Flicker of Doom

by Paul Kenyon

  A moment later he'd regrouped his men and set off looking for other survivors. He was going to try to collect a small force and mop up any isolated guerrilla groups that were small enough to handle. Yes, he said, he'd try to create a diversion to draw the main PAFF force away from the vicinity of the observation tower.

  "Good man," Skytop said, as they watched him disappear into the darkness, his back ramrod-straight, his little battered remnant of a squad around him.

  Skytop and Wharton heaved at one of the overturned jeeps and got it on its wheels. The Baroness and the three girls got their shoulders under another one and turned it upright. Fiona looked with distaste at the grease she'd got on her milky skin. She minded it more than blood; it was harder to get off.

  They climbed into the jeeps and set off across the expanse of asphalt at top speed, showing no lights. Someone fired a shot; a bullet zinged past Penelope's cheek, making a star in the windshield. Beside her, Inga rammed the butt of her machine pistol through the glass, shattering it so the Baroness could see. Penelope raised a forearm briefly to shield her eyes from the powdery fragments, then gunned the motor again, feeling the wind in her face and hair.

  A man popped into view ahead of them. He peered at the jeeps, trying to figure out if it was some of his buddies joyriding through the chaos. Penelope twisted the wheel and roared straight toward him. He fired off a snap shot, then lost his nerve and turned to run. She caught him with the left fender. He went straight up into the air, a tumbling rag doll, and hit the asphalt with a splat. Behind her, Fiona had twisted in her seat and shot another man who ran out of the gloom.

  They were on the airstrip now. Around them were the dark huddled shapes of jet aircraft, lined up at the sides of the runways. One of the new F-5E supersonic fighters that the Shah had bought from the United States lay canted over, broken-winged. Some guerrilla had tucked an explosive charge under one of its wheels. A little further on, one of the fifteen-million-dollar Grumman F-14 jets was burning, casting a ruddy glow.

  There was the tower! Five — no, six — guerrillas were guarding its base. They looked up at the sound of approaching motors and raised their weapons.

  "There it is!" Inga shouted against the windstream.

  It was illuminated in a glare of headlights. They'd parked a couple of vehicles in front of the tower, beams on, so the technicians could see what they were doing. One of the vehicles was the Honest John launcher. It was a long, low, six-wheeled army truck that carried a girder-like launching rack on its back. The rack was tilted up, pointing skyward. It was empty.

  The rocket was hanging high above it, suspended from chains. A work gang at the top of the tower had rigged up a winch. They'd hauled the long, thin missile with its bulging warhead halfway up.

  The Baroness ducked. They were being shot at.

  The jeeps peeled apart and came at the Arabs from two directions. The guerrillas had dropped to their knees, firing their submachine guns. Bullets spattered off the radiator and fenders. Penelope prayed that they wouldn't get a tire. She was below the dash, steering from memory.

  There was the spang of a ricochet, and something hot bounced off her bare back. They were being fired on from above. She could see a guerrilla leaning over the lip of the tower platform with a gun.

  There was another ricochet. Inga cursed and howled. The hot bullet had fallen down her cleavage. She ripped off the bra and put a moist finger to the burn.

  A machine pistol cleared its throat behind her. Yvette, crouched in back, had aimed upward. The Arab clutched his chest and tumbled out of the tower, a starfish figure in the headlight beams. Another Arab, who had started to lean over with a rifle, danced back hastily.

  The right front tire blew, and the jeep skidded crazily. But they were almost on the sentries by then. Penelope stomped on the brakes. The jeep spun wildly around, its rear end swiping two guerrillas. She leaped out of the jeep, firing. She could see Inga, bare-breasted and magnificent, swinging her automatic weapon like a club. It caught a guerrilla in the face and he fell over. Yvette was crouched low, firing a burst, and she could see Skytop's bulky form pounding toward the tower, Wharton and Fiona at his heels.

  More guerrillas were boiling out of the tower door. She sprayed them with fire. The machine pistol bucked in her hand, then was empty. She jammed another clip into it. Wharton was running toward the tower at a crouch, a big sandy-haired fellow who looked as if he ought to be sitting in a lifeguard's chair at the beach instead of holding a chattering weapon. They'd pinned the remaining PAFF terrorists inside. They couldn't stick their heads outside the door without getting their faces shot off. The tower itself was a featureless shaft of concrete with a glass gallery at the top.

  Something swayed overhead, and she looked up. The rocket was being drawn jerkily upward by the winch. It swung from its chains, a slender, twenty-foot pencil with an ominous swollen nose.

  Skytop aimed a burst at the men working the winch. Somebody tossed a grenade from above, and he dived back under the overhang. They were all on the ground when the grenade went off, but Wharton and Yvette were bleeding from small cuts.

  "What'll we do?" Skytop said.

  "Cover me!" the Baroness said.

  She tossed him her machine pistol and scrambled for the launcher. There was a spatter of bullets around her, but her people were firing from below, distracting the men in the tower. She crouched behind the enormous rear tires of the rocket transport and found the control lever. The rack came down like the back of a dump truck.

  They were puzzled up above, but she didn't give them time to think about it. She wriggled underneath the truck, tripped the lever again, then came out the other side.

  She caught hold of the end of the missile rack just as it was tilting upward. She was terribly vulnerable for five seconds, dangling by her hands from the steel bar, and then she was twenty feet above the ground, under the sheltering bulk of the rocket.

  She swung a leg over the bar and stood, teetering. She grabbed the tail fins of the rocket and hoisted herself up. A bullet sang past her ear, and she heard a panicky voice yell, "Hasib!" There were no more shots. They were afraid of hitting the atom bomb.

  She shinnied up the metal tube. It was like climbing some kind of unnatural tree. She thought of that deadly hollow lump of uranium that she had her legs wrapped around, and shivered. Then the rocket jerked and swung, and she had to hold on for dear life. They were drawing it up the rest of the way.

  She grinned. That was all right with her. It would save her a climb up the chain.

  When the pointed snout of the Honest John poked itself up past the edge of the parapet, the Baroness was perched on top of it. The technicians were ranged along the outside balcony, back several feet to keep from being shot at from below. They had just enough time to take in the sight of the woman in a black bikini who was smiling sorrowfully at them, and then the white arms rose and fell, and there were three dark spheroids in the air at once, soaring gracefully over the railing.

  Penelope ducked her head. The grenades went off, spaced at equidistant intervals along the parapet. She sprang, and jackknifed over the rail, rolling.

  There were men sprawled the length of the balcony, dead, dying or wounded. One guerrilla, both feet blown off and bleeding to death, had enough hatred in him to point a gun at her. She shot him in the face with the little Bernardelli VB. She spun and shot two more PAFF men who were crawling toward her. A bloody hand grabbed her by the ankle, and she fired two shots into its owner. The trigger clicked on an empty chamber, and she drove a knife, left-handed, into the chest of another man who was coming after her.

  There was no more movement except the agonized writhings of the dying. She raced for the door to the upper tower, snatching up an automatic rifle on the way. She got inside just in time to shoot the man who was coming up the stairwell. She hauled the body out of the way and poked her head inside. A bullet zinged past her so close that she could feel its searing passage. She fired down the stairs, and heard crie
s, and the thumping sounds of a body tumbling downward. She tossed a grenade, then another, down the stairs to worry them, then backed out onto the outside balcony again. She planted a delayed-timing grenade just inside the door, and another outside. She needed enough time to do the rest of the job without being exposed to fire from above.

  She leaned over the railing, yelling and waving. Her people were doing a good job keeping the PAFF men bottled up down below. Wharton passed a sweaty arm over his face and handed his gun to Fiona. He got into the cab of the Honest John's launcher and backed the vehicle into position.

  The rocket, with the Baroness straddling its warhead, slipped down its chain and stood itself on its tail fins in the launcher. Wharton worked levers. The launching rack lowered with the rocket, and the Baroness was beside him in the cab, covered with sweat and blood.

  "Let's get going!" she yelled.

  The six-wheeled behemoth lurched forward. Fiona hitched a ride on the tail, just in time. Yvette and Inga piled into a jeep, while Skytop, backing off, poured a stream of automatic fire into the tower entrance.

  They lumbered over the acres of pavement, threading their way past wrecked planes and sprawled bodies. A steel-jacketed bee rattled against their armor plate.

  "This thing won't go more than forty," Wharton said, sweating.

  "That's fine, Dan," Penelope said. "I don't want to go too fast. Let them see us."

  Back there by the tower, the surviving nuclear team would be getting up enough courage to show their heads and start off in pursuit. Along the way, shaggy guerrilla heads looked up from what they were doing, then started after them.

  By the time they reached the dock area, they had half the PAFF force after them.

  Wharton drove the big vehicle straight down the length of the pier. They jumped for it just as the enormous truck tilted and went over the edge into twenty feet of water.

  "Let's see them try to set it off now," the Baroness said with satisfaction, picking herself up and brushing herself off.

  Wharton looked worried. "You've just given Iran the atom bomb," he said. "They'll salvage the rocket and…"

  "Darling," Penelope said, "Iran doesn't need our help in making an atom bomb. Haven't you seen the CIA estimates? They'll do it any time they feel like it."

  Skytop's jeep screeched to a stop on the pier. The big Cherokee and the two girls piled out.

  "I feel like the Pied Piper," he said. "The rats are right behind us. We better get our asses out of here."

  Sumo and Eric had already cast off the moorings. The dhow was beginning to drift. A yard of dark water showed between the pier and the hull.

  They swung themselves aboard. Sumo's strong, wiry arms were helping her up. She looked into his grinning face.

  "Did you get it figured out?" she said.

  "No problem," Sumo told her. "There's a computer program. You won't believe this, but there's feedback from the target. The Computer scans the victim optically. Reads the visual clues — the way he moves, the pupils of his eyes if he's close enough…"

  "Later," she snapped. "Can you make the damned thing work?"

  He looked hurt. "Of course I can."

  Down below, Wharton was coaxing the dhow's engines into sputtering life. They were standing a dozen yards off the dock now.

  It was just in time. A screaming horde of guerrillas was boiling onto the pier, shooting wildly and at random. One of the random bullets caught Inga in the thigh. They all ducked down behind the deck structure. Yvette was bending over Inga. She whipped off her halter to make a tourniquet.

  Dozens of the guerrillas were clambering down ladders to the scores of small craft that had followed the dhow, once the Iranian defenses had been knocked out, and brought them here. A gasoline motor coughed into life, then another.

  "Tommy!" the Baroness yelled.

  "Just charging the capacitors," he called. She heard a strange, high-pitched whine from the searchlight on the poop.

  And then there was an amazing sight. The flood of khaki-clad men stopped its pouring movement and began to swirl in meaningless eddies. She heard strange, distressed cries. Here and there Penelope could pick out individual men. They were twitching, jerking like marionettes. A man with a crazed face was emptying his machine gun into his buddies. Two other men were locked in a death struggle, strangling one another.

  And everywhere, the guerrillas were falling down, writhing.

  It was mayhem. The whole dock area was open space between the piers and the row of sheds set back beyond them. There were hundreds of men jammed into the area. Skytop had been right. It was at least half of the PAFF force.

  The big round face of the searchlight swiveled on its mounting. The beam of invisible flickers swept the edges of the docks. Men began to fall off ladders as if they'd been sprayed roaches. The searchlight moved. One of the power launches full of PAFF guerrillas began to move in aimless circles. Penelope shuddered at what she'd seen on the deck.

  There was gunfire in the distance.

  "The Iranian Marines!" Penelope said. "They must have gathered enough men to counterattack!"

  "Don't worry," Sumo said. "This thing is directional. Laser light. I'm pointing it at a low angle. Not like PAFF. They must have scanned the horizon."

  The gunfire came closer. Sumo switched the apparatus off.

  "Good enough," he said. "The Iranians can handle the stragglers."

  The dhow's cumbersome bulk was moving out to sea. The Baroness checked on Inga. She was pale from loss of blood, but she'd be all right. Wharton's wounds hadn't looked too bad. Fiona had nothing worse than some blood stains and grease smudges.

  Paul was drifting at the rendezvous point. They transferred to the launch. Sumo fussed over the computer tapes that he'd taken from the searchlight's peripheral electronics gear, and fidgeted impatiently while he and Eric dismantled some of the more vital components.

  Sumo sat in the cockpit among his rifled treasures. "I've got the taped programs," he said, "and the electronic shutter and the feedback circuits." He turned and looked regretfully at the dhow. It was low in the water and looking even clumsier. Wharton had opened the sea cocks.

  They moved off in the launch and watched the dhow sink. It wallowed in the sea like a giant's wooden bowl. The curving prow with its sprit dipped beneath the surface, and then the poop, with what was left of the deadly searchlight. The bare masts with their rigging disappeared, and then there was nothing except the flat waters stretching out before them.

  The Baroness looked at the subsiding ripples. "Now we know what Deathshine means," she said.

  * * *

  The man was exhausted. His face was gray and drained. He was young, still in his twenties, but he moved like an old man. He looked as if he'd been through hell. Perhaps he had.

  "Dead," he said. "All dead. The Iranian sailors butchered those who were still alive. They were angry. I escaped. I and one or two others. When the fit came over me, I was climbing down a ladder. I fell into a boat. It drifted. Perhaps they saw me and thought I was dead. When my eyes opened, I could hear the gunfire. I got to Al Khasab in the boat."

  "So PAFF is finished?" Don Alejandro said. He took a sip of his sherry and set the glass down on the carved walnut table beside him.

  "No, no, not finished!" the guerrilla protested. "There is still the cadre in Iraq…"

  "Raw recruits," Don Alejandro said. "Demoralized incompetents. A political embarrassment to the Iraqis, now that they've failed."

  His hands were shaking with suppressed fury.

  "We can gather strength again," the PAFF man said. "Grow…"

  "No one will take you seriously," Don Alejandro said. "You're of no use to me anymore."

  Over in the shadowed corner, a monkey shape made a sound. "It was not a good idea for you to come here," it said.

  "Dr. Funke is right," Don Alejandro said. "I don't want to be connected with PAFF. It would endanger the next stage of the plan."

  "Plan!" the guerrilla said with sudden fire.
"What do I care of your plan? You are a foolish dreamer!"

  Don Alejandro closed his eyes. "We all have our own dreams."

  The guerrilla swayed in sudden weariness. He grasped the back of a tall carved chair to support himself. "Give me some money," he said. "Enough to get out of Tangier. Don't worry, you'll never see me again."

  "I'm sure I won't." The tall Spaniard nodded to the shadow in the corner. "Eh, Dr. Funke?" He pulled a bell cord.

  The guerrilla stood, waiting. "We'll start over," he said. "You'll see."

  There was a scuttling sound behind him. He started to turn his head, but then there was a squat form riding his shoulders, a pair of little legs clamped powerfully around his neck. Two hairy hands took his head between them like a coconut and turned it all the way around.

  Sancho entered, a bumbling figure in velvet knee britches. "You rang, Don Alejandro?"

  Don Alejandro indicated the body on the floor. It was a disconcerting sight, lying on its stomach, but with its face turned up to the ceiling.

  "Yes, Sancho. Please dispose of this."

  "At once, Don Alejandro."

  Sancho took the body under the arms and dragged it to the door. The disconnected head flopped around loosely.

  Dr. Funke said, "You are not going on with Deathshine?"

  "And why not? We have made our points. We are on schedule. We don't need PAFF or anyone else for the next stage. And when we require manpower again, there are plenty of factions to choose from."

  "But…"

  "There are no buts, Doctor." Don Alejandro picked up his sherry with a trembling hand and took a sip. "We must tie up the loose ends. If any more of that PAFF riffraff come here, we'll dispose of them."

  The bald dome nodded reluctantly.

  "And, Ahmed," Don Alejandro said, "it's time to get rid of him."

  Dr. Funke nodded again. "And the Baroness as well?"