Instantly, he banked, then pushed the stick forward and sent the ship down in a steep dive, opening up with the machine guns. A blur of snow lifted near the men, and the line melted. He hauled back on the stick and the Grumman climbed steeply, then he swung back over the freighter and cleared her deck with a burst of fire.
Then Diakov was hammering on his back and pointing. He looked up to see a V of planes coming toward him about five hundred feet up. Turk’s face turned grim and he climbed even more steeply. The Grumman went up and up and up, reaching for altitude. When he looked again, he could see the planes more closely. Three light bombers all painted with the rising sun. They were probably there in case the Russians had brought up a destroyer, or to sink the ship if it looked like it would get away. After all, it was an American ship.
Madden swung the Grumman around. Stand by, they said. That meant to keep the situation in hand. One of the planes was climbing to meet him, and coming up fast. He had outflown the Japanese before, and could do it again, but in a ship like this, against a war plane, even the best of flying would have to be nine-tenths luck to come out alive. He streaked away from the climbing aircraft and went into a dive over the next lowest bomber.
The fellow swung away, and Turk’s first burst of fire missed. Then he did an Immelmann and came in on the bomber’s tail. His second burst painted a string of holes along the bomber’s fuselage, and he saw the string reach the pilot. The bomber shot up, suddenly fell off, and going into a slow falling turn, burst into a bright rose of flame.
A streak of tracers shot by him, and Turk pulled the Grumman around, diving straight for the trees and the low-hanging fog with the other plane after him. The Japanese was a flier, and with his greater speed was coming up fast. Turk felt an icy blast of air as Diakov swung open the roof hatch behind the wing and deployed his gun mount. The Cossack slammed his machine gun onto the pivot and opened up as Turk banked the ship steeply, his wingtip almost grazing the treetops, and roared into the fog bank. The war plane pulled up slightly, and Madden’s Grumman bucked and pitched through the mist with prayer the only force keeping him out of the invisible treetops.
Turk pulled up, into the clear, but the other plane had swung around and was coming at him from the side. The big Grumman was in a spot, and Turk banked around and headed straight for the nearest war plane, his twin motors wide open and all his guns hammering. The Japanese held on grimly, and the two planes shot at each other with terrific force, but in the split second before they would have come together, the Japanese lost his nerve and pulled back on his stick. The plane shot up, and Diakov raked his underside with a wild burst from his gun. Then he shot on by, and only had Diakov’s shout of triumph to know that he had scored again.
Strangely, the last aircraft was streaking off over the Sea of Japan and climbing. Turk banked a little and glanced down to find himself coming in toward the freighter. A Jap on the shore was desperately trying to cast off. Turk shoved forward on the stick and opened up immediately with a burst of fire. The man crumpled, seeming to come all apart at the seams, and a second man, rushing for the woods, was caught on the edge of the raking burst and fell, his body tumbling in a complete somersault.
Turk came around and trimmed back for a hot landing on the river just before the freighter. The Cossack sprang ashore with a line, and Turk, leaving him to make the ship fast, grabbed his automatic and dashed for the ship.
Richards. The man was still aboard, and he needed to be apprehended.
Turk reached the top of the ladder just as Richards stepped out of the amidships house. The man’s face turned livid and, without regard for Turk’s gun, sprang at him. Madden hesitated only a second, then shoved the gun in his pocket and sprang forward, throwing punches with both fists.
Richards was not only big, he was tough and powerful. They grappled and he rolled over and scrambled free. Both men came up at the same time. Turk started to close in, but Richards kicked him away, and when Turk struck out, he caught his arm in a flying mare. Turk relaxed and went on over in an easy roll, landing on his feet. He spun around, slipped a fast left, and smashed a big fist into Richards’s stomach. The mate backed up, his face dark with fury and pain. Turk followed, stabbing a left to the face, then crossing a jarring right to the chin. Richards’s knees wilted and he almost fell. He lunged forward, and Turk broke his nose with a driving right hook. Richards went down, hitting the deck hard.
Aaron Richards scrambled to his feet. Wheeling, he rushed for the gangway that led to the bank of the river. He bent over and plucked the large pin that allowed the gangway to swivel back and forth out of its hole. As Turk closed on him, Richards turned and swung the heavy piece of metal. It hit Turk a stunning blow on the back of his shoulder and knocked him flat on the deck, his pistol coming loose and rattling into the scuppers.
By the time Turk had picked himself up, Richards was stumbling down the ladder and out onto the muddy ground. When he saw Turk appear at the ship’s rail, he turned and, taking hold of the gangway railing, gave a mighty heave. The entire assembly, now disconnected at the top, came loose. Scraping down the side of the hull, it crashed into the gap between the ship and the riverbank. The mate took to his heels.
Diakov was returning from scouting the trees, and Richards straight-armed him like a football player. The big Russian went down, and Richards disappeared into the stand of fir along the water. Turk watched as he picked himself up, but instead of giving chase he limped toward the Welleston.
“There are still some left, comrade! They’ve a boat down the river!”
At that moment a heavy engine roared to life beyond the trees. Turk ran to the other rail in time to see a Japanese torpedo boat arc out into the river. She was going all out, bow high in the water and her stern sunk deep, a cloud of blue-gray exhaust trailing from her pipes. Within minutes Aaron Richards would make the inlet, and from there the open ocean.
Turk backed up, yanked off his low boots and coat and, vaulting the railing, took a running dive into the icy water. The height and the cold took his breath away, but within a dozen powerful strokes he was alongside the Grumman and scrambling onto the hull. His clasp knife made quick work of the mooring rope, and then he was pulling himself into the cockpit and firing the engines.
He flew down the river with the throttles wide open, leaving Diakov on the bank bellowing encouragement. As the plane clawed for altitude, Turk struggled out of his freezing shirt and turned up the mostly ineffective cabin heater.
As the water deepened, the patches of fog thinned, and then ahead of him he could see the torpedo boat. She was shooting across the swells like an arrow, kicking up blasts of spray and leaving a long wake. Turk put the plane into a shallow dive. Fast as the Japanese craft was, the Grumman came down on it at over a hundred fifty miles per hour. Turk triggered his forward guns, the burst cutting the water across the bow.
There were only two men visible on deck—a Japanese sailor at the helm, and Richards, who was struggling to pull the cover from the boat’s antiaircraft machine gun. Turk wheeled around and came back, angling in on the fast gray boat carefully. The man at the wheel had begun evasive maneuvers, and Turk could tell it was throwing off Richards’s aim; his gun flamed, but it was a moment before he hit the Grumman, and then the bullets found only the wingtip.
Turk held his fire as Richards swung his gun, and then he let go with a long burst just before the traitor could fire. The steel-jacketed slugs tore up the decking, forcing Richards to dive for cover, and continued ripping back and down into the engine compartment. Turk shot past, barely off the water, then pulled back on the stick, heading up toward the clouds.
Outside his left-hand window he saw his port engine stall and die. The drag pulled at the plane, and he leveled out, trying to compensate with his rudder. He turned the nose of the plane back toward land and was glancing at the motor for any signs of bullet damage or fire when the starboard engine died.
“This could be better!” he muttered to himself.
The amphibian set down upon the water smoothly, and when it came to a halt, Turk turned and flipped on the two-way radio switch.
“Calling Khabarovsk…calling Khabarovsk. Madden, Coast Patrol. Down at sea off Kumuhu River. Please send help. Out of petrol.”
“Khabarovsk airdrome answering Madden, Coast Patrol. Stand by.”
Another voice spoke through the radio. “Diakov calling from S.S. Welleston. I found the crew tied up. We’re coming to fish you out. Are you all right, comrade?”
“Okay for now. Go pick up Richards first, no immediate danger…only I wanted to be shipwrecked with a beautiful dame.”
“Well,” a cool voice said in his ear, “you’re not very complimentary!”
Turk turned and his jaw dropped. “Tony! What are you doing here!”
“I was in the plane, and you just jumped in and took off, so here I am!”
Turk must have left his mike switched on. “Comrade Madden…do you want to countermand that rescue order?”
Diakov waited for a reply, but there was no sound but the lapping of water against the hull. The Cossack had spent three years in the United States and had seen many movies. He sighed deeply.
Wings Over Khabarovsk
The drone of the two radial motors broke the still white silence. As far as the eye could reach the snow-covered ridges of the Sihoti Alin Mountains showed no sign of life. Turk Madden banked the Grumman and studied the broken terrain below. It was remote and lonely, this range along the Siberian coast.
He swung his ship in a slow circle. That was odd. A half-dozen fir trees had no snow on their branches.
He leveled off and looked around, then saw what he wanted, a little park, open and snow-covered, among the trees. It was just the right size, by the look of it. He’d chance the landing. He slid down over the treetops, setting the ship down with just barely enough room. Madden turned the ship before he cut the motor.
Taking down a rifle, he kicked his feet into snowshoes and stepped out into the snow. It was almost spring in Siberia, but the air was crisp and cold. Far to the south, the roads were sodden with melting snow, and the rivers swollen with spring floods. War would be going full blast again soon.
He was an hour getting to the spot. Even before he reached it, his eyes caught the bright gleam of metal. The plane had plunged into the fir trees, burying its nose in the mountainside. In passing, it had knocked the snow from the surrounding trees, and there had been no snow for several days now. That was sheer luck. Ordinarily it would have snowed, and the plane would have been lost beyond discovery in these lonely peaks.
NOT A DOZEN FEET from the tangled wreckage of the ship he could see a dark bundle he knew instinctively was the flyer. Lutvin had been his friend. The boyish young Russian had been a great favorite at Khabarovsk Airport. Suddenly, Turk stopped.
Erratic footprints led from the crashed plane to the fallen body. Lutvin had been alive after the crash!
Madden rushed forward and turned the body over. His wild hope that the boy might still be alive died instantly. The snow under the body was stained with blood. Fyodor Lutvin had been machine-gunned as he ran from his fallen plane.
Machine-gunned! But that meant—
Turk Madden got up slowly, and his face was hard. He turned toward the wreckage of the plane, began a slow, painstaking examination. What he saw convinced him. Fyodor Lutvin had been shot down, after his plane had crashed, had been ruthlessly machine-gunned by his attacker.
BUT WHY? And by whom? It was miles from any known front. The closest fighting was around Murmansk, far to the west. Only Japan, lying beyond the narrow strip of sea at Sakhalin and Hokkaido. And Japan and Russia were playing a game of mutual hands off. But Lutvin had been shot down and then killed. His killers had wanted him dead beyond question.
There could be only one reason—because he knew something that must not be told. The fierce loyalty of the young flyer was too well known to be questioned, so he must have been slain by enemies of his country.
Turk Madden began a systematic search, first of the body, then of the wreckage. He found nothing.
Then he saw the camera. Something about it puzzled him. He studied it thoughtfully. It was smashed, yet—
Then he saw. The camera was smashed, but it had been smashed after it had been taken apart—after the film had been removed. Where then, was the film?
He found it a dozen feet away from the body, lying in the snow. The film was in a waterproof container. Studying the situation, Turk could picture the scene.
Lutvin had photographed something. He had been pursued, shot down, but had lived through the crash. Scrambling from the wrecked ship with the film, he had run for shelter in the rocks. Then, as he tumbled under the hail of machine-gun fire, he had thrown the film from him.
Turk Madden took the film and, picking up his rifle, started up the steep mountainside toward the park where he had left the Grumman. He was just stepping from a clump of fir when a shot rang out. The bullet smacked a tree trunk beside him and stung his face with bits of bark.
Turk dropped to his hands and knees and slid back into the trees. Ahead of him, and above him, was a bunch of boulders. Even as he looked a puff of smoke showed from the boulders, and another shot rang out. The bullet clipped a twig over his head. Madden fired instantly, coolly pinking every crevice and crack in the boulders. He did not hurry.
His final shot sounded, and instantly he was running through the soft snow. He made it to a huge fir a dozen feet away before the rifle above him spoke. He turned and fired again.
Indian-fashion, he circled the clump of boulders. But when he was within sight of them, there was no one about. For a half hour he waited, then slid down. On the snow in the center of the rocks, he found two old cartridge cases. He studied them.
“Well, I’ll be blowed! A Berdianka!” he muttered. “I didn’t think there was one outside a museum!”
The man’s trail was plain. He wore moccasins made of fur, called unty. One of them was wrapped in a bit of rawhide, apparently.
His rifle was ready, Turk fell in behind. But after a few minutes it became obvious that his attacker wanted no more of it. Outgunned, the man was making a quick retreat. After a few miles, Madden gave up and made his way slowly back to his own ship. The chances were the man had been sent to burn the plane, to be sure a clean job had been made of the killing. But that he was wearing unty proved him no white man, and no Japanese either, but one of the native Siberian tribes.
IT WAS AFTER SUNDOWN when Turk Madden slid into a long glide for the port of Khabarovsk. In his coat pocket the film was heavy. He was confident that it held the secret of Lutvin’s death.
There was a light in Commissar Chevski’s office. Turk hesitated, then slipped off his helmet and walked across the field toward the shack. A dark figure rose up from the corner of the hangar, and a tall, stooped man stepped out.
“Shan Bao!” Madden said. “Take care of the ship, will you?”
The Manchu nodded, his dark eyes narrow.
“Yes, comrade.” He hesitated. “The commissar asking for you. He seem angry.”
“Yeah?” Madden shrugged. “Thanks. I’ll see him.” He walked on toward the shack without a backward glance. Shan Bao could be trusted with the plane. Where the tall Manchu had learned the trade, Turk could not guess, but the man was a superb plane mechanic. Since Madden’s arrival from the East Indies, he had attached himself to Turk and his Grumman, and the ship was always serviced and ready.
Turk tapped lightly on Chevski’s door, and at the word walked in.
Commissar Chevski was a man with a reputation for efficiency. He looked up now, his yellow face crisp and cold. The skin was drawn tightly over his cheekbones, his long eyes almost as yellow as his face. He sat behind his table staring at Turk inscrutably. Twice only had Turk talked with him. Around the port the man had a reput
ation for fierce loyalty and driving ambition. He worked hard and worked everyone else.
“Comrade Madden,” he said sharply. “You were flying toward the coast today! Russia is at war with Germany, and planes along the coast invite trouble with Japan. I have given orders that there shall be no flying in that direction!”
“I was ordered to look for Comrade Lutvin,” Madden said mildly, “so I flew over the Sihoti Alins.”
“There was no need,” Chevski’s voice was sharp. “Lutvin did not fly in that direction.”
“You’re mistaken,” Turk said quietly, “I found him.”
Chevski’s eyes narrowed slightly. He leaned forward intently.
“You found Lutvin? Where?”
“On a mountainside in the Sihoti Alins. His plane had crashed. He was dead. His ship had been shot down from behind, and Comrade Lutvin had been machine-gunned as he tried to escape the wreck.”
Chevski stood up.
“What is this?” he demanded. “Who would machine-gun a Russian flyer on duty? We have no enemies here.”
“What about Japan?” Madden suggested. “But that need make no difference. The facts are as I say. Lutvin was shot down—then killed.”
“You landed?” Chevski demanded. He walked around from behind his desk. He shook his head impatiently. “I am sorry, comrade. This is serious business, very serious. It means sabotage, possibly war on a new front.”
CHEVSKI WALKED BACK behind the table. He looked up suddenly.
“Comrade Madden, I trust you will say nothing of this to anyone until I give the word. This is a task for the OGPU, you understand?”
Madden nodded, reaching toward his pocket. “But, com—”
The Russian lifted a hand.
“Enough. I am busy. You have done a good day’s work. Report to me at ten tomorrow. Good night.” He sat down abruptly and began writing vigorously.
The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Four Page 62
