CHAPTER TEN
Turkomans like to talk about the fighting they have done, and the fighting they will do. Before they can decide on the practical details of a forthcoming engagement, they must first give free rein to their fantasies, telling the fly-blown tales of old battles, speaking of their past glories in Merv, Bukhara, and Samarkand, reciting their dubious claims of descent from Batu Khan and the Golden Horde. This takes considerable time. In our case, it used up the better part of five hours before we could agree on the simplest sort of plan.
Even in agreement there was dissension. Dain wanted to confine the attack solely to the destruction of the factory. But the Turkomans, intoxicated by the idea of fighting, and overreaching themselves as usual, insisted upon a scheme that would also allow them to destroy the fifty Altais. Dain considered this foolhardy, and I thought it was suicidal; but we had no choice except to include it. So as last we came to a decision.
We would wait until the Altais left the factory, since it was too dangerous for our small group to attack a building filled with armed men. We would wait half a day, in order to put the Altais far to the west of us. Then we would swoop down upon the factory under cover of darkness. If all went well there, we would turn about and go after the Altais, overtaking them by forced marches, and hoping to surprise them on favorable ground. Or better yet, perhaps we could come upon them while they slept at their campfires.
So we waited, keeping watch on the factory while the sun crept down the sky. At twilight the Altais came out. Dain saw through his field glasses that they carried a number of fat leather saddlebags which they hadn’t had before; and Chitai identified these bags as the sort which were used to carry the White Powder.
The Altais went back into the mountains by the same trail they had used before. We hid on higher ground, and they passed within fifty yards of us. The range and the field of fire were very tempting, and one or two of the Dushaks unslung their rifles. But Dain and I reminded them of everything we had said before, and they sadly put their arms away.
The Altais passed beyond range, and for a long time we could hear them on the march. Then we heard nothing at all. Soon it was night. With the coming of darkness, the factory stirred into operation. The chimneys poured smoke against the moon, and many windows were brightly lighted.
The Dushaks were growing impatient, but Dain made them wait. They stirred and grumbled softly, but no move was made until the moon had set. Chitai returned from a reconnaissance and told us that there were four machine-gun stations, one at each corner of the factory, each manned by two men. The guards didn’t always stay near their weapons, but walked about the roof, talked, brewed tea, and acted in a generally careless manner. There was no outer stairway to the roof.
This was important information. We could see that the roof guards were behaving like any men who have stood to arms for a long period of time without having to fight. But we didn’t know how many guards might be inside the factory. Our success depended on how quickly we could get to the roof and overwhelm the machine-gunners before they had a chance to turn their weapons on us.
At last the moon was well down and the night was as dark as it ever would be. The Altais were many hours to the west of us. Every man had been told a dozen or more times what to do. We unslung our rifles and crept down the mountainside toward the factory. Our attack had begun, and how ever it went, the Turkomans would have a new story to boast about over their campfires.
Once we were in the valley, we lay flat on our stomachs in the deep shadow. Slowly, silently, we crept forward, inching our way toward the factory. Ahead and above us, etched cruelly against the stars, was the broad barrel of a machine gun, its ammunition belt trailing into a canister. We could hear a mutter of conversation from two guards on the roof, and we bit our lips and inched across the flat ground. Every approach to the factory was covered by one or more of the machine guns; on that level land, without a tree or a rock, we were an ideal target for a gunner.
Our rifles were wrapped in sheepskins, and every metal object was muffled; nevertheless, it seemed to me that we creaked and scraped with enough noise to wake the dead. We crawled on, hardly daring to breathe, our eyes fixed on the skyward-pointing muzzle of the nearest machine gun. Every noise seemed magnified. When my rifle butt scraped over flat rock, the noise was like steel against a grinding machine. And when Chitai’s knife fell out of his belt onto the cement apron that girdled the factory, you would have thought that a madman had beaten a huge drum. Luckily, the guards’ nerves were not as taut as ours, and they didn’t hear, or didn’t bother about, the extremely minor sounds of our passage.
But if the guards were deaf and blind, one watcher was not. As we came to within twenty yards of the factory, we heard a sudden barking, and we froze into our positions, still watching that damned machine gun. I prayed, and the others must also have prayed, that the zealous watchdog would die of instant strangulation, or would find a cat to chase, or a bitch to amuse himself with. But the beast barked steadily, coming nearer, and soon we saw a large, light-coated hound lope toward us. It saw us and began to howl like a lost soul. On the roof, we heard the guards moving about.
In that terrible moment, I saw Norotai and several others uncover their rifles and take aim at the machine gun. Two or three men got ready to shoot the dog, but Dain told them not to fire yet.
On the roof, a guard leaned over the parapet and shouted to the dog to be still. When it kept on barking, he cursed it and turned away.
I was dizzy by this turn of events, and I couldn’t understand why the guards would not heed when a watchdog gave the alarm. But then I understood. Past a doubt, nothing had happened here since the factory was built; but the dog must have found many rabbits to chase, and to bark at. Therefore the guards had learned to disregard him. But if the dog continued barking, wouldn’t they shine a light, or come down to investigate?
Within a few feet of us, the dog abruptly stopped his clamor. He was probably surprised at seeing fifteen men lying on the ground like corpses, and he came closer to investigate, his ears cocked. And of all the men lying there, he chose me to sniff at.
“Cut his throat quickly,” Chitai whispered.
I tried to find my knife, ignoring the dog’s wet nose at my ear. The scabbard was in my belt, and I squirmed to get my fingers on the hilt. But somehow, during the crawl, the belt had worked itself around, and now the scabbard was situated in the middle of my back and halfway up my body, out of reach for anyone but a contortionist. I nearly broke my arm trying to reach it while lying prone, and all the time the Dushaks were hissing advice till they sounded like a nest of angry vipers, and the mongrel was growling at me deep in his throat. It was all very well for the Dushaks to tell me to strangle the beast, or to break its back; they weren’t faced with the problem. To silence that growling animal seemed impossible; and then I had a sudden inspiration.
I reached inside my shirt and took out a lump of mutton which I had saved. I held this out. The dog sniffed suspiciously, then snatched the meat. He bolted it and came back for more. I managed to find another lump, and then a piece of flat bread. While he ate, I stroked his scarred ears, and in a few moments we had become friends.
Dain motioned the Dushaks to crawl on. In another moment I was able to join them, the dog trotting at my side whimpering for more meat. I had nothing else to give him, so I crawled on, afraid he would begin barking again out of sheer pique. But instead he followed me, whimpering and snuffling, and at last we came to the shelter of the factory walls. We were reasonably safe here, for the machine guns could not be depressed sufficiently to hit us.
Here we assembled and unslung our rifles, and the Dushaks whispered insults at me, saying that I would soon be world-famous for fighting with a lump of meat instead of with a more customary weapon. Chitai drew his knife and bent down to slit the dog’s throat, but I shoved him aside angrily. The beast had not given us away, and I was not planning to see him rewarded in Turkoman fashion. Dain drew our attention back
to the job at hand, and we walked upright in single file close to the wall, with the dog trotting beside me.
We came to a door and stood for a long time beside it. Within, we heard the hum of machinery and an occasional low-voiced remark. The door was unlocked, and we eased it open about an inch. We could see nothing within except machinery, so we flung the door open and rushed inside.
As had been decided, eight Dushaks located the stairway to the roof and quickly raced up it. The rest of us spread around the room, staying near the wall with our rifles pointed inward. We were trembling with anticipation and were prepared to shoot on the instant.
But our attack had been completely successful. Taken by surprise, the dozen or so men working in the factory looked at us with dazed expressions, then slowly raised their hands. Only one man resisted. Standing in a sort of storeroom off the main floor, he tried to take a submachine gun off the wall. Dain, who was nearest, clubbed him down with the butt of a rifle.
We waited, and then we heard the sound of rifle and revolver fire from the roof. There were some hoarse shouts, a moment’s silence, and then the roar of a machine gun. It came in furious bursts above the rifle fire, the most menacing sound in the world. We stood and listened, and cursed, for evidently our eight men had not been quick enough to overcome the guards. The machine gun chattered, and then another machine gun joined in and the rifles stopped firing. Then there was silence.
We waited, our rifles aimed at the staircase, fearing the worst. Evidently the guards had won the fight. If so, the rest of us were in serious trouble. We couldn’t leave the factory as long as the machine guns commanded our retreat.
The roof door swung open. We took aim at the square of darkness, and Chitai muttered, “Perhaps they won’t shoot. They would kill their own people down here.”
“Doubtless they have orders to cover this kind of emergency,” I said. “Personally, I think they’ll shoot.”
Still nothing happened, and the wait was becoming an agony. Norotai saw something move in the doorway. He took careful aim, and growled like a bear when Dain pushed his rifle barrel aside.
From the doorway, we heard the sound of laughter. It was low at first, and then it broke into a wild and raucous yell. A moment later, a mocking voice cried out, “Norotai! Would you kill your own dear clansmen?”
Laughing at our fears, the eight Dushaks came trooping down the staircase, bearing with them one of the heavy machine guns. They had burst over the roof like an avalanche, they told us. Each pair had flung themselves on the machine-gun position assigned to him, fighting first with knives and then with rifles. Their valiant charge, they told us, had completely unmanned the guards. Those who didn’t fall at once were driven from the four corners of the building, leaving the Dushaks with the machine guns. The guards had drawn revolvers and begun firing. Rifle fire had cut into them, and then the heavy machine guns were put into action, tearing the guards to tatters. When the fight was over, the Dushaks had come to the doorway—and stared straight into the muzzle of Norotai’s rifle!
Norotai angrily accused his men of playing a dangerous joke, but they insisted they had delayed only long enough to cut the guards’ throats. The argument might have raged interminably, but Dain drew Norotai’s attention to the factory workers, who were huddled together, with their hands over their heads. These men looked at us with shocked eyes, and faces as white as their long laboratory smocks. Obviously they thought the world had come to an end, and they expected to be killed momentarily.
They did well to fear; our Turkomans looked as fierce as a band of devils, and twice as dangerous. But they were happy and excited now, and not interested in further killing. First we wanted to see and to hear about this factory that we had captured.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It was an amazing place, that factory in the mountains. Although small, it was more modern in appearance than factories I had seen in Teheran and Istanbul. To one side were the furnaces, with insulated pipes running along the walls and other pipes leading into pieces of shiny equipment. There were neat workbenches, with scales, tubes, retorts, burners, beakers, and other pieces of modern equipment. There were metal boxes filled with a white, grainy chemical, which Dain said had to be added in order to make heroin. Along another wall were ovens, odd-shaped pots, and beakers of alcohol for processing and refining the opium. We found storage bins filled with round, dark, rubbery-looking bells half the size of a man’s head. These I knew were opium, And by their colors I identified them as coming from Khurasan, Baluchistan, Afghanistan, and Turkey. And at the far end of the factory we saw the final product, the heroin, some of it still loose in flat rubber trays, but most of it sealed into small metal containers.
This was all very amazing to us, and we turned to the factory technicians for an explanation. Here we ran into immediate difficulties, for they spoke an uncouth and incomprehensible language. These technicians were small men, bowlegged and barrel-chested, with broad, impassive brown faces and tilted eyes. I questioned them in a variety of languages, and finally discovered a few words in common in the T’uholo dialect. On the basis of this, I identified them as Western Mongols, perhaps from Ulangom or Yusun Bulak, or even from Ulan Bator. But some of the Turkomans, who also had been shouting questions at the technicians, disagreed with me. Obviously they were Mongols, the Turkomans said; and obviously they were Olots from the deserts of Sinkiang. Others insisted that they were Uighurs from the Karakorum Mountains, and still others were sure that they came from Kashgar. To all of this the technicians nodded vigorously, agreeing with everything, and talking incessantly in their unrecognizable language.
I continued to question these men in my rudimentary Tuholo. But, whether in truth or by guile, the technicians seemed to understand only a few words of this dialect. I asked them, as well as I could, whether they came from Ulan Bator. They made emphatic signs of agreement. They did the same when I asked them about Kashgar, Sinkiang, and Karakorum. Finally, out of irritation, I asked them if they came from New York. They agreed to this also, all the time chattering at me in their ridiculous-sounding language.
“What have you learned?” Dain asked me.
“I have learned that these men come from anywhere you care to mention,” I said sourly. “They speak a language nobody understands except themselves—if they do understand it themselves. By appearance and sound, they are Mongols. But it isn’t completely sure whether they come from Mongolia, Sinkiang, China, or perhaps Tibet.”
Chitai pulled at my sleeve and whispered urgently in my ear. I said to Dain, “Turkoman ideas are usually valueless, but Chitai seems to have thought of a scheme of some merit. He suggests that the best way to get truthful information out of anyone is to heat a rifle barrel until it glows red-hot, and then apply it until the man under questioning discovers some intelligible language.”
“Suppose the man being questioned doesn’t know any of your languages?” Dain asked.
“In the experience of the Turkomans,” I replied gravely, “a person so questioned invariably finds some means of giving the desired information.”
Dain looked thoughtful, which surprised me. I had expected him to reject the notion out of hand, since Americans and British rarely have the stomach for really serious questioning, although they are unbelievably zealous in blowing up things. But Dain gave the idea some thought. At last he shook his head.
“We won’t torture them,” Dain said. “As a matter of fact, we won’t even question them any more.”
“Sir?”
“You heard me, Achmed. I’m not interested in where they come from.”
Indignantly I said, “Mr. Dain, surely you want to learn about this factory, who owns it, who sanctioned it—”
“No, I don’t,” Dain said. “This place is in no-man’s land between three countries, operated by men of a fourth country, or possibly of no country at all. That suits me very well.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand, sir,” I said.
“I’m sure that you do,
” Dain said. “If this illegal factory belonged to the Russians or the Afghanistanis or the Iranians, I would have to leave it alone and make an official complaint through diplomatic channels. Similarly, if these technicians told me that they were nationals of Mongolia or China or Tibet, brought here with government approval, then I would have no right to hold them at gunpoint, or to kill their machine-gunners. Do you understand now?”
“I think I do,” I said.
“As matters stand,” Dain said, “we have discovered an illegal factory in an uncertain border area, staffed by men of no definite nationality, and without even an owner on the premises. Our course is clear.”
“Yes sir,” I said, feeling admiration for Dain’s lucid grasp of international realities. “We destroy this factory, which belongs to no one, and no one can complain.”
“Exactly,” Dain said. “Take those technicians outside and let’s get to work.”
Two Turkomans herded the prisoners out of the factory, and six more Turkomans went to the roof and brought down the remaining machine guns. The rest of us prepared the factory for burning. This was easily done, since there were great quantities of alcohol stored in vats. We sprinkled everything liberally, and then moved outside. Dain gave Norotai the honor of starting the fire.
The factory made a beautiful blaze, and we all cheered when the flames leaped skyward. Even the Mongol technicians grinned at the sight; all it meant for them was a temporary loss of work. The Turkomans knew they had struck a mortal blow at their enemies. Dain knew that he had nipped the source of the local heroin trade. This factory, carted piece by piece over mountain, desert, and steppe, would probably never be rebuilt. Even if it were, the Iranian police would maintain a close watch on the area around Imam Baba for years to come.
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