Suddenly he found himself wishing he was back in the East Indies running his airline in person instead of being up here in a lonely inlet on the coast of the Japanese island of Hokkaido waiting to pick up two secret agents.
From a single plane flown by himself, he had built his passenger, express, and freight service to three ships operating among the remote islands of the Indies. Then, wanting a change, he had taken a charter flight to Shanghai. From there he had flown for the British government to Vladivostok, only to be talked into flying down the coast of Japan to pick up Powell and Arseniev.
Arseniev he had known in China. He had been flying for Chiang Kai-shek when the OGPU agent had been working with Borodin and Galen.
He liked the Russian, and they had been through the mill together; so he accepted the offer.
Madden glanced shoreward again, tempted to take off. Then with a grunt of disgust he heaved his two-hundred-pound frame out of the pilot’s seat, let go his anchor, and got his rubber boat into the water. “This is asking for it,” he growled to himself, “but I can’t leave while there’s a chance they’re still ashore. If the Japanese found them now, a firing squad would be the best they’d get.”
The moonlight was deceiving, and the rocky shore was dark. Filled with misgiving, he paddled toward a narrow strip of beach. He made the boat fast to a log, and stepped out on the sand. Again he felt the urge to chuck the whole business, to get out while the getting was good. But he walked up the beach, stepping carefully.
It was too quiet, too still. Where were the men? Had they been captured? Had they merely failed to make it? Or were they here, without a light, unable to signal?
Loosening his gun in its holster, he stepped forward. He was rounding a boulder when he saw a shadow move. Instinctively, he crouched.
“Move,” a cool voice said, “and I’ll shoot.”
Turk knew when to stand still and when to move. Now he stood still. A dozen men materialized from the surrounding shadows and closed in. Swiftly, they took his gun and shoved him up the trail between them.
“Well,” he told himself, “this is it.” The Japanese had no compunctions about their treatment of foreigners under any circumstances, and spies—well, death would be a break.
Ahead of him was a low shack, barely discernible against a background of rocky cliffs. A voice challenged, and one of the Japanese replied, then a door opened, and they were revealed in a stream of light. Shoved rudely forward by his captors, Turk Madden almost fell through the door.
Two men were lying on the floor, bound hand and foot. One was a slender, broad-shouldered man with the face of a poet. The other was short, powerful, his face brick-red, his eyes frosty blue. The latter grinned.
“Sorry, old man,” he said, “we couldn’t make it. These blighters had us before we reached the cove.”
Madden turned around, squinting his eyes against the glare. There were six Japanese in the room, aside from one with the attitude of an officer who sat at a table studying a chart. There was a coal oil light on the table beside him. None of the men were uniformed, or showed any distinguishing marks. All were armed with automatics and rifles. One carried a light machine gun. Their behavior, however, was definitely military.
The officer looked at Turk, his eyes narrow and heavy-lidded. “An American?” The Japanese smiled. “You sound like one. I am Colonel Kito Matasuro. I once lived in California.”
“That makes us pals,” Madden assured him, grinning. “I was a deckhand once on a San Pedro tugboat.”
“But now I am a soldier and you are a spy,” Matasuro murmured. “It is most unfortunate—most sad—but you must be shot.”
He indicated Arseniev. “He will mean promotion for me. We have wanted him for some time. But like a shadow, he comes and goes. Now we have him. We catch three—we eliminate three.”
Turk was acutely conscious of the flat hard butt of his .380 Colt automatic pressing against his stomach. It was inside his coat and shirt, but in his present predicament it might as well have been on the moon.
Despite the harsh realization that his time was only a matter of minutes at best, Turk found himself puzzling over the situation. Why were these men, obviously military, on this stretch of lonely coast in civilian clothes? Why were they here at all? Only a short time before it had been reported devoid of human life, but now there were signs of activity all about him.
Matasuro turned and rapped out orders. “Sorry,” he said, getting to his feet, “I would like to have talked to you of California. But duty calls—elsewhere.”
With three of the men, he went out. From somewhere a motor roared into life, then another, and still another. A plane took off, and then the others followed. They sounded like pursuit jobs.
For a few minutes they stood in silence. Then Madden said, without looking around, “Fyodor, I’m taking a chance at the first break.”
“Sure,” the Russian said. “We’re with you.”
One of the Japanese soldiers stepped forward, lifting his rifle threateningly. He spoke angrily, in Japanese.
The door opened suddenly, and another Japanese came in. He was slim and wiry, his voice harsh. He merely glanced at the prisoners, then snapped orders at the three guards. Hurriedly, they cut the ropes that bound the ankles of the two Intelligence men, and jerked them to their feet. The officer and two soldiers walked out, and the guard behind shoved the prisoners into line and pointed to the door. Madden glanced quickly at Arseniev as the last of the men stepped out, leaving only the guard. “The table!” he snapped. Then he kicked the door shut with his foot, and lunging forward, struck the upright bar with his head. It fell neatly into the wide brackets.
Instantly, Arseniev kicked the table over and the light crashed and went out. Powell had wheeled and kicked the remaining guard viciously in the stomach. The man gasped, and fell forward, and the Britisher kicked him again, on the chin.
Turk, whose hands had not been tied, spun Arseniev around and stripped off the ropes that bound his wrists, then, as the Russian sprang to get the rifle, he did the same for Powell.
“Come on!” he hissed sharply, “we’re going out of here.”
Turk jerked the bar out of place and threw the door wide open. Outside, clear in the moonlight, stood the three Japanese, hesitating to shoot for fear of killing their comrade. Arseniev threw the rifle to his shoulder and fired, and they plunged outside. The officer had gone down, drilled through the face by the Russian’s shot, but the other two jerked their rifles up, too late. Madden’s automatic barked. Once…twice…One was down, the other fled, firing into the night.
“Get their guns, and let’s go,” Turk said. “My plane may still be okay.”
Running, the three men got to the beach and shoved off in the rubber boat. The amphibian floated idly on the still water where he had left it, and they scrambled aboard.
Turk almost fell into the pilot’s seat while Powell got the boat aboard, and the Russian heaved in the anchor.
The twin motors roared into life, and in a minute the ship was in the air. Turk eased back on the stick and began reaching for altitude. Glancing back they could see the flat space of the landing field.
“How many planes took off?” Turk asked. “Did you hear?”
“Twelve,” Arseniev said. He looked grave. “Where do they go? That is what I am thinking.”
“It has to be Siberia,” Turk said, at last. “If to China, why the disguise? If to my country, they would be bombers. Pursuit ships cannot reach Alaska from here.”
“If they go to make war,” Powell said, “they wouldn’t be in mufti. There’s more in this than meets the eye.”
“Maybe,” Turk suggested, “a secret base in Siberia from which they could strike farther west and south?”
Arseniev nodded. “Perhaps. And how many have gone before these? Maybe there are many. In the wilds of the taiga there are many places where hundreds of planes could be based.”
“What’s the taiga?” Powell asked.
“The forest that extends from the Urals to the Sea of Okhotsk, about twenty-five hundred miles from west to east, about seven or eight hundred north and south. I’ve been through part of it,” Turk said; “looks dark and gloomy, but it’s full of life. Miles and miles of virgin timber, lots of deer, bear, elk and tiger in there.”
Turk leveled off at ten thousand feet, and laid a course for Vladivostok. His eyes roved over the instrument board, and he told himself again how lucky he was to have this ship. It was an experimental job, an improvement on the OA-9. No bigger, but much faster, with greater range, and capable of climbing to much greater heights. Also, it was armed like a fighting ship.