Chapter 7
Terror and Death
"No luck." The pilot sounded disgusted. "Either the radios aren't working, or everyone's abandoned the radio rooms."
He circled outwards from the melting ships, but there were no other craft in sight.
"I don't spot any enemy vessels," Mann said. "Course, our under-wing bombs were removed to install extra fuel tanks, so I don't have any big artillery to use against anybody anyway."
"Buzz lower," Doc Savage directed, "so we can get a better look."
"Are you crazy!" Mann blustered. "One, this is government property you're riding in, and I'm responsible for it - I'm not letting it melt like those tin cans. Two, I'm no coward, but I don't have any intention of committing suicide!"
"Look," Doc said calmly, "the sun is still red, but nothing's happening to this plane. Only the ships are melting. We should be safe. Drop down a bit. At the first sign of trouble, pull up."
Doc knew how to use his voice like a master debater, and he could be highly persuasive. The pilot grunted, then turned the diver bomber's nose downward. The Helldiver descended in a slow, controlled spiral with the cluster of doomed ships at its center.
"We're okay so far," Mann said, relief evident in his voice.
The man of bronze kept the binoculars glued to his eyes. Suddenly, an explosion bloomed on the deck of one of the troop ships.
"What was that?" Mann asked.
"A deck gun exploded," Doc explained. "Someone tried to shoot at us."
"What! Are they crazy? We're not the enemy!"
"It's likely the melting has deteriorated the gun to such a point that it exploded when someone tried to fire it," the bronze man surmised. "Perhaps they would shoot at any stranger because the horror of the situation has driven them mad."
Indeed, the sight Doc surveyed was pure horror. Men writhing and screaming in agony. Some rolled on the deck in obvious pain or slapped at their bodies. Others leaped overboard, only to flounder in the water briefly before sinking from sight.
For the people on board were clearly suffering the effects of whatever terror was melting the ships. Just as particles of the metal comprising the craft were dissolving and melting to roll toward the surging waters below, the human beings trapped by this bizarre attack were flaking to pieces, crumpling to the rapidly deteriorating deck and quickly crumbling to puddles of ash.
Doc could not hear their screams, but he could clearly see their stretched and twisted expressions.
"My God!" Captain Mann cried. "This is . . . too much . . . too hellish . . ."
"Keep an eye on the plane," Doc warned, trying to distract the pilot from the terrors below. "Make sure we don't start melting as well."
"Yes," Mann choked out. "Yes, you're right."
The Helldiver continued to circle, leaving Doc and the pilot helpless witnesses to the terrible deaths of the troops who had survived the war only to be utterly destroyed so close to home. There were few remains left afloat when Captain Mann turned the plane away, its decreasing fuel supply requiring them to head toward their original destination.
On the way, they passed three ships speeding to the disaster area in response to a brief Mayday that one of the radiomen had gotten off before succumbing to the melting horror.
After landing, there was some commotion with the ground crew as Doc and Captain Mann clambered down from the cockpit, but the two flyers were quickly whisked away to the officer in charge. Doc and Captain Mann made their reports to the officer, who assured both men that he would send the file to the heads of the War Department immediately. He then summoned a driver, who delivered Doc Savage to his headquarters.
In his penthouse high atop one of Manhattan's tallest buildings, the man of bronze moved quickly and determinedly about his business. He rapidly reviewed the films Long Tom had retrieved from the cameras trained on the building's exits. He studied the faces of the gang members - including that of Black Cat Jackson - just long enough to memorize the features of each.
Next he checked the recording gadget that captured any messages called into the office phone by his associates or any other callers. Nothing there.
He made calls to the residences of Monk and Ham but received no answers.
Then he flashed a dull colored light upon one of the office windows. A fluorescent writing sprang into visibility where only clear glass had been apparent just a moment before. Doc recognized Monk's scrawl. The chemist had used a stick devised by Doc to write a message on the window. The writing turned visible only under the rays of ultraviolet light, which were emitted by the small torch the bronze man had shone onto the glass.
Monk's message gave the address he had gotten from the cab company.
Doc next checked a small cabinet hanging on a wall. Inside were several keys, each set suspended by a numbered peg. The bronze man noted which set was missing, then plucked a set from another peg and dropped it into a coat pocket.
He brought a small case from another room before dashing out the door of the penthouse headquarters.
*
While Doc and Captain Mann had been winging their way from the site of the melting Navy ships, Monk and Ham, still trapped in the gang's basement, had been squirming against their bonds. To no avail.
Both ceased their efforts upon hearing a different set of steps ringing on the floorboards overhead. Dim morning light filtered in through the grimy windows, and the two adventurers turned their gazes toward one another, each offering a question in his expression. When they heard the new voice from upstairs - muffled by the woodwork, but still recognizable as a woman's voice - those questions dissolved into knowing looks.
More steps above, then the door at the top of the basement stairs opened. "Here's what I called you about," Gravel Voice said.
Black Cat Jackson appeared beside him in the doorway. She followed him down the steps and stared down at the two prisoners.
"I knew you boys were trouble the first time I saw you," she said. She was more casually dressed than yesterday - a sweater and slacks over low-heeled shoes - but she was still gorgeous. Ham, trained in the courtroom to read voices and expressions, detected no surprise or anxiety from this woman. In fact, she eyed Monk and Ham much as someone might eye a piece of furniture - which chair looked more comfortable to sit in?
"She's a cool one," Ham thought.
"We caught 'em last night snooping outside," Gravel Voice explained. "Smalley wanted to kill 'em right off, but I figured we better clue you in first. Especially since you've had more contact with the Blind Man lately."
"Shut up!" For a moment Ham thought Black Cat would strike Gravel Voice, and clearly the thug thought the same, for he quickly stepped back.
"Did you talk this way in front of them all night?" Black Cat demanded.
"No," Gravel Voice answered, recovering from his brief shake up. "No, they been down here all night. No one's said anything to 'em. We waited for you. After all, you brought 'em into this."
"Only after consulting . . . the boss," she replied. "We needed to know if Doc Savage was already involved."
"Looks like he ain't - he wouldn't be sending out these two stumble bums if he were around."
"And steps are being taken to keep him away," Black Cat said. "We know he's in Norfolk. He'll stay there."
"So the bronze guy is out of it," Gravel Voice noted. "We can go ahead and silence these two." Ham got a cold feeling in his gut as the thug turned an evil leer in the direction of the smartly dressed lawyer and the hairy chemist.
"Are you crazy?" Black Cat asked. "Doc Savage is bad enough on a normal day. But if his two boys show up dead, you might as well put a gun to your own head. Nothing would stop him from getting to us then. And if the . . . the boss found that out, he might kill you before Doc Savage did."
"So what the hell do we do with 'em?"
"Keep them handy," the woman replied. "If for some reason Doc Savage returns to the city, we'll use them to keep him at bay. They'll be hostages."
Gravel Voice gave Black Cat a puzzled look, then turned his sour puss toward the prisoners. He looked doubtful.
"Who did the boss put in charge?" Black Cat asked.
Gravel Voice was slow to answer. "You."
"All right, then."
She turned, and Gravel Voice led the way back up the stairs. At the top, Black Cat paused to look down at Monk and Ham, bound hand and foot, before turning away and slamming the door.
*
Doc Savage, like Monk, had recognized the address belonging to the Black Ship. He knew the dive's reputation as a hangout for low lifes. He had prepared appropriately.
He had selected an older model car from his underground garage. It was dented and dirty, but looks were deceiving. The metal beast could burn down the highway better than some police patrol cars.
The small case he brought along contained a makeup kit and a change of clothes, similar to what Monk had prepared the previous day. When Doc drove his seeming jalopy along the street leading to the Black Ship, no one glancing inside the car would have recognized the man of bronze at the wheel.
Actually, there were few people on the street to even notice the car and its driver. This neighborhood witnessed more nocturnal activity than daylight action.
The disguised bronze man pulled to the curb close to the alley mouth that led to the Black Ship's entrance. Dropping to the pavement, Doc had assumed a posture and a shuffling gait that - along with his shabby clothes and made up features - transformed him completely beyond recognition.
He rounded the nose of the car and approached the doorway to the tavern, one hand tucked into a coat pocket. He began to sway from side to side and muttered to himself. He stumbled into the establishment.
Although daylight blazed outdoors, it was dim within. The Black Ship was well named - as if the quality of light inside its walls remained constant, no matter what occurred outside its world. The place was nearly deserted - only half a dozen men sat at tables or stood by the bar, tended by a surly-looking fellow who apparently needed a new blade in his safety razor.
The bronze man continued his swaying shuffle while he kept up his low-toned muttering, moving from table to table. He wavered over each tabletop, seeming on the verge of taking seat, before trundling to the next table. When he approached a place where someone sat and started his odd behavior, he was roughly shooed away and loudly abused.
Having stumbled past all the tables, the mutter man of bronze slid along the bar. Finally, the bartender slapped his rag into the dented metal sink and shouted, "Buy a drink and siddown and shut up or get the hell oudda here ya damn tumblebug!"
Doc Savage shuffled a weaving track toward the door and made his way outside, one hand remaining in his pocket all the while. He swayed from one side of the alley to the other, then stopped near the mouth of the alley.
A glowing patch appeared on the wall of chipped brick. Doc's hand moved within the coat pocket, and the glow resolved into the familiar fluorescent scrawl of Monk Mayfair. The chemist had scribbled a message on the wall while he stood watching the thugs he had followed last night. The writing was revealed by the flashlight-sized ultraviolet projector Doc carried in his coat pocket, which offered a hole through which he beamed the light. Doc's wanderings through the Black Ship had merely been his effort to find such a note or other clue left inside the tavern.
Monk's note read like this:
M & H FOLLOW 3 FROM GANG.
He had also noted the time.
This message let Doc know that nothing had befallen his associates up to this point of their investigation. Tracking them down from here on might be problematic, since the bronze man didn't know to what location Monk and Ham had followed the gang members.
Doc returned to his car, where he turned over the engine and then switched on a dial on the dash. Harsh static erupted from a small speaker. Doc adjusted a second dial, tuning into a specific frequency. In a moment, a crisp, bell-like tone rang from the set. It was followed by another and repeated at regular intervals. The man of bronze dropped the car into gear and whirled away down the block.
The bell tone was carried by a certain frequency emanating from a transmitter hooked to the car used by Monk and Ham. When Ham took the flash light from the glove box of their car, he had flipped a switch that activated the transmitting set. Because each of Doc's vehicles was tuned to a separate frequency, Doc knew which frequency to search for by checking which keys were missing from the cabinet at his headquarters.
Triangulating against echoing broadcasts from fixed receivers and transmitters maintained by certain agents Doc kept on his payroll, the bronze man steadily bore down on the source of the bell tones - the car taken from the garage by Monk and Ham.
He soon cruised down the residential street along which the chemist and the lawyer had scurried last night. Doc recognized a parked sedan as one of the cars from the films Long Tom had developed. He assumed the house before which it was parked was a location used by at least one of the gang members.
Doc continued to the end of the block, where he spotted the car abandoned by Monk and Ham, still parked where they had left it. The bronze man drove on. His two associates might be fine, simply keeping a lookout on the gang's activities, but maybe not - and their lack of reporting in suggested to Doc that the two were in trouble. And if they were in trouble, someone would likely have found their car and kept a watch on it.
A few blocks away, Doc pulled into an alley providing access to garages at the back of a group of residential lots. He parked close against a row of tall shrubs and stepped from the car. He picked up a nearly empty wine bottle from the gutter and began performing his drunk act again. He muttered and shuffled along, slowly heading back toward the corner at which Monk and Ham had left their vehicle.
*
While Doc Savage was leaving his vehicle in an alley, Black Cat Jackson parked in front of the house inhabited by Gravel Voice and the rest of the gang. She crossed the porch and entered, then stepped into the room that Monk and Ham had spied upon the previous evening.
Four men sat at the table drinking coffee from chipped mugs. One read a newspaper, one dealt a deck of cards in a game of solitaire, another flipped through the pages of a pulp paper magazine, and the fourth simply stared into his coffee as if waiting for something to surface there. Gravel Voice came in from the other room.
He moved his palms along the sides of his head to press his hair into place, then dry-washed his hands. "What's up?" he asked.
Black Cat jerked her head. "Bring your two guests upstairs."
All the men at the table looked up. Gravel Voice squinted. "Whuffo?" he questioned.
A light blazed in the woman's eyes. After a moment, she answered, "I've contacted the Blind Man. We're moving these two."
Gravel Voice made a chewing motion, then gestured with his thumb. Three of the men stood from the table, leaving the magazine reader. A few minutes later, they dragged Monk and Ham, still bound and gagged, into the room. The hairy chemist and the slim attorney turned acid-laced looks toward the beautiful dark woman standing before them.
Just as Black Cat opened her mouth to speak, an explosion roared outside. The house shuddered and the windows rattled in their frames. Both Monk and Ham nearly fell, their many hours of bondage sapping their ability to weather a sudden lurch.
Great surprise appeared on Black Cat's face. "What the hell was that?"
Gravel Voice clapped his hands sharply. "Haw! You said Doc Savage was such a bloodhound, and there was a chance he might track down these two bozos. So Smalley found their car and rigged a bomb to it in case their boss checked it out. You just heard that bomb going off!
"Doc Savage is dead!"
Written By:
Duane Spurlock
based on notes by:
Kenneth Robeson
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