Rhodesia

Chapter Nine

Ross would have been astonished to see Nick at the moment. The mouse had crawled so quietly into the trap that no one knew it — yet. Nick had joined a group of white men in a locker room behind a messhall. When they had left he had appropriated a blue jacket and a yellow safety helmet He strolled through the hustle and bustle of the loading docks as if he had worked there all his life.

He spent the afternoon nosing through the giant smelters, plodding past narrow-gauge trainloads of ore, looking purposeful as he went in and out of warehouses and office buildings. The natives didn't dare look at him or question him — the whites just weren't used to it. THB ran like a precision machine — no unauthorized person ever moved around inside.

Judas' move helped. When the girls were brought to the villa he snarled, "Where are the two men?"

The patrol team, which had been directed to the girls by radio, said they thought the jungle team had them. Herman Duzen, the volunteer leader of the jungle pursuers, went pale. He had been exhausted; had brought his group in for food and rest. He thought the patrol had scooped up all the quarry!

Judas cursed, then sent all his security group out of the camp into the jungle and along the patrol roads. Inside, Nick did everything but punch a time clock. He saw trucks and rail cars loaded with chrome and asbestos, and he saw the wooden boxes move from the gold smelters to be buried under other loads while supervisors kept careful records.

He talked with one, getting by with his German because the man was Austrian. "This the one for the Far East boat?" he asked.

The man dutifully consulted his clipboard and waybills. "Nein. Genoa. Escort LeBeau." He turned away, efficient and busy.

Nick found the communications center, a room full of clattering teletypes and gravel-toned radios. He obtained a blank from the operator and wrote a telegram to Roger Tillbourne, Rhodesian Railways. The blank was numbered, German Army style. No one would dare...

The operator read the message: Next thirty days require ninety ore cars. Move only by Beyer-Garratt power under engineer Barnes. Signed, Granche.

The operator was busy, too. He asked, "Railway wire. Free?"

"Ja."

Nick was near a truck park when the sirens went off like a bombing alert He climbed into the body of a giant dump truck. Peeping over the top he watched the search go on all day, finally concluding it was for him, although he did not know about the girls' capture.

He found out about it after dark after he propped up the electrified fence around Judas' villa with sticks and crawled close to the lighted patio. In the screened enclosure nearest the house sat Mike Bor, Muller, and Si Kalgan. In a more distant enclosure, with a pool in the center, were Booty and Ruth and Janet, They were tied spread-eagled to the wire fencing, nude. A large male baboon paid them no attention as he munched on a green stalk.

Nick shuddered, drew Wilhelmina, sighted on Bor, paused. The light was odd. Then he realized the three men were in a glass enclosure — an air-conditioned and certainly bullet-proof box! Nick backtracked swiftly. What a trap! Within a few minutes he saw two men move silently through the brush where he had stood. Herman Duzen was patrolling, determined to make up for his error.

They were making a full circle of the house. Nick followed them, slipping from around his waist one of the pieces of plastic cord he let no one know he carried. They were pliable, with a break strength of over a ton.

Herman — although Nick did not know his name — went first. He lagged to inspect the outer electric fence. He died without a vocal peep, in a short thrash of arms and legs that subsided in sixty seconds. His companion came back along the dark path. His end came as shortly. Nick bent over and was a little sick for a few seconds, a reaction he never revealed even to Hawk.

Nick returned to his patch of shrubbery overlooking the glass bos and looked at it with a feeling of helplessness. The three men were laughing. Mike Bor pointed at the pool in the zoo enclosure where the naked girls hung like pitiful statues. The baboon had retreated to a tree. Something crawled out of the water. Nick shuddered. A crocodile. Hungry, probably. Janet Olson screamed.

Nick ran for the enclosure, Bor and Muller and Kalgan stood up, Kalgan holding a long gun. Well — for the moment he couldn't hit them and they couldn't hit him. They were depending on the two men he had just eliminated. He put slugs from Wilhelmina precisely into each of the croc's eyes from a distance of forty feet.

Mike Bor's heavily accented English roared from a loudspeaker. "Drop your gun, AXEman. You are surrounded."

Nick ran back into the rank of landscaping and crouched. He had never felt so helpless. Bor wasn't far wrong. Muller was using a telephone. They'd have plenty of reinforcements here in a few minutes. The three men laughed in his direction. Far down the hill a vehicle's engine roared into life. Midler's lips moved mockingly. Nick ran away, for the first time in his career. He went away from the road and the house, letting them see him flee, hoping they would forget the girls for a moment because the victim could not see the bait.

In the comfortably cool enclosure Bor chuckled. "See him run! It's the American all right. They're cowards when they know you have the power. Muller — send men around to the north."

Muller barked into the phone. Then said, "Marzon is over there now with a squad. Hell run into them. And there are thirty men closing in from the outside road. Herman and the inner patrols will be behind him in a moment."

Not quite. Herman and his squad chief were cooling under a baobab tree. Nick slipped past a three-man patrol and stopped when he saw the road. There were eight or nine men spread along it. One held a leashed dog. A man standing by a combat car was using a radio. Nick sighed and shoved a fuse into the block of plastique. Three of these, and nine bullets — and he'd start using rocks against an army. A portable searchlight probed.

A small column of trucks growled up the incline from the north. The man with the radio turned, held it as if confused. Nick squinted. The man clinging to the side of the first truck was Ross! He dropped to the ground as Nick watched. The truck reached the command car and men came out of the truck's back. They were black! The command car's lights went out.

A white man behind the radioman lifted a submachine gun. Nick put a bullet in his middle. At the shot — action exploded.

It sounded like a small war. Orange tracers ripped the night. Nick watched the black men attack, flank, crawl, fire. They moved like soldiers with a purpose. The hard kind to stop. The whites broke, retreated, some were shot in the back. Nick yelled to Ross and the burly black ran to him. Ross carried an automatic shotgun. He said, "I thought you were dead by now."

"Close to it."

They moved into the glow of the trucks lights and Pieter van Prez joined them. The old man looked like a victorious general. He carried a small command set. He looked at Nick without emotion. "You've triggered something. A Rhodesian unit that was chasing us has gone around to join another one coming in from outside. Why?"

"I sent a message to George Barnes. Tin's THB outfit is a bunch of international criminals. I figure they can't have all your politicos bought."

Van Prez tapped his radio. "The native workers are breaking out of their compounds. The charges against THB will shake something up. But we've got to get out of here before the security boys arrive."

"Give me a truck," Nick said. "They've got the girls up on the hill."

"Trucks cost money," van Prez said thoughtfully. He looked at Ross. "Do we dare?"

"I'll get you a new one or send you the price via Johnson," Nick exclaimed.

"Give it to him," Ross said. He handed Nick the shotgun. "Send us the price of one of these."

"It's a promise."

Nick whipped the truck past wrecked vehicles and around bodies, got on the side hill road toward the villa and climbed as fast as the engine would roar. Across the valley clusters of lights glowed but they were minute beside the fires that were breaking out everywhere. Away off, at the main gate, tracer bullets snapped and twinkled and the sound of firing was heavy. It looked as if Mike Bor and company had lost their political connections — or couldn't reach them fast enough. His guards must have tried to stop the army column, and that did it.

He rolled onto the plateau, circled the house. He saw the three men on the patio. They weren't laughing now. He drove straight at them.

The heavy International was rolling at a good clip when it hit the wide-weave chain-link fence. The barrier was carried along with the charging truck in a ripping, tearing mélange of grinding wire, falling posts, and shrieking metal. Chaise longues and deck chairs flew like toys before the impact of the fence and the vehicle. Just before Nick crashed into the bullet-proof glass box that sheltered Bor, Muller, and Kalgan, the V of fencing — pushed ahead like a metal soundwave by the truck's nose — parted with a giant twang.

Bor bolted toward the house and Nick watched Muller poise, holding a gun. The old man had guts or he was petrified. Kalgan's Oriental features were a mask of angry hate as he pulled at Muller and then the truck rammed the glass and everything vanished in a jolting shock of metal-to-glass. Nick braced against the wheel and firewall. Muller and Kalgan vanished, obscured by a sudden screen of fractured, splintered glass. The stuff bent, gave, and became opaque with a network of breaks.

A cloud of steam burst from the truck's fractured radiator. Nick struggled with his jammed door, knowing that Muller and Kalgan had gone through the exit door of the glass shelter and were following Bor into the main house. Finally he dropped the shotgun out the window and crawled out after it.

The door to the house was swinging as he ran around the shelter and came to it — the truck and the trailing fence was a barrier to his right. He put one blast from the shotgun through its center and it ponged open. No one was waiting for him.

Over the hiss of the truck's steaming radiator sounded a girl's terrified scream. He whirled, surprised that the lights stayed on — he had knocked down several outdoor fixtures — and hoping they'd go out. He was a good target if Muller and the others went to upper windows.

Dashing to the fence that separated the patio from the 200 enclosure he found a gate and got through it. The baboon cringed in a corner, the crocodile's corpse quivered. He cut Booty's bonds with Hugo. "What's wrong here?" he snapped.

"I don't know," she sobbed. "Janet screamed."

He got her free, said, "Undo Ruth," and went to Janet. "You all right?"

"Yes," she quavered, "a horrible big bug crawled up my leg."

Nick unfastened her hands. "You've got guts."

"Damn exciting tour."

He picked up the shotgun. "Untie your own feet." He ran for the patio and the door to the house. He was searching the last of many rooms when George Barnes found him. The Rhodesian policeman said, "Hello. Bit of excitement? Got your word by Tillbourne. Clever."

"Thanks. Bor and his crew have disappeared."

"We'll get them. I do want to hear your story."

"I haven't made it all up yet. Let's get out of here. This place may blow up any time." He carried blankets out to the girls.

Nick was wrong. The villa glowed brightly as they drove down the hill. Barnes said, "All right, Grant. What happened?"

"Mike Bor or THB must have thought I was business competition or something. I've had a lot of surprises. People attacked me, tried to abduct me. Annoyed my tour clients. Chased us all over the country. He was really violent near the last, so I made a pass at him with a truck."

Barnes laughed heartily. "Talk about the understatement of the decade. As I see it, you triggered a native revolt. Broke up a fight between our army and some guerrillas. And you've exposed enough smuggling and double-crossing by THB to turn part of our government on its ear. The radio has been wailing from HQ so much I got away from it."

"Gee," Nick said innocently, "did I? Just an accidental chain of events. But lucky for you, eh? THB was abusing workers, cheating your customs, and helping your enemies — they sold to everyone, you know. You ought to get a fine commendation out of this."

"If we ever straighten it out."

Of course they straightened it out. Nick noticed how simple it is when you're dealing with a lot of gold that has tremendous power and no patriotism. The free world felt better with the yellow metal flowing into hands that appreciated it. Judas was traced to Lourenço Marques and his trail vanished. Nick could guess where — up Mozambique Channel to the Indian Ocean in one of the big oceangoing ketches he favored. He said nothing, for technically his own objective had been reached and he was still Andrew Grant, visiting escort with tour group.

Indeed, an assistant chief of the Rhodesian police gave him a commendation scroll at a small dinner. The publicity helped him decide not to take Hawk's suggestion, via coded cable, that he leave the tour on some excuse and return to Washington. He decided to complete the trip for the sake of — appearances.

After all, Gus was good company, and so were Booty and Ruth and Janet and Teddy and...