The Avenger 30 - Black Chariots (10 page)

“Maybe they want to scare the natives,” suggested Cole, “so they can lower the real estate values hereabouts.”

“There must be something,” said Jennifer, “something around here they want to spy on. That’s what the ships are intended for.”

“A defense plant or a government project, mayhap?” said Cole.

“Yes, I imagine it’s something like that.”

Cole frowned. “I have the impression the Army Air Corps boys wouldn’t stand still for anything like that.”

“These ships are designed to avoid any method of aircraft detection now in use in your country,” said Danker. “Should they actually encounter one of your stodgy conventional planes, they can easily outfly it.”

“No propellers,” said Nellie.

“They work on a different principle,” said Jennifer, “more like a rocket.”

“As much as I would like to prolong this pleasant discussion,” said Danker, “I must now begin getting you aboard your respective ships.”

“You’re breaking up the set?” asked Cole.

“Only one of you can fit in each cabin along with the pilot.” He smiled at Cole. “You’ll be happy to learn that you’re traveling with Dirks.”

“Yes, it’s nice to meet an old friend on a trip.”

“You’ll also be securely bound,” added Danker.

“But not that securely,” Cole thought to himself.

The disk-craft was humming through the night, heading out over the desert.

Dirks sat hunched at the controls, muttering to himself now and again.

“If you’d like to stop somewhere for a bite to eat, it’s all right with me, old man,” Cole said aloud. He was sitting on the floor of the small cockpit, hands tied behind him.

“How much you make a year?” asked Dirks, not looking at him.

“My work isn’t actually of a salaried nature.”

“What I figured,” said the big man. “I been around a lot, you know, and I never seen a smart-mouth guy yet who ever made big money. You know why that is? I will tell you. It’s because nobody likes a smart-mouth guy.”

“How about Fred Allen, Fibber McGee, Edgar Bergen, Joe Penner, Jack Pearl?” Cole had his right wrist halfway out of the restraining ropes.

“Joe Penner ain’t on the radio no more.”

“He passed on.”

“See what I mean?”

They were flying low over the flat desert, not more than a few hundred feet up. Now the ship began wobbling slightly.

“Bumpy road?” said Cole.

“Wind,” said Dirks. “Wind coming up. One thing this crate ain’t no good in, it’s wind. Course, I remember a crate I flew back in 1933. I had me a job with an air circus. I would come roaring over this field full of rubes in this checkerboard biplane. I’d jerk this special little knob I had rigged up, and colored smoke would start coming out the rear end. It was something.”

Cole concentrated on working his hand further loose from the ropes. He said nothing.

After a moment Dirks asked, “Ain’t you got no smart-mouth remark about that?”

“Some things are too beautiful for words.”

“I maybe could have been somebody in that racket, the aviation dodge,” said Dirks. “Somebody like Roscoe Turner. I might look pretty good with a little mustache like his. But my first loyalty is to my home country, so that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing.”

“It’s just as well. A mustache wouldn’t suit you at all.” He had the hand free. The tangle of ropes fell away, and Cole could use both hands.

Dirks said, “That blonde, she’s kind of cute.”

“Which blonde?”

“The tall one, not the little one. Oh, I suppose the little one ain’t bad, but I never took to small women. Once in Columbus when I was traveling with—”

Cole had gotten a half-nelson on the man. “Okay, Dirks, here’s what you do, old fellow, if you don’t want to choke before your time.”

“Watch out, that’s dangerous.”

The chariot was wobbling more wildly now.

“Set this thing down, right now,” ordered Cole.

“We ain’t near nothing,” protested Dirks, gasping for air. “It’s no place down there.”

Cole reached around and took the man’s revolver from under his jacket. “I imagine if we sit here in the desert till sun up somebody will spot us.”

“Look, let me set it down near a highway at least, huh?”

Pressing the gun to the back of Dirk’s thick neck. Cole said, “Very well, chum, but no cuteness.”

“I got a great fear about being lost in the desert. Ever since I seen
Beau Geste
the last time.”

Cole glanced down through the window of the small cockpit. There were no lights below them at all. “How far do you have to fly to find us a touch of civilization?”

“Not far, pal, not more than fifty miles or so. This baby’ll cover that in—” Dirks threw himself to the side, then swung back a fist.

He hit Cole in the Adam’s apple. Cole gagged and stumbled back. He started to bring the gun up.

Dirks hit him again. “You ain’t as smart as you think, pal.”

Cole went to his knees, and his head banged against the back of the pilot seat.

“Now, we’ll continue . . . Holy smokes!”

The craft was bobbing through the darkness, swooping down, spinning up.

“See what you made me—”

There was the ground. The craft met it.

The bearded old man swung his lead-tipped cane in the direction of the registration desk.

The clerk flinched.

“Dadburn it,” shouted the old man, “I want to see the goshdarn manager of this here pesthole.”

The clerk was slowly sinking out of range, in case the cane whooshed again through the air. “That’s quite impossible, sir. Mr. Danker is . . . otherwise occupied.”

“Well sir,” said the expertly disguised Avenger, “he better unoccupy himself. Otherwise I’m going to go right straight into Manzana and talk to about a half-dozen shyster lawyers.”

Smitty, wearing now a dark suit and a chauffeur’s cap, stepped up beside Benson. “Maybe you ain’t aware of who you’re chinning with, buddy. This is Old Man Guptill.”

“But he’s . . . that is, I really can’t help you, Mr. . . . Guptill, is it?”

Smitty reached a giant hand across the desk and caught one lapel of the clerk’s dinner jacket. “Old Man Guptill is giving you bozos a break, a chance to settle out of court.”

“Dangnab, I’m losing my patience.” Benson pounded the mosaic flooring with his cane.

MacMurdie, who had been sitting in a chair and pretending to read a newspaper, arose now. He joined the group. “I couldna help overhearing, sir. Perhaps I mot help ye, being I’m an attorney.”

“That’s danged good news,” bellowed the Avenger. “I want to sue this whole Oasis place for kidnapping me.”

“Please, sir,” pleaded the clerk, “keep your voice down.”

“I’m going to hoot and holler till I get some satisfaction. I just done got loose, and I got me proof positive these galoots are the ones who done me dirt.” He leaned an elbow on the counter. “All-fired mad as I am, I retain my cool business head. I’m wiling to let the whole mess get shoved under the rug . . . for a substantial piece of hard cash.”

“Dinna be too anxious,” cautioned Mac. “From what I can tell, Mr. Guptill, ye’ve an ironclad case against these berkies.”

“Uh . . . you’d . . . yes, come along with me, Mr. Guptill.” The clerk, warily, emerged from behind the protection of his desk. “I’ll escort you to our other building, where the business offices are housed.”

“ ’Bout time, sonny boy.”

The clerk, with many looks around, led the trio out of the main building of the resort, down a gravel path, and alongside the deserted pool.

“Not much business going on,” remarked Mac.

“It’s the . . . off season,” said the clerk.

“Funny, I heard,” put in Smitty, “that you was full up to the brim with guests.”

“Well, yes. But a good many of them are older people. They come out only at . . . ah, allow me to open the door.” He held open the door that Jennifer had followed her uncle through. “If you’ll wait over there in the ballroom, I’ll see if I can find Mr. Danker and fetch him here.”

“You better be mighty dang quick about it,” Benson told him. “I feel a spell of impatience coming on agin.”

There were no customers on the huge dance floor. A six-piece band, however, occupied the elevated bandstand at the far end of the dimly lit room. They were not performing. Four of them were playing poker, using one of the drums as a card table. The other two watched. They were all big men, broad-shouldered. At least three of them were in need of shaves.

“Boys,” said the clerk from the threshold, “perhaps you could entertain these three gentlemen.” He made several hand gestures in the air.

“Sure thing,” said the one with the most stubble. He hopped from the low stand, jabbing a hand into his jacket pocket as he did.

“Pair of knucks,” said Smitty. He rubbed his big hands together in anticipation. “I smell a fracas.”

“What kind of shenannigans you got in mind, sonny?” Benson turned toward the clerk, but the man was already slipping away.

He slammed the ballroom door and locked it on them from the outside.

“By the grizzled beard of Hereward the Wake,” said MacMurdie, dropping the newspaper he’d been carrying under his arm, “I do believe it’s a donnybrook in the making.”

Three more of the burly musicians left the stand and came shuffling across the polished floor.

The leader, fitting the pair of brass knuckles to his fist, said, “You guys trying to make trouble for this joint, huh?”

“You ain’t seen half the trouble I can make, young feller.”

“Skinnay,” the leader said to the man on his left, who was as husky as the rest of them, “you take care of the old geezer, since you’re just getting over a cold. He’ll be easy.”

“Yeah, their bones break real easy,” said Skinnay with a pleased chuckle. He leaped for Benson.

Benson was not there, however, any more.

Skinnay hugged thin air. “Hey!”

The Avenger was to the left of him. He chopped down against Skinnay’s thick neck with the side of his hand, hard, three times.

“Gah,” said Skinnay. His entire body shivered; then his right knee bammed against the hard dance floor.

Another chop from the Avenger sent the man sprawling.

“That’s a pretty spry old coot,” observed one of the other hefty musicians.

The leader was too preoccupied to reply. He had taken a swing, with his brass knuckle fist, at Smitty.

The giant had caught his hand in his. He was squeezing now.

“Cripes,” gritted the leader. “Let loose, will you?”

“Okay.” With a final powerful crunch Smitty shoved the man away.

The brass knuckles were bent and twisted, cutting into the man’s fingers. “Get these damn things off me, somebody.”

Before any of the other four could move, Smitty grabbed one of them. “You guys could use a little more exercise,” he said, clutching the man by the armpits and spinning him around. “Or maybe a little airplane trip.” When he let go, the musician sailed across the room, landed on the bandstand, and knocked over the trap drum.

“Hout, here comes a gun,” warned MacMurdie, diving for the impatient musician who’d decided fists weren’t going to work.

The agile Scot got hold of the weapon while it was still half in the shoulder holster. Shoving it back, he simultaneously jabbed the gunman twice in the stomach.

“Woof,” said this one before collapsing.

In the Avenger’s hand now appeared the strange tubelike pistol he called Mike. He leveled it at the two untouched musicians. “I advise you to forget about overcoming us,” he said in his cold, even voice.

“Sure, we got no quarrel with you folks,” said one.

“All a misunderstanding,” said the other.

The leader was grimacing. “Get these damn knuckle-dusters off me,” he said.

“In a moment,” said the Avenger. “First I want something from you.”

“What, what?”

“Information,” said the Avenger.

Danker paced the stone floor. “Dirks was only moments behind us,” he said. “And now, almost an hour has passed and he is not here.” Crossing the large underground cavern, he mounted a metal ladder and climbed up to the jagged ceiling. Danker slid aside a metal panel and ascended another metal ladder.

This placed him in a small room cut out of the rock. He pushed a button set in the stone wall, and a section of the ceiling slid away. This revealed a tough plastic dome, which gave him a view of the night sky above.

“If there’s been an accident,” he said as he picked a pair of powerful binoculars from the floor, “we may have serious trouble.”

A swirl of sand rasped against the outer surface of the observation dome.

Danker stopped with the binoculars halfway to his eyes. He looked instead at a series of dials and gauges set in the stone wall.

“Can that be right? The wind is blowing at the rate of eighty miles an hour.” He bent and read the wind velocity dial again. “Yes, it is correct.”

Straightening, the dark, thin man put the glasses to his eyes. He could see nothing out there now in the night, only the sand being carried on the howling wind.

“There is no way to search for that idiot now,” he said, closing the roof of the dome. “No, the ships cannot fly in this.”