Flicker of Doom

by Paul Kenyon

  "Why don't you stick your head back in that desk?" she said serenely. "You looked so much more attractive that way."

  His face went dark with fury. There was good-natured laughter from some of the men. He slapped her. She could taste blood in her mouth.

  "Begin," he said to Jemail.

  Jemail unrolled a square of canvas and spread it out on the floor. It was fitted with pockets, like a little tool kit. He took out a knife and a pair of scissors, tweezers and a pair of pliers and lined them up in front of her.

  Then he stood in front of her, hands on hips, sizing her up. He had a technical problem. One of the first things to do to a prisoner is to castrate him. It was a practice hallowed by custom and opportunity. It wasn't too often that your prisoner was a woman.

  There was a long, stiff piece of wire lying near her feet, left over from tying her up. Jemail's eyes fell on it. He picked it up, a flash of inspiration showing in his face.

  He used the pliers to straighten it out. It was now a nine-inch skewer. With an artist's touch, he bent a little loop at one end to hold it by.

  "The eye, Jemail!" one of the guerrillas urged. A couple of others took up the call. "The eye, the eye!"

  He ignored them with the disdain a true artist shows toward hecklers. He picked up one of her breasts and weighed it in the palm of his hand.

  "But-teekh," he grinned. It was the Arab word for melon.

  The other men laughed.

  Jemail mugged for them, like the performer he was. He bounced Penelope's breast a couple of times in his hand, then plunged the long wire into it.

  She almost fainted. The pain was sickening. There was a darkening of her vision and the taste of bile in her throat.

  Her vision cleared. She was moaning. There was the smell of vomit in the room, and at first she thought she'd done it. Then she looked across and saw that it was Qasim who had been sick.

  She looked down at her breast. A single drop of blood was oozing out, over to one side of the nipple.

  Jemail was slapping her face, trying to get her attention.

  "Now," he said, "the other one."

  Again there was that blinding pain. Her body arched in the chair, making the wires cut into her wrists. She fell back, sick and exhausted.

  The men were nudging one another, making comments and grinning.

  "You bastards," she said weakly. "You bastards."

  "Now you answer my question," the PAFF leader said. She ignored him. It was clear from the look on his face that he'd forgotten what the question was. He didn't care what she said.

  Jemail had picked up a long knife. He ran its edge along his thumb and nodded to himself, satisfied.

  "Harvest time," he said.

  He leaned over her, straddling her bound legs. He put a big sun-browned hand on the back of her neck and forced her head down. Her breasts swung forward as she leaned over. He rested the knife blade flush with the underside of her right breast where it hung from her torso. She could feel the cool steel against her ribs.

  One quick slice, and the breast would be resting in her lap. Penelope breathed hard and deeply.

  Jemail looked up at the expectant faces. "Five pounds I bet," he said.

  She swung her feet up as hard as she could, between his spread legs. Her ankles caught him in the crotch. The twisted wire, at least six inches of it standing out from her ankles, pierced his scrotum.

  He screamed and dropped the knife. She caught it neatly by the handle with one of her tied hands. She yanked her legs free and the wire came loose, pulling bits of testicle with it. He was sprawling heavily across her, gagging.

  Somebody shot at her. The bullets thudded into Jemail's neck.

  She pushed with her feet. The heavy office chair swiveled around. The knife she was holding sliced into the lower gut of the guerrilla who had been standing next to her chair. He gasped in pain and dropped his submachine gun.

  She'd calculated positions nicely. The handgrip of the gun fell into her waiting hand. She leaned to the side, bracing the stock between her ribs and her wire-tied arm on the armrest.

  The chair was still spinning around. She squeezed the trigger. The safety was off, as it usually was with most of these sloppy riffraff. The submachine gun spat fire in a wide arc, cutting down startled men.

  She shoved with her bound feet again, and the chair rolled back on its casters. She pushed it backwards across the floor.

  Dead and dying men were lying all over the floor. One of the survivors sent off a random blast at her. The bullets slammed into the dead man lying across her body. She could feel the dead man jerk with the impact of the slugs.

  There were more shots. A line of automatic rifle fire stitched its way across the wall, singeing her head.

  Then she was behind the heavy metal filing cabinets whose position she'd carefully noted. A hail of bullets sprayed against them, making the steel ring.

  The firing went on for a long time. They were being very cooperative, giving her the precious moments she needed.

  She nudged Jemail's body to the floor and leaned to one side, taking the twisted end of the wire on her wrist between her teeth. You couldn't cut wire flex, but you could unwind it.

  She unwrapped it in less than a minute, her strong teeth aching from the effort of clamping down on the wire. With one hand free, it was the work of another thirty seconds to untwine the wires on her ankles and other wrist. She got out of the chair and crouched low — just in time. A fragmentation grenade had landed on the cabinet top and a piece of jagged metal embedded itself in the wall behind her.

  The explosion deafened her, but not so badly that she couldn't hear the screams. She was close enough to the filing cabinets so that the steel protected her. But shrapnel had sprayed across the room in every direction.

  There was silence. They must have been appalled at the damage they'd done to themselves with their own impetuousness. They also must have been pretty sure that she was dead, after the hail of bullets and the fragmentation grenade.

  She grinned pitilessly. There had only been thirty armed guerrillas against one helpless, tied-up naked woman. She wondered how many of them were left, and decided it was time to find out.

  About now, a couple of the braver souls would be edging toward the row of filing cabinets to have a look. They'd be approaching from either side.

  She checked the clip of the submachine gun. It was empty. She'd shot the whole thing off.

  She'd have to do something about that!

  She hoisted Jemail's body into the oak chair and wrapped a couple of turns of wire around it to hold it in place. She pushed the chair in front of her, like a grisly kiddy-car, to the end of the row of files. Then, putting her shoulders into it, she shoved the chair out into the room.

  There was an instant outburst of machine-gun fire. The chair spun around as bullets thudded into Jemail's corpse. But the Baroness was already racing behind the row of filing cabinets to the other end.

  She popped her head around the corner. Everybody, including the Arab who had been sneaking up on her from that side, had turned to look at the decoy chair.

  A pair of naked white arms snaked out and caught the startled guerrilla by the shirt collar and belt. She yanked him behind the cabinets with her, and flung him to the floor. As he twisted to get up, the bony edge of a foot caught him in the throat and killed him.

  A futile rain of bullets struck the wall at the side where she'd reached out. She ignored it and popped up above the files, in the middle. She had time to snap off two single shots before ducking down again.

  She'd had a good look at the carnage in that second. She reviewed the instant photo in her mind. She'd killed or disabled eight men with that curving spray of fire when she'd first whirled the chair around. Jemail was dead, and so was the man she'd stabbed with his knife. The fragmentation grenade had cut down another five guerrillas. She'd kicked another man to death, and now — she knew without checking the results — she'd just killed two more.

 
In the space of five minutes, eighteen men had been eliminated. There were twelve left. She wondered what they were thinking.

  There was a noise to her right. She spun around and shot the man who'd tried to get behind the filing cabinets from that side. She pulled his automatic rifle in with her. Now she had almost two whole clips of ammunition.

  There were sure to be guns trained on either end of the row of files, and more aimed at the top, ready to squeeze off a rain of slugs by reflex the moment her head emerged. Sooner or later, it was going to occur to one of the survivors that he could just walk up to the cabinets and drop a grenade behind them. She had to maintain the offensive, keep them off balance.

  With a grin, she ripped the back off one of the bottom file drawers and emptied out its contents. She squeezed herself into the steel box, lying forward, the submachine gun ready.

  With her feet against the wall behind her, she pushed the drawer open.

  The startled men on the other side had no time to react. They saw a bottom drawer slide open and a woman's head and a pair of naked breasts burst out of it. A gun spat fire, killing two of them, and the drawer snapped shut. Their bullets ricocheted against the steel front of the drawer.

  And then, before they had time to think about it, an upper drawer popped open. Again there was that brief vision of a naked head and torso, and a deadly splatter of lead. Another man died.

  Eight men left. With a sob, one of them, almost crazed, pulled the pin of a grenade and threw it. It struck the top of a filing cabinet, bounced against the back wall, and landed at Penelope's feet.

  It was fortunate that he'd been too agitated to pull the pin and count off a few seconds before throwing it. The Baroness scooped the grenade off the floor and tossed it straight up. At the height of its arc, she batted it with the butt of her rifle, keeping down, out of the way of bullets. The little ovoid, with its deadly metal warts, flew across the room.

  It would never have qualified as a home run, but it bounced against the opposite wall and exploded in midair. She risked a look and saw that it had cut down three men.

  It was too much for the five remaining Arabs. Death was with them in this room: death in the shape of a devil-woman who popped up here and there, grinning at them. And time was running out; the explosions and gunfire would bring the Moroccan police — perhaps even soldiers.

  They turned and fled toward the door. Penelope emerged from behind the office furniture in time to shoot the last of them in the spine.

  She raced for the door after them. If she allowed four PAFF guerrillas to escape with the knowledge that the Baroness Penelope St. John-Orsini was a probable American spy with the talent to kill more than two dozen men who had been holding her prisoner, then she was finished. They all were finished: Skytop and Sumo and Dan Wharton and Farnsworth and Paul and Eric and the girls.

  She paused for a fraction of a second to sweep her belongings off the desk top into the straw bag and snatch up her bikini and caftan. It wouldn't do to leave any clues behind for the Moroccan authorities or the CIA.

  Then, naked, a straw bag in one hand and an automatic rifle in the other, she ran barefoot down the steps.

  She emerged at the landing at the top of the cavernous weaving shed. Dozens of pairs of dark bright eyes looked up at her over the primitive looms. Down there on the floor she saw the four Arabs, running between the walls of bright carpeting. She couldn't fire without hitting some of those solemn, silent children spinning their glorious rugs.

  She ran around the tier of scaffolding at the top of the loft. The children whose job it was to cast down the skeins of colored yarn scampered out of her way, screaming. She was a fearsome sight, this naked woman, breasts and hair flying, gun in hand. The guerrillas, at least, were familiar.

  It was thirty feet to the floor. She grasped one of the huge wooden spools in either hand and jumped.

  She floated down like a Yo-Yo. By the time the four guerrillas reached the door, she was standing in front of it.

  She'd left the gun up above, but the straw bag was still over her arm. She swung it at the nearest guerrilla. It caught him in the face. He staggered backward.

  With her other hand, she cast the wooden spool. It wrapped itself around the neck of another man. His fingers clawed at the colored yarn.

  That gave her a moment to deal with the other two. One of them was bringing up the barrel of a rifle. Her bare foot flashed upward and kicked it out of his hands. He grabbed for it instinctively. His chin met her knee.

  The fourth man cowered. It was Qasim. His face was still greenish from being sick. "Please," he said, "please."

  She didn't waste any time with him. Her hand darted into the straw bag for the little Bernardelli automatic. She whirled and shot the first guerrilla in time to keep him from getting out through the door. The toy-like gun didn't have the stopping power of a .38 or .45, but three little slugs in his head changed his mind about leaving. Permanently.

  She turned again and shot the man she'd kneed with her remaining two bullets. It was just in time. He'd managed to produce a pistol of his own. It clattered to the floor, and she kicked it out of the way before the other guerrilla could reach for it.

  The yarn was still tangled around his neck. She grabbed it and yanked him toward her like a dog on a leash. He nailed at her. She blocked his blows and got behind him. She put a knee into the base of his spine and pulled with both hands on the yarn. He flopped like a fish. It took a couple of minutes to strangle him.

  She leaned against the door jamb, exhausted. The three dead men lay at her feet. All those pairs of horrified eyes were turned in her direction, but the clever fingers still tied knots, the shuttles still flew over the threads.

  Qasim was standing there, looking frightened and sheepish. He tried a small smile on her.

  "So," he said, "I have learned about politics."

  She passed a hand over her face. "It was an expensive lesson, wasn't it, Qasim?" She thought of all the dead men upstairs. Her breasts hurt abominably.

  He grew bolder when he saw her standing there, making no move. "I won't tell about you," he said. "After all, I don't want to get involved, either."

  "I believe you," she said.

  His eyes roved over her naked body. The little smile still fluttered on his red, girlish lips. "I hear sirens," he said. "We'd better get out of here right away."

  She tilted her head. There was the distant whooping sound of a klaxon, coming closer. It was a truckload of soldiers, at least.

  "There's one more part of the lesson," she said.

  His smile grew uncertain.

  "Some mistakes in politics are permanent."

  She moved with shocking speed. He was bowled over before he knew what was happening. She straddled his chest, her knees pinning down his upper arms. Her fingers were around his throat.

  "Please, Baroness…" he croaked.

  "Sorry, Qasim," she said. "You should have known better. You're a big boy now."

  She made it as quick as she could, watching the life drain from his brown eyes. She got to her feet and pulled the caftan on over her head. She took a last look at the busy children at their looms. When the authorities arrived, they wouldn't have seen anything. They were wiser in the ways of their world than Qasim had been.

  She put on her sunglasses and stepped through the door into the fading evening light. With her straw bag, she was just another foreign tourist lady, prettier than most. She pushed her way along the crowded street with its booths and stalls. By the time the first truckload of soldiers arrived, she'd already turned the corner.

  10

  She was being followed again.

  He was very good at it, but he'd given himself away when she stopped at a coppersmith's booth to make a routine check for tails. She'd picked up a large, brightly polished tray and tilted it, for the fraction of a second that was all she needed, to reflect the steep alley behind her.

  He stepped quickly into a doorway. That was how she knew he was good at it. Mos
t tails are careful about such things as plate-glass windows and women's hand mirrors, but the tray trick would have caught most of them by surprise. Even so, he probably was just being super-cautious when he stepped into the doorway. She doubted that he realized she'd spotted him.

  She closed her eyes and reviewed that split-second image in her brain. He was a lean young Arab, looking natty in city clothes. She'd caught a glimpse of an intense, brooding face over a neat white collar and tie and a light suit.

  She loitered at the stall to make sure. The merchant, a little yellow-skinned man wearing an embroidered skullcap, fussed over her. In the end, she bought a small copper bowl that she could stuff into her bag. The little merchant was surprised that she didn't haggle with him.

  It was getting darker. She took off her sunglasses and put them in her bag. Again, in that brief moment, she saw his reflection in the curving dark lens. There was no doubt that he was keeping pace with her.

  Who was he? A PAFF lookout, stationed outside the carpet stalls? In that case, he'd have heard the explosions and gunfire, and been aware that something was terribly wrong. When the soldiers arrived, he would have slipped away, following the person he'd seen emerging from the hideout.

  She sighed. She'd thought she was done with killing for the day.

  She led him through the darkening passageways of the Medina. On either side, merchants were closing up shop, packing up merchandise and locking the wooden shutters that fronted their narrow cubicles. A man in a red tarboosh hurried by her, anxious to be home before dark. Tourists were warned to stay out of this quarter at night.

  She felt in her bag for the shape of the little Bernardelli VB automatic. She'd inserted a fresh clip before leaving the weaving shed. But if she could get him close enough, it would be quieter to kill him with the nail file.