Part 10 (1/2)

The attendant did not answer at once.

”Give the pa.s.sword,” he shouted then.

There was silence. ”Pa.s.sword, h.e.l.l!” said one of the men in the planes. ”We haven't got it. We've got to have gas-”

”Brother, give the pa.s.sword,” yelled the attendant. ”Or don't set foot ash.o.r.e.”

The man on the plane yelled, ”Oh, nuts! I'll show you our papers and-”

The attendant made a lunge, scooped up his machine gun from where it had been concealed nearby. He fired a short burst. The bullets. .h.i.t the water near the planes, knocked up a procession of small geysers.That started a commotion in the planes. They began sticking rifle barrels out of the windows.

The attendant headed for cover. He did not go into the shack, but went across the sand, going so fast that he seemed to have wings.

He got out of sight behind a pile of metal drums.

The rifle muzzles in the plane windows began letting out fire and noise.

Sand jumped up in many places around the pile of fuel drums, and bullets. .h.i.tting the drums made hard, ironlike spanking noises.

The attendant's light machine gun let out four brief bursts, about six shots to the burst, but the bullets seemed to accomplish nothing but knock up more water.

Suddenly fire sheeted over the fuel drums. But in a moment there was more smoke than fire. Infinitely more smoke, the very black product of fuel oil, burning.

”d.a.m.n the luck!” yelled a voice in one of the planes. ”The muzzle blast from his machine gun set the oil on fire!”

THE smoke crawled out of the oil drums as black as a polecat and became in size a cow, an elephant, a house. It rolled and tumbled and stuck close together the way oil smoke seems to stick.

In the smoke, the attendant's machine gun gobbled indignantly a time or two.

The breeze took the smoke and carried it toward the planes. The smoke kept close to the ground, spreading more to the sides than up and down, it seemed. It reached the seaplanes and enveloped them.

There was profanity and disorganization around the planes for a few moments. Then a man got the crews organized.

”Scatter and rush that pile of oil drums,” the organizer shouted.

They did that. They piled out of the two beached seaplanes, yelling the way men like to yell when they are going into danger in a group.

They shot into the oil drums and the smoke and the sand and the bright Caribbean sky.

The echoes, and there were echoes although there seemed to be nothing from which echoes could bounce, whooped and gobbled. A horde of sea birds, gulls and pelicans with sacklike chins, were in the air like leaves in a whirlwind, making outcries.

”Careful,” roared the spokesman for the group from the two seaplanes.

They held their guns ready and alert, and rounded the pile of oil drums.

There was n.o.body there. No attendant.

They thought for a while that he had in some fas.h.i.+on dodged around and hidden in the smoke. But before they could investigate that possibility, one yelled and pointed, ”There he is! The motorboat! There he goes!”They should have heard the motorboat. They could hear it now. And they could see the gasoline dump attendant, standing erect in the boat, steering with his knee, and drawing a bead on them with the little submachine gun. He fired, and the bullets made ugly, hard-footed running sounds in the sand around the men.

The attendant got down out of sight in the launch. The launch picked up its nose, dug its stern into the water and drew a streak of foam across the clear blue water.

There was some shooting, but the men did not stop the launch.

”All right, get the high-test gas in the plane,” the leader said.

By that time, Doc Savage was safely concealed in one of their seaplanes.

THE trick had worked very well, as well as Doc and the attendant had hoped when they rigged it.

There had been two possible holes in the scheme. First, the planes might not beach in the right spot when they came in; but this chance had been negligible, because actually there was only one good spot for beaching the s.h.i.+ps close to the gasoline shack. Doc and the attendant had rolled a few coral rocks on the beach in the edge of the water at other points, to make everywhere else look even less desirable.

Second, they might have left a man with each of the planes. But they hadn't. There had been too much excitement.

Doc had been concealed under the sand. First, he had dug a hole in the sand, then the attendant had put stout brown wrapping paper over him, and sand over that to a depth of a couple of inches, leaving a hole for breathing.

It was perfect camouflage and Doc had been close to the edge of the water, near the planes, and in the path the smoke from the burning fuel oil drums was sure to take.

The attendant had only to draw attention, start the shooting, fire the fuel oil drums, and escape. Under cover of the smoke, Doc simply climbed into one of the planes.

He had only one piece of bad luck.

Major Lowell was not in the plane into which he clambered.

He took a little time to make sure, and then he jumped out of the s.h.i.+p, but had to climb back in again, for the wind s.h.i.+fted and the smoke moved away from the craft, so that it was not safe to make a dash for the other plane.

In a seaplane of this type, one with a deep hull, there was baggage stowage s.p.a.ce under the floor boards, a long compartment which was large enough to hold him.

He pulled up one of the flimsy but strong hatches of aluminum alloy, found the spot loaded with food and boxes that were not labeled, and tried another hatch. There was s.p.a.ce under that one.

He inserted himself in the cavity and closed the hatch.

The radio which he had brought along, a more or less standard walkie-talkie, except that it was very compact, he wedged in beside him. Now was a good time to talk, so he switched it on.He got Johnny Littlejohn, and said, ”I am aboard one of their planes. I will switch on this radio outfit each twenty minutes and leave it on for thirty seconds, so you can get a radio-compa.s.s bearing on the signal.

You can follow us in that fas.h.i.+on.”

”I'll be superamalgamated!”

Johnny said. ”What about Monk and Ham and Renny, in the other plane?”

”Contact them,” Doc said, ”by radio. Tell them what I've just told you-”

”Won't be necessary, Doc,”