Bolan let out his pent-up breath in a long sigh. Unfastening the flap of the pouch at his waist, he drew out a small leather case containing two metal devices each the size of a matchbox. One of them emitted a continuous radio signal; with the dial of the other correctly tuned, the movements of the first could be traced from a distance by following the direction in which the bleeps were loudest.
Where should he conceal the homer? Its magnetic limpet attachment would be useless on lead. Finally he shrugged and thrust it as far as he could into the cotton beneath the container. At least now he could keep track of the animal carrying the deadly load, even if he had to leave the caravan when the column split into two: the radio signal had a range of twenty miles.
But a visual check would help. Taking a penlight from his pouch, he allowed himself the briefest flash. Okay: between the bogus bale and the real one a rolled blanket with red, yellow and black stripes lay across the camel's back. Noted.
Working fast but warily, he replaced the coverings over the wicker cage, tightened the retaining straps and crawled back the way he had come. He was getting to his feet at the end of the line when a flashlight beam blazed at him from behind a tree.
"What are you doing?" a harsh voice growled. "Stay still or I shall shoot." There was a movement toward him in the shadows.
Bolan froze. "Pardon," he said in French. "I was trying to find my way to the central market. Perhaps monsieur could direct me?"
"On your hands and knees? A likely story! Come here and let's have a closer look at you. Thefts from caravans are not regarded too kindly here by the military."
The Executioner advanced slowly, thankful he was not wearing the telltale djellaba that would tag him as a pilgrim traveling with the camel train. "I assure you monsieur, there was no question of theft," he said. "I had lost my way and I tripped in the dark. When you saw me I was just rising..."
"We shall see about that," the other snarled. "Put up your hands and we shall see what you have stolen."
Bolan raised his arms and remained still. The man came closer, circling him watchfully, the barrel of a revolver gleaming in the light from the torch. Bolan saw that it was Mahmoud, the camel master.
He patted the warrior on both hips and under the arms, running his fingers expertly up the insides of his thighs and across his abdomen. "At least you carry no weapons," he said. "That should reduce the sentence by perhaps five years. Aha! What have we here?" His hand had touched the hard shape of the leather case inside the pouch.
"A transistor radio," Bolan said truthfully.
"I shall believe that when I see it. Take it out."
"You want me to unfasten..."
"Quick!" The gun barrel jabbed Bolan hard in the small of the back.
He lowered his left arm slowly and unfastened the flap of the pouch, drawing out the case containing the tuner between finger and thumb.
Then, before the grunt of satisfaction had left Mahmoud's lips, he dropped the case and his hand streaked down and behind him, knocking the Arab's gun arm aside.
The heavy-caliber revolver roared as Bolan whirled to seize the hand that held it in both of his own. He jerked the man's arm furiously up and down, exerting a paralyzing judo grip on the wrist. When the pistol was pointing at the ground, it exploded again, the slug ricocheting off the stony terrain to whine away among the trees.
As the revolver finally dropped from his nerveless fingers, Mahmoud fisted his other hand to slam the head of the flashlight under Bolan's chin, pushing his head back with agonizing force. The warrior went with the thrust, releasing the Nubian's wrist and rolling onto his back. At the same time he brought up his knees, planted his heels in Mahmoud's crotch and then suddenly straightened his legs.
The camel master flew over his head and crashed to the ground with a clatter that echoed throughout the square.
Pausing only to boot the revolver into the shadows and scoop up the leather case, Bolan leaped to his feet and ran for the alley. This was no time for a prolonged combat: all that mattered was that he get away and return to his tent before he was recognized. Roused by the shots, people were already running toward them from the encampment.
Mahmoud was yelling abuse as he scrambled after the gun. A third shot rang out. The wind of the bullet fanned Bolan's left shoulder, then he was clear of the square and pelting down the alley toward the street that led to the bazaar.
He stopped abruptly and melted into the shadows of a doorway. Half a dozen soldiers with drawn pistols careered into the alley from the street and ran past him in the direction of the square.
Once they had gone, the Executioner slid out of his hiding place and walked rapidly away from the noise. "But you must have passed him," Mahmoud's angry voice called. "He ran down that lane only seconds before you arrived..."
Bolan joined the throng eddying toward the bazaar and strove to conceal the fact that he was hurrying. Veiled women, fellahin in striped shifts and tarbooshes and bedouin in flowing white robes jostled him as he walked. There was a commotion behind him as Mahmoud and the soldiers ran back into the street.
He heard arguments, protests, shouts... and then he was swallowed up in the activity of the marketplace, where the shuffling of feet was drowned in the cries of barkers and the traditional haggling between merchants and customers. Hands gesticulated, fingers wagged, palms were upraised in the suffocating press among the stalls of fruit, vegetables, cloth and hardware beneath the blazing naphtha lights.
Bolan had almost shouldered his way through to the far side when three shots reverberated above the heads of the crowd.
There were screams and a stampede as everyone fought to get away from the center of the bazaar. A great stand of copper pots and pans near Bolan toppled over as half a dozen people forced their way between two stalls.
"Stay where you are! Don't leave the marketplace," a voice yelled over the clangor of tumbling hardware and the furious complaints of the merchant. "There is a foreign thief at large here, and we want to find him. This is the military. Stay where you are. You have nothing to fear."
Feeling as vulnerable as a man suddenly exposed in the glare of a searchlight, Bolan edged behind the stall and made for a street that twisted away into the shadows. If he was to run one hundred yards down there and then find a right turn, he might be able to circle back and find the lane that led to the wall sheltering his tent.
"Over there!" another voice shouted. "Look! On the far side of the bazaar. Quick! After him!"
He glanced over his shoulder. The owner of the hardware stall, dancing up and down among his tureens, was pointing his way. Mahmoud and the soldiers were advancing rapidly between the rows of striped awnings.
Bolan himself broke into a run and plunged down the dark street. A fusillade of shots erupted behind him as he made the shadows. Bullets kicked up the dust at his feet, one chipping plaster from the wall by his shoulder.
He gained the first bend and saw there was no turnoff to the right — the street led toward the lights of another square. He dashed into a doorway on the left, hared up a flight of stone steps, crossed a wider street and sprinted through an archway into a maze of unlit alleyways.
The voices and footsteps of the hunters behind him drew near. He had passed plenty of people in the street who could point the way he had gone.
He pressed on, down a second flight of steps, and found himself in a narrow lane lit at long intervals by dim street lamps. All around him a murmur of voices behind closed shutters stirred the warm air. Music rose and fell in the distance.
He halted, panting, the blood pounding behind his eyes.
"Why do you not come inside, stranger?" a soft voice at his elbow intoned in Arabic.
Bolan swung around and heard a faint click. The beam of a pencil flashlight revealed a woman's breast, the swelling contours held toward him by silver-tipped fingers, the nipple and areola purplish in the diffuse light.
Below this a tight swathe of diaphanous material sheathed belly and hips; above, a hin
t of white teeth, the highlight on a full lip shone through the gloom.
The Executioner caught his breath. He had seldom seen anything more suggestive, more overtly erotic than that breast shamelessly exposed against the dark. He hesitated. The hunters were only a block away, and heavy feet had begun to scramble down the last winding flight of stairs.
He made up his mind. His decision was based on the conviction that a prostitute was unlikely to be well disposed toward the police and the military. It was a gamble — she might prefer to buy a little protection by turning a fugitive in — but what the hell: the entire mission, his whole life in the hellgrounds of the world, was a gamble. "Why not?" he said huskily.
He stepped toward the doorway in which the woman was standing. The light vanished. A door creaked open into blackness. Bolan brushed past her and stood waiting as she closed it.
In the airless dark, the odor of some cloying, exotic cosmetic washed over him. Footsteps scraped to a halt outside. He heard Mahmoud's voice. "Foreign, by his accent... a tall man wearing black... bearded but with no headdress..."
"He came this way. Some pig of a thief."
A woman mumbled a negative.
"But he must be here somewhere! He can't have gotten away. The far end of the alley is blocked."
"He could be anywhere," another voice cut in. "You know where we are? This is the street of the..."
"It does not matter what street it is," Mahmoud interrupted. "You must post sentries at the entrance, too, and search it house by house. There is valuable merchandise with the caravan. The foreign swine must be captured at all costs." The footsteps died away.
The woman, whose breath had hissed in sharply the first time Mahmoud spoke, now moved past Bolan toward the rear of the building. Soft flesh brushed the back of his hand. In a low voice, she said, "This way."
Light stabbed the dark as she switched on the flashlight. Bolan saw a narrow passageway leading to a flight of stone stairs, and he followed the woman up the stairway. Apart from the clip-clop of her slippers and the swish of garments against her naked flesh, there was silence. At the top of the stairs he saw a poorly lit hallway with a number of curtained alcoves. The illumination was provided by a single primitive lamp: a simple wick floating in a small bowl of oil. There was another in the tiny room she ushered him into — a cell no more than eight feet square, furnished only with rugs and cushions strewn across the floor.
As she went to draw heavy draperies over an arched window, he leaned against the wall while he regained his breath. It seemed as if the gamble had paid off. But there was still danger in the air. Judging from the whispers and an occasional muffled cry, most of the other cubicles were already occupied. And there was no way of knowing how the inmates or their clients might react if they knew a wanted man was in the house.
A hazard of a different kind presented itself when the woman turned to face him.
She was voluptuously built, the full breasts heavy on her chest, her taut belly shadowed under the semitransparent skirt. With a start of surprise, he recognized Yemanja, the dancer from the caravan.
"So! It is you!" she breathed. "I knew we were fated to meet again. It is well that you came this way."
Bolan cleared his throat. "I'm glad to see you, too. But I have to tell you, I only want..."
"You are running away, are you not?" Yemanja cut in. "It is you that Mahmoud and the soldiers were chasing? This is no concern of mine. I have no love for the guards or the military, especially Mahmoud and the Nubians, who are brutal men. On the other hand, if it is they who are responsible for bringing you here..."
"Yemanja, I didn't recognize you. I was..."
"Why would you, my friend? How could you recognize what you will not see? But I recognize you— although Mahmoud evidently does not... yet."
"I don't want you to misunderstand me, Yemanja. When I agreed to come in here..."
"I know. If you had recognized me, you would have run away from me, too. The way you always run away with your eyes when I look at you. Why do you rebuff me? Am I not beautiful? Am I not desirable?" She sank down onto a pile of cushions, staring at him with her enormous eyes.
"You are very beautiful," Bolan said, "and very desirable."
"Then...?"
He hesitated. Dare he trust the woman? If she was genuinely sold on him, might it be worth the risk? On the other hand, they did say that a woman scorned... Mentally he shrugged. He had really no choice.
"I'm involved in a certain... mission," he said carefully. "In order to complete this, it is vital that I do not in any way attract attention while I'm with the caravan. That's why I was unable to respond to your..."
Yemanja laid a finger on his lips, stopping him in mid-sentence. "I have told you that this does not concern me. So why do you not stay here? Come. Sit beside me and I will send for some refreshment."
Bolan swallowed. He shook his head. "Yemanja, I can't."
"Cannot? But I wish it. You are not one of the emasculated ones with high voices. You also are beautiful. You have a strong but kind face, effendi. You are different from the Nubians, the bedouin and the other men I meet here. In this place I am forced by Mahmoud of the camels to take whoever chooses to stop. Let me for once make a choice of my own. I ask you once more — do I not please you?"
"I've said that I think you're beautiful."
"Then why do you reject me?"
"It's not a question of rejection. If I... become friendly with you, it'll make Mahmoud jealous. And if he becomes more jealous than he already is, he'll notice me all the more in the caravan. And that must not happen. He hasn't yet connected the man he chases tonight with the man his woman so obviously likes in the caravan."
"Mahmoud!" Yemanja's voice was full of scorn. "He is a bad man, that one. He beats me. Look — I will show you..."
"No, no," the Executioner said hastily. "I believe you."
"In any case he is not jealous. Because he sees that I like you, he is afraid that I will take no money from you, that is all. You need not be afraid of Mahmoud. He is a bully, all brag and no courage."
"I'm not afraid of him. It's just that I don't want him to notice me."
"Well, he cannot notice you here!" Yemanja cried triumphantly. "While the caravan was traveling, each night you refused to look at me. Well, here we are alone. Perhaps you can find time to look now?"
"Like I said. It's not a matter of desire but of time..."
And then she was pressed against him, kneeling up on the cushions, one arm clasped around his hips, the other hand feeling for his genitals, the fingers moving knowledgeably over the skintight blacksuit, caressing, massaging.
"See!" she cried, her voice suddenly exultant. "You do desire me! Your manhood..."
She tensed, leaving the sentence unfinished.
A persistent hammering echoed up the stairway. "The soldiers," she whispered. "They said they would search every house."
Bolan put her away from him gently. "I'm sorry," he murmured. "That's what I was trying to say."
"No, you are right. They must not find you here, my friend. You must go."
"Sure... but how?"
Yemanja ran to the window, her eyes wide with alarm. "Nobody saw you come in," she said, pulling aside the draperies. "As far as they know, I have been here alone all the time. If you were to leave through this..."
"Does Mahmoud know you're here?"
"Of course. I am here at his command. Now where do you wish logo?"
"Back to the encampment. There's a lane that runs behind the wall."
"Very well." She pushed open the window. "Out here is a flat roof. Below it there is an alley. You cannot go back directly without crossing the lane in front of where the soldiers are. But if you take the alley in the opposite direction, you will find you are in the street circling the town inside the walls. Turn right along this and you will see that the — one, two, three, four, yes, fifth — the fifth turning will lead you directly to the mosque. And from there, the lane you speak of..."
"Yes. I know the way from there," Bolan said.
He thrust money into her hand. "Take this. Please. Perhaps one day you will be able to buy a little freedom with it." The hammering had stopped, and there was the sound of many voices from below. He swung a leg over the windowsill, turning back to the woman. "You're very desirable and very kind. I'm grateful. If there's ever anything I can do..."
"You know what you can do!"
He grinned, leaning inward to kiss her briefly on the lips. But once more she was ail over him, devouring him with kisses, her body pressed against his chest, her hands cradling the back of his head. For the second time, Bolan disengaged himself. "The soldiers," he reminded her in a whisper.
"I had forgotten." She was panting. "But I will not forget you. The next time you have occasion to visit Wadi Djarzireh..."
"It will be a pleasure," he said. Then the warrior jumped lightly to the flat roof and ran to the edge. The curtain dropped over the window.
The alley was about fifteen feet below. The jump jarred him from head to heels, and it seemed to Bolan that he made a hell of a lot of noise. Nobody appeared to have heard, however; no voice questioned and no footstep advanced. He waited ten seconds, listening, and then stole away in the direction of the mosque.
The beaten-earth road behind it was deserted. Just before he reached the square he saw the back of a patrolling sentry silhouetted against the night sky on top of the village's outer wall, but he was swallowed up in the shadows below the mosque before the man reached the end of his beat.
There was one danger point before he was home free, when he had to cross an open space between the domed building and the street that led to the marketplace. But the few passersby were all facing the lights of the bazaar, which showed through an arch halfway along the street. Shouts of command from the soldiers could still be heard above the hubbub.
Bolan passed noiselessly behind the watchers and turned the corner of the mosque. Two minutes later he was back behind the tumbledown houses in the lane, jumping for the top of the wall behind his bivouac. He lowered himself quietly behind the small tent, lifted the back flap and crawled inside with a sigh of relief.
Anvil of Hell Page 9