Get Off At Babylon

by Marvin H. Albert

  The jeep had stopped behind my car. The four men were climbing out and starting up the slope after us.

  One point in our favor: None of them carried a rifle. With a good rifle they could have dropped us from where they were. A hand gun wasn’t any use at that distance. If we could stay ahead of them until dark, we could lose them.

  One problem: There were hours left before night. Another problem: There was very little concealment up there where we were heading—few trees and only very low brush.

  The third problem was that I didn’t know how long it had been since Odile had had her last fix. If the need came to her before dark, she was going to start caving in on us. And a halt to let her shoot up would bring those four men on top of us.

  I looked back again without slowing my pace. They were still the same distance behind us, no further, no nearer.

  One of them looked like Tony Callega, though I couldn’t be sure at that distance. Two of the others I didn’t know at all.

  Sheer size made the fourth man Boyan Traikov.

  Chapter 29

  I lengthened my stride and moved up ahead of Gilbert and Odile, leading them toward an area I remembered. There was too much danger in traveling any distance through terrain I didn’t know. In that vast jumble of haphazard formations we could find ourselves trapped in the end of a blocked gorge with no way to go but back—toward the guns of our four pursuers.

  Once into a section I was familiar with, we would have an advantage. The four behind us were unlikely to know the Val des Merveilles. They were reduced to trailing us with no foreknowledge of what lay ahead—unable to detour in order to get ahead of us. I wasn’t going anywhere, just aiming to keep away from them until dark.

  Less than fifteen minutes from the cabin we slipped through a break in a high ridge. Ahead of us was a section I’d been through twice in the past. First with Babette. The second time with three friends from Paris I took on a trek to some of the Paleolithic cliff engravings.

  What lay below the other side of the ridge was a cirque that spread for several miles. A steep-sided hollow gouged into the land by long-vanished glaciers and bottomed by a long, deep, meandering lake. The inner slopes above the lake were precipitous, in places forming near-vertical cliffs. Wherever soil had gathered in dips and fissures there were patches of scrub with vividly colored alpine flowers. Here and there a lone stunted pine had anchored itself into a split in the rocks. But most of the cirque was dominated by stone and water, both tinted a dark, shiny purple by the sunlight.

  I led the way down the steep inner face of the hollow, warning Gilbert and Odile to place each footstep with care.

  The slope there was littered with loose stones and erosion-splintered rock. A wrong move could start them rolling and sliding. There was little vegetation at this height to hold the land in place. Large expanses of exposed rock had been disintegrated by ages of weathering. That made many of the steeper slopes extremely unstable, with any minor slippage of debris liable to trigger a major landslide.

  Odile seemed somewhat more surefooted then Gilbert as we made the descent.

  I got the distinct impression she’d been this way before, without him.

  We reached a ledge that ran along the slopes roughly fifteen feet above the edge of the lake. As we moved on along the ledge I looked back again. Boyan Traikov and the other three were making their way down from the break in the ridge to our ledge path. I was certain now: One of the others was Tony Callega.

  I continued along the ledge with Gilbert and Odile, keeping to the same steady pace. Below us there were places where spurs of rock at the bottom of the slope jutted out just over the surface of the lake. At other points the dark water lapped over little beaches of pebbles and fallen, shattered boulders.

  Our route took us around a number of sharp bends where for minutes at a time we were out of our pursuers’ view. But at none of these places was there any other way through the cirque or out of it. Nothing we could do but stick with the ledge route. And Traikov and his men could see we had nowhere else to go, even when they couldn’t see us.

  That situation would change, I remembered, when we reached the other end of the lake. Once we climbed out of the cirque there, we would be into a maze of tight little gorges, each with a choice of several side-ravines and cross-gullies. There we could lose the pursuit, even in daylight.

  It was just a matter of not letting the four men back along our trail get any closer before we got there.

  * * * *

  For the first hour we had no difficulty keeping well ahead of Traikov’s group.

  Then Odile began to falter. Gilbert had to seize her arm and pull her along with him in order to maintain our pace. But she kept getting heavier and weaker, her feet dragging. I dropped back and took her other arm, helping Gilbert to hurry her along.

  What was happening was obvious. Her face was drawn with strain and unnaturally pale. She was breathing harshly with her mouth open, her lungs heaving painfully. Prolonged drug abuse saps the user’s natural health and strength. A fix injects a spurt of substitute energy into the veins—for a short time. But as that drains away the system goes into a collapse.

  We were almost to the far end of the lake. But Odile was becoming a dragging weight between Gilbert and me, slowing us more and more.

  “I’ve got to stop,” she sobbed. She was trembling now. “Just a minute—please!”

  I knew what she needed it for, and I knew it would take more minutes than we could survive. All the involved preliminaries. Getting a little water and preparing the syringe. Measuring the precise mixture. Heating the cooker. Tying the tourniquet on to pump out the vein. Traikov and company would have us before she could plunge the needle in.

  But at the pace she was forcing us to, they were going to catch up with us anyhow—before we could climb out of this end of the cirque.

  “Move her faster,” I snarled at Gilbert. There was no time for explanations. Just ahead of us were two sharp bends in the slope, one immediately after the other. We almost carried Odile. Both bends created temporary screens between us and the pursuers.

  I stopped immediately after we were around the second one, letting go of Odile. She sagged in Gilbert’s arms, panting. I pointed at a wide rock spur just below our ledge: “It overhangs a small cave. Get out of sight under there, fast. I’ll try to make them think you’re still with me—draw them after me. If they fall for it, wait until they’re well past you. Then get her back to the car—and down to Menton. Wait for me at the Piccadilly.”

  I left them and ran the rest of the way along the ridge. The pursuit group still hadn’t appeared. I scrambled up a funnel in the scarp above that end of the lake. There were other ways I could have gone up, but this route was full of loose debris, and that was what I wanted.

  I kept kicking the rubble as I made the climb, starting it rolling. By the time I neared the crest everything loose in the funnel was in motion below me. A little landslide, rumbling loudly down the slope, churning up dark clouds of rock dust that billowed high in the air.

  I went over the crest in a low crouch and flopped down behind an eroded projection of stone. Flat down on my belly, I turned myself and eased forward to peer back down around the base of the projection.

  Gilbert and Odile were gone from the ledge, out of sight under the overhang. One heartbeat later Boyan Traikov, Tony Callega, and the other two men appeared on the ledge, coming around the last bend. They halted, just above the point where Gilbert and Odile were hidden. But they didn’t look down. They were looking up in my direction, where the clouds of slide still billowed and the last loose stones were dribbling down the funnel.

  Then they were in motion again, quickly leaving the ledge behind and climbing toward my hiding place. They spread out as they came up the slope: Traikov and Tony Callega off to one side of the funnel, the other two on the other side.

  I snaked ba
ckward. When I was far enough for the crest to screen me from the climbers I got my feet under me. Keeping low, I entered a shallow gully and went through to where it merged into a wide ravine. The ravine twisted between broken, jagged walls of mixed clay and stone. I went halfway through it and then hauled myself up one side.

  A dead tree lay there, uprooted and smashed apart by a rock slide long ago. I lifted one end of its largest severed branch, got it balanced on the other end, and toppled it over the edge. It crashed to the bottom of the ravine. Not much dust this time. But enough noise to give my position to the four men hunting me. I didn’t want them to lose me. Not yet.

  The longer they kept trailing me, the more time Gilbert and Odile would have to reach my Peugeot and get away. I figured he would let her have her fix first. Under the circumstances, that was the right thing to do. She wouldn’t make it all the way back to the car without that lift.

  On my own I was going to have little difficulty staying ahead of the pursuit force. I wouldn’t even have to wait for dark to make my escape. When I judged I’d given Gilbert and Odile enough of a head start I would begin to circle back. In this area—which I knew and the pursuers didn’t—I should be able to bypass them and make it to their Jeep. With plenty of time to hot-wire its ignition before they returned. I’d use the Jeep—and they’d have a very long walk.

  It seemed a workable tactic—at the time.

  I began climbing again, cutting between wind-hewn spires of rock, following a route I knew. It took me, finally, to the mouth of a narrow gorge.

  Near it was a small group of low, gnarled pine trees. I made my way up to the trees and into their deep shadow. Turning, I leaned against a bent trunk and looked back the way I’d come.

  Several minutes passed. Then I spotted two of the pursuers coming in my direction, shifting quickly and cautiously from the cover of one stone spire to the next. Keeping about seven feet apart from each other. They were good at this kind of stalking.

  I stayed where I was, waiting. Looking for the other two. The first pair emerged from the scattering of spires, still well separated, and scanned the area where I was hidden. Each held a gun ready in one hand. These were the two men I didn’t know.

  Concealed under the trees, I continued to search the area behind them for Tony Callega and Boyan Traikov. They didn’t appear.

  After a few moments the pair I could see started advancing toward my general area, spreading further apart. They didn’t glance behind them before doing so.

  My heart sank.

  One of them had gotten suspicious of how easy it was for them to trail me by the noise I’d been making. Probably Traikov—he was the brain of this bunch.

  I’d underestimated that brain. His size and strength tended to occupy all of one’s attention. Reju had warned me against that—back at the Cannes film festival. It seemed a long time ago, and very far away.

  This pair had continued to trail me. Tony and Boyan Traikov had turned to recheck the back trail, just in case.

  Back where I’d left Gilbert and Odile.

  Chapter 30

  There was no time left for playing hide-and-seek with the pair of gunmen coming toward me now. I had to put them out of action fast and get back to Gilbert and Odile.

  I drew my gun from its holster and fired a shot at one of them. Just to let them know where I was. At that distance I didn’t have a chance of coming anywhere near the target with a pistol.

  They instinctively dodged for cover but then stopped, looking at the point I’d fired from. Registering the distance and not even attempting to fire back. I went through the little pine grove and out the other side and then ran up an incline to the mouth of the gorge. As I entered it I looked back. The two gunmen were on the move again, coming after me—much faster now.

  I headed up through the gorge. It was hard going, but I’d known it would be. The gorge climbed steeply, cutting up the side of a mountain. It was narrow, with sheer walls that rose some twenty feet on either side of me. In places it was partially blocked where slides had sent broken boulders and shale rolling down through the confines of the steeply inclined gorge.

  The gunmen coming after me would be well inside the gorge by now. But they’d take their time working through each blockage, wary of ambush. I didn’t have that to worry about. I went through as fast as I could.

  I reached what I’d come in for. A place where the wall on my left stopped being sheer and became a climbable slope. Climbable—but dangerous.

  Piles of rocks and thick slabs of shale covered all of the slope. Debris from higher slopes that had slid only partway down. They formed an unstable mass of rubble. A landslide waiting to happen.

  But to one side of that loose mass was a relatively bare scar cutting upward through jagged formations. I worked my way up through the scar with infinite care. Even there, to one side, any stones I caused to roll could trigger the entire slope into movement.

  I made it to the summit and turned to my left. There a top-heavy boulder perched precariously on the lip, its base eroded by runoffs from mountain rains. I waited there, looking down the length of the gorge below.

  Minutes dragged by. Then I glimpsed movement among the rock rubble in the floor of the gorge. Hidden by the boulder, I continued to watch and wait. The two gunmen appeared, approaching cautiously, slipping from one bit of cover to the next, poised to shoot the instant they saw me. But they didn’t see me—and they kept coming.

  When they were almost directly below me I put my back to the boulder, spread my feet, and shoved with all my strength. The boulder leaned, tilted over the edge, and went crashing down the slope. As it rolled, the whole slope began to slide—slowly at first, and then very fast.

  The two gunmen froze for an instant, staring up in horror at the tons of rock and shale thundering down at them. They tried to run. But there was nowhere for them to go in the brief time left to them. The downward-crashing-slope had started the masses of rubble in the steep bottom of the gorge moving, too.

  A dense, rising fog of rock dust shrouded their end. If they had time to scream before they were engulfed, it couldn’t be heard through the noise of that ponderous landslide.

  I turned away and followed a route along the top of the gorge for a short time. Then I shifted to another route that took me down around a hogback, in the direction of the little grove of pines and the spires of stone. I pushed as fast as I could and ran where it was possible.

  Back toward the cirque and its long, dark lake.

  Gilbert wasn’t far from where I’d left him with Odile. He was on the ledge that ran along the cliff wall above the water. He was crawling along it, back in the direction of the cabin. A long way to go, with one leg dragging uselessly.

  I had my gun in hand when I reached him. But there was nobody else in sight.

  Gilbert’s right trouser leg had a bullet hole above the knee and was soaked with blood. He had knotted his belt around his upper thigh to staunch the bleeding. When I arrived he turned, wincing at the pain, and leaned against the cliff, resting on his left hip. His nose was bleeding, too. It had been broken.

  He spoke through clenched teeth. “I let her go down to get water for her shot. Five minutes after they’d gone past. I thought it was safe then. But two of them came back…and saw her coming up to the cave. A very big man, and a smaller one…the one she calls Tony. He’s the one smashed my nose with his gun.”

  “Did she shoot up before they grabbed you?” It was important to know what condition she was in.

  Gilbert nodded. “Just before they came in at us. They said they’d kill me if Odile didn’t tell them where the dope is. Then Tony shot me in the leg—and swore he’d come back and kill me if she was lying to them.”

  That was the only reason he was still alive. So Odile would take them to her heroin cache in order to save him. “Where did she tell them it is?”

  “Back ne
ar the other end of the lake. Not far from the cabin.” Gilbert nodded at the pistol in my fist. “You’ve got to hurry. They’ll kill her once they have that dope.”

  “I’ll come back for you,” I told him, and I left him there, heading in the direction they’d taken.

  I ran most of the way along the side of the lake. But when I was about two-thirds of the way to the end I slowed to a silent walk and worked at getting my breathing back under control. They hadn’t been running. I had to be getting close to them by then.

  I stopped at each bend in the cliff that hid the way ahead.

  Stopped and listened—before easing around the bend, leading the way with the H&K, my finger ready on its trigger.

  I was almost at the last bend before that end of the lake when I heard them—very close ahead.

  Their voices stopped me. When I moved again it was without a sound. I still couldn’t see them. But I could hear.

  Boyan Traikov’s matter-of-fact voice: “Behind this? You’re quite sure?”

  I didn’t hear Odile. She either whispered or answered with a gesture.

  Tony Callega’s voice, edgy and exultant: “It better be there, Odile—or your boyfriend is dead.”

  I eased around the jut of rock. Tony stood with his back to me, a long-barreled revolver dangling in one hand, watching Traikov and Odile.

  She sat on the lip of the ledge, her head bowed in hopeless defeat, her legs hanging over the water that sloshed under the rocks ten feet below.

  Traikov was down on one knee beside her, gripping her wrist with one hand. His other hand had reached down below the ledge and pulled away a slab of stone, letting it fall into the lake with a loud splash. He was reaching into a hole there when I made my move.

  I took a long stride and clubbed Tony Callega’s skull with my gun, just behind the ear, very hard. He went down and out. His body made a half turn as he fell. He sprawled unconscious across the ledge, one leg straight and the other bent, the revolver falling from his limp hand.