The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Four (72 page)

“Look!” Panola screamed, and following his outthrust arm and finger, they saw a gigantic column of debris lifting toward the sky!

“Somebody opened a door!” Runnels said grimly.

Turk was jolted momentarily, and then suddenly, he saw his chance!

“Hold everything!” he yelled, and swung the ship over into a screaming dive.

The fighter had been jolted, too, and the ships ahead were wavering. In the picture that flashed through his mind, Turk could see their doubt, their hesitation.

Something had happened. What? The bomb at the house had gone up, but how? Why? Would there be enough radioactivity at this distance to affect them? Who among them knew? And what had caused the other explosion? Might this one go, too?

The fighter pilot must have sensed something, or his roving eyes must have caught a glimpse of the plane shooting down on his tail. In a sudden, desperate effort, he pulled his fighter into a climbing turn, and it was the wrong thing.

Turk opened up. Saw his tracers stream into the fighter’s tail, saw the pursuit ship fall away, and then banking steeply, he sent a stream of tracer, stabbing at the fighter’s vitals like a white hot blade!

There was a sudden puff of smoke, a desperate effort as the fighter flopped over once and fired a final, despairing burst that streamed uselessly off into space. Then it rolled upside down and, sheathed in flame, went screaming away down the thousands of feet toward the crags below.

The other ships must have seen the fighter go, for they split apart at once. One flying north, the other south. With a gleam in his eyes, Turk saw it was the bomber that turned south. “We got ’em,” he yelled.

He rolled over and went streaking after the passenger ship. His greater speed brought him up fast, and he could see the other plane fighting desperately to get away.

In that passenger plane would be the men whose knowledge of atomic power could give the militarists of the world a terrible weapon, a weapon to bring chaos to the world. It was like shooting a sitting duck, but he had to do it. His face set and his jaw hard, he opened the Goose up and let it have everything it had left.

Swiftly he overhauled the passenger plane, which dived desperately to escape. It came closer to the hills below, and Turk swung closer. He glanced at the gigantic Dome of St. Paul, coming closer now, and then he did a vertical bank, swung around, and went roaring at the plane!

The pilot was game. He made a desperate effort, and then the probing fingers of Turk’s tracer stabbed into his tail assembly. The ship swung off her course, lost altitude, and the pilot tried to bank away from the rounded peak of the Dome. He tried too late. With a terrific crash and a gigantic burst of flame, the passenger plane crashed belly first against the mountainside.

For an instant the flaming wreck clung to the steep side, then it sagged, something gave way, and like a flaming arrow it plunged into the deep canyon below.

Turk shook himself, and his face relaxed a little, then he started climbing.

“Two down,” he said aloud, “and one to go!”

He went into a climbing turn. Up, up, up. Far off to the south he could see the plane bearing the atomic bomb, a mere speck against the sky now.

It was an old type plane, with a cruising speed of no more than a hundred and fifty miles per hour. With his ship he could beat that by enough. For the fiftieth time he thanked all the gods that he was lucky enough to have picked up this experimental model with its exceptional speed. He leveled off and opened the ship up.

Runnels had moved up into the copilot’s seat. He glanced at Turk, but said nothing. His face was white and strained. Behind him, Turk could hear Panola breathing with deep sighs. Only Shan Bao seemed unchanged, phlegmatic.

As the lean Manchu thrust his head lower for better vision, Turk glimpsed his hawklike yellow face and the gleam in his eye. It was such a face as the Mongol raiders of the khans must have had, the face of a hunter, the face of a fighter. There was in that face no recognition of consequences, only the desperate eagerness to close with the enemy, to fight, to win.

Turk’s eyes were cold now. He knew what he had to do. That atomic bomb must go. If his own plane and all in it had to go, the cost would be slightly balanced against the great saving to civilization and the world of people. Yet that sacrifice might not be necessary. He had a plan.

He swung his ship inland for several miles, flying a diagonal course that carried him south and west. The bomber was still holding south, intent only on putting distance between them.

Turk knew what that pilot was thinking. He was thinking of the awful force he carried with him, of what would happen if they were machine-gunned or forced to crash-land. That pilot was afraid. He wanted distance, freedom from fear.

Yet Turk was wondering if the pilot could see what was happening. Did that other flyer guess what was in his mind? And Turk was gaining, slowly, steadily gaining, drawing up on the bomber. It was still a long way ahead. But it was over Canal Ladrillero now, and as Turk moved up to the landward, the bomber followed the canal southwest.

Deliberately, Turk cut his speed back to one hundred and fifty. Runnels glanced at him, puzzled, but Turk held his course, and said nothing. At the last minute, the enemy pilot seemed to realize what was happening and made a desperate effort to change course, but Turk moved up, and the bomber straightened out once again.

There was one thing to watch for. One thing that might get the bomber away. He would think of that soon, Turk realized. And that would be the instant of greatest danger.

“Watch!” he said suddenly, “If he drops that bomb, yell! That’s his only chance now.”

Runnels jumped suddenly as the idea hit him.

“Why! Why, you’re herding him out to sea,” he shouted. “You’re herding him out there where his bomb won’t do any damage!”

“Yeah,” Madden nodded grimly, “and where he won’t have gas enough to get back.”

“What about us?” Panola asked.

“Us?” Turk shrugged. “I think we’ve got more gas than he has. He wasn’t expecting this. We had enough to fly us back to our mother ship. If we have to, we can sit down on the water and last awhile. This is a boat, you know. We could probably last long enough in this sea so that the ship could find us. We’ll radio as soon as we get this bomber out far enough.”

They were over two hundred miles out, and still herding the bomber before Runnels let out a yell. But Turk had seen the bomber jump and had seen the bomb fall away.

He whipped the ship over into a steep climbing turn and went away from there fast. Even so, the concussion struck them with a terrific blow, and the plane staggered, and then he looked back at the huge column of water mounting into the sky, and then the awful roar as thousands upon thousands of tons of water geysered up and tumbled back into the sea.

Turk banked again, searching for the bomber. It was there, still further out to sea, and Turk turned again and started after him.

“All right, Panola,” he said. “In code, call our ship. I hope they survived the wave caused by that bomb.”

The bomber was farther out now, and they moved after him, and in a moment, Panola leaned over.

“She’s all right. About two hundred miles north and west.”

Turk turned the amphibian, keeping the bomber in view, but angling away. “He may reach land,” he said over his shoulder. “But if he does he’ll crash on the coast of Chile. He’ll never make it back to the Argentine!”

Runnels leaned back and ran his finger around inside of his collar.

“For awhile you had me worried,” he said grimly. “I thought you were going to tangle with that bomb!”

Turk chuckled. “Not me, buddy! I’m saving this lily white body of mine for the one and only girl!”

“Yeah?” Runnels was skeptical. “And you’ve got a girl in every port?”

“Nope. I haven’t been in every port!”

Tailwind to Tibet

T
he twin motors of the Grumman muttered their way through the cloud, then pulled the plane into the blue sky beyond. Below, the bare, brown backs of the mountains fell away into the canyons like folds of loose hide. The winding thread of the Yellow River which had pointed their way toward the distant hills had fallen behind. Before them lay only the unknown vastness of the Kuen-Lun Mountains and, beyond, Tibet.

Turk Madden eased forward on the stick and slid down a thousand feet toward the black, thumblike peak on which he had laid his course. Then he banked around it and came in over the black lake.

It was there, just as he remembered it. On the far side the age-old ruins, ancient beyond belief, lay bleak and bare in the late rays of the setting sun. Turk put the ship down gently and taxied toward the crumbling structures, keeping a careful eye out for any of the stone piers that might be under the water.

Shan Bao moved up behind him as he neared the stone platform, weathered and black with age. “We’ll tie her up,” he told the Manchu. “I want to go ashore.”

Sparrow Ryan looked over his shoulder. “Looks older than the mountains!” he exclaimed, staring at the buildings. “Who built these?”

Turk shrugged. “That, my friend, is possibly the ultimate mystery. Nobody knows anything about this part of the world. No competent archeologist has ever worked up here. I’ve seen Roman ruins that look juvenile compared to these.”

When the ship was tied to massive iron rings on either side of the slip, they climbed out. Ryan glanced at Turk. “I’ll stay put,” he said, “just in case.”

Madden nodded and helped lovely film actress Raemy Doone to the dock. Travis Bekart climbed out and stood looking around. There was apprehension in his eyes and a certain watchfulness that Turk didn’t like. He was glad the tough little government man was staying behind to keep an eye on things.

The stone platform on which they stood was worn by long ages of wind and water, and it fronted what had once been a magnificent building, over half in ruins now. The architecture was not Chinese but something that predated even the massive monasteries of inner Tibet. The city itself, of which almost a third had been built on stone pilings over the lake, stretched halfway up the sandy hills of the valley.

At the far end of the lake the Thumb Peak pointed a finger at the sky. “I’m glad it’s thumbs up!” Turk said, chuckling. “This place is gloomy!”

Their footsteps echoed hollowly on stones no white man had ever trod, and when they spoke they dropped their voices to whispers as though fearful of awakening spirits long dead.

There was no other sound. A stillness of something beyond death lay over the valley. Even the wind found no place to wail or mourn among the ruins or the hollow arches of empty windows. The platform ended in a paved street that ran along the shore behind the first row of buildings, then turned up a gloomy avenue that mounted the hill. A great stone tower had fallen into the street, which was scarcely more than an alley, making a pile of dusty rubble over which they must climb.

Shan Bao slid a long, yellow-fingered hand into the pocket of his leather jacket and drew out a pipe. Raemy glanced at him, seeing the curious expression in his eyes. “These were your people?”

“Who knows? I am a Manchu, and my people are very ancient, but this”—he waved a yellow hand—“this is more ancient. This is older than the Great Wall, older than time. It is perhaps older than the mountains.”

Turk stepped to a great stone arch that opened into a vast hall, unbelievable in its height and impressive expanse. They walked inside, a tiny knot of humanity lost beneath a dome so huge as to make them stare, unbelieving.

“Who would ever dream there were such places as this!” Raemy exclaimed. “It’s so strange, and so beautiful!”

“Beautiful?” Bekart stared about him distastefully. “It’s gloomy as a cavern.”

They walked out into the darkening street. A bat dipped toward Turk’s head, and, involuntarily, he glanced up.

Beyond the rooftops and on the ridge that enclosed the valley was a small group of horsemen. They were at least a half mile away but clearly visible in the last rays of the sun.

Raemy caught Madden’s arm. “Who are they?”

“Can’t say,” Turk murmured, scowling. “They might be Lolos. We’ll get back to the ship. Bekart, you go on ahead with Miss Doone. I’ll hang back with Shan Bao as they may come up on us.”

“I want to see them!” Raemy protested, lifting her chin defiantly.

Turk grinned. “You’d better go, honey chile. You’d be worth fifty camels up here!”

“I’ll stay,” she said. “I want to see them!”

Turk barely glanced around, his eyes level and hard. “You’ll go,” he said, “now!”

“Let’s not use that tone, Madden!” Bekart said savagely. “I’ll not have it!”

Madden’s eyes shifted to Bekart. “You go with her,” he said coolly, “and get moving!” His eyes went back to the actress. “Take him along,” he said.

Their eyes held. Horses’ hoofs sounded on stone. She turned abruptly then. “We’d better go, Travis,” she said. “He’s right, of course!”

A
DOZEN HORSEMEN
were riding toward them, loping nearer on their ragged, long-haired Mongolian ponies. When they were almost up to them they reined in, and their leader, a tall, fierce-looking man with greasy black hair, shouted speech strange to Madden’s ears.

Shan replied. After attempting several dialects he made himself understood. “He wants to know what we do here,” Shan said. “I told him we rest awhile.”

“Ask him what he knows of the great mountain, Amne Machin.”

Shan spoke, and the big man’s face became a mask of incredulity. There was excited talk among the horsemen, then the big man spoke excitedly to Shan, shaking his head many times.

Shan looked at Turk. “He says you cannot go there. That is Ngolok country, and they are very bad men with a queen who is a wicked and evil woman. She has many slaves, some of them his own people.”

“Tell him we search for a man who crashed in a plane. Ask him if he knows of any white men up this way.”

After some excited talk, Shan Bao turned back to Turk. “He says once long ago a big bird landed back in the Ngolok country. He has seen it, but it is not broken. He said there was another bird, not so fat in the belly as ours, that flew near here yesterday.”

“Sounds like a fighter,” Madden speculated. “Who would have a fighter up here?”

Shan talked some more, and the leader got down from his pony and came forward. Squatting on his haunches he drew a rough map in the sand, pointing out the mountain peaks, then drew a line for a valley. He put his finger on one spot. “The plane is there,” Shan Bao interpreted. “That line is a deep valley, and very, very rich. Caravans come from and go there from Sinkiang, Urumchi.”

Turk Madden drew a flashlight from his pocket. There were several in the plane. He flashed the light on and off, then handed it to the chief. The man got to his feet to accept the gift, then bowed very low.

“He says any enemy of the Ngoloks is a friend, but he thanks you,” Shan advised.

As the horsemen rode away, Turk led the way back to the ship. “We’ll stay here tonight,” he said. “I think the place he mentioned isn’t more than sixty miles away.”

Ryan was waiting for them on the dock with Bekart and Raemy.

“Miss Doone,” Madden said, turning to the girl, “your trip may not be a wild goose chase. A ship like the one we’re looking for came down safely about sixty miles from here.”

“Turk!” Raemy’s eyes flashed with joy as she caught him by the sleeves of his jacket with both her hands. “Do you mean it? Is it true?”

“Take it easy,” Madden advised. “He might have been killed in the landing, anyway. We only know what this native said, and he was never close to the ship. If he’s alive and enslaved to the Ngoloks, we’ll have a rough time freeing him.”

“Oh, if he’s only
alive
!”

Turk’s eyes lifted from hers to Bekart’s and he was shocked. The former Army flyer’s face was dead white, the bones seeming to stand out tight and hard against the tautened skin. His eyes were narrowed and ugly.

Gently, Madden stepped away from the girl. Was Bekart so affected because the girl had grabbed him in her excitement? Or was he afraid that Captain Bob Doone might still be alive?

While the others were busy preparing for night, Ryan walked over to Turk. “What do you think of Bekart?” Madden asked him.

Sparrow Ryan kicked a stone. “Haven’t got him figured,” he said. “Like I told you in Hollywood before we left, the government checked him thoroughly. His war record is good. Before the war he was an advertising man, before that a number of things. He seems to like the company of wealthy women, but who doesn’t?”

“Notice his face when I mentioned the plane was intact?”

“Uh-huh, I did. That hit him right where he lives, Turk, and I’m wondering why. He flew the wingman for Doone, and nobody ever knew what happened but him.”

Could Bekart secretly be in the pay of the people who wanted the Pharo counter? Certainly, this improvement in the Geiger counter which had been the sole cargo of the missing plane was infinitely valuable to a number of countries.

M
ADDEN RECALLED
Ryan’s words of a few days before. “It’s a new gadget. Yank flyer in India dreamed it up. He’d been working in a laboratory where they had to keep testing for radiation. The device for that’s a Geiger counter. This guy dreams up a new angle on it, a much more sensitive tube, just the sort of thing that would be ideal for locating secret atomic plants. This Pharo counter is much more sensitive and has a directional device so they can pin down the location of the disturbance within a matter of miles.

“This guy in India,” Ryan had said, “had access to the materiel and built a model, but then he was murdered. However, they put the gadget in this steel box and started it for the States over the Hump. They were flying it to Chungking, then Japan, then home. But the plane crashed.”

Had that been the reason for the crash? Madden doubted it, and so did the authorities in Washington. The crash had been in the wrong place, almost impossible of access. Three times, under cover of other excuses, the Army had tried to find the plane and failed. Then when they discovered that Raemy Doone, the film star, was financing her own expedition to search for her brother, who had piloted the ship, they had slipped their man, Ryan, into the personnel for the flight. Madden’s eyes searched the shadowy line of the hills, and beyond them the mighty, ice-capped peaks and shoulders of the mysterious Kuen-Luns and the towering majesty of the world’s mightiest mountain, Amne Machin.

Travis Bekart was utterly ruthless. He was the sort of man who got what he wanted, regardless of price. The cold, bleak fury in his eyes a few minutes ago had not been the look of a man in love and engaged to the beauteous Raemy Doone. It had been the expression of a man thwarted who meant to do something about it.

Then Turk Madden stiffened. Sparrow Ryan, who had started toward him, stopped dead still, his mouth open.

For from the distance over the hills came the mutter of a rapidly approaching plane! A drone that mounted and mounted until suddenly, with a gasp of night air, it swept by, low over the hills! It was a single-engine fighter.

“Think he saw us?” Ryan speculated apprehensively.

“No telling. We’d better figure that he did. Get out that B.A.R. If he comes back and asks for it, he can get it.”

The plane did not return, and at daylight Turk Madden rolled from his blankets into a crisp, chill dawn. Gathering a few sticks he built a small fire against a stone wall.

The rest of them crawled from the plane, Sparrow with a gun on his hip, and Shan Bao with his ever-present rifle. Standing it nearby he began to prepare breakfast. Turk’s gun, as always, was in his shoulder holster.

Bekart’s face looked drawn and worried. “Madden!” he burst out suddenly. “I’ve come this far without complaint! But this is madness! Sheer, unadulterated madness! This place is ghastly, and who knows what horrors we may run into up close to that mountain? I’ve heard of the awful chamber of horrors in Samyas monastery in Tibet, and compared to these Ngoloks the people of Tibet are civilized! I insist we turn back!”

“How can you talk that way, Travis?” Raemy protested. “Why, would you want me to waste all I’ve spent? All my hopes and Madden’s time? I wouldn’t think of turning back!”

“I insist!” Bekart replied stiffly. “I love you and I can’t have the woman I love subjected to such risks! This journey was madness in the first place! With what we know now it is worse than madness!”

“You mean,” Ryan interrupted suddenly, “because we now know that Doone landed in one piece?”

Bekart’s face whitened and his eyes glittered, but he did not reply, only continued his tirade. “What kind of plane was that, that flew over us last night? I know every plane that flies, and I never saw such a ship before! What would a fighter be doing here, of all places? We’ve been warned about these people, and every step is nearer to awful death or slavery!”

Turk Madden glanced up. “You knew all that when you came,” he said coldly. “We all did. As it happens, neither you nor Miss Doone has anything to say about the further progress of this trip.

“It is true,” he added, smiling at Raemy’s surprised look, “that she financed this trip to find her brother. That’s still our purpose, but we have another. Ryan is a government man. We’re after a steel box that was Doone’s cargo in the lost plane. That box is of enormous importance, so let’s hear no more about it. The trip continues.

“As for Bob Doone,” Madden added, “if he is alive, we’ll find him. If he is dead, we shall find his grave. Also”—he glanced up, his eyes bland—“I wish to examine Doone’s ship to see what happened to it.”

Travis Bekart’s eyes sparkled dangerously. “What are you implying?” he demanded.

“I?” Turk raised astonished brows. “Why, nothing! Only that’s the usual course when a crashed plane is found. We must find the cause of accidents to prevent future trouble. What else would I imply?”