Free The Man of Bronze by Kenneth Robeson Page A

of speed. Doc put himself between the shark’s teeth and the sniper!
    But the bronzed, powerful body was not there when the needled teeth slashed. Doc was alongside the shark. His left arm flipped with electric speed around the head of the thing, securing what a wrestler would call a strangle hold.
    Doc’s legs kicked powerfully. For a fractional moment he was able to lift the shark’s head out of the water. In that interval his free right fist traveled a terrific arc—and found the one spot where his vast knowledge told him it was possible to stun the man-eater.
    The shark became slack as a kayoed boxer.
    Doc shoved the sniper ashore. The breed’s swarthy face was a study. He looked like some one had jerked the cover off hell and let him see what awaited men of his ilk.
    Now that the shark was atop the water, where rifle bullets could reach it, Renny and Monk put the finishing touch to the ugly monster.
    “Why did you fire upon us?” Doc asked the breed, couching the words in Spanish. Doc spoke Spanish fluently, as he did many other tongues.
    Almost eagerly, so grateful was he for what Doc had done, the breed made answer:
    “I was hired to do it, senor. Hired by a man in Blanco Grande, the capital of Hidalgo. This man rushed me here during the night in a blue airplane.”
    “What was your employer’s name?” Doc questioned.
    “That I do not know, senor.”
    “Don’t lie!”
    “I am not lying to you, senor! Not after what you did for me a while ago. Truly, I do not know this man.” The breed squirmed uneasily. “I have been a low mozo , hiring out for evil work to whoever pays me, and asking no questions. I shall desert that manner of living. I can take you to the spot where the blue airplane is hidden.”
    “Do that!” Doc directed.
    They started off, reached the outskirts of town. Doc prepared to hail a fotingo , or dilapidated flivver taxi. Then he lifted his golden eyes to the heavens.
    An airplane was droning in the hot copper sky. It came into view, a brilliant blue, single-motor monoplane.
    “That is the plane of the man who hired me to shoot at you!” gasped the breed prisoner.
    The gaudy blue craft whipped overhead, engine stacks bawling, and sped directly for the mud beach.
    Without a word, Doc spun and ran with tremendous speed for the beach where Johnny, Long Tom, and Ham waited with his own plane.

    HALF-NAKED children gaped at the blur of bronze Doc made in passing them. And women muffled in rebozos , a combination shawl and scarf, scampered out and yanked them clear of the thundering charge of Renny and Monk and the prisoner, coming in Doc’s wake.
    On the beach a machine gun suddenly cackled. Doc knew by the particularly rapid rate of its fire that it was one he had brought along. His friends had set it up, were firing at the blue monoplane.
    The blue plane dipped back of the tufted top of a royal palm, going down in a whistling dive. Then came a loud explosion. A bomb!
    Up above the palm fronds the blue plane climbed. It was behaving erratically now. The pilot or some part of his azure ship was hit.
    Straight inland it flew. And it did not come back.
    Doc, reaching the beach, saw the bomb had been so badly aimed as to miss his plane fully fifty yards. His three men were sitting on the wing with the machine gun, grinning widely.
    “We sure knocked the feathers off that bluebird!” Long Tom chuckled.
    “He won’t be back!” Ham decided, after squinting at the distant blue dot that was the receding aircraft. “Who was it?”
    “Obviously one of the gang trying to prevent us reaching that land of mine in Hidalgo.” Doc replied. “The member of the gang in New York radioed to Blanco Grande, the capital of Hidalgo that we were coming by plane. Right here is the logical place for us to refuel after a flight across the Caribbean. So they set a trap here. They hired this breed to machine-gun us, and when that didn’t work, the pilot tried to bomb us.”
    At that moment Renny and Monk