Sonic Slave

by Paul Kenyon

  When he finished, he was panting. He swayed and almost fell, steadying himself by leaning against the sturdy flanks of the stallion. He looked up at her.

  "Who are you?" he demanded.

  She opened her mouth to reply, when there was a groan from the other man. The man she'd saved looked around at his companion. It was a sickening sight. He had no eyes, just two oozing pits, and there was a great gaping hole in his cheek where his teeth and jawbone showed through. He hadn't been in great shape to start with, either. His leg was infected and suppurating, the pus staining his trouser leg, and there was a crude crutch lying beside him. The man who'd been standing off the Emir's falcons must have half-carried him all this way.

  "Give me a knife, woman, if you have one!" the lean wiry man said. "And for the love of Allah, be quick about it!"

  You had to follow your instincts. Silently she handed over the hunting knife from her saddle.

  He took it and knelt beside the other man.

  "Courage, Aziz," he said with a sob.

  "Beyohgahni!" the mutilated man moaned. "It hurts!"

  The other bent over and kissed his companion, in the Arab custom, on the mouth. Or where the mouth had been. Then with a quick, deft stroke, he cut the man's throat. There was barely a twitch as the man died.

  The other looked up at Penelope, tears streaming down his face. "Aziz was a friend of mine," he said. "I couldn't leave him for the dogs and the hyenas." He looked at the bloody knife in his hand, then, speculatively at Penelope. He wiped off the knife and tucked it in his waistband.

  "You're the Baroness Penelope St. John-Orsini," he said accusingly.

  "And how did you know that?" she said.

  "One of my agents identified you at the airport. They picked him up immediately afterward. Then, somehow, they got onto me, too. I've been rotting in the Emir's dungeon since you arrived. Have you been having fun on this hunt?"

  "Not much," she said.

  "Why is an American in Ghazal at this moment? Were you sent here to help the Emir flush us out?"

  "Who's 'us'?"

  His dark eyes flashed. "It's no secret now. The GFP."

  More initials. "And what's the GFP?" she said.

  "The Ghazali Freedom Party," he said, with more than a touch of pride.

  "Are you allied with PFLOAG?"

  His lips curled in contempt. "PFLOAG! A gang of terrorist fanatics who are trying to sell Islam to the Chinese communists!"

  "And aren't the GFP terrorist fanatics?"

  He laughed. A sense of humor was rare in his circles, and Penelope studied the lean, intense face more closely.

  "Some call us that," he said. "I'd rather call us patriots. We want to get rid of the Emir and his gang and bring justice to the people. Our aim is a constitutional monarchy."

  Penelope raised her eyebrows. "And who's your candidate for king?"

  He became evasive. "There are a number of sheiks and chieftains who would be acceptable to the people."

  "You speak good English."

  "I was educated at Sandhurst."

  "The Royal Military College! My! What's your name?"

  His eyes flashed again. "Call me Amar."

  They both heard it at the same time. Penelope lifted her head and there was the high-pitched, hysterical sound of salukis on a trail.

  "Well, Amar, your time's running out," she said. The big horse quivered beneath her. He knew what the sounds meant.

  He shot her a defiant look. "Stay, woman, and watch." He put his hand on the hilt of the knife and looked at her speculatively. Penelope knew he was trying to decide if a quick leap would pull her out of the saddle and get him into it. But his ordeal had left him in poor condition. He shrugged, and turned to go — to try to put a little more distance between himself and the dogs.

  "Amar!" she said.

  He looked at her quizzically.

  "Get in the saddle."

  He sprang up behind her without a word, his fingers light on her waist. The white stallion took his weight beautifully, not flinching. That was reassuring to Penelope. She trusted El Fahda's instincts as she trusted her own. There was a dangerous man riding behind her, carrying a knife that he'd just used to kill a friend of his. It didn't worry her at all.

  "Can he outrun salukis, with my extra weight?" Amar said.

  "This horse can," she said.

  "By the Prophet, I believe it."

  The big Arabian began to move forward, in long, easy strides. He took his time getting up to speed. He worked his way through a trot and a canter to a headlong three-beat gallop. Penelope laughed with the sheer joy of speed. Behind her, Amar laughed too.

  "Where are you taking me?" he said.

  "I'll leave you at the border," she said.

  "Ah, yes. Sheik Hamad is no friend of the Emir."

  "I don't think he likes revolutionaries much, either," she said.

  He laughed again. "No, he doesn't."

  The border was only fifteen miles away. She left him at the foot of a low, sandy hillock, where a few straggly bushes and acacia trees had sent roots into the unpromising soil. An endless gravel plain stretched before him. Far off there was the smoke of a human settlement.

  She gave him her canteen. "Will you make it?" she said.

  "I'll make it," he said grimly.

  10

  They were waiting for her near the place where she'd netted the falcons.

  They swooped from behind a dune, whooping and screaming, firing their antique rifles into the air. There were five of them: Sheik Zakar on his black mare and four of his black-robed Bedouins on camels.

  She reined in El Fahda and waited. It was all she could do, with blanks in her Weatherby hunting rifle. El Fahda could outrun their animals. But he couldn't outrun their bullets.

  Zakar rode up to her, drew back his arm and slapped her across the face. It was a violent blow that set her head ringing.

  "Whore!" he spat. "Traitor! We saw you take the man on your horse!"

  The Bedouins looked on, grinning. One of them had something the shape of a laundry bag dangling from his saddle pommel. In it were the carcasses of the Emir's falcons in Penelope's silver web.

  "What are you going to do?" she said.

  He cuffed her on the ear. "Silence!"

  She stared him directly in the face. "I said what are you going to do?"

  Zakar looked startled, but he said, "I will take you back to the Emir and tell him what I have seen. When he sees that you have killed his birds — his beautiful white Hakim — he will think of some way to punish you. He will think very hard, woman. Your pain will be a legend in Ghazal for a thousand years."

  "Then you don't intend to kill me yourself?"

  He looked genuinely shocked. "To punish you is the Emir's right."

  The Bedouins were leaning across their camels, whispering among themselves. One of them turned and opened his lips, showing rotten teeth. "Ana awiz ahrusah," he said. The others nodded assent.

  Zakar licked his lips. "A good idea," he said. "The barefaced whore shall be used as a whore."

  "A little gang rape first, is it?" Penelope said contemptuously.

  Three of the Bedouins were already sliding eagerly from their camels while the fourth remained in the saddle, his rifle balanced on one knee.

  "Get down," Sheik Zakar said.

  Penelope dismounted and handed her reins to Zakar. He moved off a little way with the two horses.

  "Aren't you joining the fun?" Penelope said, curling her lip.

  "You are unclean," he said pompously. "Like a left hand."

  "And you are unmanly," she said. "But for your right hand."

  His nostrils flared, but he stayed where he was. It wasn't going to work. He wasn't going to get mad enough for her to get him off his horse without his rifle.

  The Bedouins had had a little conference about who was first, and now they were approaching her from three sides. Two were going to hold her, evidently. The third was knotting his black robes up around his wa
ist, the way Arabs did when they went wading, even in the presence of women. His tool stood like a greasy bone straight out from his shaved groin. One of his friends made a jocular remark, and all three of them grinned.

  "Istanani!" Penelope said.

  They looked at her in surprise. Rape victims were supposed to be scared. Or resigned. They weren't supposed to stand there smiling at you and unbuttoning their own clothes. But mahlesh, it was well known that all Western women were immoral.

  She removed her riding jacket and tossed it to the sand. They stood, looking a little disappointed, while she unbuttoned her shirt. It would have been more fun to rip it off. But their eyes brightened when she slipped her right arm out of the sleeve and the right cup of her brassiere popped into view.

  They were still staring at her right breast when her hand slipped under the shirt at the left to reach into the bra holster under the armpit.

  The little golden gun was out in a blurred streak, pointing at the Arab at her left, making a sharp little snapping sound. A neat little hole appeared in the center of his headband, and a look of rage appeared on his face.

  In the same instant that she'd fired, her right foot in its leather riding boot was shooting upward, straight at the middle Bedouin's shaved fork, the pointed toe mashing his testicles into the body cavity. He didn't even have time to scream. He was dead of shock even before the man she'd shot in the head had collapsed.

  But the third Bedouin had moved without thinking, his desert instincts taking over. He'd leaped across from her right, both hands going for her wrist. She was a little off balance. Her foot was trapped for a fraction of a second inside the pulverized ruin of the middle man's groin before she pulled it loose with a horrid squish. By that time the little automatic had gone spinning, falling into the sand ten feet away.

  He smelled goatish and rancid, and he was terribly strong. She let him play with her wrist a while before it occurred to him to grab her elsewhere. It was her other wrist he chose. She got his wrists in a trapeze artist's grip and flung herself on her back, pulling him down with her.

  He grunted in surprise, and both her feet were tucked up under her, the heels of the riding boots catching him in the solar plexus, pitching him headfirst into the sand behind her. His billowing black robes eclipsed the sun for a moment, and then he was choking on sand and trying to get up. Before he could, she was on top of him, her right hand raised in the terrible killing blow they'd taught her at the secret school in Maryland. It came down like an ax blade, outside edge rigid and hard, smashing into his larynx and crushing into his spine.

  A shot whistled past her head. It was the Bedouin who'd stayed on his camel. Desert Arabs didn't usually miss at this range, but he must have been excited. He was struggling with the bolt of his antique rifle, trying to get another cartridge into the chamber. Her senses were alive; that peculiar slow-motion clarity that came on her in times of stress had taken over. There was all the time in the world to watch him tugging at the bolt, to glance back over her shoulder and see that Zakar still hadn't made up his mind what to do, and slip her long fingers through the slit in the leg of her jodhpurs.

  She was running toward the startled camel, the Spinneret in her hand, squeezing the plastic bulb. The nozzle shot its fine spray, and there was a silvery puff in the air, light as gossamer. It solidified instantly into a spider's web that settled over the Bedouin's shoulders. She was scrabbling up the camel's side, trying to avoid its hooves and its teeth now, one hand on the oversize pommel, the other tugging her upward by the rope trappings. The rifle tumbled past her before she could get her hands on it, but she wasted no time worrying about it. She was astride the camel's neck somehow, facing backward, her bottom nestled firmly in the U-shaped hollow between neck and shoulders, giving her leverage. She was staring upward into a terrified face that peered through a silver net. The man's bare foot was in front of her, gripping the base of the pommel between the toes, Bedouin-fashion. She grasped the ankle, and with the other hand got him by the cartridge belt where it passed over his shoulder. With a mighty heave, she lifted him two feet off the saddle and broke his back over the camel's hump.

  Zakar had recovered. She could see the terrible muzzle of his rifle pointed straight at her, and there was nothing to do except ride directly at it. His eyes looked like death.

  She kicked the camel and yelled. It pawed the sand, and arched its long neck around to try to bite her. She rapped it sharply on the nose and tugged the head around by the rope in its nostrils. There still hadn't been a shot. Zakar was taking his time. He knew he couldn't miss. The camel decided she was boss and started to run. She thundered across the sands to where Zakar sat astride his black mare, the reins of her white stallion draped over his arm. She tried to ride low, behind the protection of the camel's neck, but the mangy beast had its own head low, thrust straight forward to run.

  Twenty feet more! Fifteen! Ten! Now! She gathered herself to spring, seeing the chrome of the rifle wink at her, the barrel unwavering, Zakar's finger tightening on the trigger. The last moment of her life! There was a brief twinge of regret for all she was going to miss.

  And then, all at once, there was a shot, and a trumpetlike snort from the white stallion and a whinny from the mare, and the bullet had gone past her, and she was still alive.

  El Fahda had knocked the sheik off his aim, rearing and trying to mount the black mare. She must have been at the very beginning of her estrous cycle — detectable only to the keen nostrils of the stallion. Otherwise, Zakar would never have ridden her today. The close presence of the stallion must have teased the mare all the way into heat.

  El Fahda was rearing and neighing, and Zakar was trying to stay in the saddle, and Penelope was launching herself from the camel's towering hump straight down on top of Zakar.

  She pulled him out of the saddle, and they both fell into a pile of sand. The old man was tough and wiry after a lifetime in the saddle, twisting under her like a crocodile. He was trying for the knife in his belt. He got it in his hand while she was still reaching for his throat. Now his forearm was going to whip across from the hinge at the elbow and that razor edge was going to lop off both her hands at the wrist. She jerked her hands back, like a child playing a slapping game, and the sharp blade sliced into Zakar's own shoulder. Blood spurted. He stared at it stupidly, and she took the knife gently out of his hand.

  "Inshallah," she said, cutting his throat.

  The eyes glazed, still unbelieving. It couldn't be happening, to be killed by a woman.

  She got to her feet, suddenly weary. There was blood on her arms and shoulders, spots on her bra. She scrubbed herself with handfuls of sand, then brushed off her hands.

  She looked around at the noises. The big white stallion had mounted the black mare. She was standing motionless and docile. El Fahda pounded away like a giant steam engine.

  "Enjoy yourself, old fellow," she said. "You deserve it."

  She found her shirt and riding habit and put them back on. The four bodies were sprawled in the sand. The camels had all run off, including the one carrying the evidence of the netted birds. She shrugged. There was nothing she could do about it.

  She considered the rest of the evidence. Four bodies, one with a bullet from a .22 in the forehead. There were no .22s in the hunting party. She found one of the antique rifles in the sand and fired a shot at medium range into the hole that her bullet had left. The dead head twitched, and the forehead was suddenly a mess. It was going to be hard to find her own bullet inside that skull, even if it occurred to somebody to look.

  She looked over her shoulder. The shots were going to bring members of the hunting party in this direction sooner or later. She had to work fast now.

  With El Fahda's help, she dragged the bodies across the sands to where Amar and his friend had been fending off the Emir's falcons. The big stallion was through with the mare for the time being. He gave Penelope an affectionate nip in the shoulder while she tied the rope to the bodies.

  Th
e hyenas were already at work at Amar's friend. There were two big, bold ones tearing pieces of meat off the body. They looked up at her and continued feeding. She felt an overwhelming revulsion. The filthy creatures stank, even from a distance of fifty feet. There were a couple more, a little way off. One of them darted toward the body of the dead GFP guerrilla and ran away carrying most of an arm.

  They were big creatures, bigger than Siberian wolves, weighing a good two hundred and fifty pounds apiece.

  They were the color of dirty ashes, with darker stripes, their doglike heads held low between the shoulders and their tails tucked between their legs. The back legs looked weak and stunted, giving them a cringing posture, but the jaws were powerful. She'd seen that one quick snap that severed the body's arm, bone and all. She shivered. She was glad she was carrying Zakar's hunting rifle. The hyenas were cautious enough to be afraid of it.

  She shouted and waved her arms, but they refused to be driven off. In the end she had to shoot one of them. The other hyenas backed off a little, waiting. They were good at waiting.

  She dragged the four bodies down to what was left of Amar's friend. The hyenas became excited, and began to make their idiot laughing noises. They tried to edge forward, and she had to fire a couple of shots in the air to discourage them.

  She tossed one of the antique rifles at the body of Amar's friend, about where the arm would have been. It was the best she could do. It raised the possibility that the two guerrillas had somehow acquired weapons, that one of them had got away with the help of friends in the desert, that they'd managed to kill Zakar and the four Bedouins. The evidence of the slashed throat, the crushed larynx, the ruined testicles, would be covered up by the hyenas.

  She'd barely taken a dozen steps toward her horse when the hyenas were swarming over the new bodies, snuffling and grunting as they snatched at the flesh. There was a yipping sound over the next ridge, and there were another couple of hyenas, running with their crouching gait toward the feast.

  Penelope rode away, dragging a long piece of desert brush behind her to wipe out El Fahda's hoofprints. She made a wide circle, miles long. By the time she rode into the Emir's hunting camp, she was approaching from due south.