Rhodesia

by Nick Carter

  "Yes. This used to be the last patrol post when they came in on horses. Still used. There's a village about five miles away keeps an eye on it. That's one trouble with my people. So damn law-abiding and obedient."

  "Those are supposed to be virtues," Nick said as he unloaded the food box.

  "Not for a revolution," Ross said bitterly. "You should stay rough and mean until your rulers get civilized. When you mature and they stay barbaric — with all their tiled baths and mechanical toys — you're screwed. My people are infested with spies because they think it's the right thing to do. Run tell the policeman. They don't realize they're being robbed. They get kaffir beer and ghettos."

  "If you were all that mature," Nick said, "you wouldn't be in ghettos."

  Ross paused, looked puzzled. "Why?"

  "You wouldn't have bred like bugs. From four hundred thousand to four million, wasn't it? You could have beat the game with brains and birth control."

  "That's not so..." Ross paused. He knew there was a flaw in the idea somewhere but it hadn't been covered in his revolutionary reading.

  He was quiet as night fell. They hid the jeep, ate, and divided up the available quarters. They bathed gratefully in a wash house. Ross said the water was pure.

  The next morning they drove thirty miles, and the track ended at a deserted village, unlike the compound. It was falling to pieces. "Resettled," Ross said bitterly. "They were suspect because they wanted to stay independent."

  Nick looked at the jungle. "You know the trails? From here — we walk."

  Ross nodded. "I might make it alone."

  "Then well make it together. Feet were made before jeeps."

  Perhaps because of the dry weather, with the animals drawn to the remaining waterholes, the going was dry-misery instead of damp-horror. Nick fashioned head nets for all of them out of his packet, although Ross claimed he could get along without one. They camped the first night on a hillock that showed signs of recent occupancy. There were thatch shelters and firepits. "Guerrillas?" Nick asked.

  "Hunters usually."

  The night sounds were an uproar of roaring animals and screaming birds; crashing in the forest that sounded near. Ross assured them that most animals had learned by lethal experience to avoid the camp, but they didn't sound like it Just after midnight Nick was awakened by a soft voice coming from the door of his cabin. "Andy?"

  "Yes," he whispered.

  "I can't sleep." Ruth Crossman's voice.

  "Scared?"

  "I don't… think so."

  "Here..." He found her warm arm and drew her down on the stretched-hide bed. "You're lonely." He kissed her comfortingly. "You need a little cuddling after all the excitement"

  "I tell myself I like it." She snuggled against him.

  On the third day they came to a narrow road. They were in bundu brush country again, and the track had been hacked fairly straight Ross said, "It marks the edge of THB holdings. They patrol four times a day-or they used to."

  Nick said, "Can you take me in to where I can get a good look at the operation?"

  "I can, but it would be easier to circle and get away from here. We go into Zambia or out toward Salisbury. You can't accomplish anything against THB alone."

  "I want to see the operation. I want to know what's going on instead of getting all my information secondhand. Then maybe I can put real pressure on them."

  "Booty didn't tell me that, Grant. She told me you helped Pieter van Prez. Who are you? Why are you an enemy of THB? Do you know Mike Bor?"

  "I think I know Mike Bor. If I do and he's the man I think he is, he's a murdering tyrant."

  "I could have told you that. He's got a lot of my people in the concentration camps he calls compounds. Are you with the international police? The UN?"

  "No. And Ross — I don't know where you fit in."

  "I'm a patriot"

  "Like Pieter and Johnson?"

  Ross said sadly, "We see things differently. In every revolution there are many points of view."

  "Trust me to knock THB when I can?"

  "Come on."

  Several hours later they scrambled to the top of a miniature escarpment and Nick drew in his breath. He was looking at a mining empire. As far as he could see there were workings, camps, truck parks, warehouse complexes. A rail spur and a road came in from the southeast. Many of the operations had sturdy fences. The hut compounds, which seemed to stretch away endlessly in the clear sunlight, had high fences and watch-towers and guarded gate houses.

  Nick said, "Why not slip arms to your people in the compounds and take over the place?"

  "That's one of the points over which my group and Pieter's differ," Ross said sadly. "It might not work, anyway. You will find this hard to believe, but the colonial operation here over the years has made my people very law-abiding. They bend their heads and kiss the whips and polish their chains."

  "Only the rulers can break the law," Nick murmured.

  "That's right."

  "Where does Bor live and have his headquarters?"

  "Over that hill beyond the last shaft tower. He's got a beautiful place. Fenced and guarded. You won't get in."

  "I don't have to. I just want to see it so that I can report I've personally seen his private kingdom. Who lives with him? The servants must have talked."

  "Several Germans. Heinrich Muller is the one you're interested in, I imagine. Si Kalgan, a Chinese. And a number of men of different nationalities, but all criminals, I think He ships our ore and asbestos all over the world."

  Nick looked at the rugged black features and did not smile. Ross had known all along much more than he revealed. He shook a powerful hand. "Will you take the girls to Salisbury? Or direct them to some part of civilization?"

  "And you?"

  "I'll be all right. I'm going to get the whole picture and get out. I have a compass."

  "Why risk your life?"

  "I'm paid for it. I've got to do my job right"

  "I'll get the girls out tonight." Ross sighed. "I think you're taking too much of a risk. Good luck, Grant, if that's your name."

  Ross crept back down the hill to the hidden valley where they had left the girls. They were gone. Tracks told the story. They were overpowered by booted men. Whites. THB personnel, of course. A truck and a car had taken them away over the patrol road. Ross backtracked their own jungle trail and swore. The price of overconfidence. No wonder the pursuers in the truck and sedan had seemed slow. They had called in trackers and were behind them all the time, perhaps in touch with THB by radio.

  He looked sadly up at the far hills where "Andrew Grant" was now probably entering the mining kingdom; entering a beautifully baited trap.

  Chapter Nine

  Ross would have been astonished to see Nick at the moment. The mouse had crawled so quietly into the trap that no one knew it — yet. Nick had joined a group of white men in a locker room behind a messhall. When they had left he had appropriated a blue jacket and a yellow safety helmet He strolled through the hustle and bustle of the loading docks as if he had worked there all his life.

  He spent the afternoon nosing through the giant smelters, plodding past narrow-gauge trainloads of ore, looking purposeful as he went in and out of warehouses and office buildings. The natives didn't dare look at him or question him — the whites just weren't used to it. THB ran like a precision machine — no unauthorized person ever moved around inside.

  Judas' move helped. When the girls were brought to the villa he snarled, "Where are the two men?"

  The patrol team, which had been directed to the girls by radio, said they thought the jungle team had them. Herman Duzen, the volunteer leader of the jungle pursuers, went pale. He had been exhausted; had brought his group in for food and rest. He thought the patrol had scooped up all the quarry!

  Judas cursed, then sent all his security group out of the camp into the jungle and along the patrol roads. Inside, Nick did everything but punch a time clock. He saw trucks and rail cars loaded with ch
rome and asbestos, and he saw the wooden boxes move from the gold smelters to be buried under other loads while supervisors kept careful records.

  He talked with one, getting by with his German because the man was Austrian. "This the one for the Far East boat?" he asked.

  The man dutifully consulted his clipboard and waybills. "Nein. Genoa. Escort LeBeau." He turned away, efficient and busy.

  Nick found the communications center, a room full of clattering teletypes and gravel-toned radios. He obtained a blank from the operator and wrote a telegram to Roger Tillbourne, Rhodesian Railways. The blank was numbered, German Army style. No one would dare...

  The operator read the message: Next thirty days require ninety ore cars. Move only by Beyer-Garratt power under engineer Barnes. Signed, Granche.

  The operator was busy, too. He asked, "Railway wire. Free?"

  "Ja."

  Nick was near a truck park when the sirens went off like a bombing alert He climbed into the body of a giant dump truck. Peeping over the top he watched the search go on all day, finally concluding it was for him, although he did not know about the girls' capture.

  He found out about it after dark after he propped up the electrified fence around Judas' villa with sticks and crawled close to the lighted patio. In the screened enclosure nearest the house sat Mike Bor, Muller, and Si Kalgan. In a more distant enclosure, with a pool in the center, were Booty and Ruth and Janet, They were tied spread-eagled to the wire fencing, nude. A large male baboon paid them no attention as he munched on a green stalk.

  Nick shuddered, drew Wilhelmina, sighted on Bor, paused. The light was odd. Then he realized the three men were in a glass enclosure — an air-conditioned and certainly bullet-proof box! Nick backtracked swiftly. What a trap! Within a few minutes he saw two men move silently through the brush where he had stood. Herman Duzen was patrolling, determined to make up for his error.

  They were making a full circle of the house. Nick followed them, slipping from around his waist one of the pieces of plastic cord he let no one know he carried. They were pliable, with a break strength of over a ton.

  Herman — although Nick did not know his name — went first. He lagged to inspect the outer electric fence. He died without a vocal peep, in a short thrash of arms and legs that subsided in sixty seconds. His companion came back along the dark path. His end came as shortly. Nick bent over and was a little sick for a few seconds, a reaction he never revealed even to Hawk.

  Nick returned to his patch of shrubbery overlooking the glass bos and looked at it with a feeling of helplessness. The three men were laughing. Mike Bor pointed at the pool in the zoo enclosure where the naked girls hung like pitiful statues. The baboon had retreated to a tree. Something crawled out of the water. Nick shuddered. A crocodile. Hungry, probably. Janet Olson screamed.

  Nick ran for the enclosure, Bor and Muller and Kalgan stood up, Kalgan holding a long gun. Well — for the moment he couldn't hit them and they couldn't hit him. They were depending on the two men he had just eliminated. He put slugs from Wilhelmina precisely into each of the croc's eyes from a distance of forty feet.

  Mike Bor's heavily accented English roared from a loudspeaker. "Drop your gun, AXEman. You are surrounded."

  Nick ran back into the rank of landscaping and crouched. He had never felt so helpless. Bor wasn't far wrong. Muller was using a telephone. They'd have plenty of reinforcements here in a few minutes. The three men laughed in his direction. Far down the hill a vehicle's engine roared into life. Midler's lips moved mockingly. Nick ran away, for the first time in his career. He went away from the road and the house, letting them see him flee, hoping they would forget the girls for a moment because the victim could not see the bait.

  In the comfortably cool enclosure Bor chuckled. "See him run! It's the American all right. They're cowards when they know you have the power. Muller — send men around to the north."

  Muller barked into the phone. Then said, "Marzon is over there now with a squad. Hell run into them. And there are thirty men closing in from the outside road. Herman and the inner patrols will be behind him in a moment."

  Not quite. Herman and his squad chief were cooling under a baobab tree. Nick slipped past a three-man patrol and stopped when he saw the road. There were eight or nine men spread along it. One held a leashed dog. A man standing by a combat car was using a radio. Nick sighed and shoved a fuse into the block of plastique. Three of these, and nine bullets — and he'd start using rocks against an army. A portable searchlight probed.

  A small column of trucks growled up the incline from the north. The man with the radio turned, held it as if confused. Nick squinted. The man clinging to the side of the first truck was Ross! He dropped to the ground as Nick watched. The truck reached the command car and men came out of the truck's back. They were black! The command car's lights went out.

  A white man behind the radioman lifted a submachine gun. Nick put a bullet in his middle. At the shot — action exploded.

  It sounded like a small war. Orange tracers ripped the night. Nick watched the black men attack, flank, crawl, fire. They moved like soldiers with a purpose. The hard kind to stop. The whites broke, retreated, some were shot in the back. Nick yelled to Ross and the burly black ran to him. Ross carried an automatic shotgun. He said, "I thought you were dead by now."

  "Close to it."

  They moved into the glow of the trucks lights and Pieter van Prez joined them. The old man looked like a victorious general. He carried a small command set. He looked at Nick without emotion. "You've triggered something. A Rhodesian unit that was chasing us has gone around to join another one coming in from outside. Why?"

  "I sent a message to George Barnes. Tin's THB outfit is a bunch of international criminals. I figure they can't have all your politicos bought."

  Van Prez tapped his radio. "The native workers are breaking out of their compounds. The charges against THB will shake something up. But we've got to get out of here before the security boys arrive."

  "Give me a truck," Nick said. "They've got the girls up on the hill."

  "Trucks cost money," van Prez said thoughtfully. He looked at Ross. "Do we dare?"

  "I'll get you a new one or send you the price via Johnson," Nick exclaimed.

  "Give it to him," Ross said. He handed Nick the shotgun. "Send us the price of one of these."

  "It's a promise."

  Nick whipped the truck past wrecked vehicles and around bodies, got on the side hill road toward the villa and climbed as fast as the engine would roar. Across the valley clusters of lights glowed but they were minute beside the fires that were breaking out everywhere. Away off, at the main gate, tracer bullets snapped and twinkled and the sound of firing was heavy. It looked as if Mike Bor and company had lost their political connections — or couldn't reach them fast enough. His guards must have tried to stop the army column, and that did it.

  He rolled onto the plateau, circled the house. He saw the three men on the patio. They weren't laughing now. He drove straight at them.

  The heavy International was rolling at a good clip when it hit the wide-weave chain-link fence. The barrier was carried along with the charging truck in a ripping, tearing mélange of grinding wire, falling posts, and shrieking metal. Chaise longues and deck chairs flew like toys before the impact of the fence and the vehicle. Just before Nick crashed into the bullet-proof glass box that sheltered Bor, Muller, and Kalgan, the V of fencing — pushed ahead like a metal soundwave by the truck's nose — parted with a giant twang.

  Bor bolted toward the house and Nick watched Muller poise, holding a gun. The old man had guts or he was petrified. Kalgan's Oriental features were a mask of angry hate as he pulled at Muller and then the truck rammed the glass and everything vanished in a jolting shock of metal-to-glass. Nick braced against the wheel and firewall. Muller and Kalgan vanished, obscured by a sudden screen of fractured, splintered glass. The stuff bent, gave, and became opaque with a network of breaks.

  A cloud of
steam burst from the truck's fractured radiator. Nick struggled with his jammed door, knowing that Muller and Kalgan had gone through the exit door of the glass shelter and were following Bor into the main house. Finally he dropped the shotgun out the window and crawled out after it.

  The door to the house was swinging as he ran around the shelter and came to it — the truck and the trailing fence was a barrier to his right. He put one blast from the shotgun through its center and it ponged open. No one was waiting for him.

  Over the hiss of the truck's steaming radiator sounded a girl's terrified scream. He whirled, surprised that the lights stayed on — he had knocked down several outdoor fixtures — and hoping they'd go out. He was a good target if Muller and the others went to upper windows.

  Dashing to the fence that separated the patio from the 200 enclosure he found a gate and got through it. The baboon cringed in a corner, the crocodile's corpse quivered. He cut Booty's bonds with Hugo. "What's wrong here?" he snapped.

  "I don't know," she sobbed. "Janet screamed."

  He got her free, said, "Undo Ruth," and went to Janet. "You all right?"

  "Yes," she quavered, "a horrible big bug crawled up my leg."

  Nick unfastened her hands. "You've got guts."

  "Damn exciting tour."

  He picked up the shotgun. "Untie your own feet." He ran for the patio and the door to the house. He was searching the last of many rooms when George Barnes found him. The Rhodesian policeman said, "Hello. Bit of excitement? Got your word by Tillbourne. Clever."

  "Thanks. Bor and his crew have disappeared."

  "We'll get them. I do want to hear your story."

  "I haven't made it all up yet. Let's get out of here. This place may blow up any time." He carried blankets out to the girls.

  Nick was wrong. The villa glowed brightly as they drove down the hill. Barnes said, "All right, Grant. What happened?"

  "Mike Bor or THB must have thought I was business competition or something. I've had a lot of surprises. People attacked me, tried to abduct me. Annoyed my tour clients. Chased us all over the country. He was really violent near the last, so I made a pass at him with a truck."