Doc Savage: The Ice Genius (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 12) (16 page)

“I’m for that, too,” seconded Long Tom.

Doc Savage hesitated.

Suddenly, wordlessly, he advanced the throttles, throwing the great air leviathan into a take-off run. Johnny scrambled to close the door. He got it shut.

The bony geologist charged for the cockpit demanding, “Are we leaving?”

“What does it look like?” Monk growled. “We’re takin’ off, ain’t we?”

Johnny fell to sputtering inarticulately. To Doc Savage, he demanded once he got his tongue organized, “What is your plan?”

“I have no plan,” admitted Doc, with a trace of frustration tinging his normally well-modulated voice.

Chapter XX

AIR ATTACK

AS DOC SAVAGE sent the great four-engined aircraft hurtling into the startlingly blue Mongolian sky, the others called out reports from their stations around the cabin.

Renny thumped, “That runaway pony is still carrying off Tamerlane.”

To which Long Tom added, “And the Mongols are riding hard after it.”

Monk suggested, “Doc, what say we shove open some windows and start whittlin’ down these heathens with our superfirers?”

But Doc Savage was too engrossed in getting the plane into the air to respond. It was clear that the big bronze man was thinking hard. His metallic features were grave and unyielding.

Hovering behind the cockpit, Johnny insisted, “We cannot allow such a rare specimen to get away from us.”

Doc said nothing.

“Nor can we permit him to run free, otherwise there is no telling what deviltry he might cause,” added the long-worded archeologist.

Doc Savage leveled off the plane, and began sweeping the steppe below in broad circles.

“This is the Twentieth Century,” he told Johnny. “It is unlikely that Timur could accomplish much mischief. Remember that he was a warlord, now without much of an army to lead.”

“You cannot mean that you are going to leave him behind!” Johnny exploded.

The bronze man’s prolonged silence made it clear that Doc Savage was torn between unpleasant alternatives. Finally, he called back into the cabin, “Endeavor to discourage the Mongols from pursuing the pack pony.”

Johnny was grinning.

Noticing this, Doc Savage told him somberly, “I am still considering this matter.”

Johnny’s smile collapsed into a pucker. He began to look worried.

As the bronze man banked the great plane lower to the ground, Monk, Ham, Renny and Long Tom threw open windows, out of which they jabbed the spike-snouted muzzles of their superfirers.

When the stoic bronze man jockeyed the plane into position, they opened up.

Resulting din was deafening. The intricate weapons were not designed to be operated in close quarters multiplied by four. The horrific moan assaulted the ears of everyone in the plane, leaving a ringing sensation deep in their eardrums.

Down on the steppe, the enraged Mongols were charging in a cloud of dust that trailed them, hanging in the air like a dun genie. Dressed in their coat-like native costumes, waving old rifles and longswords, they might have been a remnant of the Golden Horde of Genghis Khan from ages before.

The combined fusillade of the churning supermachine pistols commenced taking a noticeable toll. Horses stumbled, as if encountering gopher holes. Unprepared riders were thrown. Some were trampled. Others broke.

Seeing this, Doc called back, “Cease fire!”

He was not heard over the hammering racket at first. The frightening commotion continued uninterrupted. Finally, his crashing voice penetrated a pause in which there was a hasty reloading of ammunition drums.

Monk called up, “What’s wrong? We’re just thinnin’ out the herd.”

“Men are being trampled by their panicked horses. This is a scientific expedition. We did not come all this way to inflict unnecessary casualties.”

Reluctantly, Monk latched his weapon on single-shot operation. The others did the same. They fell to sharpshooting. The weapons made distinct snapping sounds, but target shooting from a fast-traveling aircraft was a far different matter than hosing almost three hundred rounds a minute into a tumbling mass of horsemen.

So constrained, Doc’s men had considerably less success in bringing down additional bandits.

Then the plane went hurtling past the melée below. Wrestling the control wheel, Doc Savage banked around to give his men another crack at the bandit horde.

Long Tom complained, “At this rate, we could be at this all day.”

Renny rumbled, “Maybe we should drop some gas bombs on them, too.”

“A good idea,” squeaked Monk. “Let me rustle up a bunch of them.”

It
was
a good idea. Doc Savage did not object to it. He leveled off the plane, and so got closer to the ground, overflying the gathering Mongols who were getting themselves organized after having been thoroughly dispersed by gunfire.

Coming back from the aft portion of the aircraft, Monk Mayfair lugged an unnumbered case in both furry fists. Dropping it to the cabin floor, he flung it open, revealing racks of very large metallic eggs nested in excelsior packing.

Ham peered down at the cluster of objects and asked, “What are those?”

“Knockout gas,” grinned Monk. “It’ll put Chinua and his bully boys to sleep like a ton of bricks fell on ’em.”

This hairy chemist began distributing the devices.

Doc Savage jockeyed the plane around, this time coming in from the west to give Monk and the others an opportunity to push the cumbersome gas bombs out the windows.

As Doc lined up the aircraft, sinking it even further, the wings started jumping alarmingly and metallic sounds could be heard throughout the cabin. The plane bucked like a stung bronco.

“They are shooting at us!” warned Johnny. “We’d better hurry it up.”

By this time, everyone had a gas bomb balanced on his lap. Monk called forward, “Say when.”

The powerful engines carried them toward the target, then Doc rapped out a resounding, “Now!”

They fell to dropping their bombs.

The devices were very simple. The shells were not thick, and made of a soft metal resembling pewter. Dropped from a height, they would crack open like metallic eggs, disgorging their volatile liquid contents. Once this potent brew vaporized, it would produce large clouds of anesthetic gas.

The eggs landed in a random fashion, fracturing as expected.

By the time this occurred, the roaring flying boat had flung on past, so it was impossible to tell how successful they had been.

Once again, Doc Savage threw the great plane into a banking turn, and the roar of motors with their accompanying blade scream made the entire aircraft shake and shudder.

Due to the stress on the aircraft, and the drumming sound as motor vibration transmitted itself throughout the great aircraft’s bulkheads, Doc Savage and his men failed to detect a new phenomenon.

IT was while they were sweeping around, attempting to line up on the Mongol band, that Monk muttered, “Those engines don’t sound right.”

Renny cocked an ear, and said, “Those aren’t the engines!”

“No!” Ham wailed. “Then what are—”

Suddenly, Doc Savage threw the great plane into a steep dive. He executed a frightening acrobatic wingover, and the men were tossed about the cabin as if they were baggage.

They landed in the aisle, in awkward positions among the seats, while Monk found himself back in the tail section, with cases of equipment falling out of cargo netting onto his barrel chest. He flung them off.

Renny’s “Holy cow!” was a thunderous crash.

As they struggled to find their footing, suddenly the flying boat was pointing its broad nose at the incredibly blue sky, and they were once again scrambling to keep from being flung about the cabin.

The drumming that had sounded so alarming, abruptly ceased.

“What’s goin’ on?” howled Monk.

Doc Savage was too busy fighting the controls, so Johnny offered an explanation.

“Aerial ambuscade,” he said, uncorking his long-worded vocabulary.

“Speak English,” snapped Long Tom peevishly.

Johnny clarified his remark. “We are being attacked by fighter planes.”

Chapter XXI

RETREAT

DOC SAVAGE CLIMBED the great aircraft as if he were pushing it up into the blue by main strength.

When he reached an altitude of six thousand feet, the bronze giant leveled off. He was not gentle about it. But the situation called for extreme measures, inconsiderate of the comfort of all aboard.

Back in the cabin, his men scrambled to windows on either side of the plane. They looked down. A flight of five slivery aircraft were buzzing about far below. At this distance, they resembled loose scales off a mackerel.

Monk wrinkled his beetling brows. “Whose ships are they?” he wondered.

Frowning, Ham remarked, “I do not recognize that type of aircraft, nor did I see markings on any of them.”

Renny Renwick, who possibly knew aircraft better than anyone aboard save Doc Savage, muttered gloomily, “If I didn’t know better, I would say those are Japanese warplanes. They look like the new Zero-
sen
model.”

“What would they be doing up here?” grumbled Long Tom.

Doc Savage answered that. “We are not terribly far from the Manchurian border. There have been border incidents, and even a brief war between Japanese-dominated Manchuria and Soviet-controlled Mongolia two years back.”

“So why are they shootin’ at us?” Monk wanted to know. “We’re not at war with anybody.”

The question went unanswered when the five warbirds suddenly spiraled upward, climbing. Winking red eyes appeared on their ruler-straight wings. They undertook to strafe the underside of the air giant like ravenous sharks dogging a great whale.

All of Doc’s planes were well armored and could withstand a great deal of punishment. But they were not military machines, nor were they designed to continue operating under sustained fire from a large number of modern warplanes.

Too, they were not armed. They carried no fixed guns in their wings, nor other external armament.

Considering that harsh reality, Doc Savage made a bold maneuver. Necessity demanded it. As the snarling fighter planes charged up, Doc banked his larger aircraft, then threw it into a stomach-churning sideslip, followed by a hair-raising dive.

Unexpectedly, the opposing pilots found a four-engine air behemoth dropping down into their midst.

Releasing the trips of their hammering wing machine guns, they naturally scattered to get out of the way. Whatever their motivations, the opposing pilots were not eager to end up in a tangle of duralumin metal at six thousand feet above hard, cold ground.

Once Doc hurtled past them, he pulled back on the control yoke and leveled out the plane. The way the tendons on his rigid column of a neck stood out, it was clear that the bronze man was putting all of his might into jockeying the plane about the sky.

The air leviathan had not been designed for this type of maneuvering. Everyone knew that. The risk of tearing off a wing—if not both of them—was very great under such extreme acrobatics.

At the same time, Doc Savage had put all of his aeronautical knowledge into the construction of the flying boat. He had hardened the wing roots, and reinforced other stress points, so that the streamlined fuselage could take more than the usual punishment. But there was a limit on what aircraft of this size could do. It was no fighter. Nor was it very nimble in the air. This ultra-modern craft was designed for long-haul flights.

So it was when Doc Savage climbed again that the fighter planes regrouped, buzzing back like silver-scaled hornets. It could be seen that neither the sides or wings of the swarming aircraft were emblazoned with the
Hinomaru
—the red-ball-in-a-white circle representing the national flag of the Land of the Rising Sun.

“Unmarked,” muttered Long Tom.

“That’s a bad sign,” echoed Monk.

Doc Savage got on the radio, and fished around until he found the frequency on which there was excited babbling.

Hearing this chatter, Johnny piped up, “Japanese for sure!”

Picking up the microphone, Doc Savage then replied himself. “This is Doc Savage. Why are you shooting at us?”

The pilot’s reply was not what was expected. A harsh voice simply snapped in Japanese, “You will land. Immediately. Or be shot down.”

“We are engaged in a scientific expedition,” Doc responded firmly.

The harsh voice spat back, “Do not lie! You were conducting military operations near our border. You will land, and subject yourself to interrogation.”

In the back, Monk growled, “I’m subjectin’ myself to nothing. Those monkeys can go whistle for answers.”

Renny pointed out, “They must have seen us shooting at those Mongols. Their suspicions are aroused.”

“I don’t trust them Japs,” Monk insisted. “I say we fight ’em.”

“I have a better idea,” said Doc Savage.

“Yeah?” said Monk.

“We will lead them into an ambush of our own.”

Monk brightened, “I getcha. I’ll set it up right away.”

“Set up what?” demanded Ham Brooks, face puzzled.

Monk ambled to the rear, moved some dislodged cases to one side and exposed a number of pressurized tanks that had been mounted in the tail section. These were equipped with simple aluminum petcocks. Grinning, the apish chemist turned them. A slow hissing was produced.

Ham asked, “Is that the stuff you use to clog airplane engines?”

Monk’s grin made his tiny ears retreat. “It’s a new formula. Watch and see what happens.”

DOC SAVAGE booted the big aircraft around, as if he were running away from the Japanese warplanes. The fighter pilots naturally lined up in a simple V formation and pursued the four-engined wonder, confident that their smaller aircraft with their supercharged motors would soon overhaul the comparatively slower air giant.

They were very much mistaken in that expectation. For no sooner had the Japanese fighters fallen behind Doc’s big bus than they began experiencing difficulties.

Droplets resembling black rain suddenly speckled their windscreens. Every pilot in the world understands what that means—an oil leak from the engine, which could quickly become very serious.