by Gar Wilson
"Please," the ferret-faced man tried again. "You hurting me. No rough stuff, hear? We can talk..."
Fawzi was not prepared for the vicious attack by the raven-haired tigress with the AK-47. The rifle barrel slashed down without warning, dislodged teeth on the right side of his face, painted the inside of his brain with acetylene-torch brightness.
"We have no time for games," Nemtala hissed in Arabic, her face inches from his. "The American. Tell us where they have taken him." The rifle came up again, the butt poised over his thin, hooked nose. "Talk. Or I will kill you by inches."
Fawzi's head snapped up; he understood he was not dealing with amateurs. "Please, madam," he wailed, shielding his face with his hands. "No more. I'll talk. I'll tell you everything you want to know. Only promise you'll spare me. I am only a simple man, trying to make a living however I can. He is named Bihar Jibril. I am not associated with those people. Believe me, I beg you..."
Five minutes later Fawzi, his hands bound behind him, was being pushed from his own front door, flung roughly into the Land Rover between Nemtala and the driver. Smiling back at the wan-faced Dembo, she said, "Watch carefully, my friend. Warn us immediately if he guides us wrong.''
"Yes, mistress," Dembo replied, newfound respect and awe in his voice.
The ELF stronghold was caught up in a frantic flurry of activity. Two Eritrean hardmen were gathering records, preparing for momentary getaway. In a brightly lighted back room, another member of the terrorists was stationed at an elaborate shortwave radio, trying desperately to raise someone on Blackwell's end of the line. While in the main parlor, lighted only by candles, a more grisly diversion was in progress.
And though all the terrorists knew the American mercenary would never leave their lair alive, they still knew flight was mandatory. His friends would move heaven and earth to find their comrade, to avenge his death. Thus it was essential that they absent themselves from Munzoga — at least for a while. But first, the sport at hand.
Gary Manning was stark naked, hanging by his wrists, his arms pulled at rigid forty-five-degree angles by ropes that were strung to overhead rafters in the high-domed structure. The four men in the room had trussed his ankles as well; his feet were suspended eighteen inches from the floor.
Manning's face was puffy, bruised, one eye almost swollen shut. His lips were gashed; a steady trickle of blood meandered down his chin. Stoic to the last, he had not answered any of their questions; he had denied them even the satisfaction of an outcry as they had punched at his face, as they had taken turns slashing away at his midsection. The grunting explosions of breath at each new blow — that was all they got from him.
"You are being unnecessarily difficult," Bihar Jibril — a dedicated inquisitor, black, fat, pockmarked — wheezed in excellent, cultured English. "You know we will get what we want before we are through with you, don't you?" He leered. "Our methods can get to be very ugly."
Manning opened his eyes a crack, regarded Jibril with cold contempt. Still he said nothing.
"Who are you?" the interrogator continued. "Who do you represent? Who sent you... the rest of your gang... to Sudan? Was it the CIA? Is this another United States intervention in our internal affairs? Did you actually believe you could succeed? A handful of men such as yours?"
Manning remained silent.
Bihar Jibril stepped forward, face distorted with rage, smashed the Canadian in the belly full force. Manning groaned, fought for breath, sagged.
"We have a thing we do with a lamp socket," the ELF topcock said, his words slurred. "It will prove detrimental to your sex life, however. Please, American, be reasonable. Talk. Do not make us resort to such animalistic devices."
He paused, waited for a reply. And when Manning's breath finally evened out and his eyes opened again: "Your name. The name of your organization? Your last chance, hero. Answer me."
"Fuck you." Manning's defiance was bought at great cost.
"As you wish, my friend." Jibril deliberately puffed his cigarette to a hot, glowing ember, advanced on his victim. "For starters, then. Be stubborn, if your choose. We can be just as stubborn. As you will soon see."
Manning could not stifle his coarse groan.
I The three Phoenix Force members and Salibogo and Nemtala crowded in a last-minute huddle against a looming, mud-brick wall, their presence obscured to the ELF sentry by a heavy buttress. They had come the last mile on foot, unwilling to chance having the LR's noise provide a tip-off to the enemy.
All listened intently as Katzenelenbogen sketched the battle plan. A beloved comrade's life was at stake; there was no room for the slightest miscue. A single outcry from an adjoining residence could alert the terrorists within the ELF hideout, put Manning in deadly jeopardy.
Salibogo would go first, serve as decoy while Encizo maneuvered atop the wall. Once the sentry was dispatched, Rafael would drop inside, see to the stealthy opening of the gate. A rooftop recon then, once the group infiltration was made. After that? Play it by ear.
But first there was the matter of Ashwar Fawzi.
Katz sent a flickering glance to McCarter, who stood behind the rat-bait informer, a stone-hard hand clamped across his mouth. McCarter nodded, tightened his grip on him, dragged him backward twenty-five feet into the gloom. He shoved him roughly into a convenient cul-de-sac in the wall.
"It's okay?" the man bleated softly as the Briton slightly relaxed his hold. "You free me now? Please, buddy, we got deal..." His eyes were liquid with pleading terror.
They were the traitor-for-hire's last words. McCarter deftly shifted, clamped the crook of his arm around Fawzi's throat. With a whistling grunt, McCarter applied merciless pressure. The sell-out man fought desperately against the steely choke bar closing his throat. His eyes bulged; his legs sagged.
When he was sure the Arab was dead, McCarter flung him away with a grimace, as if he were contaminated. Goodbye, sewer-bloom, he thought. You'll never play Judas again.
Salibogo was primed and ready as McCarter felt his way back through the darkness. Encizo was already in place at the wall, his silenced Walther stuck in his belt. With a grunt, McCarter leaned, let Katzenelenbogen use his knee for balance beam. A moment later Encizo, breathing hard, was edging up to form the key element in the three-man tower.
They heard the rasping slide of his boots on the wall. Another grunt. The weight was lifted. Encizo was up. A muffled thump sounded as Katz hit the ground again. Overhead Rafael was already moving down the line, a shadowy, flitting cat. Yakov gave Salibogo the go signal.
They could hear him engaging the guard in conversation, playing the lost man to the hilt. The ELF lookout tried repeatedly to get him moving, but he was tenacious and kept up his stupid dialogue until he was sure Encizo was in place.
Because they knew what to listen for, they heard the faint cough of the silencer-equipped Beretta as Salibogo caught the terrorist by surprise, pumped two rounds into his chest. "Let's go," Katz whispered. They moved out.
By the time they covered the remaining two hundred feet to the ELF's front door, Encizo had dropped inside. The gate hung halfway open, and Salibogo was dragging the ventilated trooper inside the walls. The minute they were inside, the gate snicked shut.
All froze in swift visual assessment. Then, Encizo darted to the right. Seconds later they saw him slithering silently across the high dome, heading for a small cupola at its top, where a dim light flickered. Breaths were sucked in, held as he reached the top, stared intently inside the room below. They saw his face darken with anger.
Rafael's crisp whisper carried down. "He's here. We barely made it in time. Those bastards."
"How many?" Yakov asked.
"I see four working on Gary. Some motion in the back part of the house."
"Weapons?"
"Yeah. All on standby, though. They're having enough fun without them."
"Get down here, Rafael."
And when a puffing Encizo rejoined them, he reported. "They've got Gary strung up on rop
es. They're torturing him. Going at him with cigarettes. Someone's rigging up some kind of an electric-cord gadget."
Nemtala's eyes nearly exploded in her face. She swayed where she stood, fought back a despairing outcry.
As Encizo finished with the description of the inner layout, Yakov took over. "A simple rush," he said tersely, his face anguished yet controlled, adrenaline pumping savagely. "No misses. They can't have Gary, understand?"
"Gotcha," McCarter muttered.
"Rafael, you and Salibogo crash the back door the minute you hear anything. Blow them away. We're going in shooting. Take them by surprise."
The war party separated. The soft crunch of sand, the creak of leather, the click of lock and bolt hung on the night air. Then there was utter stillness.
Yakov, poised at the door, placed his ear against the thick plank and heard muffled voices within. With painstaking care he touched the door handle, gasped with relief as he found it unlocked. Overconfident fools, he thought. Slow millimeter by slow millimeter he turned the knob. His heart kicked as the latch disengaged. The door slowly swung open.
After the all-enshrouding gloom outside, the light glowing at the end of the side vestibule seemed almost blinding. They filtered inside and began their critical advance upon the main room.
But at the last crucial moment, as they verged on swinging into the parlor, there was a blunder — Nemtala's AK-47 came in contact with a hanging plant holder and made a muted clang.
"Wakkif. Min inta?" The sharp voice sounded alarm.
Even as the trio crashed into the arched opening, the ELF hardboys were breaking for their weapons. They were a millisecond too slow on the uptake. Katz, Nemtala and McCarter slid into view, their weapons booming. The minidomed living room was suddenly turned into deafening, hammering bedlam.
In the back of the building the other terrorists sprang up and went for their weapons. They were just in the process of straightening up when the back door I crashed down under Rafael and Salibogo's determined onslaught. The radioman, interrupted in midconversation, took Salibogo's five-round line across his chest and was flung backward. He died with his blood pumping in thick gouts all over his shattered equipment.
Encizo dumped a flock of 5.56mm bone-crushers into the cramped office, caught the terror goons cold. They collapsed like deflated balloons, rendered the top-secret files useless by flooding them with jetting pints of blood. They screamed, writhed amid the scattered papers.
In the parlor, it was no contest.
The man branding Manning's chest with a cigarette made a desperate dive for a P-38 that lay atop an ornate rosewood mosaic table. His fingers were inches from it when Nemtala's rifle spat hellfire, the rounds falling low, her trajectory deliberately circumspect to avoid hitting her lover. Jibril screamed as two slugs chewed into his upper thighs, turned him into a rolling, clawing basket case.
He quickly went still, sank into apparent shock.
Yakov put a silenced round of 9mm into the chest of the man at Manning's right. He saw him spin, go down like a sack of wet concrete.
McCarter had the best angle of all. The two ELF stooges on the left were in clear view. The Cockney kill machine put the Browning Hi-Power on full auto and sent thirteen rounds of 9mm parabellum booming into them. They died quickly.
Again an awesome, draining silence closed in; all stood in slumped, momentary paralysis.
There was time for full impact of the bizarre scene — a medieval torture chamber with Manning naked, spread-eagled on a rope cross, his face bloodied, his chest spangled with angry, dark welts — to fully register.
Encizo broke the silence. "All clear back here," he called, moving up along with Salibogo.
"Clear here," Katz replied, shaking himself from his trance, gratitude that they had arrived in time foremost in his thoughts.
By then Nemtala was putting down her weapon, racing for the room's far corner, where she began fighting the anchoring rope tied to a decorative pillar there. She would not endure the sight of her lover, hanging like trussed beef, one second longer.
"All down?" Encizo said, entering the room, grimacing as he assessed the full extent of Manning's wounds.
"All down," Yakov responded, moving to the other wall to undo the second rope.
In that moment of lull, defenses down, they were caught by surprise. With a fanatic, last-ditch charge, his preliminary movements hidden by a heavy couch, Bihar Jibril was on his feet. And though he knew he was doomed, he was still determined to take one of these infidels — preferably the accursed, silent hero — with him.
He lurched toward the helplessly staring Manning one of the Iong-bladed knives meant for their captive's final torture in his hand. He was halfway across the room before anyone's reflexes cut in.
The AK-47s swept up, then froze. Any shot at this close range would take Manning, also. McCarter, Encizo threw themselves forward in a futile move to catch the terrorist leader from behind.
A blurred figure flashed from out of nowhere as Nemtala, first to see Jibril's lunge, came in from the left. Her rifle out of reach also, she reacted on pure instinct. Flesh against flesh. "No," she shrilled. "No, Gary!"
She flung herself on the man's back, closed one arm around his neck. Weak, staggering from his wounds, he was still more than a match for the fragile girl. He viciously shook her off, tried for disemboweling stroke at Manning. But in a last, desperate exertion, Nemtala caught his arm and hung on like a rabid pit bull. The savage charge, the downward thrust of the man's arm authored the unexpected disaster.
The long razor-sharp blade swung back, the man's wrist flexing in hundred-eighty-degree turn and the knife slashed up into her diaphragm, penetrated her heart. Nemtala hung in midair momentarily, her eyes wide with a mixture of disbelief and regret. As she spun and began to fall, she propelled herself forward, hands reaching, straining to touch Manning.
"Gary," she choked a last time, dark streams of blood pouring from her lips. "Oh, my darling..."
She was dead before she hit the floor.
"Tala!" Manning howled. "Tala! No! God, no... "
By then McCarter and Rafael both had Jibril in their grip. McCarter was bringing up the Browning when a horrendous, throat-rupturing bellow erupted from Manning.
"No!" he called, the command booming in the domed room. "Leave him! He's mine, do you hear? Mine!"
They did as they were told, savoring the way the terrorist hardman gasped, struggled, his eyes all but bulging from his head as Salibogo and Yakov finished cutting Manning down.
Manning did not look at Nemtala; he did not pause over the pitiful curl of her body. Instead he walked on wobbly legs directly toward her murderer. His lips were drawn back; his eyes burned.
The ELF headman cringed before the oncoming avenger.
"Hold him," Manning grated, his voice seething. "Hold him, the way he held me."
Groaning, his fists flashing like a human windmill, Manning thumped the enemy. Again and again his ham-sized hands rocked the Arab's head.
Even after Jibril was dead — his face turned into shapeless, unrecognizable raw meat — Manning continued to flail away at him. Manning's howls gradually turning into uncontrollable, wrenching sobs. He could barely stand by then.
Katzenelenbogen finally intervened. "Enough, Gary," he said in a firm voice. "Enough, my friend. She is avenged."
It was then that the warrior turned, moving like a short-circuited robot, and went to Nemtala.
He fell to his knees beside her, brushed her hair gently back from her forehead. He lifted Nemtala, arranged her in his arms, stared into her face for long, sad moments.
He rocked her silently, burying his face in the juncture of shoulder and throat. "Tala, Tala," he crooned in soft, ragged monotone.
The others stood apart, eyes averted, emotions beaten by the tragedy at hand. Salibogo quietly left the room, his heart again savagely torn, tears of sorrow running down his face.
13
"Damn you, Malwal," Jeremiah Blackw
ell raged, pounding his radioman on the back, "get that connection back. The first time we get some info, and you can't hold the signal. Don't just sit there, do something."
"I'm sorry, General," the communications officer said, quailing before the madman's fury, "but it's not our equipment. The radio in Munzoga has apparently been destroyed. Their operator was talking about the American commandos, relaying information as he got it. Suddenly there was noise, the sound of shooting. Then the transmitter went dead."
Blackwell frowned, his frustration nearing a boiling point, then he flung himself from the command car. He paced back and forth, his hands clamped behind his back, talking nonstop under his breath.
When the transmission from Bihar Jibril had first begun blasting from the command car's speaker, and he had grasped the critical importance of the message, he had brought the convoy to an immediate hah. Hanging over the speaker, his pulse hammering in his temples, Blackwell had not been able to believe his ears.
A four-man team? An old man and a young girl? Nosing around Munzoga, asking all the wrong kind of questions? They had wiped out the Americans' contact agent, but not before he had spilled his guts. Not good. Not good at all.
But when he heard about the captive, whom they were at that very minute in the process of torturing for additional information, he had been reassured. What in hell was this, he had wondered. A four-man swat team?
Again the chill had returned. Maybe Jibril had counted four mercs. But there had to be more; these were merely the advance party. There was no way that small a force could have taken out the squads he had sent out after that girl.
His eyes had narrowed. Could it be? That woman from Abu Darash? Had she hooked up with whoever was on his ass? The twinge of fear became more pronounced. Oh, Christ, he thought, if she ever gets me between a rock and a hard place... He recalled the gory mess she had made of Major Ochogilo and his henchmen, and he had shivered.
It cannot be, he had assured himself. A one-in-a-million shot that the girl would connect with the merc force.