On the concrete apron in front of the hangar “X” lifted the tail from the dolly, snapped off the hangar light and closed the door. The plane’s nose was pointed toward the field. It crouched in the darkness like an eager bird, ready to leap into the sky.
“X” slipped a suede helmet over his head, climbed into the one cockpit and wound up the electrically operated inertia starter. In a moment the motor sprang into thundering life. At sound of it the man in the operations office switched on the field’s floodlights.
One minute of warming, and “X” took off into the night sky with the thrumming, taut swiftness of a rocket. He climbed steadily, banked only once, then hurtled ahead toward the spot two hundred miles away where the clenched fist of the DOAC menace threatened to loose a sinister lightning bolt.
Even the criminal, Mike Carney, didn’t deserve the torture that awaited him if he fell into the DOACs’ hands. No man did. Led on by a thirst for gold to expand their sinister projects, the DOACs would force the secret of his fortune from Carney’s lips even if they had to tear him limb from limb to do it. The Agent didn’t doubt that such an organization had devised forms of torture too horrible to think of.
But besides his desire to save a human being from torment, was an even stronger desire to gather more data concerning DOAC activities. How could they hope to gain entrance to the state prison unless they had spies among the guards or inmates, men who would help them from the inside? And if there were such spies “X” wanted to learn their identities.
His mind swiftly turned over the strange events of the night as he sent the ship hurtling through the black sky. Towns, cities and villages streamed by below him. He flew high, sighting at last the small, peaceful river on which the prison town of Meadow Stream was located. Its grim, gray walls, he knew, lifted directly from the river shore. One of the state’s oldest penal institutions, its various buildings were castlelike, symbolic of the might and majesty of the law. Many a famous murderer had spent his last hours in its death-house before the hot, searing power of electricity ended his earthly career.
Agent “X” shut off his motor, glided down out of the darkness. His quick airman’s eye had spotted a field not more than a half mile from town, along the highway that led to Meadow Stream. Its green color looked like open turf.
He swept earthward in a long glide, ready to switch on the motor again if the field proved impractical for a landing. A pale moon and a ground haze made the task hazardous.
At the last he clicked on his landing lights for a brief instant, saw that the field was adequate, and side-slipped in.
Quietly as a rubber-tired carriage coming to rest, the Blue Comet rolled to a stop. Agent “X” leaped out There was a dump of bushes at the end of the field. “X” rolled his plane to these, turned it about, facing the wind for a quick take-off. He removed his flying helmet, stuffed it into the plane, and set off toward the town.
Almost immediately he broke into a run. For a sudden, wailing sound shattered the silence of the night. It was a siren, somewhere on the walls of the prison, rising higher and higher, like the scream of some demented thing, giving warning that danger and death impended.
Chapter VI
A SEARCHLIGHT blazed blue-white in the darkness that lay ahead. Agent “X” moved forward with the long, rhythmic strides of a runner trained to conserve his breath. But a hundred yards down the road he saw the lights of a car coming along behind him.
He stepped into the center of the highway, held up his hand and the car slid to a stop. One man was in it, a farmer, judging by his clothes, stirred by the siren’s note, coming to see what it meant.
The Agent climbed onto the running board. He ignored the suspicious glances the driver gave him. The car shot ahead toward the town and the prison.
Lights were beginning to flare up in houses along the way. People were dashing into the streets. The farmer charged through them, honking his horn. The car sped past a railroad station, took a curve on two wheels, and came to a stop two hundred yards from the prison.
A half-dozen searchlights were blazing now. Leaping from the farmer’s car, the Agent saw movement on top of the prison wall. Above the wailing clamor of the siren, still sounding, he heard the popping of rifles and the rhythmic chatter of machine-gun fire.
As he watched, a man by one of the prison turrets threw up his arms and hurtled to the ground. He had been shot by a sniper somewhere in the darkness below.
Agent “X” reconnoitered. He left the farmer, slipped into the shadows, angled straight toward the prison. The raid seemed to be centering on one side of the rectangular wall.
Cautiously he crept forward. Armed and desperate killers, he knew, were there in the darkness, murderers gathered together in an amazing organization.
A row of houses lined one side of the road. They led almost up to the prison gates. Agent “X” slipped behind these, moving steadily forward till he was within five hundred feet of the prison wall.
Gathered around the last house of the row he saw crouching figures. A searchlight on the prison wall bathed the ground before them in eerie bluish-white light. Against this background Agent “X” caught glimpses of sinister hooded heads.
The DOAC raiders were here in full force, hiding behind their strange headgear. As yet they had made no attempt to scale the prison wall. They were answering the fire of the guards. But “X” saw a group, with ladders, held in readiness. A DOAC marksman with a high-powered rifle aimed directly at the nearest searchlight. The man fired. His aim was excellent. The light went out with a hissing sputter. There was a gap in the path of illumination now.
Down this path of darkness, straight toward the prison wall, a hooded figure ran. The guards on top of the wall could not see him. But “X” could make out his figure silhouetted against lighter ground beyond. The man carried something — a strange roundish object with projecting rods like small electrodes at one side.
He moved close to the prison wall, flung the object upward. An instant later something happened to one of the turrets where armed guards crouched behind their bullet-proof barriers. There was a ripping, tearing sound like a giant lightning bolt, a blaze of orange light.
A bomb had obviously been detonated — but a bomb of a different sort than any “X” had ever seen. This one seemed to suck inward, creating a terrific vacuum that disintegrated animate and inanimate matter alike.
The turret vanished before “X’s” eyes. Stones and the sprawling, mangled figures of men swept together, then dropped. The Agent clenched his fists, cursed harshly under his breath. For the DOAC raid was bolder and more ruthless than he had anticipated. They were using war-time tactics to gain their end.
Other hooded men carrying more of the strange bombs ran forward. They attacked the two corner turrets. The chattering machine guns atop the prison wall kept up till the last. One of the hooded forms went down writhing. His companion caught up his fallen bomb, hurled that and his own, and another turret was silenced. Then a score of the raiders swarmed forward.
Four carried ladders. There was no fire from the wall above now, nothing to stop them planting the ladder against the stone barrier.
From the direction of the town a roaring motor sounded. “X” saw some of the men before him turn. Like sinister gray ghosts four of them crossed the street, mysterious bombs in their hands.
“X,” powerless at the moment, saw them take position where they could see the road to the prison.
The car coming evidently bore armed men from the town bent on seeing that the raid was not carried out.