Wade’s face was utterly expressionless, only his eyes showing the murderous fury that flamed within him. These men intended to plunge the Near East into a maelstrom of slaughter, a fake Jihad manipulated by their own hands for their own profit.
Behind a low rock Wade crouched. Not far away was a zeg-zeg tree, its twisted branches casting a black blot of shadow. The sentry moved back and forth….
There was a low thud. The Tuareg turned, saw a gleaming automatic lying where Wade had thrown it, near the zeg-zeg. He glanced around sharply, but the white man remained unmoving, like a part of the rock that shielded him.
The Tuareg hesitated. His thoughts were not difficult to read. The business at hand was unloading guns. There was nothing especially unusual in seeing one here, where apparently it had been thrown by mistake. Moreover, what enemy would cast away his weapon?
But the Tuareg did not act immediately. His gaze flickered toward Wade, held intent for a moment. Few men could have remained so completely motionless—but the ruse worked.
The Arab stepped forward.
Chapter VI
The Hills of Gold
WADE launched himself like a catapult. He smashed against the Tuaregs legs, while one hand clamped tightly over the blue veil, shutting off a yell. Briefly the two went rolling over and over on the sand. The slight noise of the scuffle was lost in the shouts and commands of the men around the campfires.
The carbine had flown out of the Tuareg’s hands at the first onslaught. He kicked his knee up viciously, trying to disable Wade, but the white man twisted deftly aside. Then steel gleamed in the moonlight.
A sliver of thirsty light sped toward Wade’s heart. He arced his body like a flash, feeling the sting of a blade along his ribs. Simultaneously he put all his weight into a sledge-hammer blow that crashed into the Tuareg’s face. The man’s outcry died unuttered in his throat. He collapsed, his head twisted at an impossible angle.
Wade didn’t move. He crouched tensely, straining for a sound that would mean his presence had been discovered. But it did not come.
After a moment he collected the knife and carbine, slung the Tuareg’s body over his shoulder and slipped past the zeg-zeg.
A safe distance from the camp he halted. The cold fury had gone from his eyes, yet his face did not relax as he stripped and changed clothes with the dead Tuareg. After that, not trusting the uncertain moonlight, he used a tiny flashlight to study the face of the corpse and opened the make-up kit.
THOUGH the veil would hide his features, it would be wise to make doubly certain. Luckily his hair and eyes would not have to be changed. The skin, too, was already dark enough, but Wade rubbed oil over it to duplicate the greasy sheen of the Tuareg’s face. With the aid of collodion, he traced a crinkled scar upon his left cheek-bone and slipped a moulage of black rubber into his mouth. He rubbed grime into his hands and fingernails, adjusted the blue veil and stood up, satisfied at last.
The make-up kit went under his garments, where the inconspicuous radio set had already been stowed. The Tuareg’s body he buried under the sand, though he could ill afford the time. Already he could hear the angry snorting of the camels as they were roused from their rest.
Wade turned on the radio. It would continue to send out signals now, on its narrow beam, until it was stopped or smashed. And the Thunderbug would remain on the trail, till its assistance was needed.
But first Wade knew he must find the heart of this criminal gang. He was only on the outskirts as yet. Skipper Klett and the Tuaregs would lead him to the Hills of Gold, where the false mu’min gathered his army.
Waiting his chance, Wade joined the caravan as it filed inland, a serpentine procession of grunting camels and cursing Tuaregs. He fell in near the rear of the group, after making sure that Klett was at the head of it. The skipper’s burly body was lurching from side to aide atop an already overloaded camel.
An Arab turned to stare at Wade sharply.
“Salaam alaikum,” he said.
He got in return the prescribed: “Wa alaikum as salaam.”
Wade mentally crossed his fingers as he muttered the guttural words.
There’d be mighty little peace among these Tuaregs if he could help it!
A night and a day had passed. They were far from the Gulf, in the bleak, desolate country east of Shakra. Klett had driven the Tuaregs unmercifully. Wade guessed that a showdown was imminent, or else Skipper Klett would not have left his ship.
They were in a mountainous country, approaching a towering peak that reared darkly against the surrounding ranges. Wade hoped they would soon be at their destination, though he had dared to ask no questions. Among the taciturn Tuaregs, his silence passed unnoticed.
The sunset flamed crimson to the east. Simultaneously the color of the mountain peak changed. The fiery rays burnished it, reflecting from mineral deposits that must have covered its sides, till abruptly the whole mountain seemed washed in yellow flame. The color ran down to the surrounding ranges, leaping from crest to summit.
Some widespread ferrous deposit, perhaps feldspar or fool’s gold, Wade thought as he stared at the golden peaks before him. Then suddenly he remembered.
The Hills of Gold!
Bright and burnished they rose from the desert, gleaming like the fabled treasure-mines of Solomon of Ophir. Even after it grew dark, the high ranges reflected the last gleams of the sunset. The mountains of gold glowed like a mirage above the desert.
Fool’s gold, Wade thought grimly. Luring men to—what? He would soon know.
Ten minutes later the caravan halted in a broad, moonlit valley that seemed to have been scooped out of the heart of the mountains by some colossal dredge. Ancient ruins, crumbling and grim, rose on the nearer slope. The camels headed for the site of that long-forgotten city, built in the fabled Days of Ignorance, lost in Arabia’s misty past. Once a thriving desert city had existed here.
Wade wondered what catastrophe had wiped it out. He was never to know.
There were skin tents scattered here and there, near an oasis where palms grew thickly. There were, Wade noticed, two encampments. One was Tuareg. The other was more luxurious, with banners of the desert chieftains swaying above them.
Klett barked orders. With the others, Wade made the camels kneel and set to work unloading the boxes of weapons. Surreptitiously he stole glances around.
What had the nomad chiefs in common with the Tuaregs, whom they usually detested and feared? He did not know, but he noticed that each group kept strictly to itself.
Klett rolled forward, his blue-black beard jutting.
“Hurry it up!” he commanded harshly. “Unload those camels!”
He turned away, heading for one of the few structures that remained still standing despite its great age. Wade hesitated, waited his chance and followed. He kept to the shadows. Luckily there were no guards in this stronghold of the enemy, presumably because they felt themselves safe from attack.
Silently Wade edged his way along until he was behind the house Klett had entered. He dared not try the windows, but the roof might prove a good vantage point. He sprang up, caught its edge with his hands and quickly drew himself up.
TRIUMPH surged within him. Only the edge of the roof was of sun-baked brick. The rest of it had long since fallen in and had been replaced with thatch. Wade wriggled out till he lay full length on the parapet. Then he peered down into the room below.
Three men were there—Klett, an Arab and a white man whose face Wade could not see from his vantage point. The trio were seated about a table. Klett was pouring liquor from a square-sided bottle. His low laugh rumbled up.
“This is the last trip. You’ve got enough guns now, eh?”
The Arab held up a warning hand. His savage, bearded face twisted.
“Speak softly! The Tuaregs are not the only ones here now. The chieftains are also—”
Klett spat contemptuously.
“They won’t hear anything. They’re too far away, Mabruk.”
Mabruk! This was the false mu’min!
Wade’s eyes narrowed as he peered down. Then they widened as the third man leaned back in his chair to reveal a sallow, gaunt face in which a nervous tic twitched under one eye. Wade remembered the hamadryad and the karait that had been planted in his bag on the Basra train and the two men who had aroused his curiosity there. One of them had been the Hadj Nesserdin.
The other sat beneath him now. Jerry Coyne, “newspaper man.” So he was the third member of the renegade trio, traveling as a foreign correspondent to disarm suspicion! It was Coyne, Wade guessed, who had placed the deadly snakes in his Gladstone.
“Everything’s ready,” the fake reporter said, lighting a cigarette. “Give me a drink, Klett. Our own natives are posted and ready. I’ve taken care of that. Basra, Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut—all the key cities. They’re just waiting for the signal.”
The mu’min smiled in his beard.
“And tomorrow I speak to the priests and tell them when to make Jihad.”
“Sure you want to speak?” Coyne asked. “Maybe we’d better use one of the doubles.”
“There is no danger,” Mabruk said. “Besides, there are only two other Mabruks left. We may need them later for more dangerous tasks, like the fort near Khaibar. Ai! It was well I was not leading that attack, or the bullet would have slain me instead of that other. What was his name?”
Coyne shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. He was Mabruk, after he had enough hashish.”
Wade’s eyes hooded. He was beginning to understand the mu’min’s reputation for immortality. It was easy enough, for doubles were used. Arabs were captured, drugged with hashish and disguised to resemble Mabruk. Wild with the narcotic, they would lead suicidal attacks. If they were killed, that did not matter, as long as Mabruk himself was never in danger.
But Coyne had mentioned that his own natives were waiting in the key cities. Why? And why were the nomad chieftains gathered here?
A man lurched into the room, staggering under the weight of a heavy rolled tent carpet over his shoulder. He lowered it, panting, and stood up. It was Ali Hassan, the Arab who had shot Tanit in the Ramadan Café!
“Ali!” Coyne snapped sharply. “What the devil are you doing here?”
The killer shrugged.
“I obeyed you, Sahib. I killed the British officer in Basra, as you ordered.”
“Well?”
Coyne stared down at the carpet.
“Patience.” Ali smiled. “The Hadj Nesserdin—”
Anger sprang into Coyne’s eyes.
“You didn’t kill him? You fool!”
FOR answer, Ali Hassan unrolled the rug. The body of Nesserdin lay revealed, still breathing, but with blood caked upon the green turban.
“Tanit, the dancing girl, told him too much,” Ali said. “She is dead. The Hadj hired a motor car to bring him near this place, as close as the road comes and then set out on foot. I followed. I dared not let him get too near.”
“Who the blazes is he?” Klett growled.
The mu’min was licking his lips nervously.
“He’s about the biggest shot in this neighborhood,” Coyne said, “the sort of guy who starts real Jihads, only Nesserdin’s never done it. The Arabs worship him. If he told them to go home now, they’d go and tear us to pieces first, if he suggested it.”
“Not the Tuaregs,” Klett said, smiling unpleasantly.
“No, but the chiefs are the boys who count in this game. I don’t quite know—” Coyrie hesitated, his eye twitching. “He could mess things up for us swell if he had the chance.”
“Why give him the chance?” the skipper demanded.
“Because he’s a holy man!” Coyne retorted. “He’s a little tin god on wheels! What would happen if we killed him and somebody found his body? Our lives wouldn’t be worth two seer. We can’t take the risk.”
“I say kill him,” Klett rumbled fiercely.
Coyne met his eyes with a furious stare.
“I’m giving orders here.”
The mu’min shifted uneasily. At last Klett grumbled:
“I’ve been taking all the risks so far, pirating the Bahrein Island pearls to get the money for our guns and dealing with the Tuaregs.”
“After tomorrow you can do what you like,” Coyne promised. “While the chiefs are here, we’ve got to be on our toes. Everything depends on the mu’min’s convincing them to go on Jihad. One false step and we’re sunk for good.”
They were talking in English, which obviously Ali Hassan did not understand, though he glanced inquisitively from one to the other as they spoke.
Wade, atop the parapet, huddled closer as pacing footsteps sounded on the slope below him. From the corner of his eye he could see a blue-veiled Tuareg moving like a ghost there, moonlight gleaming on the barrel of his rifle. The sentry turned suddenly, staring up toward the roof of the brick house.
Wade levered himself away from the edge, so that his body would not show as a black, revealing silhouette against the sky. He moved too far. The parapet, rotten with age, crumbled under his weight. He made a frantic clutch that failed and went crashing down through the wreckage of the thatch roof.
One glimpse he had of startled, upturned faces. He twisted in mid-air, landed on his feet, but went sprawling.
Klett sprang forward. His boot thudded against Wade’s temple, and there was an instant of shocking, blinding pain.
Then unconsciousness claimed Thunder Jim.
Chapter VII
A Holy Ally
THE first thing Wade noticed was a choking, musty odor that crept insidiously into his nostrils. He opened his eyes, saw only blackness and roiled over painfully. There was a metallic clanking that puzzled him.
The soft pad-pad of stealthy feet made him sit up, groping for some weapon. He found none, but he discovered that shackles held his wrists and ankles. From the cuffs on his hands a metal chain hung laxly, though Wade discovered that it was anchored at the other end.
Now his eyes were beginning to accustom themselves to the gloom, which was not completely unbroken. From some point about ten feet above the floor on which Wade sat, a ghostly glimmer of wan, yellow light was coming.
It revealed the interior of a cave, some long-forgotten mining shaft, perhaps, sunk by an ancient civilization in search of copper. The mouth had been freshly blocked and an avalanche of boulders, dirt and rubble made a mound there. Between two rocks was a small opening, through which Wade could see the moon.
He looked around. This might have been a mine once, but it had also been used as a prison. Metal fetters and chains were visible, dangling from the nitrous walls. The Hadj Nesserdin lay crumpled near Wade, also handcuffed and chained.
A low snarl came out of the gloom. There was a flash of green, vicious eyes.
The light was dying. As the moon sank, its rays no longer came through the single cranny that opened on the desert above. When the cavern was again in darkness, the beast—whatever it was—might attack. No doubt it had been trapped here by the man-made avalanche.
Swiftly Wade took stock of his clothing. He had been carefully searched. The radio set and his makeup kit had been taken from him, and his weapons were also gone. But one thing at least remained. A flexible, thin wire, stained to the color of his hair, could be used to unlock the handcuffs.
Wade ran his fingers through his hair, found the wire, and jerked it free from the special gum that held it. Simultaneously there was a low, vicious snarl and the beast moved forward into the last rays of the dying moonlight.
It was a hyena, huge and formidable, the hackles erect on its back, its fangs bared. Those teeth could rip open a man’s belly with one slash!
There was no time to unlock the cuffs. With a quick motion Wade gathered in the slack of the chain that prisoned him. But he had no intention of using it as a makeshift mace. He might miss. Then, in the darkness, he would be fearfully handicapped.
A bellowing roar of broken ululations, like insane laughter, slashed
the taut silence as the hyena sprang. Thunder Jim gave back under the onslaught. He managed to slip a loop of the chain about the beast’s throat. All at once the faint gleam of moonlight vanished entirely!
IT WAS utterly dark. The heavy body bore Wade down before its violent rush. Man and beast rolled over and over, fighting desperately. The sharp teeth were clicking like castanets of death. The foul, carrion odor of the hyena choked Wade. He thrust his face into the shaggy fur, drawing in his chin to shield his throat, and twisted frantically on the chain.
The hyena went mad as its breath was shut off. Razor-sharp claws ripped Wade’s clothing, tore open his skin. The beast foamed and snarled, trying to shake itself free, to bury its teeth in this grisly silent adversary. But Wade knew that if the hyena once broke away, the battle was lost.
His iron fingers tightened. Despite the handicap of the cuffs, there was incredible strength in them. Abruptly the beast gave a convulsive shudder, twisted its body frantically and went limp as its neck snapped.
Thunder Jim waited a moment to make certain. Then he cast the carcass away and fumbled awkwardly for the sliver of steel he had dropped. There might be other hyenas here—or worse.
A low voice spoke out of the darkness.
“Are you safe, my son?”
“You awake?” Wade grunted in surprise. “Yes. I’m safe.”
“Allah be praised. When I woke and saw the hyena, I pretended to be dead, hoping he might not attack. But we are prisoned here, I fear, Sahib Wade.”
“You know my name? Then why—”
The Hadj laughed softly.
“Why did I run from you in the Ramadan Café? I did not know you then. You were disguised as an Arab and I had reason to be suspicious. But when you fell through the roof—that was the way of it, was it not—when you arrived so suddenly, the false mu’min and his friends searched you. They penetrated your disguise and the man named Coyne said you were Thunder Jim Wade.”
“And then?”
Thunder Jim Wade Page 14