17
(You can read the previous chapter HERE.)
The jet car raced through the dark tunnel beneath the mountain. The Shadow drove grimly, his fiery eyes staring ahead into the black. At last he saw the faint light of the cave behind the buildings of the rocket base. He slowed the jet car and glided into the dock at the end of the single rail. He leaped out of the car.
The cave was silent and deserted. Nothing moved.
They eyes of The Shadow blazed as he searched for a sign of life.
Then he smelled the odor—the smell of gunpowder! There had been shooting in the cave. The Shadow glided across the stone floor toward the larger cavern behind the office of the CYPHER Commandant. Then he saw the body lying on the stone. The Avenger bent and turned the body over. It was Dr. Max Ernest! The Research Director had been shot twice in the head. Ernest was dead. There was the pistol in his hand. The Shadow felt it and found it still hot from being fired.
His eyes blazed up. Then he heard the faint voice.
“… Chief …”
The Shadow floated toward the sound. It came from a dark shadow near the wall of the cave just where it opened into the larger cavern. The Shadow reached the spot and found Harry Vincent propped up against the wall with the CYPHER sub-machinegun in his hand. The agent grinned at The Shadow.
“I’m okay, Chief. I got one of them. The one in the wheelchair fooled me. He had a gun in the chair and he got me.”
“Where are you hit?” The Shadow demanded.
“Right side and shoulder. Not good, but not bad. The bleeding’s stopping, I’ll be all right. But I’ve lost some blood. Too weak to move. I… .”
“Save your strength Harry.”
Deftly The Shadow poured some special medicine onto the two wounds and stanched the flow of blood. With instant plastic bandages he covered the wounds.
“You will be all right for a few hours. Do not move! The bullets must be removed but now I must find Bryan. I will return soon, Harry!”
Harry nodded weakly. “I’ll be fine, Chief. Bryan went out a different door from the cavern.
Over there next to that big oil drum.”
The Shadow nodded. He left Harry seated against the wall of the dark cavern smoking a cigarette with his sub-machinegun in his lap ready for any emergency. The dark Avenger moved swiftly across the silent cavern to the oil drum. He saw the outline of the secret door, and focused his powers on the electronic circuit that controlled the door. The door slid open. The Shadow entered a wide and dark corridor, wider than a normal passage and less lighted. He realized that this was some kind of freight passage—probably a passage for bringing materials over from the Federal Cybernetics plant on the other side of the mountain to the launch site. Such a passage would be less traveled, and Bryan had undoubtedly picked it for that reason, and for the convenience of his wheelchair.
There was no sound and no one appeared as The Shadow moved quickly along the freight corridor. He reached a double door and heard the sound of breathing on the other side. Silently he opened the door a crack and his fiery eyes studied the scene on the other side of the door. Two CYPHER soldiers stood on guard with their weapons slung on their shoulders. Beyond them The Shadow saw the interior of a storage warehouse piled with what he knew to be cylinders of rocket fuel and other equipment for the giant rocket reaching the end of its countdown out on the launching pad. The Shadow slipped through the double doors and moved on the two CYPHER men. They heard him at the last instant and turned. They clawed for the weapons slung over the shoulders.
They were too late.
The Shadow was on them in a single bound. His steel fingers closed on their throats. He held one soldier in each powerful hand and squeezed with his grip of steel. The two soldiers struggled for a frantic moment like fish at the end of a hook. Their eyes bulged with pain and terror. Then they went limp and The Shadow let them drop like sacks of grain to the concrete floor of the storage warehouse. He bent and picked up one of the sub-machineguns, and stood up to study the interior of the silent warehouse. Bryan must have had some reason for coming into the warehouse. The Shadow saw a wide freight door at the far end of the building. To the left there was another wide double freight door. To the right there was a smaller door. Sub-machinegun in hand, the dark Avenger crossed to the smaller door. He opened it silently and went through.
He stood in a small chamber with two doors in it in addition to the door he had come through.
The Shadow turned to the left door, opened it, and looked out. He was looking out into the open night valley. A half a mile away the gigantic rocket stood on its launching pad, the vapor-steam of cryogenic temperature fuel steaming in a great cloud from it. Then, as the dark Avenger watched, the umbilical fell away and the gantry began to move back.
The launch was two minutes away!
The Shadow saw nothing else and no one out in the open mountain night of the secret valley.
He whirled and crossed the tiny chamber to the last door. He opened it and saw an elevator car. He jumped into the car and pressed the automatic button. The door closed and the car started up swiftly and silently. The black-garbed Avenger held the sub-machine gun in his powerful hands and his fiery eyes blazed with impatience. The car went up and up. There was no sound but the low hum of the elevator motor far below. Then the car stopped. The door opened and The Shadow stepped out.
He stood in a brightly lighted room with a wide window to the left that faced the giant rocket a half a mile away. Three CYPHER guards saw him at once. They turned their weapons on him. A loud alarm began to clang and echo.
The Shadow fired a short burst from his sub-machinegun and then another. The three guards went down as if pole-axed by the deadly accurate fire of the Avenger. His sub-machinegun blazing he moved steadily through the bright room toward the larger room he saw just ahead through a heavy glass partition. Four more CYPHER men fell under the hail of bullets from his blazing gun. When it was empty he snatched up another from a fallen soldier. But it was not the men of CYPHER his fiery eyes watched, it was the room he saw ahead beyond the heavy glass partition!
A room lined with electronic equipment; with gauges and dials; with oscilloscopic units and other equipment even The Shadow could not name instantly. In the room there were three of the CYPHER Sub-Commandants—and J. Wesley Bryan in his wheelchair! All of them were intently watching the instruments and staring out the heavy glass window toward the distant rocket where it towered in the night sky illuminated by searchlights.
The Shadow’s eyes blazed—he had found the central launch control room! There were no more CYPHER guards, and the dark Avenger gave his macabre and mocking laugh as he leaped toward the door into the control room.
All the men in the control room whirled and saw The Shadow!
There were a series of loud slamming metal noises. The Shadow stopped.
One by one heavy steel doors came down across all the entrances into the control room.
The Shadow was blocked out of the room.
He leaped at the nearest door and concentrated his powers.
Nothing happened.
He strained with all the power of his brain focused on the heavy steel door that faced him.
The door did not move.
The Shadow now knew that the doors were deadfall doors. They were activated electronically, but once down they were raised not by electronics but by simple mechanical means. The Shadow, alone outside the door, was helpless to raise it!
Inside the room J. Wesley Bryan looked out through the thick glass at The Shadow.
A neutral voice counted, “… twelve … eleven … ten… nine … eight … .”
The Shadow fired at the window. The bullets bounced off. Inside the room J. Wesley Bryan laughed aloud at The Shadow, his insane eyes blazing with triumph. Behind him the three CYPHER Sub-Commandants watched their instruments and the rocket out on the launching pad.
J. Wesley Bryan watched The Shadow through the thick glass.
The Shadow’s eyes blazed and his power reached out through the glass. The fingers of his power reached toward the mind of J. Wesley Bryan. Clouds of his massive will poured toward the crippled genius. Bryan stared back. The crippled man smiled a defiant smile as he resisted the Shadow with all the power of his own brilliant mind. The two men stared at each other. The struggle of powerful wills went on in silence through the heavy glass of the window.
“… seven … six … five … four …”
Behind Bryant the three CYPHER Sub-Commandants tensed over their instruments and stared eagerly out the windows toward the rocket. Great clouds of vapor rose at the base of the tall space vehicle. In the control room J. Wesley Bryan blinked, shook his head, his face going white with fury as he stared at the blazing eyes of The Shadow. The Avenger let his eyes look to the red button no more than four feet from where Bryan sat in his wheelchair. Bryan shook his head.
His mouth moved, said, “No … no … no …”
But the hand of the crippled man suddenly moved. The wheelchair rolled.
The power of The Shadow rose to a massive peak.
Bryan sat in front of the red button. His hand reached out.
“… three … two … one … fire!”
The building rumbled. The grounds shook. Outside through the window the rocket stirred …
lifted … moved ponderously up toward the dark night sky.
The Shadow’s mind gave a silent command. “Now!”
J. Wesley Bryan’s face twisted once in a final agony of battle—and his hand reached out and pressed the red button. The explosion rent the sky.
A great sheet of flame and smoke shot skyward. Flame burst sideways and down.
The whole valley lighted up like brilliant sunshine.
Great rocks were torn from the steep sides of the narrow valley. Chunks of metal hurled through the blazing night sky. The two buildings closest to the shattered and blazing rocket were smashed and burst into flame. The forest blazed with flames. Farthest from the launch site, the warehouse next to the control building still stood, but flaming debris already had ignited its roof.
In the control building the whole edifice rocked, and the observation windows shattered and blew in.
Through the shattered windows the screams of men could be heard all through the flaming valley.
Inside the control room the men had been hurled down. Outside the control room, The Shadow had been flung to the floor like a puppet.
Stunned only for a second, the black Avenger struggled to his feet. He looked into the control room. The steel doors were still secure. On the floor of the control room the three Sub-Commandants lay unconscious, hurled down and unconscious without the amazing strength of The Shadow.
The Avenger looked for J. Wesley Bryan. For a moment he did not see the crippled genius.
Then he saw Bryan!
By a fluke, a stroke of fate, the low and heavy wheelchair had not been hurled over. It had simply been pushed by the force of the explosion against a far wall. Bryan was uninjured and free now of the power of The Shadow! Even as the Avenger watched, Bryan wheeled away into the open door of a second elevator and vanished. The Shadow turned and ran to the elevator he had come up on. It was damaged by the blast and inoperable. The Shadow dashed for the emergency stairs. He ran down the narrow winding stairs toward the bottom.
He reached the small chamber that had withstood the blast and ran into the warehouse.
Flames licked down from the ceiling of the warehouse. In the distance explosions continued to rock the valley as ammunition stores, and stores of other chemicals, exploded. The warehouse was a pandemonium of activity. Hundreds of black-uniformed CYPHER soldiers battled to control the fire in the warehouse before it could reach the stored cylinders of rocket fuel. No one saw The Shadow glide across the room toward the door through which he had entered. Mad with fear, the men of CYPHER and their leaders had no eyes for anything but the fire and the danger. Twice soldiers looked straight at the Shadow as if they did not see him.
He reached the double doors and raced through. The wide freight corridor was deserted. He ran on and reached the secret panel. His powers focused and opened it. He ran into the large cavern and on toward the smaller cave where the jet car was—it was the only escape for J. Wesley Bryan, the crippled man had to be trying to reach the car. The Shadow reached the smaller cave.
“Bryan! Stop!”
The Shadow heard the shout. It was the voice of Harry Vincent. The Shadow reached where Harry lay flat on the stone floor with his sub-machinegun extended and a new wound on the side of his head. Harry did not look around as The Shadow bounded to him.
“Stop! Now!” Harry shouted.
The fiery eyes of The Shadow looked in the direction of where Harry’s gun was pointed. He saw a scene like a slow-motion movie.
J. Wesley Bryan sat in his wheelchair beside the torpedo-shaped jet car. The crippled genius had started the engines. Now he struggled to raise himself from the chair and lower himself into the cockpit. He was half out of the chair, the engines up to a high whine, when Harry Vincent fired a burst from the sub-machinegun. The bullets must have struck the controls of Bryan’s chair. Without warning the chair lurched, began to roll toward the rear of the jet car. Bryan was flung back into the seat of the chair. The small crippled man beat at the jammed controls. His face was a mask of fear. The chair rolled to the rear of the jet car, lurched, and pitched over into the track directly behind the flaming jet engine.
The agonized scream of J. Wesley Bryan echoed through the hidden underground caverns deep inside the mountain. Then there was silence.
Harry Vincent lay on his face, his eyes sick.
The Shadow glided forward and stood over the charred remains of Bryan and his smoldering wheelchair. Then the dark Avenger reached down and shut off the jet car engine. The cave became totally silent. The Shadow moved back to where Harry now sat up again.
“He surprised me again. Grazed my head. Superficial, but it stunned me a moment,” Harry explained. The agent was clearly weak from the loss of blood.
“Rest, Harry,” The Shadow said. “It is over. The rocket was destroyed. The CYPHER base is a ruin. I do not think they will have much fight left tonight.”
The Avenger bent over his ring radio. “Come in Margo!”
There was a silence, and then Margo’s clear voice.
“Margo reporting, Chief.”
“Report,” The Shadow intoned.
“Troops from the nearest Air Force Base have arrived at the plant and have the situation under control. Troops were dispatched under orders of General Broyard when I contacted him as soon as we left the CYPHER rocket base.”
“Very good, Margo. Were all the CYPHER men captured?”
“Negative,” Margo reported. “A strong unit made its escape by the highway, is presumably heading for the rocket base. General Broyard’s commander here is reluctant to advance over the mountains in his helicopters in the face of the battalion size strength we reported to be at the rocket site. However, we heard the explosion, it shattered all our windows. What is the situation there?”
“There will be little resistance here, Margo,” The Shadow said drily. “The base is destroyed, the troops scattered and demoralized. Tell the commander he can come in by helicopter and should beat the unit that escaped here.”
“Very well, Chief,” Margo said.
“Are you all safe?” The Shadow asked.
“Stanley is wounded, but I am unhurt. However, Professor Farina and General Rogers are missing. Farina is in the hands of the CYPHER unit, and probably Rogers, too, but we are searching. Most of the workers here seem uninvolved.”
“Very good, Margo. I will await you here.”
The Shadow clicked off and stood for a moment in the dim cave with his eyes blazing. Then he raised his head to listen. Far off be heard a faint sound. It was the high whine of one of the jet cars. A whine too high for anyone but The Shadow to hear. The eyes of the Avenger gleamed.
Someone was coming!
“Harry,” The Shadow said.
But the agent had finally fainted from the effect of his wounds and the loss of blood.
Quickly, The Shadow carried the unconscious man into a safe shelter in the cavern, ran to the secret door into the office of the CYPHER Commandant, and vanished through into the office.
To Be Concluded
SATURDAY
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by James Patterson and Brian Sitts
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