Slave Safari

by Warren Murphy

  “I have tolerated the Loni and their legend long enough. I was wrong, Butler, to listen to you, to try to bring the Loni into the government. Now, Dada is going to do what he should have done before. I am going to wipe out that accursed tribe.”

  Butler lowered his eyes so that Obode would not see the exultation there. Let him think Butler looked away to hide his disagreement. But now that the cursed Oriental and American had escaped the trap, this was best. Let Obode chase them; let Obode kill them; and then Butler would take care of Obode. Men loyal to him were now in positions of power throughout the government; they would flock to Butler’s support. The Loni would acclaim him as the man who embodied the legend, and with a united country, Butler could return Busati to the power and dignity it held centuries before.

  “Shall I mobilize the Army?” Butler asked.

  “The Army? For the Loni? And for two men?”

  “Those two men just killed thirteen,” Butler protested.

  “Yes. But they did not face Big Daddy. And they did not face you, Butler. One company and us. That will be enough to take care of both the Loni and the legend, once and for all.”

  “You have tried before to eliminate the Loni,” Butler reminded him.

  “Yes. Back before you arrived here. And always they scurried, like bugs before heat. And then I stopped because I listened to you. But this time, I will not stop and I do not think the Loni will run.” He grinned a broad faceful of mirth. “After all, are not the redeemers of the legend there among them?”

  Butler nodded. “So it is said.”

  “Well, we shall see, Butler.”

  Butler saluted, turned and walked toward the door. His hand was on the knob when he was halted by Obode’s voice.

  “General, your report lacked one item.”

  Butler turned. “Oh?”

  “Your women. What happened to them?”

  “Dead,” Butler said. “All of them.”

  “Good,” Obode said. “Because if they lived they might speak. And if they spoke, it might be necessary for me to make an object lesson of you. We are not yet ready to defy the American government.”

  He meant it, Butler knew, which was why he had lied in the first place. Soon enough, Obode would be dead and the kidnapings could be blamed on him.

  “Dead,” Butler repeated the lie. “All dead.”

  “Don’t take it so hard,” Obode said. “When we are done with these accursed Loni, I will buy you a new whorehouse.”

  Obode smiled, then thought again of the thirteen soldiers dead at the hands of the American and the Oriental. “Better yet, Butler. Make that two companies of soldiers.”

  · · ·

  Princess Saffah came from the hut wiping her hands on a small cloth.

  “She sleeps now,” she told Remo.

  “Good.”

  “She has been ill-treated. Her body has been used badly.”

  “I know.”

  “Who?” Saffah asked.

  “General Obode.”

  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 they 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 t
he missing Lippincott was dead; and then forget this whole God-forsaken country.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  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 Loni 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 their bases. Only stumps of ivory remained, broken, chipped, craggy, like 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 penciled 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 traveled, 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 insides 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.”