Some of the Arab Union troopers were near enough that Bey could make out their bugging eyes. It was the end. They dropped rifles and submachine guns, turned, yelling their fear, and ran, some of them with arms held high.
Bey jumped to his feet and to the middle of the wadi and held up his arms, in desperation. He had little real hope of preventing the massacre. In fact, he was in considerable danger of being trampled to death.
Guémama himself, a submachine gun held high in one hand, led the charge. His face was a mask of excitement but at least he wasn’t frothing at the mouth as were some of those behind him.
To Bey’s relief and actual surprise, the young chieftain came to a halt, only a few yards before him and held up an arm to restrain his rampaging followers.
“Why do you halt us, O Bey-ag-Akhamouk! Insh’Allah, we shall slay all these Arab Union giaours, may they burn in Gehennum!”
The others were shrilling their war cries behind him, shaking their weapons, firing their rifles into the air, in anticipation.
Bey said, keeping his voice impossibly even, “I have heard from El Hassan on the Roumi device which allows one to talk at great distance. He desires that all the remaining dogs be spared, until he can put them to the question and learn greatly of what goes on to the north.”
The Tuareg scowled but the orders were from El Hassan himself and they made considerable sense. Besides, what could be more pleasurable than to herd the pigs of the Arab Union back to Tamanrasset to be put to the torture at leisure?
He held up an arm again and shouted to his men in Tamaheg, the Berber language of the Tuaghi.
Bey, disguising inward relief said, “Let your men go forth then, and relieve the remaining dogs of any weapons they may still retain, though seemingly they, in their great cowardice, have thrown them away. Round them up and put them under guard.” He laughed contemptuously, as was expected by the tribesmen and said, “Few guards will be necessary. Women could guard them. Put the rest of your men to gathering up their weapons and put them in the lorries which they have abandoned. Do not kill the wounded you find, especially the officers. El Hassan wishes to question them all. Put those among the dogs who understand how to drive the Roumi vehicles to the task and escort them back to Tamanrasset with the loot.”
“Bilhana! with joy,” Guémama blurted and though obviously disappointed at not being able to conduct the slaughter which he’d had in mind, turned and shouted orders to his men.
He struck his hejin camel with his mish’ab camel stick and barked in command, “Adar-ya-yan,” to bring it to its knees. The camel went through its awkward, rocking motion and subsided to the sands.
The young warrior jumped to the sands, his face in great glee. He was dressed in standard Tuareg garb; baggy trousers of dark indigo-blue cotton cloth, a loose, nightgown-like white cotton shirt and over this a gandoura outer garment. On his feet were red leather fil fil boots and over his head and face the teguelmoust, the lightweight cotton combination veil and turban. It was indigo blue and some ten feet long and a Tuareg man was never seen without it, for the Tuareg, unlike the other tribesmen of the desert, go veiled, while the women are veilless. Traditionally, it is to protect their complexions from the sun, since the Tuareg considers himself a white man, though as a whole they are as dark as the Belas whom they enslave.
“Wallahi! O Bey-ag-Akhamouk,” Guémama chortled. “Bismillah ! Thus it should be! These are the last of the Arab Union dogs to be rounded up.” Next to El Hassan himself, whom the Tuaghi chieftain worshipped, Bey-ag-Akamouk was his favorite among the new leaders of the tribesmen of North Africa.
Bey-ag-Akhamouk clapped him on the shoulders, with both hands in an American gesture, usually not acceptable to a Surgu noble, but now, in the full glow of victory, received with a triumphant laugh.
Kenny Ballalou came up, dragging a .10 caliber Tommy-Noiseless by its sling and followed by a Teda tribesman with his flac rifle. He looked, and was, exhausted. He still wore bandages from the wounds he had taken at Fort Laperrine.
He said, in English, “What the hell happened?”
And Bey said, in Tamaheg, for the benefit of Guémamaa, “They attempted a final desperate charge in effort to break out. Guémama with his valiant warriors arrived at the last moment, and the cowardly Arab Union dogs broke and ran.” Kenny had just passed through the portion of the wadi that had been cordoned off, so Bey added, “How many of them are left?”
“About two hundred unwounded and walking wounded,” Kenny cleared his throat and looked at Bey. “The boys seem to be polishing off those hit so badly that they can’t stand.”
Bey turned to the Tuareg and said, “It was the wish of El Hassan to return to Tamanrasset with all the captured. See what you can do, O Mokkadam of men.”
Without further words, Guémama was back onto his camel and off up the wadi.
Approaching them, his face wan and his once beautifully tailored uniform torn and disheveled, was Colonel Midran Ibrahim, his hands tied behind his back and escorted by two of the veiled camel corps men. Neither of the two Americans had ever seen the Egyptian officer before, but they recognized him through his insignia.
Without words, Bey went behind the other, reached out and drew the arm dagger from the sheath of one of the Tuaregs. The tribesman made no motion to resist the taking of his weapon, assuming that his commander was about to use it to the best advantage on the colonel.
However, Bey cut the rope binding the other and returned the knife to its owner.
He said gently, in Arabic “I was astonished, Colonel, not to see you in the advance of your men in the various attempts to break out of our ambuscade.”
The colonel rubbed his wrists to restore circulation, and said contemptuously, “We are taught at the military institute that a commanding officer must not risk himself. His guidance of his men is more important than heroics. Would Napoleon or Wellington have exposed themselves at Waterloo?”
“It’s been done,” Kenny said mildly. “Our Stonewall Jackson died at Chancellorsville. Even Big Mouth Custer, didn’t get back from the Little Big Horn.”
Bey said, “We’ll return to Tamanrasset immediately. Your wounded will be placed in the lorries and in and on the armored cars. Do you have any medics with you?”
The colonel was evidently taken aback. Like the tribesmen who had brought him up, he had expected immediate execution. He said, “We have one doctor, slightly wounded, and two of his nurse-assistants.”
“Good,” Bey said. “Dr. Smythe, of our Medical Corps, will be able to use their aid.” He looked at Kenny Ballalou. “How about rounding up the fastest of their trucks? We’ll get going soonest. They ought to be faster than our hovercraft.”
“Right,” Kenny said, and went on up the wadi.
Colonel Ibrahim said, not attempting to disguise his suprise, “You do not mean to kill us?”
Bey laughed sourly. “It will give us good marks in world opinion if we refrain from butchering our prisoners—in the manner that has been the wont of the Arab Union.”
The colonel, at least, had the decency to flush. He said, stiffly, “In which vehicle will I ride?”
“You won’t,” Bey told him. “You’ll walk, with your men. The vehicles are needed to carry the wounded.”
Bey made a motion to a couple of the riflemen who had backed his flac rifle and the machine guns and instructed them to return the colonel to the column which was to take up the return march to Tamanrasset and Fort Laperrine.
Kenny came up in a hover jeep. Bey-ag-Akhamouk recognized it cynically as one of the Skoda models from Czechoslovakia in the Soviet Complex. In spite of supposed world detente, the great powers continued to supply the smaller with the tools to slaughter each other.
Kenny came to a halt next to him and said, “This was as fast as anything they had and it leaves more room for the wounded than if we’d taken a truck. Those trucks are going to have to go slowly, or they’ll bounce anybody inside with a bad hit to death.”
; Bey could see the flac rifle the other had tucked into the back of the jeep. He lugged his own over and put it in too and then the remaining cannisters of clips.
Kenny Ballalou said, “Should we take Guémamaa along with us?”
And Bey said, “Hell, no. If we did, not a single Arab Union trooper would make it back to Tamanrasset. As it is, he wouldn’t disobey an order of El Hassan under torture.”
They started up, heading back down the wadi in the direction from which the Tuaghi camelmen had come only a short time ago.
Kenny said, “That’s the most gruesome sight I’ve ever seen. There’s more dead than alive in that wadi and more wounded than whole. How many did Guémama’s men knock off when they came up?”
“So far as I know, none.”
Kenny looked over at him from the side of his eyes, even as he wrestled the vehicle down the winding way. “Then why’d you give him all the credit, Bey?”
The other grunted and said, “Because he’s the nephew of Melchizedek, the chief of the Kel Rela clan of the Kel Rela tribe. But that’s not all. The Ahaggar Taureg consist of three tribes each headed by a warrior clan which gives its name to the tribe as a whole; the Kel Rela, the Tégéhé and the Taitog. The chief of the Kel Rela clan is also chief of the Kel Rela tribe and automatically paramount chief, or Amenokal, of the whole confederation. That’s Melchizedek, and though he’s supposedly fighting chief, he’s too old to take the field. Guémama, who’s the apple of his eye, is also his nephew and the son of his favorite sister. Descent among the Tuaghi is in the matriarchal line. Guémama will become Amenokal when the old boy dies. And that’s not all, either. The kid’s the most popular character going among the young Tuaghi. They’d follow him to hell and gone.—And he’d follow Homer the same way.”
Kenny Ballalou looked over at his companion. “How in the hell do you know all this?”
Bey grunted in self-deprecation. “I thought that you knew I was born a Tuareg. A missionary took me to the States when I was only three years old. However, I am a member of the Taitog tribe, which makes me a subject of the Amenokal, in spite of the fact that I hold a doctorate in Political Science from the University of Minnesota.”
Kenny took him in from the side of his eyes again. Bey-ag-Akhamouk was a handsome physical specimen in the Tuareg tradition. It was debated among anthropologists whether the Tuaghi were of Berber or Hamitic descent. In fact, the more far-out contended that they were descendents of Crusaders who had never made it home from the Holy Land. Be that as it may, he was tall, as the desert men went, wiry and strong, and his well featured face lighter in complexion than was usually found, even among the Tuaghi. Kenny wondered about that missionary. Was Bey his natural son?
VI
EL HASSAN
They had only been gone a few days in their pursuit of the retreating Arab Union forces and Bey-ag-Akhamouk and Kenny Ballalou were astonished at the changes that had taken place in so short a time. They had left at night, with all the debris of furious battle littering the area, in particular, between Tamanrasset proper and Fort Laperrine. El Hassan’s Tuaghi and other tribesmen had attacked in force, while most of Colonel Ibrahim’s armor and other mechanized equipment was plunging out into the erg and reg in an effort to seize the waterholes upon which El Hassan’s people were dependent. The deciding factor was when the heratin sedentary workers and serfs, stirred up by infiltrated El Hassan propagandists, had erupted from the souks of Tamanrasset, armed largely with hoes, scythes, sickles, axes and other agricultural implements and stormed the fort. They had been cut down in swaths by the few machine guns the colonel had left to defend the area, but nothing could hold them.
The forces of El Hassan, those disciplined enough to take orders, were the only element that prevented a complete destruction of the overwhelmed Arab Union Legionaires.
But now, seemingly overnight, all bodies had been removed, and most signs of the recent combat were already erased, though large squads of native workers were everywhere, still patching, still rebuilding. Most of the material damage had been done on the outskirts of Tamanrasset, rather than on Fort Laperrine. The elements of the Arab Union left behind to hold the almost abandoned fort, had possessed a few motorized recoilless guns and had shelled the town, until overwhelmed. But even this damage was rapidly being repaired. The workers seemed in a holiday mood, despite the arduous labor to which they were subjecting themselves.
Kenny looked over at Bey, as they approached. He said, “Homer’s pulled another rabbit out of the hat. How’n the hell did he ever get these people to work so hard? Traditionally, they’re experts at goofing off.”
“Search me,” Bey said, looking around. “Possibly it’s because it’s the first time they’ve ever done something that would profit themselves. I don’t see the tents. Where are Homer and the rest?”
A Tuareg warrior was passing. Bey called out to him in Tanaheq, asking the whereabouts of El Hassan and his viziers. The other answered and Bey looked back at Kenny. “They’re inside the fort.” he said.
They pulled through the main gate, which was in the process of being repaired, and headed for the parade ground. Once Foreign Legionaires, Chasseurs d’Afrique, Spahis, and Tirailleurs d’Afrique had paraded here. Now it was as warm with Tuaghi, Teda, Ouled Tidrarin, Sudanese, Songhoi and even occasional Rifs from the far north, not to speak of representatives of various tribes that neither Kenny nor Bey recognized. All were armed, and armed with modern weapons of Soviet Complex design. On the face of it, El Hassan had taken little time to confiscate the captured modern equipment of the Arab Union and distribute it among his followers.
Bey asked questions again and they drove over to the former administration building of the fort and parked the hover jeep. There were quite a few other vehicles in the vicinity, ranging from additional jeeps, to heavy trucks and even several medium tanks. El Hassan had supplied his forces adequately with his military loot. Well, they both decided, inwardly, they’d need it.
They found Homer, Isobel and Cliff Jackson in the former officer’s mess, all three looking as though they hadn’t slept for as long as they could remember.
Homer Crawford and Cliff Jackson were dressed in military khakis, obviously liberated from the foe. Isobel wore a man’s shirt of the same material and had evidently taken two pair of khaki shorts, ripped them up and reconstructed them into a culotte, a divided skirt. On her figure, it looked fine. She was a pretty wisp of a girl, somewhere in her mid-twenties and seemingly couldn’t have been more out of place than in this Saharan background.
The three were seated at a long, heavy table, strewn with papers and dispatches and a battered typewriter which sat before Isobel. They looked up at the entrance of Bey and Kenny.
Homer ran a black hand back over his short wiry hair, in a gesture of weariness, and said, “I thought you two were pursuing that bastard Ibrahim.” But he looked relieved to see them, as did the other two.
“Consider him pursued, man,” Kenny said, slumping down onto a bench, and putting his Tommy-Noiseless on the table before him.
Bey said, “Guémamaa is escorting the survivors back.”
“Guémamaa!” Cliff Jackson blurted. “With those fanatic camelmen of his? If any of the prisoners get back here, they’ll be lucky.” The big Californian former UCLA athlete was the least sophisticated of the El Hassan crew and had a tendency to gush.
Bey sighed and said, “I told them that El Hassan had sent word that he wanted to put the prisoners to the question and find out everything he could about what the Arab Union was up to. They can’t wait to get back to watch the torture going on.”
“Oh, great,” Homer growled. “Now I’ll have to talk them out of that little pleasure. How many prisoners are there?”
“Possibly two hundred, including the wounded,” Kenny said.
Isobel winced. “No more than that?”
Bey looked over at her. “When they started from here, quite a few were wounded. There was insufficient room in their vehicles—tho
se that they still had—for wounded, other than officers. They were carrying too much equipment. The others had to keep up as best they could. There was insufficient water, and in this part of the world, the sun we shall always have with us. We hung on their flanks and knocked off the stragglers, and sniped at the main column. Short of the Khyber Pass, this is possibly the best area in the world for guerrilla fighting. From time to time, they’d flip their lids and send the armored cars—they had two of them—or their jeeps to flush us out. The only casualties we took were probably tribesmen who laughed themselves to death. Finally, they gave those tactics up and put the armored cars to each flank and the jeeps to the front and rear to cover those on foot. Damn little good it did them. We continued to pick them off, one by one, or to overrun stragglers, two or three or so at a time.”
Bey took a deep breath. “It was pretty bad. The tribesmen had the time of their lives. It got a little sickening to Kenny and me.”
Homer said, understanding in his voice, “What finally happened, Bey?”
“Their officers seemingly went completely around the bend. They took to one of the larger wadis, probably figuring that they could make better time. We ambushed them. At first they wouldn’t surrender, probably figuring on being butchered. When Guémama and his boys came up, slavering at the mouth, they panicked completely and it was all over.”
Homer Crawford said, “How did Guémamaa work out?”
“Fine. He controls his men like a top sergeant.”
Kenny said, “What in the hell are you three doing in Western dress? What’re the Tuaghi going to say when they see you without a teguelmoust? With your faces, ah, obscenely revealed?”
Both Bey and Kenny still wore the complete Tuaghi attire, as had all of them, even Isobel, up until the present.
Homer shook his head and said, “This camp now represents a score of different tribes, some of which I’ve never even heard of. Some of them are blood-foes of the Tuaghi, or have been until the advent of El Hassan’s unifying movement. We can’t afford to present ourselves as favoring one element. From now on, all of El Hassan’s immediate staff will wear desert khakis and so will all of our armed forces, Tuaghi and otherwise. If any potential trooper doesn’t like the idea, he won’t be accepted into our service. We’ve got to break down these age-old traditions. Some of them are crazy. Wearing black wool burnouses, for instance, in this climate. Or Moroccan babouche slippers. They have no back to them. You walk by kind of shuffling forward. If you try to walk backward, the slippers fall off your feet. Or can you imagine trying to run at any speed in them? Or take the haik as worn in Morocco and Algeria. It so covers the woman’s head that she can’t hear well and only one eye is exposed. Can you imagine walking through modern traffic in a city in this outfit? They get hit like ten pins.”
The Best Ye Breed na-3 Page 5
