West from Singapore (Ss) (1987) (19 page)

"So today I had you followed by Fly Johnny, one of my crew. In fact, for the past week he has never been more than a few feet from you.

"Today, when we first came ashore, Millan went through your quarters. He found the package of flashlight powder you used in making signals. He also found other evidence, so I think the case is clear."

Aldridge nodded, his face hard.

"Sounds conclusive," he agreed, "so I guess"

He wheeled like a cat and jerked Warren's gun from his hand. Eyes blazing with hatred, the gun swept up. But he was too slow. Ponga Jim stepped forward in one quick stride, half turning on the ball of his foot. His right fist smashed upward in an uppercut that slammed Aldridge into the sand, the gun flying from his fingers.

Ponga Jim looked at him once. "Bring him along," he said, "we'll be going now."

"You know," Warren said seriously, "the more I think about it the more I believe Drake had something!"

Ponga Jim grinned. "Yeah, and he would have liked you!" In the radio shack, Ponga Jim Mayo picked up the stub of a pencil, grinned, and scratched out a message.

MAJOR WILLIAM ARNOLD RAFFLES HOTEL SINGAPORE, S. I.

PROCEEDED WITH CAUTION AND A LOT OF GOOD IT DID. ARMED MERCHANTMAN OF TEN THOUSAND

TONS NOW HAS HOLE IN HIS BOW AND DISABLED GUN. WE HAVE ENEMY AGENT ABOARD-IN IRONS.

WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND YOU CAN HAVE THEM. WILL BE IN RED SEA FRIDAY. NUTS TO YOU.

MAYO.

The Red Sea is about 1,200 miles long and at its widest point, 190 miles. Although there are dangerous coral reefs along the shores, the waters in the main channel are deep. During the latter days of Egyptian control and in Roman times, ships sailed from Red Sea ports to India at the rate of one per day, or about 120 ships per year during the sailing season. These ports, Myos, Hormos, Berenice, and Ptolemais Theron, are now silted up and no longer in use. There are a few foundations remaining and some evidence of what once existed there.

Long before the Suez Canal was more than a dream, there had been a canal dug by order of the pharaohs to connect the Nile with the Red Sea. Most of it has since been filled with sand as a result of the constant winds.

At the north the sea is divided into the Gulf of Suez, leading to the canal, and the Gulf of Aqaba. The Sinai Peninsula lies between them, on which is the Mount Sinai of the Bible, also known as Jebel Musa. It is 7,450 feet high.

*

Chapter
I Strange Battlewagon.

The heavy concussion of the first shell brought Ponga Jim Mayo out of his bunk, wide-awake in an instant. He was pulling on his shoes when he heard the whistle in the speaking tube.

"Skipper?" It was Gunner Millan. "We're running into a battle! Can't see a thing but red flashes yet, about three points on the starboard bow. Sounds like a battlewagon."

"Put her over to port about four degrees," Ponga Jim said quietly. "Have the watch call Brophy and get the gun crews topside."

He got up, slid into his dungarees, and slipped on the shoulder holster with the forty-five Colt. There would be no need for it at sea, but he had worn the gun so long he felt undressed without it.

When Ponga Jim reached the bridge the sky was lit with an angry glow of flame. Two freighters of the convoy off to the starboard were afire, and something was lifted toward the sky that looked like the stern of a sinking ship. They could hear the steady fire of six-inch guns and then the heavy boom of something much bigger.

Second mate Millan came toward him along the bridge, swearing under his breath.

"Skipper," he said. "I must be nuts, but I'd swear that gun wasn't smaller than an eighteen-inch, and there's nothing afloat carries a gun that big!"

"Sounds like it," Jim said briefly. "Might be a sixteen. The Tirpitz, maybe. But you wouldn't think they'd gamble a battleship in waters as narrow as the Red Sea."

The blazing wreck of one freighter was directly opposite them, and suddenly a low, ominous blackness moved between them and the blazing ship. For a few minutes it was clearly outlined against the red glow of flame.

Squat, black, and ugly, the monster glistened in the reddish light. It was built low and completely covered by what appeared to be a steel shell. Even as they looked they saw the muzzle of a heavy gun belch flame. A big freighter, almost a mile away, was attempting to escape. Even as they watched, the shell struck it amidships.

Suddenly, but with every move so perfectly detailed as to seem like a slow-motion picture, the distant freighter burst. The amidships vanished and the bow and stern seemed to lift away from it and then fell back into the flame-tinged water. Then there was a slow rain of black debris.

"Gun crews standing by, sir," first mate Slug Brophy said, as he came up. He saluted snappily, but he was scowling as he looked off across the water. "What the devil kind of a craft is that?" he demanded. "Looks like she was a seagoing tank."

Ponga Jim nodded. "It's what I've been wondering why someone didn't do," he said crisply. "That's a new battleship. No elaborate superstructure, no basket masts or turrets. She's completely covered by a steel shell and probably bomb-proof. She's built along the lines of a streamlined Merrimac."

"Lucky that fire's in her eyes and we're back here," Slug said. "One shell from her and we'd be blown so high we'd starve to death falling back."

"Yeah." Jim studied the warship through his glass and then glanced ahead. "Gunner, lay all five guns on that baby. I'm going to give her a broadside and then run for it."

"You're nuts!" Brophy exploded. "Why, Chief-" "You heard me," Ponga Jim said sharply.

"Get going." He stepped into the wheelhouse.

"Selim," he said to the pockmarked, knife-scarred man at the wheel, "aren't we abreast of the old smuggler's passage through the reef? It gives us about five fathoms, doesn't it?"

Selim nodded, lifting his eyes from the compass. "I take her through?" he asked.

Ponga Jim studied the mystery ship ahead thoughtfully and then the nearing bulk of a large rocky island.

"Yeah," he said. "We'll fire that barge a broadside and then slip around that island and through the reef passage. They can't follow us, and blacked out the way they have us these days, we'll be invisible against that rocky shore. We got a chance."

He stepped back to the bridge and lifted his megaphone. "You may fire when ready, Gridley!" he said and grinned. The crash of the five 5.9s left his ears momentarily dead and empty. The freighter heeled sharply over. With his glasses on the warship, Ponga Jim waited for the Semiramis to recover. "All right, Gunner," he called. "Once more!"

He had his glasses on the warship when the salvo struck. He scowled and then spun on his heel.

"Hard over!" he snapped crisply. "Show them our stern, if anything." He stepped on the speaking tube. "Chief," he called, "give me all she's got! I don't want to use the telegraph. Jangles too much. We're in a spot, so keep her rolling."

Slug Brophy and Gunner Millan had returned to the bridge. The squat first mate wiped his face with a blue handkerchief. "You sure pick 'em big when you want trouble!" he observed. "See those five-point-nines slide off that shell? Like rice off a turtle's back! What kind of a ship is that, anyway?" "That ship," Ponga Jim said quietly, "can destroy British and American naval supremacy! The United States has the biggest, best, and most efficient navy afloat, but we haven't anything as invulnerable to attack as that ship!"

Behind them a gun boomed, and off to the left a huge geyser of water lifted toward the sky. Ponga Jim glanced aft and then looked at the black bulk of the rocky island.

Selim was cutting it close, but no one knew the Red Sea better than he did.

The Semiramis steamed straight ahead and then at a low word from Selim, slowed to half speed as he turned the ship at right angles to her course. Ponga Jim stared into the darkness ahead, hearing the roll of the surf on the coral reef. He put his hand up to his forehead, to find he was sweating.

Brophy stood close beside him, staring down at the black, froth-fringed reef dead ahead.

"You sure this guy knows what he's doing?" Slug muttered. "If he doesn't-"

"He does," Mayo said quietly. "Selim was a smuggler in this sea for several years.

He knows every cove and passage in the eleven hundred miles of it."

As if to prove his statement, the reef suddenly seemed to open before them, and an opening, invisible until they were close up, appeared in the reef.

In a matter of seconds they were through and in the clear water of the inside passage...

Two days later the Semiramis steamed slowly into the harbor at Port Tewfik and moved up to the place at the dock that had been made ready for them.

"Mr. Brophy"-Ponga Jim turned to the chief mate-"get the hatches off and the cargo out of her as quick as you can. Take nothing from anybody, use any gear you need, but it must get out. Also, I want a man at the gangway every hour of the day and night. Nobody comes aboard or leaves without my permission. Also, I want one man forward and one aft. All to be armed. Understand?"

"You must be expecting trouble," a cool voice suggested. Ponga Jim turned to find himself facing a square-shouldered young man with a blond mustache and humorous blue eyes. He was a slender man with a narrow face, dark, immaculate, and with a military bearing, and had just boarded the Semiramis with a companion.

"William!" he exclaimed. "What in time are you doing in Egypt? Thought you were in Singapore?"

Major William Arnold shrugged his shoulders.

"Trouble here, too," he said. "Heard you were coming in, so thought I'd drop down and see you." His gaze sharpened. "Have any trouble coming up from Aden?"

"We didn't," Ponga Jim said drily, "but we saw a convoy get smashed to hell."

"You saw it?"

Ponga Jim was nodding as Major Arnold quickly added: "Jim, let me present Nathan Demarest, our former attache at Bucharest. He's working with me on this job."

"Glad to know you," Ponga Jim said, and then he looked back at Arnold. "Yes, we saw it," he said briefly, and went on, as his glance went back to Demarest. "Arnold will tell you that I don't run to convoys, so we were traveling alone. About six bells in the middle watch I got a call and got on deck to find a big warship blasting the daylights out of the convoy. Only one destroyer remained in action when we came up to them. And that not for long."

"A ship?" Arnold demanded. "Not submarines?"

"A ship," Mayo repeated. "A ship that couldn't have been less than forty thousand tons. She was streamlined and completely shelled over like a floating fort, and she mounted eighteen-inch guns."

"Your friend Captain Mayo is a humorist," Demarest suggested to Arnold, smiling.

"There is no such ship."

"I'm not joking," Ponga Jim said stiffly. "There was such a ship, and we saw it."

Arnold looked at his friend thoughtfully. "What happened, Jim?" he finally asked.

"We were coming up in the darkness and were unseen. I gave them two salvos from my guns, and then we slipped around an island and got away."

"You hit her?"

"Yes-direct hits-and they didn't even shake her. Just like shooting at a tank with a target rifle."

Demarest's face had hardened. "If this is true we must get in touch with the Admiralty," he said. "Such a ship must be run down at once."

"If you'll take my word for it," Mayo said slowly, "I'd advise being careful. This ship is something new. I don't believe bombs would have any effect on her at all.

She looks like another secret weapon."

Ponga Jim Mayo glanced at the winches.

The booms were being rigged, and in a few minutes the cargo would be coming out of the freighter.

"Is this what brought you here, William?" he asked. "Or something else?"

"Something else," the major said. "Have you heard of Carter's death? Ambrose Carter, the munitions man? He was found shot to death in his apartment near Shepheard's in Cairo three weeks ago. Then General McKnight was poisoned, and Colonel Norfolk of the CID, who was investigating, was stabbed."

"McKnight poisoned?" Ponga Jim exclaimed. "I heard he died of heart failure."

"That's our story," Arnold agreed. "We mustn't allow anyone to know, Jim. But those are only three of the deaths. There have been nine others, all of key men. Some poisoned, some shot, one stabbed, two found dead without any evidence of cause of death, others drowned, strangled, or snake bit."

"Snake bit?"

"By an Indian cobra. The thing had been coiled in one man's bed. When it bit him he died before help could get to him. Jim, they called me here because these deaths can't be explained. Carter, for instance, was an acknowledged pro-Nazi, a former friend of Hitler's. If it weren't for that, it would seem logical the Nazis were starting a reign of terror, killing off the leadership for a major attack in the Near East."