The Radioactive Camel Affair - Leslie Peter - Страница 19

“What is the trouble?” the dark man asked curtly.

“This man was attempting to join the train, Excellence.”

“But I have seen him before,” the officer said. “I had trouble with him when we were separating the two caravans.”

“So have I seen him before,” Ahmed snarled. “I knew the face was familiar!” He leaned across and twitched the enveloping headdress from the agent. “Aha! So the foreign thief is revealed! Foreign thief…and, perhaps, foreign spy, eh?”

The cavalry captain was looking inquiringly at the dark man. “I suppose so,” the latter sighed. “It was planned otherwise—but, in the circumstances…At least it seems we now know the mystery of the radio transmissions from the caravan. We can search his baggage afterwards.” He nodded imperceptibly at the officer.

“Get down,” the captain ordered Solo curtly.

The agent slid from the dromedary, his mind racing. The homer and his tiny two-way radio were safe in the money belt around his waist; the Mauser was in its improvised holster under his robes; and on his other side a pair of powerful binoculars were slung. The rest of his gear would have to be sacrificed along with the bedroll on the camel…assuming he could get away at all. Unobtrusively, he grasped the big automatic through a fold in his burnoose.

As his feet touched the ground, Solo heard the chilling sound of a rifle bolt being drawn back and slammed home. He knew that he was very near to death: the soldier behind him was preparing to shoot…

Exploding into motion, he ducked under the camel’s belly and fired at the cavalryman through his robes. The soldier toppled forwards over his horse’s neck, his rifle clattering to the ground. Before any of the others had time to move, Solo bobbed up on the far side of the animal and the Mauser roared again. The second man, winged in the act of raising his rifle, clutched at his shoulder and sagged in the saddle.

An instant later, in a smooth, continuous flow of motion, Solo had bounded across the space between the camel and the first soldier’s horse, hauled the dead man clear of the harness and vaulted into the saddle. Then, driving his heels into the animal’s flanks, he rode straight at Ahmed, the officer and the stranger, scattering them before they could draw their guns, leaped the horse over a four-foot thorn hedge by the side of the trail, and galloped away into the scrub.

From behind him, Ahmed’s revolver boomed. The report was followed by the sharp crack of an automatic and a duller, flatter explosion—probably someone had snatched up a rifle from one of the fallen soldiers.

Solo rode like the wind, zigzagging among the stunted trees. He was thankful that the soldier’s horse—unlike most Arab steeds—was harnessed and saddled. Crouching low over the animal’s flying mane, he glanced back over his shoulder. Ahmed and the officer had jumped the hedge and were galloping in pursuit; the dark man had stayed behind. His head and shoulders were visible over the line of thorn bushes, one eye squinting along the barrel of a rifle. Four more shots rang out. Then for a long time there was no sound but the drumming of hooves on the hard ground.

Solo was making a big circle through the scrub, trying to come back on a course parallel with the trail but about a mile away from it. He hoped to gain a range of low hills some way ahead and keep watch on the caravan for as long as he could before relying on the homer. In the meantime, there was the pursuit to be disposed of. Next time he looked back, Ahmed had dropped half a mile behind—but the cavalry officer was only about a hundred yards away and gaining fast. There was a puff of smoke from in front of his chest and a bullet sang over Solo’s head. Regretfully, the agent fumbled inside his robes until he reached the money belt. From a back compartment, he drew out a small, lozenge-shaped metal object. As he rode, he twisted a pointer on the face to the mark 5 SECONDS. Then, deliberately reining back a little, he waited for a straight stretch between the thorn trees and dropped the thing to the ground. The Sudanese was firing again—but after three shots a heavier detonation roared out and drowned the noise of horses’ hooves as the grenade Solo had dropped went off.

He looked behind him again. Horse and rider were lying in a grotesque tangle among the trees. The bare earth, and parts of some of the tree trunks, glistened redly in the mounting sun.

Half an hour later, Solo reined in the horse between two monolithic rocks on the crest of the range of hills he had seen. From the shadow he watched through his binoculars as the caravan wound its way around the far end of the spur on which he stood. The camel with the striped blanket still walked just behind the posse of cavalry at the head of the column. It would be twenty minutes or a half hour before the last riders had passed the foot of the slope immediately below him.

He decided to rest the horse and call Illya on the radio. He had not contacted him at all, and Kuryakin must be wondering what had happened—besides which, he himself wanted to know how the Russian had fared on his journey in from the other direction.

Sheltered by the rocks from the fierce heat, he sat down, took out the transmitter and, turning the pointer to RECEIVE, pressed the button actuating the automatic call sign on their wavelength.

At the end of the half hour—the last outriders of the caravan had passed below him some time before—he was still pressing it.

There was no reply from Kuryakin.

Chapter 10

The City Which Was Off the Map

THE RECEIVER in Illya Kuryakin’s breast pocket began to bleep after he had been arguing for nearly two hours with the officer in charge of the detachment of soldiers who had prevented him from resuming the road after his night in the Landrover.

Colonel Ononu was short and bulky, with fierce, bright eyes in a very dark face. He was a volatile man, speaking in a declamatory fashion and constantly throwing out his arms and then smoothing down the creases in his rumpled bush shirt and shorts. Every now and then he would snatch the French paratroop beret he wore from his head, as if to emphasize a point, and then cram it back again on top of his close-cropped hair. The issue between them was simple: Illya wanted to go on; the colonel wanted him to go back. Either that or submit to arrest—for he was not entirely satisfied with the Russian’s credentials, he said.

“What do you want to go for, man? What for?” Ononu said. “This is dangerous country. We got a civil war on our hands, man—you could say the whole place is under martial law. Okay, technically the province is still ruled by the Arabs. Technically, I say. But possession is nine-tenths of the law, even martial law, and we’re here…and we’re in possession of you, man.”

“Granted, granted, granted, Colonel,” Illya said patiently. “For the tenth time, I have pictures to take, and in my opinion the only place I am likely to get them is further on here—”

“Where further on? How far you goin’? There’s nothing to take around here—unless you want shots of villagers murdered by the Arabs.”

“As I said, I’m taking this road as far as the fork for Halakaz, and—according to my map—the Halakaz road crosses a range of volcanic mountains and then skirts an enormous forest before it reaches the town a hundred miles further on. There are no roads through the forest—indeed, I understand it is hardly explored at all, and certainly not by Europeans. And it is here that I hope to be able to get the animal photos I want.”

The colonel Hung out his arms in a theatrical gesture. “Pictures, animals, photographs!” he cried. “I tell you there’s a race war going on here, man! You’d do better to photograph some of the atrocities—”