Carter wiped his fingers clean on Hodler's shirt and tossed the tooth away.
Hasan was asking Sultana, "Did I mention that my uncle is Emir Bandar, my dear?"
"You can tell her in the car," Carter said. "She's coming with us."
"Wonderful!"
"Faranyah changed her mind," Sultana said. "She's coming too."
That didn't leave much room for Hodler. Carter and Hasan hefted the East German and crammed him into the trunk. Even with both of them carrying, Hodler was a heavy load. They had to get rid of an extra spare in order to fit him inside, and even then, it was tight.
Carter savored the irony. The East German liquidator would be making his last ride in a West German-made supercar. And it would be his last ride. Once he was delivered to the emir's dungeons, Hodler would leave it only to attend his own execution. According to Khobaiqi custom, he would walk to the headsman's chopping block. Although in Hodler's case, he would probably have to go via wheelchair.
It was obvious at a glance that it would be a tight fit, getting five in the Red Wing: Hasan, Carter, Sultana and her slave, and Hasan's younger brother Fawwaz, who was standing lookout at the gate, scanning the valley below.
"We can always steal a bigger car," Carter suggested.
"You might be able to steal a bigger car, my friend, but not a faster one," Hasan said.
The foursome climbed in the car, the females in back, Hasan at the wheel, Carter riding shotgun. The dashboard-mounted two-way radio crackled with static.
"I radioed Road Post Fifty-eight to send us some back-up," Hasan said. "Odd… they should have been here by now."
Fawwaz fired a burst into the air to attract their attention. He frantically waved his arms.
When the Red Wing paused at the gate to let Fawwaz climb in the back, they saw what had gotten him so excited. A trio of jet-black limousines rocketed up the mountain road, already a third of the way up.
Hasan said, "They're not mine."
"They're Hodler's," Carter said. "Let's get out of here!"
Fawwaz did not object to sitting in the back in such close proximity to Sultana, but he was taken aback by the stream of profanity launched his way by toothless Faranyah, abusing him for accidentally poking her with the butt stock of his automatic rifle.
Hasan tripped a catch under the dashboard, accessing a hidden compartment stocked with weapons and ammo.
"That's some option," Carter quipped as he selected a Swedish Carl Gustav M-45 submachine gun, slapping in its advanced rhomboidal thirty-six-round clip. There were plenty of spare clips on hand, too, as well as grenades and a sawed-off Remington shotgun.
The three black limos were more than halfway up the mountain when the Red Wing dropped down the road on the other side, descending the steep southern face.
Hasan handled the car like a pro on that wild roller-coaster ride, switchbacking through a series of hair-raising hairpin curves.
Carter looked back. Sultana sat bolt upright, eyes wide. Faranyah covered her eyes with her hands and moaned. Fawwaz grinned hugely. He was having a great time.
The last curve played out, dropping through foothills to reach a straightaway shooting across the plains.
A true motoring fanatic, Hasan shouted, "Now I'll show you what this car can really do, Nick!"
The press of acceleration pushed Carter deep into his seat as the Red Wing opened up, building ahead. The horizon leaped forward, while the pursuers receded in the distance.
At that moment, the sun came up. Its angry red orb beamed long ruby rays across the desert landscape, touching it with fire. Jagged rock pinnacles and spires threw elongated shadows across the flatland.
Way, way back, the trio of pursuit cars crawled like three black bugs over the ribboned road.
Hasan laughed. "They'll never catch us now! We'll be at the post in ten minutes!"
Unease nagged Carter. "Didn't you say they were sending out some units?"
"Why, yes. We should have met them by now. I don't see them, do you? I'd better call again."
Activating his hand-held microphone, Hasan tried and failed to raise the outpost. Finally he made contact. Brief contact.
The post's radio operator was frantic. "We are under attack by a large force of heavily armed guerrillas! Repeat, we are under attack! We cannot hold them off much longer! Turn back, Prince Hasan. Repeat, turn back!"
And that was that. Following that message, the outpost ceased transmission, no longer responding to Hasan's urgent radio calls.
"Reguiba's on the move," Carter said.
"We'll have to turn east at the next junction and pick up the coastal highway! But there's no need for alarm." Hasan chuckled. "Nothing on the road can catch us!"
Nothing on the road.
The crossroads was empty of ambushers and everything else but highways and earth. The Red Wing slowed to 70 mph to take the left turn, its free-floating suspension showing no symptoms of stress. Safely set on the eastward course to the coast, the car once again increased speed.
Trouble arose out of the north, manifesting itself at first as a pinwheeling glare in the sky.
Nearness resolved the pinwheel into the rotors of a helicopter sweeping toward them on a swift, sure trajectory bound to intercept them in a matter of minutes.
Its shadow zoomed across the plains, overtaking the Red Wing. "Not one of ours," Prince Hasan said unhappily.
The copter was a lightweight, four-passenger job whose white fuselage was trimmed with green stripes. Not a military model, for which Carter was profoundly grateful, the chopper was a type favored by geologists making aerial surveys and the like. It had no heavy-caliber machine guns, and that was a break. But it did have gunners firing automatic rifles out of the ports and gaping side hatchway, slung back so the shooters could hang halfway out of it for a better firing position.
Air drag vacuum shook the Red Wing as the chopper overflew it. Its landing skids missed the car's roof by little more than six feet.
Executing a sweeping turn, the chopper came in for another pass. The whoop-whoop of the whirlybird was counterpointed by stuttering automatic rifle fire.
The Red Wing caught the tail end of a burst, shuddering under the jackhammer pounding. Sultana screamed as the rear window exploded, cascading safety glass into the interior. She and Faranyah were huddled as low as they could get. Holes were punched in the trunk. Had the gas tank been hit, it would have been all over right there and then, but luckily none of the slugs tagged it.
Prince Hasan did some evasive driving, randomly cutting from lane to lane, slowing down and speeding up to throw off the gunners' aim.
Carter squirmed his upper body out the window. The airstream tore at him, seeking to rip the M-45 from his hands. He sat on top of the door, legs hooked tightly to keep him from toppling out.
Fawwaz joined the party, sticking the snout of his rifle out the window, pointing the barrel up.
The chopper overflew the road, coming in behind them. Carter's thighs already ached from the strain of wedging him in the window square, but he needed both hands for accurate shooting — as accurate as a submachine gun gets, anyway.
Twin spokes of fire converged on the rear of the car.
Hasan's evasive tactics threw off Carter's aim, but the Killmaster could hardly expect him to stop dodging. He could only wait for his chance, and when it came, he opened up with the M-45, squeezing off short sharp bursts. He targeted not the copter, but the gunners hanging out of its side.
He got one. The shooter dropped his weapon and fell forward, saving himself by holding on to the landing skid.
Temporary save. He couldn't hold on for more than a few seconds. His buddy was reaching for him, trying to haul him back inside, when the wounded man lost his grip and fell off the copter.
He bounced across an eighth of a mile of landscape before his tattered corpse rolled to a halt.
The relief that kill bought for the Red Wing was short-lived. The copter faced them, zooming low over the road, com
ing in for what looked like a collision course.
The dogfight turned into a game of chicken. Losing a man must have unnerved the other gunner, none of whose shots came close on this pass.
Carter's bullets ripped the copter's underside. He poured it on, going for the aircraft's gas tank. Landing skids came so close that he had to duck his head to keep it from being taken off. Fawwaz poured it on too.
The copter's roar was interrupted by irregular coughing.
The enemy wasn't so eager to rush in for another go now. They were in trouble. Tendrils of smoke wisped out of the copter assembly, thickening by the second into fat black snakes coiling around the craft.
Where there's smoke, there's fire. Once the burning began, it rapidly went out of control.
There was a whoomp, a crumping sound, then the first explosion — a small one. Pale yellow flame wreathed the machine's dragonfly body. The engine yammered, the copter yawed, pitched, shuddered.
The gunner tried to save himself by jumping. Had he been made of rubber, he might have survived the fall. As it was…
The copter blew up, going nova, making the brutal desert sun pale by comparison. A mass of seething incandescence with a black helicopter silhouette at its heart.
The flying funeral pyre didn't stay airborne for very long. Leaning sideways, it plowed into the ground, producing a still more spectacular explosion.
End of copter.
Carter climbed back into his seat, his nerves starting what would be a long, long process of untensing.
Fawwaz, delighted, fired off the rest of his clip into empty air to show his exultation.
"Everybody okay?" Carter asked.
No one was hurt, apart from a few minor scratches and bruises sustained by Sultana and Faranyah. The rear window was gone. A line of fat black holes dimpled the car's rear. The right side of the windshield was starred by a spidery impact web.
Prince Hasan breathed a heartfelt "Allah be praised!" at their narrow escape.
That did it for the opposition. The Red Wing reached Al Khobaiq without further incident.
* * *
The emir's crack units of Bedouin Home Guard were mobilized on full alert. Security was intense at secret police headquarters, where Prince Hasan rolled the Red Wing to a halt.
Those bullet holes perforating the trunk didn't look good for Karl Kurt Hodler. The lock was jammed and a burly guardsman had to jimmy the trunk lid open with a crowbar.
Hodler was curled up in a fetal position, steeped in a pool of his bright red blood. He was later found to have taken three slugs, any one of which would have killed him.
Sultana, hugging herself, asked, "Is he dead?"
"Incredibly dead," Carter said.
Karl Kurt Hodler had had the last laugh after all. He had cheated both AXE and the headsman's axe. A tough break, but Carter didn't seem as upset by it as the prince would have expected.
After a hurried consultation with an excited aide, Hasan was grim-faced. "More bad news. Road Post Fifty-eight was massacred, wiped out to the last man. That includes Wooten, whom I left there for safekeeping. He was gunned down in his cell."
The prince was sour. "What a waste! All that work, and we've lost both our leads, Wooten and Hodler. We'll have to start all over again, and — but you are smiling, my friend. What can you possibly find amusing about this setback?"
"We've got a source that's better than Wooten, and the next best thing to Hodler," Carter said.
"Who?"
"Sultana. The Crescent Club provided Hodler with a perfect cover. He used it to meet with leading subversive elements in AI Khobaiq. Pretending to be nothing more than pleasure seekers, the radicals met in the back rooms of the club to plot revolution with Hodler."
"Hodler is dead, Nick."
"Sultana is very much alive. Hodler was insanely jealous and possessive."
"I can see why," Hasan said, eyeing Sultana.
"He never let her out of his sight," Carter said. "Kept her with him at all times when he was at the club, even when he was busy plotting with his radical pals. Sultana knows them all, and will identify them. Once you put the arm on them, I'm betting it won't be long before one of them tips us to Reguiba's hideout."
"I see." Hasan nodded, smiling. As the implications sank in, his smile broadened. As the full effect of Sultana's curves hit him, he was all but beaming. "That's good. Very good!"
Carter grinned back. "I got some of the story from her last night, but Pm sure you'd like to talk to her yourself."
"Indeed I would! You will excuse me, please!"
Prince Hasan made a beeline for Sultana, and in no time, their two heads were together. Carter overheard Sultana asking him, "Tell me, are you really a prince?"
"Am I a prince? But of course! Emir Bandar is my father's brother! The emir regularly consults with me on security matters!"
Hasan took her arm. "But this is no place for a beauty like you, out here in the dust and the sun! Let's find a more congenial spot. We can drink mint tea and get to know one another better."
"That would be nice," Sultana said.
Off they went. Carter knew that Sultana was in good hands. Or was it the prince who was in good hands?
Catching the Killmaster's eye, Faranyah flashed him a nod, a wink, and a smile. Then she hurried off after her mistress.
Thirteen
Carter had Reguiba right where he wanted him, dead center in the cross hairs of his scoped target rifle. This was more of a firing squad than a military operation.
The Killmaster was not alone. With him were fifty members of the emir's Green Legion, the elite of the Bedouin Home Guard. Every member of this crack commando outfit was equipped with a rifle like Carter's, and qualified as a marksman.
They were the spearhead, the advance guard of this night attack. Nearby, waiting in the wings just out of sight, six companies of Home Guard infantry gathered, their firepower multiplied by machine gun-bearing jeeps and armored personnel carriers.
This was the cleanup.
Carter was right when he said that it wouldn't take long to get a line on Reguiba's whereabouts. Sultana arrived at secret police headquarters at midmorning. By noon, special squads prowled Al Khobaiq, collaring the conspirators she had named. It didn't take much squeezing to extract information from the plotters, not in a land where red-hot irons and the rack were standard police procedure. By early afternoon, the suspects were falling over themselves in their eagerness to confess everything they knew.
Emir Bandar was reportedly shocked at the extent of the conspiracy, which had enmeshed some of the city's leading families. He shouldn't have been. His royal family, the Jalubi, was a hereditary aristocracy maintaining a stranglehold on all the emirate's power centers. Many of the plotters were motivated not by revolutionary fervor, but by a desire to get a piece of the action.
But that was no concern of the Killmaster. Seen in the feudal context of Arabian politics, the emir was no better and no worse than the absolute monarchs of a dozen other kingdoms. Carter wasn't there to start a reform movement.
No matter what his faults were, the emir couldn't be as bad as what Reguiba had planned for Al Khobaiq.
The Zubeir Depression was a shallow bowl stretching some twenty miles. Under it lay one of the most extensive oil deposits in the world. Once the dome had been tapped and the wells came in, Al Khobaiq was awash in a sea of oil and money.
Acres of ground sprouted a forest of derricks. The area designated Field 89 was the scene of furtive, frantic activity as the Khobaiqi component of Operation Ifrit swung into high gear. Epicenter of the disturbance was a fenced-in compound as wide as a football field.
Dominating the space was an equipment shed as big as a dirigible hangar. Here was a motor pool and storehouse holding trucks, earth-moving machines, pipe-laying rigs, cranes, forklifts, and the like. It also held a fortune in smuggled weapons and explosives, which were now being passed along as quickly as possible to organizers of the insurrection.
The
gigantic scale of the layout dwarfed the antlike streams of handlers and loaders moving the ornaments. A steady flow of diesel trucks entered the compound, pulling up to loading docks, stuffing themselves with weaponry. The materiel was earmarked for militant cells of Shiite revolutionaries among the rank and file oil workers.
The imposition of martial law in Al Khobaiq had caused the delivery timetable to be speeded up, but not fast enough. Time had run out. Zero hour was nigh.
The Home Guard was ready to crush the militants. They were prepared to sustain the loss of Field 89 in order to keep all the other fields. They clustered beyond the zone of light, ringing the compound, ready to move in hard the moment the signal was given. That moment was designated as zero hour.
But Emir Bandar was particularly concerned that the ringleaders be exterminated. To that end, a special squad of the Green Legion was sent into action, to infiltrate and to execute.
Carter was along for the party. As one of the few men alive who could identify Reguiba, his presence was vital. Plus, he would have hated to sit this one out. Reguiba's troops had done plenty of shooting at him, and it would be a positive pleasure to return the favor.
Like the members of the Green Legion, Carter was outfitted in camouflage-pattern combat fatigues, black jump boots, and a black beret. Like them, his face was carbon-blacked for added cover.
Two hours earlier, the unit began infiltrating enemy territory, taking great pains to avoid discovery. The complex mechanical environment of derricks, pumps, pipes, and storage tanks provided excellent cover.
Sentries and pickets were disposed of via the knife, the crossbow, and the garrote.
The commandos moved like ghostly shadows from one place of concealment to the next, closing in on the compound. Pumps and recirculators chugged away, drowning the sound of their approach. The compound was noisy with idling trucks, busy hoists, and the hectic pace of loading the weapons crates.
The vaulting equipment shed's twin slablike doors were swung wide open, its barnlike interior ablaze with light that spilled into the compound. It was the buzzing heart of this wasp's nest.
Blood Of The Falcon Page 13