Assignment White Rajah

by Edward S. Aarons

  The Rajah crossed the swift current first, rifle held high over his white head. Pala Mir followed; then Hammond slung Lily Fan over one shoulder and forged through the rushing water. Durell came last. As he climbed up the steep bank, he stared into Hammond's grin, then at his gun.

  "Company ahead, buddy-wuddy."

  "How many?"

  "Plenty."

  "Any ideas?"

  "We'll get through. Make it fast."

  "Point that gun somewhere else, George.'*

  "Are you nervous, Cajim?"

  "I'm always nervous."

  There was an aura of tension, even joy, about Hammond in the prospect of action. His teeth were bared behind skinned-back lips. He swung ahead, limping, with a grenade in his hand. DureU caught up with him in two long strides.

  "Hold it now, George, right here. I told you, I want those pilots safe."

  "So?"

  "So, no noise. No grenades yet."

  At that moment came a diflEerent voice. "Excellent thought, Mr. Durell."

  Colonel Tileong stepped from the jungle brush.

  Pasangara's security chief looked as cool and tidy, as if he were seated behind his office desk. Instead of a business suit, however, he wore jungle fatigues, boots, and a beret with an impressive medallion on it. He carried an American M-16 rifle. Out of the jungle around him, as soundlessly as ghosts, rose a squad of his men, similarly armed. They looked efficient. Lieutenant Parepa slid effortlessly into sight, his bulk quiet, his face sweaty.

  "Hey, American," he called to Durell. He pointed his rifle at him. "I kill you any time, last ten minute, you like that? We watch you come all way down, buddy-wuddy, tuan."

  "Still a joker, Parepa," Durell said. "You'll get your teeth knocked in, waving that gun around."

  "You nervous, hey?"

  Durell sighed.

  Colonel Tileong touched his moustache, looked at an ornate wristwatch, and said crisply, "We have over an hour of operational daylight left, I have been expecting you for this past hour, Mr. Durell." He smiled briefly. "Your consul, Mr. Condon, briefed me on your mission here. I might say that we are allies on this venture."

  "Good," Durell said flatly.

  "My men are highly trained and ready. We mean to wipe out the Pao Thets without mercy, something I have been organizing for some time. I must thank you and your colleague, Mr. Hammond, for leading the way and providing some answers."

  Hammond grunted impatiently. "Look, Tileong, we have our own job to do. We don't want interference."

  "I am sorry, but that is precisely what you shall get," Tileong said quietly. "The operation will follow my plan." He looked sharply at Lily Fan. "What is the trouble with the young lady?"

  "She works with Paul Merrydale and the Pao Thets,"

  Hammond snapped. "I'd have shot her but the Cajun has a soft heart."

  Lily Fan looked terrified again.

  "And," Hammond added, "she is my prisoner."

  Tileong said gently, "I regret, sir, you forget you are in Pasangara. You also forget that she is the daughter of our premier, Mr. Kuang. He is the supreme authority here. You will turn the yoimg lady over to me, and we will Usten to her side of it in good time."

  "Look here, Tileong—" Hammond began.

  Durell intervened. "Colonel, my sole aim is to get to the American Navy pilots who are prisoners at the other end of the airfield in those barracks. Your aim is to clean out the Pao Thets. We can divide our goals that way."

  Parepa snorted. He looked eager and bloodthirsty. Tileong waved a few of his men forward into the jungle, and the men moved out efi&ciently. They had been well trained.

  Tileong said, "I know little about the pilots. If you and Hammond wish to go ahead, you may. Lieutenant Parepa will accompany you, but I cannot spare any men for the first part of the operation. There are over two hundred Pao Thets here, and I have only fifty in my company. Still," he added, smiling grimly, "I believe the odds are in my favor."

  Hammond nodded. "Fine. Let's get going. And Lily?"

  "The girl remains with me," Tileong said. He indicated his armed men. "Will you argue about it, sir?"

  Hammond grinned his insane grin. "Okay, but she's a rebel bitch, Tileong, and you ought to shoot her right now,"

  "She is the premier's daughter."

  Pala Mir spoke up. "May I go with you, Sam?"

  "Stay with your grandfather," he said shortly.

  Parepa said, "Hurry up, buddy-wuddy, tuan."

  TTie three men moved quickly along the opposite slope of the valley above the airstrip. The village was not as empty as it had appeared. There were a number of Pao Thets quartered there, and the Malays, finished with their day's labor, were being herded into a fenced compound. Hammond walked with a long tiger's stride, like a stalking jungle animal. Durell matched him in silence and speed. Parepa was a little clumsy and once stumbled on a vine, setting off a series of crackling noises. Hammond turned a furious face toward him.

  "Hell, you'd better stay away from me. You and Durell take off that way. When you hear my first shot, get into the barracks first."

  Durell kept silent and did not object, for reasons of his own. Parepa grinned, taunting him. "You take orders from Hammond, man? I think maybe you like sore bellies and beating up, hey?"

  Durell said nothing but he and Parepa continued to follow Hammond.

  There were two vehicles parked under camouflage at the end of the airstrip—a towing jeep and a command car. Guards stood about, smoking and talking quietly in the evening dusk. A squad of guerrillas marched across the field and vanished into the opposite jungle. The dim sound of metal striking metal came through the foliage.

  Lying flat on his belly, Hammond wriggled forward along a rise and parted the grass for a better view.

  "I guess the planes, the Thrashers, are hauled off under the nets across the way. Do you see the tracks where the jets were dragged off the runway?"

  "I see them," Durell said.

  "We can forget about the planes. If it's true the Pao Thets are going to bomb Pasangara tonight, they'll wait another hour, at least." Hammond looked at his watch and squinted at the loom of the mountain to the west. The sun had gone behind it, and the sky was streaked with orange and lilac colors. "Fifteen minutes. I figure five to reach the prison compound. It will be just ahead where the jeeps are parked. We'll come around from the other side. You and Parepa move in from this direction. At 8:10 we bust the place open."

  They hurried along a narrow trail above the airstrip. After two minutes they came to a barbed-wire fence, seven feet tall. Hammond waved Durell one way and went the other, vanishing within a few steps. Durell checked the wire, saw no electronic telltales. He heard a soft spang! and Hammond appeared briefly, waving a wire cutter. They were through the fence a moment later.

  The smell of burning charcoal hung in the quiet evening air. Laughter could be faintly heard. A hundred more yards brought them to the edge of a clearing just beyond the end of the airstrip. They had to go on their bellies now. A second fence barred their way.

  Below them and to the right was a prison compound.

  Parepa hissed with satisfaction. No doubt, Durell thought, he admired the efficiency of the Pao Thet prison.

  There were triple fences of barbed wire about a small rectangle of trampled earth and mud that contained a tiny row of huts not much larger than doghouses. A single bigger building, obviously serving as a mess hall, stood against one side of the inner fence.

  Only one watchtower, mounting a thatched-roof platform, patrolled by a guard with a .50 machine gun, was situated at the south end of the compound rectangle.

  Disconsolate and despondent, the men, wearing tattered black pajamas and headcloths, were squatting in the mud or simply standing idly, staring into the green jungle.

  "How many do you make?" Hammond whispered.

  "Ten outside," Durell said.

  "Two more in the cook hut, I think. I'll circle around and come in that way, through the wire and over the roof
of the hut. You and Parepa take the main gate."

  Durell nodded and watched Hammond lift himself up and wriggle through the barbed wire; he disappeared in a flash into the brush beyond. Parepa grunted again and reached in a Claymore pouch for a grenade.

  "We go now, hey?"

  "Give him time," Durell said.

  "He great fighter. Like goes amok, hey?"

  "Like, yes," Durell said.

  When his sweep-second hand showed the right time, Durell moved to the right along the wire fence, tending downward toward the beaten trail that led to the main gate under the watchtower. Now and then through the foliage he glimpsed the prisoners, who rarely moved about. He breathed easier when the missing two appeared from the cook hut and joined the others in the compound.

  "Over there," Parepa whispered.

  Durell halted. Parepa moved silently through the jungle, his huge hands holding his M-16, now set on automatic. His mouth grinned, but his eyes were bleak, regarding Durell.

  "We get better field of fire on sentry in tower," Parepa said. Then he added softly, "Hey, you still sore at me, American?"

  "What for?"

  "Me beating you. Was Tileong's orders."

  "I know."

  "WeU, you still sore?"

  "No."

  "That's good. I no like man to die angry with me. You die now, hey? Surprise?"

  "No."

  "I have gun at your head."

  "And I have a grenade."

  Durell produced the grenade which he had been holding in his left hand. He pulled the pin and held it out on his palm toward Lieutenant Parepa.

  Parepa's dark brown eyes grew wide with shock, disbelief, astonishment, then abject fear. The M-16 in his big paws wavered. His mouth opened, closed, opened again.

  "You blow us both up?" Parepa whispered.

  "That's right, buddy-wuddy."

  "No!" Parepa shouted. "No! Crazy!"

  The big Malay stumbled and turned, running headlong through the jungle, down toward the compound. He screamed once, as if calling Hammond, and then Durell lobbed the grenade after him.

  It went off with a dull roar that shattered the stillness of the little valley.

  At the same time, there was another series of concussions from the village—the sudden rattle of automatic fire, the thump of grenades, the whomp of a mortar. Durell stood still, his head turned, watching smoke mushroom over the settlement. It would be Tileong, he thought. He didn't want to move. He was covered with sweat, and his hand shook slightly as he lifted the Uzi again. It had been a close call. He seemed to see nothing but the bore of Parepa's M-16, pointed right between his eyes, and the flash of Parepa's big white teeth behind it, smiling at his death.

  He told himself again to move, and for a moment he couldn't. But then he turned and ran in the same direction Parepa had gone, toward the stockade.

  26

  Parepa was dead, sprawled in a tangle of limbs from the grenade thrown at him. Durell ran past him, crouching, holding the Uzi close to avoid tangling with the vines, sliding this way and that through the thick growth. There was shoutmg from the stockade, then a single shot. From the right near the airstrip came the thump of an exploding mortar shell. It was almost dark under the canopy of the jungle trees, but daylight filtered through from the clearing ahead. Durell slid under another barbed-wire fence. Flat on his stomach, moving fast, he came up behind a wild oleander, choked with tiny orchids about to open for the evening. Something slid away along the jungle floor, a flicker of brown and red. He did not know what it was.

  There was fighting going on in the village behind him where Tileong's men had either been surprised or gone on to attack, regardless of the schedule. Durell saw the guard on the stockade tower lean over the rail; he yelled to someone behind the fence. Durell looked for the pilots, and seeing them being herded toward one side of the compound, he swore softly. Five Pao Thets held guns on the captive Americans. The guard in the tower swiveled his machine gun to cover them, too.

  He cocked the Uzi- on automatic and waited. There was no sign of Hammond, coming in over the cook-hut roof as he had promised.

  "Sam?"

  It was the faintest of whispers, but his weapon came up instantly, covering the jungle at his back.

  "It's me. Pala Mir. And Grandpapa."

  "Come out here," he whispered harshly.

  "Don't shoot, please. Trust me."

  "Show yourself."

  The girl and the Rajah stepped carefully into view. The Rajah still carried his hunting rifle. The girl had armed herself with an M-16, and he wondered briefly where she had gotten it. She had a sack of Claymore bombs slung over her shoulder. Her face was scratched and her long hair had become tangled. Peering at the stockade, she knelt beside him.

  "Where is Parepa?"

  "Dead. He tried to kill me."

  "He—but why?"

  Durell waved toward the stockade. "We're almost too late. Tileong blew the whistle on us. Too eager to get his Pao Thets cleaned out, I guess."

  "And Hammond?"

  "No show, as yet."

  From the screen of brush, the ground sloped down across a clearing thick with waist-high saw grass, banking a tiny stream that flowed near the compound gate. There was no cover for them over the fifty yards leading to the watchtower. The guard up there under his thatched roof was watching the prisoners being herded against the opposite wire fence. He kept fanning his machine gun, as if impatient to squeeze the trigger and open j&re.

  "What are they doing?" Pala Mir whispered.

  "Getting ready for a massacre."

  There was more fighting, sounds of explosions, and rapid-fire automatics in the village beyond the airstrip half a mile away. It was growing heavier. Grenades slammed and mortars whomped, and the evening breeze brought the smell of smoke and fire through the foliage.

  Durell watched the thatched roof of the cook shed on the opposite side of the compound. It was 8:11. Hammond was late.

  The Rajah coughed. "May I go on with you, Durell?"

  Durell looked at him. The old man had recovered from their long trek, and although his face was still seamed by exhaustion, there was pride and determination in him.

  "We have to wait," Durell said.

  "But those guards will kill your Navy pilots—"

  "I think not."

  The prisoners were lined up against the wire fence. Even from here, Durell could see in their attitudes that they expected death. The guards were shouting and harrying them into place, and an officer in a khaki uniform turned his head to yell something to the machine gunner in the watchtower. The guard grinned, swinging his weapon back and forth.

  Durell lifted the Uzi and squeezed the trigger.

  The sudden roar of the automatic froze everyone in the compound. He kept firing at the tower. He heard the Rajah's heavy rifle thump once, but he didn't know if it was his Uzi or the RajaJi's shot that got the man, who threw up his arms, spun around, broke through the flimsy rail of his platform, and fell to the ground.

  Durell got up and ran through the tall grass for the gate. Pala Mir ran beside him. The Rajah moved slower, covering their rear. At the same time, Hammond finally appeared on the roof of the shed on the other side of the clearing.

  Durell threw his first grenade and blew the gate apart. He heard a yell from the top of the shed and saw Hammond, his legs spread wide, holding his rifle at hip height and spraying the nmning guards. The captive pilots had thrown themselves flat in a line along the fence.

  Durell rushed through the gate, the Uzi chattering, then turned left along the fence. A Pao Thet charged at him with a bayonet. He ducked left, brought the Uzi up with a sharp sweep that knocked aside the blade, then reversed the gun, smashing it at the guerrilla's shaven skull. The man went down and Pala Mir jumped over him to join Durell. The Rajah's heavy hunting rifle boomed again, and a Pao Thet who was taking aim at Hammond's figure atop the shed suddenly spun about, as if kicked by a mule, and rolled over and over, his weapon firing into the
mud.

  The guerrillas, caught in a cross fire between Hammond and Durell, scattered, running this way and that. Seeking escape, they finally came at the gate. Hammond's gun slammed again, and Durell threw another grenade. He heard Pala Mir firing, too, and then he ran farther along the fence.

  A scarecrow figure rose up from the mud ahead, face darkened by dirt but teeth showing in a grin.

  "Hey, chum! Glad to see you!"

  The remains of a JG's bar on a khaki shoulder hung loose by a thread. The captive yelled to his fellow prisoners, and Durell gave him a grenade. "Pick up any weapons you can find."

  "We getting out, sir?"

  "Yes. But you'll have to help."

  "It's a pleasure."

  The shed on which Hammond had been standing suddenly went up with a tremendous explosion. But Hammond was already gone from there. The gush of flame and smoke gave the Pao Thets a chance to pour through the compound gate. Durell let them go, helping the prisoners arm themselves. In just the brief days and weeks they had been kept here, they already looked like ragged ghosts.

  But now their haunted eyes were suddenly aflame with hope they had thought was lost forever.

  The JG said, "The Thrashers are over there, sir. The gooks lured us—God knows how—to this hell hole. We don't even know where we are."

  "You're on your way home," Durell said.

  One of the pilots had a broken leg; another showed scars from torture. Several of them trembled from weakness, derived from beatings and starvation. But they snatched up the weapons dropped by the fleeing Pao Thets and followed Durell, Pala Mir, and the Rajah as quickly as they could.

  Durell searched for Hammond.

  The Pao Thets had disappeared. The shed was in flames. Through the smoke Durell could see Hanmiond's lean figure leap from a fence rail, his gun held high. Swinging toward the end of the airstrip, Hammond raised his hand, then turned away from Durell and the freed captives. There were more sheds here, and machine-gun fire was coming from them. Hammond went flat on his belly, out of sight in the tall grass. A grenade sailed through the air, his arm briefly visible, and a gout of flame came from the nearest shed. One of the machine guns went silent.

  "Hammond!" Durell shouted. "Get back!"