Doc Savage: The Ice Genius (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 12) (38 page)

Then, General Chinua raised his red-tipped sword and said, “Steel beats bronze!”

No one was quite sure what this meant. Although the blade in his hand was clearly hammered out of steel.

Doc Savage eyed the scattering of warriors and milling mounts, swiftly sizing up the situation. His men were all but surrounded, their backs to the blazing caboose.

Johnny was obviously utterly hopeless and stuck in his saddle.

There was no sign of Tamerlane, but he would be at least an hour regaining consciousness. So the frosty fiend was out of the picture for the time being.

The next move appeared to belong to Doc Savage or General Chinua. But if either man had anything in mind, it was not brought into play.

For out of the early morning skies of China came a concerted moan.

Everyone looked up and about, seeking the source of the unnerving sound.

The sun had not climbed far, but the sky was already a brazen bowl of light. This made it difficult to see.

Suddenly, vaulting over the mountain peaks buzzed a squadron of fighter planes. They could not be immediately identified. Identification suddenly became unimportant when they rolled out of the sky and commenced strafing the battlefield.

Everywhere dirt and dust began to jump up and stark-faced men scrambled for shelter, seeking to preserve their lives, all thought of further combat evaporating like so much steam.

Chapter LIV

STRAFING RUN

WITH MACHINE GUN bullets raining down from the sky, Doc Savage vaulted into the saddle of the handiest Mongol pony. Seizing the reins, he heeled the horse in the direction of General Chinua and the pony across which Johnny Littlejohn was strapped. The archeologist hung in his ropes like a careless daddy longlegs spider caught in his own web.

The bronze man’s thinking was simple. His fighting men could fend for themselves. But Johnny was utterly helpless.

Seeing Doc Savage riding hard in his direction, General Chinua had other ideas. Lashing his own pony, he led the other steed in galloping away.

Doc Savage gave chase. He had a disadvantage in that he weighed much more than the average Mongol horsemen. His pony struggled to carry him.

Chinua, however, did not realize this. Hearing the bronze man hard on his heels, he switched tactics.

Dropping the other pony’s reins, he drew his vicious sabre, and, windy features fierce, wheeled to meet the bronze giant.

Coming on, Doc leaned half out of his saddle, reached down and scooped up a fallen sabre lying in his path. He lifted the dusty blade high.

When the two combatants collided, steel rang and sparked. Chinua attempted to hack away, seeking to sever the wrist back of his opponent’s sword hilt.

But this was no easy feat. Doc Savage’s muscular strength was not only greater, his swordsmanship was considerably more adept.

With two swift strokes, Doc disarmed the general, and unceremoniously banged him out of the saddle, employing the flat of his blade. Chinua tumbled off his mount, landing in the yellowish dirt.

A low-flying fighter plane swooped in at that moment and began peppering the ground. Dun-colored spikes of dust erupted everywhere. Mongols caught between them screamed and fell, writhing. Blood flowed liberally.

Doc Savage was forced to retreat.

BY now, it became clear that the attackers were Nationalist Chinese fighters. They were doing a credible job of scattering the combatants in all directions.

They were perhaps not the greatest marksmen, because they missed more targets than they hit. But they sowed a considerable quantity of death when they did place their rounds accurately.

Doc Savage knew that the warplanes had been summoned by the remarkable radio relay network that gave Chinese towns and villages early warning of Japanese air attacks. The ambush of the train had no doubt helped raise the alarm.

Unfortunately, the Chinese pilots were making it all but impossible for Doc to regroup his men and fight their way out of the bloody mess.

Time after time, the Chinese warplanes barreled around, emptying their guns. Eventually, ammunition belts ran dry. And with no place to land, nor any other means by which to inflict further damage, they turned around and buzzed away in the direction of their distant airbase.

By the time they had departed, the moan of their motors still lingering in the morning air, most of the combatants had fled into the foothills and mountains that ringed this particular valley.

Doc Savage ranged the terrain, but could find no trace of his men. Nor could he locate the pony on which Johnny Littlejohn had been lashed. The animal had last been observed racing away, Johnny’s loose-limbed figure bouncing in the saddle, along with the strange carven box, the purpose of which Doc Savage failed to fathom.

The train which had been stalled on the tracks had managed to work itself loose from the burning rubble and was huffing away, hurling dirty smoke and cinders into the sky.

Cupping hands before his mouth, Doc Savage called out, “Monk! Ham! Answer me!”

But there were no answering calls.

This told Doc Savage, more than anything else, that his men were either prisoners or incapacitated, possibly both. The maddening confusion of hoof and foot prints, combined with the enormous amount of obscuring dust kicked up by the many strafing passes, further hindered his ability to locate his associates.

When a second wave of Chinese planes appeared to resume the strafing run, the bronze man was forced to slip into the foothills and seek shelter until this latest aerial attack had passed.

He lay hunkered down amid some boulders and brush for some fifteen minutes before a familiar snuffling grunt sounded behind him.

Out of the brush came a porcine apparition—dog-legged, long-snouted, scrawny-spined Habeas Corpus the pig. The ungainly shoat had been forgotten in the general excitement. It was clear that he had managed to escape the burning caboose, but had failed to rendezvous with his master, Monk Mayfair.

“Here, Habeas,” said Doc Savage.

The beady-eyed pig commenced to squeal disconsolately. He brushed up against Doc Savage before lying down to await developments.

Chapter LV

GONER

WHEN THE SLASHING storm of lead initially commenced, General Chinua’s first thought was for his lord, Timur Khan.

Racing to the field among the wounded, he located his fallen warlord, jumped from his panting, wild-eyed steed, and roughly laid the unconscious Timur across his own gaudy saddle. Mounting another pony, Chinua picked a direction and lashed this animal madly, dragging his own horse by its rawhide reins.

Shouting at the top of his lungs, he cried for all who could to follow him. Many tried, but only a few succeeded. Steel-jacketed lead lancing from the skies tore many Mongols to bloody scraps of flesh and bone, strewing the ground with fractured teeth.

In this wild confusion, the fighting men of Doc Savage also sought escape.

So it was that General Chinua and his surviving Mongols found themselves racing the Doc Savage mercenaries toward safety.

Safety, of course, lay among the foothills of the mountains over which they had just traversed. All else was flat or gently rolling terrain, parts of it yellowish loess—a sediment comprised of wind-blown salt, sand and clay that created pockets where nothing grew.

With the buzzing aircraft diving, swooping and ripping the ground asunder with each noisy pass, there was no opportunity to trade words or blows. They spurred their horses and, as it happened, both sets of foes found themselves choking into a deep cleft in the foothills.

This was an altogether different cut than the pass over which they initially traversed. It had a strange quality, as if it had been excavated. When the horsemen charged in, they soon realized why.

Monk exploded, “Bless my boots! It’s a dang
tunnel
.”

That it was. Evidently, in times past there had been an effort to dynamite a railway tunnel through one low mountain. This had been abandoned before completion. The tunnel was very wide at this, the western entrance, but as they slowed their ponies in the cleft where the climbing sun did not reach, the way narrowed until they were forced into going single file.

It was then, with the yammering of machine guns still hanging in the air, that General Chinua growled a low command. Monk, Ham, Renny and Long Tom found themselves ringed by glittering steel.

They still toted their supermachine pistols, but had holstered them, for the still-smoking weapons were completely devoid of shells.

Monk began growling deep in his throat. The simian chemist looked ready to spring out of his saddle and brave the viciously curved
kilij
sabres prodding his barrel-chested upper body.

Ham spoke up sharply, warning, “Monk, you hairy mistake! They have us dead to rights.”

“Blast me!” snarled the apish Monk. “I hate lettin’ any of these horse-happy heathens get the better of me.”

Renny rumbled, “Unless you want to be skewered where you sit, I’d lift my mitts.” By example, the big-fisted engineer erected his monster hands.

Reluctantly, pain etched upon their faces, Ham Brooks and Long Tom Roberts did likewise.

Monk looked around, cavernous jaw sagging.

“What’s the matter with you? Where’s your moxie?”

Long Tom spoke for the others when he said, “We know when we are outnumbered.”

“Well, I ain’t outnumbered,” said Monk, and then he did a foolhardy thing.

ONE hirsute paw swiped out and slapped the sabre out of the hand of the closest Mongol warrior. Monk snatched for the spilling blade, but it was no good. He missed. Probably that is what saved his fingers. For, had he clutched the wicked cutlass, no doubt Monk would have cut himself severely. But so great was the hairy chemist’s rage that he no longer cared.

Two more sabres leapt in and embedded their points in his chest, their steel grating against the links of Monk’s alloy undervest.

Monk growled more deeply. “Try anything funny and I’ll shove my hand down your gullet and pick apart your spine from the inside,” he warned them. It would have been humorous, had the situation not been so perilous.

Turning his mount, General Chinua suddenly wheeled and drove the heavy hilt of his sword against the back of Monk’s bullet skull. The gorilla-like chemist pitched out of the saddle, knocked entirely out.

Ham let out a sharp yell as if the blow had struck him, too. A keen-edged blade swept in to tickle his throat, and the dapper barrister subsided. His fingers twitched, as if aching for his absent sword cane.

Grinning fiercely, Chinua instructed his men to heave Monk back onto his saddle and tie him down. This was done, although four men were needed to accomplish the task. Monk weighed approximately two hundred and fifty pounds.

The Mongols got themselves reorganized, and climbed back in their saddles, and so it was that Ham and the others found themselves once again surrounded. Now they were being prodded deeper into the cleft in the mountain that represented the abandoned tunnel.

When the party passed over to the other side and into bright sunlight, they became aware of a pony being led by one warrior. Draped across the saddle was the ungainly form of Johnny Littlejohn. He resembled a scarecrow liberated from a cornfield. A fresh bruise on his forehead explained how the unfortunate archeologist had once more been rendered insensate.

Ahead of him, lashed to the pommel of the ornate wooden saddle, was a small casket carved from teak. It was perforated with numerous holes, as if containing an animal that needed to breathe.

They could not help but notice this intricate receptacle, which caused Long Tom to remark to the others, “I wonder what’s so important about that box?”

To his surprise, a hollow voice seemed to come from the perforated container.

It said, “Mind your damn business.”

Everyone’s eyes became very strange, for they recognized the basso hound-dog voice. Measuring the small box with their eyes, they could not imagine how Cadwiller Olden had managed to squeeze inside.

Nor did they discover how. For every effort they made to entice the miniature man into conversation was pointedly ignored.

Except one time.

That was when Renny remarked to the others, “I thought for sure the little runt was a goner.”

“I
am
a goner,” moaned Cadwiller Olden.

Chapter LVI

TRAIL

WHEN THE LAST sortie of Free Chinese Air Force warplanes broke off to return to their base, Doc Savage emerged from concealment, the long-eared pig, Habeas Corpus, walking in his wake like a deformed version of Dumbo the elephant.

The porker appeared reluctant to venture out into what had been a blood-soaked battlefield.

Doc Savage halted, turned.

“Wait for me,” the bronze man said. Habeas promptly sat down. He had been trained by Monk to obey simple commands. In that respect, he was as intelligent as any superior breed of dog.

Doc managed to get only a few rods before the drone of aircraft engines again filled the spacious valley. He looked up over the mountains. A lone B-10 bomber bearing Chinese markings flashed into view.

The bomber banked sharply, and seemed intent to overfly the battlefield.

Reversing course, the big bronze man plunged back into the underbrush, scooping up Habeas on the fly. With the pig secured under one arm, Doc hunkered down in the shelter of the largest boulders he could handily locate.

The B-10 dropped only one bomb. It was a large one. It came whistling down, smack in the center of the field, detonating with terrific force. Doc simultaneously cupped his hands over his ears, and squeezed Habeas’ long head between his knees, blocking the pig’s winglike ears.

Had he not done so, it was conceivable that the loss of hearing would have been more severe than it eventually was.

Dirt, rocks, debris, mixed with parts of bodies, both human and equine, were flung in all directions, and there followed a brief rain that was composed of sanguinary matter.