Nick glanced at the sky. The sun was still shining through wispy cloud but it was darkening in the south. Rain soon. Then he heard it again, the insect buzzing of a plane far off. He saw it. A gnat in the sky far to the west. Must be somewhere near the railroad. He watched the plane. If it came closer, just a bit closer, he would take a chance. Shoot the works. Go for broke.
The guerrilla spokesman grew impatient. Nick knew that his pals were circling to get into the next valley and take him from behind. A lot of them would get killed that way and they knew it. If this crazy big nose could be talked into surrendering it would save a lot of bother and blood…
The plane was closer. Flying low, dipping and rising, following the rugged contour map of Korea. Looking for something? Someone? Nick strained his eyes — it was a light plane of some sort. A scouting plane.
"What say, crazy fool English?" The bandit was whipping himself into a lather now. "You let us go jeepo by God! You sonbitch sullender or we cut neck good! What say, English?"
"Truce over," yelled Nick. He sent a burst at the cliff just over the speaker. Rock dust flew. The man dived back into the hole in the cliff. A moment later he stuck his head out again to scream, "Cruddy sonbitch!" That guy, Nick thought, has been associating with GIs.
He yelled back. "Harabachie you!" His Korean was scanty and bad, but he thought it meant something like up your honorable grandfather's. In a land of ancestor worship it was a deadly insult.
The plane was closer now and its present line of flight would bring it over the valley. Nick sent another spray of lead at the cliff, just to hold them down, then turned to sight on the two jerricans he had so carefully placed beside the hut. The thatch was sodden from the rains, but the underside might be dry enough to catch. There should be enough smoke and flame for the pilot to sec. If he missed the signal and flew on past — well, Nick preferred not to think about that.
He sent a short burst at the jerricans. Gas spurted from holes in the metal but no fire yet. An incendiary or a tracer, damn it! He sent another burst into the cans, a long one this time. Red tracer streaked into the cans and they exploded with a whoosh of flame and smoke up the side of the hut. The relatively dry underside of the thatching caught and a pillar of black smoke began to mount.
Nick Carter swiveled to send another long burst of fire at the cliff. The machine gun heated and jammed. He flung it away and picked up another one.
Behind him Raymond Lee Bennett was still babbling: "I want my little tiger they gave it to me and said to keep it but they never came but the men came and shot it and it broke all those pieces and they were fighting and she wouldn't let me keep my little tiger so he will never come now because I lost the tiger and she is a nice lady but she oughta let me keep my tiger…."
The little plane had spotted the plume of smoke and was banking around to investigate. The engine was running rough, missing now and then. It had a bad cough. Nick Carter followed the incoming glide of the plane with something akin to awe — it couldn't possibly be! Yet it somehow was. That was an Aeronca 65 TL! Twenty-six years old. Held together with paper clips. The Hying Turtles had found him!
The man from AXE so far forgot himself as to stand up and wave. Fire from the cliff face whanged and screeched around him, and he dove for cover again. He sent a lance of lead at the cliff and the firing stopped as they ducked back.
The plane skimmed the ridge just behind Nick. He could make out two men in the tiny cabin. That would be Jimmy Kim and his partner, Pok. Small arms fire rattled from behind the ridge and Nick saw bits of the wing fly off. The guerrillas had gotten around behind that ridge faster than he had thought possible — if it were not for the plane they would have him in enfilade now. As it was the situation was much brighter — the guerrillas would expect the plane to radio for help.
Killmaster whipped around just in time to see them making a sortie from the cliff. They weren't giving up so easily. He nestled the Tommy gun on the rocks and shot down the screaming men like metal ducks in a gallery. He got four and the others turned and ran. Nick did not think they would try again.
The Aeronca had banked around and was coming back down the ridge. The engine sputtered and coughed gouts of black smoke. It was very low, hedge hopping, barely skimming the tops of the trees on the ridge. Nick watched with a mixture of admiration and apprehension. The Flying Turtles were a couple of kooks!
Pok must be flying the jalopy, because Jimmy Kim was leaning far out on his side and blazing away at the trees with a Tommy gun. They were so close that Nick could see the expression of fiendish glee on Jimmy's face. The boy was having a ball. Pok was firing a pistol from his side, shooting with one hand and flying the crate with the other.
As they glided overhead Jimmy Kim looked at Nick and waved the Tommy gun in salutation. He shouted something that was lost in the wind and gunfire and blast of the engine as Pok gunned it for altitude. But Kim was grinning and Nick got the idea — the situation was well in hand.
For about one more minute. He watched the plane bank around and come in for another strafing run — the engine coughed, spurted black smoke, coughed again and quit cold.
The sudden silence had a strange deafening effect. Nick's ears rang with it. There was no gunfire. The cliff was silent and no sound came from the ridge behind him. The only sound in the hush was the keening, the sibilant whistle of air around the little plane as it came gliding in.
They had a chance. A bare chance. Nick leaped out of his cover behind the rocks, a Tommy gun in each hand, and prepared to cover both the cliff and the ridge. It was all he could do. Cover them and wait for the crash.
Pok brought the little craft in over the far end of the valley, beyond the now blazing hut. He was fishtailing in, cutting his air speed, trying to pancake her in. Pok was flying her by the seat of his pants.
She cleared the burning hut and came down in a long flat slide. The undercarriage folded and exploded, matchwood now. The plane lost half a wing to a boulder, turned sideways and kept sliding, turned over once and came upright again and lost the other wing. She plowed a long furrow in the valley floor. She came to rest fifty feet short of the cliff face.
Nick was running toward the plane before it stopped moving. Pok and Jimmy Kim would be sitting ducks for the guerrillas in the cliff opening — if they were still alive. Nick ran zigzag, a Tommy gun in each hand, firing alternate bursts at the cliff. There was no accuracy that way — you had to hold a machine gun down to hit anything with it — but it made for effective spray fire.
There was no return fire. Nick ceased his own fire and with great caution, keeping an eye on the cliff face, took what cover he could find behind a jagged piece of tail section. He was about twenty feet from what was left of the main cabin.
He yelled: "Hey! Kim — Pok! You people all right?" It was, as he admitted later, rather an inane question. But he had a lot on his mind just at the moment.
Slowly, as though rising in an elevator, Jimmy Kim's head appeared in the smashed window of the cabin. His smile was broad. He appeared to be bleeding slightly from a cut on the head.
Jimmy Kim said: "Hi, dad! Nice to see you again. And why shouldn't we be all right? Why should a little plane crash bother us?" He began to climb out the window. "You can put those guns down now," he told Nick. "Your friends have taken off. Running. High tailing it for the high mountains."
Nick dropped one Tommy gun, kept the other. He went toward the plane. "I thought they might," he said. "They're smart enough — they knew you would radio for help."
Jimmy Kim reached down to help his partner from the plane. Pok was tiny even for a Korean, but his grin was as big as Jimmy Kim's. He leaped to the ground. Nick couldn't see a scratch on him.