Doc Savage: Phantom Lagoon (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (30 page)

Keeping his spyglass trained upon the two cutters, Doc was surprised to spy a small destroyer taking up the rear. Even from this distance, he could see that it was a United States Navy destroyer.

Shifting the glass around, Doc Savage attempted to discern the purpose of the unusual nautical formation. Coast Guard cutters and Naval destroyers did not normally travel together.

It was after a considerable visual search that the bronze man spotted the yacht.

The yacht was of modest size compared to the destroyer, of course, but it rivaled the Coast Guard cutters. It had not been immediately recognizable in the aquamarine water because it was a dull mahogany color, and the cutters were a bone white.

Doc studied the yacht for a very long time.

That he had in some manner recognized it became evident when his trilling began to flavor the tropical air, so low that it was a phenomenon more felt rather than distinctly heard. Tuneless, it was somehow melodic, as if the sound belonged to some higher realm of reality.

Doc’s trilling had the unusual property of carrying in its melody the essence of the bronze man’s repressed feelings. The emotions that flowed forth at this point began as a kind of curious wonder and swiftly escalated to a genuine alarm.

Doc was so focused on what he was witnessing that he lost much of his habitual presence of mind.

So it was that he was unaware of the pair of mermen crawling up, snakelike, along the inner wall of the crater, intent upon ambushing him.

They were marvelously quiet, given that they were climbing with webbed hands and feet. They almost reached the bronze man undetected.

But Doc Savage had been training since childhood in many disciplines, and all of his senses had been sharpened to a degree that verged upon the superhuman.

He did not hear them at first, but the unnatural smell of the rubber free-diving suits wafted up to his sensitive nostrils, for he had removed his helmet in order to employ his telescope. Doc took the eyepiece from one orb, and looked downward.

The reddish-green forms were very close. Their flat eyes shone in the light like new coins.

Doc wasted no time with them. Restoring his helmet, he leapt over their heads, went into a long dive that slammed him into the crater pool’s surface.

Silvery eyes blank, the two mermen rotated their heads and peered downward.

There, churning waters painted the spot where the bronze man had disappeared into the algae-choked waters below.

Swapping fishy expressions, the mermen reached a mutual decision, and pushed outward with muscular forearms, twisting like grotesque dolphins as they followed the bronze man down.

In their fanged mouths were two of the shell-handled obsidian knives whose bite was more vicious than that of a shark. They grasped them, pulled the weapons free.

Their intent was clear—to eviscerate the bronze man the way a fish is gutted and cleaned.

Chapter XXIX

THE BOTTOM

DOC SAVAGE STRUCK the water with an immense splash.

Under dangerous circumstances, the bronze giant would normally have taken care to cleave the water more cleanly, in order to make the minimum noise. But something momentous was impelling him to move at the greatest possible speed, at the expense of stealth and caution.

Doc’s plunge had brought him once more into the sea-weedy depths of the emerald pool. He pulled out his spring-generator flashlight and thumbed it on. With this, the bronze giant found his way to the mermen’s ancient grotto, where the radio set had been in use.

Doc traveled with powerful muscular strokes, feet kicking furiously, until he reached the ledge himself.

There was no sign of Count von Elmz now, other than drag marks that showed that the sleeping nobleman had been removed from the scene.

But there was a solitary merman. At the sound of Doc’s head breaking the surface of the grotto pool, he turned, fixing reflective eyes on the bronze giant.

The latter rasped,
“Der Mann aus Bronze!”

Doc Savage disposed of him with a careless toss of an anesthetic bomb. The glass capsule landed before the oversized green feet, releasing an invisible odorless vapor which swiftly overcame the shambling monstrosity.

Doc pulled himself onto the ledge while the merman fell with a wet, rubbery smack. He lay still, a grotesque form edged in frilly fins.

Doc himself did not have to hold his breath for the requisite minute or so, due to his protective helmet, of course. Going to the radio set, he began manipulating dials until he found the frequency on the 600-meter band employed by the Coast Guard at sea.

“Doc Savage to Coast Guard naval escort in Caribbean Sea,” he called into the microphone. “Doc Savage to Coast Guard escort.”

There was no answer. Doc repeated his request. His voice was extremely urgent.

“Doc Savage calling Coast Guard escort in the Caribbean Sea, operating in the Lesser Antilles.”

After several minutes of this, an angry voice yelled back,
“Whoever you are, this is an official frequency. Cease transmitting at once!”

Doc attempted to push through the official obstinacy.

“This is Doc Savage, calling from an uninhabited island in the Caribbean. I can see your formation from my position. It consists of two cutters and a U.S. Navy destroyer escorting a yacht.”

“I say again, stop interfering with this frequency,”
snapped the Coast Guard radio operator.

The bronze man spun the tuning dial, shifted over to the Naval frequency.

“This is Doc Savage, transmitting from an uncharted island in the Caribbean Sea. It is urgent that the yacht being escorted by the Coast Guard and U.S. naval destroyer turn around as soon as possible. There is grave danger to the yacht. Repeat, this is Doc Savage transmitting an emergency declaration.”

This call was met with complete silence.

Doc Savage seldom showed emotion, and even more rarely did he display anger. But his face flushed, his skin darkened, and he hauled back and kicked the radio set. This uncharacteristic outburst was an unmistakable physical expression of the bronze giant’s inner turmoil.

Doc went in search of the Count. There was not much to the grotto, but he found a crawlspace and examined it closely, employing his torch. It led upward at a shallow angle. Consulting his wrist compass, he determined that the escape tunnel—for that was what it was—went in the general direction of the old temple ruin in the mangrove swamp.

Worse still, it was too narrow to admit his broad shoulders. He could not use it to reach the surface of the cay.

Clapping his helmet back into place, the bronze man leapt off the ledge, and slipped back into the water.

He had not progressed very far when the two mermen who had been trailing him came at him with their vicious black blades.

They swept in, intending to rip him to shreds.

Doc Savage slapped one against the side of his rubber-coated head, and the man’s skull smashed into the tunnel wall. An eruption of bubbles from his needle-pointed maw showed that he was out of the fight for good.

The other reached for a hank of Doc’s hair, intending to snap back the bronze man’s head, the better to slice into his throat.

Doc blocked the sweeping blade with one massive forearm, and kicked clear. He drove a bone-hard fist into that awful basket of teeth, thus smashing in the rubbery mouth, driving the artificial fangs into the man’s natural face. Billows of crimson began leaking from the ruin, followed by dribbling air bubbles. The merman lost all interest in the struggle.

Doc left them behind to battle their way to the ledge and oxygen.

Swimming back out into the hidden lagoon, the bronze man located the natural tunnel that led out into the warmer waters of the open sea. He made remarkable speed, causing tropical fish and the odd wild-eyed seahorse to scurry out of his way. His head soon broke the surface beyond the lonely cay itself.

Searching the horizon with his strange golden eyes, Doc saw that the two Coast Guard cutters and the destroyer were steaming closer. He had his telescope out again, and commenced searching the surrounding waters for something else.

It was very difficult work, because the thing he was searching for could hardly be visible any closer than one hundred yards, if that.

But the bronze man had a stroke of luck. Sunlight glanced off something metallic jutting up from the water’s surface. At first, Doc could hardly discern it from the sparkle of sunlight on exquisitely blue water. The glint was of a different character. The other glints twinkled with the wave action. This whitish blob stood very still, making it stand out in the dance of tropical sunlight on waves.

Pocketing his telescope, Doc Savage struck out for the strange object.

An Olympian swimmer would have been impressed with his performance. Doc Savage cleaved the waters with choppy motions of his arms. It was if he were hacking his way toward his objective.

The Herculean bronze man ate up a tremendous amount of distance at a speed that scientists would have said was unsurpassable by anything except a fleet porpoise. As he swam, Doc shrugged off his diving helmet and shoulder piece, lest it slow him down. The intensity of his determination was incredible. Doc Savage focused on one thing alone—reaching the stationary thing sticking up out of the water.

As he neared it, Doc saw the approaching ships creeping ever closer, unwittingly driving in the direction of the lurking thing in the water.

Doc reached his objective. It appeared to be an upright pipe, painted dull blue. He wrapped one hand around it, capping its unwinking glass eye.

For it was the periscope of a submarine. Its lens was pointing in the direction of the approaching ships.

But now it was blind. The bronze man’s large palm lay flat against the lens, blocking out all light.

Maneuvering in the water, Doc immersed his face and gazed downward.

THERE he spied a vague cigar shape, painted an aquamarine hue so that it was all but invisible in the blue water. Its shape was strange, for it flared out at either side into what might have been the fins of a small whale. But it was no whale.

It was one of the smallest submarines Doc Savage had ever beheld. It was a runt, but no less deadly for its small size. And it struck Doc with great force that he had seen it before. It was the indistinct blue shape he had spied in the water after Hornetta Hale had been dragged under the waves by something that could not be clearly seen except for its blue-gray back fin—really a truncated conning tower.

It was now obvious that one of the shark-finned merman had pulled the blonde adventuress from sight and had dragged her into this waiting submersible.

Pivoting, Doc clamped his muscular legs around the periscope, and took hold of the upper portion directly under the bend in the tube beneath the lens with both strong hands. Flexible fingers clamped tightly.

With a tremendous effort, the bronze man exerted himself. Tendons popping out on his neck and arms, he wrenched the periscope inexorably backward. It commenced complaining with metallic squeaks as the metal began distorting, acquiring a joint that grew more and more pronounced as Doc applied unbelievable pressure…until the glass eye was pointing up in the clear blue sky—useless.

That accomplished, Doc began shimmying down the narrow tube until he reached the flat deck of the submersible.

From one pocket of his equipment belt, he extracted a pair of special grenades.

Easing to the stern of the U-boat, Doc made his way to where the propeller screw should lie. His intention was to disable the screw, but not damage the submarine, because he was all but certain that Pat Savage and Hornetta Hale were prisoners inside the strangely-shaped submersible.

The grenades were magnetic, so it was possible to place them where they could do the most damage, and not fall away into the water.

However, once he reached the tail—it was actually shaped like the fluked tail of a killer whale—Doc Savage discovered that the U-boat lacked regulation screws.

Instead, there was an open maw, very much resembling a torpedo tube.

Curiosity compelled Doc to investigate.

Swimming head downward, he shone a light into the opening. It was smooth and there was no sign of any propulsion mechanism.

Had the bronze man not been underwater and so constrained, he might have emitted his distinctive trilling sound. As it was, a stream of bubbles dribbled from his parted lips, and the gold flakes in his eyes whirled with a light of understanding.

It seemed inescapably clear that the weird fishlike underseas craft was propelled by compressed air, hence it was virtually noiseless when submerged. It also explained the discouragingly powerful jet of water that had forced the bronze man to abandon the chase when he first encountered the weird vessel the previous time.

Grimly, Doc Savage set the timer mechanism on the magnetic grenades and inserted them into the propulsion vent.

Returning to the deck, Doc moved forward to the bow side of the small conning tower that was shaped to suggest a flat fin.

It was then that the bronze giant began wishing he had his helmet, for he knew that the coming underwater concussion would be punishing to his eardrums. He inserted fingers in his ears, closed his eyes and waited.

The detonations came only seconds apart, and they threw the submersible about the way a helpless fish switches its tail when gigged.

Doc shot toward the surface, and found himself bobbing in the water, with the Coast Guard cutters bearing down upon his position. He cupped his hands over his mouth and called out, “Ahoy! U.S. Coast Guard cutters! Turn back! Danger! U-boat!”

If anyone heard him, there was no sign, no alteration in the course of the approaching ships. They continued steaming ahead.

Then, to Doc Savage’s great alarm, the twisted periscope began lifting out of the water, which meant that the submarine was breaking toward the surface.

Doc flung himself to one side, and soon the truncated conning tower popped into view, spilling water off its sides, the fiery sun making its smooth blue hull blaze.