Chapter 3: The Running Fight!
 

 “What the hell does that young lady think she’s doing?”

 First Officer Orin Clements blinked as he looked down at the chart table. “In what respect, sir?” His dark brown eyes swiveled towards the human bent over the map before them.

 Silas Stanbridge had read the latest message given him as he was calculating the ship’s best possible speed. “Just because she thinks she still owns that Seagull doesn’t give her the right to put herself or her crew in harm’s way.”

 The chimpanzee straightened up, clasping his long hands behind his back. “May I remind the captain that it was part of the contract you helped draw up in making Miss Monroe a Pilot Officer in the service so that she could continue to operate the aircraft.”

 Standing to his full six feet and one inch height, the captain regarded the simian officer, his blue eyes glittering with the emotions roiling inside the man. ”As you so often do, Orin, as you so often do.  And that damn amphibian has become a sword of Damocles over my head.”  Turning his attention back to the map Stanbridge sighed then tapped the small island marked as ‘Little Orpington’ with his pencil.  “It will take us three and a half hours to get there; three, if we’re lucky.  I just hope they’re still alive when we arrive.”

 “And if they’re not?” questioned the First Officer.

 Tossing the pencil down on the table Stanbridge turned towards the door to the flying bridge, fishing for his pipe.

 “Then they’ll have saved me the effort of chewing on their furry butts!”

 The biplane amphibian made another pass over the site of the black boat, drawing another streamer of tracers.  Ben Frasier and Karl Mueller returned fire, their Vickers cutting through the canopy of the mangroves, showering the shipwreckers with leafy debris.

 In the pilot’s seat, Jenny Monroe divided her attention between flying and keeping an eye on the slender craft below.  The young rabbit fem worked rudder bar and control yoke to swing the aircraft out to sea before bringing it about for another pass. 

 “I don’t think they spook that easily,” she chuckled into the microphone of the canvas mask covering her muzzle. 

 “Maybe they’re hoping we’ll get tired of the game and leave,” was the reply from the Cairn terrier manning the rear gun tub. 

 “Vish we had sum grenades or small bombs to drop on them!”  The ginger tabby with the German accent was fitting another drum to his machine gun in the bow position.  “Any vun haff a kitchen sink?”  Then he stiffened. 

For a fleeting moment Jenny thought Karl had been hit when he slid out of sight.  She tried working her mouth to get the words out but nothing came forth.  And as quickly the German feline popped back into view.  He turned towards the cockpit.

“Yenny,” he called, “come in slow and low over der trees on der next pass!”

Not having the faintest idea what Karl wanted the lepin pilot brought the Seagull around once more then down to skim barely above the treetops.  More machinegun fire angled upwards towards them, and some found their marks.  Ragged holes appeared in the lower starboard wing as the bullets stitched their way through.  Mouthing a sulfurous curse Jenny kept the plane steady as she watched the figure in the forward tub lean over the side and began dropping objects towards the boat below.  It took a moment to register in the rabbit fem’s brain what Karl had just launched: soda bottles!

In quick succession the former German naval observer pitched the full bottles towards the boat lurking in the slough below, hoping that the shipwreckers would mistaken them for the grenades or small bombs he had asked for.  The ersatz bombs crashed through the palm fronds to splash into the murky water very close to the boat.

“It worked, Karl!” shouted the Cairn terrier from the rear gun tub. 

Below the passing airplane the crew could make out the churning of water around the stern of the black craft.  The shipwreckers were leaving!

Throwing the Seagull into another circle Jenny Monroe brought the seaplane over the palms, giving their quarry a lead to open water.  And the operators of the black boat took the bait.  Like a black arrow the slender speedboat shot out of its hiding place and made a dash for freedom.  But the boat operator wasn’t being a frightened dummy.  He kept to the coastline so that the Seagull could only come at them from the starboard side or overhead.

“This guy knows what he’s doing,” shouted Ben over the chatter of his Vickers.

“Ja,” replied Karl, “und ve vill be low on ammunition soon if ve don’t stop them!” 

“You’ll have to coordinate your fire and bring it to bear on that boat,” shouted the lepin pilot.

“Good idea,” was the Cairn’s reply, “’cause I’m on my last drum!”

“Ich auch,” came from the forward tub.

Quickly Jenny outlined her strategy as she swung the plane once more out over the surf.  After a moment her crewmen gave their agreement to the plan.  With a silent prayer on her lips the young rabbit woman brought the amphibian around and trailed after the shipwreckers.  Again a stream of green tracers angled upward towards them.  But there was no answering fire. As the bright specks of light began to draw closer Jenny pushed the yoke forward and to the right while kicking hard right rudder.  And just as quickly she pulled the plane back up and left to level flight, the white caps brushing the chines.

“NOW!” the young rabbit cried out.  The two Vickers began a steady hammering as their red streamers lanced out to the speeding cruiser and began dancing over its dark length.  Splinters of wood and shards of glass flew.  Soon the cruiser began to slow down and drift towards the shoreline.

“We got ‘em,” crowed Ben, “we got the bloody bastards!”

Karl Mueller vented his spleen in a steady stream of German profanity, a few words that Jenny caught and made her ears grow warm with embarrassment.  She pulled the Seagull up and into a left bank.  Three pairs of eyes watched the out of control boat hit the shallows and nose up onto the beach where it finally came to a halt, tilting to its port side.  As the Seagull circled overhead, her machine guns trained on the beached vessel, the crews watched in nervous anticipation for someone, anyone, to tumble out of the boat and make a dash for the palms.  But nothing of the sort happened.

“Think they’re dead?” Jenny asked the question uppermost on their minds.

“Don’t know,” was Ben’s reply.  “They could be, or playing possum for our benefit.”

“Oder wounded und can’t do anything about it,” was Karl’s answer to the situation.

With a shrug Jenny settled it.  “We’ll have to go down and check.”

With the grace of its namesake the amphibian settled lightly on the water, rolling up onto the white sand on lowered wheels not more than fifty yards from the shipwrecker’s boat.  Karl kept his gun trained on the other craft while Ben worked his way forward and pushed open the canopy.  Standing on the pilot’s seat Jenny thrust both her hands out over the windshield, pistol in hand, as the terrier dropped over the side, a pump shotgun at the ready.  Crouching low Ben Fraiser made his way towards the boat, zigzagging in short dashes.

Circling up above the boat, shotgun at the ready, the flight engineer approached cautiously, eyes taking in the scene before him.  He could make out three figures, one sprawled in the sand and the other two curled up in their cockpits.  The body at the helm appeared to be canine and displayed a swath of blood across the right side of his body.  The other two looked to be another canine as well as a small bear and had taken the brunt of the return fire from the Seagull.

“Are they dead?” was the cry from the plane.  Ben merely waved a hand as he stepped carefully closer to the shipwreckers.  On the sand next to the bear was a Lewis light machine gun.  In both cockpits was a pair of rifles.  A quick examination of the deceased satisfied the Cairn terrier that there would be no sudden attacks from any of them.  But it was when he turned the Lewis gun over that he made a startling discovery.

“Jenny!  Karl!  You won’t believe what I found!”

 The sun was near its zenith, a brassy ball set high in a clear sky.  The morning clouds had passed on their way in a southeasterly procession, leaving a vacant blue dome spanning horizon to horizon.  On the western beach of Little Orpington Island a biplane amphibian had rolled up onto a white beach, its crew busy with patching a wing and doing other general maintenance on the aircraft.  Not far from the shore was anchored a Motor Patrol Boat of the Rain Island Naval Syndicate.  The boat’s launch was pulled up on the sand not far from the plane.  A handful of natives were speaking with a couple of officers while some ratings were busy working there way around two rows of bodies draped with sheets, fanning palm fronds to keep the flies away.

 There came two short blasts from the MPB’s whistle.  The naval personnel turned to see the lookout in the crow’s nest indicate with exaggerated arm pointing that something was coming around the island.  The officers, a young chimpanzee wearing the shoulder boards of a lieutenant on his summer whites and an even younger white feline ensign, turned to see the buoy tender Ida Lewis appearing from behind the palms.  There came three long whistles from the bigger ship as she worked her way around the R.I.N.S. before dropping anchor.  It was another fifteen minutes before a boat left the tender and headed for the beach.  The officers and the crew of the Seagull gathered to meet the newcomers.  A tall man and his simian executive officer, dressed in khaki, climbed out, returning the salutes of those waiting on the beach.

 “Good morning, Captain Stanbridge,” said the younger chimpanzee.  He turned and smiled to the other simian.  “Morning, father.”

 Orin Clements’ faced beamed with parental pride as he shook hands with his eldest son. “How have you been, Andrew?”

 They spoke briefly while Stanbridge turned to his flyers. 

 “Well, I see none of you are dead, nor is the plane a burning shambles.”

 His words were flat and without emotion.  Jenny, Ben, and Karl knew that when the captain spoke like that that trouble was not too far behind.

 “I hope you have a good explanation for why you decided to engage these people as you did.”

 Licking lips gone dry Jenny Monroe spoke up.  “Well, sir, it was either capture them or let them get away.  And after what they did to those poor souls,” she made a gesture to the sheet covered figures on the sand, “we couldn’t let them skedaddle to blow up anymore lights or kill anymore innocents.”

 The other two nodded their agreement.

 Stanbridge gave a deep sigh then thumbed his hat back on his head before looking at them again.  “But you didn’t capture them, did you?”

 “No, sir,” was the rabbit fem’s reply.

 “No, you just shot them to pieces!” the human snapped back.  “So how are we to find out who they are and whom they’re working for?”

 Ben Fraiser took a step forward.  “That we can easily show you, sir.”

 Giving the Cairn terrier a sidelong glance, the captain muttered, “How?”

 Gesturing towards the amphibian with his head Ben turned that way, Karl on his heels.  From where he stood Stanbridge watched the two crewmen retrieve a pair of rifles and a Lewis gun that had been leaning against the hull of the plane. On his return Ben handed one of the rifles to his captain.  Glancing down at the weapon the man quickly recognized it as a military issued Mauser.

 “How’s this going to tell us who’s behind the destruction of our light towers?” 

 “By reading the stampings on the receiver, sir.”

 Suspecting something was in the offing Stanbridge rolled the rifle over until he could see the top of the receiver.  His eyes narrowed in suspicion.  Expecting to find German or maybe English lettering the man was surprised to find Chinese characters stamped into the steel instead.  He looked at the other rifle, then the machine gun.  All three weapons bore the same script.

 “And that’s not all, Captain,” said Jenny, now recovering some of her fortitude, as she led her commanding officer over to the bodies.  Making a motion to the ratings the rabbit fem indicated which bodies to uncover.  The man stopped to stare down at them.  Two canids and an ursinoid had been laid out with the other dead.  But they were different from the others, for these three had the noticeable stamp of the Orient about them other than their clothes.

 “Any idea who they might be?” asked Stanbridge aloud.

 Lieutenant Andrew Clements stepped forward, his hand outstretched. “This might be the key to the puzzle, sir.”

  A bronze medallion, about two inches across, lay in his brown palm.  The human picked it up, studying the image cast into its deep red-brown surface.  It showed five dragons in intricate detail chasing the tail of the one preceding it as they spiraled into the center of the disk.

 “Five dragons,” mused Stanbridge, his right forefinger and thumb toying with the corner of his moustache.  “Something about five dragons comes to mind; something in a memo from the Naval Syndicate, but for the life of me I can’t seem to recall the whole story.”

 “If you’ll allow me sir,” spoke up Lieutenant Clements.  ”The Five Dragons is a special department within the Kuo Han intelligence service.  It is composed of five operational groups working independently of each other in the service but answering only to the director of the department.  It appears its primary function is to test the response time of the nation’s security forces to an outside threat.”

 “So what are they doing here?” asked Stanbridge, his interest piqued.

 The younger Clements shrugged.  “Of that I don’t know, sir.  The Criminal Investigation Department is not privy to what the Intelligence Department knows, even when it might be something involved in a current investigation.”

 The man nodded.  “Everyone likes to keep their secrets secret, even from those they’re suppose to be working with.  I know that old song very well, lieutenant.”

 “Begging the captain’s pardon,” interjected Jenny as she stepped close to her captain,  “but our hosts are returning and I believe they will be asking you to stay for lunch.”

 Snapping the young rabbit a sidelong glance Silas Stanbridge turned his attention to the movement along the treeline, and froze.  The tiger doctors were talking with an Alsacian in naval whites that was escorting a young rat woman wrapped in a blanket.  But what held the man’s rapt attention was the figure that walked a little apart from the group.  Her head was bowed in that normal attitude of watching the ground while walking until the party was about fifty feet from the collection of naval personnel.  There appeared to have been a whispered comment from the medical officer that made the woman lift her head up . . . and stop in her tracks!

For over a minute the two humans simply stared at one another, the looks of wonderment clearly stamped on their faces. To Silas Stanbridge she was the most beautiful creature he had seen in a long time.  About a head shorter than he the woman had an oval face that was pleasant to look at, as well as a well-rounded body to carry it.  He thought she might have been a farmer’s daughter for the stoutness of her limbs and the tan of her flesh seemed to indicate this.  Brown eyes watched him with an intensity that made his cheeks grow warm from embarrassment, and a tousled cap of dark blonde curls completed the picture.

Beverly Plumb was dumbfounded to see another human being again, in particular here on this tiny lump of sand and coral in the wide Nimitz Sea.  The man was tall, with wide shoulders and a slender waist. The face was long with an aquiline nose set over thin lips and a dark beard peppered with gray.  But it was the blue eyes that held Beverly’s attention.  They were bright with a glow of life and vitality she hadn’t seen in ages.  This man had seen the world that she could only dream of, and watched the ever-changing sea from its most calm moments to its violent rages.

Jenny Monroe spoke softly to Stanbridge after the prolong awkwardness of silence.

“Mein Kapitan, it would be best to close your mouth.  Not only does it make you look foolish, but it will attract the birds to nest in it.”

The man blinked before coming back to reality.  He turned to the pilot officer.

“What? Oh, yes, yes, sorry.”  He turned back to the woman and offered a warm smile.  It made her heart skip a beat.  Taking off his hat Stanbridge stepped forward and offered her his hand.  “Forgive my manners, miss, but it was been a long time since I’ve seen another human woman, and a very beautiful one at that.  I’m Silas Stanbridge, captain of the buoy tender Ida Lewis.” 

Still dumbstruck, Beverly Plumb could only take the offered hand numbly, her attention never leaving the man’s face. But she gave a short gasp as the man, on the spur of the moment, bowed slightly to kiss the back of her hand.  He looked up sharply.

“Is something wrong?” he asked a note of worry in his deep voice.

Beverly quickly found her voice, albeit a rather breathless one. “No, no, nothing of the sort!  Except I’ve never had my hand kissed before!  And never by such a handsome man as yourself!”

There was a quick round of knowing looks among the watchers circling the pair until Raman Singh politely coughed into his hand to draw attention his way. “Please accept our humble apologizes as a host forgetting his manners.  It is time for the noonday meal and we offer our hospitality to you all.”

The young chimpanzee stepped forward at the moment, noting how his superior officer was otherwise engaged. “We would most gratefully accept your offer to dine with you, Doctor.”  Andrew Clements glanced around at the others.  They all nodded.  “Would you so kind as to have food brought out to my men here on the beach?”

The tiger bowed.  “Certainly, Lieutenant.  If you all will follow us.”

The tiger pair led the way towards the palms.  The Alsacian medical officer guided the young rat woman towards the launch as Jenny Monroe stepped up to the two humans still locked in silent appraisal.

“Captain, the dinner bell has been sounded,” she whispered quietly.

After a moments pause they turned their attention towards her.

“What did you say, Pilot Officer?”

With a smile Jenny repeated her message.

Snapping back to the present Stanbridge turned back to the woman, offering his arm. “Shall we go, miss?”

Beverly smiled.  “Yes, lets.” 

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