Doc Savage: Death's Dark Domain (17 page)

Doc led them on a chase to the waiting vehicle. He ducked inside. This time, he engaged
the engine. It muttered to life. Doc depressed the gas pedal, and reeled away along
the winding approach road.

The firing squad reached the roadside and someone took charge. He barked out an order
to kneel and fire. It was obeyed.

Evidently, the riflemen forgot for a moment that they composed a firing squad, for
six men pulled triggers and were rewarded by six futile clicks.

The seventh soldier’s bullet ripped out of its muzzle and spanked off the rear bumper,
scoring chromium.

Doc abruptly sent the car into a screeching turn and accelerated up the road, straight
at the kneeling execution squad.

Consternation ensued. Muddy brown uniforms broke in all directions. Doc flew past
them, reached the courtyard and leaped for Fiana Drost.

At the sound of the solitary rifle discharge, the woman had apparently fainted or
something.

Doc scooped her up and deposited the dark-haired woman into the passenger seat. Clamping
the driver’s door shut, he took off again.

On the lower road, the firing squad was reassembling itself. A whistle blew shrilly.
Men were digging into uniform blouse pockets for spare ammunition.

One hit pay dirt. He got his rifle reloaded, brought it up, fired once.

Doc Savage blew through the scattered men like a hurtling juggernaut.

In passing, a bullet smacked the rear window, shattering it. The slug lodged in a
car seat, all but spent.

Remarkably, that was the extent of the attempts to inhibit the bronze man’s escape.

Doc reached the roadway below and turned south, in the direction of the military air
drome where he had spotted the bronze glint of his great amphibian from the castle’s
roof.

There, he hoped he would find Monk and Ham.

MONK MAYFAIR AND Ham Brooks—not to mention Long Tom Roberts—had no intentions of waiting
for Doc Savage to come out of his narcotic coma. It was often on such occasions—and
there were many—when one of the aides was unjustly imprisoned, allowing the Man of
Bronze to straighten out affairs was the prudent thing to do. He could cut through
red tape like no one’s business. Failing that, the bronze man was a genius at defeating
capture. His men often suspected him of having gleaned the secrets of the great escape
artists of the past. But Doc never spoke of that.

This was one time when they were left entirely to their own devices.

Monk put it best. “No tellin’ how long Doc will be in whatever hospital they shipped
him off to.”

“That sedative’s effects could last for days,” admitted Ham glumly.

From somewhere up the cell corridor, out of their sight, Long Tom put in, “So you
two are saying that if we want to escape that firing squad, we have to fend for ourselves.”

“That’s what I’m sayin’,” said Monk. “Got any ideas, Long Tom?”

“It just so happens I was planning on busting out of this hoosegow around supper time.”

Ham perked up. “You have a plan?”

“Better. I have a half-dollar.”

“That won’t buy us much,” muttered Monk.

“No? Watch this.”

Lifting his voice, Long Tom called out, “Guard! Guard!”

No one responded, so Monk and Ham joined the chorus. They yelled and complained loudly,
taking off their shoes, using them to pummel the cell bars. This produced no results.

“Anyone know the local word for guard?” asked Ham, restoring his footwear.

None of them did, so they changed their yelling to screams of pain and distress.

Eventually a warder showed up, key ring jangling at his hip.

“What is the matter?” he demanded in a suspicious voice.

Monk pointed to the adjoining cell. “Our buddy, Long Tom. It’s his stomach. It’s always
actin’ up.”

Lying on his cot, Long Tom clutched his belly and bayed like a hound dog in gastric
distress. It was a very convincing performance.

The guard looked concerned. “What is wrong with him?”

“Damn jail grub,” groaned Long Tom. “Gave me ptomaine.”

“He needs better food than he is getting,” Ham suggested hopefully.

Turning away, the guard grumbled, “He is to die soon. He does not need any food.”

“No last meal?” asked Monk, looking disappointed. Monk liked his food.

“Perhaps some bread and water later.”

“Look here,” moaned Long Tom. “I have a half a dollar, American money. Will that buy
me some decent chow?”

The guard looked suddenly interested. He whirled from the door through which he had
been planning to exit, approached the cells, eyes avid. He was mentally computing
how many meals fifty U.S. cents could purchase—for himself.

“Show money,” he undertoned.

Reaching into a pocket, Long Tom said laconically, “Here.”

The other made an impatient gesture. “Toss coin to me.”

Sitting up, Long Tom attempted to throw the half-dollar. It fell short, falling inside
the cell itself.

“I cannot reach,” complained the guard, who got down on one knee and stretched his
arm through the iron bars as far as he could manage.

“Hold your horses,” said Long Tom, levering himself up on his cot with evident pain
writhing over his pale features.

Standing up, the undersized electrical genius made his way to the coin. With one toe,
he gave it a nudge. It skidded a little, just within reach of the eager guard, but
still remaining within the jail cell.

Lunging eagerly, the guard went to grab for the coin. Long Tom clicked his heels together
just as the guard’s grasping fingers touched the coin. He failed to see the thin trailing
wires which snaked back to Long Tom’s shoe heels.

When the guard’s fingertips brushed the coin, he began doing a jig on his knees. He
howled, moaned, and made frantic contortions with his suddenly-rubbery body.

Long Tom separated his copper-plated heels. The electrical charge coming from tiny
dry-cell batteries secreted in each shoe heel cut out. The guard’s convulsions instantly
ceased. To the accompaniment of a long groan, he folded up into a heap.

Satisfied that it was safe to do so, the slender electrical wizard stepped up and
clouted the guard on the jaw by shooting one rock-hard fist between the door bars.

The guard collapsed. It was a simple matter to confiscate his key ring.

“Trick coin, eh?” Ham said, who had witnessed some of it.

Long Tom pocketed the device. “Yeah. Been waiting for a chance to use it on someone.”

Monk grinned. “I use ’em myself.”

“I will take that as a confession of guilt,” sniffed Ham. “You’ve been winning too
many coin tosses lately.”

“Luck, I call it,” Monk said brightly. “Runs in the family.”

Long Tom unlocked his cell door, showed himself. He looked as if he had just crawled
out of a coffin—which for the puny electrical wizard was perfectly normal.

Fumbling at the lock for some moments, Long Tom finally got Monk and Ham loose. They
stepped out.

The guard had a sidearm. Monk and Long Tom made a grab for it. Long Tom won. Monk
decided not to challenge him for possession. Long Tom’s temper was nothing to fool
with on a good day. Facing the prospect of a firing squad, he was undiluted poison.

They reached the passage and tumbled out, uncaring who or what they encountered. The
trio were in no frame of mind to be cautious. Escape was uppermost in their thoughts.

Long Tom led the way, revolver jutting from his fist. He stretched his pale head around
a corner and hastily withdrew it.

“Two guards,” he whispered. “Both armed.”

“I’ll fix ’em,” Monk decided.

Suiting action to words, the hairy chemist bounded around the corner and fell upon
the unsuspecting guards with all the enthusiasm of a bull gorilla harvesting coconuts.

In this case, the coconuts were the heads of the two unprepared guards.

Normally, Monk liked to howl during an ambush. But that would be unwise in this case.
So he simply charged around the corner and grasped heads, got them firmly in the crooks
of his hairy arms, and began conking the heads together. Ten seconds of this made
the hapless men as loose and unresisting as puppets. Monk dropped them and grabbed
up one fallen sidearm. Ham got the other.

They took a minute to break open the revolvers and count ammunition.

“Enough for a start,” Monk decided, snapping his pistol back together.

“Let’s go!” hissed Ham.

Habeas trotted after them. He had been sleeping in the corridor. The pig had a way
of never getting very lost.

They traversed two corridors before they heard sounds ahead. Everyone drew to a skidding
stop. Except Habeas Corpus. The long-legged shoat’s hoofs failed to find traction
on the polished stone floor and he went skidding around the corner ahead of them all.

Habeas was spotted at once. He made an abrupt about-face and retreated, ears straining
out like wings.

SHOUTS, the sounds of weapons slithering from holsters, rifles being cocked came distinctly.
In full cry, men came running in their direction.

Monk, Ham and Long Tom considered resistance, decided against it.

Instead, they dropped to the floor and laid themselves out in a row.

The soldiers charged around the corner and began tripping over their outstretched
forms, making a confused pile of arms and legs.

Pistols abruptly left hands, yanked by upward-snatching fingers. Fists reached up,
connected with jaws and noses. Monk rapped a man on his skull with his own gun butt.
They began flinging the fallen off them.

In a trice, the scrappy trio were on their feet, holding the weapons on the captured
soldiers. They positively bristled with arms.

“I didn’t think that old gag would work,” Long Tom observed.

“It always works,” boasted Monk, grinning.

The soldiers lifted their hands above their heads—an easy thing to do when one is
prostrate upon a cold stone floor. They looked astonished, if not down right embarrassed,
at their plight.

Ham asked, “What do we do with them?”

“Their uniforms might fit you and Long Tom, but not me,” decided Monk.

Long Tom nodded. “That’s good enough.” They began exchanging clothes.

When that operation was completed, Monk Mayfair enthusiastically brained each and
every conscious man with a pistol butt.

“That settles that,” he said with undisguised glee.

A minute later, Monk was being marched out of the place, hairy hands held high, at
the rifle points of Ham and Long Tom, each wearing Egallah brown.

Habeas trotted along, ears erected, playing prisoner.

It was a bold plan, but plans born of desperation are often thus. They did not speak
the local language, except Ham who could muster up a smattering of the tongue, but
probably not enough to get them by most situations.

So they settled for boldness and confidently marched the hairy chemist out onto the
tarmac.

They were not spotted at once as they exited. It took three or four minutes for the
apish form of Monk Mayfair trudging along to draw attention.

A voice called out. It was gruff, questioning. They understood none of it.

Ham waved at the man, said nothing.

Another cry came.

This time, Long Tom waved them off angrily, as if it were none of their business.

Ham threw in a stray word or two of Egallanese, which he recalled meant, Mind your
own business.

That gained them a few yards of marching.

When they spotted their amphibian plane on the side of the tarmac, they decided to
make a run for it.

That brought howls of protest from all directions.

Monk pulled two pistols from his belt, where they had been concealed. He fired wildly
in all directions, not caring whom he hit. Monk was blood-thirsty that way.

Ham and Long Tom were more cautious. Ham sighted, unloosed discouraging lead and kept
going. He was a fair sprinter.

In this fashion they reached their plane. Monk got there first, hauled open the door
and they piled in. The door slammed behind them, just before a bullet drummed against
it.

Ham got the motors going. The self-starters were designed for cold weather such as
this. The engines were kept warm by a circulating chemical.

Releasing the brakes, Ham got the amphibian rumbling onto the runway and moving fast.

“Where was the prevailing wind?” he asked frantically, eyes searching the field for
the tell-tale wind sock.

None of them had taken the time to notice.

“Just get us upstairs!” Long Tom yelled.

Rifle bullets began arriving. Lead spanked off hull and wing surfaces. Doc’s planes
were all bulletproofed. But there remained points in vulnerability. The tires, for
example. They could be shattered by a high-powered rifle slug, properly placed.

“If they hit the wheels with a lucky shot,” warned Ham, “we might not get her off
the ground safely.”

“Fly this bus and leave the defendin’ to us,” called Monk from the door, which he
had flung open. He was blazing away with a supermachine pistol he had extracted from
an equipment case.

The apish chemist had not taken the time to see what kind of drum the fearsome weapon
was charged with. It turned out to be demolition shells.

Monk discovered this when he fired a single test shot at a military truck from which
two men were firing.

The truck jumped into the air in a jumble of smoke and noise. Fire tongues spurted.
All firing from that quarter ceased.

“My lucky day!” enthused Monk, grinning from ear to ear.

Setting the tiny weapon to constant fire, he began hosing buildings, warplanes and
everything else that could be used to block off the tarmac, or follow them into the
air.

The air shook with prodigious detonations. They were thundering. It was as if volcanoes
were going off all around. Uniformed men fled in every direction, seeking escape,
but finding additional explosions. One man lost his head. Literally.