Assignment- Tiger Devil

by Will B Aarons

  A square cut outlined a trap door.

  Peta met his gaze, shrugged.

  Durell tested the door, found it unlocked and flicked his .38 from its holster. He hoped the water had not penetrated its cartridges. He put his cheek close to the warm boards and raised up slowly.

  No one shot at him. There was no cry of alarm.

  The room was dim behind its shuttered windows, smothered under the sun that hammered on its tin roof.

  "What do you see?'* Peta whispered.

  "Nothing. Nobody."

  They pulled themselves onto the floorboards, and Durell stood in the center of the room, gun hanging at his side. It was not what he had expected. There were no filing cabinets, no desk or working space. At one end was an old-fashioned water pump, its spout angled toward a sink of galvanized metal, kitchen cabinets of rough lumber^ a small wood-burning stove for cooking, a simple dining table and pair of chairs. At the other end was the living area, an old bureau, a narrow iron cot, neatly made, under mosquito netting, a worn sofa and two sagging easy chairs.

  Someone once had lived here comfortably, if simply, Durell thought, but not Dick—at least not for a long while. There was no food in the kitchen, no clothing in the bureau.

  Durell conjectured that Dick's only use for the place had been for overnight stops, or—remembering Eisler's accusation—for meetings with the restive East Indians.

  He rifled it, the closet, the chest of drawers, then the cabinet.

  He was digging through knives and spoons and bottle lids when he found the wrinkled note. Written in a crabbed, rough hand, it read:

  Dick

  I got Jonah to bring this with him to bartica. Told him how to get in your house. I am waiting here for you. I got another look at the dam. Sketch on other side shows where I figure weak points are. Should check them first.

  It was signed, "Claude."

  Durell flipped it over with trembling fingers and found a pencil drawing of a dam with X marks at the two wings and a third point labeled "turbine intake."

  The sketch had only one meaning for Durell: explosives planted in the dam. It explained why Dick had attempted to inspect the structure, and what he was doing there when the Chinese apprehended him.

  A breath-sucking dread crept over Durell, not for the dam or its keeper, Colonel Su, but for the life of every high oflBcial of Guyana.

  They all would be atop that dam for its dedication tomorrow morning.

  Leon had his way, the peace of Guyana would be shattered—and Durell suspected that was only a prelude to a flood of revolution that would be unleashed to devastate the whole of South America.

  His voice was tight as he spoke to Peta. "Your father is waiting for Dick to bring help, but we're the only ones who can help him now. Will you take me to his claim?"

  Peta stared at the note.

  "I will help my father," he said.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Rick Kirby shoved the throttle forward, and the Cessna Skywagon bore up the river. Spray whirled in its propwash, pontoons bumped and thudded against bits of debris swept down from distant rain forests, and Durell hoped there were no logs in their path. Then the red and blue aircraft leaped from the water and bent a half-circle out of the azure sky, headed west into the sun, along the brassy track of the Mazaruni River. Widely spaced squall clouds trailed banners of rain across the endless jim^le ahead, while behind, Bartica was a pile of children's blocks spilled onto a green rug, the horizon walled by damp haze.

  Durell's backward glance showed relief that was only momentary. The next hours would bring a confrontation with Colonel Su, a dash to Qaudius' claim and—hopefully—a decisive encounter with the Warakabra Tiger.

  How it would go was only guesswork, speculation.

  He could not know which way it would end.

  Peta, an unwilling partner at best, plainly jealous of Ana and protective of his father, and the claim, might undo all his efforts in the final test.

  Durell had no choice but to rely on the somber youth and hope for the best.

  The climb peaked as Rick throttled back and dug a black cigar from his shirt pocket.

  The dam was on a tributary of the Mazaruni thirty miles west of Tumereng, in foothills of the Pakaraima Mountains, and Durell judged it would take about an hour to reach it. He looked at his wristwatch, guessed that darkness was likely to descend before Peta could guide him to the claim—but night could be an ally. Especially if you were outnumbered and outgunned.

  The engine hummed as the hot air tossed the little aircraft, and the dimension of the ancient jungle, where time had no meaning, reached up and engulfed them. The minutes oozed by. Their progress seemed in inches, measured against the green monotony far below. The billowed trees were woven together like fabric down there below the wings of an eagle splashing the sun, and Durell thought of explorers and prospectors and wondered how they survived such savage wilderness.

  "There she is. The lake." Rick pointed into the harsh sunrays, where Durell saw a golden slab of water. To his left the forest floor threw up mountain ramparts, and he might have glimpsed the haze-shrouded plateau of nine-thousand-foot Mount Roraima some eighty miles to the south. From his boyhood he remembered Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's book. The Lost World, inspired by tales of that jungled spire where Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana met.

  Durell reached between the seats, added his .38 to the other guns in his suitcase and turned to Rick. *'Do you have a parachute?"

  "What for?"

  "Do you have one?"

  Rick stared from behind the mask of his sunglasses. "Behind the back seat, but you'd be crazy to—"

  "I'm not jumping." Durell told Peta to retrieve the chute, then harnessed it to the suitcase. He spoke to Rick. "I want to drop the suitcase before we reach the dam."

  "You're the customer."

  Durell hoped the Chinese would cooperate with him, but that would not be very likely if they found him armed. The weapons would be useful later, however, when he moved on Claudius' claim. The big diamond, Claudius' note, everything pointed to that claim or its vicinity as a staging area for the assault on the dam. If Claudius were not there now, Durell felt safe in assuming someone else would be.

  The lake was a wrinkling metal that burned under the westerly sun.

  Peta leaned forward, eyes squeezed against the brightness.

  Durell said, "Are you oriented?"

  Peta made no reply; his face revealed nothing.

  Durell again regarded the vast, treacherous rain forest, considered the odds against him down there if not for Peta's knowledge and assistance. Worry burned in the core of his stomach.

  Peta needed his help as well, and Durell told himself the kid was sensible enough to know that. He told himself to trust Peta, if only because their goals chanced to coincide. But he could not quite do so.

  He turned to Rick. "Descend to three hundred feet. Take us around the south end, away from the dam."

  Rick nodded, the cigar clamped under his mustache, | pushed the aircraft into a shallow, banking glide, and the engine roar fell to a muttered whisper.

  Durell struggled the suitcase and parachute onto his lap, unlatched his door. The wind puffed and whistled into the cabin. He kept his eyes on the lakeshore, but it was not easy to find landmarks down there. The forest all looked the same, down to the water's edge. He decided on the point of a ridge that formed one low wall of the lake valley, spoke to Rick, and the ridge glided closer, its point taking form with shaggy vegetation and tumbled rocks. The treetops showed little, if any, wind, and Durell counted on a relatively straight drop into the sultry stillness.

  He jerked the ripcord, felt the chute restraints pop, smothered the silk against his chest and worked the suitcase out the door.

  The chute unfurled as it went out and settled seconds later near the stony outcropping, some three miles from the dam.

  He slammed the door shut. "All right," he said, "let's go see the Chinese."

  The lake, still filling, sent
glittering fingers up valleys, gullies, hollows, cutting off innumerable islands, its backwaters burdened with rafts of debris. To the west ran a narrow whip welt, a road built at enormous cost to bring equipment from Morawhanna on the coast, up the Kait-uma River, then by railroad to the manganese mines at Matthew's Ridge.

  The Chinese had spared no effort, no expense to construct their Latin American showpiece. In twenty years half a dozen similar dams would be completed, harnessing seasonal floods that rose twenty or thirty feet and generating power to open the interior and exploit its vast reserves of ore and timber.

  But in a few hours—^literally overnight, now—the destiny of Guyana could change—and that of the whole continent with it.

  Durell knew a determination not to let that happen.

  They skimmed down the lake. As they neared the dam, Durell made out a prefabricated village, apparently of workers' quarters, offices, shops and the like, bunched on raw earth at the water's edge. Durell glimpsed the fluttering banner of Guyana, a green field with a black-edged triangle superimposed on a yellow triangle. Beside it flew the five-starred red flag of the People's Republic of China.

  Then they turned into the wind, drifted down, and the pontoons smacked the water.

  "I hope you've got friends here," Rick said. "Those Chinks don't like people dropping in without an invitation."

  The construction camp still was a quarter-mile away, when Durell felt something brush past, then saw Peta dive out the door.

  *Where the hell's that kid going?" Rick yelled.

  T don't know," Durell said, dismayed.

  "He must be crazy. We'd better go get him."

  Rick started to turn the plane, but Durell touched his arm and shook his head, and said, "We have to let him go."

  If they attempted to stop the youth, he would fight, and that would be the end of any help he might have given, Durell reasoned. He could not force Peta, could only hope he would have second thoughts, alone out there with the Warakabra Tiger.

  He regarded his watch bleakly and thought about the ceremony atop the dam tomorrow morning.

  He picked out two twin-engine amphibians tied up as they approached the dock. One was a Canadair that Rick identified as the Chinese company plane.

  "Are you familiar with the other one?" Durell asked.

  "Sure," Rick said. "The Grumman Goose belongs to a bigwig name of Calvin Eisler."

  Chapter Twenty-three

  "Sam, this is your last chance." "You're pushing too hard. Ana."

  "I—I know Fm interfering. "Yes."

  "But if you don't leave, something terrible will happen. I just feel it."

  "You're playing Eisler's game."

  "Just because we want the same thing, doesn't mean we have the same reasons."

  "Not necessarily."

  Ana's taffy brown eyes emphasized her anguish. Her boots and jungle khakis still were spotless, despite the previous night's travail. The spell of her slender femininity seemed to defy dirt and grime, Durell thought. She had -rolled her black hair imder the billow of a soft, visored cap and applied fresh makeup, a touch of delicate fragrance.

  They had all waited on the wooden dock for Durell's aircraft to tie up—Ana and the squat threat that was Colonel Su Chung of the Cheng pao k*o, or Political Security Section, Black House, and Calvin Eisler, plus over a dozen armed Chinese and a sprinkling of curious Guyanese.

  It seemed that he had been expected.

  "How did you know I'd be here?" he asked.

  "Just a hunch." She took a small step backward. "Sam—I don't like the way you're looking at me."

  His expression did not change.

  She blew a little breath. "All right, Sam. I admit it. I knew you'd be leaving Bartica, most likely by air, and I still wanted to be part of what you were doing, so—" her smile trembled "—I went to the seaplane base and found out who you had hired and asked him your destination."

  Durell regarded Ana, then turned his eyes to the ominous Chinese, his thoughts on his objectives here. He must get the dam inspected for explosives, then push into the jungle and somehow find Claudius' claim.

  It was bad enough that Peta had deserted him.

  Now he had Ana to contend with.

  Ana spoke to his angry silence, her voice low. "The police are hunting you, Sam. They say you murdered Otelo Antunes."

  "Somebody did."

  "The police killed that East Indian you brought to my plantation last night—evidently Leon turned him over to them."

  "They killed Ajit?"

  "They claim he was escaping—they'll say you tried to escape, too."

  "And you're going to help me?" Durell's voice was dry.

  "I told you: Calvin and I will fly you to Timehri Airport, and you can board a plane for home. The police won't expect you there, after seeing you in Bartica earlier today. You've got a decent chance of getting away— before it's too late."

  "What about Colonel Su? He would be delighted to see me arrested, the U.S. further embarrassed."

  "It's all been worked out, Sam. He doesn't know about Otelo. All he wants is to keep you away from here. He has accepted Calvin's word as a national assemblyman to take you away and see that you don't come back."

  "That's very tidy, Ana—except that I won't go."

  "Sam—"

  Durell shoved past her and approached Colonel Su and Eisler. Eisler's limp blond hair hung over one aristocratic eyebrow, and his blue eyes studied Durell as if he were a distasteful laboratory specimen. He said, "Well, Durell? I really don't know why I'm being so bighearted about this. Ana talked me into it, I suppose."

  "Still trying to get me out of the country, aren't you, Cal."

  "Now, look here—"

  "Shut up."

  For the first time Durell's eyes met Su's, and he saw that those bright, black slits were full to the brim with decades of hatred for the West, its decadence and undisciplined waste, its corrupting wealth and history of colonial oppression. Durell knew the lines by heart. He could almost hear Su speak them as he exchanged stares with the flat-nosed old revolutionary. Su might live in an era that was past, Durell thought, but nothing could change the fact that the colonel regarded him as the personification of everything he had been taught to fight and despise.

  Out of Georgetown, the Chinese intelligence officer wore a blue Mao jacket. Only a pistol belt broke the simple line of his clothing, and the heel of his hand rested on the butt of a Tokarev identical to the one Dick had brought out of the jungle.

  Su spoke to Eisler. "Mr. Durell refuses your kind offer. I see it by his face. Am I not correct, Mr. Durell?"

  "Quite correct, Colonel Su. I came to help you save your dam."

  Su's teeth winked a tiny smile. "But I do not see the threat—unless you brought that as well. Are you something new? A virus that cures itself? A rabid dog that bites only its own hindquarters?"

  "Perhaps something new is what's needed—an American to protect you, since the Chinese seem incapable of defending themselves."

  Color flared angrily on Su's cheeks, and he said: "I told you once to stay away from here. I could not have made myself clearer."

  "And I would not have come, but necessity demanded it. Someone's going to blow up the dam. Look at this." Durell showed the sketch drawn by Claudius. "Explosives may be hidden at those points."

  "Nonsense. This project is guarded day and night. Your late colleague found that out."

  Durell spoke loudly, playing to the other Chinese so that Su could not afford to take a chance, even to save face. "If it happens, you can't say you weren't warned."

  Contempt twisted Colonel Su's mouth as he snatched the sketch.

  Durell hoped he could allay the man's suspicion somewhat, and said: "I have no wish to help the PRC, Colonel. It happens that our aims coincide, just as they did in Angola, against the Russians. You need stability to further your objectives—but if this dam goes up tomorrow, you can kiss it all off; there won't be any stability in South America for a long time.
" Su's gaze responded uncertainly.

  "Like it or not," Durell said, "we're on the same side." Su thrust the sketch at an aide and spoke in Chinese:

  "Have the locations inspected immediately."

  It took about fifteen minutes. Durell waited on the wooden pier, along with the others. The slanting sun spilled heat that was acid on his exposed face, and sweat trickled down his neck and darkened his shirt. Ana showed discomfort only in a dewy film above her small, provocative mouth. Her hands clasped and unclasped, eyes drifting from Durell to the Chinese to Eisler. She made no attempt at small talk, for which Durell was thankful. His lungs sucked at the heavy, humid air as he watched men scale down the face of the dam, suspended in slings, probing the monolithic structure for instruments of destruction. A troop of howler monkeys screamed in the distance, and the noise rebounded from the concrete rampart.

  Durell's eyes moved darkly to the camp, built on rutted yellow earth torn from the primordial rain forest, then to the forest itself, a dense screen a hundred feet high, wattled with looping, flowered lianes. The parachute was not visible from here, but he could see the butt of the ridge where it lay. He was confident of reaching the weapons. After that, he did not know. He had counted on Peta more than he cared to admit.

  The return of Su's aide broke his thoughts. The two Chinese spoke briefly in low tones, then Su turned to Durell. "It is as I suspected, Mr. Durell. Our search shows no sign of explosives." His malice was complacent.

  Dui:ell was baffled.

  Colonel Su ordered Rick to return to Bartica, and said, "Your passenger will remain here."

  The pilot's tongue rolled his dead cigar to a comer of his mouth. "Well, I don't know about that. Mr. Durell is a paying passenger. I take his instructions, not yours."

  "You will do as you're told." Su slid the Tokarev from its holster, and the other Chinese made restless movements with their automatic weapons.