A silent group met in the big room where the Goose waited, resting easily on the dark water.
Young, Scotty, Doone, Ryan, and Kalinov gathered around Turk. He was brief and to the point.
“We’ve got to move out now! They’ll be down here, and we haven’t weapons enough to fight them off.
Scotty, I’d say you and Kalinov should move out right away, keep to the low country and get as much distance between you and this bunch as you can. It’ll be rough going, but you’ll have to do it.
“Travel light. We haven’t much in the way of supplies, but we’ll rustle some more and bring them to you, supply you by air. “Don’t fight unless you have to, but keep your riflemen to the rear.” Madden watched them go, scowling thoughtfully. He was worried by Bo Han’s lack of opposition to the escape from the Domed House. The man had the look of a plotter, a conniver as well as a man of action.
Turk doubted that they would get away so easily.
The Grumman had brought more supplies than needed, and a few things were carried by the walking party, which made the plane somewhat lighter. There remained Young, Doone, Ryan, Shan, Bekart, and the two girls. It was still a heavy load. Madden had his own plans, intending to fly the fighter. From what he originally learned, there was still another fighter and two transports somewhere around the valley.
The transports, even if armed, did not worry him. The fighter was another thing.
Bob Doone had avoided Bekart, and he avoided him now as he walked over to where Turk Madden, his thumbs tucked behind his belt, was staring bleakly at the grim hills. The gray clouds had lowered themselves over the peaks now, and the massive grandeur of Amne Machin was shut out. “Ryan tells me you came for my cargo, too?” Bob suggested. Turk nodded. “And the sooner we get it and get moving, the better.” “All right. When you’re ready, I’ll take you to it. I hid it myself. was “Sparrow, you come with us. Shan, get the ship warmed up. Young, if you will, warm up the fighter for me.
I’m flying it.” He glanced at the Manchu. “And keep an eye on Bekart. He’s got something on his mind!” Turk checked his Colt, and then the three turned and walked from the ancient temple. The wind outside was raw and chill. Bob Doone led off and they started up the street, over the tumbled walls and broken stones. When they were halfway up the hill they stopped and looked back. White caps dotted the lake’s black water, and the hills were a sullen gray and black, streaked here and there in cracks and crevices with the white of snow. On the far side of a plateau a path led downward. “Found it by accident,” Doone said. “Came down here, couldn’t carry the box very far. Before we crashed I’d seen those natives coming, and they didn’t look enticing.” The path dipped into a thick growth of pine, then out and into a small open glade at the end of a canyon. Here, set away by itself, was a temple. A wide stone-flagged terrace lay before it. They walked across, footsteps echoing hollowly, then up three high steps and through the narrow door.
Inside the light was vague, but they could see a bare and empty room except for one place at a far corner where some animal had gathered sticks and grass for a nest. A huge figure of what was intended for Buddha loomed at the end. They walked toward it, and Doone gestured. “See? The Buddha is newer than the rest. Probably some other god was there and they put the Buddha in its place. Didn’t work very well from what I heard in the valley, for the people deserted the temple and, later, the town.”
He circled the pedestal and the huge stone figure. “Careful! It’s balanced very badly there.
I think someone started to move it, planning to return the original, and then stopped.”
It was not of one solid stone, rather of blocks cunningly fitted together.
Behind the pedestal, Doone got down on his knees and dug at a flat block fitted into the floor. Using a knife, he succeeded in getting his fingers under the edge. He heaved on the slab, and his shoulder touched the pedestal. The figure above teetered dangerously. “Look out!” Ryan warned.
“If that thing fell off of there it would kill us all!”
Turk stooped and got one edge of the slab and they lifted it out. In the recess below was the black steel box. Carefully, they lifted it out. Turk and Ryan each took a handle, and they straightened.
Turk went suddenly cold inside. His right hand gripped the handle on the steel box, his Colt was in its shoulder holster in his left armpit. And Travis Bekart was standing before them, in his hands a submachine gun. He was smiling, his coldly handsome face was even colder now, and his eyes were like ice. “So,” he said, “here’s the payoff. Didn’t think I’d let you get away with this, did you, Madden? You messed up my plans for me.
I’d an idea of marrying Raemy and living on the fat of the land, then getting rid of her and inheriting it all myself. I got Doone out of the way, and then you had to nose in.
“But I’d no intention of going back as a prisoner. Oh, no! I intend to go back, all right! I’ll go back alone, and very sad that you were lost, but I’ll take the black box with me, and they will be very pleased. I may even get a decoration for it. And there will be other women with money.” “What about Young?” Doone said. “He knows!” “Young is dead,” Bekart replied, with triumph. “I’ve killed him. I pushed Raemy into the lake when no one was looking, then when the Manchu went in after her, I took this gun and came away. Unfortunately Young never knew what hit him. And now you … you’ll all know, and I’ll have made a clean sweep. I’ll just leave the girls. Those Ngoloks will take care of them. It will serve Raemy right for not marrying me when she had the chance.”
“You talk a lot,” Turk said. If only he didn’t have that damned box! He could make a try for his gun and-Bob Doone shifted his feet. “You can’t get away with it,” he said. He shifted his right foot a little, lost his balance, and hurled his weight against the pedestal of the huge Bu. Hal As his weight hit the pedestal there was a grinding crash from the stone rollers beneath the figure and the great mass of stone toppled forward! Travis Bekart threw up his arms with a scream of fear as he saw the huge stone figure looming over him. For one blinding instant the man’s face was a tortured white mask, and then with a mighty crash the stone image hit the man’s widespread arms and screaming face, burying him under an avalanche of ancient granite.
The sound died, dust lifted, and Turk staggered forward, pulling on his handle of the box. “Let’s go!” he said.
They found Young down on his face beside the fighter, his head smashed with the heavy slugs.
“Go ahead,” Turk told them. “Get this into the amphibian and take off. Get moving.”
Tenderly, he carried the man’s body to a lace beside the other grave. He scraped out a hollow and rolled the body into it, then covered it with brush and stones. There was no time to make a cross.
He turned and hurried back to the fighter. As he did so, he caught a movement on the lake front below, and saw a column of men circling the lake toward the temple! Yet even as he looked, he saw the amphibian taxi out on the water. Scrambling into the fighter, he revved the motors. Young had evidently had them warmed fairly well before he was killed. Staring at the lake front, he saw the monks begin to deploy along the waterfront, scattering out in a crude, skirmishing line.
Twin motors roaring, he started the ship down the plateau. It bumped, then rolled faster and faster.
Swiftly, he shot over the packed snow, then hauled back on the stick and lifted the tiny ship.
He was airborne. He climbed steadily, then swung around in a steep bank and raced back for the lake front.
He could see the monks lifting their rifles now, and although he could hear no sound, he knew they were firing. Then he swept down upon them and tripped the triggers on his guns. The leading edge of the wing burst into fire, and he saw the scattered line break and lunge for cover. One man leaped off into the icy water, and then Turk came back on the stick and shot away above the lake, lifting higher and higher, reaching for altitude to put him above the amphibian.
The plane below him w
as heading off across the bleak gray hills, and a thousand feet higher he turned after the fleet Grumman.
He turned once, to glance back toward the valley, and his eye caught a flash of movement.
He glanced up, and fear struck him like a blow! Another fighter was dropping out of the gray clouds, guns flaming, and coming down in a wild, screaming dive! Turk whipped the fighter around and dove for the lake, then shot up, just clearing the black edge of the surrounding ridge by a matter of feet. The enemy fighter was on his tail and coming fast. He swung the ship again, darting this way and that in a mad rush to escape. A bullet hole appeared in the instrument panel ahead of him, and something spattered on his face. He hauled back on the stick and climbed almost straight up toward the gray clouds, then went over backward in a loop, trying to reverse positions, but as he swept by the other ship he saw a fleeting glimpse of a taut yellowish face! Bo Hau! A burst of tracer flamed past him and he whipped the ship around, fighting for his life. The big Ngolok knew his ship and knew every trick of flying. Another burst, and Turk felt a sharp blow on his leg. There was no chance to glance down, but feeling numb and sick, he whipped the ship around again and dove like a streak for the dark, stone-filled streets below!
As he eased out of a screaming dive he shot the ship for the looming black tower and banked around as if rounding a pylon on a racing course, Bo Han whipped around it, too, but with a sudden loop, at its bottom no more than fifty feet above the black stone roofs, Turk got Bo Hau’s fighter in his sights, and he let go a burst that riddled the engine cowling and cockpit. The fighter dipped suddenly and went crashing into the street, one wing ripping off as it hit the edge of a stone roof. There was a tremendous burst of flame, and an explosion that rocked Turk’s fighter, and then he was speeding away, heading after the amphibian. His motors began to stutter, then spit, and he leveled off and headed for the ground. Ahead was a long level stretch, rocky and scattered here and there with dark, dry-looking brush. As he came in, he cut his speed, eased back a bit on the stick, felt her wheels touch, then again, and then the ship hit a bush and the tail flopped up and over. Something smashed him on the head, and he conked out. After a long time, he opened his eyes. He was hanging in his safety belt, one shoulder against the edge of the seat. Holding with one hand, he loosened the safety belt and topped to the ground below. He sat there for a long time, his head buzzing. Then he got to his feet, gathered up the few things that belonged to him, and started on weaving feet down the trail the marching party had taken.
Sometime during the night he fell down by a bush and slept, and then almost at dawn the cold awakened him. Turk staggered to his feet, staring around him.
His head throbbed and he was tired, but his mind was clear. Of all that had happened since he began walking he had no idea, nor where he was. He saw the tracks of considerable party and started on, putting each foot down with care.
At noon, somewhere between delirium and sanity, he heard a hum in the sky and looked up, shielding his eyes. Then it stopped and he walked on. He was walking like that when they found him, Sparrow Ryan and Raemy. He was walking solemnly along the dim trail, his eyes fixed ahead of him, blood all over his head and caked in his hair and on his cheek, limping with one leg, but walking on.
Raemy saw him first, and she started to run.
“Oh, Turk! Turk! I thought you were dead!”
Her arms went around him and he felt her soft lips on his and through the fog of pain his memory came back and he looked over her red-gold hair at Ryan, who was grinning with relief.
“Go away!” he said. “Can’t you see she wants to be alone?”
*
Author’s Notes:
The Goose Flies South
More on mercenaries:
For thousands of years warfare offered a young man his best chance of advancement. Because of the rigid caste system that existed in Europe, the chances for an ambitious man were slight unless he went to war, where courage and a strong arm. might win him riches, a knighthood, or a place among the great captains of his time.
In Ireland in the time of Queen Elizabeth, there was no future for a young Irishman of family, so many sailed away to Europe to take service in one army or another. Because they flew away to far lands they were called “wild geese.” Alexander O’Reilly, who commanded the Spanish army for a time, was one such. General McMahon, who served with Napoleon, was another. There were Irish soldiers in every army in Europe, as well as in Latin America.
Often such soldiers moved from war to war as long as they survived, renewing old acquaintances as they moved. Yet, often enough it was harder to collect the money promised than it was to win the war, if such wars are ever won.
It was a hard world, yet few such men knew any other, and nobody mourns for a mercenary.
*
Steadily the motors were droning away, in the thin upper air. “If I was a betting man, Panola said grimly, “I’d give ten to one we never get out of this alive!”
“You asked for it!” Captain Runnels replied dryly. “This is strictly volunteer stuff. You could have ducked it.”
“Sure,” Panola shrugged. “But who wants to duck a job like this? I asked for it, but I’m not dumb!”
Turk Madden eased forward on the stick and felt the Goose let her nose down. In the heavy, cottony mass of cloud you could see less than nothing. Letting her down was taking a real chance, but they were almost at their destination, and they would soon be ready to land. There were a lot of jagged peaks here, many of them running upwards of two thousand feet. He was already below that level and saw no sign of an opening to the world below.
The Goose dipped out of the clouds suddenly, and with a rush. A huge, craggy, and black mountainside towered above them. Turk whipped the Grumman over in a steep bank and swung away from the cliff, missing it by inches. He glanced at Winkler as the ship flattened out. The Major’s face was a sickly yellow.
“Close, that!” he said grimly.
“It was,” Turk grinned. “You don’t see ‘em much closer.”
He glanced over his shoulder. Runnels and Panola looked scared, but Shan Bao, his mechanic and right-hand man, a tall Manchu, seemed undisturbed. Death itself meant little to the Manchu.
“How much further?” Runnels asked, leaning forward. “Not far. We just sighted Mount Stokes, so it’ll be just a few minutes.” “Let’s hope the place is empty,” Panola said. “We’d be in a spot if some ship was lying there.”
“It’s pretty safe.” Turk said. “Nothing down here to speak of, and even less back inland.
All this section of the Argentine and Chile is wild and lonely. South, it gets even worse. his It was a cold, bleak, and barren country, sullen and dreary under the heavy gray overcast. Great craggy peaks lifted into the low clouds, and below there were occasional inlets, most of them edged with angry foam. Some of the mountains were covered with trees, and in places the forest came down to the water’s edge. In other places there were only bleak plains, wind blown and rain whipped.
Then suddenly he saw the mountain, a huge, black, domelike peak that shouldered into the clouds.
“That’s the Dome of St. Paul,” he said, looking over at Winkler. “San Esteban Gulf is right close by.”
He swung the plane inland, skirting the long sandy beach on which a furious surf was breaking, sighted San Quentin Bay with its thickly wooded shores, and then swung across toward the mouth of the San Tadeo River. The land about the river mouth was low and marshy and covered with stumps of dead trees, some of them truly gigantic in size. Inside the mouth of the river it widened to considerable breadth, and something like seven miles up it divided into two rivers.
Turk swung the ship up the course of the Black River, flying low. The stream was choked with the trunks of dead trees, and huge roots that thrust themselves out of the water like the legs of gigantic spiders.
A few miles further, and then he swung inland above a barely discernible brook, and then eased forward on the stick and let the amphibi
an come down on the smooth surface of the small lake.
He taxied across toward a cove lined with heavy timber, and then let the ship swing around as he dropped the anchor in comparative shelter.
“Wow!” Panola shook his head and grinned at Turk as the latter peeled off his flying helmet.
“How you ever remembered this place is beyond met How long since you were here?”
“Twelve years,” Madden replied. “I was a kid then, just going to sea. Incidentally, from here on we’d better go armed. I’m just giving you a tip, although of course, that’s up to Major Winkler.”
“We’ll go armed,” Winkler said. “And all of you know, we can’t take any chances on being found. We’ve got to get this plane under cover and stay there ourselves as much as possible. If we were caught here, there’s not a chance we’d get out of this alive.”
Turk watched Shan Bao getting out the rubber boat and then turned his gaze toward the mainland. The amphibian lay in a small cove, excellently sheltered on all sides. The entrance to the cove from the small lake was an S-shaped waterway, ending in a pool. The pool was surrounded on all sides by a heavy growth of timber. It was a mixture of fir, pine, and occasional beech trees. The beach was sandy and littered with washed up roots and trunks of old trees.
There was no sign of life of any kind. And that was as it should be. Not over two dozen men on earth knew that here, off the coast of Patagonia, was to be another experiment with an atomic bomb. An experiment kept secret from the world, and of which no American from the North, no Englishman, and no Russian was to know. It was an experiment being made by a few desperate and skillful German scientists and military men, working with power-mad militarists of the Argentine.
Turk Madden, soldier of fortune, adventurer, and late officer in the Military Intelligence, was flying his own plane, a special-built Grumman Goose with a number of improvements and a greater armament and flying range than the ordinary Goose. The trip was in command of Major Winkler, and with them were Captain Runnels and Lieutenant Panola, a recently discharged officer.
Night Over the Solomons (Ss) (1986) Page 14
