Doc Savage - The Freckled Shark Part 13

AFTER lightning strikes, there is usually a moment of everything-stopped silence. This one lasted about twenty seconds.

Then a machine gun stuck out a tongue of red flame from the palm thicket and gobbled ear-splittingly. In the next quarter minute, possibly two hundred bullets. .h.i.t the car engine. The hood came loose, flopped, banged, and finallyflew up and away and the big motor itself broke in places. Impact of the bullets shook the whole car until the occupants held to things.

When the bedlam stopped, Monk was yelling. He thought the others were being murdered wholesale, the bullets missing him by some miracle.

But shooting was only to put the car engine out of commission.

"Come outa there!" a voice rapped angrily. "That car being armored won't do you any good!"

That was the first they knew about the car being armored.

"Let's fight 'em!" Monk gritted.

The voice yelled, "We wasn't kiddin' about that TNT under you!"

"I don't think they are," Ham muttered.

Johnny, shocked into using small words, said, "They surely don't plan to kill us immediately, or they would have cut loose with the machine guns. We better surrender."

Monk growled, "What puzzles me is why they don't go ahead and try to kill us?"

They learned why after they left the car, after they stood with their arms in the air, and were relieved of weapons, and after the captors discovered that Monk, Ham and Johnny were wearing bulletproof undergarments of a chain mesh.

These were torn off with some difficulty, leaving the late wearers almost embarra.s.singly unclothed. They learned the reason they had been kept alive when a captor barked: "Where's Jep Dee?"

Monk looked around for some trace of Horst, but the master mind did not seem to be in sight. The head skunk, Monk thought savagely, was staying out of sight whether the hole was falling in or not.

"C'mon!" the captor snarled. "Only reason you're alive is because you can tell us how to git hold of Jep Dee."

Monk began, "There is where you're mis-"

And Ham kicked his shin, hissed, "Want to make us dead, stupid? They find out we don't know where Jep Dee is, and they'll kill us."

Monk saw where it would be wise to let their captors think they knew where Jep Dee could be found, if they wanted to think that. He said no more. The others also clamped lips.

They were slapped and kicked and threatened for five minutes.

"This is gonna take time, so we better get 'em on the boats," a man growled. "No tellin' who might show up to investigate that shooting."

The sea was close, it now developed. The prisoners were led a short distance, then shoved through mangroves for fifty yards, coming out on the bank of a tidal creek on which floated four varnished dinghies.

"Whar might the head polecat be?" old Tex Haven inquired.

"Horst?" A man laughed. "Boy, he don't know what minute Doc Savage is going to turn up in this thing. He don't want to be around when that happens."

"He skeert of Doc Savage?" asked Tex.

"He ain't nothin' else!"

"He's not alone, either," another man muttered. "Right off, I can't think of anybody I'd be more scared of."

The prisoners were shoved close to the four dinghies, and after a grunted suggestion by one of their captors, it was decided to take them two dinghy loads at a time.Monk, Johnny and Rhoda Haven were loaded in two of the dinghies, along with four captors, a pair to each little craft.

The dinghies-twelve feet long, of light lapstreak construction, the wood varnished-were standard yacht tenders.

The two d.i.n.ks paddled along the tidal creek, and the creek swung sharply left.

Just after the pair of small boats rounded the corner, the rearmost one-the boat containing Johnny and Monk-overturned.

IT happened suddenly. No warning. Before the occupants could even yelp, they were in the briny creek water. It was too sudden and violent for any accident.

The men in the lead boat turned. One of them splashed a white flashlight beam.

They saw a swimmer making for them. He seemed to travel with fish speed. But there was more about the swimmer than speed.

And there was more about him than his giant size.

There was, probably most striking of all, his bronze complexion. Bronze was the swimming giant's color motif, his hair being a little darker bronze than his skin.

His eyes-when he was very close to the dinghy, the flashlight glare disclosed his amazing eyes-were a strange flake-gold tint. Flake gold that seemed stirred by tiny winds.

"Doc Savage!" a man yelled.

Doc Savage put hands on the dinghy rail. The hands were barred with sinew, the arms above them incredibly muscled.

He jerked. The dinghy upset.

"Monk, Johnny-swim this way!" Doc Savage called.

The bronze man's voice had a crashing power, as arresting as lightning.

Rhoda Haven floundered in the water. Her wrists were lashed, as were the wrists of Monk and Johnny. A dropped flashlight was still glowing on the bottom of the creek, about eight feet down. The water was very clear, and the flash glow diffused and made them seem to swim in milk.

Rhoda saw Doc Savage dive swiftly. The next instant, she was seized, dragged beneath the surface. She had enough mind presence to hold her breath.

Doc Savage slashed her wrists free.

She did not, for an instant, realize what else the bronze giant was doing. He shoved a clip on her nose; it closed her nostrils tightly enough to hurt a little. Then he shoved a mouthpiece between her teeth, a mouthpiece to which was attached a rubberized pouch. She knew what it was, then.

She swallowed the salt water that was in her mouth, after which she was able to breathe, underwater, as long as she did not take deep breaths, with the mechanical "lung." Chemicals in the rubberized pouch, in the mouthpiece-filter, purified her breath and furnished oxygen.

By swimming downward, she kept on the creek bottom.

Doc Savage had already reached Monk and Johnny and struck at their wrists lashings with his knife. He merely jammed a mechanical lung into Monk's hands, another into Johnny's clutch. They knew what to do with them. Doc himself donned one of the lungs.

The three of them-Doc Savage, Monk and Johnny-sank beneath the surface together. They found Rhoda Haven, faintly discernible on the outskirts of the glow that came from the waterproofed flashlight on the creek bottom.

Monk seemed inclined to stay and drag some of their late captors below the surface.

Doc Savage jerked at Monk's arm, discouraging his ideas about lingering.

IT was probably fortunate that Monk did not stay. The other two dinghies rushed into view, foam at their bows, loaded down with men who had machine guns.

The swimming Horst followers were hauled aboard the newly arrived dinghies.

The submachine guns roared and mowed down surrounding mangrove thicket.

The men heaved hand grenades overside, which burst, causing the creek to vomit water high in the air; and dead fish began coming to the top and floating bellies-up, and a nurse shark that had been in the creek made an agony-maddened threshing.

Some distance down the creek, Doc Savage led the others out into the mangroves. They listened to grenades burst, and men swear.

"A tintinnabula," Johnny remarked.

Monk said, "If that means a devil of a noise, you said it!"

There was more moonlight around them than they cared for.

Rhoda Haven gripped Doc Savage's arm.

"You . . . you are Doc Savage?" she breathed. "How on earth did you come to turn up now?"

Doc Savage did not answer that, because there was an interruption-Monk gave a great horrified start. The homely chemist had remembered his squabbling mate, Ham Brooks, was still a Horst prisoner.

"Ham-we've got to rescue Ham!" Monk gasped.

Rhoda Haven added something grim and imperative about saving her father, too.

"Crawl through the mangroves," Doc Savage said. "Keep going due south."

The bronze man then vanished. There was no commotion, no elaborate flourishing of arms or leaping into the tops of mangroves. The metallic giant merely walked a few paces-and suddenly could no longer be heard or seen.

"Doc's going after Ham and Tex Haven," Monk explained.

"Hadn't we better help him?" Rhoda Haven demanded.

Monk snorted.

"There's only twelve or fifteen of Horst's gang back there," the homely chemist said. "Doc won't need any help."

"Are you crazy?" Rhoda Haven asked incredulously.

"No, I've only seen Doc Savage in action," Monk explained.

They began creeping through the mangroves, heading south, as the strange bronze giant had directed. The mangroves were almost without leaves; none of them were more than ten feet high nor much thicker than Monk's thumb. They were as tough as iron. They grew in a solid mat, the boughs interlacing. There was usually about a foot of s.p.a.ce between the lowermost branches and the mangrove swamp mud. Monk, Johnny and Rhoda Haven started mud-crawling southward.

ABOUT this time, the Horst men stopped shooting and throwing hand grenades into the mangrove creek.

"They got away!" growled the man in charge. "We better see they don't grab Ham Brooks and old Tex Haven from us!"

Both dinghies were paddled back furiously to where the other two prisoners had been left. The Horst men were frightened now.They had seen Doc Savage finally, gotten a sample of the bronze man's work. Back in New York, when they had first learned they were pitted against the mysterious and almost legendary Doc Savage, they had been afflicted somewhat by the creeps. But as the hours pa.s.sed, and Doc Savage in person did not appear, there had been a reaction; and they had been inclined to beat chests and say, "h.e.l.l, we ain't scared of this guy!"

Simply because the bronze man had not appeared, they had started to think what they hoped in their hearts was true-that the reputation of Doc Savage was a myth, a soap bubble blown by hot air from gossiping tongues.

But now the bubble had burst.

And there stood their personal devil, just as big and bronze as they'd heard he was.

With fright-driven haste, the Horst men seized Ham Brooks and drawly old Tex Haven, flung them into the dinghies, and rowed back down the mangrove creek.

They heaved hand grenades into the water as they progressed. The blasting grenades made concussions that would have killed any man, even Doc Savage, attempting to attack the boats by swimming below the surface.

Their flashlights raked the mangroves. Their machine guns lead-ripped every lump of dark shadow.

What saved them was their gas masks. They had donned these-all but the prisoners who had been in the trailer, and who naturally had been rescued. The latter had no masks.

The men without masks collapsed unexpectedly, every one of them. It happened at a point where the creek was narrow. The men with masks were terrified. Their machine guns ran out thunder and lead until the barrels turned red-hot. They heaved grenades as fast as they could dig them out of pouches.

Doc Savage-he had laid down the barrage by heaving small, marblelike capsules of gas from a distance-was forced to flatten in mud under mangroves. He was no more bulletproof than the next man.

The dinghies-carrying all of Horst's men and Ham and Tex Haven-got out of the mangrove creek. Digging oars drove them for the yacht.

THE yacht was sixty-five feet long. Also deceptive. From the water line up, she was a two-masted schooner, with a clipper bow, a nice hull line, and a clean stern. Her sails were all jib-headed, and raised and lowered on neat tracks instead of the old-style mast hoops.

Outwardly, she looked like some moderately rich man's plaything, a schooner capable of a top speed of ten knots at the very most. Except that the masts were hinged like a Dutch ca.n.a.l boat, so they could be lowered.

If one got close to her when she rode in very clear water, and looked at the hull lines below the surface, the impression was a little different. The water-buried part of her was built like a Harmsworth trophy contender. More than half the boat was engine room, crammed with the newest high-speed Diesel equipment.

When the dinghies had been hooked to davits and yanked aboard, the yacht anchor came up, and the craft gathered speed until she was jumping from one wave to another.

An investigation showed that the gas victims seemed merely to be unconscious.

The man in charge went below and got on the short-wave radio. It was a very modern radio, equipped with a "scrambler"-a mechanical-electrical device which made it impossible for any listener-in to understand what was being said.

The man talked to someone on the radio for some time. Then he went on deck and made a speech to his men.

"We're going to the island," he said.

"But that will leave Doc Savage untouched," a man reminded him. "And it will leave Jep Dee running loose, somewhere. To say nothing of that Henry Peace, whoever he is."

"That's all right," said the man who had talked on the radio. "Something new has turned up."

"New?""Senor Steel is here."