Doc Savage: The Miracle Menace (44 page)

Pete was likewise disappearing into the brush and rocks.

Behind him, Gull could hear the thundering voice of Renny Renwick. “Every man for himself!”

“Ye-e-ow!”
howled Monk Mayfair. “Free-for-all!”

Fists began colliding with jaws, from the sounds which followed.

GULLIVER GREENE flopped behind a large stone, jammed the rifle stock to his shoulder and waited. He’d never killed a man, but he was convinced he was going to do so now. But when a man leaped into view, something happened to Gulliver’s viciousness, and he lowered the rifle muzzle, broke the men’s legs betwixt knee and thigh. Strangely enough, the man fell flat on his back, the way the dead are supposed to fall. A red fountain came out of his leg; he began to scream and writhe, then to pile sand on the wound and to beat the leg with his hands, screeching all the while.

Gull went on. “Pete!” he called. He couldn’t hear her running.

“Here!” She was ahead, to the left.

Veering for her voice, Gulliver heard crashing behind him and drove a random bullet backward, barely slackening his flight; when he was about to shoot again, he remembered repeating rifles of this type—with a so-called two-thirds magazine—held five cartridges in the magazine and one in the barrel. He’d shot four times already—two shells left, so it was no time for extravagance with lead.

Then he forgot that, for Pete began crying out, staccato sounds of surprise, then words that warned, “Go back! More of them are over here!”

Gulliver did not go back, although it might have been better if he had, or at least better if he had changed his course, for he saw that several of Cass’ men had seized Pete. She must’ve come upon them unawares, as they hurried about in the general confusion. The men shot repeatedly at Gulliver, so that he had to veer off to the right to avoid their lead, leaving Pete in their possession.

MEANWHILE, Doc Savage’s men had not been idle. At the beginning of the mêlée, they had shrugged off their grief-stricken gloom and gone into action.

Renny was the first to strike. He possessed fists as massive as coconuts, and twice as hard. They turned into pumping pistons, rocking heads backward, sending jaws askew.

One man came at him feet first. Renny got aside, hit him hard. He tripped another man, used his fist on a third.

Monk was not far behind him. He didn’t bother to hit anyone. He was too busy yanking weapons out of hands that lacked the strength to hold onto them. When he had two fistfuls, he flung them in the faces of two Cass confederates, who went flying backwards.

Monk rushed in and began hopping up and down atop their ribcages, which commenced making distressing noises like crunching glass. Monk seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.

Johnny Littlejohn ducked behind a spindly tree that would have afforded no individual other than the skeletal archeologist any shelter, just ahead of a flurry of lead. It peppered the tree harmlessly, proving that it was mere rat-shot.

A Cass man happened by, unaware of the lurking Johnny. The latter detached himself from the tree, and wrapped his elongated arms and legs around the man, who was trying to shoot Long Tom’s head off, with the result that the fellow felt as if he had been attacked by a giant granddaddy longlegs spider. They rolled around on the ground, the Cass cohort seizing Johnny by his longish hair and attempted to smash his skull against convenient rocks.

After socking a few eyes and jaws, Long Tom stepped in and applied his well-skinned knuckles to the nose of Johnny’s assailant. This drew blood, and the man went tumbling backward, arms windmilling. After his head struck a stone, he shook feebly, then subsided.

Long Tom helped Johnny find his feet. Then he backed into Renny, who was busy pummeling a face into red ruin. The big engineer wheeled, knobby fists ready to fly.

Renny’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Are those my duds?”

“Borrowed them,” returned Long Tom, waving a sleeveless arm.

Renny grunted, “Ruined ’em is more like it. I’ll send you a bill.”

They went back to fighting.

Bony fists flying, Johnny was now trying to whip two men at once, not succeeding very well. He finally disposed of one, was smashed down by someone who leaped upon him. They fought. The leaper had a rock. The rock changed hands and the foe went to sleep.

At a temporary loss due to the lack of his sword cane, Ham Brooks found a Winchester and began drilling assorted arms and legs, causing his foes to bleat in pain and drop their weapons. The dapper lawyer did not miss once.

The air was full of the sounds of combatants grunting and hitting and getting hit in turn.

In the middle of all this uproar, no one noticed Cadwiller Olden, still clutching his vicious-looking triangular dagger, sneak up on his erstwhile leader, spymaster Ivan Cass. The midget jumped up onto a clump of stones, the better to slip the sharp blade into his boss’ ribs. It went in smoothly.

Cass let out a short gasp of pain, and immediately began struggling for breath. A lung had been punctured. The little man bared a fierce set of miniature teeth and jerked out his knife. This time he squinted one eye shut, and said, “I’ve been meaning to do this for a good long time.”

With that, Olden drove the triangular blade into the center of Ivan Cass’ chest, directly into the man’s pounding heart. With a last leaky sigh, the spymaster rolled up his dark eyes and released all animation. A pinkish froth began foaming on his thin lips. From one set of fingers, a fountain pen dropped. The man had been about to settle the situation by flinging one of the powerful disguised bombs into the thick of his foes.

After Cass fell, the diminutive murderer retrieved his knife, and went looking for more scores to settle.

In the beginning of the battle, the close quarters made it difficult for Cass’ men to bring their unwieldy rifles to bear, for fear of shooting their comrades. But now, as their numbers began to dwindle, they got themselves organized.

Someone found the machine gun that Gulliver had employed to good effect up in the rocks, trained it downward.

He let out a short burping burst. That got everyone’s attention.

“Everyone not with Cass, raise your hands,” he ripped out.

Ham Brooks was the quickest to react. He raised his Winchester and plugged the man’s right shoulder with a bullet. It was a good shot, but deliberately not fatal.

The man managed to squeeze off another burst, this one very wild.

That set everyone to scattering.

Now the shape of the battle became different, with men ducking into brush or behind boulders, seeking shelter or a safe place of ambush.

It promised to become a bloody massacre.

GULLIVER GREENE was circling around in a determined effort to get ahead of the Cass contingent who had made off with Saint Pete. His heart pounded. His mouth was dry as a bone. He felt as if he was trying to swallow a toy balloon.

Creeping along, he did not sense anyone looming up behind him.

A hand vised his mouth shut, another pinioned his wrists, wrenched, forcing the Winchester to the ground. Gull struggled mightily. He was strong, but this individual who had seized him was stronger still. So strong that he felt like a helpless child in the other’s grasp.

His captor spun him around without effort.

Gull looked up. He had to. The man towered over him.

There stood Doc Savage, golden eyes vital.

Admonishing silence, the bronze man released his grip.

“H-how?” sputtered Gull. “You’re dead.”

Doc explained, “Ruse. Cass shot at a protective skullcap I wear, to which was affixed with gum arabic a vial of Mercurochrome, rigged on a bush in order to draw his attention while I moved Christopher Columbus out of harm’s way.”

“Sure made a realistic effect,” grinned Gull with the admiration of one illusionist for another. “You fooled everyone.”

Doc acknowledged the compliment with a modest nod.

Gulliver’s face suddenly clouded. “They nabbed Saint Pete.”

“No longer. I came upon them and flung several anesthetic grenades in their direction. They are quietly slumbering now, as is Saint Pete.”

Gull let out a gusty sigh of tension release. “Then it’s finally over.”

“Not quite,” said Doc.

Sounds of battle began assaulting their eardrums.

Doc Savage reached into his equipment vest and carefully removed a case containing metallic grenades no larger than robin’s eggs.

“Explosive?” asked Gull.

By way of replying, Doc began arming the tiny devices and pegged them in the general direction of battle, seeming not to aim. Then he pushed Gull to the dirt, directly behind substantial boulders.

The bombs detonated well short of the zone of combat.

Gull had recovered his Winchester rifle. “Want me to pitch in?”

“No,” said Doc, who hurled more of the grenades. He threw them seemingly every which way, and the resulting explosions were entirely random.

They did, however, produce an interesting reaction.

A straggly bush quivered. Another gave a jerk, as if trying to leap off the ground. Nettles everywhere stirred. That was just the beginning.

All around commenced a skittering and scampering in the underbrush, which began to twitch and jitter as if phantom feet were racing through them.

Gulliver scratched at his dirty white hair. Fleet forms were darting, close to the ground, almost too fast for the eye to follow. They had tails.

Then he got it.

“Rats?”

“Rats,” said Doc Savage.

THE STAMPEDE of rodents charged in the direction of the ledge, the vicinity about which men crawled and fought and took pot shots at one another.

The arrival of the rodents altered the character of that combat. They flowed like a river with many branches, surging toward the sea. They swarmed over everyone and everything, climbing brush, rock, even screeching men, tiny teeth biting wildly in their frenzy. There seemed to be hundreds of them. It was too much to bear.

There was a frantic exodus from the battlefield. Even Doc’s men sought relief from the fast-spreading swarms. Ham rushed them to the darkroom, and they got the pivoting door slammed ahead of frantic gray rivulets.

The Cass operatives plunged toward the beach, which they imagined was the safest place to go, since the maddened rodents were unlikely to follow them into the surf.

Doc Savage watched this spectacle and his lips parted.

From his mouth came the melody that had earlier been mistaken for a songbird. This time it rose, assuming greater volume. It made a weird music, as if the Pied Piper of medieval legend had emerged from antiquity to summon Rat Island’s rodent population to do his bidding. It was the herald-call of Doc Savage!

Below, Doc’s men heard their leader’s uncanny trilling and understood that it signaled victory was at hand.

The thrilling sound trailed off. A silence descended. The day had seemed several years long.

Doc Savage turned to Gulliver. “Go back and collect Saint Pete. You will find Christopher Columbus in a safe place—the bungalow. Await us there.”

“Right,” said Gull, taking off.

Doc Savage took charge of the bullet-scarred area around the ledge. There had been casualties, but only a few dead. All were Cass’ men.

His own aides emerged from concealment and took inventory. Harvell Braggs was still dead to the world. They had to kick scurrying rats off his bloated form. A few had taken nips from his sausage-plump fingers.

Renny Renwick came upon a body, called out, “Hey, Brother Cass is dead!”

They gathered around the deceased spymaster, whose eyes stared upward in mortal agony. Rats had gotten to him, too. They were sampling his blood, not his flesh. The bronze man chased them away by snapping his coat at them.

Doc knelt, examined the stab wound and abruptly came erect, his vibrant voice brittle. “Find Olden.”

His men scattered to search. Their joy at being reunited with their leader was subordinate to the desperate situation at hand.

Monk Mayfair found Cadwiller Olden high up in the rocks, where he was using his bloody blade to fend off a number of voracious rats.

Doc discouraged the rats by pegging unerring stones at them. They fled.

Looking up, he asked, “How did you escape our plane?”

Cadwiller Olden peered down, croaked, “One of Cass’ boys read the mind of your man, Long Tom, and learned I was on the plane. He took a rowboat out to the plane and cut me loose. When we got to the beach, I found that girl prowling around and took her hostage.”

Doc Savage said nothing to that.

Then, “You slew Ivan Cass.” It was not a question.

“Guilty. I’ve been wanting to stick a shiv into that skunk for a long time. Imagine his starch, belittling me every chance he got. It stuck in my craw, it did.”

Wordlessly, Doc Savage reached up and extracted the deadly blade from the midget’s powerless fingers, and with his other hand removed Cadwiller Olden from his precarious perch.

“Guess I’ll fry for this, huh?” gulped the miniature man.

Doc Savage said a grim nothing. He handed the midget over to Long Tom Roberts with instructions to ferry him back to the airplane before anyone could see that Olden had survived.

The men clustered on the beach were another matter. They had splashed into the surf and were working their way around to their big plane, with the idea of fleeing now that their leader, spymaster Ivan Cass, had perished.

They managed to clamber aboard, although a brief fight broke out in which two men were pitched overboard, for fear they would overload the aircraft. When one attempted to leap back aboard, he was shot between the eyes, discouraging the other.

One man planted himself in the control bucket and began snapping starter switches.

Nothing much happened.

“When they realize that their motors lack distributor caps for the carburetors,” said the bronze man, “they will have no choice but to surrender. Take them into custody.”

It was easier said than done. They surrounded the disabled craft, calling for its passengers to exit. A hatch popped and a fusillade of bullets came rushing out. The besieged men were unpleasantly generous with their lead.