Blood Of The Falcon

Fifteen

Which was worse, the desert heat of Al Khobaiq on Arabia's east coast, or this inferno of Egypt's Western Desert, located just a hair south of the Tropic of Cancer? A moot point, thought Carter. As far as he was concerned, both sandy hells were equally unpleasant. At least in the emirate he was transported in long, luxurious, air-conditioned stretch limos. Here, 600 miles south of Cairo and 125 miles southwest of Aswan, he suffered and sweltered in a reconstructed mini-bus stocked with sweating soldiers, Major Namid of the State Security Bureau, Lieutenant Osmanli of the Army, and a Nefrazi brigand named Zarak.

Carter barely had enough energy to flirt with Khamsina.

"Is it true the Nefrazi are descended from a lost clan of New Kingdom Egyptians?" he asked.

"Where did you read that?"

"In one of your monographs," he said. "I have to admit, I'm no expert. I just skimmed the high points."

"Why don't you ask Zarak?" she said. "He's a Nefrazi."

Carter glanced at Zarak, scowling on the other side of the bus. "He doesn't seem too sociable. It's amazing that you get along with him so well."

"I told you, I was initiated into the tribe on my last field trip out here five years ago. The ceremony made me blood kin to all the tribe. To him, I am a sister."

Zarak looked like the kind of character who'd murder his own mother, but Carter kept the thought to himself. If ever a man looked born to be a brigand, Zarak did.

He knew Major Namid felt the same way about the Gray Raider. Namid came from a police background. Zarak was an outlaw. From the moment they had pulled strings to release Zarak from a Kalabsha jail, Namid and Zarak had taken an instant dislike to each other.

Khamsina said, "To answer your question, there are some strong suggestions that the tribe descends from the ancient, Pharaohnic Egyptians. Their name comes from the root word nafr, an old Arabic word that means 'hidden. Much of their culture is virtually identical to that of the Bedouins, but the Bedouins themselves hold the Nefrazi to be idolators posing as good Moslems."

"They also call them the Gray Raiders."

"Yes, but that does not imply a judgment," she said. "All the tribes in this area, Bedouins and Nefrazi, have made their living by raiding towns and caravans."

The mini-bus was part of a military convoy going deep into Nefrazi territory, the tortured hills of the Sawda Hamadi, the Black Highlands, site of Egypt's newest and hottest brushfire war.

And Reguiba looked to be right in the thick of it.

Sadat had been a strong ruler, and paid the price for it. The current government in Egypt was well intentioned but weak. They had their hands full keeping the lid on the population pressure cooker that stocked the cities with legions of the poor, the sick, and the starving. They had recently been rocked by the Alexandria riots, and lacked the manpower and the firepower to mount a major effort to put down the troubles in the Sawda Hamadi.

It was popularly known as the war of the Gray Raiders versus the Crime Police.

The Gray Raiders were the Nefrazi, strongest of all tribes in this, their traditional homeland. In the last few months, they had been hit hard by the Crime Police.

The Crime Police had actually been police not long ago, the underpaid, abused, infamous Riot Police who had rocked all Egypt by their rampage of looting and destruction in the tourist center of Giza not long ago.

The rioting Riot Police were quelled by the military, but many thousands of them had deserted, fleeing to the hinterlands. Most had scattered to the four winds, but a small army of them had gathered somewhere in the rugged lands of the Sawda Hamadi.

They survived and thrived by banditry, thievery, and raiding small villages. In this, they were little different from the native inhabitants, but their background combined with their nefarious activities had earned them the name Crime Police.

Starting at the time that Reguiba accepted the contract for Operation Ifrit, what had been little more than a nuisance had taken a quantum jump into a credible threat. The Crime Police were being organized and supplied with heavy weapons, forming a small, well-equipped, elusive guerrilla army.

Their first victims were the Nefrazi. They had taken a heavy toll of the various clans. The government could happily have wished a plague on both their houses, but the Crime Police had stepped up their actions to attacking military outposts and stations, wiping out the soldiers and looting the bases of weapons, gaining more recruits.

A fire fight in which the Crime Police got the worst of it had turned up some interesting personalities among the corpses. Some of them were Moroccan killers known to be associated with Reguiba.

Nick Carter's mission in conjunction with Major Namid was to establish friendly relations with the Nefrazi and, through them, seek out and destroy Reguiba and his Crime Police.

As hot as it was in the broiling mini-bus, Hawk was making things much hotter for the Killmaster. Hawk wanted Reguiba dead. Of course, Carter did, too, but Hawk wasn't letting him off the hook for Reguiba's getaway in AI Khobaiq.

Carter recalled his last conversation with AXE's chief before embarking on this trek west of the Nile.

"By the way, Nick," Hawk had said, "Griff and Stanton are operating in the area independently of your group. They might be able to come up with something if you're stymied."

That stung. But the Killmaster hadn't offered any alibis. He had had Reguiba in his sights and Reguiba got away. Actions speak louder than words. Reguiba, dead, would do all the talking for Carter.

Of course, the important thing was not to wind up dead yourself.

Professor Khamsina Assaf was known and trusted by the Nefrazi. That was where she came in. She was also concerned enough for their welfare to put her own skin on the line. Quite lovely skin it was, too, Carter thought, not for the first time.

Nimad, Carter, and Khamsina had flown down to Aswan, city of the mighty dam whose relative nearness to the Sawda worried Egyptian strategists. If the Crime Police ever grew strong enough to raid the dam, the consequences could be catastrophic, unthinkable.

From Aswan, they went south via hydrofoil to Kalabsha. That was where they picked up that charmer, Zarak.

Major Namid's sources informed him that a power among the Gray Raiders was sitting in a military jail for various crimes of violence. Khamsina suggested that freeing Zarak would incur a debt of honor on the part of the Nefrazi.

The local authorities vigorously protested the release, but Namid had the clout to make it happen. Zarak swore an oath on his sacred honor not to break parole, to aid and assist the searchers in negotiations with his kinsmen.

Carter and Namid both wondered what the word of a thief, outlaw, and probable killer was worth, but Khamsina argued that a Nefrazi would never violate his sacred oath, so they had to play ball. After all, she was the expert.

And so here they were, deep in Nefrazi territory, a wild land of wadis, sinks, sand, broiling plains, and a seemingly endless series of rugged gray-black ridges.

The convoy consisted of three jeeps and the mini-bus. The mini-bus was specially adapted to the primitive road conditions. It was fairly primitive itself, a rough ride, but at least it kept on going and didn't break down. It was equipped with a radio and a handful of hot, tired, well-armed soldiers who were so bushed that they didn't even bother to ogle Khamsina. Lieutenant Osmanli's threats to one or two of the more insolent wolves had nipped that in the bud.

A jeep rode in front of the mini-bus, a second brought up the rear, and the third ranged ahead as a scout. All three jeeps carried mounted machine guns. The scout jeep was equipped with a radio as well.

Extreme caution was exercised each time they approached tight gorges and blind curves. Soldiers went up on foot into the hills to search for potential ambushers. They hadn't come across any — yet.

Zarak, whose utter contempt for all things not Nefrazi was incredible, chuckled at the precautions. "All your men could not stop my people if they wished to destroy you."

Major Namid was too hot and tired to do more than make a disgusted face, but Carter was interested.

"How would they do that?" he asked.

"They would drop a mountain on you." Bored suddenly, Zarak went back to his pastime of snatching flies out of the air.

Khamsina explained. "It is an old Nefrazi trick, from the days when cavalry came to the Sawda to harass them. They would find a likely spot, at a mountain pass or gorge, undermine a section of the cliff face by driving long stakes into it, and pry the rocks off to crush their enemies."

"That gives us all something else to worry about. Beware of falling rocks, eh?" Carter said.

"Oh, they do not do that now. That was a long time ago."

"If it worked on cavalry, it should work on convoys too," Carter noted.

Presently they all had something else to worry about, and it wasn't falling rocks.

Station 6 did not reply.

Not a fort, hardly an outpost, Station 6 was the end of the line, the last stop before the road and semi-modern civilization ran out. It consisted of little more than a blockhouse, barracks to hold its complement of a dozen men, a well, and a gas pump. It would be the last stop, too, for Carter, Namid, and Khamsina before Zarak led them into the hills where the Nefrazi had their hidden oasis… and where the Crime Police base camp was secreted.

Station 6 had a radio, too, but they could not be raised by the operator working the set on the mini-bus. He was a youngster, fresh-faced, who said hopefully to Lieutenant Osmanli, "Maybe their radio is out of order, sir."

He didn't believe it, and neither did anybody else. The soldiers stopped looking bored and started paying plenty of attention to their rifles and ammunition.

The scout jeep went on ahead, out of sight of the rest of the convoy, as they investigated the communications gap.

After a long pause, the scouts radioed back the reason for the unbroken silence of Station 6:

"They're all dead — wiped out!"