Turk studied the dead gray of the sky. “Storm making up,” he said, “but there’s plenty of time. That’s the Nahtohu coming up.” He swung the Grumman to cut over the woods and intersect the river trail.
“Madden!” Arseniev’s voice was sharp. “A Nakajima fighter is coming down toward us!”
“Okay,” Turk replied. “Get those automatic rifles and stand by aft. But don’t shoot unless I give the word, or he starts. Then pour it into him!”
He flew right straight ahead. His mind was working swiftly. It would have to be quick, it would have to be surprise. The fighter’s armament was no better, but his speed and maneuverability were much greater.
He glanced around. The fighter hadn’t offered to open fire. It must be that he was uncertain. Turk slowed up suddenly to let the Nakajima overtake him. It did, coming at such a terrific rate that when the Grumman abruptly lost speed the fighting plane drew ahead. Madden suddenly banked steeply toward the Nakajima, and at the same instant, opened fire with his full forward armament.
The savage blast of fire caught the uncertain Japanese unprepared. A shell exploded against his instrument board, riddling his body with fragments. As he sprang up in the cockpit, a hurricane blast of machine-gun fire swept the ship from wing to tail assembly, and the Nakajima rolled over and started for earth, screaming like a dying eagle.
Turk pulled the ship into an Immelmann and wheeled back over the spot where the plane had been. But the pursuit ship was a gone gosling. It was headed for earth with a comet’s tail of fire streaming out behind. Paralleling it fell the black body of the pilot, turning over and over in the air.
He’d had no chance to think, let alone to act.
“Nice work,” Powell said, coming forward. His eyes were narrow, and he was sweating. “You don’t gamble much, do you?”
Madden looked up quickly. “Gamble? With a war at stake?”
Powell laughed, his voice a little harsh. “Some would. You had me worried there for a minute!”
Turk eased back on the stick and began to climb. He glanced at the altimeter. Slowly the needle left ten thousand behind, then twelve…fifteen…sixteen….
Powell looked uncomfortable, and loosened his collar. Arseniev, who had rejoined them, was watching Powell curiously.
At twenty thousand Turk leveled off and continued west. “What now?” Powell’s breathing was heavy in the thin air. “Better land and look around on foot, hadn’t we? If they see us we’ll have a flock of pursuit jobs around us faster than we can think, and they’ll do what you do, shoot first, then talk!”
“No,” Turk said. “If they are down there, we’re going to call Khabarovsk, then attack.”
“Attacking twelve pursuit ships?” Powell said, his face getting red. “You’re no combat pilot! You’re mad!”
“Didn’t you know that?” Turk grinned. “And that’s not true, I flew in Spain.”
Powell turned, looking at Madden. “You flew in Spain?”
“That’s right,” Turk nodded. “And I was a prisoner for a while during the siege of the Alcazar at Toledo. Remember?”
“Remember…” Suddenly, Powell’s hand flashed for a gun, and Turk shoved the stick forward. The Grumman’s nose dropped and Powell, overbalanced, plunged forward, his head smashing against the wall. He slumped in his safety belt, and Turk eased the stick back and brought the ship to an even keel. Arseniev’s eyes were bright.
“All the time he was a traitor!” he whispered hoarsely. “All the time!”
“Sure,” Madden agreed. “I couldn’t place him at first. He’s a German, lived in England for several years, but he was with Franco. You’d better tie him up.”
Arseniev glanced down as Turk banked the ship. On the shores of a small lake were lined a long row of planes. Half of them were in the process of being camouflaged with branches and reeds. The others still were uncovered. There must have been a hundred.
Arseniev, his face white, bound Powell hand and foot, then he stepped over to the radio. “Calling Khabarovsk…calling Khabarovsk…enemy airdrome located…between the forks of the Nahtohu…position 138 degrees east, 47 degrees 2 minutes north…. Approximately one-hundred planes.”
Turk glanced down again. Below them the airdrome was a scene of mad activity.
“Heard us!” he snapped. “Get set, I’m going down! Get on those bombs!”
Turk pulled the Grumman into as steep a dive as she would take and went roaring toward earth. When the ship was built she had been fitted with a bomb rack, and he had taken her just that way. Now it would come in handy.
Roaring toward the ground he saw one of the pursuit ships streaking along the field, and he opened up with the guns. The ship was just clearing the trees at the end of the field when it dipped suddenly, smashed into the timber and burst into flame.
The Grumman dove into the field so close that frightened Japanese scattered in every direction, then Arseniev pulled the bomb release, and Turk brought the ship out of the dive. For an instant he didn’t think the wings would stay with her, but they did, and the ship was shooting away over the trees when the thunder of the bursting bombs reached their ears. He did a quick wingover and started back, his forward armament chattering wickedly.
He strafed the field from beginning to end, and a pursuit ship that had started to make the run for a takeoff spilled over into flame. He saw men start across the field.
Behind him, Arseniev was busy dropping incendiary bombs, then the Grumman began to climb, and Turk looked back over his shoulder. Several blazes were burning furiously around the field, two planes had definitely crashed there, and several were on fire.
He turned south. “We’re getting out of here, Fyodor. Better inform your boys!”
Madden heard the voice replying behind him, then Arseniev switched off the radio.
“There’s a force coming!” he yelled.
Turk tooled the Grumman on south, then swung away from the mountains toward the marshes. Suddenly the motor sputtered, coughed, and Turk worked, his face changing. The motor sputtered again, missed, then died.
“What is it?” Arseniev demanded.
“Gas!” Turk indicated his fuel gauges. “Must have winged us as we were leaving.”
He put the Grumman into a slow glide, studying the earth below. It was marshland, with occasional ponds and lakes. But all were small. Suddenly, just ahead, he saw one that was somewhat larger. He pushed the stick forward, leveled off, and landed smoothly on the lake water. With what momentum remained, Turk tooled the ship into a small opening in the marsh. Nearby was a small island of firm ground.
“Better get on that radio and report,” Turk said. “I’m going to look around.”
He tried a hummock of grass near the plane, and it was solid. A flock of birds flew past, staying low. Turk turned to look at them, scowling. Then he looked up, studying the sky. There were clouds about, and the wind was picking up, but not much yet. Along the horizon there was a low black fog.
Suddenly, complete stillness fell over the marsh. Above, the clouds had ragged edges, and the black fog along the horizon suddenly lifted, and then the sun was covered.
“Arseniev!” Turk shouted. “Quick! We’ve got to get the ship lashed down. We’re going to have a storm!”
In a mounting wind they labored desperately, furiously. There were no birds in sight now, and it was beginning to snow. When the ship was lashed down, Madden turned, wiping the sweat from his brow.
“Come on,” he said. “We’ve got to make some shelter!”
“What about the ship?” Arseniev protested. “That will do, won’t it?”
“Might be blown out on the lake. Start cutting reeds, and work like you’ve never worked before.” Turk glanced around hastily. “Don’t cut them there, or there. Just over there, and work fast!”
The wind was blowing in gusts now, cold as ice, and the snow was lifting into the air. Turk bent his back and slashed reeds with the bolo he always carried in the ship, sweat broke out on his face
despite the cold, but he labored on, swinging with his bolo like a madman. Uncertain, Arseniev followed suit, not sure why they were cutting, but working desperately against time.
Leaping back to the bunches of reeds left uncut, Turk began binding them together with stout cord brought from the plane. Then he wove the long reeds closely together among the clumps, drawing them down low above the ground, and working the gathering snow close around the edges. Running to the plane, he caught up a canvas tarp and raced back, doubling it over on the ground under the covering of the reeds that was partly a hut, partly just a low shelter.
Suddenly there was a shout from Arseniev. Turk looked up, wondering. Powell had somehow broken his bonds, and had leaped from the plane. Turk went for his gun, but his hands, numbed by cold, fumbled, and before he could draw it the man had leaped to a hummock of grass, dodged behind a clump of reeds, and when they next saw him he was running at full tilt over the marsh. Once he fell waist deep in water, then scrambled out, and trotted on.
“Let him go,” Turk said. “Maybe it’s better than a firing squad, at that.”
“What do you mean? You think—” Arseniev began.
Turk shrugged. “He’s partly wet, he has no shelter, no weapons. What do you think? He’ll die before this night is out. Feel that wind, and imagine yourself wet—in that.”
Arseniev shivered. “I can’t.” He looked around. “What now?”
“Crawl in between the canvas,” Turk said. “I’ll join you in a minute.” He walked back and forth, piling the reeds over the canvas and feathering them against the wind. Then he trampled the snow down, and after a while, lifted the canvas and joined Arseniev.
The instant he was inside it felt warmer; over them they could hear the lonely snarl of the wind, and out on the lake the lashing of the waves, but over their covering of reeds the snow sifted down, gathering over them in a thick, warm blanket.
IT WAS MORNING when he awakened. He turned over slowly, warm and comfortable. No wind was blowing, but he knew that it was cold outside. He touched Arseniev on the shoulder, then crawled out.
The world was white with snow everywhere. The lake was crusted with ice, and even the reeds bent heavily under the weight of the snow. The plane was almost covered with it.
“We’ve got to make a fire,” Turk said, “and then uncover the ship. The way it is, a searching plane couldn’t find us.”
Sweeping the snow from a place on the ground, Turk went back to the shelter and brought out a handful of dry reeds. Arseniev collected some driftwood from the edge of the lake, and soon a fire was ablaze. Then they went to work, clearing the snow from the ship. It was a job, but it kept them warm.
Arseniev stopped once, looking over the white, empty expanse. “I wonder what his real name was?” he said.
“I don’t know,” Turk said. “I never heard.”
It was an hour later when they heard the mutter of a plane. Soon it was circling above them, and then it leveled off and landed on solid earth not far away from the island where they’d spent the night.
Two men came running to them over the frozen marsh. “Marchenko!” Arseniev yelled. “It is good to see you, believe me!” The other man was Bochkarev, a flyer noted for his Polar exploits. They shook hands all around.
Two hours later, the Grumman was towed to solid earth and repaired. The big Russian ship took off, then the Grumman. Turk headed the ship south, toward Khabarovsk. They were flying low over the snow when Arseniev suddenly caught his arm.
Powell.
They knew him by the green scarf that trailed from his neck, a bright spot of color on a piece of ground swept clear by the driving wind. The man lay where he had fallen, frozen and still.
Turk Madden eased back on the stick and climbed higher. Ahead of them, the sky was blue, and the sun was coming out from the clouds. In the clear cold air the sound of the motors was pleasant, a drumming roar of strength and beauty.
Coast Patrol
Dense fog blanketed the Siberian coast. It was cold, damp, and miserable. Turk Madden banked the Grumman steeply and strained his eyes toward the fogbound earth.
He could not see anything but the gray cottony thickness. Occasionally a jagged peak of the Sihoti Alins loomed through the clouds, black and ugly where the wind had swept the snow away.
It was warm in the cabin of the plane, and glancing over his shoulder, Turk smiled to see Diakov asleep. The Ussuri Cossack gunner possessed an amazing ability to sleep at any time or place. And he never dozed. He was either instantly asleep or wide-awake. Well, a few more miles of patrol and they could return to Khabarovsk, to food and a warm bed.
Turk swung the ship lazily, detecting a rift in the fog. Then, quite suddenly, he saw the freighter.
She was moored fore and aft, just inside the river mouth. A freighter of no less than four thousand tons tied up at a rocky shelf in the mouth of a lonely stream on a coast that rarely saw anything bigger than a fishing smack or occasional whaler. Since the war had begun, even the few Udehe fishermen had gone back up the coast to colder but safer waters.
Glancing back, he saw Diakov was awake. The big Cossack’s black eyes were alert. “You see something? What is it?”
“A ship,” Madden said. “A big freighter, tied up in the river.”
“No Russian ship would be here,” Diakov said. “I think not.”
“I’m going down and have a look-see,” Turk said. He rolled the plane around in a tight circle, heading upstream. His sense of direction had always been his greatest asset. He remembered that river, too. For two weeks he had been flying over it every day, and before that at odd times. Upstream there was a wide bend with a little backwater where he could land…with luck.
He landed.
Fog was around them like a shroud. Diakov straightened, his face pale under the tan. “Well,” he shrugged, “I tell myself it is your life, too, so why should I be afraid? Nevertheless, I am afraid.”
He leaped ashore and took a turn around a tree with a line, making the plane fast, then another tree, lashing it bow and stern. Then he got out skis and checked his rifle. “How far you think?” he asked.
“About three miles.” Turk grinned at him, the smile making his lean brown face suddenly boyish. “You stay here, Muscovite. If I don’t come back, you go over the mountains to Sidatun.”
The Cossack lifted an eyebrow. “Even a ghost couldn’t cross the Sihoti Alins now,” he said. “We fly out, or die.”
It would have been simpler to have flown to Khabarovsk to report the ship, but finding a thread of river on that coast in a fog like this would be harder now than finding a Jap in Chungking. This way he could investigate first and have something definite to report.
A snow-covered forest trail followed the river. An expert on skis, Turk made good time and in only a matter of minutes stood on the edge of the forest, not a hundred yards from the ship.
The ladder was down, but the name of the ship was invisible in the fast-falling snow. Vladivostok, the nearest Siberian port, was miles away to the south, almost four hundred miles, in fact. Across the narrow Sea of Japan, however, were the Japanese islands.
Could it be a raiding party from Japan? It didn’t seem likely. In any case, it was his job to find out. It was a chance he had to take.
Already, falling snow had covered him with a thin sifting of flakes. Moving carefully, taking every advantage of flurries of wind that veiled his movement, Turk crossed to the ship. He had abandoned his skis in the brush, so when he reached the ladder, he did not hesitate, but mounted swiftly.
There was no challenge, only the whisper of snow. The deck was white and still, unbroken by a footprint. Hesitating, flattened against the bulkhead, he studied the situation. Something here was radically wrong. It was almost an hour since he left the plane, and the snow had begun then, yet there had been no movement on the deck in that time. Every sense in his body was alert, and he hesitated, dreading to move, aware that his steps would be revealed in the snow.
Turk slid his hand inside his leather coat and loosened his Colt. Then he moved swiftly to the passage that led to the saloon and the officers’ quarters.
The door opened easily under his hand, and he stepped into the warm passage. The door of the mate’s cabin was on his left, but a glance showed it to be empty.
Before him was the door of the saloon. He opened the door, pushed it wide with his left hand as his right gripped the butt of his automatic.
A man lay with his cheek on the table, face toward the door, arms dangling. Between his shoulder blades was the protruding haft of a knife. His cap, bearing a second mate’s insignia, lay on the table.
On most freighters the second mate had the twelve-to-four watch. The man had been murdered while eating, so apparently he had been killed just before taking over his watch. It was now nearly four.
Turk stepped back and closed the door gently, then mounted to the bridge. The wheelhouse was empty, except for a man lying sprawled on the deck. Even before he knelt over the body, Turk could see from the way the head lay that the man’s neck was broken. There was a large welt on his head, and over him, a broken shelf.
Another cap lay nearby. Turk picked it up and glanced at it. Third Mate. He sized up the situation. “Nine bucks to a dime,” he muttered thoughtfully, “somebody came in the port door. This guy rushed him, and the guy used judo on him. Threw him into that shelf.”
Grimly, Turk stepped out on the bridge and closed the door. Visibility was low. He’d be unable to take off in this. He descended to the captain’s deck and tried the starboard door. It was locked. Rounding the deckhouse, he tried the port door and it opened gently under his hand.
THE VERY PRETTY BRUNETTE with the gun in her hand showed no surprise and no fear. “Come in,” she said, “and close the door, or I’ll kill you.”
“Thanks,” Turk said, “it’s getting cold out there.” If she had said she’d shoot him, he wouldn’t have been surprised. But she said “kill,” and he had a very good idea she meant it. “No need to hold that gun on me,” he said pleasantly, “unless you’re the one who murdered the mates.”
The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Four Page 60
