Текст книги "[The Girl From UNCLE 01] - The Global Globules Affair"

Автор книги: Simon Latter

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"Well, we know it will, old girl. The space boffins have proved it down to the nth. Can't be tapped, bugged or otherwise tampered with."

"Yes, but don't you see? Oh! Skip it! The sun must be softening me." She grinned. "And there's Carl Karadin too. A bit ironic, don't you think? Right now we're gearing up to smash him. And we'll do it because we have to. Twenty years ago he was branded a nutcase. A world currency was his bug and it bit him deep, deep. So deep that he worked for twenty years to perfect a way of destroying all paper currency and replacing it with a world currency. Yet even now, the finance wizards of the world are trying to work out ways of doing that very thing—a transfer to a world currency."

Mark nodded. "Crazy—just crazy! Ours not to reason why—eh, old girl?" He checked his watch again. "Nearing zero."

They donned glasses, oval-shaped, with contoured side pieces an extension of the three-colored lenses. Vertical stripes of purple, orange and green with an opaque sheen on the convex surfaces. The timing and translation controls on the receiver were set to prearranged figures and the lenses lined on a compass bearing.

Each took a cylinder from a padded pouch in their assault belt, about the size of a two-cell hand torch but larger at its base and sloping to a tiny aperture. A thumb-press, a red safety switch and a recessed gun site were the only breaks in its shiny black surface.

They checked watches again. Mark began to count down from ten to zero. "... five, four, three, two, one!"

At that second there appeared in the sky over forty miles away a series of stuttering flashes, as if sunlight was being reflected off the windshields of fast-moving cars. But through the three-colored lenses, each flash could be seen as a different shape. Some shapes repeated themselves more often than others. The relay moved at fantastic speed—so fast that whole words appeared as if some celestial type writer was impressing keys on to the hazy blue paper of the sky.

April and Mark vied with each other in their attempts to read the messages, but the phonetic alphabet used by the Laser Beam Sender had not yet been included in their curriculum and they only managed to decipher a few words in every sentence.

When the relay ceased, they both sent two long and two short flashes into the sky from their own hand beams. It took about five seconds for these flashes to reach the relay area, where they exploded into phonetic letters spelling "okay".

As they removed their glasses, Mark said:

"The range test was impressive. I'm going to have a test of my own."

"Careful," April warned.

"They won't be able to see anything from way down there."

"I didn't mean that, you oaf!"

He smiled at her. "I'll remember your concern for me—in the right place." He moved the red switch, lifted the recessed gun site on the torch body, took aim at a smallish rock some hundred yards away and pressed the button.

The rock exploded with a dull crack. Pulverized stone spurted up in a fan-shaped arc. When it had settled, only a faint depression remained where the rock had been.

Mark moved the safety-catch to "off". They looked at each other steadily, silently. April shivered slightly, then stooped over the laser beam receivers. She opened the slide panels and drew out the purple-orange-green striped film. Mark did the same.

"We could have saved one," said Mark. "But orders is orders. We might have been separated at the time."

On the films were the messages, translated into ordinary words. These read:

"Move in dusk. All forces position 1800 hours. Target area sealed. Avoid or destroy hazards. No wrecking. Repeat: no wrecking. We cover but avoiding inter-in. Delicate."

"Once the department boys get into the act they start pussy-footing around," said April. "Why try to avoid an international incident when the whole darn caboodle down there is directed against all of us?"

Mark shrugged. "The F.B.I. claim that large numbers of genuine foreign nationals—sick people—do actually come to Little Basin. That's why we can't just march on the place. You know how dicey these inter-ins can be. The dipsomatic boys have nightmares about agents shooting one foreign national who is under their protection—which same these sick people are."

"Phooey!" said April. "Sick people might have checked in there one time—when Karadin was building up a front—but not now."

"Don't be bloodthirsty, darling. Read on."

She read on:

"Retreat and contact if infiltration impossible. Major attack set-up discovered Chicago. Suspect others. Keep finger off button. Good luck. A. W."

"Ah—that's better!" said April. "A far more valid reason for no-wrecking attack."

"I think A. W. was pacifying the dipsomatic boys."

"Do you mind not mispronouncing that word? Some of my best friends are diplomats."

"Gertcha!" said Mark. "Most of my best friends aren't. Let 'em be friends with each other—there are enough of them. They don't speak our language, me old darling."

"This finger-off-button bit means that A. W. must be dead sure that Little Basin is their American H.Q."

"And the Chicago bit means even more," said Mark. "With all forces alerted, it's possible they've picked up some lesser agent in Chicago. Maybe more than one. Lesser agents crack easy."

"But they don't always know much."

"Only who tells them to do what, and when."

"So?"

"So A. W. and our Government pals may have cracked the Global Globules alarm system. There won't be anything casual about the way their project swings into major action. To do the greatest harm in the shortest time, they'd have to synchronize the blast-off of their blasted spray—a one-button job for certain."

April nodded pensively. "And dat is down dere?" She pointed.

He chuckled. "Dat is. Tell you something else—dere is someone over dar." He pointed to further around the hills. "I seen him bobbing behind a rock."

"A peeping Tom?"

Mark looked at her, one eyebrow flicked up. "You're kidding, of course?"

She looked away. "Well, I mean—we're not what people might think, and—"

He grabbed her, held her tight. "Darling—you're really human! Let's give Tom an eyeful he won't forget."

She stared at him calmly, her face close to his. She kissed him gently, then said softly:

"Let go of me, you over-sexed rat, or I'll clobber you!"

"At last!" he cried. "At last, the real woman emerges from her glossy career cage!" He too kissed her gently. "You're a sweet bitch. Keep looking over my shoulder."

She lay still. "Yes—yes, I saw a movement. Ah! He's gone now—scuttled up and over the brow of the hill."

Mark looked back and released her. "Now who? Not one of our friends, surely? And it's a powerful long hike from the valley to where he was, so we'd have seen him." Mark pulled out the range glass and twisted the bevel for focus. "He's gone right enough. It's a great big lonely world out there." He switched to the sprawled cluster of buildings below them. "No activity. Strange, y'know. Not seen a soul outside ever since we got here. There's movement inside—can just see shadows through the screens over those picture windows. What is it—off-season for nut hatches?"

She held out her hand for the glass, then laughed. "They must have heard you!"

"I can see them—not to identify though. They look like women."

"They're not," said April firmly. "They're dressed like women, but they're husky men." She lowered the glass, then looked at Mark. "Could be they have spotted us and are putting on a show?"

"Not a chance. We were here before dawn. We've built a natural stone rampart, plus the cover that scrub further down must give us against anyone looking up here." He tapped his chest. "Plus these desert-camouflage track suits which blend perfectly against the background. Why, I couldn't even spot you when I reccied along the ridge." He paused before adding: "But chummy-boy over there might have set them off."

"Set them off on what?"

Mark pointed downwards. "If that nut hatch was genuine, there would be people resting on the patios, others taking the air, some using the pool—there's an awning over it to protect invalids from the sun. And where are the staff? It's a lovely place down there. Lush and beautifully laid out. Wouldn't there be even one single person with business or pleasure outside the building? There are stables beyond the pool and a carport full of cars and pick-up trucks. Yet no one to tend the horses? No car needing checking? No, me old darling—something set 'em moving, and I think it was young chummy on the hill yonder. He was wearing dark clothes."

"Young?"

"The way he scarpered over the Beecham—yes."

"Speak English, you limey half-wit!"

"Scarpered, darling—ran. Beecham—as in Beecham Pill hill. They call it rhyming slang. Very useful."

"Not now. The only useful thing I need is a way in to that lush oasis without setting off their goddamn button."

Mark leaned back, relaxed.

"With you little eye, can you spy a gee-gee?"

"A number of them in stables—the top halves of the doors are open."

"I have a way with gee-gees. I think I smell good—a sort of inner cleanliness."

"Skip the commercial."

"Devices are for alarm—yes?"

She shrugged. "I've known some killers—booby traps."

"But not down there."

"Oh no? Flower beds, lawns, curving paths—we won't know how to avoid them. That dirt road from the highway must be all of eight miles, but I'd say there'd be alarms every mile."

"But not killers."

"If it was me, I'd wire the patio too," she said thoughtfully. "That would leave the path around the perimeter fence, past the corrals and the carports and on to the stables. Now where would I booby that? I'd let us get in—some way in—then I'd rig them across that open area. Hmm—can't see what's at back of the main building. Doesn't really matter. Our shortest line for entry is at the side." She moved her head and the range glass back and forth. "Yep—through or over the fence, along the outer path, past the stables, cut across at the edge of the pool. Three leaps and we're under a window."

"They won't be killers," said Mark.

"Will you quit saying that? It's a chance we have to take."

"I love horses. I wouldn't hurt a horse. And it can run a sight faster than I can."

She lowered the glass, leaning on one elbow.

"You British! Crazy animal lovers. Feed a dog and starve a child."

"Nasty, nasty."

"Yes, it was. Sorry. But you make me so mad. You think we can use the horses?"

"Me—not we. I will give my well-known impersonation of the galloping major while you trip the light fantastic around t'other way."

"But if the approaches are booby-trapped, as we're sure they must be, you'll set them off. It's the very thing we want to avoid."

"Horses, ducky—horses will set 'em off. So if you set any off, they'll think it's another horse. By the time they find out, you'll be through the alarm system."

"You'll draw them to you."

"I shall be expecting them. They won't be expecting me."

"How do you get around to the stables?"

"Goat's milk—very nourishing," said Mark. "Make yogurt from it. Marvellous stuff. Makes you live to a hundred and ten. And goats live on old chop sticks and bubble gum."

"What are you burbling about?"

"Behind the stables, in the shade of them now, no doubt; but last time I spied, I saw a li'l white goatee beard. Where there's goats there are no booby traps, so I hike me around yonder, do a spot of belly crawl down that side and, at a synchronized time—bingo!" He rested his head in the crook of his arm and tilted his hat over his face. "Call me at eighteen hundred hours, mother dear, for I long to be Queen of the May."

"Queen is right," April snarled. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Stop yapping," said Mark. "Do your knitting—or something."

He snored into a quivering silence.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: THEY'RE ALL YOURS!

A SHREDDED canopy of silver and black lay over the valley and hills of Little Basin. The moon rode the hills, rimming them with light.

Earlier, in the sunset's flare, the message "Let's go" had flashed into the sky. They waited until a smoky-purple haze rippled beneath the early stars, then became two swift, soft– moving figures. Their track suits had been reversed—the underside being black with a pattern of zigzag purple stripes, giving an illusory effect of a moving shadow. Whereas all black is a stark outline in all but the deepest of shadows where the eyes cannot see, this coloring had an affinity with both full and half shadow. The pouch belts and shoulder attachments fitted natural body contours and did not rattle, reflect or protrude.

Mark swung wide around the fencing to come in at the far side, leaving April to enter at a point immediately opposite the swimming pool providing shortest access to the patio. Watches were synchronized for the time when each would don U.N.C.L.E. gas masks and make the first move according to the carefully assessed plan.

It was annoying not to be able to use even their personal ear radios. These could not be overheard, but ultra-sensitive equipment might reflect the signals. But April ceased to be annoyed at this when, as she waited by the fence, she saw one of the flower beds begin to move apart in the center. Moonlight on the bed gave her a clear view, despite the fact that this section of the fence was shadowed by the buildings.

From the gap there a pole began to rise, looking at first sight like a young fir tree. A faint whine of hydraulics, a slight hiss, and the pole stopped at about the thirty-feet height. Fan-shaped antennae "grew" from near its top. TV and radio booster aerials sprouted below these. Then at the very top a "soup-dish" radar bowl came up like a conjuror's bunch of flowers that appear out of his sleeve, springing open to assume its correct shape.

April goggled at it. "I sure hope lover boy sees this," she muttered. "With that mast they could monitor my grumbling appendix."

Mark certainly saw it—from under the belly of a goat as he inched across a patch of moonlight towards the shadow of the stables. Reaching this shelter he checked his watch, to find he had time in hand. He surveyed the mast. "Take a look at that, me old darling!" he whispered. "I reckon the C.I.A. or the F.B.I. boys made a shrewd guess about the electronic potential around here."

He was about to break open the lock on the stables' main door when a couple of goats ambled past him, having come through the hole he had made in the fence. Ignoring him, they went on across the stable yard, over a grass patch and along the path curving around the house.

"Ye gods! A goat radar, no less! Well, thanks a lot!" He drew his gas gun and followed them. No booby traps. He was at the corner of the house when he saw his mistake. By a reflection of moonlight as a goat passed it, the glassy eye of a photocell set amid some wall greenery betrayed its presence.

Mark dropped to one knee, eyes keened for more photocells. There should be a pattern of them to identify the size of objects caught in their beam. He saw the next highest; then saw something else. The window nearest to him was curtained by a sheet of the metal material and was stretched across the inside frame. A tiny chink of yellow light showed at one corner; otherwise the window reflected only moonlight.

Crouching to keep his body at the same height as the animals, he followed the goats around the path. He was nearly caught when a door opened. He heard the snick of the catch, darted close to the house wall, dropped flat. No light flowed from the open door, but the man there was clearly etched against the sky. Even his gun was in sharp relief. He swore in a guttural voice. "These goddamn goats are loose again. That's all it was. Cut out the scanners and send Longess out to round them up." The door closed.

Mark exhaled slowly. "Scanners too!" He blew a kiss towards the goats, who now were scoffing flowers from the large bed in which the aerial mast was set. "I'll never call you 'stinkers' again!" He eased upright, then sped on soundless feet across the front of the house, around the patio, and up the side of the pool. He took a chance that April was there and leapt for the patch of shadows. She almost rammed the gas gun nozzle into his ear.

"Some horse!" she whispered from under her mask.

"Some break! The goats got loose. I didn't need the horses. No booby traps, darling—just masses of cells and scanners. They've switched off until—ah, here be is! Wait here!" A man had come out from this end of the house.

Shadow leaping, silent—a swift pad-pad of feet balancing, body poised, arms reaching.

The man halted, swung around, mouth open. Eyeballs white, wild against the moonlight, glazing fast as flexed-steel hands struck once, twice. The senseless figure crumpled. Human sack among the flowers. The goats went on eating.

April anticipated the next move. A small side door was open. Mark joined her. They stepped inside, closed the door softly. A lobby, Spanish style, wall benches, hooks, overalls hanging. Riding boots, sand-yellow, a straw sombrero, the smell of garlic. Then a door, light-glow slanting through. She tiptoed past him, peered, backed up, signaled three. He nodded. They went in.

A large kitchen, fitted ranch-style, split level. Three men, cards on a plastic-topped table, were there smoking, waiting for the fourth, now sleeping among the flowers. Two were big men, one small, and they scarcely glanced up as Mark sat in the fourth chair.

"Took you long..." said one man, and broke off as the gas gun hissed.

They reared up, puking, gasping, mouths working at words which were strangled at source, then sank to the floor like jelly-babies, in all shapes.

April caught the smallest man and eased him on to the floor, steadying the tilting chair before it crashed. Mark slammed the other two over the table, patted their clothes, and drew out two guns. April bad already taken the third. She took the two from Mark, went across to the stove, and lifted a stew-pot lid. Steam eddied up. She dropped the gun inside, replaced the lid, and came back, eyes smiling.

There was a short passage before them now, high-ceilinged, one wall a whole mural, a desert scene glowing with light. On the other wall were crossed sabers, an old muzzle-loader rifle, a board with Spanish daggers akimbo. And along the pine floor was a long, narrow Jacobean antique linen chest. Mojave rugs lead to a ghastly pseudo-Moroccan archway, draped with an Indian blanket.

Beyond the drape was a large oval room, aseptic in its clinical lay-out, a ghost room, silvered with moonlight from huge picture windows. It had sound-absorbing tiles from floor to ceiling. Fluted air-conditioning vents pulsed sibilantly, loud in the emptiness, invalid chairs, their tubular chrome glistening, stood headstoning the long white graves of massage couches. There were white leather lounge chairs, canopied sun chairs, tall spindly chairs, all mocking an empty curving bar. This was the hub of the nut hatch, thought Mark. Yes indeedee.

He noticed two white doors, smooth, all smooth, with no handles, no locks, no hinges. They set to work methodically, but fast, training, experience, knowledge culled from a thousand minutes, compressed and drawn on in less than five. System, mechanism, alarms. Contacts, method, effect.

Mark made signs, not daring to use personal radios, and drew out his U.N.C.L.E. device, held it, questioning. April nodded agreement, took her cigarette lighter, adjusted it into a cutting torch. Mark traced the hair-wires, separated them, clipped on the device to one, then spat on his fingers and arced the wires. Blue light danced from finger-tip to device. A puff of white smoke, a tiny "phut"—and the alarm circuit was broken.

The torch flame burned blue-white, following the line of the alarm wires into the door post, burning deep, clean, through steel contact plate. Paint blistered in a small halo. Mark came around April, to place the palms of his hands hard on the smooth door surface, each palm holding a suction pad. The torch flame died. The blistered halo glowed half an orange bubbling, then slowly dulled to a bruise blue. The door jerked, beginning to whip back on its glides. Mark held it, saving the crashing thud when it would have hit the stops.

At the same time this action allowed an aperture for their vision and April peered through. There was a danger sign. Four—no, five—men. Noise now, too, booming out into the ghostly room. Voices, voices, voices—jabbering, murmuring; static crackling, F.M. waves pulsing sound. Mark now controlled the door with one hand, the first release impulse having gone, his head pressed against hers.

In their fan of vision stretched part of a console: TV screens, radio and radar dials, switches, colored lights. Above the console was a light-glowed map—not contoured–a linking chart of all major towns, many smaller but important centers, with Washington D.C. as the radial heart. Next in size of markings came New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, and an outer perimeter of symbols linking these with the main points.

There was to be no wrecking—that had been a clear order, and a difficult order too; for this meant having to attack personnel only. C.I.A. and F.B.I. boffins must have clued on to this fantastic desert set-up, perhaps not too hard a task, once the area had been hair-lined in their checking sights. Yet it was the sort of thing that could go undetected for a long time until someone broke through to beam the concentrated forces of detection upon it.

It would be simple then to make a frontal assault—a press of men, a blaze of guns, a few grenades even—and all this pretty-pretty, grimly efficient center would go... kerump!

Then they would have to piece it all together again to find out how the place ticked and why, and how the hell all this could be assembled and operated under, or nearly under, a lot of noses. Still, Mark sighed, no wrecking; just seal off the area and shut out all the highly efficient communication aids.

Keep the finger off the button, he thought grimly. Don't call us—we'll call you. And two of them were valiant. Two volunteers—you and you! Heads close, turning, eyes gazing through the mask visors. Clear and steady, a glint of the buccaneer, a flash of the bright high spirit. Ready when you are. A reaction gaze—okay, here we go!

They went in—guns hissing. Three of the four men inside went staggering out, crumpling cold. Then the gas guns were empty. April and Mark leapt, silent, ruthlessly slashing.

One—a big man—half gassed, flung out his hand towards along, slim red lever at the right of the console. April swung her body, throat-chopped, then saw the danger. Her supple hands locked on to the reaching fingers, spread them upward and back, tiny bones snapping with a twig-like sound; then the man's arm was whipped up, his shoulder socket wrenched out. As he spun away, a slashing blow across the nape of the neck dropped his head down against the steel of a tubular chair.

Mark's victim was the man who had come out of the door—short, powerful, with ape arms, thick-chested, a mauler-fighter, his gun half-clear of its holster. He almost went down under Mark's attack, recovered, whirled, and snatched up a metal bar—one of several leaning in a corner, slotted bars which were part of some sort of frame. Mark anticipated a swing, but it didn't come that way. The man hunched and lunged the end of the steel bar into Mark's guts.

April turned as Mark sagged and the bar was swinging up to crash down upon his skull. She fired almost before she stopped turning. The bullet smashed into the man's wrist. The bar dropped on his shoulder, bounced to the floor.

Mark, retching, full of pain, rolled to one knee, hand clawing for his gun. He fired upward. The bullet went into the man's open mouth and out the top of his head. He slammed back, to fall on the stack of bars in the corner.

April saw the danger as Mark's hand tried to free his mask. Urgently, close to his ear, she said: "This way—hold on to me." She helped him past the huddled figures to the door at the far end, opened it, and pulled and pushed him into the lobby, then flung open the front door. Sweet night air flowed in as Mark flopped to the porch, ripping off his mask. He was violently sick. April pulled off her own mask, sucking in the air gratefully.

Recovering at last, he said huskily: "Thanks."

"Yes," she said. "Thanks."

He grinned, white teeth in a white mask of face.

"No wrecking? Not including us!"

She smiled. "So the man said."

"Better shut the door—or that inner one. Light can be seen."

They went inside for the air had already helped the air-conditioning to clear the gas.

"Well, well!" said April. "Will you lookee here!"

"Bonanza! Very grand!" Recovering swiftly now, he went along the console, closely inspecting all its parts. "Luck we've had, me old darling—you see?"

April nodded. "I just saw. Two cameras—for relaying operators' image to waiting multitude, no doubt—and obligingly switched off. These TV links must have taken years to set up."

"They can't see us," said Mark. "Can they hear us?" He checked again. "No, all incoming." He flicked tabs on the console. "This is Detroit standing by. This is New York standing by. This is Los Angeles standing by." The voices went on and on.

April said: "Tapes. An answering service in reverse."

"Could be. In fact is. Clever girl! While the tapes run they know the circuit is okay and the spray outfits are ready. You read?"

She nodded. "Near enough. See the screens? All the main business sectors in each town on that colored chart."

"Remote-control cameras, ranging through forty-five degrees, but—what would you say?—six feet from street level?"

"Between four and six feet. That would be the spray height." She looked more closely at one. "You can't watch all screens at once. See this—see how the camera is lined on certain points of a street? Look—street signs, an awning over a club doorway, a street light."

"We could expect that," said Mark. He surveyed the room more closely. "But this can't be all. It's the main control, but there are no screens relaying the magic-eye alarm system outside here."

"No, Mr. Slate," said a familiar voice through a hidden speaker. "You are quite right. Do come in."

The floor suddenly slid from under them. They fell on their sides and were jostled along a few feet before they plunged down, to bounce jarringly on a wrestling mat eight feet below.

Dr. Karadin, a large swarthy man and four metal-suited figures were grouped around them.

"Good evening," said Karadin. "What a terrible nuisance you two are!" He turned to the swarthy man. "Now, Mr. Sirdar, they are all yours. Let us have no more mistakes." He walked away to steps lowered from the roof and climbed up to the control room.

CHAPTER TWELVE: RESOLVEMENT

THEY were in an oval room, low-ceilinged, not large, with five doorless openings leading from it. There was a glimpse of several short passages curving away in different directions.

Sirdar left the four metal-clad men to do the muscle work. All were big and knew their job. If only there had been one each, April and Mark would have taken a chance. As it was, they daren't risk an offensive.

"To the lay-in." Sirdar strode off. The men hustled their captives into a passage, post two rooms containing bunk beds, ending in a narrow room with coffins stacked around the walls, a plinth in the center.

Sirdar took a coffin, lifting it like it was a matchbox, measured it against Mark, then laid it on the plinth. He took another to April, measured and placed it next to that. While the men held them captive, Sirdar stripped off belts and packs, and tossed these against the wall. From a shelf he took two rolls of muslin. He worked fast and expertly, winding the muslin tight around their bodies from shoulders to ankles. After he'd fixed the last tie of muslin he gave a signal. The men stepped back.

April and Mark began to sway, off-balance, unable to move their feet. Sirdar laughed as he put one massive hand around each of their throats. He rocked them back and forth like mummified dolls.

"Ah no! No mistakes this time, eh?" He looked at April. "Sirdar is patient. Sirdar waits for his time. Now it comes. Once, you defect Sirdar because he does not believe any woman could be so quick and strong. So this time I make no mistake." He shrugged. "Is a pity. With you I could have had fun. My men also. But—what is one woman?" He held Mark at arm's length, drew April close to him, kissed her full on the lips. Then he jerked back with a howl of pain, thrusting her away. She fell against one of the men, who caught and held her.

She had bitten clean through Sirdar's lower lip. Blood spouted over his chin, reddening his shirt. He rushed at her, fists clenched. Released from the throat-hold and now mastering the trick of balancing, Mark raised himself to his toes and launched forward, inclining his head so that it struck Sirdar's temple with all the force he could achieve.

In fact, Sirdar ran into the blow, thus making the impact more severe. Lights exploded behind Mark's eyes. Blackness swam in front of them. His last thought was: "Ye gods—I've knocked myself cold!" He couldn't see, and didn't know, that Sirdar went down like a pole-axed bullock, also out cold. The next Mark saw as he came to was the ceiling, rough-plastered, mauve in the fluorescent lighting, and wooden walls on each side of him.

A man's face peered down at him.

"You awake, eh? Man, you got plenty trouble! Before this you die quick. Now you die real slow. You make Sirdar one sick man. You split his head open and the she-cat split his lip open. Man, you better pray because when Sirdar recovers, you are for a little grave under the hot sun in an open coffin for the ants to eat you and the birds to peck at your eyes!"

Mark's head felt it was splitting under the hammer blows of a throbbing ache. The light was painful. He closed his eyes and felt better.

"You would not have the stomach to watch me die," he said, having glimpsed the half-fear, half-arrogance in the man's eyes.

The voice laughed jerkily. "Me? No, I admit it. But I will not have to. Soon I will be gone from here. It is your stomach that will have the fear."