Collection 1986 - Night Over The Solomons (v5.0) (6 page)

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 such a one. General McMahon who served with Napoleon was another. There were Irish soldiers in every army in Europe as well as Latin America.

For thousands of years warfare offered a young man his best chance of advancement. Due to 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.

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 as pay as 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.

Nor do a mercenary expect it.

PIRATES WITH WINGS

T
URK MADDEN HEARD the man in the copilot’s seat roar, “Turk! Look out!” There was panic in his voice.

Turk gave one startled glance upward and then yanked back on the stick. The Grumman nosed up sharply, narrowly missing a head-on collision with a speedy ship that had come plunging out of the sun toward them.

Turk gave the amphibian the full rudder as it was about to stall, and the ship swung hard to the left and down in a wing over. Then, opening the throttle wide, he streaked for a towering mass of cumulus, dodging around it in a vertical bank.

Buck Rodd, the man in the copilot’s seat, glanced at Turk, his face pale. “Was that guy bats?” he demanded. “Or was he getting smart with somebody?”

Turk kept the throttle open and streaked away for another cloud, swung around it, and then around another. He was doing some wondering himself, for the action had been so swift that he had no more than the merest glance at the fast little ship before it was gone clear out of sight. Nor did he stop ducking. He kept the Grumman headed away from the vicinity and traveled miles before he finally began to swing back on his original course.

“What’s the matter?” Buck Rodd inquired. “Are you afraid that mug will find you again? He’s probably scared silly right now.”

“Could be,” Turk Madden agreed dubiously, “but that near smashup could have been deliberate. Leone warned us to expect trouble from Petex, you know.”

“You mean a guy would do a thing like that on purpose?” Buck demanded, incredulously. “Not a chance! Why, if you hadn’t pulled up so darned fast we would both have crashed!”

“Oh, sure!” Turk agreed. “But maybe he didn’t figure our speed quite right. You want to remember, a ship that fast, diving past us that close, could cause us a lot of trouble. If he did mean it, he was probably trying to throw a bluff into us. He probably tried to scare us.”

“I can’t answer for you,” Buck Rodd assured him grimly, “but he sure got results with me!”

G
RIMLY, TURK MADDEN, fighting, roistering adventurer of the skyways, leaned forward, searching the green carpet of jungle below them for some indication of the landmarks he wanted. He was not kidding himself about his newest assignment. It was a job that gave every indication of being one of the toughest and most dangerous he had every attempted, and his life had been one long series of tough jobs.

The vast jungle below him, known to explorers as the “green hell,” amounted to more than three hundred thousand square miles of unexplored territory, a dense, trackless region of insects as large as birds, of natives who fiercely resented any encroachments on their territory, and of fevers that were as deadly as they were strange.

This was the land he had promised to survey for oil for Joe Leone’s Tropical Oil Company, a job that could only be done from the air.

To make the project all the more dangerous, another outfit was in the field or soon to be there. The Petroleum Exploration Company had long been known by reputation to Turk Madden. He was himself a hard-bitten flyer who was ready to tackle anything if the price was high enough. The Petex was also ready, and they had the men to do it. The difference was that Turk possessed a hankering for the right side of the law, whereas the Petex was unhampered by any code of ethics. It promised to be a dog-eat-dog battle.

Joe Leone, the tough, fat little executive of Tropco, had warned him as to what he could expect. Leone had been weaned on a Liberty motor, had pioneered with an air circus, and had been a wing walker. From that he’d gone to an airline, and from there to the more hectic business of prospecting for oil by use of the magnetometer.

Leone and Madden talked the same language, and Joe pulled no punches in explaining.

“The first one to get a good survey of that region can get a concession. If there’s oil there, we want it. An’ get this, Turk. The government wants it. The Tropco is doin’ the job, but Uncle Whiskers is mighty interested.

“Our country needs oil—an’ plenty of it. Where does the oil come from? We ain’t supplyin’ our domestic needs now. An’ don’t kid yourself that we’re goin’ to make any big discoveries anymore. This country has been prospected from hell to breakfast!

“Sure! We’ll find oil here an’ there, but not enough. Not a drop in the bucket. That Brazilian country is liable to be the biggest thing yet, an’ the folks I speak for an’ the ones Petex works for are out to get that survey finished an’ make a bid. So figure on trouble.

“They’ll do anything—and I mean
anything
—to wreck your chance of a survey. They’ll sabotage your planes. They’ll kill if they come to it, don’t forget that. I don’t know for sure, but some of the guys behind this Petex outfit may represent another country. At any rate, they don’t respect Uncle Whiskers, an’ we do.

“I’d figured on you. But there was a tip from Washington, too. They said you’d be the man. Seems they liked your work during the war. So you take that ship of yours an’ head for the Matto Grosso. We’ll have oil spotted for you at Cuyaba, an’ on the Amazon at Obido. We’ve got two men to send along, both good sharp boys, rough an’ tumble guys.”

Turk had nodded thoughtfully. “Who are they?”

“Dick London an’ Phil Mora. London’s your expert on the magnetometer. Knows it like a book, an’ a good radio man. He’s just a kid—twenty-two years old.

“You ever hear of that Boy’s Ranch out near Old Tascosa? It’s a set-up something like Boy’s Town, an’ a mighty good one. Well, this Dick London came from there, an’ the kids that leave that ranch are tops, take it from me. Dick had some tough breaks as a kid, but he took to the life on that ranch an’ left there mighty interested in electrical science. Somebody helped him get a job at Westinghouse, an’ he went from that to a job in the survey of the Bahamas.

“Phil Mora’s a college man. Finished his post-grad work and went to Arabia on an oilfield job. He was there a couple of years, then back in the States, then the war. After the war he went to Syria for a year or two, and now this job.”

B
UCK RODD TURNED toward Turk. He was a big man, even heavier than Turk’s two hundred pounds, and a former commercial explorer, searching the jungle for gold, diamonds, orchids, and quinine bark, among other things. With Shan Bao, Turk’s long, lean Manchu mechanic, Rodd completed the party of five.

“You said something about a base on the Formosa,” Buck Rodd said. “That was a new one on me. Did Leone give you the dope?”

Turk chuckled. “No, Buck, I’ve actually got almost nothing to go on! A few nights ago in Rio I ran into a big bruiser in a cantina, a drunken prospector with a red beard and red hair on his chest. I bought him a drink, and he told me he’d been hunting rubber and gold in Brazil all his life, so I started talking about this neck of the woods. No sooner did I mention it, though, than the bruiser clammed up. He’d been ready to talk until then, but he shut up and I couldn’t get a thing out of him. However, I went back there again, and on the third night we met again and had another drink.

“Well, to cut it short, this bruiser finally comes out with a funny crack. He says, ‘You look big enough to take care of yourself, an’ tough enough. If you’re goin’ to work that country, there’s a little lake in the jungle just west of the Formosa River. It would be a perfect base. But you be careful.’ ”

“Huh! That ain’t much, is it? He say anything more?”

“Well, yes. He did say something. He squinted at me sort of funny, and said, ‘If you get there, an’ they take you to Chipan, tell Nato that Red said hello.’ ”

“Chipan? Where the devil is that? I thought that was all jungle, that no white man except maybe Fawcett, who got lost down there, had ever seen it.”

“That’s about right. And I never heard of any such place as Chipan,” Turk admitted. “But a lake in that country? Say! That would be a base worth having, and one that would save us days of time. So where are we headed for? The Formosa!”

The amphibian droned along smoothly, its twin motors purring like contented kittens, and Turk ran his fingers through his black, coarse hair. His green eyes swept the sky, alternately searching for the plane they had seen earlier and studying the vast sweep of the jungle below them.

Fascinated, his eyes shifted from point to point over the land below. To him this had long been the most exciting country on earth because here, in one great chunk, was a great stretch of land that offered nothing but legend. Ever since the early Portuguese explorers had told their strange stories of vast ruined cities in the jungles, men, lured by memories of the Maya and Inca cities and the gold walled temples to the Sun, had searched these jungles in their minds. Few had actually penetrated their depths, and not many of the few had returned.

In 1925, Colonel Fawcett had gone into those jungles and vanished. Rumors had come out of him alive, ruling a native people. And now this story told by a drunken prospector. The mention of a strange name…
Chipan
. And he was to say hello to Nato. Who was Nato? Man, Woman, or God? Or was it some figment of the native imagination? Some reptile? Some monster?

Long ago, reading of this jungle, Turk had read where some Latin explorer had sighted a huge reptile, not unlike a prehistoric monster, in the Bemi swamp. And if such there were on earth, surely there could be no more likely place to find it than here, in these far green forests beyond the reach of men. No sunlight penetrated those depths below. There was hot, still heat, humidity, and the unceasing buzz of insects. At night that jungle was a hell of sound, of screams and yells and screeches.

Turk’s wing tip scored the misty end of a cloud and he moved out into the vast, unclouded blue beyond, and the ship seemed lost in a droning dream between the green below and the blue above.

Then out of the green came the shaggy brown ridge of a mountain chain, and the silver of a stream. It could be the Formosa.

Phil Mora stuck his head over Buck Rodd’s shoulder. “Is that it?” he asked.

Turk swung the ship in a wide circle, studying the terrain below. “It’s not the Formosa,” he said at last. “My guess is that it is one of the streams west of there, closer against the mountains. Nevertheless, we’ll scout around for a landing.”

“Savanna over there to our northeast,” Rodd offered, inclining his head in that direction. “Looks like there might be quite a bit of open country around.”

“There is,” Mora said. “Lots of this country through here is open. Several small mountain ranges in here, too.”

Turk Madden swung the ship in a tighter circle, moving in toward the spot of open water. It looked not unlike the brief description Red had given him in the cantina, but there was no way he could be sure. He dropped lower, then cut the throttle and slid down toward the smooth dark water. Then he leveled off and, with the stick back, took the water easily and started to taxi toward the shore, keeping a sharp eye out for snags.

W
HEN THEY WERE in a small cove, Shan Bao dropped the anchor and they swung slowly, turning the nose into the wind. Turk stared around curiously.

The shore was flat and low at this point, the gravel beach giving way to tall grass, and beyond, a few scattered trees. A bit farther along, the wall of the jungle closed in, but here at the cove was timber enough for shelter and fuel, and some camouflage. Dick London was getting the boat out and Turk nodded toward shore.

“Look that bottom over as you go in. I’d like to run her up on the beach if we can. I think we might make a takeoff up there. I think we’ll start flying from here tomorrow.”

When they were gone, he got up and reached for his shoulder holster, buckling it in place. Then he picked up his jacket and slipped it on. Ashore, Buck was getting a fire started, and they all went to work getting their camp set up. Turk stared thoughtfully around.

“It’s late, so we’ll sit tight. Tomorrow we’d better have a look at things.”

Dick motioned toward the spur of the mountain. “Some funny rocks up there. One of them looks almost like a tower.”

Madden turned toward it. The outline was dark against the sky. It did look like a tower. He lighted his cigarette, still staring at it, then tossed the match down and ground it into the sand with his toe.

Chipan—what was Chipan? Staring at the strange shape against the sky of this remote jungle, Turk Madden felt a queer, ominous thrill go through him, a feeling that left him uncomfortable, as though eyes were upon him. He glanced around, and something in the manner of Phil Mora told him the geologist was feeling it, too.

“Odd place,” Mora said at last. “Gets you, somehow.”

“It does that!” Buck glanced up sharply. Against the darkening sky the shape of the tower was all gone. “I wonder if that is a tower? Or is it just a rock?”

Dick London laughed. “There’s nothing of that kind in here. This is all wild country.”

Mora shrugged. “So was the jungle in Cambodia before they found the lost city of Angkhor. You never know what you’ll find under this jungle. You couldn’t even see a city from the air unless you were hedgehopping. Not if it is really covered with jungle.”

Buck Rodd had taken over the cooking job from Shan Bao for the evening, and Turk seated himself on a rock watching the brawny prospector throw a meal together, and listening half unconsciously to an argument between Mora and London as to the relative merits of Joe Louis and Jack Dempsey.

It was not only his interest in this area of jungle that had prompted Madden to accept so readily the challenge of this new venture. Prospecting with the magnetometer was new, and as always such developments intrigued him. He was aware that the device would not entirely replace the usual surface instruments and methods, but it would outline the areas that deserved careful study and eliminate many others and much waste of time.

Both Mora and London had worked with the magnetometer, the latter a good deal. Even in civilized areas, the cost of such a survey on the ground was nearly twenty times more expensive than by air, while the difference in the time required for the survey was enormous. The magnetometer would be towed a hundred feet or so behind the plane in a bomblike housing, with the plane flying from five hundred to a thousand feet in the air, and at speeds around one hundred fifty miles per hour.