Assignmnt - Ceylon

by Edward S. Aarons

  “Jesus, oh, you bastard . . ."

  “Give it up, Willie.”

  “But how did you—”

  “McFee is here.”

  Willie Wells’ dark eyes went wide and round, showing bloodshot white around the black iris. “Hell. Don’t put me on. I’m going to kill you.”

  “Forget it. That job is all over.”

  Wells suddenly heaved, tore loose from Durell’s grip, lunged on all fours through the muck for the rifle. He got his hand on the barrel and swung it hard at Durell’s head. Mud splashed. Overhead, the fire had leaped to the living treetops. The barrier wall of driftwood was a solid mass of flames now. No time to think of Aspara in there. He felt the stock of the rifle graze his head, endured a moment’s blankness, grabbed for the knife again. It would not come loose from the ground where he had driven it in. Probably caught on a bit of root. He swung hard at Wells’ jaw. His knuckles smashed into the man’s broad nose. He hit him again. Wells began to club him with the rifle, struggling to his knees. They hugged each other for a long, desperate moment in a deadly embrace.

  “Give it up.”

  “I—can’t.”

  “We’ll get an antidote. Understand?”

  “Only if—I kill you.”

  “We’ll get Sinn together. You and me. Right?”

  “Not—possible.”

  Willie’s teeth gleamed white in the red glare of the fire. They swayed back and forth on their knees, seeking leverage. The rifle was only two feet away. Neither dared break the grips to lunge for it. Durell felt the man’s strength, like a bar of iron. He could not break Wells’ hug. He felt his ribs being slowly crushed inward. The air was squeezed inexorably from Ids lungs. Smoke drifted over them, choking, acrid, and heavy. It tasted of dry rot. The flames made a vast roaring noise like the forced air of a blast furnace. The heat smothered them.

  Wells looked desperate. Great beads of sweat shone on his dark face. He tried to lock his hands behind Durell’s back, almost succeeded. Then his grip suddenly slipped, and Durell heaved forward, throwing the man backward. Wells’ legs bent under him. His head hit the rifle barrel and his eyes rolled, looking for the grip again, and one hand thrashed out, reaching for the weapon. Durell slammed his forearm across Willie’s throat and brought all his weight to bear down on the larynx, controlling the final impulse to crush it and kill the man. He didn’t want to kill Willie Wells. He didn’t want to waste time.

  “Willie, can you hear me?”

  “Yuli.”

  “Truce. See McFee for yourself. Right?”

  “A—trick?”

  “No tricks. A deal. Otherwise, I kill you.”

  Durell brought more weight to bear on his forearm. It squeezed the breath from Wells’ throat. The other’s body thrashed wildly. His eyes began to pop. A strangled sound came from him, half laughter, half a cry of defeat and despair.

  “Let—go!”

  “A deal?” Durell asked.

  “Yuh.”

  He eased up very carefully. Wells did not move. His left hand groped for the rifle, and he caught it up in a sweeping movement that lifted it from the swampy muck. With the gun in his hand, Durell sprang back, up on his feet.

  Wells lay on his back, knees drawn up, chest heaving. His dark eyes stared his hatred. Durell swayed. He was almost at the limit of his own strength. Another minute or two of struggle, and the toll of the last few days would have cost him his life. He let the rifle rest in the crook of his arm and moved back two steps, away from the black man.

  “Sam! Sam?”

  It was Aspara. She had escaped from the burrow, stumbling down the stream. At the same moment, the great barrier of driftwood suddenly collapsed with a roar that seemed to encompass the entire island. A great blast of heat rolled over them. Sparks billowed into the sky, and the flames roared higher. The night was turned into a red hell.

  twenty-three

  The fire drove them back toward the sea.

  Durell released General McFee from the net snare. When McFee stumbled and fell, Durell did not move to help him up but continued to make his way through the bush, with Aspara walking quietly beside him. McFee, after the first few moments, went beside the dark figure of Willie Wells and talked quickly and earnestly. Snatches of their conversation touched Durell as he led them out of the mangroves, but the roaring fire behind them blotted out some of the small man’s words.

  ". . . shocking behavior. But I can understand Samuel’s attitude—”

  Wells said, “You gave me the orders . . . doing as you said . . ."

  “Of course, my boy, of course. Creditable . . . But then, you see, our premise . . . based on faulty data . . .”

  “I was going to kill him.”

  “Yes, yes. But we learned . . . false Geneva bank deposit.. . manager there, a M. Fouquier . . . knows Durell. . .became curious because of Samuel’s overseas call . . . had the signature checked by experts . . . Kubischev . .".

  “He’s here too.”

  “What have you learned about Mouquerana Sinn?”

  “. . . gives me the creeps, the—"

  Durell carried Wells’ rifle and helped Aspara as they walked. Her long hair had become undone and swept down her shoulders and her back. Her shirt was torn and muddied by their flight all through the long afternoon and night. He wondered what the time was. The moon was well down toward the west now, huge and orange, and he estimated it was still two or three hours before dawn touched the opposite side of the island. There was an urgency in the way he moved that overrode his weariness. Just a bit more, he told himself. A few more hours, that was all. He was worried about the fire, which seemed to be spreading south toward the wharf area, where the PFMs had their barracks. Another tongue of flame had jumped a long-abandoned rice paddy and was raging inland through the thickets of wild bamboo that grew along the trail that led up to the palace from the little harbor. Smoke hung heavily over the shore and drifted slowly out over the Andaman Sea.

  “We’ll cut around to the north,” he said bluntly. “We can cut back to the palace from there. The fire seems to be spreading, and Sinn will have most of his men out fighting it down here. So we’ll hit him from the other side.”

  Wells said, “You’ll never get in, Cajun. He’ll still have enough men around him—and Kubischev—to guard himself.”

  Durell looked at the black man thoughtfully. “Then we’ll have to fake it, if you feel strong enough.”

  “That stuff in me is beginning to work.”

  “I’m not surprised. How long do you think you can hold out?”

  “I don’t know. A few more hours anyway. Then I’m going to need that antidote.”

  “We’ll get it for you. General?”

  McFee said, “Anything you’d like, Samuel.” He sounded remarkably subdued. “I’m simply glad to have found you alive—although you really could have cut me down out of that net a bit sooner. What can I do?”

  “You’ll do anything I say. When I tell you to move, you jump. Understand? And don’t be too humble or too anxious to atone for your error, General. I’m only interested in getting out of here alive.”

  “But we want to get this Mouquerana Sinn.”

  “Maybe you do. Not me. I’ve quit.”

  McFee said softly, “You’ve quit K Section?”

  “K Section quit me. You quit me. Fair enough?” “Samuel, you can’t be serious. The business is your whole life.”

  “Yes. It almost was,” Durell said grimly.

  “I have apologized. I shall do so again, if you wish. It was a terrible error. I—I was outraged by the evidence against you. I didn’t wish to believe it, but it was all hard data, we could not ignore it.”

  “You could have given me a hearing.”

  “If I had left you to join Dr. Sinn, you see, it would have seemed too late. Please try to understand my own problems in the matter. It truly looked as if you had defected and escaped to join Sinn.”

  “To hell with it,” Durell said.

  H
e spoke briefly and crisply as he urged them all along the narrow beach to the northern point of the island. Behind them, the fire grew like a hungry, wild animal trying to devour everything in its path.

  “We need more weapons.” It was half an hour later, and they were crouched in the thickets within twenty yards of the shadowed north facade of the palace. The moon was down, but the sky was a red glare overhead from the fires leaping across the island. The roar of the flames drowned out every other sound, and the draft that fed the fires in the mangroves and bamboo made a hot wind that blew at their backs, while overhead in the sky sparks and cinders leaped and gyrated against the carmine smoke. Durell pointed toward the back terrace of the threatened palace. “That one, there.”

  “I see him,” McFee said. “Let me have your knife.”

  “No, we’ll do it as I suggested.”

  “He’s a jumpy one.”

  “It will be all right,” Durell said. “Willie?”

  “Right.” The black man grinned briefly, but great beads of sweat stood out on his face.. “I can make it.”

  “Pick me up, then,” Durell said. “Across your shoulders, like a sack of meat. Take the rifle too.”

  “Cajun, there was nothing personal in the whole messy thing—"

  “I know. Hurry it up.”

  Wells’ strength was still more than sufficient to sling Durell’s weight up and across his shoulder. Durell let himself go limp, arms and legs dangling, as if he were some sort of killed prey. Wells muttered, “Hup. Here we go. That guy is getting more nervous.”

  The PFM who patrolled the terrace of the palace was casting anxious eyes to right and left, worried about the flames that ate at the island’s vegetation and inexorably came his way. It occurred to Durell that the man had good reason to be nervous. If the fire effectively cut across the island’s waist, they were all barred from escape aboard the junk moored at the opposite end of the land. The man carried his AK-47 as if he were ready to use it at any suspicious shadow.

  From the foot of the wide stone steps leading to the weed-grown terrace, Wells called softly, “Yo, brother!” He heaved Durell’s dead weight to a more comfortable position on his shoulder. “Go tell the boss I’m back with the prize.”

  The PFM turned, eyes wide with momentary alarm. His rifle jerked upward. Then he recognized Wells and saw his burden and began to grin slowly while he jabbered away in some local dialect. He pointed to the fire and yelled something.

  “I’m not interested in that,” Wells said. “I set it to flush this bugger out of his hole. My fault, maybe, but no sweat. Gimme a hand here, huh? This carcass is heavy.”

  The PFM did not understand English any more than Wells understood his spate of Tamil, but the man guessed what was wanted and lowered his rifle and came closer. Wells swung his own weapon in a savage, one-handed blow against the man’s head while Durell slid from his shoulder. The PFM reeled, his mouth open to shout an alarm. Durell hit him, sent him down, while Wells kicked the man in the jaw. They both heard the bone break. Without a pause, Durell scooped up the AK-47 and turned. McFee and Aspara ran up the broad marble steps. He tossed the rifle to McFee.

  “Two to go. Inside. General, you go in through that door. Aspara, stay with him. Willie, come with me.”

  “Why split up?” Wells asked.

  “I’m going to look for Colonel Skoll.”

  “Skoll is dead.”

  “Maybe not.”

  Durell still had his knife. Wells weighed his rifle, hesitating. “I’m more interested in finding Dr. Sinn. He’s slippery. If he thinks that fire threatens him, he’ll vanish like smoke.”

  “Superstititous?”

  “He got to me a bit, yes,” Wells said. “He has an aura around him—I don’t know how to say it—”

  “I felt it too. Let’s go. Skoll first.”

  “Waste of time,” Wells said.

  But he followed Durell around a comer of the crumbled, weed-grown terrace, hugging the far balustrade. A door stood open here, and from within came the dim glow of a light. Durell listened to the thump of the generator from nearby.

  “Hold it. We’ll get the power first. I think that fat cancer needs an elevator to get up and down the steps.”

  “Right,” Wells said.

  The generator, with its diesel power, was located just below the terrace, in a small stone building. Durell vaulted the balustrade, landed in soft weeds, heard Wells after him. A guard walked around the comer of the generator house and saw them. The man yelled. There was no help for it. Durell used the knife, sinking it home into the terrorist’s ribs. The man dropped his rifle, grunting, and sank to the ground. He carried a clip of three grenades in his belt.

  “Let me,” Wells said.

  He took the grenades, chose one, kicked open the generator door, and pulled the pin. He threw the grenade inside. There came a yell of shock from another terrorist within. Then Durell and Wells threw themselves flat as the housing burst in a roar that threw stones, dirt, and twisted metal high in the air. The concussion rolled over them in a tremendous wave. It left their ears ringing. Almost at once, Durell was up and on his feet, putting the knife away. He had the AK-47 as his weapon. They vaulted back onto the terrace together, came to the open door, slammed through. Dim shouts echoed through the old palace. Durell took a flight of steps three at a time, with Wells beside him. Through the door opposite, which stood ajar, they could see the red glare of the fire burning in the night across the island.

  “Down in the cellars,” Durell said.

  “What about Sinn? I need that stuff for the poison he put in me.” Wells was sweating. His mouth drooped. His dark eyes looked rebellious. “It’s every man for himself.”

  Durell nodded. “All right. Get him.”

  “What’s Skoll to you, anyway?”

  “He’s in the business,” Durell said. He took one of the two remaining grenades. I'll use this one.”

  Wells licked his lips. “I can’t kill him until I get the stuff from him. If he can be killed at all, that is.”

  “You’ll make it.”

  Durell left him and ran across the main entrance hall. No one was in sight. He guessed that most of Sinn’s men had rushed off to fight the fire. Down the stairs, the light from the flames was cut off, and he moved through inky blackness. The corridor smelled foully. He felt his way along, counting the doors to the prison cells, and in a few moments came to one that was open.

  “Cesar?” he called softly.

  There were no guards here. He thought he heard someone take a deep breath. He wasn’t sure. He wondered what had happened to Ira Sanderson and his son George, and then he stepped into the open cell, gaining a little light from the high window that admitted some of the fire’s glare.

  “Skoll,” he said gently.

  There was a snort, a rush of animal strength, a collision that threw Durell back against the stone wall. He smelled the blood and sweat on the tortured man and fought off the great bearlike arms that tried to strangle him.

  “It’s me. Cajun. It’s all right, Cesar.”

  “Eh?”

  “We thought you were dead.”

  The Siberian’s weight was still enormous, pinning him to the wall. Durell did not want to use force on the man in any way. “Let up. I’ve come to get you out.”

  “What is happening? They thought they killed me, the devils. That Kubischev did his damnedest to strip me to the bone.” The Russian’s breath went in and out like a great wheezing bellows. “Da. Da. You are the Cajun. You have a gun? What started the fire?”

  “Wells did that. It’s a long story. Come on, we’re getting out of here.”

  “Da. Good. My feet—they are in bad shape—very burned. My fingernails—three pulled out.” There was a spitting sound in the dark. “Also three good teeth. For no reason. Kubischev knew I would tell nothing, nothing at all. I—” He began to spit blood again and dropped his arms, stood swaying. His bald head was outlined against the small cell window. His face was a dar
k mask, thrust forward angrily to flare out of slitted, puffed eyes. “Da. We will go.”

  “Can you walk?”

  “I will walk. I told you about Siberia, when I was a boy. I will do anything. I want Andrei Kubischev.”

  A voice behind them said, “You have him, Colonel.”

  Light jumped at them from the torch held in the defector’s hand. Kubischev looked enormous behind it, a menacing shadow that blocked their escape from the cell. In his right hand he held a long-barreled pistol, like a Luger. He loomed alone, with no one behind him in the corridor. Everything about his shape and manner implied tremendous confidence and arrogance.

  “I see that you survived, Durell,” the Russian said. “I told Dr. Sinn that you would. I warned him. I told him you would kill Wells and come back to kill him. And now you have set everything on fire. I warned him about you.”

  “Where is Dr. Sinn now?”

  “You will never find him. Never see him again. He has his ways. He cannot be destroyed, that one.”

  Skoll growled. “You scum, you traitor, you sold yourself to that spawn of hell.”

  Kubischev laughed. “Save your breath, Colonel. It will be your last, this time. You are a hard one to kill, I see. I shall make certain of it myself, now.”

  Durell was aware of Skoll shambling forward, his arms swinging like a great ape. He was a bit to the left. He needed no other signal. They jumped Kubischev together, with Skoll roaring, “He’s mine! Leave him to me, Cajun!” Kubischev’s gun roared, echoing like thunder in the narrow underground passage. He fired again as he went down under their combined weight, struggling. He suddenly screamed as Skoll’s massive paws caught at his throat. Durell rolled free to retrieve his AK-47. Acrid smoke drifted down the corridor. In an exhibition of tremendous strength, Skoll dragged Kubischev to his feet, picked him up bodily, and hurled him against the stone cell wall. His curses in Russian came in an endless stream as his naked body pounded again and again at the other man.