Doc Savage: The Ice Genius (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 12) (33 page)

“Certain chemicals, ordnance that we can alter for our needs.”

The Generalissimo said, “If we have it, it is yours. How many fighters to support you?”

“None. Not at this time. Let us try to quash this army of terror alone. If we need further assistance, we will let you know.”

“This is highly irregular, you understand,” the Generalissimo said tersely.

“This is a new war,” countered Doc. “It will not be won by regular tactics.”

They clasped hands and Doc Savage went to tell his men that they had their bomber.

The bronze man wasted no time with explanations. “Monk, we’re going to need special chemical bombs. Also fresh mercy bullets. Renny, see about finding the appropriate caliber ammunition and we will get right to work.”

It took two days working round-the-clock to prepare the bomber. In the meantime, the Japanese were pounding Burma mercilessly.

On the second day, there was a
gingbow
—an air raid. It was brief. Three Japanese bombers dropped their loads, producing the dully monotonous
crump-crump-crump
sound when their payloads detonated.

After Chinese fighters chased them away, resulting damage proved to be insignificant.

“This dang war ain’t going so well,” Monk grumbled.

Doc reminded, “Wars are settled in the end, not at the beginning of conflict.”

The Generalissimo drove out to meet them, bearing news.

“This nomad army crossed the border of Manchuria and has descended upon a small town in the purple frontier. I have reports of wholesale butchery, in which no one was spared.”

“We witnessed exactly that in Manchuria,” replied Doc.

“I was forced to dispatch troops to deal with these Mongols.” The leader hesitated. “They were approaching the main column but were ambushed from behind by a hidden detachment of cavalry. My men were slaughtered. There were no survivors. I dare not squander any more soldiers on these mounted demons. It is up to you to accomplish this.”

Doc Savage said nothing. The look in the Chinese leader’s sun-squint eyes was troubled.

The Generalissimo said, “You are a man who knows history, Savage. Genghis Khan sacked this very city, massacring some million citizens. We Chinese built the long wall to keep the Mongol scourge at bay. Now that menace has returned, and at the worst possible time, when China is sundered and reeling, her coastal cities in Japanese hands.”

Doc Savage promised, “We will not return until the army of Tamerlane is no more.”

The Generalissimo nodded curtly, and without another word left them to their work.

OVER the following two days, Doc Savage supervised modifications to the Heinkel, which included souping up its twin engines and making interior alterations to accommodate the type of ordnance Monk and Renny were devising.

Finally, the bomber was ready. As a gesture to Doc Savage, Chinese mechanics had scrounged up some bronze paint and applied it to the olive drab skin, adding a crude U. S. flag to the tail.

Noticing Chinese brushstrokes along the nose, Monk asked, “What do these chicken tracks say?”

Johnny grinned.
“Brazen Devil.”

“Swell. Let’s give Tamerlane merry hell.”

They squeezed in. Doc crowded into the cockpit, with Monk claiming the navigator’s position beside him. There was a flexible machine gun in the blunt nose. Renny took that. Ham folded himself in the dorsal gunner’s blister, directly behind them. Below, Long Tom squeezed his slender form into the ventral gunner’s position situated in the Plexiglas belly gondola. Lastly, Johnny crawled into the bomb bay, distributing his lathy limbs in a corner of its cramped confines. The bomber permitted a crew of five, so space was tight.

The Heinkel took off at dusk, trailing a dusty serpent behind it. The Wright Cyclone radial engines Doc and Renny had refurbished pulled the ship into the sky with a scream like two howling banshees. High above them, searchlights made pale ghosts that hunted among the clouds.

“Feels good being back in a big plane again, don’t it?” asked Renny, from his position in the Plexiglas-nosed forward gun position.

Long Tom remarked, “I kinda liked my Warhawk. The Flying Tigers have been protecting the Burma Road from enemy planes with those scrappy crates.”

Doc did the flying. Habeas Corpus, who had been along for all the hectic flying, slept on the floor of the rear bulkhead by himself.

Johnny had been silent, deeply troubled by the hell he had inadvertently awakened. Now he spoke, addressing no one in particular. “I wonder if that devilish Cadwiller Olden is living or dead.”

Long Tom groused, “Last we saw him he was on a spit. Maybe that defrosted demon roasted him alive.”

“Serves him right, after all the deviltry he stirred up,” Monk muttered. “Maybe being cooked alive prepared him for the hot place.”

Doc Savage offered no comment. He concentrated on his flying. Any concern as to the fate of the murderous midget did not show in his face or actions. The little man seemed like an insignificant piece of a larger problem now.

All through the night, the Heinkel droned north, on a direct heading with the first Free Chinese town to fall before the Mongol invasion—a spot called Wu Lung on the map. The name of the place, in English, was Five Dragons.

Chapter XLV

CRIMSON CONSEQUENCES

CADWILLER OLDEN AWOKE with his throbbing head feeling three times its normal size. He peered around, winced, and saw that he was inside a round Mongol tent which was sumptuously furnished.

Groaning, the midget attempted to rise, but almost fell off the shelf-like brick bed on which he had been placed.

Scrambling, he seized the coarse bedding with his left hand to keep himself from falling over. For some reason he could not immediately see, his right hand refused to obey him.

Working himself around, he managed to get himself into a seated position.

That was when a fiery agony flared up in his right shoulder like dozens of red-hot needles.

Then, he remembered—remembered being speared like a joint of meat on the sword of the wolfish bandit chief named Chinua. The memory bit and seared.

Feeling for his throbbing shoulder, Cadwiller Olden discovered that it had been bandaged, but the bandages were soaked with blood. His good hand came away sticky with the stuff.

Moaning aloud, Olden attempted to use his right hand. It was completely paralyzed. The entire arm felt numb.

He considered his situation. Calling for help seemed the poorest of choices. So he bit his thin lips, and fought back the urge to cry out in pain. His shoulder ached, but below that everything felt dead and heavy. It was as if his right arm no longer belonged to him, even though it was attached to his body.

Without both arms, the only way off the shelf-like bed would be to throw himself down and then roll and crawl. Cadwiller Olden did not feel up to such strenuous exercise, so he waited, fear and agony twisting his small features.

AFTER an hour, Tamerlane entered, his unmasked face revealed in all its grotesque, toad-like fascination. His windy-featured general, Chinua, accompanied him.

Seeing that the little man was awake and seated upright, they began discussing him, stabbing fingers in his direction.

Olden said bitterly, “There was no need to treat me the way you did. I’m on your side.”

The Mongols did not understand English, of course. The pair continued their earnest discussion, and after a bit leaned in and examined the wounded shoulder, after roughly stripping away the bloody bandages.

This ripped a long groan from Cadwiller Olden’s throat, and sparked amused laughter from the withered lips of Tamerlane the Great.

After the examination came more discussion. Without warning, Tamerlane bit out instructions to his general.

Abruptly, Chinua yanked his sabre from his scabbard, wheeled, and advanced on Olden, who shrank back, cowering fearfully.

“No, no, no!” pleaded the little man. He threw up one minuscule hand, as if to fend off the lifting sword.

Without hesitation, the blade flashed downward. There came a meaty sound, which ended in a thud, punctuated by a long scream that made it sound as if raw lining was being torn out of the midget’s tortured lungs.

After the outcry trailed away, there followed a moment of silence in which the rasping voice of Tamerlane lifted in cruel cackling, to be joined by the hearty laughter of his general.

Somewhere outside, wild dogs could be heard barking. Their yipping sounded weirdly like raucous laughter.

CHAPTER XLVI

FIVE DRAGONS

FROM THE AIR, one Chinese town looks very much like another. It might be nestled amid terraced mountains or stretched out among vast rice paddies. Distinguishing one from another would be difficult, even for a native Chinese flyer.

Doc Savage found the town that had fallen to the new Golden Horde without any difficulty whatsoever. He had its longitude and latitude, good maps, and his navigational skills were excellent—if ultimately superfluous.

For the hapless town was easily discovered without any map coordinates.

A great pall of ebony smoke hung over what remained of the spot. The evil cloud was slowly thinning into a gray haze at its outer edges, but the blot was intensely black where it smothered the habitation.

“What did you say this place was called?” asked Ham Brooks, eyeing the spreading smudge.

“Five Dragons,” said Doc, grim-voiced.

Monk grunted, “Looks like all five up and breathed scorchin’ fire on the joint.”

In the cabin, Johnny Littlejohn was half out of his drop-down seat and scrutinizing the ground with a pair of powerful field glasses. What he beheld through the thick smoke made his long features turn the color of scraped bone.

“It was a massacre,” he croaked.

In the transparent gunner’s gondola, Long Tom pressed binoculars to his eyes.

“Johnny isn’t exaggerating. Looks like no survivors.”

“What can you make out?” asked Doc, sweeping around and bringing the plane closer to ground.

“Bodies. Heads. Lots of both. Not many together, though.” He sounded sick.

Monk looked to Doc Savage. “Do we land?”

“Finding Tamerlane and his army takes priority,” returned the bronze man.

Climbing the Heinkel bomber dubbed
Brazen Devil,
Doc Savage sought the trail of hoofprints leading away from the blighted town. He soon found what he sought, and planted the plane on a heading following the marching army of terror.

The others fell to checking their weapons. Except Johnny Littlejohn. He had his face buried in his thin hands, as if unable to fully comprehend the horror that he had witnessed.

Long Tom whispered to Ham over the intercom. “Looks like Johnny is taking it hard.”

“Wouldn’t you?” countered the dapper lawyer. “None of this would have happened had he not discovered that damnable ice cave.”

“I just hope he doesn’t suffer a breakdown, his mind clouded by guilt the way it is.”

“When the fighting starts,” declared Ham, “Johnny will be in the thick of it, with the rest of us.”

In the cockpit, Monk glanced back at the skeletal archeologist, who seemed to be lost in a trance of horror. The expression on his hollowed-eyed face was frosted with shock. He resembled one of the ancient desiccated mummies he had once excavated from the Nile.

A low moan lifted from deep within Johnny Littlejohn’s being. It made everyone who heard it squirm uneasily.

Chapter XLVII

THE KHAN OF IRON

RIDING AT THE head of his army, wearing his battle mask forged from meteoric iron, the Mongol warlord who called himself Timur surveyed the rolling landscape of northern China with canine yellow eyes.

Alongside him rode Chinua, his wolfish second-in-command. Strapped to the otherwise unoccupied saddle of a Mongolian pony, was an ornate box of intricately carved teak, resembling a casket in miniature.

Behind them, stretched out in ranks of five, followed his ever-growing army, the new Golden Horde, which Timur had dubbed his Iron Horde, insisting that gold was too soft a metal to describe the hard-bitten warriors at his command.

“It is a great day to be alive!” proclaimed Chinua.

“No,” said Timur in a voice that reminded one of a rusty gate hinge creaking in the wind. “All days that one tastes life are great.” His feral eyes flamed. “Some days, however, are greater than other days.”

Chinua beamed, drawing in a long breath of air. “For me this is the greatest day so far of my existence,” he boasted. “I have never dreamt of such a day.”

Surveying the Chinese countryside all around, Timur growled, “Far greater days lie ahead. Days of conquest. Nights of satisfaction.”

“With such days stretching before us, I do not care if I never sleep again. I do not want to miss any of this earthly glory.”

Casting his voice in the direction of the teakwood box bouncing on the empty saddle, Timur demanded, “What say you, my little oracle?”

From the carven casket came a miserable voice. In rough Mongolian, the voice said, “I don’t care anymore. I just want to die.”

And Timur laughed—an awful, ugly chattering sound, for his peg-like teeth could not stay still.

From the coffin-like container came a low groan, articulate and helpless.

Chinua laughed, “His command of our language is improving.”

“With every whack of my sword,” Timur grunted, “I fortified his desire to learn.”

This brought another groan from the bouncing box. It was very small. A young child might squeeze into it, but he would have very little room. There was so little space in the receptacle box that not even the diminutive Cadwiller Olden would have found room for all of his tiny person. Yet somehow the inhabitant of the casket he had been crowded into its tight confines.

The marching army came at last to a bulwark of mountains and struggled to wend their way up the difficult pass that cut through them.

“What lies beyond this mountain range?” wondered Chinua. “I do not know these peaks.”