Assignment Star Stealers

by Edward S. Aarons

  "I don't like it any more than you do."

  "I will remain with the track, if you agree."

  "Fme."

  "And the lalla?"

  "She comes with me. It is her choice."

  "She will not remain where it is safe?"

  "There is no safety, anywhere."

  "She loves you enough to die for you, sir. And yet she is very strong in her own way, accustomed to—ah—the ways of American women. Very independent. Si Durell."

  "Yes. A woman of great power."

  The man was nervous, which accounted for his babbling. They had edged up another twenty miles from where they had found Chu Li's body, and then halted for the night. Now it would soon be dawn again over the hammada. The direction finder had gone berserk during one period of the dark hours, and it had seemed to Durell that strange shapes lifted out of the grim landscape ahead. They had found a cluster of the familiar pinnacle rocks and hidden the truck there.

  He was sure of the way when, after midnight, he heard the beat of a helicopter coming in to land. Its navigation lights had been off during the flight, and it came up from the south. In the moment of its touchdown, however, he saw the glare of landing lights, like a long explosion in the desert night.. Then the darkness and silence returned again.

  He was ready to go in, now.

  There had been no sign of Skoll. The only sound to be heard was the thin piping of the wind around the red pinnacle rocks. The stars blazed in the chilly dawn air. He felt Amanda shiver. He had argued that it might be best for her to stay behind, but when she expressed a distrust of Kadir as her guard, he agreed that he preferred to have her at his side.

  Hadj Kadir plucked at his sleeve. '*You understand, Si Durell, we have crossed an international boundary?"

  "Yes."

  "I think I know exactly where we are. I have been puzzling over it. Five hundred years ago, in the time of the Shi, who was also known as Sunni Ali, there was much trade between Gao and Timbuktu, and the Taureg country. He was king of Songhay, and established oases on the trade routes. A most enlightened man. Some of the waterholes were in rock formations like this. In the venerable book, Tarikh-al'Sudan, such places were described. I believe this is one of them." The Chleuh merchant blood came out in Kadir. "The caravans came north wth gold and ivory from the black man, the non-Muslims, along with their brothers whom they sold as slaves. Oh, yes, it was a time for great commerce."

  "There's no sign of a waterhole," Durell said.

  "It would be a deep well, underground, with steps going down to it. Perhaps there are caves here, where the caravan people once rested."

  Sand and dust blew in little whirlwinds across the ledges. There was a low rise ahead, where Durell had spotted the helicopter landing. He turned to Amanda. "Let's go." To Kadir, he said, "If we don't return by nightfall, get back the best way you can. Take Si Richard to the Americans in Agadir or Marrakesh. They will pay you well for him."

  "He is as mindless as a child, sir."

  "It may change," Durell said.

  Amanda said, "Sam, what can you do alone? Vm a good marksman, and I can shoot, but we have only one gun."

  "We'll get another."

  "And there are dozens of men here, surely." She was exasperated, almost tearful. "Shouldn't we go back and get help? You don't even know how to get mto this place!"

  "Getting in will be easy." Durell's blue eyes were dark with thought as he surveyed the eastern sky. The first faint pearl of light glowed there. "It's getting out that's the problem, Amanda. But we'll take care of that when we come to it."

  He started forward, with the girl at his side. The emptiness of the desert surrounded them. The dawn wind was cold. The slope lifted in a series of ledges toward a flat summit, and he waved Amanda back a few steps and then went flat and crawled to the very top.

  He stared for a long time in the faint light.

  He had found what he had come for.

  There was a cuplike depression atop the rise, some acres in area, surrounded by red stone walls. The floor below was as flat as a ballfield, and the walls were pierced in several places by defiles and in one case, by a large iron gate opening into a tunnel. Part of the field was sheltered by a rooflike overhang of rock. Metal glinted under this natural roof, reflecting starlight from a bubble of plexiglass. Two helicopters were parked there, hidden from aerial discovery. There were also trucks and Jeeps—he wondered if one was SkoU's—and one private twin jet, capable of carrying half a dozen passengers. Durell drew a deep breath. The wind grew momentarily stronger. He focused his attention on two large metal plates that were set into the floor of the crater. They were being uncovered by several men in white smocks, who slowly hauled the tarpaulins to one side.

  ''Sam?"

  Amanda's warning touched him softly just as he heard the warning grate of boots to the left. Durell remained flat on the lip of rock over the crater and turned his head as a tall shadow climbed up and blotted out the fading stars. The man carried one of the AK-47 automatic rifles. He grunted and blew his nose on the sleeve of his striped robe, and looked to the north—and Durell hit him, rising slightly from behind and slamming his revolver against the back of the man's head. The Taureg's breath exploded and he half turned, started to topple off the rim, and Durell caught him by one leg and yanked him desperately forward, toward Amanda. TTie AK-47 clattered on the ledge and he caught it up, then crouched, listening.

  The guard was out cold. Although dressed as a R'guibat, his features were white, and the usual indigo tattooing over his veil was gone, washed away.

  For twenty heartbeats, Durell waited and watched for an alarm. One of the men with the tarpaulins gave a low shout of command, but their attention was not focused this way.

  Amanda climbed to his side. "Are you all right?"

  "Never better. Here, lend a hand."

  She helped him strip the jellaba and hood from the unconscious guard and then tore the man's shirt into strips, which Durell used as a gag and binding for the fellow's wrists and legs. It was not too secure, but it had to do.

  "Take my gun." He gave it to Amanda. "You're sure you can use it?"

  "I used to go hunting with Hannibal," she whispered.

  "Put on this fellow's robe. Use the hood to hide your hair." He smiled thinly. "There aren't many Blue Men mth long red hair like yours, sweetheart." He picked up the automatic rifle for himself. "We're off to a good start."

  The guard had mounted to the top of the crater by way of a trail cut upward from the chopper pad below. He worked quickly, dragging the phony Taureg's body down the outer slope to hide it beside one of the ledges, then turned suddenly as the air was filled with a loud, mechanical whine.

  "Down!" he whispered to Amanda.

  She dropped to the crater's edge with him. The whining grew louder just as the sun's first rays shot up over the horizon. The eastern sky was splashed with gaudy colors. Down below, the men had pulled aside the canvas, completely revealing the wide metal discs set into the stone. The discs, like manhole covers, suddenly lifted and moved straight up, like pointing metal fingers rising to the pale sky.

  "What—?" Amanda began.

  "Hush.''

  For some seconds it was impossible to define what was happening. It was like something out of another world. The whining noise grew to an earsplitting crescendo. The metal fingers stabbed higher and higher, unfolding arms, discs, meshed ovals. It lifted above the edge of the depression and rose higher. At the same time, several men appeared from the gate in the tunnel below, wearing khakis. Some lighted cigarettes, others beat their arms to warm themselves against the chill.

  Another footstep grated on the rock ledge to Durell's right. It was a second guard, and the man's boots had been overshadowed by the mechanical noise below until he dislodged a few small stones. The man had been looking at the activity on the chopper pad, but as Durell turned his head, the man saw him, too. He yelled something and Durell came up with a rush as the guard tried to unsling his rifle. He slash
ed it at Durell's head, missed, and hit Durell's left arm, and then they went rolling and bumping down the slope outside the crater. The man's breath hissed and his dark eyes gleamed in the faint light. Durell hit him and suddenly felt the barrel of the other's rifle smash across his neck, pinning him against the ledge. He tried to break free by bucking upward, but the man was heavy and strong, his teeth gleaming in triumph as he put more weight across Durell's throat.

  There was sudden movement, a thump, a thud. The man gasped and fell aside. Amanda stood over him, feet spread, her rifle reversed in her hands. Durell scrambled up.

  "Thanks. You're handy with that gun." He rubbed the side of his throat. "Now we both have the uniform of the day."

  He stripped the robe from the second man and put it on, gave Amanda the second AK-47, and put his .38 away in his belt. There was no need to chmb up to the edge of the crater to see what was happening.

  The mechanical sound of pumps and hoists had ended. Thrust high into the dawn sky were twin towers on which there slowly turned radar-seeking dishes and probes. The sun was only moments from rising above the horizon entirely. The eastern Hght winked and flashed on the antennae that searched the still-visible stars in the sky.

  "No wonder our counter-satellites couldn't locate this main base," Durell murmured. '^Shielded by rock this way, you could fly over it at fifty feet, when the towers were retracted, and never know it was here."

  "Are we going in?" Amanda asked.

  "In a moment."

  She stood close to him while they waited. The probe did not take long. In five minutes the whining returned, the towers telescoped down upon themselves and vanished into their subterranean pits, and the workers returned to cover the steel hatches with the tarpaulins again.

  "Stay close to me," said Durell.

  They went down the path by which the first guard had climbed up out of the crater. It was not a long way to go. They moved openly, depending on their jellabas to make them acceptable, and Durell headed for the parking area under the natural rock roof. The two Bell choppers had no markings except Moroccan registrations. He memorized them, but expected nothing from the records, which would surely be falsified. The two heavy trucks were dusty from desert travel, but under one of them he noted a torn bit of still-green brush. So the main trail was up from the south, from Mali country. Walking in apparent idleness around the Jeeps, he stopped at one that did not match the others. Skoll's, he thought. There was a dark streak on the back of the seat next to the driver's. He touched the rough clot thoughtfully.

  "What is it?" Amanda whispered.

  "Blood."

  A streak of dawn light touched the helicopter pad outside the roofed parking area. A man called from there, shouting a query to Durell. He shrugged, waved vaguely, and suddenly saw a door cut in the rock in the back of the still-shadowed parking space. He nudged Amanda that way and sighed with relief to find the steel door was not locked. The man on the pad yelled again, as they slipped inside.

  The tunnel was dimly lighted by a pulsing generator that throbbed below. Durell walked quickly, cocking the AK-47. Amanda stayed close at his heels, her robe iBap-ping, her face partly hidden by her hood. At the end of the corridor they came to a circular well pit, with steps spiraling down as Hadj Kadir had described. Durell started down at once.

  Two more tunnels opened from the bottom of the dry well. He heard voices, a soft laugh, the clatter of dishes from the left. He walked with Amanda past a small cafeteria-type dining room that seated about twenty men and four women at comfortable tables. There were several Chinese, a group that spoke in loud Russian, two men chatting in French. Some of the faces were familiar. They were scientists, electronics experts, and technicians whose dossiers Durell had seen across his desk back in Washington. All had been reported as missing or dead. He wondered what had tempted them to join in this enterprise, then went on with Amanda. A cross corridor led them to a central control room for the radar towers. Two white-coated attendants were removing spools of monitoring tape from a row of machines against the opposite wall. From somewhere in the carefully organized tunnels came the sound of chimes, followed by the quick rap of marching feet.

  "Sam, do you have any idea what we're looking for?" Amanda whispered.

  "Of course. Skoll, first. Then Von Handel. Then the electronic machinery Richard developed and built to steal our spy satellite data, and then the files and blueprints of those machines."

  She grinned. "That's not a small order."

  "Keep your veil up. Taureg women don't wear veils, it's true, but you're supposed to be a R'guibat warrior—or a reasonable facsimile thereof."

  "And after you get aU these things done?"

  "We'll take off for home."

  She shook her head. "We'll never get out alive."

  The hill on which the base had been constructed was only so big, Durell reasoned. He made a complete circuit, always walking as if with a purpose, and the men they passed never spared them a glance in their jellabas. There were dormitories, offices, a small library, a machine shop. Dr. Von Handel had developed his blackmail base with typical thoroughness. There was even a prison. But it was down two more levels, in the crumbling, mud-brick walls of a desert city of the Songhay Empire long dead and forgotten.

  There was a relaxed air among the personnel they passed that indicated a complete sense of security, hidden here in the Saharan wastes. It wouldn't last long, Durell thought grimly, once the two guards were found outside.

  It was down in this lower warren of partially excavated ruins that they finally heard a grunt of pain, a sudden yell of outraee.

  "Skoll," Durell said.

  He moved faster, down a narrow, dim corridor like a tunnel, probing the old ruins. They turned a corner—and a towering figure stood before them. Surprise was mutual. It was Hassan, the Blue Man who had acted as his "guide" when he first went after Dodd in the desert. Beyond the Taureg's tall figure, he glimpsed a small cell, a sprawled figure, two other Blue Men, and a small, chubby man in gold-rimmed glasses who seemed detached from what was going on here.

  They had been lucky so far.

  But now their luck ran out.

  For a second, everyone was frozen. Hassan's eyes above his veil were wide with shock—and then he grunted with pain as Durell rammed the muzzle of his rifle into his belly.

  "Hold it, just like that," he said quietly.

  Hassan did not move, except for a tremor that shook his huge body. But the small, stout man bevond him was quick as a weasel, spinning around and darting down the corridor away from the tiny cell where he had been watching.

  "Von Handel!" Durell shouted.

  There was a glimpse of the man's round, enraged face, and then he was gone. At the same moment, there was a roar from inside the cell and Skoll came up, grabbing for his two torturers, knocking their heads together. Hassan moved, a knife flickering as he jumped back. He had been very quick. Durell's gun was knocked upward as Hassan kicked at it expertly. The next moment the corridor roared with the hammering of Amanda's AK-47. Hassan went jerking and stumbUng backward, puffs of dust coming from his robe. The man shrieked something and then spun completely around and fell on his face.

  "Comrade American!" Skoll bellowed. "The key, the key! Get the key from him!"

  The vaulted tunnel still echoed from Amanda's single burst of fire. Durell jumped over Hassan's body, fumbled in the man's desert robe, and found the key to the old iron-grilled doorway. Skoll stood up inside his cell, teeth gleaming as he grinned.

  "I knew I should have chosen you as my partner."

  Durell unlocked the door. "So I could end up like Chu Li?"

  "Ah, you found him? I hoped you would. A terrible accident. I could have used him."

  "You used him—until you got here. Then you killed him."

  "Comrade Cajun—"

  "Let's get out of here."

  "Do not point your gun at me. We are allies, not?"

  "Not. Look at Hassan. That's what you'll get from me if you
make one funny move."

  Skoll looked as jovial and as well-fed as he had in Fez. His pale little peasant's eyes were shrewd. "You do not give me a gun to help?"

  "No."

  "Then we shall never get out of here."

  "I'll risk that. Go on. That way." The two guards in the cell were groaning and holding their heads. Durell picked up their weapons and pushed Skoll's bearlike figure ahead, in the direction that the man with the glasses had gone. "That was Von Handel?"

  ''Naturally. He was nostalgic for memories of his concentration camp activities. He came to watch them squeeze my—" Skoll halted, looked at Amanda, and laughed. ''The lady is quite good with guns. Not squeamish at all, eh? She must love you much, to instinctively kill that big fellow as she did. Beauty—and all her money. You Americans are always lucky."

  "Shut up. Let's move."

  He heard the faint chattering of Amanda's teeth, but when he looked at her, she clamped her jaw shut. She was very pale. But she held her gun steadily enough.

  An alarm siren began to whoop somewhere above them.

  "This way," said Skoll. "I had a private interview with your Dr. Handel before they changed their methods of interrogation. Quite a charming fellow. You Americans forgave him his Nazi indiscretions and put him to work on your PASS satellite base, eh? So you have him. He is yours."

  "Not any more."

  "An animal does not change his swastika spots, nyet?'

  Skoll led them up an old, crumbhng stairway. The brick walls were obviously hundreds of years old. They heard the sounds of running feet and shouts and the whooping of the alarm siren. At the top of the stairs, two running guards crashed into Skoll before they were aware of him. He grabbed them both in his bear hug and throttled each with an arm under their chins. Durell pushed ahead. A newly cut tunnel led to a glimpse of greenery. Before he and Amanda reached the arched doorway, Skoll had rejoined them, breathing only slightlv faster.

  A garden, under camouflaged netting, lay ahead. Tamarisk trees drooped their plumes, geraniums flamed in big clay pots, a small pool glistened in the mottled shadows cast by the overhead net. There were antique mosaic tiles, serpentine columns under a fretwork of Moorish arches. Two cypress trees grew on each side of the main arch. A grapevine made an arbor of shade in the early morning sun.