Doc Savage: The Secret of Satan's Spine (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 15) (34 page)

Steel rifle muzzles prodded the fumbling sailors into a corner pocket of the chamber in which they imagined themselves to be. That they were deep underground was undeniable. There was no escaping this knowledge. As measured by maritime men, the prisoners suspected that they had descended many fathoms. It made their mouths dry up and their tongues feel like sponges left out in the sun.

It was there that they discovered they had been lied to. Or at least, some of them had.

“Keep your blindfolds on for a minute,” commanded Diamond. “Some of you will have yours removed. After you do, don’t say a word. Loose lips sink ships, like the Navy posters say. Yap, and we will blow your backbones apart.”

Two men were taken aside, their blindfolds rudely shucked off. They looked around, and their blinking eyes went wide. They had difficulty understanding what they beheld. Soft gasps escaped their lips.

The place in which they found themselves was a sort of dome. The ground under their feet was flat and level. Walls were unnaturally smooth, jet black, dull as coal and therefore probably formed of basalt.

The ceiling of the subterranean dome reared about fifteen feet at its apex, directly above their heads. That made the two nervous mariners feel as if they were a mile below the surface of the reef. Of course, that was not so. But their imaginations made them feel like coal miners—ever mindful of the possibility of a cave-in.

Diamond stood there, his naturally bald head glowing moistly in the glow of various flashlights. His amber eyes were as cruel as a tomcat’s. In one earlobe danced a red-gold hoop to which was affixed a glittering diamond.

“You see that opening over there?” Diamond directed. “Walk in there and grab everything and anything you can lay your hands on.”

Their searching eyes veered in the direction the pirate pointed.

There stood an opening in the smooth wall. Not a door, but an aperture.

It was round, as high as a very tall man and as broad as four men standing abreast.

The disquieting thing about this opening was that in its upper portion, matching horns had been cut, making the shape of the entry resemble a quarter moon turned on its curved back so that its devil horns pointed ceilingward.

Beyond lay a great space, choked with shadows. Neither man could pierce the gloom with their eyes. But the air coming from the dark space beyond was cold. Unnaturally cold.

The two sailors hesitated. One asked, “Why do you need us to go in there?”

“Is it dangerous?” blurted the other.

“Just do it!” roared Diamond.

Hesitatingly, the two sailors stepped forward while Diamond’s men directed their flashlight beams into the shadow-clotted space beyond. A short tunnel connected the two rooms.

The men could not see clearly until they passed into the adjoining chamber.

When they did so, their exclamations of astonishment were not mild.

“It’s freezing in here!” one complained.

“This cold ain’t normal,” the other squawked. “It’s like an ice box!”

“Don’t hang around gawking!” Diamond exploded. “Just grab armfuls of loot and back out of there.”

The men did their best. There came a commotion and clatter that their blindfolded shipmates heard distinctly. Abruptly, one of the searching sailors stumbled, fell over, emptying his arms of the objects he had collected.

The other sailor demanded, “Tom, what happened to you?”

Silence followed. That man also toppled.

The silence that followed was unsettling in the extreme.

Two more blindfolds were whipped off, and selected sailors were pushed roughly in the direction of the chamber door.

“Get in there and yank them out right now!” Diamond ordered.

The two Merchant Marines did not hesitate. These were fellow mariners in peril. They plunged in. Taking hold of their friends, they began dragging them back, until they, too, seemed to lose all strength and collapsed on the floor.

“This ain’t workin’ out so hot,” a pirate growled. It was the rogue named Joe Cannon.

“It’s got to work,” Diamond insisted. “We practically moved a mountain to get this far. Get me two more men!”

Again, blindfolds were roughly removed and sailors were kicked and prodded into the connecting chamber. They were not told what to do. They did not need any instruction. They just plunged in, groped around, and laid hold of one of the collapsed sailors.

They did pretty well, managing to haul out a single individual, and laid him spread-eagled on the stony floor of the domed chamber. Returning for more, they dragged another stricken shipmate into the light.

After they had done this, the two men lay down as if exhausted. Their breathing was ragged, their eyes glassy and strange.

“What—what’s in there?” one gulped. “I feel like I got all the life sucked out of me.”

Diamond did not bother to answer. He said, snapping his fingers, “I got me an idea. One man goes in, throws out what he can, and we catch it. When he collapses, someone goes in and drags him out. Send in another man, and repeat the operation. If these guys hold out, we can clean the place out in no time.”

No sailor, blindfolded or not, cared for that suggestion. As a plan, it seemed half-sound. But as a task, it was terrifying. The two men still trapped in the adjoining chamber had ceased to make any sounds.

FOR A few minutes the Diamond gang stood around, playing their flashlights on the faces of their captives. Some carried kerosene-fed hurricane lanterns. These smoked faintly, and the smell of the kerosene started to become unpleasant in the close air. Coughing commenced, and appeared to be catching. Others joined in. The vocal ruckus began to sound like dogs barking.

“Douse those hurricane lamps!” ordered Diamond. “We’ll relight them when we have to. The smoke is getting to everyone. We can’t have any more problems than we’ve already signed on for.”

The glass chimneys were lifted and the wicks blown out efficiently.

The shifting illumination in the chamber became dimmer, only broken by flashlights here and there. This contributed to the spectral atmosphere. The way the light struck up against the face of the men arrayed about created the unpleasant aspect that Hollywood lighting technicians call “horror lighting.”

In this weird semi-gloom, no one saw or heard a silent figure descend the ramp that wound down from the tower many fathoms above their heads.

There was not much to see in any case. Just a pair of pale, yellowish eyes floating downward, like an ethereal occupant of a tomb returning to his earthly rest.

Chapter XLIV

TENSE SITUATION

THE CREW OF the unknown submarine showed that they were well-trained and coldly efficient in their duties.

The deck gun was brought up, made ready, and a warning shot was fired three points off the port stern of the foundering liner,
Northern Star
.

At the ship’s stern anti-aircraft gun, Don Worth keyed the vessel’s intercommunicator, and informed Captain McCullum, “Sir, the submarine has fired a warning shot. Orders?”

“Can you make her out?”

The submarine was still commencing to rise, and gradually the submersible hull began showing its true color, which was an oyster gray. It was insufficient to identify the U-boat. Virtually all warring submarines are similarly painted.

“No, Cap’n,” Don reported.

“Return fire a warning shot,”
instructed McCullum.

Donald Worth pressed firm thumbs into the trips and made the air sizzle over the submarine deck-gun crew’s capped heads. The startled sailors ducked, making it even harder to discern their nationality.

Leander Tucker and Mental Byron caught the blistering shell casings and gingerly heaved them over the rail, there being no luxury of tossing them into waiting receptacles designed for that purpose.

Tensely, Bosun Worth and the others waited for a response, whatever it might be.

When they did turn, they glanced back in the direction of the bow, where the sun crawling out of the ocean painted the weird reef called Satan’s Spine in true-light colors.

It was not exactly Technicolor. The reef was a long hellish finger of blackness. It was no coral reef, such as had been created by countless sea organisms dying and petrifying. This was lava that had hardened into black basalt long ago. Nothing grew there. No salt water mangroves. Not even a solitary palm tree. All was barren. It resembled an ancient seam of dirty coal thrown up by the ocean.

The rising sun threw a squat black tower into sharp relief.

B. Elmer Dexter squinted at it.

“That—that thing looks like it has horns!” he gasped.

Don Worth stole a quick glance, just enough to make out the foreboding shape. He frowned. “That must be why it’s called Satan’s Spine.”

“But what is it?” wondered Leander Tucker.

As a group, they had no idea and no time to fret over this new development. The submarine deck crew was getting themselves organized again.

Into the talker, Seaman Worth informed the skipper, “They are getting ready to fire another shot. It may not be a warning shot this time.”

“Stand ready,”
said the Captain hoarsely.

The wind was freshening, picking up steadily, but all thoughts of the approaching hurricane were far from their minds. If they could not stand off this unknown submarine, the tropical tempest would be the least of their worries.

From the direction of the unworldly tower came a sound—steady, unnerving, and increasing in volume and intensity. It was an unearthly and unnerving moaning, as if some great monster dwelling in the vaults of the earth were awakening in complaint.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” muttered Morris Byron.

To which Tucker replied, “I’ll take that awful noise over the cough of an enemy deck gun.”

“You don’t know that it’s an enemy sub yet,” cautioned Don.

“Well, we don’t know that it’s not, do we?” Tuck retorted.

The question quickly evaporated from their mental processes when sharp-eyed Mental Byron noticed something in the chop that lay between the stern of the
Northern Star
and the blade-like snout of the submarine.

He stared. His eyes grew stark. His jaw sagged slightly.

Stabbing out an excited finger, he exploded, “Look! There’s someone swimming toward the sub.”

All stared hard, and saw that the man in the water wore one of the pale blue shirts that were common among the Merchant Marine crew of the
Northern Star.
He was arrowing toward the submarine, making fair time, swimming with powerful overhand strokes.

At this distance, it would not have been possible to make out who the foolhardy sailor was, except that he had rolled up his sleeves, exposing his muscular arms. The dark color of those arms as well as the woolly texture of his hair proclaimed his identity undeniably.

“JURY GOINES!” burst out Dex. “We forgot that he was in the water checking on the condition of the screws.”

Tuck blinked rapidly. “But what’s he trying to do?”

Don Worth leapt to a sensible conclusion and voiced it. “Oiler Goines looks like he’s trying to reach the deck crew to warn them off.”

“If they’re Nazis,” muttered Dex, “they’re not gonna take well to the intrusion.”

“Yeah,” added Tuck. “They’re liable to turn that pop gun on him.”

Seaman Goines seemed unconcerned about the prospect. He swam with all his muscular might, cleaving through the water, approaching the bottom of the submarine that lay in the water like a great tomahawk blade pointed at them.

Behind the
Northern Star
, the moaning of the horned tower grew in volume, turning into a weird wailing as if something terrible impended. So intent were they upon the prospect of the submarine deck gun opening up on their position, the four sailors failed to appreciate the true significance of the rising sound.

They looked at one another and saw the ocean breeze was disturbing their hair, and then they knew.

“It’s the hurricane!” Morris Byron exclaimed. “It’s bearing down on us! Somehow it’s creating the sounds coming from that strange tower.”

This was not good news by any measure, but it had an interesting and unexpected side effect.

The awesome wailing—and awesome was as good a word to describe it as any—had captured the attention of the submarine deck crew. They were staring and pointing in the direction of the black tower that was now fully silhouetted by the rising sun, making its solitary quarter-moon eye blaze.

There could be no question but the awful keening was coming from that source. It was eerie and unnerving, and while their attention was fixed upon it, Jury Goines managed to reach the submarine and clambered up the side.

“They will spot him any minute now!” Leander Tucker exclaimed.

Turning to Mental Byron, Donald Worth rapped, “Take over this gun. I’m going to try to distract them with the Aldis lamp.”

He rushed back to the blinker, turned it on, and began flashing out a brisk semaphore message, hoping to capture their attention and give Oiler Goines time to accomplish whatever it was he intended to do.

The message was the international signal A.A., repeated several times. It spelled a simple question known to all mariners:
Who
are
you
?

All around them, the air seemed to turn in a violent swirling as if the entire world was being churned. Gale force winds were agitating the surrounding seas, making the spume and spray splash onto deck, depositing a quivering froth that suggested the unpleasant residue of boiling soup bones.

The end of the world, Donald Worth grimly reflected, will probably look and sound something like this….

Chapter XLV

DEEP

IN THE GLOW of many flashlights, a Merchant Marine sailor was prodded and shoved through the quarter-moon portel cut out of the wall of black basalt that was marked by a pair of jutting curved horns in outline.

All of those who had eyes to see with watched him disappear into the ominous aperture. Those who were still blindfolded could only listen. Those blindfolded sailors were listening very intently.