Trouble was a Red Guard aircraft carrying a squad of troops. Evidently the Red Guards who’d been following us had figured out our destination and radioed it to their headquarters. Unluckily for us, the plateau on which the village was situated was both flat and wide enough for the plane to land easily.
The villagers, who had good reason to hate and fear the Red Guards, hid us from the soldiers. This was no great problem where Papa Baapuh and Ti Nih were concerned. They could move about as freely as the villagers themselves, being indistinguishable from them as far as the soldiers were concerned. In the case of Putnam and myself, however, concealment was more difficult. Our Caucasian features were dead giveaways.
When, shortly after they landed, the Red Guards instituted a house-to-house search, it became obvious that it would be impossible for the villagers to hide Putnam and me for long. I was for grabbing the yaks and beating it out of there. But Putnam had a better idea.
“We’ll steal their plane,” he decided.
“I don’t know the first thing about flying a plane. Do you?” I asked him.
“Sure. I used to fly my own plane all the time years ago. I’ve never flown a military transport like this one, but it shouldn’t be much different.”
“I hope you’re right.”
So, scurrying from hut to hut and managing to avoid the searchers, we made our way to the plane. There were two guards, one on either side of it. Putnam silently garroted one while I clobbered the other with the butt of Papa Baapuh’s shotgun.
We boarded the plane. Putnam went straight to the controls. I started to follow him, but I was delayed by a large Red Guard mechanic who came at me from the tail of the plane with a monkey wrench. While Putnam revved up the motors, I got sucked into a wrestling match with this big galoot.
The monkey wrench glanced off my ear. I slammed the gun-butt into a stomach that felt like a steel barrel. My opponent grunted to show that he was annoyed. He didn’t like being annoyed. He yanked the shotgun out of my hands and flung it from the plane like he was flicking away a used matchstick.
Putnam had all four engines going now and he was feathering them to get them into sync. The sound covered up my scream of anguish as the burly mechanic bounced the wrench off one of my kidneys. I doubled over and then took advantage of the position to sink my teeth into his arm just above the wrist. I ground my teeth like a bulldog and the wrench went clattering to the floor of the plane.
The plane was moving over the snow-covered plateau now, picking up speed. From outside I could hear shouts and then the sound of gunfire. The Red Guards had spotted us and something about the way their bullets pinged off the side of the aircraft told me they resented our making off with it.
However, I had a more pressing problem close at hand. The Red husky was doing push-ups on my chest. His knees were firmly planted on each of my shoulders and his two huge, hairy hands were wringing my neck. Fear had filled my mouth with saliva, but the squeeze he had me in made it difficult to swallow. So, instead, I spit in his eye.
He took this as escalation. He redoubled his efforts to separate my head from my body. It became obvious to me that coexistence was impossible. I could almost feel the beginnings of what might end up a death rattle in my constricted windpipe.
There was only one thing I could do. I did it. I kicked him in the groin as hard as I could.
Just for an instant, his arm muscles unflexed. I took advantage of that instant. I flung my arms sideways and broke his hold on my throat. Moving fast, I managed to scramble out from under him.
The plane lurched as it left the ground. A hail of bullets bid us farewell. The hefty mechanic and I went tumbling over each other as we were carried aloft.
As the craft leveled off, he regained his balance and began moving in on me like a gorilla overacting a love scene for a Tarzan movie. Bravely, I retreated as fast as I could. I backed all the way to the tail. I couldn’t back up any further. There was nothing but an open hatch and empty space behind me now.
The brute grinned a ghastly grin as he saw my predicament. I smiled back weakly-—-but winningly. I meant it to be conciliatory. He didn’t take it that way. A phlegmy Chinese roar rose in his throat and he dived for me. My response was instantaneous.
I dropped through the hatch!
Only I took the precaution of grabbing the edge of it as I fell. Literally dangling by my fingertips, I was gratified to see my opponent propelled through the hatch by his own momentum. He passed right over my head and kept right on going. A split second later he was dropping towards the ground, a hurt look of surprise on his face.
“So long,” I called. I averted my eyes as he hit the ground. I can’t stand messy sights.
Of course my own troubles were far from over. Hanging out of an open hatch from an airplane that’s rapidly picking up speed and altitude isn’t exactly an exercise in survival technique. Particularly when you’re hanging by your fingertips and subzero temperatures are turning the blood in them to ice. It wasn’t easy to pull myself back inside.
It was a matter of raising myself finger-joint by finger-joint. Then I got a wrist over and then an elbow. It took a long time before I finally managed to drag all of me back inside that speeding plane.
I caught my breath, closed the hatch, and caught my breath some more. At last I stopped shaking enough to make my way forward to where Putnam was sitting at the controls of the plane. His greeting to me left something to be desired.
“Where the hell have you been? I could use some help up here, you know. I can’t do everything myself!”
“Sorry. I get airsick during takeoffs.” I didn’t bother elaborating. “How are you doing? Do you really think you can handle this boat?”
“Well, I’ve really never seen controls like this before. And the labels on them are all in Chinese. Do you know anything about radar?”
“A little bit. What do you want to know?”
“See that scope there?” Putnam pointed.
“Yeah.”
“That line keeps coming closer to that green blob each time it goes around. And every time it happens there’s a sound like a blip. Listen.”
I listened.
“Blip!”
“I see what you mean,” I told Putnam.
“What does it mean?”
I studied the radarscope. “It means we’re approaching some kind of solid object. If we were at sea, I’d say we were going towards a submarine or something like that.”
“We’re not at sea,” Putnam reminded me.
“Then maybe it means we’re heading into a mountain,” I mused. I peered through the windshield. “LOOK OUT!” I screamed in sudden terror.
Putnam pulled back on the wheel as hard as he was able. In a split second my entire life insurance planning ran through my mind. The mountain sped towards us at top speed. We virtually flipped over on our tail to climb up its slope, coming so close at times that I could have reached out and pulled snowballs from the drifts. After an eternity, we passed its peak and Putnam leveled off the plane.
“Your nose is bleeding,” he commented. “It must be psychosomatic. Do you often get nosebleeds in tension-producing situations?”
“Your nose is bleeding too,” I informed him. “And it’s not psychosomatic. We’re very high up and we’re running short of oxygen.”
“Well, one of those gismos must increase the oxygen supply.” He waved at the instrument panel. “Turn it on.”
Gasping, I threw a switch at random. There was a grinding sound as the landing gear retracted.
“It’s about time,” Putnam commented. “You should never fly with your landing gear down. It’s dangerous. Now turn on the oxygen.”
I threw another switch and a voice crackled out in Chinese.