The Omega Terror

by Nick Carter

  Djenina saw an irony in her words, since it was I who had said I did not want to face her. He grinned slightly at me, and then the smile dissolved. “All right, Carter. No more games. Do what you have to do.”

  Gabrielle looked at me quizzically. The orderly came over, studied me for a moment as if he did not trust me, then handed me the automatic. Gabrielle looked at me and I returned the look.

  “What is this, Nick?” she asked.

  “You don’t need to explain, Carter,” Djenina said harshly. “Just kill her.”

  Gabrielle’s mouth fell slightly open. “Mon dieu!” she breathed. Then she hauled off and slapped me hard across the face. “Go ahead, you bastard. Pull the trigger!” she hissed.

  Her reaction to the situation helped the credibility of the whole thing. The chauffeur laughed and dropped the level of his gun slightly.

  “All right, I will,” I said grimly. I winked at her. Before she had a chance to grasp the meaning of that gesture, I shoved her to the ground.

  In the same movement, I dropped into a crouch, whirled toward the chauffeur and squeezed the trigger of the big pistol. If the general had just been testing me, and the gun was empty, I was in big trouble. But the gun exploded in the clearing, roaring in our ears. The chauffeur was hit in the chest. He jumped straight back but didn’t fall His hand tightened in a reflex action over the submachine gun, and it began chattering in the night, spraying the area with lead.

  The general, meanwhile, had returned fire with his service pistol as soon as I shot the chauffeur. A slug ripped across my side, tearing flesh under my shirt and knocking me to the ground beside Gabrielle.

  It was probably fortunate that the general hit me. In the next split-second, the submachine gun sprayed the place where I had been crouching, chipping into the tree trunk behind us. The General and the orderly hit the ground too, as the big gun clattered in a wide circle, the chauffeur’s eyes glazed as the crimson stain brightened the front of his shirt. Bullets whined and spattered around us, but nobody was hit. Then the chauffeur fell onto his back and the firing was over.

  “Get behind the tree!” I yelled at Gabrielle.

  The general was aiming at me again and swearing violently under his breath. He was cursing himself, I figured for trusting me. But just as he was about to fire again, the orderly dived at me from my blind side and bowled me over.

  Luckily, I did not lose the gun. We rolled and thrashed on the ground, and I caught a glimpse of the general moving about, trying to get a shot at me. I slugged the orderly in the face, but he hung on to me desperately, grabbing at the gun in my hand. He smashed my hand back against the tree trunk, and my grip loosened on the pistol, but I didn’t lose it.

  Gabrielle had followed orders and crawled behind the tree. As Djenina found me in his sights again, she stood up quickly and hurled a chunk of dead wood at the general. She hit him on the shoulder, not hard enough to hurt him, but his attention was temporarily distracted.

  Djenina fired at Gabrielle, and I heard the slug chip into the wood of the tree trunk near her. Then she ducked back behind cover.

  Now Djenina turned the pistol toward me again, anger flaring in his eyes. He found me again in the sights as the orderly and I struggled for possession of the other gun. At that moment, I smashed my left fist into the orderly’s throat. He gasped and lost his balance. I twisted him between Djenina and myself just as Djenina fired once more.

  The gun roared, and the orderly’s eyes saucered. He gasped and blood spurted from the corner of his mouth. He slumped against me, dead.

  The general swore aloud again and then began to run toward the clipped hedges that surrounded us. I moved the body of the orderly off me, aimed after Djenina, and fired. But I missed. I could hear him crashing through a thicket, and then his footsteps echoed, on a gravel walk that led back to the palace.

  I put my hand at my side and came away with blood on it. The wound was just a flesh wound, but it burned like hell. I struggled to my feet, and Gabrielle was beside me.

  “Get to the Citrõen,” I told her. “And wait there for me.”

  I started after the general. By the time I got to the wide drive in front of the palace, Djenina was nowhere in sight. Then I heard the roar of the engine in the parked limousine nearby. I looked and saw the general behind the wheel. The big Rolls-Royce suddenly shot forward and came right at me.

  As the black limousine hurtled toward me, I aimed the pistol in my hand and fired. The shot shattered the windshield, but missed Djenina. I dived to the ground as the car roared past, grazing my thigh as it went.

  Djenina kept right on the circular drive and headed toward the road and the gate. I got up onto one knee, steadied my hand on my forearm, and aimed at the left rear tire. But the slug only dug up gravel beside it.

  I got up and ran after the car. I was hoping that Djenina would not find Gabrielle on the drive or at the gate. He would probably kill her if he did.

  I arrived at the gate a few moments later, holding my side and grimacing in pain. The limousine was just disappearing around a bend in the mountain road, the road we had come over earlier. I heard the Citrõen’s engine and saw Gabrielle backing the car out of the underbrush where we had parked it. I ran to her side of the car.

  “Move over!” I yelled.

  I climbed into the driver’s seat, strapped in, and roared off down the dirt road. In seconds I had shifted into high gear, and the car was hurtling along the bumpy bed of the road, throwing us around inside. We traveled for a couple of miles with no sight of the limousine, but we finally saw the red tail lights ahead of us.

  “There he is!” Gabrielle said tensely.

  “Yes,” I answered. My hand, which had touched the wound, was slippery on the steering wheel. I pushed the accelerator down all the way and the car shot forward, veering crazily around a sharp curve the general had just navigated.

  In another couple of minutes, we had pulled to within twenty yards of the limousine, which could not corner like the Citrõen. On our right was a rise of rocky abutment, and on our left was a steep drop-off to a lower road. There were no guardrails and no pavement for the tires to grab. We rounded another sharp curve, and the limousine skidded and weaved and almost threw a wheel off the road as it moved awkwardly around at high speed. We followed, a little more successfully, but I felt the wheels skid under us, too.

  I picked up the automatic on the console between us and steered with one hand while I stuck my left hand out the open window and aimed the gun toward the other car. I fired twice, kicking up gravel just behind the limousine.

  “You are short,” Gabrielle said.

  “I want to be,” I answered. I was hoping that just one of the slugs would ricochet off the gravel and up under the speeding Rolls. Just one was all I needed.

  I fired again, and the gravel kicked up behind the rear bumper of the other car, and then there was a sudden, dazzling, ear-splitting explosion from under the rear of the limousine. The big car swerved wildly as flames engulfed it. I had hit the gas tank.

  Gabrielle gasped as the car ahead of us swerved even more wildly, flames streaming out behind it. Then the car veered erratically to the right, hit a rocky outcropping, and bounded back to the sheer drop-off on the other side of the road. In another second it was plummeting over the edge.

  We pulled up beside the spot where the Rolls had just gone over. The big car was still crashing down the mountainside, end over end, completely engulfed in flames. Finally, it smashed on the rocks far below, and there was a tearing of metal as the flames spurted even higher. The Rolls lay there, burning brightly in the night. There was little doubt about the fate of General Djenina. It was impossible to survive what the limousine had gone through.

  “Did he get out?” Gabrielle asked.

  “No,” I told her. I started turning the Citrõen around on the narrow road. “I’m going back to get my weapons. I don’t want anybody to know I was there. Even if the cook or the other soldier lives, neither of them will kno
w who I am.”

  “Then what, Nick?” Gabrielle asked as I headed back toward the general’s estate.

  “Then we go south to Mhamid,” I said, “to the research facility of Damon Zeno and his friends. You’re going to wait for me nearby. If I don’t make it, I’ll be counting on you to get word to my contacts so they can take care of the lab.”

  EIGHT

  It was a long drive to Mhamid. Gabrielle became very sleepy about dawn, and I pulled over for a while so we could get a couple of hours’ sleep. When we started off again, the sun was high in the sky.

  The wound Djenina had inflicted on me was clotting and looked pretty good, but Gabrielle insisted on stopping in a mountain village around noon to put a proper bandage and some medication on it. For a good part of the afternoon, we drove through mountains, which dwindled to hills, and finally we emerged in arid desert country. We were in the wild, almost uninhabited area around the border, the place where Li Yuen had located Zeno’s laboratory. Occasionally, there were heavy rock outcroppings, but generally the terrain was flat, dotted with twisted, ugly plant life, a land where mountain and desert met and no one cared to live except a few primitive tribes and snakes and vultures.

  We reached the tiny village of Mhamid, the only island of civilization in that vast wilderness, in late afternoon. If my memory of the map was correct, we were still quite a distance from the remotely situated research facility. At first there appeared to be no place for overnight accomodations, but then we drove up to a small, white building that pretended to be a hotel. Looking at its peeling adobe walls, Gabrielle grimaced.

  “Do you think we dare sleep in a place like that?” she asked.

  “We don’t have much choice. I don’t want to go looking for the lab today, with dusk coming soon. And we both need rest.”

  We parked the Citrõen, and a small group of young Bedouins gathered around it curiously. They obviously didn’t get a look at many automobiles around here. Gabrielle locked the car, and we went into the hotel.

  It was even less appealing inside than it had been from the street. A walnut-skinned Arab greeted us from behind a small counter that passed for a desk. He wore a tarboosh on his head and an earring in one ear. There were white lines around his eyes where the sun had not reached, and he had a sparse stubble of beard on a weak chin.

  “Salaam.” The man smiled at us.

  “Salaam” I said. “Do you speak English?”

  “Angleesh?” he repeated.

  Gabrielle spoke to him in French. “We want a room for two.”

  “Ah,” he answered in that language. “Of course. It happens that our best suite is available. Please.”

  He took us up a flight of rickety wood stairs that I was sure would collapse under our weight. We went down a dim, dingy corridor to the room He opened the door proudly, and we entered. I saw the repulsion on Gabrielle’s face as she looked around. It was very Spartan, with one large iron bed that sagged in the middle, a broken-shuttered window that opened onto the dirt street below, and cracked plaster walls.

  “If you’d rather not . . . .” I said to her.

  “It’s all right,” she said, looking for the bath.

  “The bath is just down the hall,” the clerk said in French, guessing her question. “I will heat some water for madame.”

  “That would be very nice,” she said.

  He disappeared, and we were alone. I smiled and shook my head. “Just think,” I said. “Hot and cold running fleas.”

  “We will do fine,” she assured me. “I am going to take a hot bath, and then we will try to find a cafe.”

  “Okay. I saw a bar next door, an ugly little place, but maybe they don’t water the whisky. I need something after that drive. I’ll be back by the time you’ve finished your bath.”

  “It’s a deal,” she said.

  I went back down the rickety stairs and outside to the bar next to the hotel. I sat at one of four old tables and ordered a whisky from a short man in baggy pants and tarboosh, but he told me they didn’t serve whisky. I settled for a local wine. At another table near me an Arab sat alone; he was slightly under the influence already.

  “You are American?” he asked me in my native tongue.

  I glanced at him. “Yes, American.”

  “I speak American,” he said smugly.

  “That’s very nice.”

  “I speak good American, is it not true?”

  I sighed. “True, true.” The waiter brought my wine, and I took a sip. It wasn’t bad.

  “I am the hair-cutter here.”

  I glanced over at him. He was a short man in his mid-forties, I guessed, but there was a great deal of aging in his face. He wore a dark red fez and a striped djellaba. Both were soiled with dust and sweat

  “I am the hair-cutter for the entire village of Mhamid.”

  I nodded to him and sipped the wine.

  “My father was a hair-cutter also.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  He rose with a glass in his hand and joined me at my table. He leaned toward me conspiratorially.

  “I am the hair-cutter for the strangers also.” He said it in a half-whisper, near my ear, and I could smell his foul breath. The waiter, over in a far corner, could not hear.

  I glanced at the Arab beside me. He was grinning, and he was missing a front tooth. “Strangers?” I asked.

  He glanced at the waiter, to be doubly sure he could not hear, then continued in the hoarse whisper, fouling my nostrils with his breath. “Yes, the ones at the clinic. I go out every week, you see. It is all very secret.”

  He could only be talking about the lab. I turned to him. “You cut the hair of the doctors out there?”

  “Yes, yes. And the soldiers as well. They depend on me.” He gave me a toothless grin. “Every week I go.” The grin slid away. “But you must tell no one. It is all very private, you see.”

  “Were you there today?” I probed.

  “No, of course not. I would not go two days together. I go tomorrow morning, and I would not go twice, you understand.”

  “Of course,” I said. “And you take the old caravan road to the east?”

  He moved his head away from me. “I cannot tell you that! It is very private.”

  He had raised his voice somewhat. I downed the drink and stood up. I threw some dirhams onto the table. “Buy yourself another drink,” I said.

  His eyes brightened. “May Allah go with you,” he murmured in a slurred voice.

  “Praise be to Allah,” I replied.

  When I returned to the hotel room, Gabrielle was through bathing; it was getting dark outside. She had not dressed yet and was combing her long, red hair, sitting on the edge of the bed with a towel wrapped around her. I sat on a straight chair nearby and glanced up at a fifteen-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling.

  “He shouldn’t have gone to all the expense,” I remarked.

  “At least we won’t be spending much time here,” Gabrielle said. “Did you have a whisky?”

  “Nothing quite that civilized. But I did meet a man who just may be able to help us.”

  “What man?”

  I told her about the Arab barber. “Tomorrow morning I’m going to meet him out there,” I said. “But he doesn’t know it.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “I’ll tell you all about it at dinner.” I rose and removed my jacket; Gabrielle noticed Wilhelmina on my side and Hugo’s sheath on my arm.

  “I am frightened for you, Nick,” she said. “Why can’t I go with you?”

  “We’ve been all through that,” I told her. “You’re going to drive me out there and then re-turn here and wait. If you wait for more than twenty-four hours, you’re then to presume I didn’t make it, and you’re going back to Tangier and tell the whole story to the authorities. You will also contact Colin Pryor and tell him what happened. He will contact my people.”

  “Your wound is not even healed,” she protested. “Look, it has bled through the ba
ndage. You need a doctor and rest.”

  I grinned. “Maybe with all that high-powered talent out there somebody will offer me a change of bandage.”

  I took the holster off and started unbuttoning my shirt, preparing to clean up. When she saw my bare chest, she rose from the bed, dropped the comb and moved over to me.

  “I like you very much, you know.”

  She pressed herself against me, and I could feel the soft body underneath the towel “The feeling is mutual, Gabrielle,” I whispered.

  She reached up to my mouth with her lips and pressed her open mouth to mine. Her body was warm against me.

  “Make love to me again,” she breathed.

  I touched her downy cheek with my lips, and then the softness of her throat and her milky shoulder. “What about our dinner?”

  “I want you for dinner,” she answered in a husky voice.

  Her hips pressed insistently against mine, and as I moved my hands over the towel, our lips met again, and my mouth explored hers hungrily. When we parted she was breathing hard.

  “I’ll just lock the door,” I said. I went to the door and turned the key in the lock. When I turned back, she was unwinding the big towel.

  The towel dropped to the floor and Gabrielle stood nude under the dim light of the small bulb. The soft light made her skin look peach-colored, with the dazzling red mane flowing down onto her bare shoulders. Her long thighs tapered beautifully from the soft curves of her hips. She walked over to the bed and curled up on it, waiting.

  I undressed and joined her on the bed. She threw a thigh over me and nuzzled my right arm with a breast. She leaned over and touched her mouth to my chest, then moved down to my stomach, placing careful kisses all along my body.

  In moments I was burning inside. I gently pressed her back onto the bed and moved over her. Suddenly we were one, our bodies united. She moaned, her legs locked around me, her hands caressing my back.

  When it was over, I had no thought of Omega or Dr. Z or of tomorrow. There was only the warm, contented present.