by Jon Land
Near midnight, Blaine eased gingerly out of his position. He made his way to the Labyrinth entrance and opened the door a crack. The night was moonless, but light poured out of the house, making a direct approach impossible. Blaine’s first thought was to short out the fuse box, but he realized such a move would only result in Fass’s tightening security to an impossible degree.
That left a one-man commando assault as his only option. Blaine opened the door a bit more.
There was one guard posted between the Labyrinth and the tall row of bushes enclosing it. What a blessing! Blaine sighed slightly with relief; he would not have to kill the man to move on to the next phase.
He eased himself through the door, careful to make sure it closed softly behind him. Keeping his frame low and avoiding the light as much as possible, he glided soundlessly over the mist-coated grass.
The man’s head was turned the other way when McCracken lunged and seized him in a hold across the carotid artery designed to shut off the flow of oxygen to the brain. Ten seconds was all it took for a well-skilled professional, and the guard was disabled silently with a minimum of fuss.
Seconds later, the guard’s white uniform had been pulled over Blaine’s bloodied clothes. He left the rifle but pocketed the man’s knife and stuffed his pistol into the tight belt. The shoes were tight as well, but they would do. McCracken took up the man’s post and at the last second elected to sling the rifle over his shoulder on the chance that he was seen. He peered out through the narrow break in the bushes toward Fass’s mansion. The sight distressed him. Three guards were in plain view, all too well spaced to be simply overcome. With no time left for further consideration, Blaine left the rifle behind and passed through the opening into the mansion’s backyard, again keeping his frame as low as possible.
The light was his greatest foe now, as he studied the routine of the guard closest to him on the right. The man’s territory seemed to run from the start of the veranda to the far edge of the kidney-shaped swimming pool. He could tell this guard’s steps were bored and laconic. That would work for him.
Staying close to the bushes for as long as he could, Blaine edged on, closing the distance to the pool as directly as possible. Then he waited for the guard to finish his patrol of that area and start back for the veranda before sprinting toward the cover of the cabanas. The rest was a matter of waiting … and moving at the correct moment.
The guard turned at the veranda and started lazily back, almost retracing his steps. Blaine counted the seconds to distract himself before lunging at the precise instant the guard passed into the shadows. A sharp blow to the rear of this guard’s head, followed swiftly by a second blow to ensure unconsciousness. The only sound was a muffled gasp, barely finished when McCracken began dragging the frame into the cover of the cabanas. Now the next step.
“Over here! Over here!”
Blaine’s voice was raised with concern, not panic, nothing that would make the other guards use their radios before approaching. Blaine would have said more if his knowledge of Greek had not been so limited. He had to hope it was enough.
He heard the remaining two guards’ feet pounding toward him, and he didn’t look back for fear they might see his face in time to respond. As it was, they realized nothing until Blaine swung. They were very close together, which made his task even easier. He lashed out at the nearest just to stun; a stiff blow to the nose was more than sufficient to buy him the time required to launch a crunching kick into the groin of the other. The first was staggering when Blaine finished him with a knee rammed into a face forced downward to meet it. The second was on his knees going for his pistol when Blaine cracked an elbow across his temple and ear.
All obstacles to the mansion were now eliminated. He had to hope the uniform would be enough to get him by once he was inside. A quick, painful sprint brought him to the rear entrance. The door was locked but a knife blade lifted off one of the guards was narrow enough to work between the gap. Then he was inside, searching for the steps he had descended under armed escort hours before.
He found them quickly and ascended at a restrained pace. He was certain there would be a guard at the top and wished to do nothing which might make the man confront him. As it was, Blaine simply walked by the staircase guard, who seemed not interested at all in another uniformed figure. Blaine headed directly to Fass’s office and found two guards before the door with rifles at the ready. McCracken fought against hesitation and kept walking.
They regarded him only briefly as he moved by them, dismissing his presence much too early. Blaine pivoted and lunged in the same instant, driving his blade into the nearest man’s chest as the man on the other side of the door swung his rifle up and around. The move was foolish because it took much too long to execute; rifles were too bulky to be effective in close. Blaine rammed a set of rigid knuckles into his windpipe, shattering cartilage and forcing the man’s Adam’s apple into his airway. A second blow to the head forced the guard into unconsciousness.
Fass made the rest easy for him.
McCracken heard the door being unbolted from the inside and pressed himself against the wall.
“What’s going on out—”
Still clad in his white suit but lacking the tie now, Fass stuck his head out just far enough to see his guards on the ground. He was attempting to pull back and close the door when Blaine sprang, cracking him in the face with an iron fist which propelled the Greek backwards. Seconds later, the corpses of both guards lay against the wall in Fass’s office, and McCracken was grasping his slick hair to yank him to his feet. Trembling with rage, he pressed the bloody edge of his knife against the Greek’s throat.
“Wanna get your death on camera, friend? Might make for good viewing later.”
“No!” Fass pleaded. “Anything! Anything!”
“Too late for generosity. Just answer my questions. First a story. A small-time bandit robbed some crystals from you. That sound familiar?”
Fass nodded fearfully, eyes bulging as he struggled to swallow.
“They were dark red, lined with many crevices and grooves, yes?”
Another nod.
“Where did you get them?” When Fass remained silent, Blaine jolted him across the room until his back was bent over his own desk. Behind it, Blaine could see the huge patch of blood left from the boy’s murder. He pressed the blade a little closer. “Talk!”
“They were sent to me from Morocco. They were sent to many people in my field.”
“Why?”
“To solicit bids for the remaining reserves.”
“You mean you don’t have any more?”
“Just the ones that were stolen. I swear!”
“Then the rest are in Morocco?”
“I don’t know!”
“You’re lying!” Blaine drew a thin line of blood on the Greek’s neck.
“No! No! I’m telling the truth. We were told to take the crystals to our own scientific people for testing. This is months ago, months! I learned they were an incredible energy source, with the potential for a devastating new weapon. Whoever possessed it could obtain a position of incredible power.”
“An auction,” Blaine realized, “that’s what you’re describing, isn’t it? Tell me!”
“Yes! Yes!”
“And your bid?”
“Too low.”
“Who won?”
“I don’t know. Maybe no one. I was never told. I’m telling the truth! My correspondence with Marrakesh was general. It never got specific even when I was still in the bidding.”
“Correspondence with who in Marrakesh?”
“A man known as El Tan.”
“His address, what’s his address, damnit?”
Fass’s eyes darted wildly from left to right. “He can’t be reached directly. There’s a middleman, a snake charmer named Abidir from somewhere in Djema El Fna square. El Tan can be reached only through him.”
An instant of hesitation followed in which neither man knew what
was coming next. The knife trembled in Blaine’s hand as he struggled to control his rage.
“I want to kill you, Fass, but that would be too easy and too quick,” he said at last. “You need to suffer longer for all those boys plucked up from the streets and served up to you here in your own private hell. So I’m going to let you live. But mercy’s got nothing to do with it, because when Vasquez finds out you let me escape—and believe me, he will—his means of dealing with you will be infinitely more colorful than mine.”
McCracken jammed the knife harder against the Greek’s throat as he stripped his belt free to begin tying him up. “Might even ask the fat man to send me a videotape of the proceedings. Have a swell eternity,” Blaine said, as he laced the Greek’s hands behind him. “You’ve earned it.”
Johnny Wareagle knelt in the meadow on the spacious Oklahoma land set aside for the Sioux Reservation. Behind him Chief Silver Cloud approached warily, stopping when he could tell the huge Indian was aware of his presence.
“I am sorry, Wanblee-Isnala.”
Wareagle stared straight ahead over the miles of rolling flatlands alive in the breeze. “There is no reason to apologize.”
“I think there is. The Sallow Souls wanted our land even though the courts ruled against them. They became cruel, angry, their spirits dark and rank. I had nowhere else to turn.”
Wareagle turned to look at the old man. He smiled reassuringly. “I am here. Nothing else matters.”
“I should have told you the truth, Wanblee-Isnala,” Chief Silver Cloud muttered, his bronzed, leathery skin looking suddenly all of its seventy years in the hard sun. His long gray hair flapped lightly. “Instead I invited you to a nonexistent convention. I knew you could not refuse that. I worried you could refuse involvement if the truth was made known.” The chief came closer, the way a wary hunter might to an animal he thinks is tame. “You are a legend among our people, Johnny. Your manitou evokes memories of the warriors of legend.”
“The hellfire did not make legends. It made memories,” Wareagle told him.
“What will you do?”
“Sit among you today.”
“And if the Sallow Souls come?”
“Then they will come.”
Wareagle had learned only yesterday of the hoax played upon him. Chief Silver Cloud explained that oil had recently been discovered on the reservation and the locals were enraged over the Indians’ stubborn refusal to sell off the mineral rights which would have brought prosperity to a depressed area. Today the locals were coming in with their own heavy equipment to clear the meadow. The local police had disassociated themselves, and the Indians were honor-bound not to turn outside their ranks for help.
So they had turned to Johnny.
He sat in the center of the two-lane road leading up to the reservation. Around him were a hundred other Sioux of all ages, men and women. The locals would have to run them over to get their equipment past, and while Wareagle felt certain they would not go that far, he knew they might come close. In his hands was a four-foot-long wooden staff that might have been a walking stick to someone seven feet tall. The staff was made of birch and he had finished fashioning it himself last night.
The convoy of heavy equipment passed over the last ridge and rolled toward them. Fifty feet away brakes squealed, and the convoy rolled to a halt. Wareagle saw that the first two trucks were packed with two dozen men who were now climbing down with chains, bats, axe handles, clubs, and assorted other weapons.
Wareagle rose with the eyes of all his people upon him, and with the staff held lightly in his hands, he approached the semicircle of men who held their ground before the idling trucks. He stopped a yard away from a mustachioed man with a baseball bat.
“You and your friends be best to move out and let us through, Indian.”
“It’s our land.”
The man smirked and gazed around for support. Wareagle towered more than a foot over him, but he had more man twenty backups who had now closed into a circle.
“‘Our’? Seems like ‘your’ since you’re the only one standing here. Don’t want to see you get hurt now, do we?”
“Then leave.”
“Can’t do that, Indian.”
The man’s bat came overhead fast, but Johnny’s staff rose even faster, deflecting it with one end and striking the man on the side of the head with the other. Three men charged from the rear, their weapons in motion, but Wareagle swung his staff in a wide loop that smashed one against another and took them all to the ground.
A man attacking from the front with a club was met with a savage thrust to the midsection while another closing from the rear was halted by an equally savage thrust backward. The biggest of the locals came at Johnny whipping a heavy chain roundhouse fashion. The Indian leaped in to close the gap and caught the chain in his fist as he launched a sizzling kick into the man’s groin.
Seeing an opening, another local swung an axe handle high for Johnny’s head. Wareagle avoided it by dropping to one knee as he brought his staff around hard into the man’s ribs. He was vulnerable on the ground and a pair of men sought the advantage by bringing their clubs straight overhead from both front and rear. Johnny angled his staff upward and blocked both at the same time, wood clacking against wood. The men raised their clubs again, but Johnny pushed his staff like a pool cue into the front man’s solar plexus and then sliced it backwards into the other’s groin.
The man with the mustache was scampering back for the cab of his truck, bleeding rather badly from the mouth and cursing up a storm.
Three men came at Wareagle with weapons flailing. Johnny ducked, lowered his staff, and tripped two of them up. Then he brought it back up fast enough to block another blow and follow with a combination strike to the man’s face and ribs.
The rest of the locals backed away fearfully.
The man with the mustache had pulled a pistol from his glove compartment and was bringing it up to aim it.
Wareagle never even seemed to look at him. In a blur the staff was out of his hand and flying. It cracked into the man’s wrist at the precise moment he squeezed the trigger. His single shot flew hopelessly errant, and he scrambled back into the cab of his truck.
Wareagle stood his ground and watched the others rush by him, a few stopping to drag their downed fellows along with them. Johnny backed away and returned to the throng of Indians who rose as he approached, gazing on him with awe. Chief Silver Cloud sought him out as the members of the convoy fled in their trucks.
“The spirits shine on you, Wanblee-lsnala,” he said, as mesmerized by what he had just seen as all the others.
“They shine on all who heed their lessons.”
“The Sallow Souls will be back.”
Wareagle shook his head. “I don’t think so. Word of this will get out. The authorities will not be able to stand aside again.”
“But you will stay with us for a time. Let us find a means to repay our debt.”
“No action requires debt. Each exists unto itself, an entity alone. I must leave.”
Chief Silver Cloud nodded sadly. “I understand.”
“It is not your doing, Chief. You did just as the spirits wanted. But last night they came to me with a message: an old friend will soon need me again.”
The chief looked at him reverently. “Keep note of the road back, Johnny.”
“There is only one road, Chief Silver Cloud, and it passes everywhere twice.”
Chapter 18
GENERAL VLADIMIR RASKOWSKI hated Bangkok. He had been able to survive thanks only to his air-conditioned town-house outside the city. Plenty of wealthy locals shared the beautifully landscaped area with him but he spoke to none of them, seldom venturing out.
Years before the city had held promise, but then westernization had set in. Now the American capitalists were spreading their cancer to yet another region that should have belonged to the Soviet Union. The result was a miserable, teeming, overcrowded city where consumerism ruled above all else.
In the spring heat, the collective stink of the hordes inevitably wrinkled his nose. Raskowski was so sensitive about the smell that he felt the necessity of bathing three times a day, even on days when he didn’t set foot out of his townhouse.
He was even more sensitive about his height. Of course, at just over five feet four inches he was hardly a dwarf, but he knew that compared to other Soviet generals from past and present, he was a victim of the legend. All Soviet military leaders from Peter the Great on were supposed to have been large, strapping men, and Raskowski had risen through the ranks ever conscious of the fact that the more power he obtained, the more his height would betray him. He became obsessed with it; he ordered three pair of leather boots with custom-elevated soles. He had his desk placed on a platform. And when his curly, salt-and-pepper hair began to fall out in clumps, he had a transplant. Baldness would unfairly steal several centimeters of his height.
He had spent his younger years trying to compensate for his lack of height by building muscle. With the aid of a trainer for Soviet Olympic weightlifters, he had developed a body that was much too big for its frame. His arms were huge and knobby with muscle, his chest barrel-shaped. Raskowski had always been proud of the fact that all his uniforms had to be custom-tailored; that this was still true at almost age sixty made him even more proud.
Of course, he could no longer wear his uniforms in public, not while in exile, for they would draw too much attention to him. The few times he was forced to venture out into Bangkok he did so in Western clothes and did his best to look like a tourist. It made his flesh crawl and made him feel dirty. It was those rare hours outside his townhouse that set his expression so tight that his pointed chin seemed to curve upward for his nose. It shouldn’t have come to this. By all rights he should be General Secretary at this moment. He had worked for it and deserved it, but they had stolen it from him. He was a man from a different time they said, a relic from the past. Raskowski did not disagree. But times were the product of the people living in them. They were whatever those people made them and Raskowski knew exactly what he was making them now.