Assignment Golden Girl

by Edward S. Aarons

  "I'm not sure—"

  "Go ahead."

  There came a jolt, and the great sixty-six-inch drivers suddenly spun wildly on the rails, spitting sparks. The old locomotive shook savagely, then settled back as if about to give up, and abruptly rolled forward. Harvey's lip was bleeding. Durell leaned out of the cab window and stared as far ahead as he could. The locomotive began to roll forward with a heavy panting and wheezing. Black smoke poured from her antique stack.

  "Pick up the ore hopper first," Durell shouted.

  "But Gloria—"

  "We'll back up for the coaches."

  "All right."

  Colonel Abdundi's men were scrambling into the hopper, which was as solid as an armored car. Old 79 rumbled out of the shed into the misty, pearly light of dawn. Durell could see rifle and machine gun fire about five hundred yards down the tracks. Men ran and fell and screamed. Harvey eased back on the throttle lever, and Old 79 coupled into the hopper with a delicate crash. The locomotive stood still, panting.

  "Back now," Durell said.

  He opened the boiler door and stared at the roaring flame in the metal guts of the engine, tossed in a few more logs, and looked backward. The two coaches were in line, but the switch hadn't been thrown yet. He swung down, judging the distance, and ran for the hand lever. The locomotive and the ore car backed creakily down the track toward him. A bullet whined over his head. Above the ponderous thud and hissing of Old 79 came a heavier burst of fire. Bullets whined off steel, screaming out over the river. Another mortar shell burst, this time to the rear far away. There were dim shouts and yells of panic from the refugees jammed into the coach.

  Durell threw his weight on the switch handle and turned it. The tender with its two Pakuru firemen squatting on the cordwood took the rail with clicks and deliberate thumps of steel flanges, and the coaches were coupled with only a delicate jolt as Harvey manipiilated the throttle.

  "Now hold it," Durell called. "We have two more passengers!"

  "Is Gloria aboard?"

  "I'll check."

  Durell ran instead for the little shack up against the bamboo fence that bordered the yard by the river. In the shadows were Oyashi and the tall, statuesque Sally. Durell felt someone behind him and turned suddenly. The three tall, spear-toting warriors led by Khwana had trotted in absolute silence behind them.

  "You have to get aboard now," he told Sally. "These gentlemen will help you."

  She said, surprised, "They're my mother's guard."

  "I think they're shadows now."

  "What about Atimboku?"

  "So far he doesn't know you're around. We'll have to keep you out of sight and hope for the best. I think I've got a way to keep him busy for a moment. When Harvey blows the whistle, all of you make a run for the tender. You can make a little cave in the cordwood there for yourselves."

  "What about water and food?" Oyashi asked.

  "We'll worry about that later. Just let me see to it that Atimboku is preoccupied for a minute or two, all right?"

  Sally said, "I trust you, Sam."

  Durell looked up at Khwama's grim, towering height. "It's more than I can say for others."

  Durell ran back, and Harvey leaned down from the cab. "I think we can make it now. Can we go?"

  "In a minute. I'll check on Gloria first."

  He went back to the crowded coach. The fire fight between Abdundi's militia and the encroaching Neighbors had reached the far end of the yard. Abdundi's men were grov^ng less enthusiastic as they saw they would be left behind. There were only moments left.

  When Durell swung up onto the open end of the coach platform, he was appalled by the people jammed inside. In the gloom of the boarded-up windows he saw only a sea of anxious, frightened faces, black, brown, and white, mostly men but with a few women, including some Englishwomen who were trying to maintain their serenity. It was a motley crowd, and he wished he could have done without them.

  At the rear of the plush, paneled coach were the two private compartments, the doors securely locked against the others. He went to one, knocked, and was ad-' mitted by Gloria.

  "Hey," she said. "Did my little Harvey really get this wreck going?"

  "He's not as small as you think."

  "Then why aren't we moving? Or do we all get shot by those savages right here?"

  She was made up as if for a heavy date in Manhattan, wearing a tight pants suit that conformed to every voluptuous curve of her rich body. She had a ribbon at the back of her long blond hair, earrings that twinkled beside her powdered face, and eyeliner and fake eyelashes. Her perfume filled the tiny compartment. Her glance shot briefly across the corridor to the closed door of Atimbo-ku's stateroom.

  *'He*s in there," she said quietly.

  "Why not see him then? Harvey's busy."

  She stared from under heavy lids. "Harvey doesn't want me to. You know that."

  "But can you keep Atimboku busy for a few minutes?"

  "Are you kidding? Right now?"

  "Yes.''

  She stood up, smoothing her thighs. "Oh, you are a son of a bitch, Sam Durell. Harvey trusts you."

  "It's my job," he said.

  Fifteen

  "NOW?" Harvey asked. He leaned out of the cab window. Men were running toward the river across the tracks. Machine gun fire rattled behind them. A few of the bullets cracked and spanged on the locomotive's sides. Durell was interested to note that Harvey did not flinch or duck away.

  "Now," he said.

  Harvey shoved the throttle forward. Again Old 79 creaked and groaned, the drivers spun wildly, caught, and the train began to roll ponderously and slowly ahead down the tracks leading out of the yard. A grenade burst behind them. Someone screamed dimly in the passenger coach. Durell reached up for the whistle cord and yanked on it. Harvey turned his head in inquiry but said nothing. The pressure dials quivered. Durell looked toward the shack and saw Sally and Oyashi and the three warriors loping across the tracks toward them. He hoped Gloria was keeping Prince Atimboku away from the coach window. In a moment Sally tumbled aboard, followed by the Japanese and the three Pakurus.

  Durell gestured toward the heaped cordwood in the tender. "Make yourself at home."

  The switches were thrown for the main line. The train rumbled slowly over them, the heavy wheels clicking. Harvey kept his head out the cab window, although the firing ahead made a gauntlet through which they would have to run. Durell looked at him and thought of Gloria and wondered at the things his job made him do. There could be no compromise of the assignment. You followed orders regardless of who was hurt, the tragedy, the ones who fell or were lost by the side. He pushed his regrets aside. Someone had put a Uzi and an old BAR in the locomotive cab. He picked up the lightweight, accurate Israeli gun and watched a wave of men come running across the tracks toward them. Harvey pushed the throttle farther forward. They picked up a little speed, but he did not dare go too fast until they passed over the yard switches.

  A bullet whipped through the cab. Others chocked into the cordwood heaped in the tender. From the hopper up ahead came spits of flame as Abdundi's guards fired back.

  Men tumbled and fell in the dawn gloom. A grenade burst on the tracks ahead. The Neighbors looked well armed and efficient. It was touch-and-go. One of the enemy paused in the tracks directly ahead and leveled a burst of fire at them. He did not jump aside fast enough, and his body was caught by the pilot and flung aside like a rag doll. A grenade flew through the cab and went out the other side, exploding, sending steel splinters whining through the air to rattle against the locomotive's side. The sun was coming up. There was a gray mist in the air. Ahead the track now curved through a huddle of native hovels along the riverbank. The trees there looked black against the fingers of color that spread up into the eastern sky.

  A group of enemy soldiers ran across the yard at the far end, carrying a huge log, plainly intending to drop it in the train's path and derail the locomotive. Durell sent a burst of fire from the Uzi over their heads.r />
  "Full throttle, Harvey," he said quietly.

  Harvey's face was white. He slammed the lever forward, and the locomotive rattled over two more switches, swinging with the curve of the tracks along the river. The gauges and dials trembled violently as the steam pressure went up. The enemy troops, urged on by an angry officer, were still running for the main line. Durell fired the Uzi again. There came a burst of automatic fire in return. The m.en with the log dropped it short of the track and scattered. They were through. The train rumbled past the wreckage of the administration building and into a tunnel of trees. A mortar burst behind them, doing no damage.

  The track ahead was clear.

  In minutes they were out of Pakuruville, leaving the fighting behind.

  The jungle steamed as they rolled out of the valley. The train rumbled along quietly at about thirty miles an hour. The track curved constantly, following the course of the Pakuru River, and there was no way to see for any great length ahead. Harvey rubbed a gloved finger over the glass of his gauges and looked up at Durell with a shy, triumphant grin.

  "Well, we're off. Six hundred miles to go."

  "Do you want some relief? I can handle the throttle," Durell said.

  "No thanks, I'm all right. I was tired before, but I've got my second wind. I'll grab a nap later on." He moved his head to indicate the three warriors sitting on the cord-wood in the tender, their attitudes grave and alert. "Who are they? I've been so busy I never had a chance to ask."

  "They're on our side—I think." Durell turned around. "Khwama?"

  The mahogany face was expressionless. "Yes?"

  "How is Sally?"

  "Salduva sleeps. She rests. She is safe."

  The three spears were held upright by the Pakurus. Oyashi was curled up on the steel plates of the tender, a log under his head for a pillow. The two native firemen were resting, too. The locomotive chugged along and thundered around a long, gradual curve that descended into the deeper jungle ahead. There were no signs of the enemy behind them, but Durell had no illusions about the long hours to come.

  He nodded to Harvey, said, "I'll be back in a few minutes," and climbed back toward the two coaches.

  Gloria looked like a great, angry, petulant cat. There was high color in her cheeks, and her eyes flashed.

  "Oh, it's you," she said. "Welcome to steerage."

  "You're a lot better off than anyone else aboard, except Atimboku."

  "Yeah? Well, give me the common people any time."

  "What happened?"

  *With Atimboku? He's an animal."

  "You didn't make it?"

  She tossed her head. "Who'd want to?"

  Her anger was false. There was a guilty note in her voice, which had coarsened slightly. Durell closed the door to her compartment after noting the rumble of deep voices from the opposite room occupied by Prince Tim.

  "Anyway, you kept him busy when I needed it, Gloria. Thank you."

  "To hell with it."

  Durell smiled. "Did he really turn you down?"

  "Listen, no son of a bitch ever turns Gloria down, understand? Not if I really wanted to make it with him. But—"

  "He turned you down."

  "He clobbered me," Gloria snapped. She whirled away from the crude boarding over the compartment window with fists clenched at her sides. "Oh, I'll get that arrogant | bastard. I'll fix his wagon! I'll make him hurt so he'll I yell 'Mama!' on his knees to me." ^

  "He turned you down," Durell said again. "But at least he didn't go rampaging through the train."

  The train rocked and rumbled over a culvert. The gloom in the boarded-up compartment made Durell feel claustrophobic. He balanced lightly against the swaying of the train.

  "Harvey asked you to take care of me, didn't he?" Gloria asked.

  "Sort of."

  "And you threw me at that animal, didn't you?"

  "I wanted to be sure we got started without his interference."

  She sat down on the green leather seat in the tiny compartment. Not until then did Durell see the bruise high up on her left temple. "I'm hungry," she said abruptly.

  "Colonel Abdundi will distribute military rations soon, I suppose."

  She made a face. "That French-speaking creep. Do you really think we're going to make it?"

  "If Harvey holds out," Durell said.

  "You're no friend of Harvey's." She eyed him with angry speculation. "Just what are you, anyway?"

  "I'm just trying to do a job."

  "Atimboku isn't worth it," Gloria said.

  He would have marked down her mood as a result of being physically rejected, but there seemed to be more to her attitude than that. He did not press it. He opened the door to the compartment and squeezed out into the narrow corridor. At the same moment the door to Atimboku's room was yanked open.

  "Durell? Get in here. Abdundi, stay a moment."

  Prince Atimboku towered hugely, savagely in the dim, crowded Hght of the compartment opposite Gloria's. His yellowish eyes were hooded with anger, and his dark skin showed a flush of blood on his high cheekbones. For a moment he still looked young and vulnerable, and he balanced his big frame lightly on the balls of his toes against the swaying of the train. Colonel Abdundi sat in a corner of the seat, smoking one of his Portuguese cigars, not looking at either of them.

  "You, Durell. Close the door."

  Durell closed the door.

  "I'm not even going to talk about that blond bitch across the way. The move was too transparent. You put her up to it, didn't you?"

  "I didn't want you to interfere with our departure," Durell said evenly. "I don't think you're reasoning quite straight, Tim. Whatever is bugging you, you ought to control it."

  "I will. I can. I'm going to do it, right now."

  Abdundi began mildly, "Please, your Highness—"

  Atimboku whirled on his military aide. "What? I've had enough of you too, Pierre—"

  "Please. What you plan to do is not the thing—not comme il faut — "

  "What do you have in mind?" Durell asked.

  Atimboku breathed heavily and lowered his head like a bull about to charge. "I've got enemies aboard this train, man. I've been betrayed. Stabbed in the gut. I'm going to get rid of some of our supercargo."

  "How do you mean?"

  "Come along and see," Atimboku snapped.

  Abdundi shrugged and stood up and carried his Sten gun in the crook of his elegantly groomed arm. Atimboku also carried an automatic rifle. Durell did not move from where he blocked the doorway.

  "Get out of my way, Cajun."

  Atimboku jabbed the muzzle of his gun at Durell's middle. Durell stepped back out of the way into the corridor. For a moment the stocky Abdundi met Durell's eyes with a look of puzzlement, then resignation. Then they stepped from the corridor at the rear of the coach into the main body of the car crowded with the refugees. Atimboku towered over the hodgepodge of people who tmned to look at him with curious fear. Some of the men tried to shrink out of range of his sweeping stare. Atimboku smiled, but his eyes still held that savage light. There was a slight swagger to his walk as he pushed through the crowd of people.

  "You, Takale!" he barked suddenly.

  A black man in the costume of a tribal chief looked as if he wanted to run; but there was no place to go.

  "Step forward, Takale, blood brother of my second cousin Selebe, who tried to murder me when I returned to my home and my country."

  The man fell to his knees. "Prince Atimboku Mari Mak Mujilakaka, forgive me, it was not I who tried the foul deed but a misguided relative—"

  "Whom I shot," Prince Tim snapped in Banda.

  "And will you shoot me, an innocent man?"

  "Stand aside. Over there. And you, Aisata-Orapa! You who gathered the Kanmi people to vote against me in the council, who held the Queen Elephant's ear and spoke vile things about my youth abroad—"

  A thin, brown man with a dignified lift to his head pushed forward. A woman tried to cling to his striped coat
, but he put her hand gently aside.

  "I did what I thought was best."

  "Then you may join Takale."

  "What will you do to us? Are we not- all in danger, joined in a common cause to survive against a mutual enemy?"

  "You are in more danger than the rest of us, Aisata. And you, Captain Bowman! Step forward."

  A young Englishman, burned nut brown by the African sun, shrugged and detached himself from his wife and young daughter. Atimboku's eyes flicked to the wife, to the daughter, and he smiled.

  "You, captain, who think the color of your skin is better than mine. You, who have worked long months before my return to make my country subject to your apartheid policies. Join the others."

  "May I ask what you intend to do with us?" "Why, I'm going to kill you," Atimboku said. "And several other enemies who have slipped aboard my train."

  Sixteen

  "YOU can't do it," Durell said.

  "Why not?"

  "You can't expect the world to accept you and help you if you execute your enemies like a savage without a trial."

  "Ah, you admit they are my enemies?"

  "Perhaps so."

  "And you admit my country has been brutally invaded, is the victim of aggression and war, and that Pakuru is at war?"

  "I won't let you do it," Durell said flatly.

  They stared at each other while the victims—nine in all finally—huddled against each other in the forward vestibule of the car. Someone had taken down several of the fire shields from the windows, and Durell could see the deep green of swampy jungle slipping past as the train made its way steadily down the winding track. The air in the coach was already overheated and growing foul, and opening the windows was understandable. He watched a tiny thatched village slip by with the huts built on stilts beside the brown waters of the Pakuru River. He looked into Atimboku's muddy eyes and saw a laughter that was not laughter but madness.

  "How can you stop me, Bwana Durell?" Tim sneered.

  "You agreed that I was in command of this train."

  "After me. After Abdundi."

  "Not true."

  Atimboku trembled all up and down his huge frame. "What will you pay me for these people? If I use them as hostages, what are they worth to your stupid Western conscience?"