by David Drake
“It shouldn’t be too difficult,” the KGB colonel was remarking. “Their vehicle is unmistakable—and very likely damaged as well.” He gave Nguyen a patronizing nod. “And most important, the fact they didn’t answer our fire . . . well, it’s obvious that they don’t have guns or shells any more. Didn’t want to compromise a diplomatic vehicle, I’ll bet—the fools!”
Korchenko chuckled. “No,” he repeated, “it really shouldn’t be too difficult.”
XXXVII
“Professor, are you all right?” Kelly asked. He dared not stop yet. A quick glance to the side showed him only that his two passengers were sprawled across the seat.
Vlasov straightened up slowly. He had been pressing his ear against the Defense Attaché’s chest. “Yes,” he said quietly in Russian, “but your friend, I am afraid, is dead. I am very sorry.”
Kelly slammed his hand against the padded dash as he had hit the wall of the tomb the night before. “Shit,” he whispered. He had not cared for Posner, an officious turkey who let his illusions get in the way of doing the job . . . but he had lived by those illusions, and now he seemed to have died by them. “The world,” muttered the agent, “just might be a better place if everybody was a Posner and there weren’t any Tom Kellys to fuck things up.”
“Eh?”
“I’m going to pull over and change tires,” Kelly said aloud. “This wasn’t autostrada even with four tires.”
They were three quarters of a mile beyond the Citröen, and there were a number of twists and turns besides. In theory, that was a matter of only some minutes’ run for a trained man. It was still an adequate safety margin with this surface, this sun, and with the probable burden of fifteen pounds of automatic rifle if somebody really was determined to run after them.
Vlasov had tried to straighten the commander’s body against the seat back. The bullet that ripped through the top of Posner’s chest had already been tumbling. Death might have taken a few minutes, but consciousness must have spilled out instantly with the hemorrhage through the fist-sized exit hole.
“Shit,” Kelly repeated as he swung open his door.
The smell of raw gasoline warned him. Besides the ping of hot metal finding new tolerances, there was a muted gurgle at the back of the car. Kelly swore and flopped on the ground. One hole was round and neat and could have been plugged; but it was already above the level of the gas remaining. The other hole was the work of a ricochet, skipping up from the road metal and doing a job that could not have been bettered with a cold chisel. The bullet had spun through the bottom of the gas tank in a long line.
The left rear tire was dead flat and the right rear was noticeably slumping, but there was no time now to worry about them. By the time Kelly had changed a tire, there would be no fuel left to drive away on. The agent jumped back into the car and put it in gear.
“Where are we going now?” Professor Vlasov asked. In the interval, the Russian had struggled one-handed to lay the Attaché’s body out in the back seat.
“As far as we can this way,” Kelly said dourly, “which won’t be very goddam far, I’m afraid.” He paused. “Somebody back there is good with a rifle. He managed to hit us ten, maybe fifteen times out of a thirty-round box—if it was even full when he got the gun. I’d like to meet him again sometime, when I’ve got more than a steering wheel to hold myself.”
“There is something up on the next hill,” Vlasov noted. He pointed forward. The best speed they could manage with the road and tires as they were was under 20 mph. It was slow enough that the lack of windshield was not a handicap.
“Given what the gas tank looks like,” Kelly said, “I wouldn’t bet the farm that we were going to make it that far. It’s a mile and a half, and it’s uphill, which is worse.” But at least it was a better goal than anything else on the immediate, dingy landscape.
The object was a square, flat-roofed tower on a hilltop overlooking the road and many miles of countryside. At its base, the tower was surrounded by a low wall. “It’s a granary,” Kelly explained aloud. “Kabyles’ve been building them like that to store grain for a couple thousand years, my background stuff said.”
Vlasov frowned, then looked at the American. He smiled. “You are joking of course. That is a fort.”
Kelly flashed a grin back at the defector. “You could make a case for that, couldn’t you, Professor? Well, all I know is what I read . . . but it just might be that it wasn’t only long droughts that families built places to protect their grain from.”
The top of the tower was notched with embrasures. Below them, on what was presumably the second floor, there was a single slit window per side. The slits flared outward to give a rifleman within the broadest possible field of fire while only his gun muzzle was exposed to the shots of his opponents. The tower itself was plastered, but the core was almost certainly stone like the fabric of the wall around the tower’s base. If the stones were as thick as their length and breadth suggested, more than light artillery would be required to blast them aside.
“Professor,” the agent said, “if we’ve got a chance to stay clear for the next couple hours, it’s up there. I . . . if I hadn’t screwed up, you wouldn’t be in this mess. It’s not much consolation, I know . . . but I’m as sorry as I can be.”
Vlasov smiled at the American sadly. “It is not you,” he said. “Perhaps there is nothing that human beings could have done against—these others.”
Kelly’s face worked in disgust. He did not like being whipped by the KGB. Coming in second to non-existent aliens turned the thought of defeat into insult.
The slant-six engine continued to chug away happily until they crested the hump in the road beneath the granary. The Volare rode like a sled in the summer, but that was as much as could have been hoped under the circumstances. Kelly grinned. Perhaps he should have been thankful that the ricochet had only ripped the tank and had not ignited it. And then again, maybe he ought to wish he was dead in the back seat instead of Posner. Kelly had been in the business long enough to know that there are worse things than death, especially if the other side has questions they need answers to.
When the nose of the Volare pointed down at a noticeable angle, Kelly shut off the engine. None of the remaining gasoline would drain out, at least, though he was sure that the car would not carry them much further. “Professor,” he said, “we’re going to walk up there and I’ll try to talk to the people. Hope to God they speak French. . . . If we’re lucky, they’ll give us a drink of water before they shoo us out the door. And if we’re real lucky”—he fumbled beneath the passenger seat and came out with the empty sub-machine gun —“if we’re real lucky, they just might have some .45 ammo. Who knows?”
XXXVIII
There was no path from the road to the granary. The soil was friable, a mixture of baked dirt and soft stone. It was spattered with close-cropped plants that seemed each to defend a barren territory a foot or more in diameter. Vlasov and Kelly proceeded slowly. The ascent was over 30°, and the soil rolled and crumbled from beneath their shoes. Both men dabbed a hand down repeatedly, the touch of the grit taking just enough weight to give them traction again.
At first, Kelly could see only the surrounding wall and the tower when he paused and looked up from the ground before him. As the agent drew nearer, however, the design became more clear. It was as much a dwelling as a place of refuge. The wall around the base of the tower proper was of ashlar-cut stones laid in courses and mortared into place. This wall had been extended forty feet to one side by a wall of much cruder construction in which stones of varied shapes and sizes were fitted to one another dry. Within the courtyard thus created could be seen the roof of either a house or a stable.
There was a wooden gate in the newer wall. Standing ten feet from the gate and in plain view of whoever was moving behind the gun slit in the second floor of the tower, Kelly called, “Friends, we are travelers in need. For your souls’ sake, aid us!” He held the Ingram in his right hand, muzzle down and with
the stock extended. In his left hand, Kelly waved the empty magazine.
After a long time, the gate creaked back. An old man walked out and dragged the gate panel to behind him. He wore a dun-colored robe and a burnoose. The old man did not hold a weapon, but someone still watched from above.
“Father,” the agent said, “we have run far, but our enemies still pursue. Grant us water before we go on.”
The old man’s face rumpled in disdain. He gestured toward the sub-machine gun and said in cracked French, “Do peaceful travelers come calling with guns in their hands, then? Go on about your business.”
Kelly swallowed on a dry throat, “Father, our business was with the Association of Kabyles. In Algiers this day we have struck down some of the tyrants who would forbid the Kabyle language, who would prevent grandfathers from speaking to their children’s children who have gone to the city. We do not ask for shelter; that would be your death. But God will reward those who offer water to the thirsty.”
“Come in, then,” the old man said abruptly. “Mind the hens.” Stepping back, he called to someone inside in what must have been Kabyle.
The chickens running loose in the courtyard were white and scrawny and berserk at the sight of strangers. There was the usual farm odor of dung, though no animals larger than the chickens were evident at the moment, such as the sheep and perhaps goats would be penned here during the night. Now they were presumably at pasture, doing whatever further damage they could to the already barren hillsides nearby.
There were four humans besides the old man lined up in front of the low, beige-plastered house. Three were children, none of them more than six years old. The last was a black-robed woman as old as the man. She had not bothered to veil for strangers: these were Kabyles, not Arabs. There were no men of—military age, that covered it. They would be off with the flocks.
And there was no woman young enough to be mother to the children. Kelly did not need the crawling between his shoulder blades to guess where the mother was or what she held in her hands.
Still, what the old woman offered was a copper cup and a ewer of water. She filled the cup first for Vlasov as the elder of the guests. The Russian drank and passed the cup to Kelly, for whom the woman refilled it in turn. The agent nodded and passed the cup back to Vlasov. He took the empty magazine from the waist-band of his trousers where he had thrust it to free his hand. “Father,” he said to the old man again, “men cannot reward men for the gift of water which is the gift of life; but God will reward you and your house. There is a thing, now, that I would ask without offending you—though it involves laws that are strict and would be enforced with rigor.”
The Kabyle chewed the inside of his lip. “Ask,” he said. “This is not the City, that every man must beg permission to shit.”
Kelly nodded in solemn agreement. “While it is well known that the government of the City”—he had not been five years in sales without learning to pick up a cue—“forbids men to own guns today—though it was those same men and guns that drove out the French—if it could be that you knew someone with 11.43-mm pistol ammunition . . . ? Or it may be called .45 ACP, as for the Colt pistol and the tommy gun . . . that would serve a great need of ours. We are men, we fight our own battles; but without ammunition for our gun, we are unarmed.”
The old Kabyle took the magazine Kelly handed him. He studied it at length while the American drank another cup of water. The others in the courtyard were spectators as silent as the woman in the tower. At last the old man fumbled in a pocket somewhere beneath his robe and brought out a loaded pistol cartridge. It winked as he compared it with the magazine lips. It was patently too small, either a .380 or the short 9-mm Makarov round on which the Russians had decided to standardize their sidearms.
The Kabyle shook his head sadly. Kelly nodded glum agreement. “Father,” he said in decision, handing the Ingram to the old man, “to us, this would be only a burden. Take it and use it in the cause of freedom as a man should.” He tapped the LARAND suppressor. “With this attachéd, the gun will make less noise than you would believe possible. Out here”—he waved toward the miles of empty sky—“that is a little thing. But the day will come that you and your sons may have to go to the City to make your will known. . . . This will serve you well, there.”
The old man took the sub-machine gun and turned it over in his hands. Kelly touched Vlasov on the shoulder. “Come on, Professor,” he said wearily, “we’ll drive as far as we can and then hoof it. Until they catch up again.” He turned.
“Wait,” the Kabyle said. Carrying the Ingram, the old man strode through the door at the base of the tower. Voices echoed from the building. They were muffled by the thick walls but still loud enough to be intelligible had they been in French. The old woman gave the strangers another hard look, then darted through the doorway herself.
“Do you suppose he is going to give us the ammunition after all?” asked Professor Vlasov. He spoke in Russian. He might be crazy, but Kelly had no reason to think the defector was stupid.
“What I’m hoping,” said the agent, “is that they’ve got an old pistol in there that they’ll part with. Even a .380’s better than nothing.” He shook his head. “Didn’t like giving away Doug’s gun that way, but it made a hell of an impressive gift. If I get back, I can get him another one.”
First the old woman, then the man, and finally a woman in her twenties spilled back into the courtyard from the tower. The younger woman carried a Garand rifle at the balance. She held the weapon easily despite its size and her slight frame. There were a lot of Garands knocking about the world, and you could still make a case for it being the finest weapon ever issued to American troops.
What the old man had brought out with him was considerably more interesting, however.
The magazine well was in the top of the receiver, and for a moment Kelly thought he was being handed a Bren gun. The double trigger—front for single shots, rear for full auto—corrected him even before he took the weapon from the Kabyle. It was a Chatellerault, the French copy of the BAR, and an excellent automatic rifle for all its weight and complexity. The bipod had been stripped from this one some time in the past, but even so the rifle had an empty weight of at least 18 pounds.
Weight made a gun difficult to carry, but it also meant that you could control bursts of the powerful cartridge for which it was chambered. At this point, that looked like a good trade-off.
The old man gave Kelly a long, straight magazine. Apologetically, he said, “We do not have much ammunition for it—only seventeen shots. But—if Allah wills, it may help you.”
Kelly locked the magazine home. That freed his hand to take the Kabyle’s. The old man’s palm was dry and rough and as solid as a tree root. “If Allah loves warriors,” the agent said sincerely, “we two shall meet again in Paradise. Go with God.”
In brusquer Russian he added to Vlasov, “Well, Professor, let’s see if we’ve got any gas left.”
Kabyle voices resumed their argument behind the two men as they skidded down the hill to their car.
XXXIX
The Volare started and bumped off along the road. The right rear tire was by now as flat as the left. Kelly was no longer interested in getting somewhere. Rather, he was hoping to put at least a mile between himself and the Kabyles. It was the least he could do for people who had helped strangers at such obvious risk to themselves. Folks with guns in their homes were often willing to make their own decisions. That was a fact that had not escaped many governments.
The car made it about the hoped-for mile before the road began to struggle upward again. The engine sputtered only once before quitting for good.
“Well, Professor . . .” Kelly said. He took a last look at the road map before he stuffed it into his hip pocket. “If we’re where we seem to be, Douera’s that way a few miles.” He gestured up the road. “Farther than I’d like, and I figure word’ll have traveled there faster than we could anyway. But I don’t know a better way.”
“There is a helicopter,” Vlasov said.
In the stillness after the Volare died, the chop and even the turbine whine of the bird should have been obvious to the agent before it was called to his attention. Kelly cursed and stuck his head out the window. Nothing was visible. The aircraft must be flying very low and slow. The sound of its passage was echoing off the rocks ahead of it. “Quick, Professor,” the agent said, “out your side and under cover fast. They may strafe the car.”
Even as he spoke, the American was rolling out his own door and darting toward a bush twenty yards away up the low hill. Its foliage was sparse, but the shadow itself would go a long way toward hiding the outline of a man and an automatic rifle.
The station wagon was beige. Kelly had planned to shove it to the side of the road. With a little luck and the long shadows that would be on the hills in half an hour, the car might have been hidden from observation from above. No hope of that now. The helicopter was searching the length of the road from a hundred feet in the air. It was no chance overflight but a searcher summoned by either the KGB or the Algerian authorities themselves. Or by the little green men, of course, but this was not the time to mock Professor Vlasov. He had proven as cool as a paramedic in circumstances that would have reduced most civilians to mewling incapacity.
If there was one good thing about the helicopter, it was the fact that it was not a gunship as Kelly had initially feared. The agent squinted at the aircraft through the warped branches of the stunted fig that hid him. As soon as the pilot saw his presumed quarry, the bird lifted. The maneuver would have given Kelly a criminally easy shot had he wished to advertise the fact that he was armed again. He did not dare do that until he was sure of his opposition.