Slave Safari td-12

by Warren Murphy

  Saffah spat on the ground. "The Hausa swine. I am glad that you and Little Father are here because soon we will be free of this evil yoke."

  "How?" Remo asked. "We sit up here in the mountains. He sits down there in his capital. When are the twain going to meet?"

  "Ask the Little Father. He carries in him the seed of all knowledge." She heard a slight moan behind her from inside the hut and without another word, turned and went inside to minister to her patient.

  Remo walked off through the village. Chiun was not in his hut, which was built against the protection of a large stone formation, but Remo found him in the square in the center of the encampment.

  Chiun wore a blue robe which Remo recognized as ceremonial, and the old man watched as Loni tribesmen stacked wood and twigs into a pit. The pit which had been dug that morning was twenty feet long and five feet wide. Its one-foot depth had been filled to the brim with wood, but in between the branches and twigs, Remo could see that the pit was filled with smooth white stones, the size of goose eggs.

  As he watched, one of the tribesmen set the wood in the pit afire and the flames quickly spread until the entire pit was ablaze

  Chiun watched for a few moments, then said: "Adequate. But remember to keep the fire fed. It must not be allowed to dwindle."

  He turned to Remo and waited for him to speak.

  "Chiun, I've got to talk to you."

  "I am writing my remembrances? I am watching my beautiful stories? Speak."

  "The legend of the Loni," Remo said. "Does it say I get the shot at the baddie?"

  "It says the man from the West who once died will grind into dust the man who would enslave the Loni. Is that an accurate English translation of what you have said?"

  "All right," Remo said. "I just wanted to make it clear between us that I get the shot at Obode."

  "Why is it so important to you now?" Chiun said. "After all, the House of Sinanju owes this debt. Not you."

  "It's important to me because I want Obode. You didn't see what he did to those girls. He's mine, Chiun. I kill him."

  "And what makes you think the legend has anything to do with your General Obode?" Chiun asked, and walked slowly away. Remo knew it would be useless to follow and ask just what he meant by that last statement; Chiun would speak only when the urge to speak came upon him.

  Remo looked back toward the pit of fire. The dried wood had already passed the peak of its blaze and now the flames were lowering. The Loni tribesmen were busy feeding more wood into the fire, and over the sound they made, Remo could hear the stones in the pit cracking and splitting from the intense heat. An errant puff of wind blew across the pit toward Remo and the surge of heat sucked the breath from his lungs.

  His inspection was interrupted by a shout from the hill that loomed over the small village. Remo turned and looked up.

  "Tembo, tembo, tembo, tembo," the guard kept shouting. He was hollering and pointing out across the tree-speckled flatlands in the direction of the capital city of Busati.

  Remo moved toward the edge of the plateau, hopped up onto a rock and looked in-the direction the guard was pointing.

  A big dust trail moved, perhaps ten miles away, across the plain. He forced his eyes to work harder.

  Then he could pick out figures. There were jeeps with soldiers in them, and keeping up with the slowly moving vehicles were three elephants, soldiers on their backs, moving along in the stiff-legged elephant gait.

  Remo sensed someone at his side. He looked down, saw Princess Saffah and extended a hand to help her up onto the stone. The guard was still shouting, "Tembo, tembo."

  "What's he getting all worked up for?" Remo said.

  "Tembo means elephant. In the Loni religion, they are considered animals of the devil."

  "No sweat," Remo said. "A peanut or two, and keep the mice away."

  "The Loni long ago sought a meaning for good and evil in the world," Saffah said. "Because it was so long ago and they had not yet science, they thought that animals embodied not only the good in the world but the bad. And because there was so much bad, they decided that only tembo—the elephant—was large enough to hold all that evil. He is a feared beast among the Loni. I did not believe Obode was smart enough to think himself of bringing elephants."

  "This is Obode?" said Remo, suddenly interested.

  "It can be no one else. The time draws near. Little Father has begun the fire of purification."

  "Well, don't expect too much from the Little Father," Remo said. "Obode belongs to me."

  "It shall be as Little Father wishes," Saffah said. She hopped down and walked away and behind her back, Remo mumbled to himself, "As Little Father wishes. No, Little Father—Yes, Little Father—in your hat, Little Father. Obode's mine."

  And then, he thought, his job would be over. Get the girl back to America; report to Smith what had happened, that the missing Lippincott was dead; and then forget this whole God-forsaken country.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Obode and his soldiers camped at the base of the hills in which the Loni camp sat, and throughout the day, tension built in the small mountainside village.

  Remo sat with Chiun in his hut, trying to make conversation.

  "These people got about as much backbone as a worm," he said.

  Chiun hummed, his eyes fixed intently on the fire pit which shimmered heat and smoke at the other end of the village square.

  "The men are wetting their pants just because Obode's got a couple of elephants. They're all ready to run away."

  Chiun stared and hummed softly to himself but said nothing.

  "I don't know how the House of Sinanju ever got into such a crap deal, taking care of these Loni. They're not worth it."

  Chiun did not speak, and exasperatedly Remo said, "And another thing, I don't like this business about the fire ritual. I'm not letting you take any crazy chances of getting hurt."

  Slowly, Chiun turned and confronted Remo. "There is a proverb of the Loni," he said. "Jogoo likiwika lisiwike, kutakuctia."

  "Which means?"

  "Whether the cock crows or not, it will dawn."

  "In other words, whether I like it or not, you're going to do what you're going to do?"

  "How quickly you learn," Chiun said and smilingly turned away to stare again at the fire.

  Remo left the hut and wandered the village. All he heard, everywhere he went, was "tembo, tembo, tembo." The entire population was in a snit about a couple of elephants. Worry instead about Obode's soldiers and their guns. Pfooey. The Loni weren't worth saving.

  He was annoyed and only later realized that he might be taking out his anger at Obode in annoyance against the Loni. The more he thought about it, the surer he was, and late that night, stripped naked, Remo slipped past the guards and out of the village. It was well after midnight when he returned. He moved silently, unseen, past the guards who capped the nearby rocks, stepped into his hut and immediately sensed the presence of someone else there.

  His eyes scanned the bare hut and then saw the outline of a form on the raised grass mat which served as his bed.

  He moved closer and the form turned. In the faint flicker from the flames in the ceremonial pit, he could make out Princess Saffah.

  "You have been away," she said.

  "I got tired of hearing everybody yelling tembo. I decided to do something about it."

  "Good," she said. "You are a brave man." She lifted her hands toward him and he could feel and see the warmth of her smile. "Come to me, Remo," she said.

  Remo lay down alongside her on the mat and she wrapped her arms around him. "When the sun is high tomorrow, you face your challenge," she said. "I want you now."

  "Why now? Why not later?"

  "What we have between us, Remo, may not survive a later. I have this feeling that all may be changed after tomorrow."

  "You think I might lose?" Remo asked. Along the length of his warm flushed body, he felt the black coolness of her ebony skin.

  "One can always
lose, Remo," she said. "So one must take victories where one can. This now will be our victory. And then, no matter what happens on the morrow, we will always have this victory to remember."

  "To victory," Remo said.

  "To us," Saffah said, and with surprisingly strong arms moved Remo over her. "I was conceived a Lord and born a princess. Now make me a woman."

  She placed Remo's hands on her breasts. "God made you a woman," he said.

  "No. God made me a female. Only a man can make me a woman. Only you, Remo. Only this way."

  And Remo did go into her and did know her and it could be truly written that on that hour she did become a well-made woman. And when both had done and the first rays of the sun were beginning to pink the sky, they slept, side by side, man and woman, God's team, by God's design.

  And while they slept, General Obode arose.

  It was barely dawn when he pushed aside the flaps of his umbrella tent and, scratching his stomach, walked out into the pre-sun mist and did not like it at all.

  His sergeant major's eyes scanned the camp quickly. The campfire had burned out. The guards who had been posted at the corners of the small campsite were not at their stations. There was too much stillness in the camp. Things bring stillnesses, the wrong things. There was sleep on duty and that was one kind of stillness but that was not this kind. And there was death, and this was that kind of stillness, which hung heavy in the air like a mist.

  Obode stepped forward and with his toe kicked the ashes of the campfire. Not even an ember remained, not even a glow. Farther from his tent now, he looked around the camp. Next to him was General Butler's tent, its flaps still closed. All over the clearing lay the sleeping bags of the soldiers who had accompanied them, but the bags were empty.

  He heard a sound ahead of him and looked up. The elephants had been chained to scrub trees up ahead, and they were hidden from his view by bushes. Despite his feeling of foreboding, Obode smiled. The elephants had been a good idea; the Loni fear of them was strong and traditional.

  They must have seen them marching with Obode's soldiers and that must have terrified them. Today, Obode and his soldiers would storm the main Loni camp, and the Loni would look upon the slaughter that followed as inevitable, resign themselves to it as a historical fact. It had been a good idea. The great conquerors had used elephants. Hannibal and… Well, Hannibal anyway, thought Obode. Hannibal and Obode. It was enough to make a case.

  The invincible elephant; the sign of the conqueror.

  He thought for a moment to wake up Butler, but decided to let him sleep. This was a military matter for a military man, not a football player no matter how brave or loyal he was. He pushed his way through the bushes. Up ahead, forty yards away, he saw the vague gray forms of the elephants but there was something wrong with that too. Their outlines seemed somehow blunt and muted. And what was that before them on the ground? Slowly now, apprehensively, Obode moved forward through the thinning brush. Thirty yards now. Then twenty. And then he saw things clearly and his fingers rose to his lips in the Moslem supplication of mercy.

  The elephants' outlines had been softened because their tusks were gone.

  Like a moth pursuing a flame, despite himself, he went closer. The tusks of the three elephants had been hacked off near then" bases. Only stumps of ivory remained, broken, chipped, craggy, like a memorable bad teeth that demanded the ministrations of tongue.

  And the lumps on the ground. They were his men, his soldiers, and he did not have to look hard to be sure they were dead. Bodies lay there twisted, limbs askew, and through the chests of six of them, impaling them, spiking them to the ground were the six elephant tusks.

  Obode. horrified, moved yet closer, impelled by some instinct of duty, some disremembered tradition that told the sergeant major he must be sure of his facts to be able to give a thorough report to the commander.

  On the ground near the foot of one of the soldiers, he saw a piece of paper. He picked it up and looked at it.

  It was a note pencilled on the back of a printed military order that must have come from one of the soldiers:

  The note read:

  "Obode.

  "I wait for you in the village of the Loni."

  That was all. No name. No signature.

  Obode looked around him. There had been two companies of soldiers here. Some must still be around, because these corpses sure weren't two companies worth.

  "Sergeant," he bellowed. The sound of his voice rolled across the fields, across the land. He could almost hear it grow weaker as it travelled, unanswered, across the miles of Busati plain.

  "Lieutenant!' he shouted. It was as if he were shouting into a bottomless well in which sound reverberated but did not echo.

  There was no sound and no sign of his soldiers.

  Two whole companies?

  Obode looked at the note in his hand again, thought deeply for a full ten seconds, dropped the paper, turned and ran. "Butler," he shouted as he neared the other tent. "Butler."

  General William Forsythe Butler came from the tent, sleepy, rubbing his heavied eyes. "Yes, Mr. President?"

  "Come on, man, we getting out of here."

  Butler shook his head, trying to get a grasp on the morning's events. Obode flew past him into Obode's own tent. Butler looked around the camp. Nothing really unusual there. Except… except there weren't any soldiers to be seen. He followed Obode into his tent

  Obode was wrestling his white shirt on.

  "What's wrong, Mr. President?" Butler asked.

  "I'll tell you what's wrong. We leaving this place."

  "Where are the guards?"

  "The guards are dead or deserted. All of them," Obode said. "And the elephants. Their ivory been removed. We leaving. We leaving now 'cause I ain't gonna have nothing to do with nobody who can kill my soldiers and cripple my elephants in the night, without a sound, without a trace. Man, we getting out of here."

  Obode brushed past Butler before his subordinate had a chance to speak. When Butler got back outside, the sun was beginning its climb into the sky and Obode was behind the wheel of one of the jeeps. He turned the ignition key to start position but nothing happened. He tried again, then with a curse jumped heavily down from the jeep and went to another vehicle.

  That one would not start either.

  Butler came to the jeep and opened the hood. The in-sides of the engine compartment had been destroyed. The battery-had been broken in half, wires were ripped and wrenched apart, the distributor had been crushed into broken black powder and chips.

  Butler inspected the other four jeeps in the clearing. They were all the same.

  He shook his head at Obode, sitting disconsolately on the seat in the driver's seat of one of the vehicles.

  "Sorry, General," Butler said, although he was not sure he was sorry at all. "If we go anywhere, we walk."

  Obode looked up at Butler. "In this land we haven't a chance. Even the Loni could pick us off like flies."

  "Then what do we do, Mr. President?"

  Obode slammed a ham-sized fist down into the steering wheel of the jeep, cracking the wheel and sending the vehicle rocking back and forth on its wheels.

  "Dammit," Obode shouted, "we do what armies should always do. We charge."

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  While Remo slept, Princess Saffah slipped out of his hut and went back to the hut where Hillary Butler slept.

  Saffah could not recognize the feeling that gripped her on this day. All her life, she had waited for the legend to come true; now the men of the legend were here; soon the people of the Loni tribe would be restored to power; and yet, she felt a vague feeling of unease.

  Legends were never simple. There were many ways for one to come true. Had they not, for instance, thought that Butler might be the Master of the legend? He had given up his former life in America to become the Loni's friend, so one might call him a dead man. And his returning to the Loni might fulfil the prophecy of the Loni children coming home. So she had though
t, but that was wrong.

  Might not other things be wrong? You are being a fool, child. What of Obode? Do you doubt that he is the evil man of the story? And that Remo must face him today? Yes, yes. And what of the Little Father? Doubt you that he will purify the Loni? No, no, but how? How?

  Saffah ducked into the hut where the young American girl slept. She slid down smoothly onto her heels at the side of the small raised cot. The white girl breathed smoothly and evenly, and the faint trace of a smile played at the corners of her mouth. She would be well, Saffah knew, for one who could dream could live.

  She put her ebony hand out and rested it on Hillary's pale white arm and looked down at the contrast Hillary did not stir. Why was it so important, all this concern with color? Skin was skin, black or white or yellow as the Little Father's. What counted only was what was under the skin; the spirit, the heart, the soul. She looked at Hillary Butler and thought, might it not also be thus with tribes? Could hatred between Loni and Hausa end if they could only consider each other as people, good and bad, but each different?

  She squeezed Hillary Butler's arm gently, reassuringly.

  Chum was up early and Remo found him at the pit of fire. The fire had been stoked and allowed to smoulder during the night and now dry weeds and twigs were being thrown upon it.

  As Chiun directed, four Loni tribesmen began to cover the unburned wood in the pit with leafy green branches of trees which dripped water, and sizzled and hissed on the white hot stones in the pit. Steam rose and smoke poured out from under the corners of the branches in lazy coils like drunken sated snakes.

  "We going to have a cookout?" Remo asked. "Do you need a duck? I'll run to the store for hamburger rolls if you want."

  "Need you go out of your way to appear gross?" Chiun asked. "For certainly, you need no assistance, no more than the duck needs help in quacking."

  They were interrupted by a roar behind them. Along the trail, around the corner of the huts, striding into the village square came Obode and Butler, Obode leading the way, bellowing like a bull moose taunted by flies and gnats.

  "Cowards and washwomen of the Lord tribe, General Obode is here. Come out, fly swatters and mosquito killers."