Doc Savage: Phantom Lagoon (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (7 page)

Doc spotted the man kneeling at the door. He was working with something there. Wires showed.

“Bomb!” warned Doc.

No sooner had he said it, than the man retreated to the reception room. A flick of another switch showed clearly that they were rushing out into the corridor, and as far away from Doc’s offices as humanly possible.

Doc Savage realized then the magnitude of the danger they faced.

“Escape!” he rapped out, his voice metallic and urgent.

Doc had trained his men well. That one word was all they required.

They raced for a far wall. Doc grabbed Hornetta and once again ignominiously slung her over his shoulder.

Hornetta had no comprehension of what next transpired. She was dimly aware that a large section of outer wall somehow opened. She was dumped into something resembling a capsule, such as department stores send through their pneumatic tubes, only this one was of gigantic size.

Unnerving sounds—hissings and clanks—preceded the wildest ride of her life. The capsule dropped. All dropped with it, man and monkey, girl and pig. It was as if the bottom of the world had dropped out from beneath them.

Unexpectedly, the capsule changed course, corkscrewing madly.

It ran horizontally for what seemed an eternity, but was only hurtling seconds. Then it kicked upward and came to a skull-jarring stop.

All sprawled there amid padded quilted cushions for long seconds.

Doc Savage was the first to rouse to activity. He threw open a double set of hatches and began helping everyone out.

“Boy,” enthused Monk, windmilling his long, hairy arms. “That gets my blood pumpin’ every time!”

Ham climbed out and, predictably, fell to fussing with his clothes.

Hornetta found herself in a concrete blockhouse of some kind. She looked around. Behind her was a cavernous warehouse of some sort.

Lights were dim. Hornetta tried to make out the interior. She perceived great solid shapes cobwebbed in gloom. A spidery crane was the only thing that she could discern.

Gradually, light came on so as not to hurt the unaccustomed eye.

Hornetta was staring at a veritable fleet of modern aerial conveyances. A great four-motored amphibian was visible. Others included smaller planes and a gyroplane that looked a good ten years ahead of anything she had ever seen, or flown.

Hornetta was a connoisseur of aircraft and she had to resist an unladylike urge to whistle at the speedlines of the various craft.

There were also several boats ranging from a small speedboat to a sleek cabin cruiser docked in a water-filled basin. All were ultra-modern beauties. But then her gaze fell upon the submarine. It lay in a drydock trough. It was a razorback hog of steel, unlovely, and to all appearances unseaworthy. But she started toward it eagerly.

“How much to hire by the day?” she breathed.

No one answered her. They were too busy dogging the double hatches of what was a pneumatic car.

“I said, ‘How much?’ ” she repeated.

Doc Savage was in the act of throwing shut the outer hatch when a gush of foul black smoke struck him in the face.

“Blazes!” Monk gulped. “Blazes!”

DOC SAVAGE raced to a televisor plate. He manipulated several controls. Distant cameras were relaying closed-circuit images from the eighty-sixth floor of their headquarters.

But no images came. The frosted glass screen remained dark. Doc checked the circuits. All were in working order.

“This can mean only one thing,” he said gravely.

“What’s that?” Hornetta asked.

“Our headquarters has been destroyed.”

The eyes of all three men turned in Hornetta Hale’s direction. They were not pleased eyes to behold. Even the calm flake-gold orbs of Doc Savage contained a harsh metallic light.

Hornetta Hale thought fast.

“O.K.,” she said slowly and distinctly. “That hooey about a racing boat with gold in her keel instead of lead. That wasn’t true.”

“We know,” said Doc.

“It’s bigger than that,” Hornetta admitted.

“That much is obvious,” said Ham dryly.

“Yeah,” added Monk. “Them guys who just wrecked our headquarters aren’t garden variety thugs. They’re serious.”

“It’s bigger than you think,” said Hornetta. “It’s bigger than you can imagine.”

“Imagine it for us,” prompted Ham Brooks, wringing his cane.

“This thing is so big, it might change the course of history!” snapped Hornetta Hale with such force of conviction that all doubts about her veracity instantly evaporated.

Doc Savage requested, “The complete details, please.”

Hornetta hesitated. What she would have said was never known. The acerbic blonde wavered on the verge of confessing whatever tale she might have been willfully withholding.

But all thought of that fled when the door on the land side of the warehouse caved in.

A truck came rushing in. To the bumper was affixed a construct like the prow of a ship, made of two curved pieces of steel welded into a wedge. It was a plough or battering ram such as those the Department of Justice men affixed to their trucks in the hectic days of Prohibition.

Doc Savage rapped out, “Seek cover!”

Doc and his men scattered. They gave Hornetta the option of finding her own shelter. She did. Predictably, she ran for the submersible.

Men were dropping off the truck. They had submachine guns. Not Tommy guns, either. But modern military weapons.

They began unleashing lead like torrents of rain.

Gun thunder echoed. Bullets flew madly in all directions. There was a lot of gray gunsmoke, which began obscuring everything.

Monk and Ham unlimbered their compact supermachine pistols and began returning fire. The sound of giant bull fiddles filled the great space.

Doc normally went about unarmed. But he was not without resources. From his pockets, he extracted large steel grenades. Flipping firing levers, he began tossing them.

They produced violent noise concussion and smoke. The smoke was tinged with a malevolent ochre. That made the attackers think of mustard gas and they ceased all shooting to don gas masks of the type used in the First World War.

That gave Monk and Ham time and opportunity to use their machine pistols to good advantage. The tiny weapons moaned, hosing “mercy” bullets, hollow capsules which did not kill, but produced swift unconsciousness after breaking the skin of victims, thereby introducing a potent drug into surface blood vessels.

Attackers began dropping out.

Seeing the tide turn, Monk and Ham moved in, clapping fresh ammunition drums into their superfirers, Doc called out a sharp warning for caution. The bronze man had noticed something the others had not.

Too late. Some of the fallen raiders jumped to their feet and opened up on the hapless duo with vicious intent.

Monk and Ham broke in opposite directions, and beat one another to shelter. They hunkered down behind a spidery crane.

Doc raised his voice. “They are wearing some type of body armor!”

A man called out, “You think we don’t know about those trick bullets you guys use. We have on mailed union suits that will turn them babies.”

Monk howled. Ham groaned.

Throughout the warehouse—it was really a combination hangar and boathouse—Doc Savage had secreted many hidden controls. He found one such station and threw a lever.

At the far end of the hangar, which faced the Hudson River side of Manhattan, great roller doors swung open, admitting brilliant outdoor light.

This caused momentary consternation amid the attackers. They were still mixed in black smoke, but now the sudden light was throwing them into confusion.

Doc rapped out guttural orders in Mayan, the ancient language he and his assistants shared in common, and employed for secret communications.

They raced for a plane. Doc had directed them toward one in particular—a seaplane nearest the river.

They clambered aboard, closed the door.

“Where’s that gal, Hornetta?” Monk wanted to know.

Doc said, “In the sub. Safe. She dogged the main hatch after her.”

“We leavin’ her behind?”

“That remains to be seen,” Doc Savage said grimly. The bronze man knocked the engine into life.

Propeller slipstream began beating back, throwing the coiling poisonous-looking black smoke around. This added to the confusion of their attackers.

Releasing the brake, Doc jazzed the throttles. The plane started down the sloping concrete apron which dropped into the river.

Bullets began arriving. Snarling, they clipped the duralumin empennage and snapped at the tail.

Doc got the plane into the water. It wallowed. He threw the throttle all the way, and the speedy plane gave a lurch.

Gunmen surged onto the apron. Dropping to their stomachs, they took up stances that showed superb training and began shooting with methodical rapidity.

These men—whatever else they were—were marksmen. Hardly a bullet went awry.

The window glass on Doc Savage’s planes were as tough as modern science can manufacture tempered glass. That made them bulletproof—within reason.

An unreasonable quantity of lead began punishing the stuff. Glass was chopped out of the side windows. The windscreen cracked, then fell open. The tail became perforated, and started to come apart under the relentless hammer of storming steel. It was as if unseen sledges were at work.

Doc realized very quickly that attempting flight was hopeless.

A sudden whiff of aviation fuel gave the first warning of what was coming next.

“They got the tank!” Ham screeched.

“We’re sunk!” groaned Monk.

Doc Savage was pushing the speed ship as hard as he could. The hull pontoon was hammering across the river, trying to get on step.

The thundering aircraft never made it.

The relentless gunfire took its toll. Observers along the Jersey shore got the best sight. The plane was bouncing along the water without any preliminary flash or fire. It simply exploded.

A ball of red fire shot upward. Black smoke billowed up after it.

The detonation was not loud, compared to the pyrotechnics which accompanied it. But when it all subsided, there were flares and flame on the water and blackened debris began showering down, to show that nothing remained of Doc Savage’s plane.

A grisly silence followed.

Chapter VII

HORNETTA STINGS

AN EERIE INTERVAL of quiet followed the destruction of Doc Savage’s racing seaplane.

The last shards of wreckage finally fell on the heaving Hudson, to plunk beneath the waterline. A patch of oil burned for a time, then died down to faint, licking flames. Smoke continued to coil upward.

On the riverward side of the Hidalgo Trading Company warehouse, the attackers on the sloping concrete apron kept their eyes and their gun sights trained upon the water.

Their leader strode up. He was a fair-haired individual with anthracite-black eyes that might have been all pupil, and raw, sunburnt features.

“Any sign of
der bronzemann?”
he asked in his guttural native language.

“Nein.”

“If there is, treat him as a duck hunter treats a roosting fowl.”

The men kept their eyes on the water. But no heads bobbed to the surface.

The leader trained field glasses of expert workmanship on the smoky patch of burning oil.

“Der Mann aus Metall
is finished,” he said.
“Kaput.”

The others began picking themselves up off the concrete. They formed a rigid row as if at field inspection.

Fire engines wailed in the distance. They were drawing near.

“What about the meddling
fraulein,
Kolb?” asked one of the assembling men.

“We did not see her.”

Kolb demanded, “What do you mean—did not see her? Was she on the airplane or not?”

“We do not know.”

“She must have been. Search the entire place!”

“But—there is no time. Those are sirens.”

Making harsh faces, the black-eyed Kolb ground his teeth in exasperation.

“Torch this place. Blow it up. If the girl is still here, let it become her tomb.”

“Jawohl.”

They set about tipping over various fuel drums gathered from a storage area.

Some were rolled to the corners of the warehouse. Others were set in the center, among the aircraft hangared there.

The group retreated to the landward side of the building.

They began puncturing drums with well-placed rifle slugs. The stink of high-test gasoline filled the vast interior.

Oil-soaked waste rags were ignited, and open tins of kerosene tossed in.

Gouts of flames exploded. They made racing tongues of fire along the concrete flooring. Fire met fire. Combustible mixtures encountered other combustible mixtures.

The Hidalgo Trading Company was completely ablaze by the time the three machines fled the vicinity.

The fire engines arrived too late. Water hoses were unreeled and firemen fell to work at attempting to quench the spreading flames. But all to no avail.

Within an hour, all that remained of the Hidalgo Trading Company was a smoking brick shell that breathed malodorous, noxious smoke.

NIGHT had fallen by the time the exhausted firemen had collected their hoses and stowed away their equipment.

The warehouse was a total loss. Almost nothing of Doc Savage’s fleet had survived the ferocious conflagration.

Deep into the night, something could be heard in the ruin of a building.

A charred timber shifted. Another. A clattering of dry wood came. The rank odor of burnt wood assailed the nostrils. Had there been any nostrils to assail, that is.

In the dry dock of the boathouse section of the building, a hatch came open in stages. More timbers settled. That was what had caused the clattering.

On the razorback submersible, a hatch clanged all the way open. Coughing and hacking, a lithe form emerged.

“Damn that man!” choked Hornetta Hale.

What man she consigned to eternal fires remained unknown, however.

Hornetta concentrated on getting out of the still-smoking ruin without inhaling any more pungent odors.