The Avenger 30 - Black Chariots (12 page)

No, the man was holding a gun on the sandy-haired man down there.

Hamblin had no idea who the intruder was, but he decided that any enemy of Danker’s must be a friend of his. Very carefully he began to approach the back of the man with the automatic.

“Come on, come on,” said the gunman to Mac, “who are you?”

The Scot turned around to face him. “The name is Fergus MacMurdie,” he said. He kept his voice calm, even though he now saw Hamblin approaching.

The professor still held the bookend in his hand. “That name,” he said to himself. “MacMurdie, I’ve heard that name somewhere before.” It was no use, he couldn’t place it. Time, he was going to need time to remember everything, to get control of his own mind back completely.

“How’d you get in here?” the gunman demanded of Mac.

“I kin see where ye mot be worried about that, mon,” said Mac. “Ye’d best hand over that blunderbuss of yours. I’m only the first wave of the invasion.”

“Huh?” said the man. And then, “Unh!”

Hamblin had struck him down. He watched the guard fall. “Very good,” he said. “Good evening . . . it is evening, isn’t it?”

“Aye, that it ’tis.”

“I’m . . . Val Hamblin, Mr. MacMurdie.”

“Hout!” said Mac. “Ye’re one of the lads we’re hunting for. Do ye know where they’ve got your niece, mon?”

The professor ran his tongue over his lips. “Uh . . . let me think . . . You’ll have to excuse me, MacMurdie, until very recently I’ve been . . . drugged by them. I . . . I’m still not . . . but let me think,” he said, letting the bookend fall to his side. “I saw her earlier . . . and I can take you there. Yes, I can take you there . . . Come along.” He turned and began walking away.

MacMurdie followed.

“Easy, Smitty,” said the Avenger.

The giant straightened up and dropped down to the hangar floor. “Hey, I’m getting pretty good if I can hear you sneaking up, Dick,” he said. “I thought at first it might be more of them Nazis sneaking in here.” He waved a huge hand at the chariot he’d been investigating. “This is them, the black chariots.”

“I realized that,” replied Benson. “Think you can fly one?”

“I can fly anything,” answered Smitty. “But why, how come?”

“I’ve been asking, with the help of the truth gas, a few questions.”

“Great, where’s Nellie and Cole?”

Benson said, “Not here any longer, I’m afraid.”

“Ah,” said Smitty, his face falling. “Not the Hamblin dame, either?”

“No, all three of them have been taken to another concealed hangar setup,” said the Avenger. “Out in the desert, in a much less settled section. There’s a man named Danker in charge of this whole operation. He and several of his henchmen flew there an hour or so ago, using some of these aircraft of Dr. Hamblin’s.”

“Yeah, what about the doc? They haul him off, too?”

“He’s being held here,” said the Avenger. “After we—”

“Whoosh,” called MacMurdie. “Ye kin nae guess who I have with me, Richard.” He stepped out of a doorway in the hangar wall, followed by Hamblin.

“It looks like Val Hamblin,” said Benson.

“Aye, it ’tis indeed. And he saved me from having a few .45 slugs added to my carcass.”

“I’ve been . . . trying to find my niece. But she isn’t where she was . . . I thought perhaps they’d brought her to one of these . . . hangars.”

“They did,” said the Avenger. “They’ve taken her, along with two of my associates, away.”

“Away . . . What do we do now?”

“Go after them,” said the Avenger.

Agent Early shifted his folded raincoat from one arm to the other. He made a low whistling sound, not evidencing pleasure. “Had a notion,” he said to Sheriff Brown.

“Beg pardon?”

“Before I even got here.” Early moved farther along the underground corridor. “Premonition, almost a vision. They’d beat me to it.”

“You mean the Avenger and his gang?”

“Him, yes.”

All along the corridor were sleeping men. They were Danker’s henchmen. A harmless gas, concocted originally by MacMurdie, had put them all to sleep before the Avenger and his gang had taken off three hours ago.

Early, along with the sheriff and several other agents and lawmen, had arrived almost two hours ago. He’d been alerted by Sheriff Brown, who’d had a call from Smitty.

The young government agent walked on by the unconscious spies and gunmen. He slowed and peered through an open doorway. “Here’s another hangar,” he said over his shoulder.

“Anything in it?”

“Couple airships,” said Early, crossing the threshold. “Yeah, we’ve found the chariots.”

“Sort of uncanny, ain’t it? How that Avenger fellow always—”

“Talk about something else.” Early walked up to one of the chariots that had been left behind. He bent, studying its underbelly. “Cameras. So they took pictures.” He turned and went back to the doorway. “Reisberson,” he called down the hallway, “look for film, cameras, a darkroom.”

“Right, sir.”

Sheriff Brown reached out and touched the ship. “I got an impression,” he said to the returning Early, “I don’t know everything that’s going on in my area. What would these boys be taking photos of, anyhow?”

“Something we don’t want anyone taking pictures of.”

“ ’Bout, a year ago you government boys fenced off about ten square miles out in the middle of no place, out beyond Lucifer’s Playground,” said the sheriff, watching the cleancut young man. “That’s where it is, ain’t it? I mean, whatever it is.”

Nodding, Early moved along to the other craft and inspected its underside, too. “You don’t want to know any more about the thing, sheriff.”

Brown shrugged. “Okay, if you say so.”

“Tell me again,” requested Early, “what Smith told you oyer the phone.”

“Said as how he and his buddies had caught themselves a spy ring, under the Oasis here, of all places,” said Sheriff Brown. “Told me to give you a buzz on the telephone and let you know. He figured as how you’d appreciate catching a whole flock of spies, and the black chariots as well. Then, of course, he mentioned as how they’d also rescued this Dr. Hamblin and how he’d been drugged and all. They was leaving him here for us to—”

“Yes, I know. I just spent twenty minutes talking to Hamblin. He’s pretty vague about a lot of things yet.”

“Well, if you’d been abducted and shot full of—”

“Okay, but about where they were going next?”

“Taking some of these screwy flying machines and going off to catch the rest of the spies, that’s all he said.”

Early sighed, giving off again the sad whistling sound. “Could be any place,” he said. “Maybe I can question some of these guys they left behind.”

“This afternoon.”

“This afternoon? They aren’t going to wake up until then, not a one of them?”

“Smith said the stuff they used on them, whatever it might be, would keep them out for near a day,” explained the sheriff. “Shucks, might not be until late tonight, then, now I calculate it.”

Shifting his raincoat to the opposite arm, Early said, “If they took the ships, that means they were going some distance. Some place they could reach by air.”

Sheriff Brown said, “I don’t think they’re going to get far.”

“How come?”

“Reports I been getting in my car,” said the sheriff, “there’s a big sand storm blowing across a good part of this area. May even reach us here before long. Nobody’s going to do much flying in weather like that, no matter what kind of fancy plane they got.”

“Then maybe I still have a chance,” said Early, brightening.

An agent in a dark suit and hat brought a coffee cup over to the poolside table where Early was sitting. “Try this, sir,” he said, placing the cup in front of the young agent.

“Anybody should be able to make coffee, Collins,” said Early.

“You haven’t seen the machine they have here. It’s for making five gallons at a time,” said Collins. “On top of that, they don’t use real coffee. This is a substitute made out of beans and dandelion greens.”

Early’s lips puckered as he took a sip. “Not bad.”

“Taste, you know, is partly mental. If you pretend—”

“That’s enough. Get back to work.” Early leaned back in the sunchair. It was daylight now. The sand storm had never reached this far. The last reports indicated it had died over most of the desert a half-hour ago. “Awful,” muttered Early, trying a little more of the coffee.

Another agent in a dark suit, this one taller and leaner than the other one, came hurrying across to Early’s table. “Something’s come up, sir.”

“What is it, Reisberson?”

“We just got a report relayed to our Manzana office by the Air Corps,” said Reisberson. “They spotted a chariot.”

Early got up. “Where?”

“It’s down, that’s the important part, down in the desert about thirty miles from here.”

“Have they landed, taken a look at the thing?”

“Not yet. They wanted to hear what you want to do.”

Early said, “Air Corps is mellowing, giving me first crack. Tell them I’m on my way. You have the exact location?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m getting ahead of them,” said Early. “It’s possible I’ll beat them.”

“What, sir?”

Early didn’t reply. He hurried off to arrange for transportation.

By the time Cole lifted the cockpit cover and scrambled out onto the pitted surface of the chariot, the low-flying Air Corps monoplane had ceased to circle. It was heading away from him.

He waved at its retreating tail. “Aren’t you chaps going to pay a call?”

The plane continued to grow smaller in the now clear morning sky.

Cole sat down. “They’ve obviously reported us to somebody,” he assumed. “So I can expect a rescue party of some description shortly.”

The wind had piled sand up against the right side of the ship, half burying it. Cole stepped down to a fresh dune and scanned his surroundings.

To his left, about a mile off, were some lopsided joshua trees. All else was sand. “Make a splendid beach.”

Cole judged, from the position of the already bright sun, that the time was about 9
A.M.
He walked about a few yards from the downed craft.

“I wonder where everybody is? That storm must have prevented anyone from taking to the air. I doubt if even Richard—”

He heard another motor. An airplane was approaching.

“No shortage of rescuers, it seems. I’ll wager that’s Richard and Smitty now.”

The plane was coming from the wrong direction for that, though. Perhaps they’d been circling. You couldn’t be certain.

A biplane, a dark blue in color. They’d seen him, and the chariot, and were going to land.

Cole was about to wave, but something made him hesitate.

The plane landed about five hundred feet away, scattering streamers of sand.

A man with a machine gun dropped out of the passenger side of the plane before the propeller had ceased spinning. He started firing at Cole.

The door of their cell opened. A guard carrying a breakfast tray entered. There was a pot of coffee on the tray, two cups, two bowls of dry cereal, a pitcher of milk, silverware, one banana, and a .38 revolver. The revolver rested close to the guard’s right hand. “I have brought you young ladies your morning meal,” he announced.