"Robeson, Kenneth - Doc Savage 1933 07 - Pirate Of Pacific" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Within ten minutes, Long Island Sound was crawling under the craft. The surface of the Sound was like a faintly pitted silver plate, shimmering in the brilliant moonlight.

The planes spread out widely and flew low. Each Oriental pilot had high-magnification binoculars jammed to his eyes. With the same machine thoroughness which bad stamped their bloody actions at the airport, they searched the Sound surface.

It was not long before they found what they sought - a narrow craft trailing across the Sound at the head of a long wedge of foaming wake.

The planes headed purposefully for this vessel.



Chapter 2

SEA PHANTOM


THE quarry came rapidly closer. More details of the craft were discernible. The half-caste Mongol pilots continued to use their binoculars. They tilted their planes down in steep dives toward the unusual vessel below.

It was a submarine. It resembled a lean-flanked, razorback whale several hundred feet long. Big steel runners extended from bow to stern, sled fashion. Amidships, a sort of collapsible conning tower reared.

The underseas craft floated high. On the bows, a lettered name was readable:

HELLDIVER.

It was this submarine which had been the subject of the radio news commentator's broadcast.

With deadly precision, the four planes roared down at the submersible. The Orientals had discarded their binoculars, and had their eyes pasted to the bomb sights. Yellow hands were poised, muscles drawn wire-hard, on bomb trips.

A naval bombing expert, knowing all the facts, would have sworn the submarine didn't have a chance of escaping. It would be blown out of the water by the bombs.

The Mongol pilots were hot-eyed, snarling - yellow faces no longer inscrutable. They were about to accomplish the purpose of their bloody plot - the death of every one aboard the under-the-polar-ice submarine.

They got a shock.

From a dozen spots, the sub hull spewed smoke as black as drawing ink. Heaving, squirming, the dense smudge spread. It blotted the underseas boat from view, and blanketed the surface of the Sound for hundreds of feet in every direction.

With desperate haste, the Orientals deposited bombs in the center of the smoke mushroom. These explosions drove up treelike columns from the black body of the smoke mass. It was impossible to tell whether the sub had been damaged.

The four planes might have been angry, metallic bees droning over some gigantic. strange, black blossom. as they hovered watchfully. They did not waste more bombs, since the smoke cloud was now half a mile across. In it, the sub was like a needle in a haystack.

Several minutes passed. Suddenly, as one unit, the four planes dived for the western edge of the heavy smoke screen.

Their sharp eyes had detected a long, slender mass moving some feet beneath the surface. This was leaving a creamy wake.

In quick succession, the war planes struck downward at the object under the water. Four bombs dropped. The half-caste Mongols knew their business. Each bomb scored an almost perfect hit.

Water rushed high. The sea heaved and boiled. The concussions tossed the planes about like leaves.

Swinging in a wide circle, the planes came back. The commotion in the water had subsided. The pilots made hissing sounds of delight.

The long, slender mass was no longer to be seen. Oil filmed the surface. Oil such as would come from the ruptured entrails of a submarine.