Doc Savage: The Steel Hammer

by Dave Taggart

Chapter 20: The Bronze Hammer

Monk was down and out.
They quickly located him, unconscious, laying against some packing crates at the side of the tunnel.
“Is he O.K., Doc?” Ham asked anxiously.
“He’ll be fine,” said Doc.
“Holy Cow!” Renny exploded. “What could’ve knocked Monk out so quickly?”
Doc didn’t answer. But suddenly, there was a quick noise behind the group.
They turned. There lay Johnny, in a pile.
“It got Johnny, too!” Renny shouted.
“What is it, Doc?” Ham said.
Their flashlight showed nothing in the tunnels except darkness.
“Get Monk and Johnny out of here,” Doc ordered. “I’ll meet you outside.”
Ham and Renny were besides themselves. They wanted to stay and fight at Doc’s side. But they had also learned from years of experience that following the bronze man’s orders was for the best .
Reluctantly, they gathered their fallen comrades and carried them from the tunnel.
Doc was left alone in the darkness.
THE MIGHTY bronze man. turned off the beam of his flashlight. He slipped out of his shoes so that he could move silently in stocking feet.
Then he simply stopped breathing.
From birth, Doc had been trained in a wide variety of disciplines. Every day he put himself through a series of exercises designed to increase his physical and mental capabilities, so that they were improved far beyond those of most men.
The tunnel was too dark even to allow Doc to see. But he could still hear.
By stopping his breathing, Doc could concentrate on the what he could hear. Air moving slowly through the ventilation shaft. Dropping water. And something moving.
Something big.
Something not quite human.
Whatever the something was, it was attempting to follow Doc’s aides out of the tunnel.
Doc trailed it, concentrating on the sounds of the creatures breathing and its almost silent footfalls.
The creature stopped.
Doc stopped as well.
Then the creature stopped breathing.
Doc stopped breathing again at the same moment.
The tunnel was silent and dark.
A minute passed.
Two minutes.
Doc had studied under the pearl divers of the South Seas, and was able to hold his breath for an extraordinary amount of time.
At the three minute mark, there was a gasp as the creature opened its mouth for air.
Doc sprung like a panther. He flew across the tunnel.
A huge arm caught him in mid-flight and flung him back the way he came. An arm larger than any human arm had any right to be.
Doc rolled as he landed. There was no silence now; the creature, whatever it was, came directly after him.
Springing to his feet, Doc reached out to grab the nerve cluster at where he assumed the base of the creature’s neck would be. He felt cloth -- whatever it was, it wore clothes -- and muscle underneath.
Doc squeezed.
Nothing happened. The nerve cluster was buried under a solid mass of muscle.
A giant hand grabbed Doc’s own neck. Doc wiggled to keep it from getting a grip. Again he reached for the nerve cluster and squeezed. Again, nothing happened.
Two giant arms wrapped around Doc’s body, and held tight.
And suddenly Doc understood what he was fighting.
Not a creature. But no ordinary man either.
The real Steel Hammer had left behind as a guard in the tunnel a sumo -- one of the giant wrestlers of Japan. Enormously muscled, weighing perhaps four hundred pounds, and very highly trained, the sumo were the most unique fighters in the world.
Punching the sumo was useless. Layers of muscle and fat would deflect the power of all blows. All nerve clusters and pressure points would also be protected.
Choking the sumo was impossible. There was no neck; the head merely widened down into the massive shoulders.
Doc squirmed and pushed, trying to escape from the iron grip that held him. There seemed to be no way free.
Then Doc felt something brush against his back. It was one of the non-working ceiling lighting fixtures of the tunnel. Doc reached around and grabbed it, pulling with all his might. The lighting fixture could not stand the strain. It fell from the ceiling, trailing electrical wires. But before it did it gave Doc the advantage he needed. It created the slight change in angle needed to change the leverage Doc required to break the sumo’s grip.
The bronze man and the giant Japanese warrior crashed to the floor, and Doc rolled free.
On his feet immediately, Doc concentrated his hearing on listening to the heartbeat of his opponent. Conventional fighting styles would not work in this battle, and the normal rules of human anatomy which Doc used to defeat his enemies did not apply.
The only way to defeat a sumo was to fight as a sumo.
When the giant sumo wrestlers of Japan fight each other, they hurl their bodies into violent collisions. Their mass and muscle force are used to force their opponent from the wrestling ring.
Crouching to the floor, coiling like a spring, Doc launched himself through the darkness, aimed at the vague sound of his opponent’s heartbeat.
The sumo was quick, very quick. Hearing the sounds of Doc’s feet racing across the tunnel floor, he was able to turn and push himself in Doc’s direction.
The collision of the two men was gigantic. Flesh and bone collided as hard as humanly possible.
Doc rebounded immediately after hitting the sumo, not wanting the giant wrestler to get a grip on him. He stopped and fell silent, listening for his opponent. The sumo’s breathing had change, but only slightly.
Dropping down to the tunnel floor, and then exploding like a sprinter out of the blocks, Doc threw himself at the sumo.
The two giants collided.
And this time there was only one man left standing.
The Man of Bronze.
“HOLY COW, what’s that!” exclaimed Renny as Doc drug the sumo from the tunnel.
“Looks like Monk’s Japanese kinfolk,” said Ham. “Didn’t know they had apes there.”
“I’ll ‘kinfolk’ you one, you Harvard fashion-plate,” threatened Monk, now recovered from being knocked out.
“A sumo,” observed Johnny, recovered as well. “Left behind to guard the tunnel. I’ll wager you had to combat him in the traditional style, Doc?”
“Yes,” answered Doc. “Have you checked the other tunnel?”
“We did,” said Renny. “No sign of the second submarine.”
“But we did find this,” Ham said. he held out a folded piece of paper to Doc.
It was a map of Washington, D. C.

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