Doc Savage: The Secret of Satan's Spine (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 15) (24 page)

“Correct on both counts,” laughed Diamond harshly.

Cold steel again prodded his vertebrae, forcing McCullum to continue descending the companionway stairs. Sounds followed them down. Men—or probably bodies—being hurled overboard. There were pitiful screams of wounded men, running sounds—thuds, blows, kicks and other auditory manifestations of mayhem.

Stepping onto the lower deck, Captain McCullum prepared himself to pivot and apply commando tactics in order to disarm Diamond before he could get off a snap shot.

Some tensing of muscles must have communicated itself to his captor, because Diamond swiftly lifted his automatic and brought the flat side of it down on top of the Skipper’s skull.

Caught off guard, McCullum lurched for the rail, grabbed hold with both hands and managed to keep himself from falling. That was all.

“No more horseplay,” growled Diamond. “Take me to Savage.”

Biting back salty oaths, Captain McCullum recovered his sea legs and walked woodenly to Doc Savage’s cabin.

The solitary guard stationed there had not budged, despite the commotion coming from the stern deck. His shadowed eyes were worried, but his discipline held him in check.

He soon paid for that admirably disciplined attitude.

Seeing the skipper approaching, the sailor in Navy blues snapped to attention. That proved to be his undoing.

His eyes at full attention, directed rigidly forward, the sailor did not see Diamond reach around behind the Skipper and uncork a single leaden pellet. Scientists say that the speed of a bullet travels faster than the sound of its report. If that is so, the guard never heard the shot that killed him. The slug entered his brain. In all probability he never felt the ugly thing, either.

Which was cold comfort to Captain McCullum, who had had enough.

Whirling, he threw himself on Diamond’s upraised gun arm. Both hands clutched, found meat and muscle, and there ensued a scuffling struggle. It was unfortunately brief, for the Captain was still dizzy and disoriented from his head blow.

Diamond added to his misery by kicking him in the kneecap, then hooking one leg behind the damaged knee, slamming the Skipper onto the deck.

Stunned, Captain McCullum lay there, gasping. Diamond rushed to the twitching body of the dying guard, found the key to the cabin, and unlocked it with great haste.

All this time, his confederate, Weedy—who was down on the passenger manifest under the name C.C. Weed—had been trailing closely.

Weedy rushed up and said, “Don’t monkey with this bronze devil. Just shoot him on sight.”

“I know my business, dammit!” snarled Diamond, his askew wig slipping back off his forehead, half revealing his naturally bald pate.

The lock surrendered. Diamond stepped back, gave the door a wide berth and threw it open. The blackout curtain blocked their view of the interior.

“Savage! I’ve got the skipper here. This old scow is mine! Come out peaceably.”

A long silence followed.

“He ain’t buying it,” hissed Weedy. Diamond raised his voice harshly. “One more time, Savage! I know you’re in there. Come on out or I’ll bust in shooting!”

The silence got longer.

Diamond and Weedy exchanged uneasy glances across the threshold of the open door. Weedy mouthed a question: “What are you going to do now?”

He did not bother to reply. Instead, Diamond threw himself into the cabin with great violence, his automatic sweeping before him, his free hand ripping down the dark blackout curtain.

He must have been nervous, because the hijacker put two slugs into the empty bunk before he got control of his trigger-finger.

There was no sign of Doc Savage in the stateroom. Diamond put a round into the small closet before opening the door, but it, too, proved empty. That left only the bathroom.

The door to that was open, and Diamond slipped up to it, breathing hard and heavy before spraying coughing lead into the opening. Punctures perforated the thin walls. Poised tigerishly on the threshold, Diamond craned his head around. And saw clearly no one under the small sink, nor in the tiny shower, whose waterproof curtains had been thrown back. The bathroom proved to be entirely empty.

Seeing that the small space was devoid of occupants, Diamond did not bother to enter, but instead gave the cabin a last sweep with his felinely amber eyes.

There was no other possible hiding space, so he withdrew to the deck, dark face twitching with uncontainable fury.

“You get him?” Weedy asked wonderingly.

“Not there!” Diamond gritted.

“But he was under guard! You saw the guard. Hell, you shot him in cold blood.”

Diamond looked up and down the corridor, half beside himself with rage.

“One of the damn crew must’ve beat us here and tipped off Savage.”

Weedy looked doubtful. His mouth went slack. He did not appear to be very bright. But he was no fool.

“But we came the most direct way,” he pointed out. “How could anyone do that?”

“Well, someone did,” Diamond returned savagely. “Unless you want to go back in there and take a second look.”

Weedy looked doubtful of expression. “I’ll take your word for it, Cap’n. If he was in there, he’d be full of holes by now. I know that much.”

Storming back to McCullum, who was getting his breathing back under control, Diamond stood over him and barked, “Get this straight. I’m the master of this ship now. We’re going to the bridge and everything that happens from here on out happens because I command it.”

Captain McCullum was in no position to give argument, but neither did he show any signs of cooperation. So Diamond and Weedy grabbed hold of one arm each and yanked him to his feet, spun him around and shoved the defeated man in the direction of the bridge.

ALONG the way, they encountered sailors who ducked back ahead of snarling slugs. No one was hurt, especially after the Captain warned, “Stay back, you men. That is a direct order.”

“Now you’re showing some brains,” encouraged Diamond.

Behind them, more gunfire erupted. It was the Browning, evidently picking off straggling crewmen.

“After this bloody night is over,” Weedy said thickly, “the weather deck will need a lot of swabbing.”

In short order, entirely unchallenged, the three men mounted to the bridge and Diamond transferred his wrath to the officer stationed there.

To Captain McCullum’s shock and horror, Diamond immediately gunned down the Second Mate in cold blood. He sprawled around the big ship’s wheel.

The Skipper had been counting shots. He decided that Diamond had emptied his magazine. Springing for the man, he got his long fingers around the pirate’s throat, and began crushing the other’s windpipe with his strong thumbs.

This time, Diamond was caught entirely by surprise. But it did not matter.

Seeing his leader suddenly struggling for life and oxygen, Weedy fell to smashing his fists into the skipper’s face, back and sides—anywhere he could land a blow. And he landed many. His fists were like small mallets of hard bone and connecting ligaments.

The Captain was remorseless. He refused to relinquish his death grip. His features were very red, and the sweat of exertion poured down his craggy, wind-weathered face.

Ultimately, it was Diamond who preserved his own life. No doubt a red curtain had begun descending over his vision due to lack of air. In that ultimate moment, the pirate found the reserve of vitality that saved his life.

Diamond was sinking, his knees turning to water, his hands flailing. Perhaps it was sheer luck that he remembered that he had previously damaged the skipper’s left knee. His broad, horny knuckles abruptly slammed out against that knee. The pain that shot through Captain McCullum’s afflicted leg was too much to ignore.

With an anguished cry of pain, he let go.

That was when Weedy brained McCullum with the dropped automatic.

His features suffused with crimson, Diamond fought to fill his lungs for over a minute until he was in a position to breathe normally.

Seeing Captain McCullum sprawled on the bridge floor, Diamond began kicking in the ribs on one side of the skipper’s chest and then repeated the process on the other. The violence of his kicking dislodged the sandy wig atop his head, leaving him once again completely bald.

Weedy said nothing. He had seen his leader fly into such rages before. Nothing could be done or said until Diamond’s wrath was spent.

When Diamond was finished, he went to the ship’s great wheel, took hold of it firmly, and said to no one in particular, “I am the master of this vessel now.”

Chapter XXVII

VIOLENT APPARITION

BOATSWAIN DONALD WORTH had not followed Captain McCullum and B. Elmer Dexter to the stern immediately after his difficult conference with Doc Savage.

That had been the skipper’s intention upon leaving the bronze man. In the master’s grim determination to round up Diamond and his crew, he had planned to storm every passenger cabin until the job was done.

It was Don Worth’s quiet suggestion that there was a better way.

“Excuse me, Cap’n,” Worth had said. “But if you start dragging passengers out of their cabins in the middle of the night, they are sure to raise a fuss and arouse the others. You could have a riot on your hands.”

McCullum considered this carefully. He was not a man to take advice readily, but he had come to know Don Worth well and understood that the young man was very level-headed, as well as an excellent Merchant Mariner.

Knowing that he had his ear, Seaman Worth added quickly, “Some of these men may be prowling the ship and not in their berths. Perhaps we should start with them.”

The Captain nodded. “Sound thinking, Boats. Go keep an eye on B Deck while I organize a search party for any flotsam and jetsam belonging to that man, Diamond.”

With that, they had gone their separate ways and Don Worth, understanding that serious trouble was brewing, rushed below decks to collect his other shipmates.

Leander Tucker and Mental Byron should have been asleep, their watches over. But they were not. Excitement was keeping them up. So they were easily rousted from their bunks and led back to B Deck.

There they loitered, waiting and watchful, while the Captain took his Chief Warrant Officer and the Master of Arms on a tour of the boat, seeking unsavory types.

The ruckus created by the misadventure with the imaginary pigboat had keyed up their nerves substantially. Shouts from the stern told the story of the false alarm, so Don and his shipmates remained in place.

When Captain McCullum decided to use the ruse of a drill, Don shooed the others away, ordering the pair to station themselves out of sight, and watched as the passengers were rudely awakened and then driven from their cabins to the stern rail.

Silently, he counted the number of gold rings and totaled up ten of the unusual bands.

As the passengers filed up, Chief Warrant Officer Greer said to Seaman Worth, “Remain here and be prepared to round up any strays, Bosun.”

“Yes, sir,” replied the boatswain. He managed to keep the disappointment off his face because he wanted to see how the operation played out. As events quickly unfolded, it was well that he had not.

The second burst of gunfire was not as startling as the first. The subsequent cries and sounds of pain, distress and mortal injury were a different matter.

Don had his orders, but this was different. His eagerness to race to the stern was counterbalanced by clearheaded thinking. A man rushing into a storm of biting lead had very little chance to accomplish anything useful.

Therefore, Don retreated and, pursing his lips, emitted musical sounds very much like those of a whippoorwill. It was a call he and his friends had used back in their youth at a summer camp called Camp Indian-Laughs-and-Laughs. Even in adulthood, it was their secret signal to one another.

Don Worth continued emitting calls mimicking the whippoorwill, which wintered in the Bahamas, so it might not sound suspicious to the uneducated.

Very soon, similar musical warblings came floating back on the sultry night air.

Triangulating from the sounds, the three shipmates found one another and huddled in the shadow of the Number Two lifeboat hanging on its cradle.

“What’s going on?” demanded Seaman Tucker.

“I don’t know,” admitted Don breathlessly. “But it sounds like a massacre.”

“And here we are without any guns,” groaned Morris Byron.

“There are guns in Monk’s cabin,” Don related quickly. “Supermachine pistols. If we can get hold of those, we might accomplish something.”

Another burst of the .30-caliber Browning machine gun set them to jumping half out of their skins.

At that point, a whippoorwill call sounded nearby. They answered it.

A furtive shadow that proved to be B. Elmer Dexter, his khaki work clothes spattered with blood, stumbled up, panting like a pony. His features were white with shock.

“What’s happening up there?” Don demanded.

Dex struggled with his words, terror having tangled up his tongue.

“Diamond got the drop on the Skipper,” he groaned. “There’s been a massacre.”

“Captain McCullum?” Don breathed.

“A prisoner. We gotta do something before he takes over the entire ship!”

Without further discussion, they pounded in the direction of the stateroom in question.

They managed to reach it without incident, but the cabin door proved to be locked.

Since it was an emergency, Leander Tucker found a fire extinguisher and smashed the porthole, clearing it of jagged fangs of glass, after which B. Elmer Dexter, being the skinny one, crawled in, rooted around and handed out a pair of the compact supermachine pistols.

When Dex emerged through the door, his arms were full of the flat ammunition drums that resembled canisters of eight millimeter movie film.

“Enough to commence operations!” exclaimed Don Worth, inserting an ammunition drum before the trigger guard, and seeking the safety latch.

There proved to be several of these, and he managed to disengage two of them. But when he pressed the trigger experimentally, there was no discharge of rounds.