Chapter 20
Deadly Skies
Monk was frantic. There had been no word, sight or sign of Ham.
The frightfully simian-faced chemist and operative Jenson had been detained awhile answering police questions. A quick call to war department authorities cut through most of the red tape the men would have normally had to tangle with.
The blasted and burned wreckage at the shipyard revealed the remains of only one body, apparently that of Barnes. Monk shuddered, then breathed a sigh of relief: At least Ham hadn't been inside when the warehouse was destroyed.
"They musta booby-trapped the place to blow when the lights were switched on," Monk surmised.
"Then Barnes wasn't part of their devilishness," Jenson said.
"They're bad eggs," Monk said. "And they must have Ham!"
Back at Doc's eighty-sixth floor headquarters, Monk paced in circles like a worried ape at the zoo. The police and Doc's operatives were searching for the hairy chemist's combative friend. Trains, bus terminals and airports had been checked and were being watched. Crews patrolled the docks. But no sign of the lawyer had appeared.
It had been a long night for Monk, and it was not yet dawn. Dark circles ringed his eyes. He was jumpy with worry. So when the ringing phone suddenly broke the silence, Monk nearly hopped out of his shoes.
"Is this that ape, Mayfair?" a gruff voice asked after the chemist answered. "We got your buddy Brooks. Tell Savage to call off his work for the Navy or your clothes-horse pal gets the deep six!"
"Doc can't stop -- he's workin' for the War Department!" squeaked Monk. "Besides, when he gets hold of you, your goose is cooked if you harm Ham!"
"Hah!" retorted the gruff voice. "He'll never get hold of us. We're taking your pal Brooks to Japan!"
"What?!" Monk sputtered.
"Tell Savage what I said!" And he broke the connection.
*
Four outbuildings were arranged in no discernable order around the clearing surrounding Barlowe's farmhouse. One was low and long. Two others were tall and slender, and both stood with a precarious-seeming slant. The fourth was a garage housing a broken-down buckboard wagon.
Dismissed by the vicious gang chief, the Killer Kalbs stepped from the porch fronting the house and advanced toward the low and long building. Suddenly Big Boy whirled back and said, "I heard somebody --"
"And he's there!" finished Skeeter.
Both whipped pistols from the pockets of their raincoats and fired a hail of bullets at the shadowed corner of the house. Then they turned and rushed to the outbuilding that was their original goal.
The Kalbs were right. The figure haunting the shadows was Doc Savage.
Doc stepped behind the house corner for protection from the shots. As soon as the raincoated assailants ceased their gunplay, the bronze man started after them. But immediately scores of guns opened fire on the farmhouse from the woods surrounding the clearing. Doc flattened on the ground. Suddenly return fire erupted from the windows of the house.
Caught in a crossfire, Doc rolled under the porch.
Doc had arrived at the clearing in advance of Renny and the Navy squads to reconnoiter. He had slipped past Barlowe's sentries that patroled the borders of the property. He had tried getting inside the two tall outbuildings, but to no avail. When the Kalbs exited the low building to enter the farmhouse, the bronze man investigated that structure. What he found did not surprise him.
A few minutes later he had heard the firefight that resulted in the capture of Curly Wolfe and Black Cat Jackson. Doc had glided to a window and overheard Barlowe's interrogation of his two prisoners.
Now he was pinned down under the porch -- the Navy probably started its attack upon hearing the gunshots loosed by the Kalbs.
As with many structures of this type, the farmhouse rested on low columns of stacked stone that resulted in a relatively open crawlspace beneath the house. Doc rolled and crawled toward the back of the building. Occasional ricochets whined past and threw up shards of chipped rock dangerous as shrapnel grenades.
Doc encountered one puzzling obstacle -- a circular pillar of smooth stone or poured concrete, roughly three feet in diameter, rising vertically from the ground to the floor of the house. Moving around this article, the bronze man reached the back of the house.
Lying on his back, protected from flying bullets by a thick support made of cut stone, Doc peered up at a screened-in back porch. The arms and rifle of a gang member extended out the partially open screen door, firing into the darkness.
Doc reached up, grabbed an arm, and yanked the man out and to the ground. The gunman squawked once, but Doc quickly pummeled him into unconsciousness.
Doc slipped up and through the door. He stayed low on the porch floor, for the Navy -- not seeing the bronze man in the darkness -- continued pouring bullets his direction.
A hunched-over figure opened the door to the kitchen and crab-walked out to the porch. "Lefty?" he said.
A powerful uppercut from Doc had the thug momentarily defying gravity before stretching flat on the floor, unconscious.
Doc's talk with Sneaky Pete Bronson had moved him to prepare for his trip to Barlowe's stronghold by provisioning with items he had brought from aboard the flying wing. He wore his rarely used, many-pocketed vest, from which he now pulled three small devices. Each was the size of a matchbox.
He twisted the end of one item, the lobbed it into the kitchen and tightly closed his eyes. The interior of the house was suddenly brightly illuminated by the flash bomb.
Doc dashed inside. Yells of dismay filled the kitchen as gunmen dropped their weapons to claw at their temporarily blinded eyes.
Doc tossed off the remaining two flash bombs into the other rooms of the farmhouse. Then he whirled through the kitchen, swiftly disabling gang members with nerve pinches and terrific blows of his fists.
Black Cat Jackson and Curly Wolfe huddled behind the overturned kitchen table, unarmed but somewhat protected from the Navy gunfire that had abated as return fire from the house ceased. Doc directed, "Wolfe! Jackson! Stay down!"
Barlowe staggered into the kitchen, still toting a machine pistol, and heard the bronze man's instructions. "Savage!" he shouted, then triggered a hail of bullets from his gun that maimed a number of his own crew.
Doc dodged easily. But Barlowe rushed for the wood box by the stove -- although blinded by the flash bombs, the gang chief knew his way around the house by heart.
The box apparently was fitted with hidden casters, for Barlowe easily wheeled it from the corner. An opening to a tunnel was revealed. The evil-faced villain dove down this hole.
Doc's pursuit was halted by the insane giggling of Smalley. The bronze man looked up. Smalley stood on the edge of the loft and armed a large grenade.
Doc snapped up the leg of a broken chair and tossed it as Smalley launched his explosive into the room. "Down!" shouted the bronze man.
The chair leg hit the grenade, knocking it back into the loft. The sharp blast that immediately followed blew Smalley out one of the bullet-shattered windows. The mad bomber's career was ended.
The Navy attack squad was breaking down the remains of the doors as Doc dashed for Barlowe's bolt hole. He knew the blindness would soon wear off, and Doc would quickly lose his advantage over the gang boss.
The tunnel drove down into the ground about ten feet. Doc knew this tunnel's presence explained the smooth pillar he'd encountered under the house.
Doc landed in a horizontal passage. Walls, floor and ceiling formed a rough square, and they were lined with cut stone. There was no light but for a dim glow from ahead.
Doc heard Barlowe's steps clattering on the rock. The bronze man dashed in pursuit.
The sound of rapid steps, carried down the echoing corridor, ceased. A voice rapidly shouting orders came next, followed by a sharp crash.
The bronze man quickly reached a large chamber littered with tools from an overturned workbench. A radio transceiver, its case and innards smashed by a hammer that protruded from its remains, explained the crash Doc heard.
Two other items captured Doc's attention: Two rockets, about twice the size of a man and constructed with short wings at midsection and tail, pointed skyward and attached to two launch rails. These extended beyond the roof of the chamber into tunnel-like projections. Doc briefly oriented himself to the aboveground layout and determined that these launch rails undoubtedly ran up through the two narrow and tall outbuildings near the farmhouse.
Barlowe had already clambered into one of these rockets. As he ignited the jets, fire flew across the floor of the chamber in a deafening roar. Doc backed into the entrance tunnel for protection. Barlowe's jet rocketed up its rails and disappeared.
Doc leaped into the remaining jet. A source inside military intlleligence kept him updated with reports about technology developments, so he recognized these one-man jets as innovations developed by the Nazis in recent years to battle the U.S. Army Air Force during the latter's bombing raids into Germany. The jets used a combination of liquid and solid fuel.
Doc strapped himself in. He lay prone, facing the nose of the jet, half of which offered a transparent windscreen for visibility. Doc looked over the controls, compared them to what he had learned from the intelligence reports, then fired the ignition.
The jet roared up the rails, blew the top off the narrow launch building, and leaped into the sky.
Immediately the force of more than two gravities pressed against the bronze man's mighty frame. But Doc's lifetime of intense training allowed him to ignore the discomfort. He focused on controlling the jet's flight direction and locating Barlowe's craft ahead of him.
The launch rockets ceased firing. The six turbojets circling the jet body just back of the midsection took over. Doc flipped a switch, and locks disengaged so that the jet's four solid-fuel booster rockets were jettisoned.
The miniature craft's flight leveled off. Doc spotted the fire from Barlowe's turbothrusters ahead.
The jet was armed with two 30 mm cannons, each mounted on opposite sides of the cockpit. The temptation to shoot Barlowe out of the sky was very real. But Doc hoped that the gang chief would lead him to a last, unsuspected stronghold for the spy ring.
So Doc followed Barlowe through the night sky.
They flew over farmland, so the landscape was dark. But ahead, rapidly approaching, Doc saw a swiftly growing light. The single light soon became discernable as two separate lights. Large lights, perhaps bonfires.
Barlowe was headed in their direction, trailed by Doc. The bronze man noticed that Barlowe's craft was losing altitude. Soon his own jet was doing the same. The limited fuel supply was rapidly being depleted.
The flame from Barlowe's turbos sputtered into darkness. Doc detected a brief flash from the darkened body of the jet. Then against the firelight he saw a parachute. Barlowe had ejected from the falling jet.
Doc's turbos burped and went silent. He pulled at the yoke, trying to glide closer to Barlowe's landing site before having to bail out. But the now-dead jet was swiftly hurtling to earth.
Doc pulled a lever. Explosive bolts blew his cockpit capsule free of the jet body with the same brief flash he had observed of Barlowe's ship. A parachute unfurled from the end of the capsule, and Doc began a swaying descent to earth.
While approaching ground, Doc determined that what he thought were bonfires were actually burning buildings. Hangars, in fact. One housed two planes, another held only one, and all three were being consumed by flames.
A third, smaller building stood untouched by fire. The firelight revealed a figure that moved about a fourth, undamaged plane, preparing it for flight. Undoubtedly Barlowe had radioed from the underground chamber for this plane to be readied and the others destroyed to frustrate attempts to follow him further.
As Doc watched, Barlowe's capsule touched ground, and the gang chief leaped out. On the run toward the warmed-up plane, he pulled a gun and shot down the man who stood alongside the craft. Barlowe boarded the ship.
Doc landed just as Barlowe roared into the air. Like a cat with nine lives, Barlowe was still at large.
The bronze man knelt by the man Barlowe had shot down. Dead.
He glanced at the hangars caught in their infernos. The planes were beyond saving.
He looked up at the sky before dashing over to the undamaged radio shack. Barlowe was heading west.
*
The radio was in working condition. Doc reached Renny through the radioman assigned to the Navy squad that had raided Barlowe's farmhouse. The bronze man explained that he was now about twenty miles from the house.
He issued some instructions, then broke contact and radioed the airfield where he had left the flying wing he had piloted from New York.
His third call went to the Navy base with information for Admiral Ryan that he had gleaned from eavesdropping on Barlowe's conversation with Curly Wolfe and Black Cat Jackson.
Completing his transmissions, Doc located and set out smudge pots along a landing track. He lit each pot.
Twenty minutes later, a small plane landed and picked him up. The pilot whisked the bronze man to the hangar that housed the flying wing.
While preflight preparations were underway, Renny drove up in an official Navy vehicle.
Within five minutes, Doc and the giant engineer were airborne aboard the flying wing.
*
A thread-thin line of light -- the barest hint of dawn -- marked the horizon. But the Atlantic waters were still black as pitch beneath the wings of Doc Savage's aircraft.
Renny focused on the dark skies ahead. Bright flashes intermittently spotted the sky.
"Holy cow, Doc, that looks like quite a battle up there."
"I'm sure it is," the bronze man replied. "I let Admiral Ryan know that Barlowe had ordered a major offensive against the fleet."
Renny adjusted his headphones and tuned in the radio frequency used by the Navy craft. "You're right, Doc! The ships are trying to blow those Nazi planes out of the sky -- Barlowe's crews are releasing clouds of that bleeding sun chemical into the air."
Doc didn't answer. He was focusing his attention on the ocean waters below, peering through special gogges of his own devising.
"What are you looking for?" the engineer asked.
"Remember that I said the bleeding sun chemical apparently needed some catalyst to make it utterly effective against the Navy ships? We're searching for the delivery method of that catalyst: submarines."
"Subs? But that tanker that blew up in the Port of Boston -- the depth wasn't great enough for a sub to reach it there."
"Not a full-size submarine," Doc explained, "but a miniature sub, big enough for only one or two people."
"What?"
"I checked out that low outbuilding at Barlowe's farm. It actually held three bays for such compact subs as I described. Two bays were occuppied."
"But that farm is landlocked," Renny sputtered.
"The bays seemed quite deep," Doc continued. "Knowing this crew's tunneling tendencies, I'd say they dug underground channels to a nearby river deep enough for the subs to navigate. The channel would give them access to the ocean."
"That would make them nearly impossible to locate by anyone simply searching the coast or any obvious spots like inlets."
"Right. I marked the two subs with a compound from one of my vest pockets. I had the hangar crew attach one of our black light projectors to the underbody of the flying wing. I hope I'll be able to pick up the markings with these goggles through the ocean water."
Renny returned his attention to the radio signals. "Apparently the Navy ships have downed most of Barlowe's planes," he reported. "The last three have high-tailed it outta there!"
"The admiral's men will capture them -- they really have nowhere to hide now, and the rest of their local gang is wiped out."
Before Renny could reply, "There!" Doc said. He'd located the two subs. They were running parallel courses below the surface, speeding away from the fleet. "The hangar crew equipped us with four air-to-sea missiles. They'll act like depth charges to those subs. Send one just off their bows as a warning to stop and surface."
Renny, who had also donned the special goggles, sighted their quarry. He armed and touched off one of the rockets.
A geyser of water climbed the air ahead of the subs.
"I bet that rocked 'em!" A particularly dour expression took over the engineer's face, evidence of his great joy. "Doc, they're separating and speeding up."
The man of bronze was silent a moment. He sighted the fleeing subs in turn and sent the wing's remaining rockets after their targets. The ocean rose in great waves, then subsided. After a few minutes, all signs of the two subs were gone but for spreading slicks of oil and fuel.
Doc headed the flying wing back to land.
Renny looked down, stone faced. He knew the bronze man refrained from taking a life if at all possible. But he and Doc were now working for the Navy against an enemy of the country. And the engineer remembered the sight of those Navy ships, their crews and passengers that were destroyed by the bleeding sun. He had no qualms about the doom they had just visited upon those submarines and their operators.
The day was brightening. A sudden thought came to Renny. "Doc, the planes still released the bleeing sun chemical -- the Navy ships are still in danger, especially if those subs delivered their catalyst!"
The bronze man opened his mouth to reply, but before he could utter a sound one of Barlowe's Nazi planes shot into sight from where it had been trailing the flying wing. It zoomed across Doc's flight path and let loose a rapidly expanding cloud that enveloped the flying wing.
Wide-eyed, Renny turned. The sun was above the horizon. The sky was turning crimson!
"Doc!" cried out the giant engineer. "We're gonna melt!"
docsavage.info
Written By:
Duane Spurlock
based on notes by:
Kenneth Robeson
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