The Avenger 30 - Black Chariots (4 page)

Seated on the top step of the porch of the largest house, his staff across his knees, was Prester Ambrose. “Welcome, friend, to Sacred City,” he called through the dusk. “I know full well that to your eyes this must seem a poor place indeed. It is not always appearance, but rather purpose, which will smooth our way into Eternity. Thus far my followers live humbly here in Sacred City, but someday—”

“Doesn’t much matter, does it? You were saying when I caught your sermon in Manzana that the world’s about ready to end.”

“True, friend, true,” said the bearded man. “I’ve seen the signs in the heavens.”

“Yeah, that’s what I want to talk about.”

“You brought the dough, friend?”

Smitty sat down on a lower step and handed him two ten-dollar bills. “Describe these black chariots to me.”

Prester Ambrose, folding the bills away in his robe, said, “I witnessed only one, friend. It was indeed strange and wonderous to behold. Aye, it screamed through the air like an avenging—”

“Whoa!” said Smitty. “Skip the poetry, I want specifics. Details.”

“It’s not an airplane. At least, not in the conventional sense,” said Prester Ambrose. “Obviously it’s an aircraft of some kind, but it’s round, without any visible wings. Shaped like a plate, or more accurately, two plates stuck together.” He pressed his palms together. “Roughly twenty-five feet across the middle, and up on top there’s a kind of bubble. I didn’t get too good a look at that part of the thing. Could be that’s where the guy who pilots the thing sits, or it might be where they got their gadgets in case the thing is some kind of radio-controlled drone. Out the back it was spitting fire.”

“What—an exhaust, you mean?”

“Not sure, friend. The thing was traveling pretty fast.”

“What about propellers?”

“Weren’t any, no sound of them, either.”

“Whereabouts did you spot this chariot?”

“Between here and town. I was making a little pilgrimage into Manzana, just about a week ago. I was on foot, since I don’t believe in automobiles.”

“How low was it flying?”

“Few hundred feet, no higher,”

“What’s it made of?”

“Can’t be certain, friend. Might be metal, might be some kind of plastic.”

Smitty asked, “They didn’t try to communicate with you, harm you?”

“No, friend, I went my way, and they went theirs.”

Smitty remained seated on the porch step for nearly a minute, silent. “Anything else you can tell me?”

Prester Ambrose said, “I can give you some advice, friend. Which is, forget about this whole thing. You’re bucking something pretty strange.”

Rising up, the giant said, “It’s not the first time.”

He was five miles from Manzana when they made their move.

The dark sedan, running with its lights out, came roaring out of a side road.

“Hey, you dope!” hollered Smitty when he realized the other car was barreling straight for him.

He twisted the wheel, and the machine went squealing in a jagged arc. Smitty took it too close to the edge. The car jumped from the road and went rocketing down across the gravel shoulder.

“This ain’t no accident.”

He hit the brakes to avoid smashing into a giant many-armed cactus.

A chattering filled the night. The back window exploded, scattering jagged shards of glass all around.

“Oh, boy, a tommy gun!” Smitty grabbed his door open and threw himself out into the desert.

Another burst of machine-gun fire cut across the darkness. Several of the surrounding cactuses were dismembered.

On his belly, Smitty got as far from the abandoned car as he could.

“Over there!” shouted a throaty voice. “I seen him move.”

The machine gun chuttered once more.

A joshua tree was cut in half about fifteen feet from Smitty.

“Okay, they ain’t got me spotted very good.” From a pocket of his coat the giant extracted a small glass pellet. Eyes narrowed, he watched the night road. “There!” He rose for only an instant to fling the glass pellet.

His toss was fairly accurate. The pellet smashed on the roadway beside the man with the submachine gun.

“What the hell!”

Blackness, blackness deeper than any night, surrounded the gunman and the two others who shared the road with him. This was the special gas used by Justice, Inc. When it connected with air a cloud of impenetrable black was produced.

Hopping to his feet again, Smitty hotfooted it across the desert and then up onto the road. “The gunsel should be right about . . . here,” he said to himself, reaching into the swirl of blackness.

“Something’s got—”

The giant’s hands closed around the throat of the man who’d tried to gun him down. He yanked him out into the night air.

“He’s here!” the gunman gasped.

Holding him by the neck with one hand, Smitty chopped the machine gun from the man’s hands. “I don’t like them things.” The weapon clanged on the road.

Smitty lifted the thin, pale-faced man up high. “You the ones who killed Ralph Stevenson?”

“I don’t know nothing about—” The man went stiff. There had been a tiny puffing sound and he had jerked his body.

“I asked you . . .” Smitty realized he was holding a dead man. A shot, silenced, had come out of the blackness.

Now he heard a motor sounding. He dropped the dead man and jumped aside.

The black sedan came shooting out of the swirl of gas. In a few seconds it was far off on the night road.

Shaking his head angrily, Smitty knelt and searched the dead gunman. There was absolutely nothing in his pockets. “Damn,” said the big man, “a dead end.”

Josh Newton got up out of the chair he’d been slouched in. He wandered to the windows of the Justice, Inc., office. Spring had reached Manhattan, and the street below was bright with warm morning sunshine. The short block was called Bleek Street. It was all owned, though very few people knew this, by the Avenger.

Putting his hands in his trouser pockets, the black man made a random circuit of the large office. “Doctor said it won’t be till next week,” he said to himself. “But I got a feeling . . .”

The door opened, and a lanky sandy-haired man came in. “Ye dinna look yer usual relaxed self, Josh,” observed Fergus MacMurdie.

“I got a feeling that—”

The phone on the desk rang. Mac was closest, so he answered. “Aye? Ah, fine, and yourself, lass?” Beckoning to Josh, he handed him the phone. “ ’Tis for you.”

“Hello. Oh, yeah, hello, Rosabel. You sure? You’re sure, okay. You wait right there, you hear? No, you won’t take a cab. You wait for me. Bye, honey.” He hung up and ran for the door. “Looks like the baby’s going to arrive today, and not next week. I got to get Rosabel to the hospital.”

“Give the lass m’ love.”

“I had a feeling . . .” Josh barged into the corridor, barely missing the arriving Nellie Gray.

The little blonde watched him go clomping downstairs before she went into the office. “Rosabel?”

“Appears the wee bairn is arriving a few days ahead of schedule,” said the Scot.

Smiling, Nellie took a chair. “That’s wonderful,” she said. “I hope it’s a girl, because I know that’s what Rosabel—”

“What was that object that flashed by me as I tottered up here?” Cole Wilson, grinning, sauntered into the room.

“ ’Twas Josh,” said MacMurdie. “Looks like he’s to become a father this day.”

“I’m sure it’ll be a boy, since that’s what Josh—”

“Honestly!” said Nellie, with a demure snort.

“Oh, it’s you, pixie,” said Cole. “I didn’t notice you there, you being so diminutive.”

“What’s that all over your shoulders?” the blonde asked him. “It’s a little late for snow, even in a city with as crazy weather as New York.”

Cole lowered himself, slowly, into a soft chair. “Must be confetti. I’m actually just returning from a farewell party for an old fraternity brother of mine. He’s a captain in the Army and—”

“Good morning.” Richard Henry Benson came into the room. He was young, of average size, dark-haired. There was something about his pale eyes that made you think he might be much older than he looked. “We have something new to work on.”

“Smitty,” said Cole.

The Avenger glanced at him. “What makes you say that, Cole?”

“Every time one of our little band goes on a vacation, he falls into a whole slough of trouble. Mac encountered witches, warlocks, and Old Nick himself when he tried to spend a few quiet days in New England; Nellie was almost the main course for a werewolf when she attempted a holiday visit to her relatives; and when I made a seemingly harmless pleasure jaunt to the film capital, we ended up tussling with zombies. So I figure . . .”

Benson nodded his head as he took his place behind his desk. “Three men tried to gun Smitty down last night,” he told them. “He called from southern California early this morning.”

Mac leaned forward in his chair. “What were the skurlies up to?”

Steepling his fingers, the Avenger said, “One of the two men Smitty was supposed to meet out there in the desert was killed before they ever got together.”

“That’s terrible,” said Nellie. “Poor Smitty.”

“From the details Smitty gave me over the phone,” continued Benson, “what happened to his friend is much more than just a highway killing.” He proceeded to tell them about Lieutenant Stevenson, Prester Ambrose, the black chariots, and the presence on the scene of Agent Early.

“Whoosh,” commented Mac when Benson had finished, “ ’tis a fine stew Smitty has got himself into.”

Cole asked, “What about the chariots, Richard? You don’t share the desert prophet’s public view that they’re unearthly in origin, do you?”

“No, Cole, and I don’t think they’re late arrivals for an Orson Welles broadcast.”

“Charles Fort,” said Nellie.

“Eh?” said Cole, cupping a hand to his ear.

“Haven’t any of you read Charles Fort’s books? He maintained, I’m not sure how seriously, that Earth has been visited by extraterrestrial ships for years, probably centuries.”

“Farfetched,” said Mac.

“At this point,” said the Avenger, “we don’t know what these flying disks are. We do know, however, that Don Early is already out there investigating.”

“Meaning,” suggested Cole, “that we’re talking not about aliens from another planet but from another country, mayhap.”

“The possibility that these chariots are involved in some kind of spy operation does arise,” said the Avenger.

“How about Smitty’s friend?” asked Nellie. “How does his death tie in?”

“He may have, by chance perhaps, got too close to one of these chariots,” said Benson. “Smitty was allowed to view the body; he says there were no marks on it. So far, Early hasn’t told him the results of the autopsy.”

“Ray guns,” said Cole. “That’s what Martians use.”

Nellie scowled at him.

The Avenger said, “This affair interests me. We’ll go out to California.”

“Agent Early will nae like that,” said Mac.

“You and I, Mac,” said Benson, “will check into the place where Smitty is staying, in Manzana. Cole, you and Nellie book yourselves into one of the desert resorts, someplace out of town.”

Mac stretched up. “Ye heard Josh’s news, Richard?”

“Yes, so we won’t include him on this excursion.”

“It’s going to be a girl,” Nellie said, still scowling at Cole.

“Would you care to make a small wager?”

Another breakdown brought Smitty a little closer to the solution.

It was late afternoon. He and Dipper, with the small young man at the wheel, were driving across the desert.

“Another couple miles,” said the giant, who had a large ordnance map spread out on his knees.

“We really ought,” said his friend, “to let the authorities handle this business.”

“Handle? All they want to do, those birds, is sweep the whole thing under the carpet. I want to know who and what killed Ralph.”

“He’s dead,” said Dipper. “He’s going to stay dead, no matter what you find out.”

“Maybe I’m a lot simpler than you, Dipper,” Smitty told him. “When somebody kills a buddy of mine, I go after that somebody.”

Dipper didn’t say anything for a moment. “Look, Smitty, don’t get the idea I don’t care about what happened to Ralph,” he said finally. “The thing is, we’re bucking some very important people.”

“Early? What’s so important about him? He’s only a cop with some hush-hush Washington agency.”

“But I work for the government myself, Smitty,” Dipper reminded him. “If I keep on—”

“Okay,” said the giant impatiently. “I won’t drag you along on any more of my wild-goose chases. Maybe you ought to go back home, make like you was never here.”

“No, I’ll stick a while longer.”

The bright hot desert shimmered all around them. Today there was no wind, only dry flickering heat.

“Taking a look at the place where Ralph stopped his car probably won’t . . . Holy smoke!”

“What is it?” asked Dipper, automatically slowing their car.

“Must be a mirage,” said Smitty. “I think I see a blonde in a polka-dot bathing suit standing up there beside the road.”

“Where? Oh, yeah, I see her, too.”