Doc Savage - The Freckled Shark Part 9

They flew five hours and picked up the riding lights of a plane. One of Horst's men had a marine telescope, through which he peered for some time.

"The Haven ship!" he said.

Horst said, "Get set, boys! It won't take long to finish this!"

Chapter VIII. BAT BRAWL.

THE Haven plane was sleek from the tapered cowling of its air-cooled motor to the trailing edge of its stabilizer fins. It had been built in a European factory. Tex Haven flew it himself and complained frequently.

"Blasted foreign ship," he grumbled. "I keep thinkin' about havin' to land it. Landin' speed is d.a.m.n near a hundred miles an hour."

Henry Peace said, "Why did you buy it, if you don't like it?"

"Didn't buy it. Stole it."

Rhoda Haven explained. "It was a personal ship of Senor Steel. We had to leave his country in a hurry."

Henry Peace scratched in his thatch of red hair, which seemed to be his habitual gesture when he wanted to think.

"There's a Senor Steel who is president of the South American republic of Blanca Grande," he remarked. "Any relation?"

"Same."

Small hard knots of jaw muscle gathered under each of Rhoda Haven's smooth cheeks. She suddenly looked more grim than Henry Peace had seen her before.

"He's no president!" she snapped. "He's a dictator. A tyrant."

Henry Peace eyed her.

"Offered a hundred thousand dollars for your head, didn't he?"

Rhoda Haven blinked. "How did you learn that?"

Henry Peace opened his mouth to answer-and gave a wild jump. Simultaneously, there was a snarling sound, somewhat as if a big bulldog had been turned loose. The plane trembled. A respectable collection of sievelike holes appeared in the plane cabin.

Tex Haven turned around, eyed the holes, yelled, "Looks like the ants have gone to work on us."

"Lead ones," Henry Peace agreed.

OLD Tex came back on the plane control stick. The little foreign plane arched up, hung in the sky by its moaning nose.

The other ship, the one from which the storm of machine-gun lead had come, pointed up and stood on its tail not fifty yards away. The ships were probably climbing, but the illusion was that they stood still.

"That's Horst!" Tex Haven yelled.

For a split second, the planes hung motionless in easy stone-throw, but the force of their up-swoop held the occupants temporarily helpless.

Tex Haven drew his six-shooters-Henry Peace had given him back the guns-and tried to knock out one of the cabin windows so he could fight. The gla.s.s, nonshatter, would not break. Tex lowered a window.

By that time, the other plane had climbed above them, was sliding over and its cabin windows were opening, machine-gun muzzles protruding.

"Watch it!" Henry Peace yelled.

Tex Haven was "watching it." He stamped left rudder, rocked with the stick. The plane flipped around and dived like a hawk that had folded its wings and was making for a chicken on the ground. Pa.s.sing wind moaned, then became a siren scream.

"You running away?" Henry Peace yelled."I ain't stackin' six-guns against machine guns," Tex shouted. "I tried that one time."

Speed-shriek lifted higher and higher. The night-smeared earth came up, seeming to bloat toward them.

Henry Peace looked at the air-speed meter. The needle stood close to five hundred.

"Five hundred-great blazes!" Henry Peace squalled. "We're goin' five hundred miles an hour. No plane ever went that fast before!"

"It's a foreign crate, so the air-speed dial is marked in kilometers, stupid," Rhoda Haven told him.

Their plane leveled out and streaked south. The earth was about a thousand feet below.

Eastward lay the sea, a vast expanse that was like dull, frosted gla.s.s; and somewhat nearer was the coast, a succession of small, buglike islands, each with a wide, white beach on the seaward side. Below the plane, there seemed be swamp; the swamp was veined with creeks, and splotched here and there with a lake.

Henry Peace wiped his brow with first one forearm, then the other. "I'd give a lot to be safe on the ground," he muttered.

Tex scowled at him. "Getting scared?"

"I always have been of planes."

Old Tex Haven craned his neck and squinted, then began to do something which he rarely did, but which he could do well-curse. He swore steadily, none of his words particularly profane by themselves, but connectively producing a blood-curdling effect. Toward the last, he speeded up until he sounded like a tobacco auctioneer.

A single bullet hit the left wing of the plane. A moment later they saw ahead of the ship tiny stars that seemed to fly as if they were pursued by the craft, red sparks that raced ahead and vanished.

"Tracer bullets!" Tex growled.

Henry Peace took a look backward, said, "Hey, that plane is catching us! It's faster than we are!"

The other ship overhauled them, got below them. More bullets pounded the craft. Tex banked. The other ship banked also. Tex came up and over in an Immelmann turn, but as the ship turned level at the top of the half loop, the other craft was almost beside them.

"Tarnation!" Tex growled uneasily.

The other pilot could fly.

It became evident in the course of the next two or three minutes that the other ship could fly rings around the foreign craft. They could not outrun them on straightaway, could not outmaneuver them in dog fight.

Henry Peace said, "If this keeps up, we're gonna be shot to pieces!"

He started for the c.o.c.kpit.

Old Tex Haven turned around and showed him the business end of a six-shooter. "You can't fly," Tex growled. "Don't you come up here and start telling me what to do."

Henry Peace retreated into the cabin, sank into a seat. He fished in a pocket, brought out a metal box the size of a tobacco can, but about half as high. From this he extracted what might have been a sponge. He put this in his mouth.

In the can with the spongelike object was a small nose clip. Henry Peace closed his nostrils with this. The Havens had not noticed.

Out of another pocket, Henry Peace took a bottle. He uncorked it, splashed the contents on the cabin floor. The stuff was liquid and it vaporized to gas quickly.

After a little while, Rhoda Haven looked sleepy and sank to the cabin floor, and soon Tex Haven was lolling back in the c.o.c.kpit seat, his eyes closed.

THE plane windows had been closed. Henry Peace opened them, letting the rush of air sweep out the gas which had been in the bottle he had uncorked. The nose-clip had kept the stuff from entering his nostrils. He had done the necessary breathing through the chemical-treated filter-the spongelike object which he had put in his mouth.

Henry Peace had said he could not fly.

He took the plane controls now and flew the craft. He did not go through aerobatics with the Horst plane. He sent the ship into a tailspin. It fell, turning over and over, toward the earth below. The chase had led inland somewhat. There were farms below now, hilly weed-grown farms, the red soil gullied, the fields edged with trees and bushes.

Henry Peace stabbed a thumb down on the landing light switch. One light had been shot out, but the other drove a white sheet.

Once what was below had been a cotton field; now it was eroded until it looked like the Dakota Sand Hills in miniature.

There were level stretches, but not many. Henry Peace selected one.

Coming in, Henry Peace kicked rudder to throw the plane from side to side-fishtail it-until it all but stalled. With flying speed gone, but enough left for control, he sat down. The ship bucked, jumped, ran up a short and steep hill. It lost speed there, and Henry Peace locked wheel brakes.

The plane came to a stop under a tree that looked as big as a cloud sitting on the ground.

Henry Peace scooped Rhoda Haven up with an arm, clutched old Tex Haven's collar, got the two limp figures out of the plane, and ran with them. Raced for cover.

The Horst plane came down a moonbeam, as noisy as a rocket, exhaust stacks blowing sparks. Machine-gun muzzles stuck from its windows and gobbled.

Bullets broke clods and knocked up dust around burdened Henry Peace. Then he lost himself in the trees.

In landing the plane, Henry Peace had acted with flash decision and unhalting execution, as though the landing of the racy-looking but not-too-efficient foreign ship had been a simple matter.

It had not been simple.

It was feat enough that Horst flew over with landing lights throwing a racing glitter before his plane-and decided not to attempt it. His plane was larger, needed more room to sit down. And that field down there was small and rough.

Horst began flying around and around while his men tried to shoot the bushes and trees to pieces, hoping to riddle Henry Peace and the Havens.

Then the third plane came down in the sky-the Doc Savage ship.

HAM BROOKS-he was flying the Doc Savage craft-had been flying off to the west, and high, inside a cloud.

Fortunately, he had dropped down out of the cloud in time to see the end of the air brawl. Had they remained in the cloud, they would have gone on and missed everything.

Monk yelled, leaned out of the plane window with a machine pistol. Monk liked to yell before a fight, as well as during it. He aimed carefully, caressed the trigger.

The machine pistol felt like a large b.u.mblebee buzzing in his fist. The ejector fed out a streak of empty bra.s.s cartridges, and the gun itself made a moan like a huge bull-fiddle.

Every fourth bullet was a tracer; they stood in the sky in a red-hot wire, and the wire waved and touched the cabin of Horst's plane.

Gaunt Johnny reached, knocked Monk's arm, spoiled his aim.

"What's the idea?" Monk yelled.

Johnny used small words.

"You know blamed well Doc Savage has a rule against trying to kill anybody," he snapped."Doc wouldn't know anything about it," Monk said with cheerful reasonableness.

By that time Ham was upon the tail of the Horst craft. The tail of a commercial plane is its blind spot; these were commercial jobs.

Monk said, "If we're gotta be finicky, I'll just shoot some holes in his wings."

He proceeded to do this. He had charged with a drum of Thermit-type incendiary slugs. They splashed like drops of liquid fire on the wings of Horst's plane. Fortunately, the wings were of metal and while the incendiaries did not do the wings any good, the only real harm was a dozen or so melted holes. But the Horst party didn't like that.

For four or five minutes, there was dog fight in the sky. Horst found his ship hopelessly outcla.s.sed, himself completely outflown.

Then Horst arched his plane, pointed south, opened throttle. He was going to try a straight, running escape.

Ham said, "We'll make him think he's standing still!"

Monk had been hanging out of the windows so far that it seemed remarkable he hadn't spilled out. Now he jerked back, clamped hold of Ham with one hand, pointed with the other.

"That light is talking!" he barked.

The light he meant was on the dark earth, in the clearing where the Haven plane had landed. It seemed to be the landing lights of the Haven ship, switched off and on.

"Dots and dashes," Ham said, after looking.

Monk spelled out the message: " H-e-l-p. I a-m m-a-n w-h-o m-a-i-l-e-d y-o-u s-h-a-r-k s-k-i-n. H-e-l-p."

There was an astonished interval between Monk, Ham and Johnny.

"We better land," Ham said.

Monk yelled, "We can't let that Horst gang get away."

Ham ignored Monk, pointed their ship toward the earth in a long spiral.

The plane carrying Horst and his men droned off to the southward and escaped.