“Sure, I know all that,” said Foster. “Patrols sneaking around.”
N’Goni shook his head. “Many Japs. Machine that fly. Gas.”
The two Yanks looked at one another. N’Goni scraped his feet in the sand.
“The Old Man was right,” said Foster. “Those dirty rats do have a field right on this island. Maybe more than one. Sending in supplies and reinforcements at night, trying to build them up.”
He whirled on the native. “Can you show us where?” he demanded.
N’Goni grinned viciously. “Make go bang boom?” he asked.
“You’re darn right we’ll make them go bang boom,” promised Foster.
“Me show,” said the native, apparently satisfied.
He started off up the beach, but they called him back.
“Not yet,” explained Mason. “Go big American village first time. Tell big chief. Many machine that fly come. Bigger bang boom.”
N’Goni’s grin widened. “Me show big American village,” he offered.
“Gee,” said Foster, “that guy knows everything.”
“Mission boy,” N’Goni explained patiently.
“All right,” said Mason. “You show short way. We know long way.”
“Short way,” agreed N’Goni.
Mason turned to Foster, waiting for his decision. Foster wrinkled his brow.
“By rights,” he said, “we both should go. Blow up the ship before we leave.”
“Blow up the ship!” yelled Mason. “Steve, you ain’t in your right mind. That ship’s all right.”
“We can’t allow the Japs to get hold of one,” snapped Foster. “You know that as well as I do. It’s too new a job. Once those monkeys got their claws on one, they’d be making them.”
“One of us could stay and guard it while the other went,” argued Mason. “The Japs would never know it was here. You just can’t blow up a perfectly good ship. Cripes, those bombs might make a bunch of Japs say uncle.”
In the end Mason won. They flipped to see who’d go and the coin turned heads for Foster.
Mason, sitting in the sand, leaned back against a palm and watched the ocean.
For a change, it wasn’t raining and a brilliant tropical moon made the beach almost as light as day.
The Avenger was hidden in a coconut grove, where Foster had taxied it before he left and everything was peaceful. Too peaceful, Mason thought, leaving against the palm, trying to keep his eyes open. Waves charged upon the beach and foamed in silver spray. The wind sang in the palms and back in the jungle a monkey scolded.
Mason dozed, jerked himself awake guiltily. It was his job to watch the plane. He couldn’t sleep.
The monkey was chattering again, down the beach somewhere. A muted chatter that Mason suddenly realized was no monkey chatter at all.
He sat bolt upright and listened intently. A breeze swept the sound away for a moment and then it came back again.
The gunner got to his feet, slid back into the shadows, still listening intently. He was sure he couldn’t be mistaken. There were men down on that beach.
Moving swiftly, but keeping in the shadows, he hurried toward the sounds.
Rounding a rocky point that thrust out into the water, he saw the beach alive with men, small men who scurried about and carried rifles on their back. Off shore stood a ship and beyond it a couple of more ships, riding without lights, like gray ghosts in the moonlight. Boats were coming in through the surf and the men were busy unloading small steel drums.
Lying flat among the rocks, Mason watched eagerly. There was gasoline in those drums, he knew. Gasoline for the few planes the Japs were operating out of their hidden base up in the hills.
And, Lord, what beautiful targets they were, working away in the moonlight. Just about the right range, too.
Common sense tried to reason with him. “You haven’t got a chance,” he said. “You’re just one man against them all.”
“But,” Hank told Common Sense, “think of the fun it’d be. Boy, could I scatter those babies!”
A truck rumbled out of the jungle, backed up to the pile of drums.
Stealthily, Mason crept from the rocks, slipped into the shadows and ran. Back at the plane, he dismounted the gun in the turret, looped his shoulders with belts of ammo and staggered at a bent-kneed gallop down the beach again.
The Japs still were there. The last of the drums were being rolled up on the truck and the little brown men, chattering like apes, were clustered around the machine. The boats had left the shore, were going back to the ship.
Softly, gingerly, Mason swung the gun off his shoulder, rested it on top of a flat rock. Carefully he laid out the ammo belts.
Waiting for a second to catch his breath, he slid behind the gun, trained it carefully. Slowly his finger squeezed the trip and suddenly the gun was jabbering.
Tracers ripped across the sand and tore into the soldiers standing at the tail of the truck. The group seemed to explode into dozens of screaming men. Others did not run, but lay still where the gun had chopped them down.
Coldly, precisely, Mason picked off the running groups. A rifle cracked and a bullet clicked against a rock nearby and went whining into space. Another rifle spat out of the shadows and Mason heard the bullet drone overhead.
The men had disappeared. More rifles were beginning to talk, bullets spatted close. The ammo belt ran clear. Mason jerked up another, slammed it home, pointed the gun at the loaded truck and let drive. He heard the 50 calibres spanging into the drums and suddenly the truck exploded in a gush of blue and yellow flame that paled out the moonlight and lighted beach and jungle with a garish glow.
More men were running now and Mason picked them off. Several had leaped from under the truck when the first bullets drove into the drums, but the sheet of flame had reached out, caught them before they could get away.
The burning gasoline snaked steadily into the sky now, lighting every boulder and tree upon the beach. But the Japs had disappeared.
With the last of his belt, Mason sprayed the beach, then leaped from the rocks and turned to run. But as he wheeled about he almost collided with three charging Japs. With a shout, he heaved the empty gun at the first one. It caught the little yellow man full in the stomach and bowled him over.
The second Jap was bearing down, however, bayonet gleaming.
Snatching free his .45, Mason shot from the hip and brought him down. The third man halted momentarily, lifting his rifle. The pistol barked angrily and the Jap collapsed, clutching his stomach, making choking noises.
Mason ran, ran with all the power that drove his legs, diving for the shadows. And as he reached them, a figure rose from behind a boulder, smashed a rifle butt down upon his head.
“This way,” said N’Goni. “Leave ocean now. Take to hills.”
Foster nodded wearily. “How much farther?” he asked.
“Not so much,” the native said, and Foster suspected he was lying.
“Let’s rest a minute,” the pilot suggested.
N’Goni squatted on the sand and Foster sat down.
“Guns,” N’Goni said calmly.
“What do you mean? Guns?”
“Guns,” insisted the native, sweeping a hand the way they had come.
Foster tried to still the roaring in his head, strained his ears.
But it was several seconds before he heard the far-off chatter of a machine gun and the less frequent popping of rifles.
Walking softly, still straining his ears, he stared back down the beach. The faint chatter of the guns was muffled by a thudding roar and the distant sky was lighted with a sudden puff of brilliance.
“They found Hank!” Foster yelled at N’Goni. “They found him and he blew up the ship.”