Through the pattern of shattered walls and leaning beams, he saw a single figure moving slowly along on the ground floor below them.
"Hey, man, this is Major Wells. Willie Wells. I work for the Teleks, that's all. A gun for hire, like they say, no more and no less. I have no axes to grind, understand?"
Durell watched the man's careful approach through the rubble. It was the American mercenary officer, the tall black with the calm, unprovoked face. The man held his .45 loosely in competent fingertips, and Durell realized that the metallic clickings had betrayed the reloading. There was a fresh clip of slugs in the butt. He touched Georgette and cautioned her again to silence.
"Durell! Don't be a fool! There's no place for you to hide here. We're all in this bag together, man. I need to talk to you. I need to know who's trying to score here, right? I'm not sure I ought to stay in this rat trap, myself. You got in, maybe we can all get out together, right?"
Durell kept his silence. He held his own gun in his hand, the snub barreled Smith and Wesson .38 revolver he preferred over the automatics. Major Wells' Colt was big enough to knock any man down, even if a slug merely grazed him. The mercenary kept moving carefully, picking his way through the debris, coming closer, his head bent back on his neck as he searched the tangle of rafters and panels of rusty, corrugated roof panels.
"Come on, Durell, I saw you up there. I didn't let on when my men were still in the place. I know you're still here."
Again, Georgette started to move, as if on impulse, ready to yield to persuasion; and again Durell checked her. He was used to waiting. He was a hunter by nature, but he knew the other side of the coin too; he knew what it was like to be hunted. He looked down from their height amid the wreckage and watched the foreshortened image of Major Willie Wells stalk back and forth, like a frustrated predator balked by prey that had gone up a tree. Wells wasn't quite sure where they were hidden. Durell had the feeling that he had heard about this black mercenary somewhere, a Vietnam veteran who had fought with great distinction in Southeast Asia; but for the moment, no details came to him. It couldn't have been in an official briefing or from one of the file dossiers; he would have remembered it completely in that case. It must have been a news article then. He would dredge it up out of his memory later, he decided.
"You bastard!" Wells suddenly shouted up into the dusty darkness. "I just want to make a deal with you, don't you understand? This whole business has gone sour for me. Can't we talk?"
Durell saw Georgette lift inquiring brows in the dimness. He shook his head, shaping the words with his mouth. "No. No deal."
"Durell?"
Major Wells stopped pacing and prowling on the debris-strewn floor down there. He swore softly, the sound of his voice sibilant in the dust. Then he turned and stalked away and vanished from sight. Durell kept Georgette from moving for several long minutes. He listened with every ounce of possible concentration. There were noises in the Getoba, the sounds of distant men shouting as they fought fires caused by the mortar barrage, the dim moan of an ambulance siren, the rattle of small-arms fire like a distant string of firecrackers. The jute mill itself had gone completely silent. Nothing stirred. He heard Finch draw a long, slow breath. He waited five minutes, then ten. Suddenly he was convinced that the mercenary had given up and gone.
"Let's get out of here now," he said.
"Where do we go?" the girl asked.
"It will be dawn in an hour. We'll have to find some food somewhere. And rest, maybe. But first of all, you take me to where the money is."
"Just like that?"
He looked into her eyes without expression. "Exactly like that."
"You don't believe in wasting time, do you?"
"Time is something we have none of to spare."
Chapter 13
THE WINDING, narrow streets of the Getoba, as Durell and the girl picked their way along, were often empty, stark and deserted, and then just as often filled with men digging in the debris for survivors or the dead left behind by General Watsube's most recent barrage. Regardless of the regularity of the mortars, promptly at each hour, conditioning the defendants to take cover in good time, there was always some damage, always some unfortunates who were found out by the blast and concussion of the incoming shells. There was no true defense against it. The rubble of broken buildings, the wreckage of shops, the smell of dust and death in the cooling dawn air, was testimony to Watsube's relentless pressure on the rebellious populace bottled up here in siege.
Finch carefully picked her way through some of the litter that blocked the lane she had chosen as their escape route from the jute mill. There were no more guards, no more sudden surprise, no Teleks waiting in ambush outside. Major Wells was gone. There was just the faintest hint of the coming dawn in the pale grayness that touched the eastern sky. The wind, in this brief hour, would blow with cooling respite before the implacable African sun struck down again with its pitiless heat.
"How many times have you been in the Getoba before?" he asked the girl.
"Oh, my. I used to teach here, when I was a Peacie. Every day, eight to ten hours a day. I enjoyed it. I really felt as I was doing some good. Then came the orders to go home. I think Daddy arranged for all that, to get me out of the jungle, as he thought of it. So I simply refused to go back."
"Why not?"
"Well, I think my life is more useful being right here," Georgette said simply.
"You mean, working for the Boganda government?"
"Yes." She grinned, and her grimy face looked oddly gamine. "Working for Unity, brother. Hallelujah."
"The Boganda people take it seriously," Durell suggested.
"Oh, so do I. More important, so do the Teleks."
The Getoba was old, even ancient, compared to the modernized area of the adjacent capital city of Boganda with its new boulevards, airport, and carefully landscaped concrete-and-glass boxes used for government functions and hotels. The Getoba had none of the rawness of the new. Everything smelled and looked its age. Here was the true origin of settlement, the basic birthplace of the Natanga culture that had grown up and merged with, then swallowed the Arab caravans and the ambitious and aggressive Portuguese, and which finally had ousted the colonial British. The buildings leaned toward each other as if tired by the weight of their centuries. The lanes were made for donkeys and camels, not automobiles. Nowhere within; the walls of the Getoba was there room for a modern automobile, except in the central square that also served as a souk, or marketplace, in normal times. Now the square was used as a focal point for the distribution of rations and the water that came from the tiled fountain and old well that served this ageless community.
As the sky brightened, the people began to stir, Chinese and Hindu, Arab and mixed Portuguese, and the short-chunky figures of the Teleks, whose tribal genetics made them easily distinguishable from the taller Natangans. There was none of the latter in sight. There were also very few women. No one paid any attention to Durell and the tall girl who walked beside him. Every man carried; arms, either a rifle or old shotgun or beautifully chase Arab rifle. There were knives, pistols, grenades, and near the fountain, a stock of grenade launchers. Here and there were warning signs, and Durell spotted a maze of booby traps and trip wires set up by the defenders in the event that General Watsube's government troops broke through the walls to end the siege.
All at once it was broad daylight. They had taken most of an hour to reach the central portion of the besieged town. Bells began to ring from the old Portuguese cathedral on the central square, and the iron clamor somehow sounded of alarm. Like well-trained puppets, the people who were gathered around the well and standing in the ration lines began to move off, stumbling into doorways and down into areas marked as shelters. They seemed mostly tired and dispirited, of a uniform grayness that tended to erase their racial and national origins. It was as if each man carried within himself the knowledge of impending doom. They were all targets now, of no special identity under the hourly barrage of Wats
ube's impersonal mortars.
"We'd better get under cover with the rest of these people," Finch said.
"Let's wait and see where the barrage lands." Durell looked back and saw the grim gray tower of stone from the Portuguese Fort, half a mile behind them on the river bank. "The fort hasn't ever been hit directly, did you notice that?"
"I hadn't thought of it," the girl said.
"But it's one of the best targets in the Getoba," Durell said. "It's also the rebel headquarters, I'm betting."
"You think there's some kind of a deal?"
"Some kind of funny works going on."
"Cheese it," Finch said suddenly. "The cops."
A small patrol of Telek rebels, with rifles slung across their backs, came along at a dog trot, herding the few stragglers who still remained in the streets. The first shell came over right on the dot of the hour, crunching into the Getoba about a quarter of a mile to the south. A thick mushroom cloud of black smoke immediately stained the dawning African sky. The explosion was followed almost; immediately by a walking pattern of other shells, moving; still farther southward, smashing houses and streets, shops and vehicles, and the luckless people who hadn't yet taken shelter. Durell drew the girl back around the nearest corner, out of sight of the ragged Telek patrol. In the dawning light Finch looked tired, utterly disheveled and dirty, still wet from their swim in the Natanga River.
She looked at him and said simply, "I'm hungry. What do we do about food here, Sam?"
"It will be rationed, of course."
"And if they have I.D. cards, we're out of luck, right?"
"Then we'll have to steal two of them," he said.
"And get shot on the spot? No, thank you. These people look pretty desperate."
He drew her into a surety, recessed doorway, painted blue for good luck according to Moslem custom. The thin sunlight touched their faces, and in the chill of the morning the heat felt good. The explosions came marching toward them again. It would last five minutes, according to Watsube's usual schedule. The lane was empty now. Not a, soul was in sight.
"Where do we look for the money?" Durell asked. "You argued me into coming here. It's up to you now, Finch. You said you know the combination. Do I take that literally?"
She drew a deep breath and nodded slowly. "It was, placed, according to my information, in the Natanga People's National Bank and Depository. Owned and run by. Watsube, if you must know. The President's brother-in-law, no less. All the international credits that were turned into cash, upon presentation of development plans and payrolls and supply bills to be met-over three hundred million in all, that's not in dollars only, it's in Swiss francs, British pounds, Russian rubles-all deposited in the vaults of the East Natanga Exchange."
"Why not in the Boganda Treasury?" he asked.
The girl shrugged. "Who knows what kind of hanky-panky was going in? Who can guess why anything is done the way it's done in this country? I don't even really know why they're fighting here, why people, women and children, are getting blown to bits in the Getoba at this very minute!"
"Where is the tank?"
"Believe it or not, it's in a converted old Portuguese church, just off the central square, past the old souk. You can't miss it." She sighed. "I'm so damned hungry, Sam. Thirsty too."
Durell listened to the slamming and banging of the mortar shells and watched the repeated clouds of black smoke and pitiful debris blown skyward against the pale pink sky. The noise was deafening, heart shaking in the knowledge that they were like fish in a barrel, being shot at by the inexorable and efficient war machinery of General Watsube. It was hard to believe that life went on with some semblance of normalcy out there, beyond the Getoba walls. The brief glimpses he had already obtained of what was going on in here showed the other face of the coin of rebellion. It was hopeless for the Teleks, of course at least, the military part of it-unless the mercenary leaders had some ace up their sleeves. The rebellion, commanded by mercenaries like Major Willie Wells, could not go on much longer against the crushing; deadly shelling that occurred every hour on the hour, day after day. Nor was there much chance of escape. Any Teleks who tried to get out of the bottle usually ended up before the firing squads on the Presidential lawns.
Aside from his briefing in Lamy, Chad, on his flight down here, he had taken the time to get some data from Wally Johnson, whose cover job at a bank in Lisbon was more than useful now. He looked at Finch. The girl was slumped, tired and dispirited, in their doorway niche. At that moment, as they huddled in the sunny recess in front of the blue door, booted feet suddenly slammed on the rough stones of the lane, and the Telek patrol they had originally backed away from came trotting with determination down the alley straight toward them.
What happened then came too quickly to prevent.
"Sam!"
Finch shrieked a warning a split second too late as the first of the patrol yelled and raised his gun to fire at them. There was no challenge, no questions, and no request for their identities. Maybe they were already known, Durell thought, in that split second of time. The rifle crashed, the-; bullet chunked splinters out of the blue plank door, and, Durell spun, slammed his shoulder against the panel, felt it give way under the impact, and tumbled inside with the. girl. There was momentary darkness, and uncertainty, waited ahead of them in the Telek house. But there was, certain death behind them.
"Give me your hand," Durell snapped.
He grabbed the girl's wrist and plunged ahead into the darkness, hit a wall, bounced to the left, saw a staircase, raced up with the girl dragging behind at his heels. The house shook. Plaster clouded down around them. The sound of the explosion from the mortar shell, in a suddenly new pattern, was deafening. It had to be luck, nothing more, Durell thought fleetingly. The shell had landed on the house next door. Vaguely, he heard a man yelling. A woman shrieked and cried and moaned.
"Come on."
At the top of the stairs, a corridor led them toward the back of the house. There were balconies, stone steps, and a maze of pathways on an upper level leading right and left, down to a narrow alley behind the lane. Several patched and colored awnings had already been spread across the alley as protection against the rising sun, making a tunnel out of the path below them.
"Jump," Durell said.
"What?"
Behind them, the thudding feet of the Telek patrol came stumbling up the dark staircase. Durell stepped up on the sill of the wide, arched window and kicked out the remaining panes of glass that still were intact. A rifle hammered on the stairway. A man shouted. A second mortar shell landed in the alley they had just quit, and several timbers fell, making great cracks in the wall of the houses,
on either side of the window. Smoke drifted from the wrecked building next door. The woman trapped in there still cried and moaned. The man had slopped yelling.
"Jump," he said again.
Finch leaped from the windowsill for the awning stretched directly below. She hit, bounced, slid downward and vanished. Durell followed. It was no more than twenty feet. His impact, however, was too much for the tattered canvas. It ripped under his weight, and he went through, his momentum broken enough so that when he struck the paving stones below the flapping, ripped awning, nothing broke. He came up on his feet instantly.
"Finch, this way!"
But the girl had gone to the left, not the way he had indicated.
"Finch!"
A third mortar shell blew up the house they had just left. In the thundering explosion there was no time to think or act except in self-preservation. Roof tiles, chunks of stone and cement, splintered beams and rafters, all came raining down in a cloudburst of smoke, dust and noise. One entire wall, and the one with the window from which they had jumped, slid down into the street and blocked the way to the left, imposing a barricade too high and too jumbled to cross after the girl. There was no hope of going after her now. Durell lay on his stomach close to the base of the collapsed wall and lay still, feeling his shoulders and back and legs
pelted by falling stones and debris. Luckily, nothing too heavy came down to strike him. He heard a dim screaming in the wreckage, but there was no chance to go back in after anyone. The tattered awnings over the alley had all been blown away. He got up, aware of a trickle of blood on his jaw from a deep, stinging cut, and then moved off to the right. The people here had been well disciplined. Nobody came running out into the open to expose themselves to further shelling. He looked backward, saw no sign of Finch, and abruptly decided it was just as well. He was better off alone, for what he had to do.
He ran for the corner, found a doorway, and dived into it. For another minute the mortar shells fell at random, turning the world into an insane, crashing inferno. More fires broke out in the sector where Finch had run. He did not know if the girl had survived or not. He felt a deep pang of worry over her, which made him wonder, since she was not his responsibility in this business and was more of a liability than an asset. He told himself it was stupid and unprofessional to be concerned about her; but he couldn't help it. At the same time, however, he did not go back to look for her.
Assignment- Silver Scorpion Page 10