Cliff Jackson had picked up the folded heliohopper and was now carrying it easily.
Guémama looked at the device and blinked.
Crawford refrained from laughing at his commander of irregulars. “It is not a kambu device. My people deal not in magic. It is but one of the many of the things the new ways bring. One day, Guémama,” Homer’s face remained expressionless, “perhaps you will fly thus.”
The teguelmoust hid the other’s blanch.
In the tent, Homer turned to the Bahaman, motioned to what seating arrangements were available.
Isobel said, “I’ll get some coffee.”
Cliff blurted, “Holy Mackerel, if Donaldson, here, can drop in on us out of a clear sky, what keeps anybody else from doing it? Somebody with a couple of neopalm bombs in the way of calling cards.”
The dried up little man grimaced in his equivalent of a grin and said, “Hold it, you chaps. I want to notify the others.”
“The others? What others?” Crawford said.
Donaldson ignored him for a moment, unslung the small bag he carried over one shoulder and dipped into it for a tiny, two-way radio. He pressed the buzzer button, then held it up to his mouth. “Jack, Jimmy, Dave. Here we are. Took donkey’s years, but I found them. You chaps zero-in here.” He left the device on and set it to one side, then yawned and settled himself to the rug-covered ground, crosslegged, Dogon style.
Homer Crawford, even as he sat down himself on a footlocker, in lieu of a chair, rapped, “How did you find us? Who did you just radio? Where’d you come from?”
“I say, hold it,” Donaldson chuckled sourly. “First of all, I’ve come to join up. I thought as far back as that time we co-operated in quelling the riots in Mopti that you ought to do this—proclaim yourself El Hassan. When I heard you’d taken the step, I came to join up.”
“Oh, great,” Cliff said. “What took you so long? We hardly get here, to our ultra-secret hideout, than here you are.”
Isobel came with the coffee and handed it around, silently. Then she, too, settled to the rug which covered the sand of the floor.
Rex Donaldson turned to Cliff and there was a wrinkle of amusement in the older man’s eyes. “I took so long, because I needed the time to recruit a few other chaps I knew would stand with us.”
Crawford rapped, “That’s who you just radioed?”
“Of course, old boy. I’d hardly bring the opposition down on us, would I?”
“Where are they?”
“In a couple of hovercraft, similar to your own, possibly twenty kilometers to the southwest.”
“You still haven’t told us how you found us?”
The little man shrugged. “After tendering my resignation to Sir Winton, I considered the possibilities, which narrowed down very quickly when I heard the Arab Legion had taken Tamanrasset.”
“Why?” Isobel said.
Donaldson shot a glance at her. “Because, my dear, unless El Hassan is able to retake Tamanrasset, his movement has come a cropper.” He turned his eyes back to Crawford, who was nervously running his hand through his hair. “I knew you had done considerable work in this area, so your whereabouts became obvious seeing that Tamanrasset is in Tuareg country. It was simply a matter of finding what Tuareg encampment was your base, and since your quickest manner of gathering support would be to swing the Amenokal to your banner, I headed for his usual encampment this time of year.”
Cliff looked at Homer Crawford. “If Rex found us so easily, so will anybody else.”
Isobel put in. “Not necessarily. Mr. Donaldson has information that most of El Hassan’s opponents wouldn’t.”
* * * *
Homer came to his feet unhappily and began pacing. “No, Isobel. Ostrander, for instance, has all the dope Rex has and is just as capable of working it through to a conclusion. It takes no great insight to realize El Hassan has to either put up or shut up when it comes to Tamanrasset. That’s possibly why some of the other elements interested in North Africa have so far refrained from action against the Arab Union. They want to see what El Hassan is going to do—find out just what he has on the ball.”
Rex Donaldson looked at him interestedly, “And? What are your plans?”
Homer Crawford’s face worked. “My plans right at present are to stay alive, and you finding me so easily isn’t heartening. However, it brings to mind some other problems which need solving, too.”
The rest of them fell silent, looking at him. His usual casual humor had dropped away, and his personality gripped them.
He stopped his pacing, and frowned down at them.
“El Hassan is going to have to remain on the move. Always. There can be no capital city, no definite base, and it’s going to be a poor idea to sleep twice in the same place.” He shook his head emphatically as though to deny rebuttal, which they hadn’t actually made. “El Hassan’s enemies mustn’t know his location within twenty miles.”
“Twenty miles!” Cliff blurted.
Crawford stared at him, but unseeingly. “Yes. At least half a dozen of our opponents possess nuclear weapons.”
Donaldson demured, sourly. “A nuclear weapon hasn’t been exploded for donkey’s years and—”
“Of course not,” Homer snapped. “Nor would anyone dare, anywhere else except in the wastes of the Sahara. A nuclear explosion in the Ahaggar would not go undetected and a controversy might go up in the Reunited Nations. But who could prove who had done it? And who, actually, would care if in the explosion a common foe of all was eliminated? But let the Arab Union, or possibly the Soviet Complex, or even others, learn definitely where El Hassan is and a bomb could well devastate twenty square miles seeking him out.” Crawford shook his head. “No, we’ve simply got to keep on the move.”
Donaldson said, even as he nodded agreement, “And what other problems were you talking about?”
“Oh?” Homer said. “Well, keeping on the move will serve to add mystery to the El Hassan legend. It isn’t good for this Tuareg encampment, for instance, to see too much of El Hassan. A leader claiming domination of half a continent looks small potatoes in a desert camp of a few score tents. On the move, showing up here, there, the other place, for only a day or two at a time, is another proposition.”
He thought a moment. “Remember DeGaulle?”
“How could we forget?” Rex Donaldson said wryly.
“He had one angle that couldn’t be more correct. He said a leader had to keep remote, ever mysterious. He can’t afford to have real intimates. Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin. None of them had a real friend to their name. The nearest to friends that Adolph the Aryan ever had, his old comrades of the beerhall days, such as Rhoem, he butchered in the blood purge. And Stalin? He managed to do away with every Old Bolshevik he knew in the days before the Party came to power.”
Cliff was staring at him. “Hey,” he said. “The one other thing one of these mystical leader types needs is a belief in his own destiny. To the point of clobbering all his intimates if he thinks they stand in his way.”
Homer broke into a sudden short laugh. “Any qualms, Cliff?”
Cliff growled, “I don’t know. This dream of yours is growing. Where it might end—I don’t know.”
As they were talking the cries of Ul-Ul-Ul-Allah Akbar! had broken out again.
“Heavens to Betsy,” Isobel said. “Another contingent of camelmen?”
* * * *
But this time the newcomers were three in number and rode in air cushion hover-lorries, the twins of that used by Homer Crawford.
Rex Donaldson brought them up to the tent, saying, “I didn’t think you chaps were quite so close.”
Homer, Cliff and Isobel faced the new recruits. The three were dressed in khaki bushshirts, shorts and heavy walking shoes—British style. Two were so obviously relatives that they could have been twins except for an age discrepancy of two or three years. They were smaller in stature than the Americans present, almost chunky, but their faces held education and cultivation. The
third was slight of build, almost as wiry as Rex Donaldson, and seemed ever at ease.
The small, bent Bahaman made introductions. “Gentlemen, let me present El Hassan—Homer Crawford to you—formerly of the Reunited Nations African Development Project, formerly of the United States of the Americas.” His face twisted in his sour grimace of a grin. “Now running for the office of tyrant of North Africa.”
“And these are two of his original and most trusted adherents, Isobel Cunningham and Cliff Jackson.” Donaldson turned to the newcomers. “John and James Peters—that’s Jack and Jimmy, of course—recently colleagues of mine with the African Department of the Commonwealth, working largely in the Nigeria area.”
Homer shook hands, grinning. “You’re a long way from home.”
“Farther than that,” the one labeled Jack said without a smile changing the seriousness of his face. “We’re originally from Trinidad.”
Donaldson said, “And this is David Moroka, late of South Africa.”
The wiry South African said easily, “Not so very late. In fact, I haven’t seen Jo-burg since I was a boy.”
He was shaking hands with Isobel now. “Jo-burg?” she said.
“Johannesburg,” he translated. “I got out by the skin of my teeth during the troubles in the 1950s.”
“You sound like an American,” Cliff said when it was his turn to shake.
“Educated in the States,” Moroka said. “Best thing that ever happened to me was to be kicked out of the land of my birth.”
Homer made a sweeping gesture at the floor and the few articles of furniture the tent contained that could be improvised as chairs. “I’m surprised you’re up here instead of in your own neck of the woods,” he said to the South African.
Moroka shrugged. “I was considering heading south when I ran into Jimmy and Jack, here. They’d already got the word on the El Hassan movement from Rex. Their arguments made sense to me.”
Eyes went to the brothers from Trinidad and Jack Peters took over the position of spokesman. He said, seriously, as though trying to convince the others, “North Africa is the starting point, the beginning. Given El Hassan’s success in uniting North Africa, the central areas and later even the south will fall into line. Perhaps one day there will be a union of all Africa.”
“Or at least a strong confederation,” Jimmy Peters added.
Homer nodded thoughtfully. “Perhaps. But we can’t look that far forward now.” He looked from one of the newcomers to the other. “I don’t know to what extent you fellows understand what the rest of us have set out to accomplish but I suppose if you’ve been with Rex for the past week, you have a fairly clear idea.”
“I believe so,” Jack nodded, straight-faced.
Homer Crawford said slowly, “I don’t want to give you the wrong idea. If you join up, you’ll find it’s no parade. Our chances were slim to begin, and we’ve had some setbacks. As you’ve probably heard, the Arab Union has stolen a march on us. And from what we can get on the radio, we have thus far to pick up a single adherent among the world powers.”
“Powers?” Cliff snorted. “We haven’t got a nation the size of Monaco on our side.”
Moroka shot a quick glance at the big Californian.
Isobel caught it and laughed. “Cliff’s a perpetual sourpuss,” she said. “However, he’s been in since the first.”
The South African looked at her in turn. “We were hardly prepared to find a beautiful American girl in the Great Erg,” he said.
Something about his voice caused her to flush. “We’ve all caught Homer’s dream,” she said, almost defensively.
* * * *
David Moroka flung to his feet, viper fast, and dashed toward Homer Crawford, his hands extended.
Automatically, Cliff Jackson stuck forward a foot in an attempt to trip him—and missed.
The South African, moving with blurring speed, grasped the unsuspecting Crawford by the right hand and arm, swung with fantastic speed and sent the American sprawling to the far side of the tent.
Homer Crawford, old in rough and tumble, was already rolling out. Before the inertia of his fall had given way, his right hand, only a split second before in the grip of the other, was fumbling for the 9 mm Noiseless holstered at his belt.
Rex Donaldson, a small handgun magically in his hand, was standing, half crouched on his thin, bent legs. The two brothers from Trinidad hadn’t moved, their eyes bugging.
Moroka was spinning with the momentum of the sudden attack he’d made on his new chief. Now there was a gun in his own hand and he was darting for the tent opening.
Cliff yelled indignantly, “Stop him!”
Isobel, on her feet by now, both hands to her mouth, was staring at the goatskin tent covering, against which, a moment earlier, Crawford had been gently leaning his back as he talked.
There was a vicious slash in the leather and even as she pointed, the razor-sharp arm dagger’s blade disappeared. There was the sound of running feet outside the tent.
Homer Crawford had assimilated the situation before the rest. He, too, was darting for the tent entrance, only feet behind Moroka.
Donaldson followed, muttering bitterly under his breath, his face twisted more as though in distaste than in fighting anger.
Cliff, too, finally saw light and dashed after the others, leaving only Isobel and the Peters brothers. They heard the muffled coughing of a silenced gun, twice, thrice and then half a dozen times, blurting together in automatic fire.
Homer Crawford shuffled through the sand on an awkward run, rounding the tent, weapon in hand.
There was a native on the ground making final spasmatic muscular movements in his death throes, and not more than three feet from him, coolly, David Moroka sat, bracing his elbows on his knees and aiming, two-handed, as his gun emptied itself.
Crawford brought his own gun up, seeking the target, and clipping at the same time, “We want him alive—”
It was too late. Two hundred feet beyond, a running tribesman, long arm dagger still in hand, stumbled, ran another three or four feet with hesitant steps, and then collapsed.
Moroka said, “Too late, Crawford. He would have got away.” The South African started to his feet, brushing sand from his khaki bush shorts.
The others were beginning to come up and from the Tuareg encampment a rush of Guémama’s men started in their direction.
Crawford said unhappily, looking down at the dead native at their feet, “I hate to see unnecessary killing.”
Moroka looked at him questioningly. “Unnecessary? Another split second and his knife would have been in your gizzard. What do you want to give him, another chance?”
Crawford said uncomfortably, “Thanks, Dave, anyway. That was quick thinking.”
“Thank God,” Donaldson said, coming up, his wrinkled face scowling unhappily, first at the dead man at their feet, and then at the one almost a hundred yards away. “Are these local men? Where were your bodyguards?”
Cliff Jackson skidded to a halt, after rounding the tent. He’d heard only the last words. “What bodyguards?” he said.
Moroka looked at Crawford accusingly. “El Hassan,” he said. “Leader of all North Africa. And you haven’t even got around to bodyguards? Do you fellows think you’re playing children’s games? Gentlemen, I assure you, the chips are down.”
VI
El Hassan’s Tuaregs were on the move. After half a century and more of relative peace the Apaches of the Sahara, the Sons of Shaitan and the Forgotten of Allah were again disappearing into the ergs to emerge here, there, and ghostlike to disappear again. They faded in and faded away again, and even in their absence dominated all.
El Hassan was on the move, as all men by now knew, and he, who was not for the amalgamation of all North Africa, was judged against him. And who, in the Sahara, could afford to be against El Hassan when his Tuaregs were everywhere?
Refugees poured into Tamanrasset for the security of Arab Legion arms, or into In Salah and Regga
n to the north, or Agades and Zinder to the south. Refugees who had already taken their stand with the Arab Union and Pan-Islam. Refugees who were men of property and would know more of this El Hassan before risking their wealth. Refugees who took no stand, but dreaded those who drank the milk of war, no matter the cause for which they fought. Refugees who fled simply because others fled, for terror is a most contagious disease.
Colonel Midan Ibrahim of the crack motorized units of the Arab Legion which occupied Tamanrasset, was fuming. His task was a double one. First, to hold Tamanrasset and its former French stronghold Fort Laperrine; second, to keep open his lines of communication with Ghademès and Ghat, in Arab Union dominated Libya. To hold them until further steps were decided upon by his superiors in Cairo and the Near East—whatever these steps might be. Colonel Midan Ibrahim was too low in the Arab Union hierarchy to be in on such privy matters.
His original efforts, in pushing across the Sahara from Ghademès and Ghat, had been no more than desert maneuvers. There had been no force other than nature’s to say him nay. The Reunited Nations was an organization composed possibly of great powers, but in supposedly acting in unison they became a shrieking set of hair-tearing women; the whole being less than any of its individual parts. And El Hassan? No more than a rumor. In fact, an asset because this supposed mystery man of the desert, bent on uniting all North Africa under his domination, gave the Arab Union, its alibi for stepping in with Colonel Ibrahim’s men.
Yes, the original efforts had been but a drill. But now his Arab Legion troopers were beginning to face reality. The supply trucks, coming down under convoy from Ghademès, reported the water source at Ohanet destroyed. The major well would take a week or more to repair. Who had committed the sabotage? Some said the Tuareg, some said local followers of El Hassan, others, desert tribesmen resentful of both the Arab Union and El Hassan.
One of his routine patrols, feeling out toward Meniet to the north, had suddenly dropped radio communication, almost in mid-sentence. A relieving patrol had thus far found nothing, the armored car’s tracks covered over by the sands.
The Mack Reynolds Megapack Page 80
