, and capable of climbing to much greater heights. Also, it was armed like a fighting ship.

T
HE MEN SITTING
behind him were silent. He knew what they were thinking. If Japan had a base far back in the great forest of Asiatic Russia, they could strike some terrible blows at Russia’s rear while the Soviet was fighting a desperate battle with the invading Germans. It might well be the turning point of the war, and the three men—American, Russian, and British—had a like desire to see Germany defeated.

“You know Ussuria?” Turk asked Arseniev.

The Russian shrugged. “Who does, except in places? There are still wild lands along the ocean, and in the north. I am from the Ukraine, then Moscow, Leningrad, and Odessa. I have been all over Russia proper, but Siberia?” He shrugged once more.

Turk banked slightly, skirting the edge of a cloud. He was watching for the coastline. “I lived there a year when I was kid.”

Powell looked at him in astonishment. “Aren’t you a Yank?”

Madden grinned. “Sure, I was born in Nevada. But when I was two my father went to the consul’s office in Cairo. Then to Zanzibar, then to Tiflis in Georgia. My mother died in Zanzibar, and when I was eleven the revolution broke out. About the same time the old man died of pneumonia.

“Me, I lived around the towns of southern Russia, sleeping in haystacks and wagons, eating when I could. I lived a few months in the Urals, and then went to Siberia. I took up with an old hunter there, and lived and hunted with him for a year. He got killed, so I went south to Samarkand, and into India.

“I got back to the States when I was sixteen. Stayed two years, then went to sea. I’ve been back twice since.”

Arseniev rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “You know a place? Where planes could land?”

Turk nodded. “I was thinking of it. Koreans used to hunt gold up in there. It might be some Japs came with them. It’s a small lake almost due north of Lake Hanka and back up in the Sihoti Alin Mountains.”

“Want to try it?” Arseniev suggested. “We could refuel at Khabarovsk.”

“Hell,” Powell interrupted, “why get him into it? He’s a commercial flier. You can’t get paid enough for that kind of work, and taking a ship like this where it may get into unsupported action isn’t sensible!”

“I agree,” Turk said, grinning over his shoulder, “so we’ll go. We’ll land at Khabarovsk, refuel there, and you’d better tell them at Vladivostok what happened. Then we’ll hop up there and look around.”

In his mind, Turk went back over those Ussurian hills and forests, trying to locate the lake. He remembered those years well enough, and how he and the old Russian had hunted ginseng, trapped mink, and lived on the berries and game of the forest. They had gone west from the forks of the Nahtohu River, and come on the lonely little lake, scarcely a half-mile broad, and three-quarters of a mile long.

L
EAVING THEIR PLANE
at the field, the three men divided. Turk drifted down the streets, then found a quiet bar, and seated himself. He was eating a bowl of
kasha
and some cheese and black bread when three men sauntered in. They sat down near him, ordering vodka.

One was a huge man with a black beard, slanted Mongolian eyes, and an ugly scar along his cheekbone. His nose had been broken, and when the man reached for his glass, Turk saw the man’s hands were huge, and covered with black hair. The other two were more average looking, one short and fat, the other just a rather husky young man with a surly expression. The bearded man kept glaring at Madden.

He ignored it, and went on with his eating. Knowing his clothing set him off as a foreigner, Turk thought it was merely the usual curiosity. The big man talked loudly, and the three looked at Turk, laughing. Then the big man said something louder, still in Russian. Above the noise in the room Turk was unable to distinguish the words.

It was obvious they did not believe he understood Russian, and it began to be equally obvious that the big man was seeking to provoke a quarrel. The crowd in the bar did not like the big man, he could see, but he himself was a foreigner. Finally, above the rumble of voices, he heard the big man use the words “dumb” and “coward.”

Turk looked up suddenly, and something in his glance stopped the voices. He spoke to the man serving drinks. “Vodka,” he said, motioning to the gathering, “for those. For these—nothing.”