by Nick Carter
'Let me kill him,' the Arab said.
Lyalin almost allowed himself a smile. 'Do you see how eager my comrades are to dispose of you?' He came over to me and frisked me, relieving me of Wilhelmina and Hugo. He threw them on the ground near the Alfa Romeo. Then he turned back to me and slammed a fist into my face.
I landed in the dirt, dazed. My nose felt as if it were broken. The man had quite a punch. I hated him a little more, sitting there on the ground.
'That is for the trouble you have caused me and for my sore neck,' he said, touching his throat where I had choked him moments before. Then he moved closer and, before I could react, kicked me in the side of the face and head.
Tearing pain exploded inside me. I tried to focus on Lyalin but he was a blur above me.
I heard Fayeh say: 'Don't!'
Lyalin moved away from me and my vision cleared somewhat. I saw him give Fayeh a dark look.
'Kill him,' he ordered.
Fayeh turned to him quickly. 'No,' she said.
I struggled up on one elbow, my head still spinning.
'I said, kill him!' Lyalin shouted.
'One of them can do it.' She waved at the two Arabs.
'No. You must do it.'
I could see well enough now, and I watched numbly as Fayeh moved slowly toward me, holding the Beretta out in front of her. Her face was grim, her eyes wide. And then I saw the tears slipping at the corners of those eyes. Tears such as I had seen the last time we had made love. Now I understood. She raised the ivory-handled automatic up until it was aimed directly at my chest.
'Oh, my God!' she said.
Then she pulled the trigger.
Twelve
The slug slammed into me hard. I felt a sharp pain just above the heart and hit the ground. Fayeh had shot me. She had really shot me.
Not much more came through to me. There was cool blackness and there were the sounds of the four of them getting into the Mercedes and the roar of the engine as they pulled away.
The blackness receded again and that surprised me. Another surprise was the absence of a hot ball of fire inside my chest, sending me into shock, killing me.
I found, eventually, that I could move. Slowly I opened my eyes and stared up into the hot sun. A goddam miracle had happened. I hoisted myself painfully onto one elbow and put my hand on my chest where the hole should have been. Then I realized what had gone wrong — or, rather, right.
I reached into my jacket pocket, the right breast pocket, and pulled out the thick guidebook for the tombs. A ragged hole marred its cover, extending through the book. The .25 calibre slug stuck out about a quarter of an inch from the back of the book. I dropped the book and gingerly opened my shirt. There was a big red welt where the skin had been broken by the protruding edge of the slug. I would have a deep bruise, but the guidebook had saved my life.
I remembered how Fayeh had tried to talk me out of buying the book, saying she could tell me what I needed to know. I laughed now, a weak laugh. It was crazy the way things turned out sometimes.
Slowly I got to my feet. My head was pounding from the kick Lyalin had given me. Lyalin. The damned microfilm. I had to follow them. I had to find Lyalin before he destroyed the film.
Wilhelmina and Hugo lay on the ground where Lyalin had tossed them.
Retrieving the Luger and the stiletto, I moved to the Alfa and climbed into it. I checked out the Luger and it was sand-clogged. I swore under my breath until I remembered the attaché case in the luggage compartment with the Buntline custom job. Maybe, under the circumstances, that would be the best weapon anyway.
I started the engine of the Alfa and put it in gear. The little GT raised a big cloud of dust as it roared away.
It must have been five miles before I came to the split in the road. One way led to Luxor and the other led toward the coast across the Egyptian Desert. I got out and studied the ground; I spotted the Mercedes' tire tracks. Lyalin had headed into the desert. He was aiming for Port Safaga where he would probably rendezvous with a Russian freighter. But not if I could help it.
The Alfa roared onto the desert road. At first the road was good but then it deteriorated into a track that got worse and worse. There were deep drifts of sand, and the Alfa, low-slung as it was, had to be babied through them. A Mercedes would have less trouble. Eventually I had to go into low gear for power.
By noon the tracks of the Mercedes were getting fresher, but the sun was getting unbearable. The outside metal of the car was too hot to touch, and I was feeling the effects of all I had been through earlier. I gripped the sweat-slippery wheel as the car bumped along, squinted through the dusty windshield at the heat waves rising off the sand and making the landscape slither about and wondered what this desert must be like in the summer. Then I spotted something at the side of the track.
I couldn't make out what it was at first through the heat waves. It might have been a part of a car or a pile of old rags. Then, as I drew nearer, I could make out its shape better. I stared. It wasn't something but someone. A figure lying still on the sand. A woman…?'
Another moment and I reached it. I got out of the car and walked over to the side of the track and stared down at the figure grimly, swallowing painfully. It was Fayeh.
They had killed her. Part of her clothing had been torn off in a violent struggle and there was a ragged wound in her side under the ribs. One of them had stuck a knife in there.
I breathed a long weary sigh. I remembered her warm body moving undermine, the flashing eyes — and the way she had cried before she pulled the trigger on the Beretta. Now she looked like a broken circus doll.
She had made a fatal mistake with Lyalin. She had shown a reluctance to kill me. She had even shed tears. Lyalin did not want people around him who were capable of crying.
Getting back into the Alfa, I found myself wondering whether Fayeh, the beautiful Fayeh, had remembered the guidebook in my pocket and aimed for it when she shot. It was something I would never know. I looked up into the sky and saw the vultures gathering already, pirouetting silently. And I swore because I did not have the time to bury her.
Another half hour of driving and I saw a wavy speck on the horizon ahead. As I closed the distance, the speck became a shimmery blob, then the blob became a car. The black Mercedes.
I gunned the engine. The Alfa lurched ahead through the sand. There was a good stretch in front of me and I intended to close the distance. As I pushed hard on the accelerator, it occurred to me that Lyalin might already have destroyed the film. But it wasn't likely. His superiors would undoubtedly want tangible proof that it had been recovered.
When I had closed to within a hundred yards of the Mercedes, it stopped. Lyalin and the two gunmen got out and watched me come on. They probably couldn't believe their eyes. When I pulled to a dusty stop just eighty yards away and got out, I could see, even at that distance, the disbelieving look on Lyalin's face.
'That's right, Lyalin!' I yelled. It's me! You'd better do your own killing from now on!'
They opened the doors of the Mercedes for cover and stood behind them, even though they were pretty much out of range.
'I don't know how you survived, Carter,' Lyalin yelled back at me. 'But you have nothing to gain here but another bullet. There are still three of us. You cannot possibly retrieve the film.'
So he still had it. Just as I had figured. But the man was right. I had three-to-one odds against me and they were professionals. No sane man would have backed my chances.
I moved to the rear of the Alfa and opened the luggage compartment. Inside lay the attaché case. I opened it quickly and grabbed the Buntline. Carefully I screwed the two pieces together and sighted down the foot-and-a-half barrel. Then I grabbed the Belgian pistol carbine stock, snapped it onto the butt of the .357 Magnum revolver and screwed it on tight I loaded the big gun quickly, jammed Pierre the cyanide gas pellet-bomb into a pocket and moved to the front of the car.
The Arabs popped off a couple of shots at me. One fell
short, spraying sand, and the other grazed the fender of the car weakly. They were too far off, and now they knew it.
Lyalin waved his hand at them. They started moving toward me, one on either side of the track. As they got closer, they would flank me, get me in a crossfire. They did not know about the Buntline.
I knelt behind the open door of the Alfa and laid the barrel of the long custom revolver on the hot metal. Sweat was running down my face from my hairline. I shook it away and sighted down the long barrel toward the Arab on the right, the one who had been so eager to put a hole in me. I snugged the rifle-type stock hard against my shoulder, found the gunman in the sights of the Buntline and squeezed the trigger.
The man literally jumped into the air, twisting in a tight circle and was thrown violently to the ground, a big hole in his back where the slug had gone through. He was already dead when he hit the sand.
The other gunman stopped in his tracks. Lyalin looked from the dead man to me. The surviving Arab also looked at me, back at Lyalin and then at me again. Then he turned and ran back toward the Mercedes. He reached the car before I could get him in the sights.
The Arab crouched behind the car, gesturing wildly to Lyalin. They were pretty well covered now. I noticed a rise of dune over to the left of the track, a little closer to them. That would give me some high ground to shoot from. I took a deep breath and started running.
Their guns went off simultaneously. Slugs dug up the sand all around me. But I kept running, and finally I was there. I dived behind the dune as a shot scattered sand inches from my head.
Getting up onto my elbows, the Buntline cradled in front of me, I looked down on them. They had moved to the opposite side of the Mercedes.
'Move in and I will destroy the film!' Lyalin yelled.
I made a face lying there. What choice did I have? The Arab fired a round at my head and missed. I glanced to my left and saw a slightly better sand dune with a steeper incline for cover. I got up and ran for it. Again shots dug up sand all around me, and again I managed to reach cover without getting hit.
I took another look. Lyalin tired at me and missed by an inch. The Arab, emboldened by this, raised up slightly to take another shot himself. I found his chest in the sights of the long barrel and fired. He screamed and fell backward, disappearing behind the car.
I saw Lyalin look down at the man. Then he looked back toward me. I could tell from his expression that his last goon was dead. He fired off two quick rounds at me and I squeezed off another shot. He jerked backward, bit in the shoulder.
'That's the one you said I owed you,' I warned him.
'Damn you, Carter!' he shouted. 'I will destroy the film, and you will have lost!'
He climbed into the car from the other side, then reached over and pulled the door closed on my side. I did not know what he was going to do in there, but I had to act fast to stop him.
I got to my feet and ran to a small hillock of sand about halfway to the car. A shot rang out from inside the car and tugged at my trouser leg. I hit the sand; now I could see into the car.
It was clear what Lyalin was doing in there. He was holding the cigarette lighter in on the instrument panel. In a moment he would put it to the film.
I fired into the car, but Lyalin kept low and I couldn't hit him. I reached into my pocket for Pierre, the gas pellet. It was my only chance now. I pulled a small pin in the pellet's side, took careful aim and lobbed it toward the Mercedes' open window. It made a high arcing loop and disappeared inside.
Smoky gas filled the car in seconds. I heard Lyalin gasping and choking. Then the door opened and he staggered out, firing the Mauser as he came. He fired three times and all three slugs dug into the sand in front of me. I responded with a round from the Buntline. Lyalin was hit in the chest and thrown violently back against the car. His eyes went wide with shock, then he slid to the ground.
I moved from cover carefully. When I got to Lyalin, I took one look and knew he was dead. The gas was clearing from the car now, but I did not have to go into the Mercedes for the microfilm anyway. Lyalin still clutched it in his left hand.
I took the film from the death grasp of the KGB man and looked at it for a long moment. I wondered whether it was worth what it had cost.
Stuffing the film into my pocket, I walked slowly back to the Alfa, glinting in the desert sun. I still had a job to do, one last task on this assignment before I could consider it finished. I had to return to Fayeh. No matter what had happened, whether or not she had remembered the guidebook when she pulled the trigger on that Beretta, I was going back to bury her.
I figured I owed her that.