Assignment Black Gold (11 page)

Then silence.

Below, in the open bulkhead door, the dead man sprawled in a
slant of sunlight. He wore only a dark loincloth and a dirty red rag around his
long head. Durell‘s slugs had hit him three times in the chest. Blood welled up
thickly across the ebony skin and dripped to the rusting steel deck.

Naked feet slapped and slid on the plates around the corner.
Durell moved his finger on the trigger of the AK-47 and went up fast,
turned right, immediately fired at his target. There was only one man
here, facing him, a tall thin figure, again in only a loincloth and a red
headband. The clamor and blast of Durell’s gun chopped through the hot silence
of the housing. The other’s gun cluttered in reply. But Durell’s surprise
appearance gave him a split-second advantage. The tall, skinny figure
jumped, jerked, was flung backward around the far corner of the corridor. For
just an instant, Durell glimpsed the strange, drug-crazed eyes of the Apgak fighter.
The man must have been hit three or four times by Durell’s burst; yet he had
the strength and destructive drive to pull away out of sight.

He was careful approaching the corner. As on the rest of the
rig, there was no sign here of the maintenance crew. He did not relish going
around the corner to face a Lubindan hopped up to the eyebrows. He took a deep
breath, then went around in a low flat dive to the floor, the
automatic thrust before him in both hands, his finger tightening on the
trigger. The clamor of his shoes spraying down the corridor echoed in
emptiness. The man was gone. There was only a trail of wet blood on the
deckplates
to show which way his quarry had vanished.

Then he heard Kitty scream.

He straightened, then went up more steel ladders to the base
of the drilling tower. The sunlight scorched his eyes. Blood spattered the
deck, leading through and around a clutter of tools and equipment to a point
above the windows from which the first shots had come. Something moved
down there, close to the derrick, in the sharp shadows cast by the sun. A
ladder forward led him down again. He could not see Matt or the girl. All at
once he felt as if he had been drawn off balance, that he himself was not the
true target. if Brady Cotton had been deliberately murdered, then perhaps the
next victim was to be his young wife. He did not know why he felt this
presentiment so strongly, but he acted on it at once.

He came around the corner toward the rotary table of the
derrick and saw Matt, leaning against the housing. He still hugged his wounded
leg, but a long, emaciated shadow stood over him, holding a knife splintering
light from its broad. sharp blade. It was the man Durell had wounded. Durell
yelled, jumped across the intervening distance, and fired twice. Matt had
already turned to see his attacker. The Apgak jerked and tumbled forward as
Durell's bullets found their final mark. The man fell across Marts
wounded leg and Matt yelled with the pain.

Again, Kitty screamed.

Durell paused only to be sure that Matt was all right and that
the Apgak was truly dead this time. He was not sure what drug the man had
taken, but it had given him
 
an enormous,
unnatural impetus to finish his mission even though he had been bleeding to
death. Durell came to the top of the cab and crossed it, crouching, to the
other side where he could see the deck where he had left Kitty.

The third man had cornered her against the railing between
the platform leg housing and the derrick’s rotary table. Her hair had come
loose and fell in a long pale screen across her face. She had her knife in her
hand, but it looked useless against the tall, muscular figure of the
third Apgak who moved toward her.

Durell did not wait. He jumped for the man from the top of
the derrick cab, reversing his rifle and using the butt to smash into the man’s
black. The Apgak stumbled and doubled over the rail, twisted, came up with
teeth glearn.i.ng in an unnatural smile like a death rictus. Durell hit him
again, drove him backward, baffled by the man’s unnatural, drugged strength.
Kitty slid sideways, out of the way. The man smashed alt him with his gun,
missed, then hurled it at the girl. It missed Kitty‘s head by an inch.

The Apgak scarcely looked at Durell. His sole aim was to get
at Kitty. Durell yelled at her to get back, but she only flattened
against the cab’s side, her arms spread wide. Her face was very pale. The Apgak
swung an arm like a flail at him. He felt the impact like a logging pole
and staggered against the forward rail. The sea looked far below. His side felt
numb from the blow. He straightened, hit the man in the throat, hit him again,
heard the Apgak’s breath hiss like steam. The eyes were wild and unnatural.
Reluctantly, the man turned his attention to Durell, his tall figure
moving forward, the mouth gleaming, the teeth very white in the sunlight
against the bony, skeletal face.

Durell drew in a deep breath, aware of a sluggish response
in him from the blow in his side.

“Sam, he has
luitha
in him,” Kitty called. “It’s a drug—”

"Stay back," he said, not looking at her.

“What about Matt?”

“Hurt. He’ll be all right, if we—”

The Apgak jumped suddenly sideways, not at him, but at the
girl. Her voice had pulled his attention back to her. Kitty yelped and Durell
landed on the man’s sweat-slick back. They went down, rolling toward the rail.
The man’s body was slippery with oil, the muscles ropy and strong, sliding
smoothly under the slick skin. For an instant, when they looked into each
other’s eyes, Durell saw nothing but madness in the others red-black depths. He
felt a sharp stab in the back of his neck; the man’s fingernails ripped
down his side like claws. He thought he heard the distant beating of wings in
the air, as if the pressure waves of heat had suddenly been translated into
repetitive sound. He slammed a forearm across the Apgak’s throat and threw his
weight forward on it. The man and his arm slipped in the sweat gathered in the
man’s squirmed and heaved under him. His breath hissed. He drew a leg up to
knee Durell, and a thin, incoherent babble came from his open mouth. Durell
applied more pressure. A shadow flickered over him, and he heard an
intense roaring. The body under him heaved convulsively and his arm slipped in
the sweat gathered in the man’s throat. All in an instant, the Apgak got away,
scrambling to his feet, lunging for the girl, who still had not moved to
safety. The tall black man got his hands on her and hurled her like a broken
doll against the side of the derrick cab. Her head hit the steel and she slid,
spread-legged, to the deck. The Apgak gave a triumphant yell and jumped for
her.

Durell saw something huge flicker above him and heard
the thrust and beat of rotors, and then he plunged between the drug-crazed man
and Kitty. He used the edge of his hand to chop at the Apgak’s throat, arm, and
belly. The man fell to his knees. Durell kicked him off balance, jumped,
spread-eagled the man, slammed a knee into his groin, hammered at the
open-mouthed face. It seemed to take forever to overcome the spastic drive that
the drug gave his opponent. He heard yelling and then he felt hands on his back
and Kitty called, “Sam, stop, it’s all right now! Lepaka is here!”

His rage surprised him. But he let himself be pulled away
from the Apgak, who was bleeding from nose and mouth and had a broken wrist and
whose breath rasped like steam in the overheated air.

“Stand quietly, Mr. Durell.”

He straightened slowly. A Bell chopper had landed on the
heliport deck. The machine looked like a giant, bubble-eyed insect, the
Plexiglas glinting in the hot sunlight. Two of Colonel Komo Lepaka’s men,
dressed in their khaki shorts and natty Sam Browne belts over dark shirts, held
him.

He turned and looked at the colonel.

“A welcome surprise. What brought you here?”

“It was simple to deduce where you had gone. Was this man
trying to kill you?”

“He was after Kitty. Better send one of your people to help
Matt Forchette. He's been shot in the leg.” Durell flapped a hand to
port. “Around the other side of the derrick.”

“Mr. Forchette is being cared for. We will get him to the
hospital in Lubinda.” Komo Lepaka still looked like a giant stork, his long
thin legs sticking out from his neatly pressed shorts. “You may tell me what
happened here.”

Durell walked to Kitty. She sat up, her eyes still dazed.
“They were trying to kill her. Not me, not Matty. The girl. Those were their
orders.”

“Why, Mr. Durell?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where is the crew supposed to be aboard here?”

Durell told him briefly what had happened since their
arrival on the Lady. The colonel listened, his small, bony face impassive. The
helicopters rotors idled in long, sweeping arcs over the forward deck. Durell
helped Kitty to her feet and said, "Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m just beginning to get seared” She managed a crooked
grin. “Just now, when it’s all over.”

 
Lepaka said, “Did you
find Mr. Cotton?”

“Up there.” Durell pointed to the tiny cab on the derrick
arm high overhead. “He’s dead. Murdered.”

Lepaka listened to the rest of it with the same lack of
emotion he had shown before. Now and then his eyes touched the Apgak who had been
thrown flat on his face on the deck, arms and legs splayed, held there by his
two men.

“We will take care of everything, Mr. Durell. It seems to be
a great mystery, does it not? Perhaps this man you captured will give us some
answers.”

Kitty said, “He’s piped to the eyes with
luitha
.”

“That can be cured,” Lepaka said quietly. “Perhaps you
should go to the helicopter now, Mrs. Cotton. Please accept my condolences.”

Kitty looked up at Brady’s dead body dangling from the tiny
cab of the derrick mast. Suddenly she began to quake, and she clung to Durell
as if he were the only stable object in a world that had turned upside down.

“Go to the chopper,” Durell said gently.

“No. I’ll stay with you.”

He saw that Lepaka and his two guards were only waiting to
handle the Apgak lying on his face before them. The colonel shrugged and knelt
very carefully beside the man.

“Butithi?” He gave the last syllable a clicking sound with
his tongue, in the Lubindan manner. Then he spoke in English. “Butithi, I know
you. You work for Madragata, correct? How many people did you kill here?”

The man spat. He said something in Apgak and Lepaka looked
up at Kitty, who still did not understand what was about to happen. Then Lepaka
nodded to one of his men, who took a military knife from a scabbard at his hip,
knelt, looked into the prisoner‘s eyes, and cut off one of the man’s thumbs.
Blood spurted on the rust-streaked deck. The man‘s arm did not jerk, and he did
not make a sound.

“How many, Butithi?” Click. “As many as there are fingers
on your hand?”

“None.”

“Ah. You found your tongue before you lost it. Where are the
Americans who were aboard?”

“They were not harmed.”

“Where are they?”

“They were taken ashore. They will be kept as hostages
against the government. We will collect many millions in ransom for each of
them.”

Komo Lepaka said, “You will collect a rhinoceros horn up
your intestines if you think so. Where can they be found?”

“I do not know.”

The policeman cut off another finger. The Apgak
squinted a little this time, staring at the long digit of flesh lying on the
deck before his face. More blood dribbled from his hand. Durell looked at
Kitty. There was nothing he could do to stop what was happening. He knew what
would be the end of it, eventually, and he did not know if she knew it; but she
would not move away. She stared at the Apgak as if he were a deadly captured
snake.

Two more fingers were cut oil before Komo Lepaka was
satisfied, A smell came from the captured man that was difficult to define.
Whatever drug he had been given was not wearing off; it apparently rendered the
pain tolerable. It seemed to Durell that it would have been better to Wait a
few hours until the man could respond normally; but he could no-t interfere. He
was not sure he wanted to, when he thought of how the man had tried, against
all odds, to reach Kitty and kill her.

“Butithi,” Lepaka said with a click of his tongue. “Butithi,
when did you come to this place?”

“In the night, Colonel.”

“Ah. And you killed Mr. Cotton up there?”

“No.”

“Your companions did it, then?”

“No. He was dead.”

“When was
he
dead.”

“He was dead when we came here and took the crew away.”

Durell interrupted to tell Lepaka of the searched and
torn-up offices. Lepaka listened to him and watched him with his hooded, muddy
eyes that gave nothing away. Finally, he turned back to the prisoner.

“Butithi, you heard all that?“

“I heard it, you capitalistic running dog.”

“Who did the searching?”

“We did not."

“You did not go into the offices?"

“We were waiting, we were left here, the three of us, to
wait for and kill the white girl.”

“Why?”

“We were told to do so. We are disciplined.”

“How did you know she would come here?”

Lepaka looked angry, waiting for an answer. The prisoner
said, “I am not told everything. We were ordered to wait aboard the platform,
and when she carne, to kill her.”

Lepaka stared at Kitty. “Do you know why the Apgaks have
suddenly chosen you for a victim?”

“No.”

“Brady told you nothing, gave you no clues?”

“None.”

Lepaka turned again. “Butithi, you knew there was no escape
for you? You knew that when your comrades left you here, to kill and murder,
that you would never leave this place alive?”