The Eye of the Tiger

by Wilbur Smith

  I judged by the volume and duration of the outburst that all the weapons involved had emptied magazines in a continuous burst. A heavy silence followed.

  Chubby was having a go, after all my warnings. Although I was bitterly angry, I was also thoroughly alarmed by what trouble he had got himself into. One thing was certain Chubby had missed whatever he had aimed at.

  I broke from a trot into a run, and angled upwards towards the crest, aiming to reach the area from which the gunfire had sounded.

  I burst out of a patch of goose-bush into a narrow overgrown path that followed the direction I wanted, and I turned into it and went into a full run.

  I topped the rise and almost ran into the arms of one of the uniformed seamen coming in the opposite direction, also at a headlong run.

  There were six of his comrades with him in Indian file, all making the best possible speed on his heels. Thirty yards farther back was another who had lost his weapon and whose uniform jacket was sodden with fresh blood.

  On all their faces were expressions of abandoned terror, and they ran with the single-minded determination of men pursued closely by all the legions of hell.

  I knew instantly that this rabble were the survivors of an encounter with Chubby Andrews, and that it had been too much for their nerves. They were hell-bent and homeward-bound - Chubby’s shooting must have improved miraculously, and I made him a silent apology.

  So much were the seamen involved with the devil behind them that they seemed not to notice me for the fleeting instant which it took for me to slip the safety-catch on the machinegun on my hip, brace myself with knees bent and feet spread.

  I swung the weapon in a short kicking traverse aimed low at their knees. With a rate of fire like that of an AK47, you must go for the legs, and rely on another three or four hits in the body as the man drops through the sheet of fire. It also defeats the efforts of the short barrel to ride up under the thrust of the recoil.

  They went downward in a sprawling shrieking mass, punched backwards into each other by the savage strike of the soft heavy-calibre slugs.

  I held the trigger down for the count of four, and then I turned and plunged off the path into the thick wall of goose-bush. It hid me instantly and I doubled over as I jinked and dodged under the branches.

  Behind me, a machinegun was firing, and the bullets tore and snapped through the thick foliage. None came near me and I settled back into a quick trot.

  I guessed that my sudden and completely unexpected attack would have permanently acounted for two or three of the seamen, and may have wounded one or two others.

  However, the effect on their morale would be disastrous - especially coming so soon after Chubby’s onslaught. Once they reached the safety of the crash boat, I guessed that the forces of evil would debate long and hard before setting foot on the island again. We had won the second round decisively, but they still had Sherry North. That was the major trump in their hands. As long as they held her they could dictate the course of the game.

  Chubby was waiting for me amongst the rocks on the saddle of the peak. The man was indestructible.

  “Jesus, Harry, where the hell you been?“he growled. “I’ve been waiting here all morning.”

  I saw that he had retrieved my haversack. from the cleft in the rocks where I had left it. It lay with two captured AK47 rifles and bandoliers of ammunition at his feet.

  He handed me the water bottle, and only then did I realize how thirsty I was. The heavily chlorinated water tasted like Veuve Clicquot, but I rationed myself to three swallows.

  “I got to apologize to you, Harry. I had a go. just couldn’t help it, man. They were bunched up and standing out in the open like a Sunday-school picnic. just couldn’t help myself, gave them a good old squirt. Dropped two of them and the others run like hens, shooting their pieces straight up in the air as they go.”

  “Yeah,” I nodded. “I met them as they crossed the ridge.”

  “Heard the shooting. just about to come and look for you.) I sat down on the rock beside him, and found my cheroots in the haversack. We each lit one and smoked in grateful silence for a moment which Chubby spoiled.

  “Well, we lit a fire under their tails - don’t reckon they’ll come back for more. But they have still got Miss. Sherry, man. Long as they got her, they are winning.”

  “How many were there, Chubby?”

  “Ten.” He spat out a scrap of tobacco and inspected the glowing tip of the cheroot. “But I took out two - and I think I winged another.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “I met seven on the ridge. I had a go at them also. Aren’t more than four left now - and there are eight more out of my bunch. Say a dozen, plus those left on board - another six or seven. About twenty guns still against us, Chubby.”

  “Pretty odds, Harry.”

  “Let’s work on it, Chubby.”

  “Let’s do that, Harry.”

  I selected the newest and least abused of the three machineguns and there were five full magazines of ammunition for it. I cached the discarded weapons under a slab of flat rock and loaded and checked the other.

  We each had another short drink from the water bottle and then I led the way cautiously -along the ridge, keeping off the skyline, back towards the deserted camp.

  From the spot at which I had first spotted the approach of the Mandrake we surveyed the whole northern end of the island.

  As we guessed they would, Manny and Suleiman Dada had taken all their men off the island. Both the whaleboat and the smaller motorboat were moored alongside the crash boat. There was much confused and meaningless activity on board, and as I watched the scurrying figures I imagined the scenes of terrible wrath and retribution which were taking place in the main cabin.

  Suleiman Dada and his new protege were certainly wreaking a fearful vengeance on their already badly beaten and demoralized troops, “I want to go down to the camp, Chubby. See what they left for us,” I said at last, and handed him the binoculars. “Keep watch for me. Three quick shots as a warning signal.”

  “Okay, Harry,” he agreed, but as I stood up there was a renewed outbreak of feverish activity on board the crash boat. I took the glasses back from Chubby and watched Suleiman Dada emerge from the cabin and make a laborious ascent to the open bridge. In his white uniform, bedecked with medals that glittered in the sunlight and attended by a host of helpers he reminded me of a fat white queen termite being moved from its royal cell by swarming worker ants.

  The transfer was effected at last and as I watched through the binoculars I saw an electronic bullhorn handed to Suleiman. He faced the shore, lifted the hailer to his mouth and through the powerful lens I saw his lips moving. Seconds later the sound reached us clearly, magnified by the instrument and carried by the wind.

  “Harry Fletcher. I hope you can hear me.” The deep wellmodulated voice was given a harsher sound by the amplifier. “I plan to put on a demonstration this evening which will convince you of the necessity of co-operating with me. Please be in a position where you can watch. You will find it fascinating. Nine o’clock this evening on the afterdeck of this ship. It’s a date, Harry. Don’t miss it.”

  He handed the bullhorn to one of his officers and went below.

  . “They’re going to do something to Sherry,” murtered Chubby and fiddled disconsolately with the rifle in his lap. “We’ll know at nine,” I said, and watched the officer with the bullhorn climb from the deck into the motorboat. They set off on a slow circuit of the island, stopping every half mile to shout a repetition of Suleiman Dada’s invitation to me at the silent tree-lined shore. He was very anxious for me to attend.

  “All right, Chubby,” I glanced at my watch. “We have hours yet.

  I’m going down to the camp. Watch out for me.” The camp had been ransacked and plundered of most items of value, equipment and stores had been smashed and scattered about the caves - but still some of it had been overlooked.

  I found five cans of fuel and hid them along with much oth
er equipment that might be of value. Then I crept cautiously down into the grove, and learned with relief that the hiding-place of the chest and the golden tigers head and the other stores was undisturbed.

  Carrying a fivegallon can of drinking water and three cans of corned beef and mixed vegetables I climbed again to the ridge where Chubby waited. We ate and drank and I said to Chubby: “Get some sleep if you can. It’s going to be a long hard night.”

  He grunted and curled up in the grass like a great brown bear.

  Soon he was snoring softly and regularly.

  I smoked three cheroots slowly and thoughtfully, but it was only as the sun was setting that I had my first real stroke of genius. It was so clear and simple, and so delightfully apt that it was immediately suspect and I reexamined it carefully.

  The wind had dropped and it was completely dark by the time I was certain of my idea and I sat smiling and nodding contentedly as I thought about it.

  The crash boat was brightly lit, all her ports glowed and a pair of floods glared whitely down upon the afterdeck, so it looked like an empty stage.

  I woke Chubby and we ate and drank again.

  “Let’s go down to the beach,” I said. “We’ll have a better view from there.”

  “It might be a trap,” Chubby warned me morosely.

  “I don’t think so. They are all on board, and they are playing from strength. They’ve still got Sherry. They don’t have to try any fancy tricks.”

  “Man, if they do anything to that girl!” he stopped himself, and stood up. “All right, let’s go.”

  We moved silently and cautiously down through the grove with our weapons cocked and our fingers on the triggers, but the night was still and the grove deserted.

  We halted amongst the trees at the top of the beach. The crash boat was only two hundred yards away and I leaned my shoulder against the trunk of a palm and focused my glasses on her. It was so clear and close that I could read the writing on the lid of a packet from which one of the sentries took and lit a cigarette.

  We had a front row seat for whatever entertainment Suleiman Dada was planning, and I felt the stir of apprehension and knowledge of coming horror blow like a cold breeze across my skin.

  I lowered the glasses and whispered softly to Chubby, “Change your piece for mine,” and he passed me the longbarrelled FN and took the AK47I wanted the accuracy of the FN to command the deck of the crash boat. Naturally there was nothing I could do to intervene while Sherry was unharmed, but if they did anything to her - I would make sure she didn’t suffer alone.

  I squatted down beside the palm tree, adjusted the peep sights of the rifle, and drew a careful bead on the head of the deck guard. I knew I could put a bullet through his temple from where I sat and when I was satisfied I laid the rifle across my lap and settled down to wait.

  The mosquitoes from the swamp whined around our ears but both Chubby and I ignored them and sat quietly. I longed for a cheroot to soothe the tension of my nerves, but I was forced to forgo that comfort.

  Time passed very slowly, and new fears came to plague me and make the waiting seem even longer than it was but finally, a few minutes before the promised hour, there was a renewed stirring and bustle on board the crash boat and once more Suleti -man Dada was helped up the ladder by his men and he took his place at the bridge rail looking down over the afterdeck. He was sweating heavily and it had soaked the area around the armpits and across the back of his white uniform jacket. I guessed that he had passed his own period of waiting by frequent recourse, to the whisky bottle, probably from my own stock that had been plundered from the cave.

  He laughed and joked with the men around him, his vast belly shaking with mirth and his men echoed the laughter slavishly. The sound of it carried across the water to the beach.

  Suleiman was followed by Manny Resnick and his blonde lady friend.

  Manny was well groomed and cool-looking in his expensive casual clothing. He stood slightly apart from the others, his expression aloof and disinterested. He reminded me of an adult at a children’s party, seeing out a boring and mildly unpleasant duty.

  In contrast, Lorna Page was excited and shiny-eyed as a girl on her first date. She laughed with Suleiman Dada and leaned expectantly over the rail above the deserted deck. Through the powerful glasses I could see the flush on her cheeks which was not rouge.

  I was concentrating on her so that it was only when I felt Chubby move suddenly and restlessly, and heard his grunt of alarm that I swung the glasses downwards on to the deck.

  Sherry was there, standing between two of the uniformed sailors.

  They held her arms and she looked small and frail between them.

  She still wore the clothes she had thrown on so hurriedly that morning and her hair was dishevelled. Her face was gaunt and her expression strained - but it was only when I studied her carefully that I saw that what looked like sleepless dark rings below her eyes were in fact bruises. With a cold chill of anger, I realized that her lips were swollen and puffed up as though they had been stung by bees. One of her cheeks was also fatly distorted and bruised.

  They had beaten her and knocked her about badly. Now that I looked for it I could see dark splotches of dried blood on her blue shirt, and when one of the guards dragged her around roughly to face the shore I saw that one of her hands was bandaged roughly - and that either blood or disinfectant had stained the bandages.

  She looked tired and ill, nearly at the end of her strength. My anger threatened to wipe out my reason. I wanted to inflict hurt upon those that had treated Sherry like this, and I had already begun to lift the rifle with hands that shook with the force of my hatred before I could control myself. I closed my eyes tightly and took a long deep breath to steady myself. The time would come - but it was not now.

  When I opened my eyes again and refocused the binoculars, Suleiman Dada had the bullhorn to his lips.

  “Good evening, Harry, my dear friend, I am sure you recognize this young lady.” He made a wide gesture towards Sherry and she looked up at him wearily. “After questioning her closely, a procedure which alas caused her a little discomfort, I am at last convinced that she does not know the whereabouts of the property in which my friends and I are interested. She tells me that you “have hidden it.” He paused and mopped his streaming face with a towel handed to him by one of his men before he went on.

  “She is no longer of any interest to me - except possibly as a medium of exchange!

  He made a gesture, and Sherry was hustled away below. Something cold and slimy moved in my guts at her going. I wondered if I would ever see her again - alive.

  On to the deserted deck filed four of Suleimans men, Each of them had stripped to the waist and the floodlights rippled on their smooth darkly muscled bodies.

  Each of them carried the hickory wooden handles of a pickaxe, and silently they formed up at the points of a star about the open deck. Next a man was led into the open centre by two guards. His hands were tied behind his back. They stood on each side of him and slowly forced him to turn in a circle -and show himself while Suleiman Dada’s voice boomed through the bullhorn.

  “I wonder if you recognize him?” I stared at the stooped creature in canvas prison overalls that hung in filthy grey tatters from his gaunt frame. His skin was pate and waxy with deep-set dark eyes, long scraggly blond hair hung in greasy snakes about his face and his half-grown beard was thin and wispy.

  He had lost teeth, probably knocked from his mouth with a careless blow.

  “Yes, Harry?” Suleiman laughed fruitily over the loud hailer. “A sojourn in Zinballa prison does wonders for a man, does it not - but the regulation garb is not as smart as that of an Inspector of Police.”

  “ Only then did I recognize ex-Inspector Peter Daly - the man who I had pitched from the deck of Wave Dancer into the waters of the outer lagoon just before I had escaped from Suleiman Dada by running the channel at Gunfire Reef.

  “Inspector Peter Daly,” Suleiman confirmed
with a chuckle, “a man who let me down badly. I do not like men who let me down, Harry. I really take it very hard. I brought him along for just such an eventuality. It was a wise precaution, for I believe that a graphic demonstration is so much more convincing than mere words!

  Once again he paused to mop” his face and to drink deeply from a glass offered him by one of his men. Daly fell to his knees and looked up at the man on the bridge. His expression was of abject terror, and his mouth dribbled saliva as he pleaded for mercy.

  “Very well, we can proceed if you are ready, Harry,” he boomed, and one of the guards produced a large black cloth bag which he pulled over Peter Daly’s head and secured with a drawn string around his neck. They dragged him roughly to his feet again.

  “It’s our own variation on the game of blind man’s bluff.”

  Through the glasses I saw the liquid flood soak through the front of Peter Daly’s canvas trousers, as his bladder emptied in anguished terror. Obviously he had seen this game played before during his stay in Zinballa prison.

  “Harry, I want you to use your imagination. Do not see this snivelling filthy creature - but in his place imagine your lovely young lady friend.” He breathed heavily, but when the man beside him offered him the towel again Suleiman struck him a passionless backhanded blow that sent him sprawling across the bridge, and he continued evenly, “Imagine her lovely young body, imagine her delicious fear as she stands in darkness not knowing what to expect.”

  The two guards began to spin Daly between them, as they do in the children’s game, around and around he went and now I could faintly hear his muffled shrieks and cries of fear.

  Suddenly the two guards stepped away from him, and left the circle of half-naked men with their pick handles. One of them placed the butt of his weapon in the small of Daly’s back and shoved him, reeling and staggering across the circle and the man opposite was waiting to drive the end of his club into Daly’s belly.

  Back and forth he staggered, driven by the thrust of the clubs.

  Slowly his tormentors increased the savagery of their attack, until one of them hefted his club and swung it like an axe at a tree. It smashed into Daly’s ribs.