Doc Savage: The Ice Genius (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 12) (23 page)

The Commissar nodded slowly, his thoughts racing.

Johnny Littlejohn was going through the papers and came upon a sketch showing a Mongol leader with a high collar, pronounced cheekbones, long rat-tail mustaches and conical cap. He wore an imperious expression.

“Who is this?” he inquired of the Russian anthropologist.

“Who is this? Who is that?” sputtered the Russian. “Who do you
think
that is?”

Johnny looked blank.

Doc Savage studied the sketch and asked, “Is this your conception of Timur
il-Lenk?
”

“Conception, no!” He lifted a decisive finger in the air. “It
is
Timur! I have reconstructed exact features from skull of man buried in tomb of Timur
il-Lenk.
The likeness is ninety-nine percent true to life.”

Johnny took another look at the sketch, and remarked, “This man does not resemble the one who came out of the ice. The ice man is exceedingly ugly.”

“Additional proof!” insisted Gerasimov. “Timur was not ugly. He was not particularly handsome, for he was old man when he died. But he was not as ugly as horned toad.”

Doc Savage interrupted, “We will leave this discussion to another time. Nothing can be done about the man from the ice, now that he has been taken to Manchuria by the Japanese.”

Johnny looked stricken. “Are you saying that we are helpless to resolve this vexing problem?”

Doc Savage imparted, “Under present circumstances, it appears so.”

Johnny’s long face fell. But that seemed to settle the issue.

Half satisfied, the Russian anthropologist gathered up his papers, and everyone disembarked the plane with the intention of seeking out a decent meal.

It was while they were walking toward the airport commissary that Doc Savage’s men came running, indeed charging toward them, looking angry and excited at the same time.

They wrenched to a halt and attempted to shout all at once.

Doc Savage calmed them down with his steady voice, instructing, “One at a time, please.”

The only result of that was another attempt by Monk and the others to communicate something of great importance.

Doc cut them off. “Ham, what is the problem?”

“A bulletin just came over the radio, Doc!” the dapper lawyer shouted excitedly. He struggled to catch his breath. He was not easily winded and Doc Savage perceived that the short sprint was not what had taken his breath away. It was something else. The news he was attempting to communicate, no doubt.

Then, Ham Brooks dropped the bomb on their shocked ears.

“The Japanese Navy attacked our naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. It happened only a few hours ago.” His cultured voice grew hoarse. “Doc, they sank almost every ship of the Pacific Fleet!”

In the silence that followed, Doc Savage’s eerie trilling seeped out and seemed to drift in every direction at once, while failing to achieve much volume or power. It was a rather thin and forlorn sound in the cool afternoon air.

Chapter XXIX

WAR PLANS

THERE WAS A steady wind blowing through the airport at Ulan Bator, and for a long time it made the only sound that reached their ears.

The Mongolian commissar, not understanding what was going on, asked a question in his native tongue.

“What motivates this unseemly excitement?” he demanded.

Doc Savage told him in a brittle voice.

The Mongol’s narrow eyes popped wide, and his blocky jaw sagged to reveal metal fillings. It took a few moments to get his jaw back into place and he swallowed twice. He grinned sheepishly.

“This means we are allies,
nyet?”

Doc and his men stood stunned, trading glances, making motions with their hands and feet like those of men not sure what to do with themselves.

Finally, Doc Savage spoke clearly.

“It is imperative that we communicate with Washington and discover what they want us to do.”

“Does this mean we’re going back into uniform?” asked Long Tom.

“Very likely,” clipped Doc, turning on his heel and rushing back to the big plane.

The next several hours were hectic and unproductive. Employing a secret radio frequency, Doc Savage reached out to the War Department, and other high military authorities. He had trouble getting through. There was chaos in Washington. All radio channels were jammed as casualty reports filtered in from Hawaii.

Doc took a break from his attempts at reaching the nation’s capital, and concentrated on radio news flashes.

It was very bad. A sneak attack had taken place at dawn, with waves of Japanese Zeros descending upon the Pearl Harbor Naval Air Station, dropping bombs and machine gunning the ground at will.

The destruction to the Pacific Fleet was utter and all but complete. Casualties were extremely high. The attacking squadrons, having wrought their destruction, returned to waiting aircraft carriers.

Listening in, Monk Mayfair fell to growling deep in his throat. He never spoke a word. Just growled and growled, his tiny eyes fierce.

Ham Brooks unsheathed his sword cane and rammed it home again several times, handsome features red with fury.

Renny looked around for a door to smash, and decided against it. He rarely cracked his knobby knuckles, but he cracked them now. It produced a sound like firecrackers popping off.

Remarkably, Johnny was cursing in a manner that was virtually Shakespearean. No one understood a word he uttered, which prompted Monk to remark, “At least that old bag of bones is starting to sound like his normal cantankerous self.”

“Shut up!” raged Johnny, who resumed his fulminations. “Those Hell-hated Visigoths!” was the most understandable of his imprecations.

Hours passed in this manner, and then came the declaration of war from the President of the United States over the radio.

“ ‘A day that will live in infamy,’ kinda understates it,” rumbled Renny.

Ham Brooks ruminated, “The Japanese attacked the Philippines, Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong at the same time they hit Pearl Harbor. It was all coordinated. Thailand has already fallen.”

Long Tom muttered, “We’re in the Army now, brothers.”

Ham, a brigadier general in the last war, wondered, “I wonder if they’ll reinstate us in our old ranks?”

“Me,” said Monk, tapping his barrel chest with a blunt thumb, “I ain’t settlin’ for anything less than full colonel this time around.”

Long hours later, Doc Savage finally reached the War Department. An Admiral Grayson came on the air.

Doc told him, “My scrambler is engaged.”

“Good, Savage. Now listen carefully. We want you to return to the States as quickly as possible.”

Doc immediately objected. “My men and I are presently in Mongolia. We can take the fight to the Japanese through Manchuria without delay.”

“No. Any counterattack must be coordinated through the War Department. It is too soon. Get back here at once.”

Doc stated, “We are prepared to reenlist upon arrival.”

“Reenlist?” blurted the Admiral. “In another day or two, we’ll have more enlistees than we need. You would be wasted in uniform. We have bigger plans for you. Return at once, and we’ll sort out the details.”

A rare ire touched the bronze man’s even tones. “My men and I are prepared to fight for our country.”

“And fight you shall. But not in uniform. We need you at the upper end of the war effort.”

“It will take several days to return safely,” cautioned Doc.

“Don’t dawdle, Savage,” the Admiral said wearily. “We are still picking up the pieces over here.”

With that, the radio went dead.

DOC SAVAGE snapped off the sending switch, and turned in his seat to his waiting men.

“You all heard. They do not want us back in uniform.”

“That’s not fair!” exploded Ham.

“Fair or not, those are our orders.”

The faces of Doc Savage’s men grew long and disappointed at the news.

Monk suggested, “If we take our sweet time flyin’ back, who’s to say we might wander off course and take a crack at a few Japs along the way?”

“This ape has half of an idea,” Ham seconded.

The others were all for reopening hostilities.

Doc Savage did not dissuade his men from such thinking. It was clear that he, too, was disappointed by the official orders from Washington.

Renny popped one monster fist into the other and grumbled, “Well, now we know why the Japs were hot to knock us out of the sky. They knew this was coming. The Emperor must have thought that slaughtering us was as important as knocking out the entire U.S. Fleet in the Pacific.”

Doc Savage nodded grimly. “In the past, we have foiled operations of their espionage apparatus. Evidently, they have not forgotten this.”

Johnny Littlejohn had been studiously polishing his monocle. Now he spoke up.

“The Mongol warrior of whom Japanese have charge,” he said slowly, “if he is in truth Tamerlane, signifies that the Emperor has control of conceivably the most fearsome general in the history of world conquest.”

The lean archaeologist said no more. He made no plea, offered no argument, nor did he draw any other conclusion than that simple declaration of fact.

Doc Savage did it for him.

“You are suggesting that the Japanese now have a secret weapon in the Ice Genius?”

“Genius?”

“As in the spirit of a place, not in the sense of a super-intelligent individual,” explained Doc. “Tamerlane has taken on all the qualities of the frozen tomb from which he has been redeemed.”

Johnny gulped until his Adam’s apple disappeared from view. “I am so suggesting,” he admitted.

The bronze man was quiet a very long time.

At last, he offered this: “It may be possible to do something about that problem before we leave Mongolia.”

The eyes of Doc Savage’s men lit up in the way that they did when a battle was impending.

Quietly and deliberately, Johnny Littlejohn ceased his nervous monocle polishing and solemnly placed the lens back into its customary jacket pocket. Of all of them, the fires of combat did not burn in his studious orbs. Instead, a passion for new knowledge quietly stirred his ashen features. He was exceedingly eager to get his hands on the Ice Genius again.

Chapter XXX

TWO SCHEMERS

CADWILLER OLDEN WAS thrown into a military prison cell in a border town in Manchuria—the Japanese had renamed it Manchukuo—and left to rot there for three days, receiving only plain water, cold rice and bits of cool white flesh which he hoped were fish but tasted like earthworm, also not warm.

Three days of uncertainty, then a turnkey came and unlocked the iron cell door.

“Oide-nassai masu ka!”
commanded the jailer. “Speedo!”

The miniature man hesitated. He did not know what to expect, and was not eager to discover his fate.

Seeing this hesitation, the turnkey reached in and used the point of his rifle bayonet to prod the midget out of his plank bunk, barking,
“Hayakusiro!”

Tumbling off, Olden landed on his feet and made a concerted run for it. The results were comical. The Japanese gave chase, blew on a whistle as he ran, making a poor showing at both procedures.

Olden slammed into a door, caromed off, and ran back between the soldier’s churning legs.

The Japanese got tangled up in turning around and lost his rifle momentarily. Olden made a move for it, and managed to yank the bayonet off its mounting.

This he used to open up a long wound in the soldier’s puttee-sheathed legs.

The turnkey let out a screech of shock, and dived for his tiny tormentor. This brought his pulsing throat close to his opponent, exactly as Cadwiller Olden hoped.

The midget evinced no hesitation. He plunged the cold steel tip upward and transfixed the man’s throat. A grisly series of gurglings commenced, and a crimson flood spewed from the dying man’s yawning mouth.

The Japanese fell on his rifle. Olden dived for the stock. It took fully two minutes for the midget to pull the longarm free.

By the time he had the weapon in hand, additional Japanese soldiers came charging through the door.

Olden had already maneuvered his rifle so he could unloose lead. The first bullet struck the lead man squarely in the forehead. The helmet happened to cover that forehead so the resultant ringing was sharp and metallic. The soldier was blown backward by the leaden blow.

So was Olden, for the weapon was too long for him to hold it properly. He had to set the butt of the stock on the ground, grip it in both hands, and squeeze the trigger.

The second soldier drew out his military sword and, screeching imprecations, charged his miniature foe.

Olden shot him square in the belly. The floundering man landed on his flat face and commenced sliding.

The top of his helmet struck the little man, knocking him down. And another rifle bullet jumped from the muzzle, to crack the plaster ceiling.

Recoil of the rifle tore the weapon from tiny fingers and Cadwiller Olden lay there, momentarily stunned. He groaned like an old hound dog.

“This—is—the—end,” he moaned.

Strangely enough, it was not.

FOR Captain Kensa Kan soon appeared, flush-faced and sputtering loudly in his native language. Seizing the midget in both hands, Kan lifted him as he would a sandbag and carried him down dank corridors to a cold office, where he slammed Olden into a hard wooden chair.

The Captain took his own chair behind the desk and began speaking.

“I have conducted a thorough investigation of you,” Kan said coldly. “There is no such person as Monzingo Baldwin. You are in fact a mysterious individual, Cadwiller Olden, believed to be deceased. You lied to me.”

“Prove it,” retorted Cadwiller Olden in his hound-dog voice.

“I have a complete dossier on you, Olden-
kun.
You come from an illustrious family of Royalists going back to before the American Revolution. There is a school named after your ancestor, Governor Cadwallader Colden, in New York City. You changed your last name for reasons undiscoverable by our agents.”