Doc Savage: The Secret of Satan's Spine (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 15) (23 page)

They were going from group to group with the Master at Arms shining a flashlight into the faces of every man congregated on deck.

“Looking for passengers,” said Officer Greer. “Have you men seen any on deck?”

Muttered answers indicated a negative. Inasmuch as most Merchant Marines were casually attired in khaki or dungarees, a passenger could easily mingle with them undetected, especially in this tropical murk.

The trio moved on, looking very determined.

During their makeshift inspection, a voice lifted shrilly.

It spoke one word. And that word brought a cold dread to every heart.

“Submarine!”

WITH amazing synchronization, every cigarette went flying into the drink. The Chief Warrant Officer doused his flashlight. Lungs ceased working.

“I
knew
this tub was sub bait!” hissed the sailor who had been talking jinx.

At the Browning, the three-man crew sprang into action. The long barrel swiveled about, and the gunnery crew began inserting plugs into their ears in anticipation of unleashing loud bursts of lead.

Captain McCullum called out, “Point out the enemy!”

Several voices began crashing.

“There! At our stern!”

“No, it’s over to starboard!”

“Are you crazy?” demanded another. “She’s lying off the port quarter!”

The confused Browning crew rapidly swung their gun barrel this way and that, ready to open up on command.

Captain McCullum rushed about, endeavoring to pierce the black night with his eyes. Myriad pointing fingers only confused him.

“General quarters!” he cried out. The Master at Arms rushed to the ship’s loudspeaker system to relay the order to the entire crew.

This led the crew to believe that the master had spotted the lurking raider. But his next actions belied that assumption.

McCullum lifted his flashlight and drove a beam off the stern rail, sweeping the heaving waters to port and starboard and back again, attempting to fix the reported submarine.

Try as he might, his flash ray failed to illuminate anything resembling the lean conning tower of a U-boat. That did not mean one was not lurking nearby. But the combination of moonless night and dark water made locating the enemy raider difficult.

By this time, the loitering crewmen had scattered to their battle stations. The deck settled down and the tension in the air was as thick as the atmospheric heat.

At the Captain’s command, a searchlight was turned on and its broad, powerful beam swept about like a gargantuan finger.

Before long, it picked out something dark in the water. What it might be was not easily discerned. It was not a moving wave and, given the situation, the Captain had no choice but to give the command to fire.

The Browning opened up, emitting a deafening racket and a stream of tracer-laced lead. The object was quickly riddled. The water about and around it jumped and splashed. Soon, pieces floated up. Pieces of what could not be immediately identified. There was no clang of bullets striking metal. Rather, the noises were on the order of rounds punching into hard matter and unresisting water.

Finally, the Browning’s ammunition box ran empty. A man swiftly and efficiently removed the empty steel box and replaced it with a fresh load.

Before the Naval Armed Guard could resume firing, Captain McCullum barked out, “Cease-fire! Cease-fire!”

The searchlight was sweeping again, then became fixed on something. It could be seen that numerous small fragments were scattered about the swells.

Chief Warrant Officer Greer spoke up. “Looks like driftwood to me.”

McCullum nodded solemnly. “False alarm,” he muttered. “Damn nervous Nellies.”

The Skipper and his men resumed their flashlight inspection of the men on the deck, but by now many had scattered and if there were any passengers mingling with the ordinary crew, they had eluded apprehension.

Completing his circuit of the after-deck, Captain McCullum huddled with Greer and the Master at Arms, saying, “It appears that all the passengers are in their cabins. So we will commence rounding them up, cabin by cabin.”

The others nodded in silent agreement. The Chief Warrant Officer said, “If we go about this the right way, we can minimize the fuss created.”

“I would rather have taken some of them on the open deck,” returned McCullum.

Greer had a sudden idea.

“Captain,” he said, “all that shooting has no doubt roused the sleeping ones. Why don’t we use that as a pretext to have them assemble for instructions in the event of enemy action?”

“That’s an excellent idea, Mr. Greer,” returned McCullum. “Since we are still in the dark about the exact number of men sailing with this Diamond, we can look them over for those identifying rings and pull them out of line.”

That settled, they embarked upon the shipboard operation. If all went according to plan, the entire affair could be concluded in a tidy and orderly fashion.

Going from cabin to cabin, they banged on doors while the Master at Arms announced, “Assemble on deck, all passengers! Assemble on deck for instructions in the event of enemy action!”

Sleeping passengers, some clad only in their shorts, stumbled out, looking surly or confused according to their individual temperaments.

“What’s the matter?”

“What the hell is going on?”

To all of these outbursts, the Master at Arms barked back, “Assemble on the stern deck for instructions from the Captain.”

It proved to be a very efficient manner of clearing out the cabins.

Only Doc Savage was permitted to remain in his quarters. The bronze man naturally heard the commotion and gunfire, and had demanded of his guard an accounting of what was happening.

The guard, of course, did not know at first, but as Captain McCullum made his rounds, he took pains to inform the bronze man that a submarine sighting had proven to be a false alarm.

“What about Diamond?” Doc called through his cabin door.

“My officers are rounding all passengers up as we speak.”

“Take every precaution,” suggested Doc.

To which the Skipper responded tartly, “I will thank you to keep your suggestions to yourself, Savage. I know my damn business.”

With that, the master of the
Northern Star
resumed his rounds.

IN SURPRISINGLY short order, the passengers were assembled on the stern deck, in the shadow of the elevated deck-gun station.

Not all of them wore surly expressions, but many of them did. Among them the man who had once called himself Raymond Lee, but now was going by the name of Diamond.

A big brown man, he stood out among the men assembled on the deck. The fellow towered from bare feet, and wore white sailor pants that were as tight to his hide as his thighs. Beneath his knit polo shirt, the power and vitality of an animal bulged; it leaned in bars of sinew across his neck as he jerked his head back to toss luxuriant sandy hair away from his insolent eyes.

His unnaturally long hair looked ridiculous in a wildman kind of way, although the fellow did radiate a physical power that was impressive.

He spoke up, demanding, “What’s the meaning of this midnight drill? We ain’t crewmen.”

Captain McCullum ignored this question in particular, but addressed the assembly as a group.

“No doubt you men heard the gunfire a few minutes ago. I want to reassure you that it was a false alarm. One of my crew thought he spotted an enemy raider, but it proved to be merely driftwood. Since we woke you up and we are navigating British territorial waters, the opportunity seemed ripe to convey to you all your status responsibilities as civilians in the event of enemy action.”

Half under his breath, Diamond asked the man standing next to him, “Weedy, what is this bilge he’s handing us?”

The other undertoned, “It was me that done it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I-I couldn’t sleep, so I was having a smoke at the stern rail. The Captain came along with the Master at Arms. He was looking over every face. I figured he was looking for you. Or one of us. So I acted like I spotted a sub. That started the ruckus. I tried to hustle back to tell you, but it was no go. I had to hide.”

Diamond said nothing, but his serious amber eyes became as hard as the substance his name implied.

The Captain continued speaking, but his words were merely a calculated distraction for the operation at hand. The Chief Warrant Officer and the Master at Arms were running their flashlights about, painting faces with hot glare and trying not to be obvious about it.

It was very dark, so the inspection team paid particular attention to hands rather than faces.

When a roving beam caused the red-gold ring on one man’s finger to gleam, Diamond folded his arms truculently.

“Ape me,” he hissed to Weedy.

“Eh?”

Weedy received a sharp elbow in the ribs, got the hint and folded his arms as well, covering his telltale ring.

No one was taken out of line, but it quickly became clear that the men were being tabulated and mentally segregated from one another.

“These damn rings,” groaned Weedy. “They’ve cottoned onto them!”

“Get ready to follow my lead,” Diamond grunted. “All of you men.”

Weedy swallowed twice, so hard his Adam’s apple bobbed like an actual apple.

During this process, Seaman B. Elmer Dexter was brought up on deck. Under instructions from the Master at Arms, Dex studied the faces of the men at parade rest before them, and quietly conferred with the skipper.

There was by now no question as to which of the men was Diamond. His long-haired sandy wig fooled no one. But none of the inspection team gave any indication of possessing that knowledge.

But once Diamond saw Seaman Dexter, whose nose he had smashed, he realized that it was now or never.

So he barked one word,
“Now!”

Perhaps this should have been expected, but Captain McCullum and his officers had overestimated the superiority of their position. With an entire crew of nearly forty able-bodied seamen, he did not expect concerted trouble.

Nevertheless, that is what the Skipper received. In spades. Diamond had been standing near the Master at Arms. He went for the latter’s sidearm.

Weedy lunged hard, just two steps behind his boss.

Between them, they bore the startled Master at Arms to the deck and, with pummeling fists and feet, made short work of him, during which altercation Diamond jumped up and showed Captain McCullum the destructive end of the .38-caliber automatic.

“Bark,” drawled Diamond, “and I’ll bark back. Get me?”

Captain McCullum was too surprised and shocked to speak. So Diamond did it for him.

“Let’s see a show of hands.”

Reluctantly, empty hands were hoisted high. Not as high as desired, so Diamond barked again, “Try washing your hands in a cloud.”

Hands that hovered at shoulder and head height now strained upward like the masts of old-time clipper ships.

The gunnery crew had not missed any of this activity. They swiveled the Browning about and pointed it directly at Diamond.

Unfortunately, Captain McCullum stood between the steel barrel and the hijacker, foiling their bloody-minded intention.

In the confusion of men wearing red-gold rings shoving aside innocent passengers and seizing officers, it quickly became apparent that to unleash the annihilating power of the Browning machine gun would be to inflict severe casualties where none were desired.

Captain McCullum recognized the peril of the situation, as well as its hopelessness.

“By the rules of war,” he said sternly, “I cannot surrender my ship to you.”

Diamond sneered, “Keep your surrender. But we’re taking your ship.”

“I would like to see you do that,” returned McCullum. “And survive, that is.”

To that challenge, Diamond responded by placing the short muzzle of the Master at Arms’ sidearm to McCullum’s temple and saying, “I would say that my chances of survival are about equal to yours right about now.”

The undeniable reality of that statement took a little of the wind out of the master’s over-starched sails.

“What do you want me to do?” he demanded grudgingly.

“That, I’m keeping to myself until the right time. Meanwhile, you’re going to take me to Doc Savage. Get me?”

“I get you perfectly clear,” replied Captain McCullum flintily.

Chapter XXVI

CAPTAIN DIAMOND

IT WAS NOT fear for his personal safety—or any emotion akin to that—that impelled Captain McCullum to obey the harsh directives of Diamond.

The skipper of the
Northern Star
was a man accustomed to command. He was not accustomed to being ordered about his own ship like a mere deckhand. The cold steel of the .38-caliber automatic depressed to his right temple was a consideration, of course.

McCullum had no desire to be dealt a swift death and so ignominiously by a mere pirate—for that is what he considered Diamond to be. True, the shock of this turn of events had momentarily taken him off guard. But the seasoned skipper very quickly shook off that mental paralysis.

No, truth be told, the ship’s master had every confidence in his crew. The pirates, at best, numbered less than a dozen. The crew of the
Northern Star
was quadruple that company.

Captain McCullum did not think that Diamond would make it all the way to Doc Savage’s cabin unchallenged, so somewhat overconfidently he led him to the port companion leading below to B Deck.

That this was a tactical and strategic mistake was made clear halfway down the companion stairs to the lower deck, when above and behind, the stuttering snarl of the .30-caliber Browning unexpectedly erupted. It was coming from the after-deck, where the crew were congregated under the threat of imminent death.

McCullum froze. The muzzle of the automatic pressed into the hollow where his upper spine fitted into his lower skull.

Behind him, Diamond’s cold voice stated, “Just thinning out the herd. We can’t have a bunch of nosy sailors walking around loose.”

Through clenched teeth, Captain McCullum ground out, “You damn devil!”