The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Four (74 page)

Shan Bao met them at the landing. He spoke to Madden in Mandarin.

“You take it easy,” Turk said. “Shan wants to show me something.”

Shan led the way to a temple built partly over the water. Part of the wall on the lakeward side was missing, and inside almost half the space was water. Evidently from the iron rings, boats had once been kept there. It was a perfect hangar for the amphibian, even to a ramp leading into the water.

When the ship was concealed, Turk turned to Ryan. “Tomorrow you and I hit that valley!” He glanced at Raemy. “This time you stay here. Some of this won’t be pretty to watch!”

She started to protest, but when her eyes locked with his she was still. In the morning when the two started off at daybreak, she looked at him. “Be careful won’t you?”

“Of Bob? Don’t worry, he’ll be all right.”

“I mean you!” she said, her chin lifting.

Turk looked around at her and she flushed. “Yeah,” he said, “I’ll be careful!”

F
OR AN HOUR
they watched the valley. Thirty-two prisoners worked there, guarded by seven men. All were armed, four of them with rifles.

“The first one will be that guard in the green coat,” Turk said. “I’ll take him.”

The guard was a big man, and he looked rugged. He moved toward the edge of the brush, and like a wraith, Turk rose behind him. He struck the guard on the small of the back with his right fist, shooting the midsection of his body forward as his left forearm slid across the guard’s throat. Off balance by the blow to the base of the spine, the guard was pulled back sharply. Then Turk’s right arm slipped under the guard’s right armpit and his hand clasped the back of the guard’s head. With his left hand Turk grabbed his own right forearm. Then he jerked back with his left forearm and pushed with his right hand.

The guard struggled, kicked, and tried to claw madly at Turk’s iron grip, but the pressure on his windpipe was too great. Turk held the pressure for a full minute while Ryan watched the other guards.

The nearest worker had noticed but continued with his labors. Then he moved toward them. “Good show, Yank!” he said. “We’re all primed and ready!” He picked up the fallen man’s rifle, and extracted the ugly knife from the guard’s waistband.

Quickly, he donned the green coat and coolie hat, then started along the line of workmen, whispering in a low voice. One of the other guards sauntered toward him, and as he neared, the Australian wheeled suddenly and slashed with the knife. The guard fell, blood gushing from his slit throat.

The Aussie gave a low whistle, and like a cloud the prisoners wheeled and closed over the remaining guards. The man on the horse who had been riding toward Turk’s waiting place grabbed at his pistol, but Ryan darted from his hiding place and leaped astride of the horse behind him. Together they tumbled from the horse, Ryan on top. He chopped viciously with the barrel of his own pistol, then again.

Ryan got up, wiping sweat from his face. He walked toward the guard Madden had jumped. He glanced at the guard, then up at Madden. “You’re thorough!” he said grimly.

The prisoners crowded around. A tall blond man pushed forward. “I’m Young,” he said. “I was in the ship with Doone. They’ve got him up in the Domed House, questioning him about our cargo. Some strange white man came to the Domed House a while back, and ever since then they’ve been in a dither.”

“We’ll get out of here fast. Those with the rifles fall behind for a rear guard. Ryan, you lead off.”

Young, who had the pistol from the fallen horseman, walked beside Madden. “God, man!” he said. “You can’t guess what it meant to us when we heard you were here. Kalinov told us last night.” Young glanced at Turk. “That cargo of ours seems to excite a lot of people!”

“Ryan’s here for that reason,” Turk said. “I’ve my instructions, too. We’ve got to get that steel box for our government.”

Young shrugged. “Doone’s the only one knows where it is.”

“Give me the dope,” Madden suggested. “What can we expect?”

“There’s at least three thousand men in this monastery. Probably around three hundred modern rifles including twenty or thirty Tokarev semiautomatic rifles. It’s as good a gun as our Garand. Also, they have some Degtyarov light machine guns, all stolen or smuggled out of Russia by agents of these people. The Domed House, which you can identify by shape, is the heart of the place. I’ve told you about the planes. The pilots are Ngoloks.

“They have two flying fields and a couple of emergency fields with a fighter plane located at each. They’ve a leader with brains named Bo Hau. He’s been to China and India and has an education of a sort. Tall, big-shouldered fellow.”

No part of the situation looked good. Only a few of the escaped men were armed, and there was little food available. They could expect determined pursuit within a few hours. Turk fell in beside Ryan. “You stick by the ship with the man with the pistol, I’ll take the four men with rifles.”

“Why not take the plane and knock off one of those emergency fields? Then we’d have rifles and ammunition?”

“And run into a fighter? With this ship of mine? A pursuit ship would fly circles around me! Unless we hit ’em before they got off the ground. Strafe the field—but it would be taking an awful chance!”

“The whole thing is a gamble,” Ryan said. “Don’t worry about Raemy! That gal has nerve!”

Turk turned to a huge red-bearded Scotsman. “You know where the emergency fields are located?”

“Helped build them! One’s about nine miles east in the mountains. Concealed, but impossible to use in bad weather.”

“How long to get to it on foot?”

“Three or four hours, if we’re lucky. It’s pretty rough going.”

“All right,” Madden told them. “I’ll keep Young with me. You,” he told the Scotsman, “will lead this party. I’ll give you four hours. Your job is to keep that fighter on the ground. Don’t damage it if you can help it, and shoot anybody who tries to get it off the ground.”

Y
OUNG WATCHED
the rescued prisoners as they turned off into a canyon leading to the mountains. “They’ve got a mighty slim chance!” he said.

Turk nodded. “So have we all. Four men with rifles can make life miserable around any landing field. Knowing the country they have a good chance of getting away with it. The Ngoloks won’t expect them to head that way.” He turned toward Young. “We have one prisoner, your former escort pilot!”

Young’s face went cold. “He shot us down! Never gave us a chance!”

“Why?”

“We never figured that out,” Young admitted. “He’d been very friendly to Doone.”

“Doone ever mention that Bekart had met his sister?”

“Come to think of it, Bekart was with him on leave once.”

“With Bob dead, she’d inherit everything. That may have been it. He could go back, be the sympathetic friend, marry the gal, and then—”

“Ugly mess!” Young stared at the peaks. “Lyte was shot right through the chest. Three-fifties!”

There was no sign of Shan Bao as they drew near the ruined city. Nor any other sign of life and movement. Fear mounting like a tide in his throat, Turk started forward when Shan burst from a building. “He’s gone! I go to hunt for wood, and he got away!”

Turk grabbed Shan’s arm. “Raemy?”

“She gone, too! Also, her gun!”

Turk rushed to the plane. So far as he could see, nothing was disturbed. “Go over it, Shan! Quick!”

He looked at Sparrow. “We’d better have a look. Maybe we can catch them before they’ve gone far.”

“No use!” Shan Bao protested. “They gone maybe two hours!”

Turk Madden’s face was cold and ugly. Despite Shan’s protest, he turned and, helped by Young and Ryan, made a careful survey of all the ruined buildings. There was no sign of life, nor could any tracks be found on the pavement or hard ground.

He had failed thus far to free Bob Doone. The steel box was still in the hands of the Ngoloks, or hidden somewhere. And now Raemy had been taken from him.

When they returned from their trek, Madden checked his watch. An hour to go before they took off. Ryan dug into the food and got out some crackers and cheese while Shan made coffee. In silence, the four men ate.

Turk got up finally and walked outside. He looked big and grim in his worn leather jacket, his head bared to the chill wind, his eyes hard as they studied the gray, barren sky. He turned and came back in, checking his .45 grimly.

“Warm her up, Shan, we’ll start now!” He looked around again, then glanced at Young. “Better have a look outside. Watch until I call you.”

Minutes later he called Young, then followed Ryan into the ship, they taxied out on the lake, and he revved her up and then started her down the dark water. The motors roared beautifully, and he gave her plenty of time for the air was cold and light. As he eased back on the stick she lifted gently, slapped a wave, and lifted toward the rocky crest of one of the hills skirting the lake.

Turk shot straight away from the lake, climbing steadily. At five thousand he swung in a wide curve and headed back. Then he lifted higher, and higher. Far below and off to his left he could see a tip of the green valley. Young waved him further to the right and he banked the ship and headed for a tall, ice-capped spire of black rock almost due west.

Suddenly, he saw the field. It was on a small plateau, and at one end there was a stone hangar and a smaller building nearby. As he pushed forward on the stick and shot down toward the field he saw men burst from the smaller building and one of them rushed toward the hangar, others lifted rifles and although they must have been firing, he heard no sound of the shooting.

The man running toward the hangar suddenly stumbled and fell headlong and lay there, a dark spot on the pavement near his head. Then Turk opened up and the harsh yammer of his own guns blotted out sound and he saw men fold and go down as if blown by a powerful wind.

He dove toward the smaller building and the men with rifles and saw men scatter in every direction, and then he was over the building and zooming up to swing back over the field. Men had scattered into the brush, but he came down fast and let go with another burst at the smaller building.

When he came around for another pass he saw men running out on the plateau waving their arms at him. He skimmed by overhead, then swung around and came in for a landing.

A
S HE GOT OUT
, he saw men pouring into the smaller building and coming out with rifles. Scotty met him, a broad grin on his face. “We got nine of them, all told. One man got away, but several of ours are after him.”

“How about weapons?” Turk demanded quickly.

Young had started on a trot for the hangar.

“There’s twelve more rifles,” Scotty said, “as nearly as we could figure. We’ll know in a minute.”

Turk walked toward the hangar after Young. In a few minutes they had the news. Of the thirty men they had in all, aside from his own crew, sixteen of them now had rifles and eight more had pistols. The others had found old iron swords and one a pike.

Turk walked into the hangar, and Young was standing there looking at the ship. Young nodded at it. “Ever see anything like
that
?” he demanded.

“Yeah,” Turk walked around it thoughtfully. “Looks like an improved version of a Russian ship they had in Spain during the Civil War. Some of the Russians who fought with the Loyalists flew them.”

Scotty came in with the escaped prisoner. “What happens now?” Scotty demanded.

“We get out of here,” Turk said, “and quick. We’ve got a lot to do. At least, Ryan and I have. And we’re taking this ship!”

Young’s brow furrowed. “I fly a little, but I never tackled anything that looked that hot!”

Madden shrugged. “I’ll fly it. Shan Bao knows my ship. You can go back to the lake with him. He could take four or five of you.”

“We’ll march it,” Scotty said, “all of us!” He grinned at Turk. “We might run into a bunch of those ’Loks, and the boys are spoilin’ for a fight!”

Turk checked the ship himself. There was plenty of gas, and he found a buried tank near the hangar that was almost full. He yelled at Shan, and the Manchu refueled the Grumman.

When they had gone, he walked outside. The ship had been wheeled out before they left, and he had taken a few minutes to look around. He hadn’t wanted to tell them, but he knew what he was going to do. He was going hunting for that other pursuit ship. From what he knew of the fighter he had, he knew she was a plenty hot ship. Also, he was going to teach them a lesson or two. They had it coming.

He walked outside and got into the fighter. He warmed her up. She was a two-motored job, bearing a resemblance to the Russian pursuits he had seen in Spain. What did they call them? He scowled, trying to remember. Masca—Mosca, something like that.

The motors purred evenly and smoothly. Carefully, he opened her up a little, and the ship trembled with the burst of added power. Turk passed his tongue over his lips. “Here goes everything!” he said softly, and, his eyes widened a little, he started the ship down the plateau.

It gathered speed and he opened the throttle wider. The black cliffs faded in a roar of thundering speed. He felt the lift of the ship as it reached for the air and he came back on the stick and felt the earth fall away beneath him. He eased back further, and the little fighter began to climb.

His eyes were bright. “Whoever built this baby,” he said, “knew what he was doing.”

Roaring with power the ship shot skyward like an angry hawk, and deftly he put her through her paces. She had it—speed, power, maneuverability. He swung her around, and headed between two gigantic peaks and darted through to see the green valley far, far below him, and even as he glimpsed it, he saw the Grumman far away to the east and north, and sweeping down toward it was the other pursuit ship!

Turk banked his fighter steeply and whipped around to dart after the other ship like a sparrow hawk after a hen! His twin motors roaring, his heart singing with the lust for battle, he cleared his guns with a burst and then swept down on the other fighter.

It was no P-40 or anything like it, but almost a duplicate of his own ship, and some sixth sense must have warned the pilot, for he suddenly pulled up sharply and swung around, wondering at the actions of his companion fighter. Turk cured him of his wonder in a quick burst as the fighter swung past his guns. It was ineffective, to all appearances, except to warn the enemy fighter that he was in for trouble.