Mulanda had been making a whispered translation for the villager. Ziemba uttered an angry curse. For the first time since Bolan had tackled him, Ziemba stood fully erect, his dark eyes glittering above the pitted tracks of his tribal scars. His face was a primal mask of vengeance.
Ohara suddenly straightened and pointed over the collapsed roof of a rondeval toward the open ground beyond the village. "Hey, over there . . . ."
"Looks like the rest of the villagers coming back," grunted Kambolo, shielding his eyes from the midday sun.
An irregular row of barbed bushes had concealed the sandy ravine where the other women, children and three old men had been hiding for the past couple of hours. One of the village elders limped forward, still uncertain of what to make of the foreign intruders although reassured to see Ziemba had not been harmed by them.
Katz shook his head sadly. These people lived all their lives in fear—fear of marauding lions and mercenaries, of starvation and cruelly ambitious tyrants. And yet, somehow, they hung on to their tattered, stubborn pride despite it all. The unlucky ones who had been caught in the village by the Leopard Patrol had been tortured to death rather than reveal where the animals or their neighbors were hidden.
"Mumungo must be desperate for taxes to have sent out his own crack troopers," Rawson said to Bolan.
"They're on a tax-gathering patrol? Yes, it makes sense. Mumungo will be desperate to raise the funds to pay off the army he's drafted to defend himself."
"Colonel Phoenix." Mulanda caught Bolan's attention with this formal address. "Ziemba asks if he may accompany us. He has vowed to make these murderers pay—that's his own brother lying there."
"Ours is a different battle," replied Bolan. "We cannot help these people. And he can't come with us."
He turned away and signaled for the others to climb back aboard the truck. They must waste no more precious time here. They had to get on the trail of Yagoda's gang immediately or risk losing them in the forbidding desert that still lay ahead. He could not allow himself to be sidetracked into tangling with Mumungo's Leopard Patrol.
"Move it, McCarter, load up!" ordered Katz. "Let's get Scarr and then get the hell out of here!"
BOLAN CONTROLLED THE ANGER he felt welling up inside as the Land Rover bucked and slithered along the rutted track that wound north. He had seen it in the eyes of Manning and the Englishman. Ohara and Encizo revealed little, but he knew they felt it too. They would all like the chance to get even with Mumungo's murderous bullies. But the Phoenix team could not be diverted from its primary objective. Bolan was not a man to run from a fight, but right now he could only hope that the Leopard Patrol would not come between them and the Angolan unit.
"Where was Mumungo's mob heading for?" he asked their guide.
"The tracks led to the south toward Shogololo," Rawson replied. "But that doesn't mean a damn thing. They won't stick to the road, otherwise all the villages down that way would be alerted, giving the villagers a chance to hide whatever money, grain, or cattle they have. No, the Leopard men will crisscross through the bush, strike anywhere without warning. That way the drum talk can't raise an alarm."
"So we could run into them even on this trail?" asked Manning.
"Let's hope not! But we'd best keep our eyes peeled," advised the South African.
The group remained silent for a minute, then Bolan asked, "What was it like under Bambabele?"
"Some of his officials were idealistic, others were corrupt. The bureaucracy moved slowly, but it moved." The surveyor shrugged. "And you couldn't make head or tail of his foreign policy. I guess it was much like any other infant nation taking its first steps."
Katz was right, Bolan conceded to himself. To help put Bambabele back into power would be a favor to these people. And to do that they first had to snatch the diamonds and the papers from Scarr.
"Come on, Kambolo, can't you make this crate go a little faster?" urged Rawson, sensing the commander's impatience.
"Sounds like you do believe in the treasure after all," remarked Bolan.
"There must be something to the rumors," the other man confessed. "It's the only thing that could have saved Scarr from being stopped by the Angolans." He pointed to the long, dark thunderheads strung out low along the horizon. "It looks like the rains are coming at last. I've got a float plane waiting for you at Baruka and you won't be able to take off if a storm's pissing down. We have to reach it before that lot catches up with us."
Bolan twisted around to observe the cloud bank. The truck was keeping up with them, but it was uncomfortable for the men bouncing around in the back.
"How far to the desert?" asked Manning.
"About an hour," said Rawson. "Don't worry, we'll catch up with Scarr's people on the Devil's Forge. They'll have to stick to the track to make sure they hit the wells. But Mulanda back there, he knows all the ways across the Forge. Used to track down renegade Bushmen through that country. He'll find us a shortcut and we'll be right on their tail."
"And we'll just have to sit there until they lead us to the cache," said Bolan. His one aim now was to catch up with Scarr's gang. The gathering storm clouds only emphasized their race against time.
"Hey, pull up!" shouted Manning. "Something's wrong . . . ."
They all looked back down the track. The truck had slewed to one side. It was sagging badly to the left.
Bolan cursed beneath his breath.
8
"Merde!" grunted Katz as he stepped down onto the track. He knew it—this whole mission was jinxed.
McCarter surveyed the monotonous expanse of stunted brush stretching away to the brown and purple wall of the Mambosso hills. "Not much chance of the AA coming along, is there?"
The older man gave him a blank stare.
"The Automobile Association," explained McCarter.
Katz merely grunted as he bent down to see what had gone wrong. He was not in the mood for McCarter's humor. Manning climbed out with a puzzled frown.
"How bad is it?" shouted Bolan, as the Land Rover backed up the narrow trail.
"The shock's gone . . . damn, looks like the whole mounting's been torn out!"
Manning shook his head regretfully. He should have checked over the truck back in that Nabu village; but a quick maintenance inspection could not have prevented the damage. He had to admit it, the colonel had been setting a reckless pace.
Bolan turned to Rawson. "How far is the nearest village?"
The surveyor looked to Mulanda for an answer. "Four, maybe five miles."
"Have you got a tow rope?" inquired Bolan. Rawson nodded.
"Get it!" Bolan ordered crisply. He was not going to lose their momentum.
Kambolo and Mulanda pulled out the wire cable from the truck and hitched it to the back of the jeep.
"We'll tow the truck into the next village and fix it there." Bolan paused just long enough to glance at the distant hills. Had Yagoda reached that far already? Was Scarr guiding the Angolans down onto the desert plain beyond? He knew they were close. And they were not going to slip away from him now.
THE BALUBA VILLAGE appeared to be marginally more prosperous than the Nabu settlement. Two rows of solid square huts were laid out along the east-west axis of the wide clearing that served as its only thoroughfare. The smoke hovering in the air was innocent gray wraiths from their cooking fires.
A well-developed young girl, bare from the waist up, was loading sacks with manioc flour under the shade of a thatched lean-to. She stopped singing and straightened up as the Land Rover towed the listing truck down the village street. She made no attempt to cover herself from these strangers.
McCarter pursed his lips in a silent whistle of admiration. Katz noticed his reaction but said nothing. This team was too well trained to start the kind of trouble he had once had to deal with in this country.
"No harm in looking, eh?" said the Englishman. "She's a real beauty!"
"So long as it's just looking," cautioned Katz.
A child watched
their approach wide-eyed with curiosity from the entrance of a hut, then turned and ran back inside.
Manning cradled his rifle, wondering how many unseen eyes were following their procession as it limped through the town.
Mulanda knew this place. The blacksmith had a small charcoal forge at the far end of the street.
His workshop was three low mud walls and four sturdy corner posts supporting a roof of matted twigs. A tattered portrait poster of Buka Ntanga stared from one of the uprights; judging from the stains that were sprayed across the crinkled paper, Bolan guessed his image was spat at more than it was ever revered.
They should be safe enough for the time it took to repair the truck. Time! That was the problem. If they weren't close on the heels of Yagoda's unit when they finished the desert crossing, they might lose them completely in those overgrown uplands.
The blacksmith was a beefy fellow, with tribal scars decorating the blue black skin above his temples. Bits and pieces of his work lay scattered round the entrance to his forge. His chief business was hammering out arrowheads and spearpoints, and repairing the tribesmen's ancient long-barreled rifles.
Mulanda explained the situation. The blacksmith nodded gravely but clearly he had no understanding of what was required.
"This is no bloody good," Rawson muttered angrily. "Mulanda, tell him we'll pay him well, but I need to use his tools. I'll do the bloody job myself!"
Kambolo unhitched the truck on Katz's orders, then drove Ohara and McCarter back in the Land Rover to stand watch at the opposite end of town. Manning and Rawson stripped off their shirts and set to work as the blacksmith began pumping the leather bellows.
When Kambolo returned, Bolan took twenty paces down the street to look at the fetish shrine that had caught his eye. Four tall sticks marked the corners of the sacred rectangle, inside which a smaller square was marked with feathers and bits of bone. Lying in the very center was a broken spearhead.
"What does it mean?" Bolan asked Kambolo, but the citified black could only shrug. He stood there toying with his cigarette lighter.
"It is to keep away evil," explained Mulanda. "To ward off the spirits that stalk the land at night."
"Like the Leopard men who come to collect the taxes?"
Mulanda nodded.
Bolan crouched, resting against the mud wall, as the glimmer of an idea began to form.
"We're in trouble," confessed Manning. "It's going to take at least three or four hours to fix it securely"
Bolan did not question Gary's estimate. He knew the Canadian engineer would do his best.
Manning looked toward the hills. "If only there was some way we could stop them."
"We don't want to stop them," Katz contradicted him. "Not yet. Not until they've led us to Scarr's hiding place. Then we'll stop them dead. No, what we need is a way to slow them down."
"Like a Bushmen's raid," said Bolan, slowly getting to his feet. "Mulanda!"
"Yes, Baas."
"Mr. Rawson tells me you know the desert well." "I've crossed it many times. I know the shortcuts, the quicksands. . . ."
"You used to track men down there?"
"Sometimes raiding parties would try to hide out there," Mulanda replied, nodding.
"This time you're going to guide a raiding party!" Mulanda smiled.
"Could you overtake those other trucks before they reached the water hole?"
"Yes, if we leave now."
Bolan turned to the others. "They can't reach those wells till after dark. That's where I'm going to hit them. No guns. Just knives and spears. We'll do enough damage to slow them down."
"Without tipping them off that they're being followed by an armed patrol. Brilliant!" said Katz. It would buy them the time they so desperately needed.
"Gary, I want you and Rawson to repair that truck quickly. Yakov, you and McCarter are to stand guard. I'm taking Rafael, Keio and Mulanda with me."
"As soon as we can roll, we'll follow the main track across the Forge," Katz said.
"No. Even if you're finished sooner, wait until first light before setting off. We can't take any more risks with that truck," instructed Bolan. "We'll make our way back along the track and hook up with you. I'll make sure Yagoda is slowed down. They won't get far. Mulanda, collect some of those spears. And give the man some money. We won't be bringing them back."
THE LAND ROVER blazed a smoking trail across the wasted landscape.
A broken notch in the steep wall of the Mambosso hills indicated where the pass lay in front of them, but for a while the faded gray brown cliffs hovered on a shimmering heat haze and seemed to draw no closer.
Bolan half turned and saw the heavy brows above Encizo's square face furrowed in somber reflection.
"I was thinking about that man back there," he admitted, his voice thick with feeling, "whipped to death! What did he call it? Afimbo?"
Mulanda nodded, amused by the foreigners' revulsion.
Ohara's face remained inscrutable. At that moment Bolan realized that the roots of violence in this ancient land stretched back to the primeval past, when man was born of the killer ape. This soil might be parched for water, but it was steeped in blood from the very dawn of time.
Mulanda began to slow down. Bolan fired a glance across at him.
"The railroad's just ahead," explained the driver. Two dull ribbons of corroded steel followed the contours of the last flat ledge before the jagged barrier of the Mambosso range.
"To the west, it goes down to the towns along the upper Kasai," the tracker said, flicking his fingers to the left. "To the east, this line curves around the desert and connects with a network of old tracks that served the mines. Not used much anymore."
Mulanda brought the vehicle to a halt and sat looking at the trail on the far side of the rails.
"What's the matter now?"
"See them, baas? Fresh tracks—two or three trucks, I'd say."
Bolan stood up and saw the impressions left in the dirt by Yagoda's unit. But how fresh were they? "Can you catch them?"
"Sure," replied Mulanda as he trod on the accelerator.
On the far side of the pass the road dropped swiftly through a twisting series of hairpin curves. Although the Mambosso hills cut off the plain beyond from the cooling breezes and healing rain, they offered no shade from the pitiless sun. It hovered over them now, a molten copper disk suspended in the sky.
The desert started innocuously enough. There was even a small stand of stunted fever trees at the bottom of the hill, but their skeletal branches served only as a roost for a watchful secretary bird.
A solitary termite hill marked the beginning of the sandy plain. Encizo glanced out at the bleached remains of some long-dead creature that lay half-covered by drifting sand. As far as the eye could see, uneven heaps of brown-and black-streaked rocks studded the rust-colored soil. The Devil's Forge was aptly named; it was as if someone had raked out the cinders of Hell and dumped them here. And this terrain was as harsh as the feeling in Bolan's heart.
Those few odd patches where the dirt was softer still carried the imprint of Yagoda's vehicles. Occasionally Bolan would sweep the way ahead through his field glasses. The intruders could not be that far in front, not at the speed Mulanda was driving.
Bolan had no illusions that helping restore Bambabele to power would mean the people of Kuranda could enjoy the freedoms of a Western-style democracy, but at least he was going to make Yagoda wish he had never strayed so far from Moscow.
"Hold on!" Mulanda called out. "Here's where we turn off."
The main track curved away in a bulging loop toward the northwest to detour around a treacherous patch of quicksand. Without hesitation, the guide spun the wheel over and plunged down a tortuous ravine scarcely wide enough for the Land Rover to pass through safely. It was certainly too narrow for the East German trucks Yagoda was using, even if Scarr knew this shortcut, which Bolan seriously doubted.
"How far to the wells?"
"Maybe two hours, mayb
e less," grunted the driver, not taking his eyes from the sloping path. "At least three by the track. We'll beat them, baas!"
The men hung on in silence as Mulanda hit the bottom of the wadi, shifted gears, and accelerated along the dry riverbed. It had been years since sufficient rainfall had spilled over the Mambosso range to fill these ancient watercourses. They had become lifeless arteries cracking the sun-hammered surface of the Forge.
Nothing, it seemed, could survive out here.
But somehow it did.
A black-backed jackal and its mate lay panting in the shadows of an abandoned burrow. Their long ears twitched cautiously as they suffered the worst of the late-afternoon heat.
And a leopard slinked softly toward the desert's only watering place. The great spotted cat was tired and frustrated. She had been chased from her territory by a younger female. That morning she'd been outrun in the foothills by a klipspringer that had leaped up the sheer ledges and proved as cunning as it was nimble in eluding pursuit. Cheated of its best hope for a meal in days, the angry predator now padded hungrily toward the water hole and its last chance for a kill. . . .
"THERE IT IS." Mulanda pointed through the grime-caked windshield. "I call it Pyramid Hill. Shoba Well lies less than half a mile beyond it."
Bolan checked the map lying on his knee—the well was the only feature marked in the midst of this desolation.
He twisted his wrist and glanced at his watch. The black driver was pleased that the big American gave him such an approving nod. "One hour, fifty minutes—you did a good job, Mulanda."
"It'll be dark soon. I think we get here just in time."
"Okay, we'll leave the rifles here," Bolan told the others.
They hid the Land Rover in a shallow depression behind the hill and proceeded to the crest on foot.
Ohara was glad to get out and stretch his long legs after the spine-jolting ride. The thin scattering of oddly shaped boulders around the slopes of Pyramid Hill afforded them cover to do a recon of the land.
Executioner 058 - Ambush On Blood River Page 6