"I'm stuck."
“How bad is it?”
“Give me a few minutes.”
That would hold him, Charley thought. He moved some more stones and suddenly his fingers felt the sharp edge of metal. A great flood of relief swept over him. He tried to pull the box loose. It wouldn't move. He began to curse and sweat. The sandstone slab pinned the box to the ledge. He tried to lift it. There was no purchase, and he did not dare exert too much pressure or the whole business would cave in. He tried again. He got his right hand under the edge of the sandstone slab his left on the small corner of the tin box. He lifted again. Nothing happened. Once more. The box moved an inch or two and then again, and he felt a darkness surge over his brain with the blood-crushing effort. From high above came the distorted echo of Durell s voice, calling down to him. He thought he heard Madeleine, too. He didn’t look up.
Once more.
The box came free.
One end had been partly crushed and flattened, and the lock was sprung so the lid was twisted partially open. He felt inside. The money was there.
And the gun.
Charley opened the box all the way and felt the wads of currency and pushed them aside until he got a grip on the heavy Colt .45. He turned his head then, his big shoulders hunched, and looked up at the circle of starlit
sky above. He could see Durell leaning down, and Madeleine and the Larkin girl, too. But they couldn’t see him. It was too dark down here for that. He took the Colt and slid out the magazine, and by his sense of touch he checked the heavy slugs in their copper jackets. Then he slid the magazine back into the butt and forced the barrel hack until a shell went snicking into the chamber and the hammer was cocked.
He laughed silently. He tugged at the canteen dangling on the end of the line. “Hey, Durell! There’s no water! I can’t reach it and I ain’t going to try. Pull the can back.”
“I can hear the water running,” Durell called down.
“Yeah, but I can’t reach it. I’m coming up now.”
“Use the line, then."
“Hell, I don’t need it.”
Charley straightened and thrust the Colt into the belt of his khaki slacks. He would need both hands to make thy climb back up.
“Did you find the money?” Durell called.
“Yeah, I got it.”
“Tie the box—did you say it was in a box?”
“Yeah, a tin box.”
“Tie it to the canteen. We’ll lift that first.”
Charley pretended to hesitate. “How do I know you won’t just clobber me and drop me back in here, huh?”
“You know better than that. You and I have a date in Paris,” Durell said.
Charley’s laughter filled the well shaft with wheezing, whispering silence. “Okay, pal, I trust you. just don’t run off with the loot, huh?”
He tied the tin box and the canteen to the line and watched it rise in swift, swooping jerks to the top of the well and vanish into Durell’s hands. The moment Durell’s head was withdrawn, to examine the contents of the box, as Charley guessed might happen, Charley jumped for a hand hold on the wall of the shaft, got one leg braced against the opposite curve, heaved with his muscular shoulders and gained another foot, stopped for an instant to get his hands flattened against the stones below and behind him, and then surged up in in a twisting, rising, spinning leap that brought him within three feet of the top of the well. His right hand shot up and outward, his fingers caught at the coping stone above, clawed for a moment, and held. His body thudded hard against the well wall as he dangled there for a moment by one hand. He jerked convulsively, got his other shoulder up, his other arm up, his left hand on the coping. A moment later he heaved once more, his shoulder muscles cracking and straining to lift his weight, and then his head came above the top of the well and he was out of it like a dark, giant cat.
The first shot went by his head like a thunderclap.
Jane screamed. The second burst of shots chipped stone from the edge of the well in a harsh spray that stung one side of his face.
He didn't know what was happening. He could see the moonlit market place clearly, after the darkness of the well. Durell was to his left. He held the tin box in his left hand, his carbine in his right. Durell wasn’t the one who had fired at him. Nor had Chet. Chet had stumbled and fallen to his knees, and Chefs carbine lay in the dust in front of him.
He couldn’t understand it.
He pulled the pistol from his belt, snaked over the well coping, and dropped flat on the ground. The third burst of automatic fire went over his head.
Charley saw it now. He was the target. It was one of those crazy things you couldn’t count on. One of those things not even Durell could anticipate.
Somebody was shooting at them from the alleyway nearby. It was where the dog had sensed something earlier and had shown it by his growls. The man was a dimly defined shadow under the leaning walls of a yellow house. He seemed to be on his knees. Then Charley saw the glint of moonlight on the barrel of a tommy gun and a sudden spray of bullets went hammering and screaming again in their direction. It was wild and crazy. It made no sense.
The man with the tommy gun began cursing in a high, thin voice. He was yelling something in Arabic, and Charley heard his own name, shockingly, in the middle of the incoherent stream of hatred. Durell shouted to the man to drop his gun. The echoes of the tommy gun were enormous in the silent, dead village. The man’s screaming incantations were the voice of a pain-crazed lunatic shouting at the cold Sahara moon.
Charley raised himself and leveled the Colt and fired one shot carefully at the Arab’s shadow in the alley. The screaming curses ended. The man dropped. Durell yelled at the same time and Charley twisted, still on his belly. He saw Chet leveling his carbine and fired again. The bullet hit Chet in the shoulder and knocked him into the dust around the well. Chet tried to get up and Charley fired again. He missed. It didn’t matter. He reached with his left hand, lunging upward for two steps, and his long arm went around Jane’s waist. She had been standing as if paralyzed for all these moments. He dragged her body flat against his and swung her around to face as he did, toward Durell.
“Now,” Charley gasped hoarsely.
Durell had dropped the money box. He was holding his left hand with his right. His carbine had fallen. A thin trickle of blood came from Durell’s clenched hand.
Durell looked at Charley’s gun and nodded curiously.
“All right, Charley.”
Charley was a prisoner no more.
"Please . . .” Jane moaned. She sounded out of her mind with terror. “Oh, please, stop it, stop it, don't shoot any more. . . .”
“Take it easy, baby.”
“You shot Chet—”
“He wasn’t much, anyway.” Charley looked at Durell. Stand away from your gun, huh? Mad, pick it up. Use it on him if you have to.”
Madeleine got up and nodded. Her face was pale and blank. She moved like a sleepwalker toward Durell and picked up the carbine. Charley couldn’t tell what she was thinking. He didn’t quite trust her. He watched her until she stepped back and faced Durell and covered him with the carbine.
Charley let out his breath in an explosive laugh. “You got creased, Durell? The gook nicked you?”
In the hand,” Durell said quietly. ‘Where did you get the pistol?”
“It was with the money. I had a hunch I might need it the day I picked it up. No telling who I’d be with.”
“I thought it was something like that, Durell said.
“I was ready for you, Charley. You ought to know I was ready to kill you as you came out of the well.
Charley laughed again. “But the gook threw you off. My break, huh? The way the ball bounces. It’s happened with me before like that.” Charley felt breathless. There was a great pressure of exultation squeezing in his chest. He enjoyed holding Jane’s soft body close to him. He could feel the trembling warmth of her flesh against his thigh. He could smell the womanliness of her. He knew he was hurt
ing her, crushing her in the grip of his big arm. He didn’t care. He squeezed her harder.
“Let’s go look at the gook,” he said.
Nobody moved. Chet groaned, sprawled in the dust. Charley kicked Chet's gun away. He sharpened his voice.
“Move, Durell. Now I'm the one who gives out orders.
Chapter Seventeen
THE ARAB in the alleyway was Talek. Durell turned him over at Charley’s command and saw that Charley’s single shot had caught the goumier in the mouth and burst open the back of his head. Charley took the tommy gun and Durell’s .38 and the single grenade Durell had picked up on the road. He went back to the well and dropped the .38 into it and Chet’s carbine. That left Charley with the Colt and the tommy gun, and the grenade. Madeleine had Durell’s carbine.
Durell took a handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped it around his wounded hand. It was just a crease, a burn across the knuckles, from one of Talek’s wild, shay bullets. He ignored the pain. He had been nicked just at the moment when he could have dropped Charley. He tried to fight down the angry frustration he felt. There was nothing he could have done to make things work out any other way. A bad break, that’s all it was. Bad enough to wreck everything he had planned. Bad enough to get them all killed by this renegade who laughed and waved his Colt around.
He forced his mind to reconstruct what must have happened. He was sure now that Talek, the truck driver, was one of el-Abri’s men. He had sabotaged the truck and deserted them in the hope of contacting el-Abri so that the Kablyle chieftain could pick them up in the desert. Probably el-Abri had planned things that way.
But the Kabyle’s plans had gone awry, too. He hadn’t anticipated the extremists’ raid on Baroumi. The extremists were as much el-Abri’s enemies as the French.
All right, Durell thought. So Talek took off for Baroumi. He went to el-Abri’s house here and got caught in the rebel raid. Somehow Talek survived, hid out until now. He looked at the dead goumier. Charley’s bullet wasn’t his only wound. One arm had been shredded by a grenade and there was blood on the man's uniform from a bullet in his stomach. Talek must have been out of his mind with pain and weakness. But not too far gone to realize what was happening when he saw them at the well. Talek had been shooting at Charley, no one else. But in his condition, he had done the worst possible thing.
He looked at L’Heureux. The man still held on to Jane.
“Let me go,” Jane moaned. “Please, please . . . Chet is dying. . . .”
“Not much of a loss, baby,” Charley said.
“Please. Let me help him.”
Charley saw Madeleine looking at him in a peculiar way. He let Jane go. When he released her, she sagged and fell to her knees, and her blond hair fell across her tormented face. Then she pulled herself up and ran to where Chet still sprawled on the ground beside the well.
Durell said, “He’s been hit in the shoulder. But I don't think any bones are broken.”
Jane scarcely heard him. She knelt beside Chet and gently lifted his head. There was a great soaking stain of blood running down his left side. He was breathing strangely. All at once a wild fury took her and she lunged crazily at L’Heureux, hammering at him with her fists. L'Heureux slapped her. His hand was hard and explosive against her cheek. She fell to the ground in front of him and began to sob.
"I'll let you help him,” Charley said. “But you can’t work against me, too. One or the other, take your choice."
Durell said, “What do you have in mind?”
You want to know right away if I’m going to kill you?”
Charley weighed the tommy gun in his hand and pretended to consider it. “What do I need you for?” He looked at Madeleine. “You with me, Mad?”
“I always have been, Charley.”
“You bet,” Charley said. “Pick up the money, Mad.”
She did as he ordered. Durell stood in a quiet attitude of listening. After the slamming round of shots, the stillness of the night clung to the dead village. Several dogs had barked for a minute or two in wild hysteria, but nothing else happened. There was no one left in Baroumi to care.
Madeleine stood beside Charley in the quiet, whispering night. The wind was cold. On the ground nearby, Jane sat with Chet’s head resting on her lap. Her face was agonized as she appealed to Durell.
“Can’t you help me? Won’t anybody help?”
L’Heureux shrugged, “Go ahead, Durell. Just to settle your mind, I can use all of you. Alive, I mean. So long as you hop when I tell you to hop. Understood?” He paused. Nobody spoke. “All right, then. I want the boy scout walking in fifteen minutes, or we leave him.”
“You wouldn’t,” Jane breathed.
“Don’t tempt me, baby. You and I got a date later on.”
“You’re a monster,” she whispered.
He grinned down at her. “The kind you like, huh, Janey?”
He looked enormous, his broad shoulders and round head pushed forward as he grinned in the starlight. Durell watched and waited. It was difficult to guess what L’Heureux planned to do. His hand throbbed painfully as he helped Iane tear a bandage from her blouse and make a crude compress for Chet’s shoulder. Durell’s brandy flask brought the boy around somewhat. He groaned and rocked his head from side to side.
"L’Heureux picked up the length of rope and handed it to Madeleine. “Tie up Durell here. He gets a taste of his own medicine. See how he likes hiking with his hands behind his back.”
“I thought we were going to stay here and wait for the rebels.” Durell said carefully.
“Odds against it they get here first. The paratroopers will drop in by morning. No, were getting out.”
“On foot?”
L’Heureux grinned. “You're nosy, huh? I’ll tell you anyway, Durell. I got a jeep, a radio, and water hidden in the hills. We go up there.”
Durell gestured at the Larkins. "You don’t need them. not leave them for the French? They’ll be better off."
“I can use them both. In different ways, though. But you be careful, Durell. You stay alive as long as I can use you, not a minute more. The minute you pull something, you’re out, you’re meat for the dogs. The only reason I keep you is for an insurance premium, see, against the French. And if we run into my pals in the rebels, they’ll be happy to have you and point to you as a foreign agent interfering with internal affairs here.” Charley rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. He seemed consumed by a poorly suppressed excitement. “Of course, you know I don’t want to meet anybody. Mad and me are getting out with the loot. To hell with making propaganda with a quarter of a million bucks. If I make it, you can all walk home any way you like. But if you make trouble, you're dead. Got it?”
Chet was on his feet. In the starlight, his face looked ravaged. He leaned heavily on the two girls. Charley picked up the money box. The night wind made his cropped yellow hair look like a silver hood closely fitting his round head.
“Tie up Durell, Mad,” he said. “If the boy scout can’t make it, we’ll drop him on the road.”
“I’ll make it,” Chet said thinly.
They started out again. Durell walked ahead. Madeleine had tied the knots around his wrists with surprising strength, and his fingers were growing numb.
But the bullet crease had stopped bleeding. L’Heureux had gotten grim satisfaction out of Durell’s discomfort.
“You kept me like that long enough, buddy boy. Now it’s your turn. Just follow the road into the hills. I’ll tell you where to turn off.”
The wind blew sand along the village streets, and the palm fronds clacked dryly. A bit of newspaper blew across the shuttered shop fronts. The moon was already setting. Durell's mind was on the Larkins. Jane was in bad shape, and he didn’t think Chet would make it far. A .45 slug puts any man down for a long time, even if it’s only a flesh wound. He didn’t see how Chet could keep up with them for any distance.
He heard light footsteps behind him and Madeleine fell into step. The village, with its s
mells of death and desolation, was behind them. The road lifted into the barren foothills ahead.
“Be careful,” Durell said at once. “Your Charley won’t like you to walk with me—unless he gave you permission.”
“He doesn’t care. He’s very sure of himself.”
“And you?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“You sided with him when it mattered,” Durell said.
“He had the gun. You were hurt. One does not argue with a gun, anyway. I have seen him like this before. He would shoot you down without a thought. One obeys a man like that when he gives orders.”
“How is Chet doing?" Durell asked.
“A little stronger. He refuses help. He drives his wife from his side. He is a stupid young man, I think. Can’t he see what Charley wants? That Jane is blind, too. She doesn’t know the man Charley can be.”
“What happens when we get to this place where Charley expects to find his jeep?” Durell asked.
Madeleine shrugged. “He will probably kill us.”
“If the jeep is there?”
“Especially if it is there. He won't need us then.”
“You include yourself among the victims, I notice.”
“He is tired of me. He looks only at the blond one, that Jane. All day it has been like that with him. Can you explain what makes a man obsessed like that?”
Durell walked on for a moment. “Madeleine, did you know about the gun he had hidden in the well?”
“No.”
“You knew about the money, though.”
She shrugged again. “It was a dream. A wonderful illusion.”
“You don’t think he’ll take you with him, if things work out as he hopes?”
“Not any more. He will take the Larkin girl. For part of the way, anyway.” She kicked at a pebble on the road. “His ego is so great, he can’t conceive of any woman turning against him. It is difficult, at that. I saw him in a situation like this once before. Something happens to him. Perhaps he becomes truly himself, without restraint. Like a clever madman. He will give orders, simple ones at first, then those that are only devised to humiliate and debase you. For the moment, he enjoys having us at his feet, but in the end he will simply shoot us.”
Assignment Madeleine Page 15