Doc Savage: The Ice Genius (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 12) (22 page)

There were enough shafts of moonlight to paint the planes in a lunar effulgence.

“That ain’t good,” grumbled Monk.

Ham contradicted him at once, saying waspishly, “Moonlight makes them better targets too, you dope.” He climbed onto the wing with his superfirer in hand.

Monk, possibly showing off, gripped one in each hairy hand. Seeing this, and not to be outdone, Renny Renwick also pulled out a spare weapon and filled his large fist with it. Of them all, Renny was probably the best machine gunner in the group, having distinguished himself in the Great War with his proficiency with large-caliber rapidfirers.

The Japanese warplanes swept in, the familiar and unnerving scream of their engines on approach filling the eerie desolation.

From the fists of Doc Savage’s men, compact supermachine pistols started erupting. It looked as if batteries of anti-aircraft fire were opening up.

Despite the small caliber of the weapons, the rate of fire was terrific and the blazing of a high-performance smokeless gunpowder was something to behold, especially at night.

Even Doc Savage wielded a supermachine pistol, something he rarely did.

A concentrated barrage, indeed a storm of lead rose up to greet the oncoming attackers.

Of course, the battle birds had the advantage, shooting down from above, as well as having greater range.

At the same time, they did not expect what appeared to be a prodigious amount of defensive fire to greet them.

This threw the Zero pilots for a loop, figuratively speaking. They riddled the ground around the plane, clipped duralumin shreds off the wings, and then broke in different directions, fearful of being caught in the explosive return fire.

Corkscrewing for altitude, they prepared to make another pass.

All of the supermachine pistols were designed to expend over three hundred rounds per minute; their firepower was prodigious. Consequently, every drum soon ran empty. There was a mad scramble to reload.

Monk complained, “I only got one drum left.”

Renny tossed him a spare, saying, “Take this.”

Johnny was perhaps the most nervous of them all and had emptied both his first drum as well as his spare. His gaunt face stricken, he plunged into the plane to get another.

The bony geologist came out, clipping a fresh canister into the receiver, and prepared for the next wave of attackers.

They were not long in coming.

THIS time the trim Zeros drove in from different angles, in order to foil concentrated fire from below.

Aiming their weapons at different compass points, Doc Savage’s men set their supermachine pistols to hooting and the combined reverberation that was so remindful of the bass string of a titanic bullfiddle commenced assaulting their ears.

Suddenly, one fighter exploded into a ball of fire, passed over their heads like a flaming arrow, so low they could smell the stink of burning engine fuel.

“What the heck just happened?” Monk demanded, open-mouthed.

“Someone fired explosive shells,” Doc Savage said sternly.

The bronze man’s flake-gold eyes fixed Monk Mayfair with a vaguely accusing gaze.

Shrugging his shoulders, Monk brought his weapons up so that the drums could be seen. To distinguish the contents of individual ammunition canisters, the bronze man painted distinguishing colors on each drum itself. Monk showed that his drums were painted green, indicating mortal lead.

“It wasn’t me!” squeaked the homely chemist.

“A likely story!” retorted Ham. “It would be just like you to doctor the drums.”

Angrily, Monk protested, “Don’t listen to that shyster! I’m tellin’ the truth. Honest!”

From nearby, Johnny Littlejohn gave out a stricken groan. It was the longest sound ever to come out of the gangling geologist that was not composed of words.

Johnny was looking at his superfirer, whose muzzle continued to smoke. His eyes were upon the drum, which was painted red.

“I have committed a catastrophic atrocity!” he said to no one in particular.

Doc went to him, saw that the drum was marked for explosive shells.

Johnny looked at Doc Savage and said in a croaky voice, “In my haste, I must have grabbed the wrong drum.”

Doc nodded wordlessly. It appeared to be an honest mistake. Nothing could be done about it now. The downed Japanese warplane was a blazing ball of fire, cackling ghoulishly not far from them.

The sight of the destroyed aircraft duly impressed the two surviving Japanese pilots. They circled for a time, as if torn between duty and their sense of self-preservation.

Finally, they made a last pass and emptied their machine guns into the hard-packed desert floor. It was a half-hearted effort at best. The pilots were not trying very hard. It appeared as if they were eager to empty their weapons, and go home with a certain amount of dignity intact.

As they flew off, Ham remarked, “Well, Johnny did us a favor anyway.”

The bronze man said nothing. Loss of life under any circumstances was something he preferred to avoid. But he understood how, in the heat of battle, the error had been made. So he did not comment further.

They made a search for any surviving pilots. They found only the man felled by Monk’s machine pistol. He could not be awakened even with a stimulant that Doc Savage tried on him.

Rising from the man’s form, Doc said, “He will not awaken until morning, for his system is filled with anesthetic chemical.”

“I wanted to make sure he went down,” Monk grumbled.

“Probably nothing we could get out of him anyway,” reminded Renny.

Long Tom said as they walked away from the insensate pilot, “It would be worth knowing why they’re all fired up to get us.”

The answer to that conundrum would have to wait. They retreated to the plane and set about repairing the salvageable engine. This operation took until morning, and by the time dawn was breaking over the east, making the cool air seem warm when it really was not, Doc Savage announced, “We should be able to fly.”

“Fly to where?” Long Tom asked.

Doc Savage said, “We appear to have defeated the Japanese warplanes operating in this area. It may be safe to return to the Mongol camp and discover what we can there.”

All eyes went to Johnny Littlejohn, for they knew that his interest in locating the man who had been excavated from ice and restored to life was very keen.

But Johnny appeared to be in somewhat of a daze. He offered no remark, nor did he show any signs of eagerness.

Taking Doc Savage aside, Renny remarked in an undertone that could be heard almost a mile away, “Johnny just isn’t himself. He’s hardly used any of his jawbreaker words since we got here. That’s not like him, not at all.”

Doc Savage did not respond to that except to say, “We will take off now.”

Chapter XXVIII

DEAD ENDS

THE MOOD IN the cabin of the great flying leviathan was grimly silent as Doc Savage approached the ring of scrubby hills where the Mongol felt tents had once sprawled.

Had,
being the operative word.

Renny was the first to exclaim, “Holy cow! The blamed Mongols decamped.”

Doc overflew the flat cup amid the hills and saw the camp was no longer there.

Johnny commented in a dispirited voice, “Mongolia yurts, or
gers
, as they are known locally, are constructed so they can be taken down and packed away by cart and horseback.”

Doc flew about for a while, looking for signs of the missing bandit band. There were none. Turning back to the camp, he set the big plane down, and then left to investigate on foot.

The truth became apparent to Doc Savage as he examined the signs in the sandy terrain.

“The Mongols did not ride off,” he told his men. “They were taken aboard the Japanese transport plane.”

“Blazes!” Monk yowled. “Does that mean that Olden and the ogre from the ice, too?”

Doc nodded grimly. “All indications are that they left together. Chinua, his Mongols, and apparently their tents as well.”

“What about their horses?” Renny demanded. “They didn’t pack those on a transport plane!”

Nor had they. The horses were discovered to be running loose. Having scattered in all directions, they had not been visible from the air.

“What does it all mean?” Ham complained.

No one had an answer for him. Nor did the urgency with which the Japanese wanted to strike the bronze man dead become apparent.

Long Tom said, “They probably lit off for Manchuria. Do we follow them?”

Doc Savage shook his head slowly. “To do so would constitute a provocation we can neither afford, nor likely win.”

“That’s it?” demanded Renny. “We slammed into another consarned dead end?”

“We have no choice in the matter,” replied Doc Savage.

There being no better course of action available to them, they boarded the plane and flew north to the capital of Mongolia, no wiser than before.

THERE was a surprise waiting for them at the Ulan Bator airport.

The short Mongolian Commissar once again came rushing up while Doc Savage braked the plane and Renny flung open the hatch door.

The functionary was not alone. Accompanying him was a Russian, not in uniform. This man was tall and lean and very excitable.

The Commissar made introductions.

“Comrade Savage,” he began, “may I present Comrade Gerasimov. Comrade, this is the famous Doc Savage, who claims to have discovered the preserved body of Tamerlane in an ice cave many miles from here.”

This conversation took place in Russian, and before the Commissar finished his formal introduction, Comrade Gerasimov was waving his arms and putting up a fuss.

The bronze man listened to a good deal of this, then cut the man off.

“We have not as yet ascertained the exact identity of the individual excavated from the ice cavern,” he said simply.

This did not calm the Russian one whit. He continued his harangue.

Calmly, Doc Savage let the man talk himself out. It became clear that the Russian was no less than the Soviet anthropologist who had been given permission to exhume the body of Tamerlane in the great domed temple in faraway Samarkand.

The Russian was insisting that his body was that of the true Tamerlane.

“His hip was badly damaged, and there were other injuries to the right leg that produced lameness in life,” he proclaimed. “Also, he was missing the bones of the small finger of his right hand and the one beside it, which matches historical knowledge of the man.”

When the Russian finally ran out of breath, Doc stated, “I would like to see this body.”

“Impossible!” the Russian spat back. “Corpse was reinterred last month. Would be impossible to obtain permission to exhume it for second time.”

Johnny was an avid listener to these excited expostulations. He asked, “Have you any X-rays or photographs of this curious cadaver?”

This request was apparently anticipated, for the Russian opened up a satchel, extracting sheets of papers and glossy black X-ray negatives for inspection.

Doc Savage and Johnny climbed back into the cabin of the flying boat and pored over documents, the excitable Russian and the Mongolian commissar hovering around them. Doc’s other men had gone off in search of hot food.

Doc and Johnny examined every negative and photograph and sketch presented to them, conferring quietly.

At length, Johnny spoke up. “All evidence is consistent with the man history remembers as Tamerlane.”

Doc Savage nodded somberly. “Of course, many Mongol warriors suffered similar injuries. History does not record Tamerlane’s injuries with exactitude.”

Johnny blinked. “Are you suggesting that the body in Tamerlane’s tomb might be a plant, designed to cover his true resting place?”

“Only that it is a possibility, nothing more. The evidence is merely suggestive, at best circumstantial.”

The long-worded archaeologist did not know what to say to that. He seemed torn between alternative theories.

Finally, Johnny cleared his throat and in his best professorial tone expounded, “I would wager one million dollars that the man cut from ice is the actual Tamerlane.”

Doc Savage said, “Do you have one million?”

Johnny swallowed guiltily. He seemed unusually rattled.

Doc Savage said, “Be careful that your emotions are not clouding your thinking. The man in the ice may be an impostor.”

“If so, he is an impostor from centuries ago.”

This exchange took place in English, of which the Russian anthropologist understood little. Turning to him, Doc switched to speaking Russian.

“We admit that the body in the tomb of Tamerlane may very well be that of the notorious conqueror.”

Comrade Gerasimov grew excited and insisted, “Who else would it be?”

“But as yet I remain unconvinced that the man from the ice might not be Timur. Possibly a close associate, or even a relative.”

The Russian seemed to take the bronze man’s even-handed alternative as a slap to his face. He was all but knocked off his feet.

At that point, the Mongolian commissar interjected, “This appears to be an unsolvable riddle, but one which interests me greatly. Where is this ice man now?”

Doc replied, “In Japanese hands.”

The Commissar grunted so hard his belly shook. “This is not good. This is very much not good.”

“Agreed,” said Doc.

The Russian anthropologist recounted, “On the coffin of Timur the Lame I discovered ominous words inscribed. They said this: ‘Whoever opens my tomb will unleash an invader more terrible than I.’ At first, I did not take this warning seriously, but two days after, the Nazis invaded Belarus and Ukraine. These words now give me chills.”

THERE was a long silence while everyone digested the apparent prophecy.

“As Renny might say,” barked Johnny, “sacrosanct bovine!”

Then the Mongol commissar remembered the hunt for Doc Savage’s plane.

“Why are the Japanese seeking you, Comrade Savage?”

Doc said, “Their stated intent was to murder my men and myself.”

“For what reason?”

“We do not know, but in the past we have interfered with Japanese espionage. Perhaps someone in their leadership has a long memory—and a longer reach.”