Doc Savage - 127 - Hell Below, page 7
"You're getting as bad as Monk where a fight is involved," Pat told him. "You'd better stop, look, listen, and whistle at the crossroads."
"Maybe," Renny said, "you'd like to cancel your ticket for this trip."
"Eh?" said Pat.
"You weren't invited, you know."
"You," Pat said, "get my goat at times."
"I can remember the times," Renny told her, "that you've brought out a cold sweat on me, too."
Pleased with himself, he put the plane into its landing bank, the usual triangular approach which he used. He straightened out for the landing glide.
A noise, a rush of air, made him turn his head.
"Hey!" he bellowed. "Holy cow!"
"I think I'll check out," Pat said, "and watch from the side line."
She jumped, the parachute pack dangling on its straps, her hand on the ripcord.
Renny twisted his head around and watched to make sure she landed safely. By that time, he had overshot his landing, so he hauled up the nose and went around again. That time he set the plane down without trouble.
Lightning Flats apparently was an old lake bed which had dried as smooth as a concrete highway. Because of its high speed, the plane which Renny handled landed hot, and he nursed it along, sending it toward the end of the lake where the light signal had been returned.
He would, he decided, sit in the plane with a gun and take the enemy by surprise. The plane cockpit was armored.
BY the time he reached the other end of the field, Renny had his machine pistol ready, and had opened the cockpit windows. He opened the windows only a slit, enough to shove the machine pistol barrel through, because the windows were also bulletproof.
Straining his eyes, separating objects in the rapidly increasing dusk, he saw that the structure he had seen from the air was not a hodag, nor one of those round structures of logs covered with sod which the Navahos sometimes used for a winter house.
This was a tank truck, a big transport truck covered with a camouflage of sagebrush and tumbleweeds.
The refueling truck, Renny thought. This is where they were going to refuel, all right.
He knew enough about the speed of his plane to be quite sure that he had beaten the stolen air transport to the spot.
Renny rolled his plane up to the concealed truck, stopped it.
Men walked out from under the truck camouflage cover. One of them waved sociably. They did not seem to be armed.
Renny shut off his motor.
"This the spot?" he called.
The men stopped.
"Hell!" one of them said. "That guy ain't one of the outfit."
Renny laughed loudly, gleefully. He shoved the snout of his machine pistol through the window slit.
"You bet I ain't," he said. "I'm a wolf in sheep's clothing, that's what I am."
They stared at him in horror.
"You boys," Renny added, "had better jump for a star. Come on! Try to grab one!"
There was an explosion, a very loud one. Sand, fire in a sheet, came from under Renny's plane. The plane itself gave a big jump straight up and changed its shape somewhat. The plane fell back to earth.
The men dashed forward and hauled Renny out of the wreckage.
The man who had thrown the big grenade approached also. He had been concealed cleverly under the ground, in a shallow pit scooped out and then covered over with paper which was the same color as the dried lake bed.
Other men had been concealed in the same fashion in the earth in the neighborhood. They were shouting questions, demanding to know if their help was needed. Evidently it was quite a job to conceal them, and they were not breaking out unless they were needed.
"Is he dead?" the grenade thrower asked, staring at Renny.
"Probably just overcome by surprise," a man said, chuckling.
RENNY was affected by something more substantial than surprise. His head had banged against the side of the plane cabin. But it was not serious.
He was tied hand and foot, and was kicked in the ribs when he regained consciousness.
"Who used the parachute?" they demanded. "Who jumped just before you landed. And why?"
Renny thought: Pat wasn't smart-she couldn't have known this was a booby trap. She was just lucky. And how lucky! From now on, she'll be hard to hold. I won't be able to tell her a thing, without her pointing to what happened this evening and laughing in my face.
A man kicked Renny again and repeated, "Who used the parachute?"
"My personal gremlin," Renny said. "And brother, that's closer to the truth than you think."
This wisecrack brought him another kick in the ribs. But they did not get more information from Renny. He just howled indignantly and mentioned specific parts of anatomy, such as ears and arms, which he was going to snatch off his captors individually before this thing was finished.
The captors sent off an expedition of four men to search for whoever had used the parachute.
They came back empty-handed and uneasy.
"Too dark to find anybody out there," they said.
"The thing to do," a man decided, "is get out of here."
"What about our plane from Washington?"
"Get on the radio. See about it."
They used a portable radio-it was a very modern and efficient set operating on various wave lengths to which it was switched in succession by a synchronized clockwork arrangement, which was the latest method of defeating eavesdropping and the use of a direction-finder in locating a radio transmitter.
"Plane's only about fifty miles away," the man said. "They're going to land, refuel, and we'll all pull out."
Before long, Renny was watching the stolen transport plane from Washington drop down on the dry lake bed.
He watched the ship pull up close, and the gasoline truck roll to the craft and refuel it.
Then Renny, still tied hand and foot, was tossed into the cabin of the airways craft.
He found Monk Mayfair there.
"How are you?" he asked Monk.
"Indignant," Monk said.
"How come they haven't shot you?"
"They got orders not to."
"Yeah? Who from?"
"Somebody," said Monk, "called Der Hase. That's German talk for the Hare, or the Rabbit."
"Where is this Der Hase?"
"At the place we're heading for."
"Where's that?"
"You now know," Monk said, "as much as I know about it."
Renny looked around, and saw another figure, that of a leathery, weather-beaten, elderly man who looked as if he had reached old age on a diet of cactus and sage.
"Who's Methuselah, here?" Renny asked.
"You big-fisted, sad-faced lump of gristle," said the old man sourly. "I'm twice your age and twice as active right now. When you're my age, I'll be six times as active."
"Who's he?" Renny asked Monk.
"Name's Too-Too Thomas," Monk explained. "And he's the key that unlocked all of this for us. He's the match that fell in the gasoline barrel."
"Old-timer, where they taking us?" Renny asked.
"If you fellers had talked sense to me in Washington," Too-Too Thomas muttered, "you wouldn't be asking silly questions now."
A man walked back into the cabin. He had a short automatic.
"All this talk is getting tiresome," he said. "Give us a rest, huh?"
Chapter VIII. SEA TRAIL
PATRICIA SAVAGE lay flattened out in a desert gully and listened to the motors of the big plane warming up again. The engines had been shut off during the refueling, so now she knew that the refueling had been completed.
Pat smiled grimly. She lifted her head to watch. The night was dark, but they were using flashlights around the plane, so that she could tell what was going on. They were getting aboard the plane.
With clenched fists, Pat waited. It was hard waiting, but she could think of no way of disabling the plane, so there did not seem to be much to do but wait.
She watched the plane go hiking across the flat dry lake bed, pick up its tail and lift heavily into the night sky. The pilot did not fool around the vicinity, but went droning out over the desert.
Now Pat crawled closer to the gasoline transport truck. It was not where it had been-the covered spot where the truck had been camouflaged earlier was much easier to reach. But the truck had been rolled out to refuel the plane.
The plane had left three men behind. They were talking. Their voices came plainly to Pat.
She listened for a while, then relaxed. There was no sense in making an effort to capture these men, when such an attempt would be a long chance anyway. Because these men knew nothing of value, obviously.
The trio had been hired to steal the truckload of aviation gas. They were talking about that now. They mentioned the amount of money they had been paid, speaking in tones of awe. They discussed the division of the payment, and one man seemed to think he was entitled to an extra share. He was voted down immediately.
The men had a small car concealed under the camouflaging. They got in it, and drove away. Pat let them go.
She hadn't liked the looks of the men. The old-fashioned bad man, who wouldn't harm a woman, was a thing of the past in the West, she was afraid. There was too much at stake to take chances.
She sat and waited. She wished she had a radio, but the one in Renny's plane had been smashed. The smashing job was an expert one.
However, Pat did find Renny's flashlight, and the bit of red celluloid from his card case which he had put over the lens of the light. She got this.
Gratefully soon-not more than twenty minutes later-she heard the drone of a plane engine. The craft circled the field.
Pat used her red light, signaled rapidly. She got an answer. She listened for the sound of the motors of the big plane, and decided they had enough distinction for her to recognize them. It was Doc's plane.
Pat, with the white light, signaled, "Get down here, Doc. This is Pat."
She sent the signals in a phonetic spelling of Mayan, partly, so there would be no delay while Doc made sure she was Pat. Doc would know that few persons other than his aides knew Mayan, so he would take it automatically as identification.
Doc landed. Ham, Long Tom, Johnny and Lena Carlson were with him.
Pat told them what had happened.
"Now don't tell me I'm a nuisance any more," she said. "If I hadn't jumped, both Renny and I would be prisoners, and you fellows would be looking for a needle in a haystack."
"Your modesty becomes you," Doc said dryly. "Why did you jump? Feminine contrariness?"
Pat laughed. "My particular brand of it," she said. "But it turned out all right."
"How do you figure it turned out all right?" Doc asked, "They got Renny."
"Oh, yes," Pat said triumphantly. "But I fixed it so we could trail them."
"Eh?"
"That's right," Pat said.
LENA CARLSON had been standing by listening, and now she entered the conversation.
"That," she said, "is ridiculous. Trailing a plane is ridiculous, unless they have a radio transmitter switched on in the craft, or something."
"Ridiculous, eh?" Pat said.
"Certainly. I've done enough flying to know."
Pat eyed Lena Carlson. Apparently the two young women weren't going to get along too well together.
"You've done too much talking in your time probably, too," Pat said.
Turning to Doc Savage, Pat asked, "You have infrared filters for the landing lights?"
Doc Savage was astonished. So were Ham, Long Tom and Johnny. "I'll be superamalgamated!" Johnny said.
Doc asked, with frank admiration, "How did you get the stuff into their gasoline?"
"I took it with me when I jumped from Renny's plane," Pat explained. "That was why I jumped, and why I took the stuff along-there had been mention before, you know, of high-test gasoline, and that meant refueling their plane. So I took this stuff along-Renny had a supply of it as part of the equipment in his plane-when I jumped."
Doc said, "How did you get it into their gas, though?"
"I didn't put it into their gas. I put it into the truck tank, and they filled their tanks from the truck, so everything is hunky-dory."
"Gosh, I hope they use the gas out of the refilled tank right away," Long Tom said. "Otherwise, if they filled a tank that isn't feeding for a while, we'll play heck picking up the trail."
Pat said, "Flying this distance, from Washington here, in a commercial plane, their fuel supply would be pretty well exhausted. I thought of that, and watched. They filled all the plane tanks."
Doc Savage said, "Come on. Get in the air, and fast."
They piled into the big ship-the plane was about the size of a B26 army job, but since it was an experimental job, it had many bizarre features-and got off the ground.
Doc Savage turned the controls over to Ham Brooks. "Switch on the special filaments in the lights," he said.
Ham obeyed-with the result that the wingtip lights seemed to become extinguished.
"What's the matter, the lights burned out?" demanded Lena Carlson.
"Keep your bustle straight," Pat said. "And watch."
Doc asked, "Pat, which route did the plane take."
"I lined it," Pat said, "as making directly for that tall rock over on the horizon."
Ham laughed, said, "That tall rock just happens to be one of the biggest mountains in Arizona."
"Well, if it's Adam's beard, what's the difference," Pat snapped. "Try lining up and flying toward it. I would say an altitude of about five hundred here, and a climb of about five thousand feet to the mile."
Ham nodded. The plane began to swing from side to side as it climbed, making S turns slowly.
Lena Carlson said, "This is a silly business. If you're going to chase them, why not chase them."
Nobody answered her. Doc said sharply, "There! We went through it!"
Ham nodded. He had seen. He banked back cautiously.
A luminous green material as nebulous as the tail of a comet appeared in their path. It came out of nothingness, and it stretched ahead in a powdery stream that had a few waves in it.
Pat turned to Lena Carlson. "I put a chemical in the gasoline of the other plane," Pat said. "The chemical, when burned in the motors, leaves an exhaust trail which is ordinarily invisible, but fluoresces in the presence of infrared light. Our infrared projectors are in the wings."
Astonishment held Lena Carlson silent for a while.
"That's marvelous," she said finally. "Why doesn't our army and navy use it-why don't they have spies get the stuff in the enemy gasoline supply?"
Pat shrugged. "It was tried. The trouble is, the enemy only has to add a tiny amount of a counteractive agent to their gasoline, and the thing is worthless."
"Everybody get busy," Ham called. "Following this trail in the sky isn't the cinch it would seem to be."
Lena Carlson nodded. "I can see that. The varying air currents will push it all out of shape in a little while."
THEY were exhausted when, an hour and a half before the official sunrise time, they came to the end of the air trail. They had not, somewhat to their surprise, headed toward the Dirty Man Ranch for the last hour.
Lena Carlson had been positive the Dirty Man was their destination.
It turned out, however, to be nothing of the kind. Not just now.
Lena had explained, "It would all tie up. Old Too-Too Thomas has been managing the Dirty Man spread for years. He built it up from nothing, on capital furnished by my father, and by myself."
"I thought you were his partner?" Long Tom said.
"I am, legally."
"What kind of a place is Dirty Man?"
"It's the kind of a place Too-Too Thomas would like. You saw him."
"A hard country, eh?"
"Made of trouble and glory, if you get what I mean," the girl said. "It's big. Hundreds of square miles of mountains and range around, inhabited by the toughest kind of Yaqui Indians, who are all afraid of Too-Too Thomas. But the Indians aren't afraid of anybody else, and they run strangers out of the country so fast it isn't funny. I don't think anyone but Too-Too Thomas could operate Rancho El Dirty Man for any length of time. He has the Indian sign on the Yaquis, you might say."
