The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Four (52 page)

Dodging and turning, he raced the boat for the coast beyond Tanjong Parigi. What he wanted wasn’t at Laiwoei, but at Tobalai off the east end of Obi Major. But there wasn’t a chance of retaining the launch. It was slower than other boats they soon would have in pursuit, and was unarmed except for the weapons they had themselves.

L
YSSY CAME UP
beside him. The Toradjas’s eyes were bright.

“Both yellow man dead,” he said. “You shoot plenty good, Captain. Where we go?”

“Ashore,” Jim said briefly. “You and London go through this boat. Get all the guns and ammunition you can find. Anything else that looks good. We’re going to have a fight of it. They don’t dare let us get away.”

Cutting the motor for an instant, he listened, and hearing the roar of motors behind him, opened up again. Tensely, he crouched over the wheel. The pursuit was getting under way faster than he had believed. It would be nip and tuck now, and if they got away it would be sheer luck, nothing less.

The motor wide open, he rounded the Tanjong and headed off down the coast, his wake a streak of white, boiling water. Spray beat against his face, and the two widening fans of water cut away from the knifelike bow.

The water was black and glistening, the night speckled with stars. Behind him, Big London and Lyssy crouched in the stern, rifles ready. Beyond the boat he saw at a glance, the sea was empty to the point, and along the coast down which they were running the jungle crowded to the very water’s edge.

Ponga Jim spun the wheel suddenly, and with his motor wide open, roared for the blackness of an opening under the mangroves. The launch shot through the hole like some insane monster of the sea, and hit the muddy shingle with such force that it ran halfway up the low bank before it stopped. Instantly, Jim cut the motor and leaped out.

“Grab the guns and let’s go!” he said. “They won’t find the boat for a while!”

CHAPTER VI

The launch was at least ten feet under the mangrove roots and out of sight from sea. They would have a good start, and fortunately, no two men in his crew were better bushmen than these two, Big London, who had grown up on the banks of the Congo, and Lyssy, the wandering warrior from the Toradjas’ highlands of Celebes.

Lyssy took the lead, and with almost instinctive skill, led them into a game trail. They started off at a fast trot. The trail led steadily upward toward the interior mountains. If it had only meant escape, Ponga Jim thought, he could have kept alive and safe for years in this jungle with these two companions. But there was no time to lose.

Rounding a shoulder of cliff several miles back from the coast, Ponga Jim saw a searchlight sweeping the jungle. It would only be a few minutes now until they found the launch, and then the Japanese would be back on their trail.

Steadily, they kept on, weaving up into the mountains, but tending steadily toward the east and south. Once, crossing a stream, they saw the huge coil of a snake on the bank, later they walked into a herd of wild pigs that fortunately did not charge, but just wandered away, grunting stupidly.

“They come,” Lyssy said suddenly.

In the moment of silence they could hear a shout as their trail was seen.

The moon had come up, and the jungle lay ominous and shadowy beneath the brightening sky. Ponga Jim hesitated. The country was too rough for fast travel, and he could see that his idea of crossing the island and seizing a boat at one of the three or four small villages along that coast was going to be a near thing. Already his ship would be arriving at Tobalai and the Japanese would be unloading the planes.

Keeping to the jungle trails, they waded down a stream, then cut back on another trail toward the coast. Then, suddenly, in the first open place they found, they saw beneath them, and some distance away, the climbing Japanese marines. Instantly, Jim lifted his rifle and all three fired at once. Two of the Japanese fell, and another staggered against the brush, clawing at his chest.

Confused, and not knowing where the shots came from, the soldiers fired randomly. But their shots were aimed south, up the trail. Ponga Jim gave the signal, and they fired another volley, then faded into the jungle. They moved at a fast trot, occasionally stopping to listen.

The moonlight was lost in the high upper branches of the mangroves, and the three slipped down to the coast unseen. Ponga Jim hesitated an instant, looking out over the water. A destroyer lay out there but here, within a hundred and fifty feet, were two patrol boats. Four men waited beside them, on guard.

“All right, here’s where we take them,” Jim said.

Working along the edge of the jungle, he got within sixty feet of the boats. Here was a small, sandy beach. Lyssy drew his knife, waited an instant, and then threw it.

The man facing the jungle grunted, and fell over on the sand. Startled, the three Japanese crowded about him. None of them had seen the knife, and they bent over to turn the fallen man on his back.

J
IM RAN SWIFTLY
and soundlessly. The nearest marine started to turn and straighten, but Jim’s right hand smashed him on the point of the chin, knocking him to the sand.

Big London rushed in close, and a soldier grabbed at his extended left arm, but Big London was too quick, and he kicked viciously, his heel striking the man on the kneecap. With a low cry the man fell, and then Big London clamped on a headlock, twisted sharply, and sat down hard on the sand.

He got up quietly. The job was finished, and Jim sent the two men to one boat and he took the other. They started the motors and headed out to sea. Jim glanced at the destroyer. If they were challenged…

They were. They were just sheering off to bear away from the destroyer when a command boomed out over a loudspeaker. Big London and Lyssy were in the boat behind him. They kept on their path and instantly a shot plunged across their bows.

Without an instant’s hesitation, Jim acted. Turning onto a course toward the destroyer, he opened the motor wide. With a roar, the boat almost leaped from under him. He slammed the two arming levers on the console down and punched every button he could see. Whirling, he leaped to the rear deck and dove off into the churning water.

The other boat was alongside, and Lyssy grabbed him by the shoulders. He was not quite in the boat when the first patrol boat was shelled by the destroyer. The bow went to fragments and the boat was dead in the water and sinking. Then there was an appalling crash, and the thunder of a terrific explosion. A burst of fire momentarily appeared alongside the Japanese warship.

Ponga Jim grabbed the wheel from Big London and sent the speedboat roaring out to sea, her bottom fairly skimming the waves.

“What was that explosion?” London asked, staring with wide eyes. “The destroyer, she all afire.”

“The speedboat had two torpedoes in its tubes,” Mayo said, “so has this one.”

The black sea swept past underneath them, and in the distance a thin gray line began to grow above the horizon. Jim’s face was set and hard as the boat roared down the coast heading for Tobalai. The patrol boat would do fifty miles an hour, and was doing it.

The fleet would be moving now, moving out across the sea toward the north. And on the tableland of Tobalai, his planes, the aircraft he had been entrusted with, would be warming up, waiting for the American aircraft of the carrier squadron to take the bait and fly to attack the Japanese battleships. The trap was set and the disguise was perfect.

Big London crouched low behind Jim, and Lyssy stared back at the glow where the destroyer burned. The sea raced by, and Jim’s hands gripped the wheel. It was a long way, but they could make it, they might make it.

“What happen to our ship, I wonder?” Big London asked.

“I don’t know,” Jim said. “I just don’t know.”

He had been thinking of that, too. The
Semiramis,
all he owned in the world, and the crew, who were not only men who worked with and trusted him, but his friends.

D
AY WAS JUST BREAKING
when he ran into the cove on the shore of Tobalai. Dropping anchor in shallow water, the three went over the side and Mayo and Big London walked ashore.

“We’re here,” Ponga Jim grinned. “Now there’s not much left to do.”

“Excuse me,
Capitan
Mayo,” a voice said politely, “I dislike to interrupt but I must…”

Ponga Jim turned, unbelieving. “How…?”

Captain Tushima smiled. “I flew here. You see…” He gestured with one hand to a line of soldiers with machine guns. “You two are my prisoners!”

Two? Mayo did not turn his head, but in his heart there was a sudden burst of elation.

“You’re always around at the wrong time, Captain,” he said coolly, “and this is the worst.”

He turned carelessly. Big London, his black face sober, stood about a dozen feet away. Lyssy was gone. Evidently he had sensed trouble and stayed underwater after diving out of the boat.

Brace Lamprey and Mallory came down from the jungle. Lamprey looked around.

“Where’s the guy with the trick haircut?” he demanded sharply.

“Who?” Ponga Jim asked innocently. “You mean the Toradjas?”

“I don’t know what he is,” Lamprey returned. “The big fellow with the front half of his head shaved.”

“That’s him. The Toradjas warriors all wear their hair that way. He left us back in the jungle on Obi Major. We scattered out, and he didn’t get back with us.”

Mallory said nothing, but stared at Jim, a curious light in his eyes. Eric Frazer came down out of the jungle. He was wearing a gun and his cheekbone was badly cut, one eye black.

Ponga Jim grinned at him, and Frazer’s eyes blazed.

“I owe you one, Mayo, and I’m going to give it to you now!” He walked up, and drawing his gun, drew back to hit Jim with the barrel.

Ponga Jim made believe to duck, but instead, lunged forward and hit Frazer with his shoulder, knocking the man into the sand. His face red with anger, Frazer swung up the gun to kill Mayo, but Tushima spoke sharply, and he stopped.

“I thought you wanted him killed,” Frazer said sullenly. “Why keep him alive?”

“Because,” Tushima said slowly, “I want one American to see with his own eyes the destruction of the rest of their most powerful fleet.”

Ponga Jim looked at him, but said nothing. Tushima turned, and motioning the guards to follow with him, started back up the steep path.

Jim thought rapidly. He was a prisoner, but there still was time if he could free himself, and Lyssy had escaped. There was no greater woodsman alive, and if anything could be done, he would do it.

T
USHIMA DROPPED BACK
to walk beside Jim.

“This war has long been coming,
Capitan
Mayo,” he said gravely, “but we shall win now that it is here.”

“Yeah?” Jim shook his head. “If you’d been smart enough to see that getting bogged down in China proper wasn’t a solution to getting bogged down in Manchuria you wouldn’t be trying to take over more territory than you can ever hold. The situation gets worse with every island you take.”

Tushima shrugged. “I am only responsible for delivering a victory here and now. Policy, I leave to others.”

“Yeah? Well, someone hasn’t studied their history and someday they are very likely to stick you with the problem.”

T
HE MOUNTAIN ROSE
toward the plateau in steplike formation, and on the topmost step before reaching the tableland itself, several houses and barracks had been constructed in the jungle.

Rayna Courcel came from a bungalow as Ponga Jim approached. Her eyes widened a little, but she said nothing. Once she glanced at Mallory, but Ross was silent.

Ponga Jim and London were put into a cell behind a barred door. Jim sat down on the cot. Only a few hours remained, probably less than that, and the only factor in the whole mess that promised anything at all was the fact that Lyssy was outside in the jungle.

Beyond the barracks and in the jungle on the edge of the tableland above were the two huge gasoline storage tanks with fuel for the planes. Already there was a bustle of movement around them as the planes were being readied for their big fight. The American torpedo bombers were being armed and serviced, crewmen were even freshening the insignias on their sides and wings to be sure that they couldn’t be missed.

Excitement was in the air now, for all knew what was coming, and not one but knew that on this flight might rest the future of the Japanese empire. At one fell stroke, they might wreck the remaining naval power of the United States, sending the last of the Pacific Fleet into the dark turmoil of oil-slicked waves.

Ponga Jim stared thoughtfully at the fuel tanks. They weren’t so far away at that. If he could rid himself of that guard he might be able to handle the door. He turned to examine it again and was surprised to see Rayna.

“You here?” he said. “I should think you’d be aloft watching the preparations.”

Her expression did not change. “How long will it take the planes to get there? To the strait, I mean?”

He shrugged. “A bit less than half an hour, I think. But not much. If you’re sticking around, you’d better keep out of the way. You wouldn’t look very nice all mussed up, and I may take a notion to crash out.”

“Would you?” Rayna looked at him curiously. “Why?”

“A lot of the usual reasons. I’m patriotic, I suspect. Then I wouldn’t want to see all those kids in fleet getting ambushed by planes that I brought out here.”

“But what could you do?” Rayna asked. “One man, against so many.”

“As much as possible.” He looked at her carefully. “I haven’t got you placed, though, honey. Just where do you fit in?”

“Actually I’m assistant to the Canadian military attaché in Pretoria.” She smiled. “We heard that something was up but I think I’m in over my head….”

“Is there a radio around here?” Jim asked, keeping his eyes on her.

“Yes. It’s in the barracks, on the upper floor.”

“Then talk to the guard a minute.” Jim had been looking at the door. It was a door of steel bars, but the hinges were set in a wooden frame. It had been hastily made, with a guard on duty, it didn’t have to be that strong.