Puffy chuckled.
"Cinderella can fly the blind spots off a Jap Zero," he said. "Just strap a pair of wings on him."
They charged toward the mouth of the tunnel. A few hundred feet from the entrance Drake stopped. He picked up a tommy gun where it had been dropped by the fleeing gunmen. Going forward more slowly they saw three men at the entrance, guns pointed into the darkness.
On one knee, Drake fingered the trigger. He picked up a large rock with his free hand and tossed it ten feet to one side. It struck with a loud thump. Immediately red fire cut loose around the place where the rock had hit. Drake brought his finger back lightly against the trigger and watched coldly as the men went down. They pitched forward like alley pins, bleeding and screaming with the pain. There was no time to lose.
Dropping the gun he went forward swiftly, whipping an automatic from his pocket as he ran. Then, seeing Lardner, he took a head dive into the deep snow as the vicious crack of lead whizzed over his head. He rolled over silently coming to his feet with a bound. Lardner, waiting by the plane, shot again and the lead burned into Drake's shoulder. He sprang forward as Lardner's foot lifted toward the open door to the cabin.
Clutching his foot, Drake jerked the man back into the snow with all his strength and they rolled into a white, seething mass of fury. With a short, terrifying blow on the chin he snapped the man's head backward. It twitched queerly and his eyes bulged. Lardner's neck was twisted to one side, stiff and broken.
"The diamond?" Puffy was at his side. Jim Drake bent over the dying man, watched his face as it twitched in pain.
"You want the girl," Lardner croaked. "You'll never get her. Even with the diamond, you'll never...."
His body relaxed suddenly, as though deflated of life. Drake pushed him back into the drifted snow, a look of disgust in his cold eyes.