Blood Of The Falcon

Thirteen

Carter had Reguiba right where he wanted him, dead center in the cross hairs of his scoped target rifle. This was more of a firing squad than a military operation.

The Killmaster was not alone. With him were fifty members of the emir's Green Legion, the elite of the Bedouin Home Guard. Every member of this crack commando outfit was equipped with a rifle like Carter's, and qualified as a marksman.

They were the spearhead, the advance guard of this night attack. Nearby, waiting in the wings just out of sight, six companies of Home Guard infantry gathered, their firepower multiplied by machine gun-bearing jeeps and armored personnel carriers.

This was the cleanup.

Carter was right when he said that it wouldn't take long to get a line on Reguiba's whereabouts. Sultana arrived at secret police headquarters at midmorning. By noon, special squads prowled Al Khobaiq, collaring the conspirators she had named. It didn't take much squeezing to extract information from the plotters, not in a land where red-hot irons and the rack were standard police procedure. By early afternoon, the suspects were falling over themselves in their eagerness to confess everything they knew.

Emir Bandar was reportedly shocked at the extent of the conspiracy, which had enmeshed some of the city's leading families. He shouldn't have been. His royal family, the Jalubi, was a hereditary aristocracy maintaining a stranglehold on all the emirate's power centers. Many of the plotters were motivated not by revolutionary fervor, but by a desire to get a piece of the action.

But that was no concern of the Killmaster. Seen in the feudal context of Arabian politics, the emir was no better and no worse than the absolute monarchs of a dozen other kingdoms. Carter wasn't there to start a reform movement.

No matter what his faults were, the emir couldn't be as bad as what Reguiba had planned for Al Khobaiq.

The Zubeir Depression was a shallow bowl stretching some twenty miles. Under it lay one of the most extensive oil deposits in the world. Once the dome had been tapped and the wells came in, Al Khobaiq was awash in a sea of oil and money.

Acres of ground sprouted a forest of derricks. The area designated Field 89 was the scene of furtive, frantic activity as the Khobaiqi component of Operation Ifrit swung into high gear. Epicenter of the disturbance was a fenced-in compound as wide as a football field.

Dominating the space was an equipment shed as big as a dirigible hangar. Here was a motor pool and storehouse holding trucks, earth-moving machines, pipe-laying rigs, cranes, forklifts, and the like. It also held a fortune in smuggled weapons and explosives, which were now being passed along as quickly as possible to organizers of the insurrection.

The gigantic scale of the layout dwarfed the antlike streams of handlers and loaders moving the ornaments. A steady flow of diesel trucks entered the compound, pulling up to loading docks, stuffing themselves with weaponry. The materiel was earmarked for militant cells of Shiite revolutionaries among the rank and file oil workers.

The imposition of martial law in Al Khobaiq had caused the delivery timetable to be speeded up, but not fast enough. Time had run out. Zero hour was nigh.

The Home Guard was ready to crush the militants. They were prepared to sustain the loss of Field 89 in order to keep all the other fields. They clustered beyond the zone of light, ringing the compound, ready to move in hard the moment the signal was given. That moment was designated as zero hour.

But Emir Bandar was particularly concerned that the ringleaders be exterminated. To that end, a special squad of the Green Legion was sent into action, to infiltrate and to execute.

Carter was along for the party. As one of the few men alive who could identify Reguiba, his presence was vital. Plus, he would have hated to sit this one out. Reguiba's troops had done plenty of shooting at him, and it would be a positive pleasure to return the favor.

Like the members of the Green Legion, Carter was outfitted in camouflage-pattern combat fatigues, black jump boots, and a black beret. Like them, his face was carbon-blacked for added cover.

Two hours earlier, the unit began infiltrating enemy territory, taking great pains to avoid discovery. The complex mechanical environment of derricks, pumps, pipes, and storage tanks provided excellent cover.

Sentries and pickets were disposed of via the knife, the crossbow, and the garrote.

The commandos moved like ghostly shadows from one place of concealment to the next, closing in on the compound. Pumps and recirculators chugged away, drowning the sound of their approach. The compound was noisy with idling trucks, busy hoists, and the hectic pace of loading the weapons crates.

The vaulting equipment shed's twin slablike doors were swung wide open, its barnlike interior ablaze with light that spilled into the compound. It was the buzzing heart of this wasp's nest.

A railroad spur circled its solid real wall, curving around it and the rest of the compound. Loading docks fronted the tracks. Set atop the concrete platforms were long flat-roofed warehouses. They formed a high wall running the full length of the compound's northern perimeter.

Stationed in position, stretched prone atop the rectangular warehouse roof, were twenty-five Green Legion sharpshooters. Carter brought the count up to twenty-six.

The high roof provided a clear field of fire encompassing all the compound and most of the hangar's enormous interior. The marksmen had the subversives in a lethal shooting gallery.

The other half of the commando unit was deploying on the opposite, southern side. That area was a jumble of storage tanks and towers, supplying plenty of vantage points for snipers.

Carter estimated that the compound held about two hundred subversives. When zero hour began, they would be caught in a murderous crossfire.

Down there, forklifts ferried crates to the backs of trucks, where gangs of sweating men piled them in. Cocky gunmen paraded about, flaunting their weapons, disdaining the manual labor.

How soon before the dead sentries were discovered?

When would zero hour commence?

Carter peered through high nightscope, its high-intensity light-collecting lens turning night into gray phosphor twilight.

There was Reguiba!

There was no mistaking him. Carter could have picked him out even without the special scope. His distinctive all-black clothes, lofty height, and arrogant stride were unmistakable.

Entourage in tow, Reguiba crossed the compound, entering the motor pool hangar. Carter felt as if he could sweat blood, he was so frustrated. If Reguiba went too deep into the hangar, he would unknowingly remove himself from the line of fire.

No. Reguiba paused at the threshold, engaged in some kind of confrontation with two other men who had hailed him and hurried to him. An argument, judging by the wild gestures made by the pair of newcomers. They looked as agitated as Reguiba was cool.

Prince Hasan consulted his watch, whispering, "Any second now…"

Carter made a minute adjustment on the sights, clarifying the target picture. Cross hairs centered on Reguiba's torso. Carter wouldn't even need to hit a vital organ to finish Reguiba. The rifle had such high velocity and penetrating power, that even tagging a limb would prove fatal to the target, swatting him down with massive pressure.

Ranged around Reguiba was his inner circle, a choice crew of misfits who held no interest for Carter. The head man was his target for tonight.

An excited character dashed into the compound, shouting and waving his arms. His words were inaudible, his alarm unmistakable. Unease stiffened the compound crew, who halted work to see what it was all about.

Somewhere in the tangled machinery bordering the compound's south perimeter, a flare gun fired a starburst shell. The missile climbed a parabolic arc, exploding in a hissing red fireball over the compound.

Zero hour was now.

Carter didn't even think about hitting the target. His concentration was far deeper than that. He was the target, identifying with it in almost a Zenlike state.

Letting out half his breath, utterly calm, he squeezed the trigger, firing the shot that would close out Reguiba's file in AXE's supercomputers.

Twenty-five rifles fired almost simultaneously with his, each sharpshooter taking out a different human target. It was doubled by a second crackling burst erupting from the rifles of the other half of the unit, opening fire from the south.

Total pandemonium broke out in the compound.

Prince Hasan targeted the driver of a truck that was idling at the front gate. The slug passed through the windshield and through the driver's chest. He bounced back off his seat and fell forward across the steering wheel, leaning on the horn, which blared nonstop, a brassy note among the percussive reports of the shooting.

Better yet, the truck now blocked the gate, obstructing that avenue of escape.

The flare's red light was the color that would do the least damage to the sharpshooters' night vision. Muzzle flares winked from roofs, towers, and other high points as marksmen picked off their targets.

A hailstorm of lead mowed down the radicals. They were in a blind panic, darting here and there, not knowing who or where to shoot, bewildered by all the bullets flying from what seemed like everywhere. Some fired their weapons off into empty air, merely to be doing something. Others who survived the initial onslaught dove for what little cover there was, huddling under trucks and behind crates.

Clamor in the east and west indicated that the Home Guard companies were on the move, charging hard. Powerful searchlights stabbed into the compound, throwing the scene of slaughter into high, harsh relief.

The militants spun, danced, whirled, died. No living thing could long survive the murderous fusillade. This was no battle; it was a mass execution. A total rout. By the time the Home Guard came on the scene, there would be little for them to do but count the bodies.

Carter felt like hell.

Reguiba was still alive.

"He who pays the piper calls the tune."

Reguiba didn't see it that way. Not surprising, since he was the piper in question. Sadegh Sassani and Nuri Shamzeri did. They served as the eyes and ears of the paymasters of Militant Islam. Needless to say, the difference of opinion generated plenty of friction in the short time in which Reguiba had been saddled with the young Iranian overseers.

Sassani was young, tough, pious, intolerant, unbending. Shamzeri, a Koranic scholar, was more intellectual and philosophical, though no less unbending. A hundred times a day, ever since they had all come down to Al Khobaiq on the same plane, Reguiba heartily wished he were rid of the irritating pair.

The Supreme Council of Militant Islam sent Sadegh Sassani and Nuri Shamzeri to see how their money was being spent. Thus far, Operation Ifrit was less than a howling success. The Al Khobaiq component of the action was of particular importance to the Iranians.

On paper, the plan sounded plausible. Those Saudi puppets, the Jalubi, were a fractional minority dominating the Shiite masses thanks to their ferocious Bedouin Home Guard. Arm the masses, raise the call to revolt, and smash the emir and his royal family.

Sassani grudgingly admitted that Reguiba had established a pipeline for the vast quantities of weapons bought from the Soviets by Militant Islam. Disguised as pipes, drill bits, and other implements of the petroleum trade, the crated weapons were off-loaded at the port, then distributed by divers and sundry means to the would-be rebels. A large quantity of them was sent via railroad to the oil fields, to be used for the great uprising.

Sassani was skeptical. In truth, it seemed that his Khobaiqi brethren were less than eager for glorious martyrdom. Oh, they were more than willing to take as many weapons as they could get, but who wouldn't be? But as for using them to depose the emir and install a fundamentalist Koranic regime, they lacked that all-important holy fire, and seemed more than content to continue the status quo.

As for Reguiba, even a short time spent in his presence had convinced the Iranian that the man was godless and evil. This was suspected in Qom, but the Supreme Council argued that it was fitting to set him on the godless infidels and their lackeys. Sassani had not been so sure of the wisdom of that argument, and he was even less convinced now. Reguiba and his crew were devils. Devils!

Worse, they had failed to get results.

The action against the Zionists had been a disaster. Its failure was what had convinced the Supreme Council to send Sassani and Shamzeri to take a close look at how their money was being spent.

Sassani had not been to Egypt, and so he had no way to form an intelligent opinion on that action's chances of success. But even the short time he had spent in Al Khobaiq convinced him that serious problems afflicted this operation.

That was bad, since it was the Al Khobaiq mission that concerned the Iranians most. A number of divisions of Iranian "freedom fighters" stood ready to invade the emirate at the slightest sign of a popular uprising. Sassani had the uneasy feeling that the troops would be waiting a long, long time.

The hustle and bustle of activity in the compound failed to inspire him. He had a terrible vision of all those expensive weapons going into the hands of ambitious petty chiefs who would use them not in the cause of the Faith, but to carry on their own private wars.

Shamzeri shared these misgivings, and so the two Iranians determined to have a word with Reguiba on that score. Sassani suspected that the North African was turning a tidy personal profit on the arms distribution.

Sassani was an intense young man with wavy hair, a wiry body, and eyes like two black olives. Shamzeri was short, stocky, his eyes huge behind the thick lenses of wire-rimmed glasses.

Catching sight of Reguiba and his crew making their way toward the hangar, Sassani and Shamzeri intercepted them. Reguiba tried to brush them off, but the two were not so easily gotten rid of, as the man in black had already discovered to his irritation.

"Calm yourself," Reguiba said after listening to as much of the pair's complaints as he could stomach. The loss of Hodler had left him in a vile mood. "Your fears are groundless. All goes according to plan. Success is assured."

As usual, Mansour made with the flattery. "You dare to doubt the master, the perfect marvel of the age? Only Reguiba could have set so cunning a plan into control! He is the flaming sword of Islam!"

Carried away by his own rhetoric, Mansour stepped forward to press the point, sealing his own death.

For at that very instant, the Killmaster's finger tightened on the trigger of his high-powered rifle.

There was nothing wrong with Carter's aim; it was perfect. But the expansively gesturing Mansour chose that second to step in front of Reguiba.

Sassani heard a sound like a pickax thudding into a carcass of beef. It was the splat of the slug, taking Mansour square in the chest.

Mansour toppled backward, into Reguiba's arms. The crack of fifty rifles boomed out. The slaughter was on.

Reguiba saw the red crater gaping in Mansour's chest. His follower was dead weight, but still useful to the master. Reguiba used Mansour to shield him as he backed into the hangar. Lotah, Idir, and the Came! followed.

Sassani and Shamzeri didn't know what to do, so they ran into the hangar too. Outside, each passing heartbeat measured a further decimation of the ranks.

They ran deep into the building's interior, out of the line of fire for a moment.

"Success? Is that what you call this? You bungler! Fool!" Sassani shouted.

Reguiba wasted no time. He sought the way out. The far end of the hangar was a solid wall, unbroken by a door or even a window.

But standing in the hangar were some pieces of heavy equipment: a crane, a pipe-layer, a bulldozer.

The bulldozer!

Reguiba snapped out instructions to his men. Sassani and Shamzeri followed at his heels, shrieking abuse at him.

Idir and Lotah collected explosives and weapons, stacking them on the bulldozer. The Camel would drive; he'd once done forced labor on a road-building project during a term of confinement and knew heavy equipment tolerably well.

Auto theft he knew even better. True, the bulldozer was no auto, but the principle was the same. The Camel needed no key to start up the engine.

He pulled out some wires from the ignition, stripped their insulation, and touched the bare ends. Blue sparks sizzled.

Sassani said, "The great Reguiba — hah! The great blunderer! Is this, too, part of your cunning 'plan'?"

Reguiba seemed not to hear him. He looped bandoliers over his arms, dumped them on the bulldozer, then grabbed a half-dozen rifles and added them to the pile.

The Camel succeeded in hot-wiring the ignition. The mighty diesel engine sputtered, jerked, shook, then shuddered into life. Not even the torrent of gunfire could subdue the roar of the engine kicking over into full-bodied power, vibrating the concrete apron below its treads.

"What shall we do, Sadegh?" Shamzeri wailed. He seemed not to remember his oft-stated zeal to die for the Faith.

Reguiba and his aides clambered up on the bulldozer, huddling behind, around, and under its blocky projections.

Sassani grabbed Shamzeri by the arm, half dragging him over to the bulldozer. "Help us up!"

Suddenly the Iranians were looking down the bore of one of Reguiba's big.45s.

"Here's a message for your holy masters in Qom," Reguiba said. He shot down Sassani and Shamzeri, and then, for the first time that day, he smiled.

But there was no time to gloat. Slugs were zipping deep into the hangar, pinging off heavy equipment, punching holes in the walls.

A few militants who managed to keep their wits about them realized what Reguiba was doing, and tried to hitch a ride on the bulldozer. He shot them down too.

Obeying his master's instructions, the Camel threw the controls that lifted the machine's great curved blade so it was high enough to protect the riders in the open-top cab.

The Camel bounced around in the driver's bucket seat, throwing switches, yanking levers, engaging the gears, and opening the throttle. With a crushing grinding noise as the treads rolled over the concrete apron, the bulldozer jerked forward.

Idir and Lotah rigged a.50-caliber machine gun to cover their rear. Lotah manned the gun, while Idir worked the ammo feed, keeping it from fouling or tangling.

The bulldozer chugged toward the hangar's rear wall, treads ponderously clanking, blade raised. Black smoke puffed from the stacks.

The blade battered the wall. The wall bulged outward, prefabricated panels popping loose from beams, corrugated sheet metal squealing like a thousand nails on a blackboard.

Vertical uprights snapped. The hangar rocked on its foundations. Somebody not on the bulldozer screamed that the roof was going to fall in on them.

The leading edge of the treads chewed up panels and beams. Night and space showed through a wrecked wall.

An instant of resistance, and then the bulldozer busted loose, plowing through the wall to the outside.

The somebody who screamed was right. The roof did fall in. Likewise, the rest of the hangar.

The slaughter fell off for a moment as the amazed sharpshooters watched the spectacle of the hangar collapsing.

Big as a tank, the bulldozer flattened a few fences and more than a few soldiers of the Home Guard who failed to get out of the way. A swath of destruction tracked its progress through Field 89.

A minute passed, then two.

Carter was not at all surprised by the tremendous explosion that lit up the sky. By now, he had a pretty good idea of the way Reguiba's mind worked. The man was a believer, all right. A believer in overkill.

The bulldozer had crashed into an oil derrick. The skeletal tower went over like a lamppost hit by a drunk driver.

A flashpoint of white incandescence was generated by the explosives that Reguiba and company had left on the machine shortly before jumping off it to safety.

The uncapped oil well caught fire. A line of brightness jetted up, up, up, rising to a hundred-foot-high pillar of flame. It cleaved the night sky with its intolerable brightness.

As a diversionary ploy allowing Reguiba and his crew to make their escape, the tactic was a roaring success.

Prince Hasan tried to console Carter. "I'll have an army turning over the countryside for him. He won't get far."

But of course, he did.

Which was why, a few days later, the Killmaster jetted to Cairo.

Reguiba was back in business.