White Death

by Robert Sheckley

  And I, too, felt a great satisfaction. I could almost feel Dain’s dollars in my purse, and I could look ahead to a new house for myself and my parents, a house with a small orchard and a vineyard, with thick, cool walls and beautiful furnishings. I would marry into a good Isfahani family—something that my ancient name and recent wealth would make eminently possible. My wife would be dark and slim and lovely, quiet and well-mannered, and infinitely alluring. With her money and mine, we would find a business suitable to my new status. Very likely I would become wealthy, have many children, earn great respect in Isfahan—

  These glorious visions were interrupted by Chitai tugging roughly at my sleeve. “Stop dreaming,” he said. “There is still work to do.”

  “Work?” I asked.

  “Of course. We must leave here now, overtake the Altais in the mountains, ambush them.”

  I had forgotten all about that part of the plan. Thinking about it now, I could find no particular enthusiasm. Nevertheless, I reminded Dain.

  “I’m not very fond of the idea either,” Dain said. “But I want to stop that last shipment of heroin before it leaves the country. I also have to find out how it’s smuggled out of Iran and into the United States.”

  “But how can you find that out?” I asked.

  “We’ll find a way,” Dain told me.

  This meant that my payment was still not quite in my grasp. Dain told me to get the Turkomans ready to travel, and to bring Chitai and Norotai to him.

  This was done, and Dain questioned them closely about their knowledge of the heroin after it left the factory. But there was very little they could tell him. Their arrangement had always been to meet the Altais just outside of Imam Baba, then to take the heroin and deliver it to a group of Arabs near the town of Turbat-i-Shaikh Jam. What the Arabs did with the heroin, whom they took it to, who smuggled it out of Iran, and how it was then brought into America, the Turkomans did not know.

  This had to be sufficient for now, and we hoped to learn more from the Altais.

  The fire was still blazing fiercely when we turned to go. At first the Turkomans wanted to kill the Mongol technicians. They had no particular reason for this; it just seemed a sound, conservative practice. But Dain argued them out of it, saying that it was unmanly to kill defenseless people. In that way, he shamed the Turkomans into letting the technicians go free.

  We turned away into the mountains, on the trail which the Altais had taken some ten hours before. By the light of the burning factory, we could see the Mongols talking together. They seemed uncertain what to do. I think if they had spoken our language they might have joined us. As it was, after some consultation, they set off in a body to the east. They might have been striking out for Afghanistan. If so, they had a good hundred-mile walk before they reached a town.

  We also were faced with a tiring march. The Turkomans had brought all four of the factory’s machine guns with them. Even taken apart and distributed among our fifteen men, they made a cruelly heavy load. But the Turkomans said they could sell these guns for five hundred dollars each in Afghanistan, and they clung to them along the steep mountain paths with surprising resolution.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  We made excellent time in the mountains. The Turkomans marched with strained white faces, bent under the extra weight of machine-gun barrels, tripods, ammunition canisters, and the like. But they marched rapidly, and at dawn we halted only for a hasty meal, then set out again. The midday break was just as brief, and the pace set that afternoon was even faster than before.

  I was filled with an unwilling admiration for these Turkomans. They were great boasters, and extremely uncouth people; but they were also tough and incredibly tenacious, making forced marches under conditions which would have broken a civilized man’s heart. They would have made superb troops for any country—if any country could find a cause for which they would fight.

  By mid-afternoon we were finding traces of the Altais, and an hour later we found dung from their mules that was still warm. They couldn’t be more than a few miles from us, and now we sent out an advance guard, and detailed men to keep watch on the heights for snipers. Without any command, the Dushak Turkomans settled into silence, and once again we muffled our equipment.

  Just before twilight the advance guard came back. They had found the Altais half a mile ahead. They had counted forty-three men, camped openly on the trail. We seemed to have achieved complete surprise, and now the Turkomans quickly moved forward for the attack.

  It was twilight when we got into position. The Altais were fifty yards from us. Some were still eating and talking, while others had lain down and gone to sleep. Silently we crept up until the Dushaks’ fifteen rifles were covering them. I was taking no active part in this slaughter, nor was Dain. It was a quarrel among kinsmen, and no affair of ours.

  All eyes were now fixed on Norotai, who would give the signal to fire. The Dushaks watched him, and settled their rifles firmly into their shoulders. The Khan raised his hand, paused dramatically, then brought his hand down. Immediately there was a ragged volley into the Altai camp, followed by independent rapid fire. I could see the bullets kicking up little puffs of dust as they struck, and the Altais’ return fire was scattered and uncertain. With the enemy caught off guard, the Dushaks prepared to charge.

  At that moment, Dain grabbed me by the shoulder. “Tell them to face around and take cover!” he said. I couldn’t understand what was disturbing him, but he shook me so fiercely that I gave his order to Norotai. The Khan ignored it at first, but then he was struck—as I was—by the unnaturally weak defense of the Altais, and the suspicious ease with which we had ambushed them. He hesitated, Dain shouted at me, and I shouted at Norotai.

  Norotai gave the order, and not one second too soon. As the Dushaks turned around and sought cover, rifle and machine-gun fire broke out from above us and to our rear. At the same time, the fire from ahead of us increased.

  Seeking an opportunity for an ambush, we had stepped full into one ourselves.

  Dain and I both ran for cover. Bullets hummed around us like maddened hornets, and we dropped behind a boulder. But this was no refuge. We started to rise again, and bullets smashed into the rock an inch from my face, showering me with fragments. My forehead was gashed, and my eyes filled with blood faster than I could wipe it away. I took two blind steps, certain that my last moment had come. Then Dain lifted me by an arm and a leg, and I felt myself moving through the air. I screamed; for one terrible moment I thought he had gone mad and hurled me over the cliff.

  Instead, he half carried and half threw me to the shelter of the steep mountainside. He bound up my wound, and I saw that four of our Dushaks were dead, caught in the open by the surprise assault. The other eleven had managed to reach the mountainside. All of us were strung out in single file, safe from plunging fire and reasonably well protected from the Altais in front and rear. But our safety was only temporary.

  Stretched out in this manner, we could bring no more than two rifles to bear on our attackers. Only the foremost and rearmost men were able to fight, and this they were doing. At Norotai’s orders, these men kept up a rapid fire to discourage a rush, while the Dushaks behind them reloaded and passed fresh rifles. We were holding the position; but we could never move out of it, and in time the sheer weight of the Altai attack would crush us.

  A moment later, our rearmost man was hit. He slumped to his knees, was hit again, and tumbled away from the cliff wall. Machine-gun fire finished him off. Another Turkoman moved into his position, and we stretched our line further. At the head of the line, the foremost man was better protected; but concentrated rifle fire was ricocheting off the rocks and singing around his head. At this rate, it would take about an hour to shoot us all down, one by one.

  Dain asked, “What about the machine guns?” I translated this, and Norotai looked around quickly, then shook his head.

  The Dushaks had dropped the machine guns when they had been fired on. The guns lay in the open, out o
f reach. But even if we could reach them, they might not help us. They were not light, hand-held automatic arms such as the Altais possessed. They were heavy weapons intended to be fired from fixed positions. Nevertheless, they seemed our only hope.

  For a while, Norotai refused to talk about the machine guns. He was too chagrined at being caught in an ambush, and at directing his fire into bales of clothing arranged to look like a party of camped men. But at last he stopped cursing his evil luck and gave consideration to the guns.

  They were out in the open, impossible to get; and yet our situation was hopeless without them. It was night now, but starlight was enough for the Altais, who poured bullets into anything that moved. Norotai whispered to one of his men, who shook his head vigorously. Then he spoke to Chitai, who shrugged, declared he was as good as dead anyhow, and handed me his rifle.

  He lay down along “the side of the cliff and began to crawl into the open toward the machine guns. Our foremost and rearmost riflemen began a fierce duel with the Altais; and while the bullets whined, Chitai crawled.

  He reached a machine-gun barrel and slowly began to drag it back toward the cliff. He had covered less than three yards when the Altais began to fire at him. Chitai got to his feet, was spun around by a rifle shot, staggered three steps toward us, and collapsed. A Dushak seized him before he fell back into the open. Chitai had been shot high in the right shoulder, and also creased in the side. His wounds were not serious, but he would do no more fighting for a while.

  This latest casualty took the heart out of us, and we simply pressed close to the cliff wall like dumb animals, while the Altai bullets whined around us. There was nothing to do, not even to surrender; for these Turkoman feuds were carried out without quarter or mercy. And all the time, those four heavy machine guns lay in front of our eyes, tantalizing and unreachable.

  Dain, however, was not satisfied to leave the matter at that. He looked at the machine guns for a long time, and at the width of open space between them and the cliff. Then he said to me, “Get me a rope.”

  I passed on the request to Norotai, who produced a shiny black horsehair rope from his pack. Dain ran it through his hands and asked for a longer length. No more was available, so Dain took three Turkoman waistbands made of heavy silk, and knotted them onto the rope. Now he had a length perhaps twenty feet long, and he pulled and yanked at each knot to test its security.

  He coiled the rope neatly around his arm. I waited, expecting to see him lasso the machine guns in the manner of the people of Texas. But this was not his intention. Instead, he handed me one end of the rope, waited until the Altai fire was heaviest, then gave a blood-curdling shriek and tumbled headfirst into the open.

  The move caught us entirely by surprise, and a few of us reached out to help him; but a veritable storm of bullets drove us back. In a moment we saw that he was not dead, and not even wounded. He had fallen less than ten feet from the nearest machine gun. And now, by imperceptible degrees, he was inching across the ground toward the gun.

  All of us divined his plan, and we muttered prayers for its success. Very slowly, Dain crawled toward the machine-gun barrel, uncoiling the rope as he went. In the deep gloom of night, it was impossible to say whether he moved or not. He was one shrouded shape among half a dozen, and his progress could only be judged by keeping one eye on a fixed object. At the moment, his greatest danger was that a stray bullet would kill him. The Altais, having nothing else to fire at, pumped an occasional round into the corpses.

  Minutes passed, and Dain reached a machine-gun barrel. By straining our eyes, we could see him making his rope fast to the trigger handles; then he was crawling on, toward the gun’s tripod. I wanted to scream at him to come back; but the barrel was of no use to us without its tripod and its ammunition, and Dain knew it. He reached a tripod after agonizing minutes, and fastened his rope. Then he started crawling again, this time trying to reach one of the ammunition canisters.

  Before he could reach it, a light machine gun opened fire, and several corpses jerked as bullets marched across them. Dain froze where he was, and we watched in horror as the bullets traced their way toward him. Then there was an angry shout from the Altais, and the gunner stopped firing. Dain had not, even now, been detected, and an Altai leader had told his machine gunner not to waste valuable ammunition on the dead.

  Once again Dain started to crawl, and came within reach of the canister. Our hopes soared, until we saw that his rope would not reach that far. We waited while Dain dragged the canister inch by inch to the end of the rope, where at last he could make it fast. Now all that remained was for him to return to our cliff in safety.

  His slow crawl began again, and it brought him within ten feet of us. Then the Altais detected his movement and opened fire. Dain, unlike Chitai, did not leap to his feet and run for the cliff. Instead of trying to run through a hail of bullets, Dain crawled to the nearest corpse. He drew the corpse’s arms around his neck, pulled the thing upon his back, and began to crawl toward us once again.

  Rifles and light machine guns had found a target now, and they directed their full fury at Dain. Dust flew from the dead man’s clothing as bullets struck him, and each time a bullet struck, Dain winced as if he had been hit. But he didn’t stop crawling, shielded by the dead man on his back. At last he reached the cliffside, and we pulled him to safety.

  The corpse tumbled back into the open, and the Altais cheered, thinking they had killed another of us. Dain’s face was gray, and he closed his eyes. I thought he was going to be sick, but he pulled himself together, rubbed his eyes, and gave orders that the machine gun be pulled in very slowly and gently.

  Three of us took hold of the line and began to pull. At first nothing happened. Then the heavy machine-gun barrel started to move. In a moment the tripod came under the strain, and then the canister. We needed no orders to pull slowly; in our cramped position, and with so heavy a load, there was no other way we could pull.

  Hand over hand we brought in that machine gun, and we cursed it every inch of the way. Twice the tripod dug itself into the ground like an anchor, refusing to budge. When this happened, we passed the line forward or back, changing the direction and pulling the tripod legs clear.

  By the time the gun was halfway to us, we could see that one of the knots was slipping. There was no help for this; only the devil himself could join silk and horsehair and hope for a secure bond. We continued to pull, and it seemed to us that we could hear the squeak of the silk as it slipped out of the embrace of the horsehair. In our frantic eagerness we cursed Norotai for not having a rope of sufficient length, and we cursed Dain for not knowing how to tie a decent knot. But we pulled, and the knot squeaked and complained and slipped, and the Altai bullets clipped so close that we expected one of them to sever the line. In the end, we had the knot in our hand before it parted, and a moment later we were the possessors of a precious machine-gun barrel, a tripod, and a full canister of ammunition.

  We praised God for this, and we also congratulated Dain. It seemed to us that our salvation was at hand. But our hopes were raised too soon. That machine gun, which solved some old problems, also gave us some new ones.

  To begin with, we had to assemble the bulky gun while keeping ourselves pressed against the cliff wall. If a man leaned out too far in his efforts, the Altai bullets would drive at him like hailstones. But the barrel at last rested upon the tripod, and an ammunition belt was taken from the canister and fed into position. Even with this accomplished, we had no room to swing the gun, and nothing to fire it at. So we made hurried plans, and then passed the gun hand over hand to the front of the line.

  It was a miracle that no one was killed during this operation. The heavy gun, swinging free on its tripod, needed two men to lift it. Once lifted, it appeared impossible to get it around the bulge of the cliff without exposing ourselves to fire. But at last this was accomplished, and the gun was at the front of our line.

  Now we gathered as close around it as we could. Packs and corp
ses were used as sandbags for the protection of the gunner. The barrel was positioned; then, with a roar, the machine gun began firing.

  For long seconds, the gunner raked the area in front of him, forcing the Altais down under a hail of bullets. They knew at once what we were up to, but they were unable to prevent it. The greater part of their forces was at our rear, and the Dushak riflemen were still able to stop them from making a decisive charge. At the front, separated from their companions, the luckless Altais hugged the ground as the heavy machine-gun bullets smashed into the rocks and swept over their heads.

  At the peak of the barrage, Norotai gave the order to attack. Two men picked up the machine gun, a third man stayed at the triggers, and a fourth man fed the ammunition belts. The rest of us charged, firing our rifles and screaming like devils.

  We caught the Altais still pressed into the ground. With the machine gun leading, we swept their ranks. They broke under this onslaught and scrambled for safety, some retreating down the trail and others trying to climb down the mountainside. The rout was complete.

  But then Aziz shouted a warning. We turned and saw the main force of the Altais coming at us from the rear, thinking they could take us by surprise.

  Two minutes earlier they would have been successful, but we had cleared out the Altais in front of us, and now we had time to swing the machine gun around. From the protection of the recently vacated rocks, we poured bullets into the Altais as they came across open ground—just as they had recently done to us. We killed perhaps half a dozen before they realized their ambush had been sprung, and retreated to safety.

  This ended the fight. Six Dushaks had been killed, leaving nine survivors, of whom three were wounded. Dain and I brought the number to eleven. We wasted no time. Under cover of darkness, and taking the machine gun with us, we moved quickly up the trail. One man was detailed to act as rear guard, to warn us if the Altais tried another attack. But the Altais, scattered into two groups, with a dozen or so dead and perhaps another dozen wounded, were in no mood to charge our machine gun. Some rifle fire was exchanged, and then there was silence.