The Omega Terror

THIRTEEN

There was a great fluttering of wings, and another sound accompanied it. It was a familiar sound— a car engine. And then there was the voice,

“Nick! Mon Dieu, Nick!”

I moved my arm from my face, and my eyes fluttered open. The sun was going down in the sky, and it was not so bright now. I moved the arm again and rolled onto my side. Then I saw Gabrielle, bending over me, concern and relief in her eyes.

“Oh, Nick! I thought you were dead.”

She was pulling at the shredded cloth of my shirt. “Thank God, I found you in time.”

“How…?” It was difficult to speak. I couldn’t manipulate my tongue.

She helped me up and leaned my head against her. Then she was unscrewing the top of a canteen, and I could almost smell the water as the cap came off. The miraculous wet stuff was washing down my throat, gurgling its way to my insides, moving into the vital places replenishing my energy and my fiber.

“You’re only fifty yards from the road,” she said. She pointed beyond the Citrõen. “Didn’t you know?”

I could actually feel the energy returning with the water. I moved my tongue, and it would work now. “No, I didn’t.” I took another swig, then Gabrielle was touching my parched face with a damp cloth. “But what are you doing out here? You’re supposed to be in Mhamid.”

“Someone came into town with news of the fire. I could not just sit there at the hotel, thinking you might be in trouble. I was heading for the lab when I saw the two sets of car tracks leading down this road toward Tagounite, the next town from here. Since the laboratory had been leveled, I figured you were either caught in the fire or you belonged to one of those tracks. I preferred to believe the latter, so I followed the tracks. They turn off the road just up ahead, but I saw the vultures first. And they led me to you.”

I sat up slowly, and the throbbing in my head had subsided somewhat. I grimaced in pain from several sources.

“Are you all right, Nick?”

“I think so,” I said. I noticed for the first time that the double vision had gone. I tried to get up and fell against Gabrielle.

“Come on, I will help you to the car,” she said.

I found it hard to believe that I was still alive. I let Gabrielle lead me to the car, and I slumped heavily into the front seat.

We drove slowly along the road, moving past the place where Zeno had driven into the desert and I had followed. Then, several hundred yards beyond that point, I saw the tracks. The Land Rover heading back out onto the dirt track. And turning away from Mhamid again, toward the desert and Tagounite.

“That’s what I thought,” I said. “Okay, we head for Tagounite.”

“Are you quite sure?” she looked worried.

I glanced over at her and grinned, feeling my cracked lips try to bend. “Zeno took my favorite playthings,” I said. “I think it’s only right that I should make him give them back.”

She returned the smile. “Whatever you say, Nick.”

We arrived at Tagounite just after dark. It was Mhamid all over again, but somehow it looked even dustier and drier. As soon as we drove into town, I sensed that Zeno either was there or had been there recently. No physical evidence, just a gut feeling, one I had learned to pay attention to on other occasions. We came to a small square just after entering town, and a gasoline pump, painted red, stood outside a place that looked like an inn. It was one of those Spanish pumps that you put a coin into and get your own gas, but this one had been converted to exclude the automatic exchange of coin and fuel.

“Just a minute,” I said to Gabrielle. “I want to ask some questions here.”

She stopped the car, and in a moment an Arab came out, a young, thin fellow wearing a desert kaffiyeh on his head. He grinned a big, toothy grin, and we asked him to fill the Citrõen’s tank. While he did, I got out of the car and went around to speak with him.

“Have you serviced a Land Rover tonight?” I asked in Arabic.

“Land Rover?” he repeated squinting at me as he pumped the gas. “There was a desert car here an hour or more ago, sir. An open top, it had.”

“Was a man driving it, a man with gray hair, a tall man?”

“Why, yes,” the Arab said, studying my face.

“Did he speak to you?”

The Arab looked at me and a small grin came onto his face. “It seems I remember something…”

I took a wad of dirhams from my pocket and handed them to him. His smile broadened. “It comes to me now, sir. He mentioned getting a good rest tonight.”

“Did he say where?”

“He did not.”

I studied his face and decided he was telling the truth. I paid him for the gas. “Thanks.”

Back in the Citrõen, I told Gabrielle what I had learned.

“If Zeno is here now, he will be here tomorrow morning,” she said. “If you find him tonight, Nick, he will probably kill you. You look terrible. You’re in no shape to go after him.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “Well get a hotel room. But I want you to wake me at dawn tomorrow.”

“All right. But until then, you will rest”

The hotel room was cleaner than the one in Mhamid, and the bed just a little softer. Gabrielle slept with me, but I did not even notice when she climbed beside me in a short, filmy nightgown. I was asleep almost as soon as I hit the bed.

At midnight I sat bolt upright, yelling obscenities at the vultures and waving my arms at them. It was all very real for a moment. I could even feel the hot sand under my thighs and smell the stink of the birds.

“Nick!” Gabrielle spoke sharply to me.

I was really awake then. “Sorry,” I mumbled. I leaned against the head of the bed and realized that I felt a hundred percent better. The pains were going away, and I had some strength.

“It is all right,” Gabrielle said softly as I fit a cigarette. I inhaled, and the red coal glowed in the room. “Are you cold?” She moved her body against me. She was soft and warm and I responded in spite of myself.

“Just right now,” I told her.

She noticed my response to her body. “I had better stay on my side,” she said. She started to move away.

My hand stopped her. “It’s all right.”

“But Nick, you need your rest.”

“I won’t go back to sleep for a while anyway.”

She settled back down against me. “All right. But you just relax and let me handle tilings.”

I smiled as she kissed my mouth, caressing me all the while. She was taking care of me, and I loved it. Soon she kissed me again, and there was real fire in it, and she knew the time had come.

Gabrielle made gentle love to me, and it was unforgettable. From that moment on my strength flowed back quickly. When she had fallen asleep beside me later, I dozed off quickly and woke at dawn feeling refreshed and renewed.

I still hurt when I moved. But the wound at the base of my skull was healing, the gash under my left eye had formed a small, thin scab, and Gabrielle had patched up the cuts on my back. She also changed the bandage on my side, where General Djenina had inflicted the flesh wound. We had coffee sent to the room while we were dressing, and after I had the thick, dark stuff inside me, I felt like a different man from the one who had stumbled into that Citrõen the previous afternoon.

Out in the car again that morning, with the sun just coming up over the flat, white rooftops of the village, we headed for the other two hotels in town. I was looking for the Land Rover. Of course, if Zeno really wanted to hide, there were probably private homes where he could have gotten a room. But he had little reason to think I was still after him. I figured he would be at one of the hotels. And I also figured he would not get out before dawn.

We scoured the parking areas around the first small hotel, but there was no sign of the Land Rover. He could have changed vehicles, too, but again there seemed to be little point.

As we approached the second hotel, Gabrielle and I spotted the Land Rover at the same time. It was parked just across the cobblestone street from the entrance, and a tall man was leaning into it over its topless door.

“It’s Zeno!” I said to Gabrielle. “Stop the car!”

She followed orders. “Nick, watch out. You don’t even have a gun.”

I climbed from the Citrõen carefully. Zeno was still arranging something on the seat of the vehicle. With some luck, I might be able to move up behind him. He had not noticed our car yet.

“Don’t turn the engine off,” I said softly to Gabrielle. “Just sit here. Quietly. And keep out of the way.”

“All right.”

I had taken three steps toward the Land Rover when Zeno looked up quite suddenly and spotted me. He didn’t recognize me at first, but then he took a second look. He seemed not to believe his eyes.

I had despised Damon Zeno before I had ever met the man, but since the horrible hours in the desert, I had developed an overwhelming hatred for him. I knew that my feelings were dangerous because emotion almost always gets in the way of efficiency. But I couldn’t help myself.

“This is the end of the line, Zeno,” I said to him.

But he didn’t think so. He pulled Wilhelmina from a hip pocket, aimed at me and squeezed off a round. I ducked down and the slug zinged over my head and ricocheted off the paving stones behind me. I ran to a parked Fiat nearby, and the Luger roared again, denting the roof of the small car. Then Zeno was in the Land Rover, starting the engine.

I went for him but stopped halfway when I saw the car lurch forward and screech away down the street, toward the edge of town. I turned quickly and motioned toward Gabrielle and the Citrõen. She stripped gears, and the car charged forward, pulling up beside me.

Gabrielle made room for me and I hopped in behind the wheel. By now several Arabs had appeared on the quiet street, talking excitedly about the gunshots. I ignored them and put the Citrõen in gear, the tires spinning and then grabbing hold as we got into motion.

The Land Rover was still in sight about three blocks away. I shifted all the way down the long street, tires squealing and rubber burning on the cobblestones. At the end of the street Zeno wheeled around a corner to the right, skidding as he went. I followed the Citrõen making the turn on two wheels.

Zeno was heading out of town on a paved road. A couple of early-morning pedestrians stopped and stared as we roared past, and I found myself hoping no local constabulary was out and around at this hour. In just a few minutes we had left the village behind us. The pavement ended, and we were on a semi-improved dirt road heading again into the desert. The rising sun was almost directly in front of us, and it glared into our eyes through the windshield.

For perhaps twenty miles we roared along. The Citrõen gained some distance but wasn’t able to overtake the other car. The road disappeared almost completely, turning into a rut-filled, sand-clogged track that made us bump our heads against the ceiling of the Citrõen as we kept pace with the Land Rover. Then, as he had that other time, Zeno left the track completely in an effort to lose us. I wheeled the Citrõen after him through scrub brush and hard clay, and now Zeno had a distinct advantage. The Land Rover was made for this kind of travel, with its sturdy frame and four-wheel drive, while the Citrõen was a highway car. In five minutes we had lost sight of Zeno, though a trail of dust allowed us to stay in the right direction.

When I was sure he would lose us completely, we moved around a kopje of jutting rock, and there was the Land Rover sitting at an awkward angle, stuck in a sand drift. Zeno’s driving apparently had not matched the ability of the vehicle. Zeno was just climbing out when we skidded to a stop, not more than twenty yards away.

“Stay in the car and keep down,” I said to Gabrielle.

“Nick, you don’t have a chance without a weapon,” she warned.

“He doesn’t know what we don’t have.”

I reached over and touched her arm. Then I got out of the Citrõen.

Zeno had ducked behind the open door of the Land Rover, holding the Luger over its edge, aimed in my direction. If he had known for sure that I was unarmed, he could have made things rough for us. He could have walked back to us with impunity and made us scramble for cover. But he did not know.

“You’re not taking me back alive!” Zeno shouted as he crouched behind the vehicle door. I didn’t need him to tell me that.

The question was how to get to him, since he had Wilhelmina. It was surprising how big and dangerous the gun looked from this end of the barrel. I glanced at the ground surrounding the vehicles. There were some rocks quite close to both cars on the right and others farther away on the left. They would afford some cover if I could get to them and would confuse Zeno if he didn’t know which ones I’d hidden behind.

Zeno provided his own distraction before I could invent one. He decided it was not safe enough behind the door of the Land Rover, so he turned and moved in a crouch toward the front of the vehicle. As soon as I saw him, I scrambled for the rocks on my right and dived behind them.

When I got up to an edge to look things over, I saw that Zeno had lost track of me and had no idea where I was. His eyes searched the Citrõen and the rocks on both sides of the cars. A hysterical look had come into his face, and I saw him take a better grip on the butt of the Luger, which was slippery with sweat.

Slowly, on my hands and knees, I crawled around the perimeter of the rocks, careful not to move any gravel under my shoes. There was no sound to cover for me. Inch by inch, foot by foot, I worked my way around the rocks to a position just above the Land Rover.

“It won’t do any good to hide, damn you!” Zeno’s loud, strained voice came over the edge of the rock. “I’m going to kill you.”

I lay soundless on the rocks above him. After a moment, I crawled slowly along the crest of the rocks, still out of sight. I was above the front of the Land Rover and about ten feet to its right. I inched up and sneaked a look. I was lucky. Zeno was watching the other side.

I found a rock about the size of my fist. Taking a good grip on it, I took another quick look at Zeno. He was still facing away from me. I hauled back and hurled the rock in a high, looping arc over his head to the other side of the Land Rover; it landed with a clatter. Zeno whirled and fired a round from the Luger at the sound and I jumped down on his back.

I did not gauge the jump well enough. I hit him on the shoulders and back, and the Luger went flying. I landed hard on my left foot and turned my ankle. We hit the ground together, grunting under the impact of the fall. We both struggled up, and I slumped to one knee. I had sprained my ankle. I glanced at the Luger; the business end of the barrel was buried in sand. It would be unusable until it was cleaned. Zeno saw this too and made no effort to go for the gun. Instead, a tight grin came onto his face when he saw my leg.

“Well, isn’t that a shame,” he hissed.

I struggled up, favoring the ankle. It sent needles of sharp pain up my leg. Along with exhaustion from the ordeal of the previous day, this made Zeno despite his age, a formidable opponent in a hand-to-hand fight.

But I had my hatred for the man; I ignored the ankle and made a headlong dive at Zeno, hitting him in the chest. We went down together again. I realized that it was to my advantage to keep him off his feet because my maneuverability was nil in an upright position. We rolled over and over on the sand as I punched my fist into his face. He grabbed at my throat wildly, clawing, trying for a hold that would strangle me. We were beside the Land Rov-er. Zeno’s hands closed on my throat. I threw another fist into his face, and bone crunched; he fell back against the vehicle.

Zeno’s face was bleeding, but he was still fighting. He was on his feet, grabbing at a shovel attached to the side of the Land Rover, one of those small, short-handled ones used for digging wheels out of sand. He had it in hand now and was raising it to bring it down on my head.

I tried to get up but was slowed by the ankle. Now I had to worry about the damn shovel. It descended savagely toward my face, the blade down. I rolled away from it in a quick movement, and it buried itself in the sand beside my head.

Zeno, dark-faced, veins standing out like ropes in his neck, pulled the blade of the shovel free for another swing. He raised the weapon above his head. I kicked out viciously with my right foot and connected with Zeno’s leg, knocking him off-balance. He fell on the sand but did not lose the shovel. I struggled awkwardly to my feet and moved toward Zeno, but he was standing up, too, and still had the shovel He swung it wildly, this time in a horizontal arc at my head. I stepped back to avoid it and felt the ankle. I moved in on Zeno awkwardly, grabbed him before he could regain balance and threw him over my hip to the ground. This time he lost both the shovel and some of his strength. That was good because I was tiring very fast, and the ankle was killing me.

He swung a fist at me and missed, and I smashed a right into his face. He went stumbling backward and slammed up hard against the Land Rover, his face twisted with pain and blood-smeared. I hobbled after him, caught him there, and jammed my hand into his belly. Zeno bent double, and I brought my knee up into the side of his head. He gave a loud grunt and fell back into the front seat of the Land Rover.

As I moved toward him, Zeno struggled for a hold on the end of the seat, and I saw he was reaching for something in the vehicle. As he turned back toward me with it in his hand, I saw that I was in trouble. He had found my other weapon, the stiletto Hugo. He flashed it at me, as he struggled to his feet, his body filling the open door of the car.

I could not allow him to get at me. Not after what he had put me through already. Before he had gotten clear of the door, I threw myself bodily at it. He fell. His head was caught between the edge of the door and the frame as it slammed closed. I heard the skull crack distinctly under the impact, and then Zeno’s eyes went very wide as a muffled grunt escaped his lips. The door swung back open, and Zeno slid to a sitting position on the ground beside the car, his eyes still open, a slim trickle of red edging down his jaw from his hairline. He was dead.

I slumped against the Land Rover, near him, taking my weight off my ankle. I heard footsteps running toward me and then Gabrielle’s frightened voice.

“Nick, are you…:

She stopped beside me and looked down at Zeno. Then she looked at my ankle.

“I’m okay,” I said heavily.

Gabrielle kissed my cheek, then got Wilhelmina and Hugo for me. We started back to the Citrõen, with me leaning on her shoulder.

“This is getting to be a habit,” I said.

“I like helping you, Nick.”

I looked down at her green eyes. “Like last night?”

She actually blushed. “Yes. Like last night.”

I grinned as we moved back to the car. I was picturing Hawk’s expression if he could see the lovely girl who was so concerned about my well-being. “I don’t know how you do it,” he would say with a wry face.

We had arrived at the car. “How long a drive is it back to Tangier?” I asked Gabrielle.

She shrugged her shoulders. “We could be there tomorrow.”

“Really?” I said, raising my eyebrows. “In this broken-down old crate?”

She looked at the dusty Citrõen. “Nick, this is practically a new car.”

“But a new car can get us to Tangier tomorrow,” I argued. “And then I must contact my superiors immediately, and they may want me to fly out on the next plane. On the other hand, if this car is old and decrepit, then it ought to take us two or possibly three nights on the road to reach Tangier.”

The bewilderment in her face dissolved, and a smile replaced it. “Ah. I see the validity of your judgment,” she said slowly. “It has been through a great deal recently, and it would be dangerous to drive it recklessly.”

I patted her backside affectionately. Then I hobbled to the door and got in, and Gabrielle climbed into the driver’s seat.

“To Tangier then, driver,” I said. “But, please. Not too fast.”

“Just as you say, Nick.” She smiled.

Taking one last look at the inert figure sprawled beside the Land Rover, I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then I settled back on the soft seat, closed my eyes and anticipated the trip back to Tangier.

I expected it to be a memorable one.