Nick Carter - A Korean Tiger

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.

Jimmy Kim laughed. "You hear that, Pok? He thinks we radioed for help."

"So sorry," said Pok. "Radio not work for about month now. No damned parts to fix." His English was on the broken side.

Nick Carter could not repress his laughter. "Well — as long as those bastards didn't know it was broken! Same result." And he went on laughing. It felt good to laugh, now that it was nearly over. "That was some landing," he told them. "I've seen better — but it worked."

Jimmy Kim's teeth flashed. "Like Orville said to Wilbur — any landing you walk away from is a good one. Where's Bennett?" '

Nick jerked his head in the direction of the rocks. "Over there. I've got him tied up."

He could see the puzzlement in Jimmy Kim's eyes as they met his. "I didn't carry out the original plan," Nick explained. "I couldn't — Bennett has lost his mind! He's completely gone. Babbling like a baby."

Kim nodded. "I knew something had gone wrong when I didn't find him among the train casualties. Soon as we heard about the train being attacked Pok and I flew up to Tacjon. We were there when the train came in and I i checked. Checked for you, too."

Nick handed his Tommy gun to Pok. "Keep an eye on that slot in the cliff, just in case."

He and Jimmy Kim started walking toward the rock fortress. "You didn't really expect to find me among the casualties?"

Jimmy shook his head. "No. Not really. I did expect to find Bennett's body. It would have been a good cover, that bandit attack. It's raising all kinds of hell. There will be cops and ROKs and Yanks all over these mountains — and those tiger hunters are in on it, too. They were all drunk when they got into Taejon. Drunk and mean — they told me guerrilla hunting was going to be a lot more fun than tiger hunting. So, if Bennett is alive, it looks like we've still got problems, huh? What you going to do with him, dad?"