The Magic Labyrinth (24 page)

Sam Clemens turned around. Something swift and silvery from above struck the base of the pilothouse. The explosion was deafening; the deck shook. Another roar from above. The pilothouse vibrated. Smoke shrouded the windows on all sides for several seconds. Then the wind seized it and scattered it.

“What the hell!” Sam said over and over.

“It’s from up there,” Detweiller said. He released a control stick just long enough to point up and to his right.

“Get her away!” Sam yelled. “Downstream!”

The pilot had already applied full power. A cool one, that Detweiller.

Again, another flash of silver. Dozens of them. More explosions. A battery of rockets on the starboard disappeared in a thunder of fire and smoke. A direct hit from
whoever
was launching those missiles from
wherever.

“Zigzag her!” Sam shouted.

There were three more direct hits. Other missiles plunged into the water on both sides and aft.

“Our radar’s gone,” Byron said. He ordered the rocket crews to fire back, using visual calculations.

“But where are they?” Sam said.

“Up on the cliff!” Byron and Detweiller said at the same time.

“Thee!” Joe said, pointing out of the stern port.

While Byron was asking for reports on the damage and casualties, Sam looked along the titanthrop’s massive finger. About five hundred feet up, where there had been an unbroken wall of rock, there was now an opening. An oblong, it was thirty feet long and seven feet high. Tiny faces looked out from behind launchers, and the sun glinted on the silver of missiles and tubes.

“Jumping Jesus H. Christ!”

John’s men must have found a cave up on the face of the mountain, and they’d carried rockets and launchers to it. A shield of some sort, probably papier-mâché simulating a patch of lichen, had been placed over the opening. While his rocketeers waited inside it, John had fled up the strait.

“Suckered!” Sam said, and he groaned.

A minute passed as the boat churned downRiver. Then, making him jump though he knew they were coming, about twelve large missiles sped from the opening, the interior of the cave lit up for a second by flames.

“Hard aport!” Sam yelled.

Only one of the rockets hit. A steam machine gun disappeared in a cloud, pieces of bodies and metal flying out from it. When the smoke cleared, there was a large hole where the platform, gun, and three men and two women had been.

For a moment, Sam was numbed throughout, unable to move or to think anything except: War is not my element. War is no rational man’s element. I should have faced reality and given Byron the command. But no, my pride, my pride. John was wily, wily indeed, and he also had the great Dane, Tordenskjöld, as adviser.

Vaguely, he became aware that the boat was heading toward the bank. Byron’s voice, as if from a long distance, was saying, “Should I keep her on course, Captain?”

“Tham, Tham,” Joe rumbled behind him. “Chethuth Chritht, ve’re going to run into the bank!”

Sam forced himself to move, to speak.

“We won’t stay on course. Head her downRiver and get back in the middle.”

There were bodies on the main deck. Youngblood, Czerny, and de Groot. And there was the upper part of the beautiful Anne Mathy, the former Hollywood star. She looked like a china doll which some sick child had mutilated.

He had seen corpses and blood before, and he wasn’t any youngster playing Confederate soldier. There was no Wild West to run away to, leaving the Civil War to those with a taste for it. He couldn’t desert now.

From fear he went to anger. The cup of bourbon that Joe—good old Joe!—handed him fueled his wrath. Damn John and his sneaky tricks! He’d send the man to hell, go with him if it was necessary.

He spoke to Byron. “Do you think we could blast those bastards out of that cave?”

The exec took a long look. “I think so. Of course, if their missile supply is exhausted, there’s no use wasting ours on them.”

“I don’t see any in the tubes,” Sam said. “But they might be keeping them out of sight, hoping we’ll come back to attack. Let’s go back and make sure. I don’t want those hyenas laughing at us.”

Byron raised his eyebrows. Evidently he thought it was foolish to risk more hits. He said, “Yes, sir,” and went back to the intercom. Sam told Detweiller what he wanted. And while the
Not For Hire
turned again, the rocket crews readied for their mission.

Byron gave his report in a flat cool voice. Twenty dead. Thirty-two badly wounded. Eleven of the wounded could be patched up and returned to duty. One steam machine gun, one rocket battery, and one cannon were destroyed. The rockets and the cannon shells had blown up also, doing more damage than the missiles themselves. There were two large holes in the flight deck, and the cabins in the lowest tier of the pilothouse had been blown out. Enough of the structure of the base remained to ensure stability. This couldn’t be guaranteed if another rocket hit the structure. Their firepower was reduced, but the boat’s performance was not affected.

Worse of all, the radar antennas had been destroyed.

A lookout told Sam that new rockets were being put into the tubes by the men in the cave.

“Byron, start firing when I give the word!” Sam said.

The exec relayed the order to sight in on the opening. The boat was now eight hundred yards from the base of the cliff. Sam told Detweiller to spin it, presenting its starboard side. He should then let the current carry it away until the starboard cannon batteries had fired. These were one 88-millimeter cannon, much more accurate than the rockets, and the compressed air cannon.

At Sam’s relayed order, the 88-millimeter belched fire, smoke, and thunder, and the other whooshed. One shell struck just above the opening; the other struck just below. No second round was necessary. The rockets in the cave must have been set off by the lower explosion. They went up in a cloud from which spewed fragments that could have been bodies.

When the smoke cleared, only some twisted metal could be seen.

“I think we can take it for granted they’re wiped out,” Sam said. He felt gratified. The enemy were not human beings. They were things that could kill him and had to be killed before they could do so.

“Take her back to the center about a quarter-mile from the pass,” Sam said. “Byron, order the helicopter brought up.”

“King John is using his, too,” Byron said. He pointed at the opening. Sam saw it, hanging about two thousand feet up, a tiny machine framed in the dark gate of the strait.

“I don’t want John to see what we’re doing,” he said. “Tell Petroski to get rid of it.”

Sam called in de Marbot. The instructions took two minutes. De Marbot saluted and went off to carry out the plan.

Petroski, the copter pilot, warmed up the motor, and took off with his two machine-gunners. The fuselage was fitted with ten small heat-seeking missiles, some of which, it was hoped, would down the enemy machine while others would strike the
Rex
.

Sam watched it as it climbed slowly, burdened with its deadly load. It took a while to climb up above the altitude of the craft in the mouth of the pass. Sam asked the Frenchman how he was coming. De Marbot, in the stern, replied that both launches were almost filled with rockets. He could leave in a few minutes.

“I’ll give the word when the coast is clear,” Sam said.

Petroski’s machine finally quit climbing. The other copter was still in its original position. When its pilot saw the big all-white chopper moving to get above it, he spun his machine around and fled.

The radar operator, now posted as lookout, said, “Enemy aircraft is moving at an estimated eighty-five miles per hour.”

“Then it’s faster than ours,” Sam said. “It’s not carrying nearly as much weight. Byron, tell de Marbot he can go ahead.”

The huge hatch had been open for some time. The larger of the launches,
Post No Bills,
slid out of the water-filled compartment, kicking up a white wake. It turned and headed toward the shore. Close behind it came the
After You, Gascon
. Both were loaded with rockets, dismantled launching apparatus, and marines.

Petroski’s voice came from the set. “The enemy has gone around the bend. I’m going up another two thousand feet before I go around.”

While Sam waited for another report, he watched the launches. Their noses were against the low bank now, and men were jumping out of them into the water. They quickly waded ashore and began off-loading the weapons and equipment. Each man would then carry a forty-pound missile or part of a disassembled launcher.

“John must have sent men up first with tackles and ropes,” Sam said. “Then he must have winched those heavy rockets from the deck of the
Rex.
It would’ve been at night, of course, so the Virolanders wouldn’t see them. It must’ve been a hell of a job. Too bad we don’t have time to place heavy rockets. But those light rockets can do plenty of damage if they hit the right places on the
Rex.
”

He rubbed his hands and blew out a cloud of smoke from his cigar.

“There’s nothing like turning the tables on old John. Using his own trap to trap him.”

“If we have time,” Byron said. “What if the
Rex
comes barreling out of the strait before our weapons are situated?”

“That could happen, but it ain’t likely,” Sam said, frowning. “Once John reenters the pass, he can only go straight ahead. There isn’t room to turn around, even if he spins on one wheel. For all he knows, we might be waiting for him, just outside the exit, out of radar sight, and out of sonar detection, too. We could blast his ass off as he comes around.”

“Maybe he could back up,” Joe said.

“With two cannon and fifty rockets aiming at the pilothouse and four torpedoes at the hull?”

Sam snorted.

“Anyway, I’d like to see you trying to run that boat in reverse in that current with only thirty feet to spare on each side. Detweiller couldn’t do it. Even
I
couldn’t do it!”

They waited. Sam watched the long line of marines, each man loaded with a silvery cylinder or a piece of equipment. Presently, de Marbot reported by walkie-talkie.

“I’ve found the path.”

“I see you waving your arm,” Sam said. “It should take you about an hour to get to the cave. It’s not so high up but the path must be a long one.”

“We’ll go as fast as possible,” the Frenchman said. “But we can’t go too fast if the trail is narrow.”

“I trust your judgment.”

“Petroski’s speaking again,” the operator said. Sam could hear the pilot before he got to the radio.

“We’ve dropped to the surface,” Petroski said. “I decided to come in at the height of the control room. They’ll pick us up on the radar as soon as we get around the last bend. But I’m counting on shaking them up, spoiling their aim. Six rockets for the pilothouse, six for the chopper, whether it’s in the air or the flight deck.”

Petroski sounded happy. He was a wild Pole who had flown for the RAF against Hitler. After the war, he had refused to live in communist Poland and so had emigrated to Canada and earned his living first as a bush pilot and later as a police copter pilot.

“Hot damn!” Petroski bellowed. “The boat’s just outside the entrance! Its nose is pointed straight at me. Only a quarter-mile to go! Wish me luck!”

The roar of motor and vanes was heavy, but his excited voice rode above that.

“Fire six!” Two seconds. Then, “Dead on! Missed the control room but blew the smokestacks all to hell! Can’t see through the smoke! Pulling up now! Flak all over the place! Can’t see through the smoke! Oh, oh! There’s the chopper, on the flight deck! I’ll…”

The radio operator looked up at Sam.

“Sorry, Captain. It’s dead.”

Sam ground the end of his cigar to shreds on the set and cast it on the deck.

“A rocket must’ve got him.”

“Probably.”

The operator’s eyes were moist. Petroski had been his good friend for ten years.

“We don’t know if he got John’s chopper or not,” Sam said. He wiped his eyes with his knuckles. “Shit, I feel like ramming right on it, making him pay…”

Byron raised his eyebrows again at this unprofessional attitude.

“Yeah, I know,” Sam said. “We’d fall into his trap. Forget it. And I know what else you’re thinking. It would have been better to have retained our observation facilities, to put it in cold military language. Now John can keep an eye on us with his chopper, if Petroski didn’t destroy it.”

“We took a chance, and perhaps it paid off,” Byron said. “Perhaps both the copter and the control room were hit. Petroski wouldn’t have had enough time to make an accurate assessment.”

Sam strode back and forth some more, puffing so hard the air-conditioning couldn’t keep up with the clouds. Finally, he stopped, thrust his cigar out as if he was spearing an idea. Which, in a sense, he was.

“John isn’t going to come back unless he knows where we are. So, he’ll either scout with his chopper or a launch. In either case, we’ll not fire on it. Byron, tell de Marbot to hold his fire if either leaves the strait. And to lie low.

“Detweiller, take her to a grailstone near the temple. We’ll dock there and do some repairing.”

“How come, Tham?”

“How come? So John’s spies will see us there. Then, if he’s going to attack, he’ll know he won’t be ambushed. In fact, he might think the rockets from the cliff did us so much damage we’re badly hurt. And he’ll know he can get through the strait before we could even get near him. Then it’ll be the last deal, with us holding a royal flush. I hope.”

“But, Tham,” Joe said, “vhat if Petrothki did blow up the control room? And Bad Chohn vath killed? Maybe they ain’t in no pothithyon to fight.”

“I don’t see anybody under a white flag and offering to surrender. We’ll just retreat and hope that John will come out to do battle. In the meantime, we’ll do a little scouting of our own. Byron, send the
Gascon
out. Tell Plunkett to go through the strait at top speed, take a quick look, and get the hell back here.”

“May I offer a suggestion?” Byron said. “The
Gascon
has torpedoes.”