The Falcon Killer

 

Suddenly the roar was punctuated by the chatter of a machine gun, instantly followed by the rising scream of an engine tortured by a dive. Henry stood up. The skies were pennoned by smoke, and it would be almost impossible to see these ships unless they came overhead. Nevertheless, the sound of firing in the vicinity of Nencheng had been absent for twenty-four hours, until now.

 

“There he is!” cried Marion in excitement.

 

Across the smudge bowl of sky lumbered a great Japanese bomber, a flying battleship evidently returning from a raid on the new Chinese lines in the northwest. But it was doing more than coming home. The four engines were racking themselves in the bedlam of full throttles. The great wings were streaking at almost three hundred miles an hour. From the stern turrets red pom-poms blazed, as Mitsubi guns yammered at an unseen attacker.

 

Henry stared with wonder. He had never seen Chinese planes so far inside the Japanese lines and, further, he saw no planes at all. The engine din was too great to distinguish any other motors until that shrill, vicious scream of a dive came again.

 

Abruptly the Chinese attacker was in view. He pulled up, stabbing scarlet nose at great gray belly and letting drive with both bow guns. Tracer was white, plainly seen from the ground, so low were the ships. Hanging on its prop like a bulldog hangs to the bull, the red ship emptied its drums full into the blaze of the Mitsubis just above.

 

“God!” cried Henry into the bedlam. “That’s nerve!”

 

For a moment a shredded wave of smoke blotted them from view and then, when the sky opened anew, it could be seen that the bomber was doomed. Great black gouts of smoke geysered from beneath the right wing, cut by wicked streamers of flame. The Chinese pursuit ship was high above, just starting another dive with loaded guns. The scarlet javelin streaked past the bomber’s tail and came up again, to pound swiftly through the turrets and cabin.

 

The bomber lurched, the fire as red now as the great suns upon its wings. Not a gun aboard her was replying when she began her dive, out of control, toward the yellow river.

 

The pursuit plane leveled off and came back over the gardens, evidently orienting itself for a dash back to its own lines. With a battering roar, the ground machine guns of the town began to rake the interloper.

 

Marion’s eyes were flashing as she cried, “Go! Get away! Please go!” She did not realize that her voice was nothing in the tumult. For the scarlet plane had nosed up into an almost vertical climb, turning slightly as it went until it was almost heading east.

 

From the river came the thunder of the bomber crash. From every emplacement in Nencheng came the clamor of antiaircraft fire. The heavens about the scarlet ship were sprayed black by shrapnel’s smoke.

 

And then, in common with the whole town, the watchers in Tsoi Yan caught their breaths in a sob of despair. The Chinese plane had come in too deep, even past the drome south of town, and now from that drome there had arisen two squadrons of Japanese pursuits, which lanced down upon their prey with greedy guns.

 

The scarlet ship turned to face them, charging straight at them through the smoke. The stair-step formations held, all trips down, throwing a concerted blast of lead through which nothing could live.

 

Even before he reached them, the pilot of the scarlet plane was riding a wingless bomb. Antiaircraft fire did for his foils, machine guns sent his prop into a thousand silver fragments. The scarlet ship stabbed earthward, out of control, painted with fire, raked still by the avenging squadrons.

 

Marion hid her face in her hands and Henry, with his hand on her shoulder, still stared upward. Suddenly he shouted, “He’s making a jump of it!”

 

Marion looked again. Behind the streaking ball of fire a black speck grew swiftly larger in the sky. The pilot was falling free, an atom of life in a roaring void, bracketed by every weapon in Nencheng.

 

“He hasn’t a chute!” groaned Henry.

 

Once more Marion was unable to look, but Henry saw the dot grow into a toy doll and then, with astonishing swiftness, into a man. Less than three hundred feet from the ground a startling thing happened. A white wake ripped out behind the pilot, to become in an instant a great canopy of cream-colored silk. The jerk of the harness almost tore the man apart, but his hands were hauling hard on the shrouds and the chute was spilling until again it was nearly free fall.

 

The ship crashed unseen into a battery on the outer wall. The diving planes, bethinking themselves at last that they were firing into a town their own troops occupied, pulled up and zoomed skyward. Seeing their prey no more, all guns abruptly stopped. And in that silence could be heard the whistle of wind in the shrouds of the parachute, as the pilot fought to land on the largest clearing in sight. At the last instant he let his shrouds go and was snatched from the spiked branches of a tree to plant his boot heels into the turf and swiftly spill the wind from his chute.

 

Working with the speed upon which his life depended, he succeeded in rolling the silk into a ball and crowding it into the broken pack. A small rock garden stood by a lake and he snatched up boulders to crowd them in, lashing it all with a quick turn of the harness. He flung the chute into the lake and then spun about, striving to locate a place of concealment for himself.

 

Suddenly he caught sight of the two people at the table before the house and his hand jerked to the holstered automatic at his side. Then he seemed to realize that they were white, and he staggered toward them.

 

When he was within ten paces he stopped again. Marion saw with a start that his smoke-grimed face was Nordic. She sensed the strain of holding himself upright. And then she saw that there was a hole in the chest of his black leather jacket, and that small, bright drops of blood were dripping from his sleeve to the grass.

 

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “This was the only open space. Foolish thing to do . . . but they killed my friend two hours ago. I . . . I suppose they’ll be pounding on your gates in a moment. If you could tell me where your rear gates are, I had better be going.”

 

“Nonsense!” cried Henry. “After a fight like that? The whole town—the Chinese, I mean and ourselves included were cheering you! Marion! Show him into the house. Send Wong out here to wipe up that blood. You’re in the hands of friends, my boy.”

 

An uncertain smile came to the strangely pale features of the man. And then, with a suddenness which prevented Henry from reaching him, his knees buckled and he fell limply, face downward in the grass.