The Code War (21 page)

Zhivkin turned slowly around and
looked Holzman up and down. Kodrob was worried now. Both demons
were large. Very large. They were equal in everything but
looks.
Beauty versus the Beast. If there
was a fight it would be a devil of a job to separate
them.

'That's a
bit rich coming from someone like you, Holzman. I heard
about you. You don't take orders too well.'

'That was a long time ago,'
replied the warty German, instantly defensive. 'And anyway, no-one
knows the true story.'

'So why don't you tell us?'

A crowd had gathered, sensing a rumble.
Zhivkin looked around at the score of faces in various stages of
drunkenness. He smiled cruelly, knowing he had them on his
side.

Holzman succumbed to the
pressure
. 'All right then, I'll tell
you.'

'I was a slave. A slave gladiator.
In Rome. My people were captured. They made us slaves. But I was
big so I got trained to be a gladiator. I was fighting for my
freedom. And then I joined Spartacus and his rebellion. 'Cause
those Romans, they didn't want us to go free, never. They were
cruel. They…'

'Get on with it,' shouted a number of
demons.

Holzman had a hunted look on his
face. He licked his lips and continued. 'My unit captured ten
legionaries. In the fighting. We had these ten guys, proper
front-line men. Rome's finest. So we decided to kill them, 'cause
there was nothing else to do. But I thought killing them's too
easy. They had hurt us bad. So I wanted to hurt them bad. That's
why I did what I done.'

'You mean that's why you disobeyed
orders. What you just accused me of.' Zhivkin made sure his voice
carried across the swell of demons pressing in to watch the
entertainment.

'I didn't disobey. I just did it my own
way, that's all.'

'Spartacus told you to kill them quick.
But you killed them slow. Come on, Holzman, tell us what you did.'
Zhivkin was keeping the pressure on.

'Come on. Tell us. What happened?'
shouted a chorus of throats.

Kodrob looked around uneasily. There was
no way of stopping this. Officer or not, he couldn't control a
mob.

But Holzman was warming to his task. His
story would show them all that he wasn't to be taken lightly.

'I got the ten men and I sat them
in a circle on the ground. I put wooden blocks in front of them.
Then I put tourniquets around their wrists and began to chop off
bits of their fingers on the blocks, an inch at a time. The
tourniquets were to stop them from bleeding out too quick. Keep
them alive longer. Let them suffer. When their finger pieces were
lying all over the ground I moved the tourniquets further up their
arms. I cut through their hands and forearms.' Holzman stopped and
looked around at the crowd. He was trying to smile confidently but
Kodrob could see he was nervous.

'Then they died.
That was it.' Holzman finished
defiantly.

The crowd was quiet. They were expecting
more.

'No it wasn't.' A thin voice piped
up from the front of the crowd. A small imp had forced his way
through the mass of legs and now stood defiantly in front of
Holzman. 'There was something else. Tell them what you made them
say,' shouted the imp. 'Tell them Holzman. Tell them what you made
those legionaries say.'

Holzman's hunted expression had
returned. 'I don't remember. It was a long time ago.'

The imp was undaunted. 'Well I'll tell
them. 'Cause I can remember, Holzman. I can remember what you made
them say. 'Cause I was there. I was one of the legionaries. I was
one of the ten.'

A buzz went through the crowd. 'Lift him
up,' shouted someone at the back. 'Let's see him.'

A burly figure at the front picked up
the little imp and stood him on the bar.

Holzman gulped his drink. Lafarge
sipped his. Kodrob sat still. It was important to look calm and
unflappable, even if he didn't feel that way.
If the crowd turned against Holzman, the entire squad was
in danger.

'When we'd all lost our fingers,'
shouted the imp to the crowd in his high pitched voice, 'he told us
to look at each other and say things like 'pluck the nit from my
head, brother, and I will pluck the louse from yours' and 'are you
taking part in the archery contest this year, comrade'?'

Sniggers
of laughter rippled out around the crowd. The imp was
looking for sympathy. He'd waited through two thousand years and
several huskings to tell his story and gain revenge on the man who
had tortured him and his mates to death. But it wasn't going as he
thought. Instead of earning himself some understanding, the mass of
demons found the story of Holzman's cruelty quite funny. Many of
them had seen or done things that were almost as bad. Holzman's
gallows humour was going down well.

Kodrob seized the moment. 'Barman,
get the imp a drink. A big one. On me.' He turned to Lafarge. 'Get
him down from there.' Lafarge understood the urgency. He grabbed
the imp around the legs and pulled him off the bar. 'Well
done little fella,' he said, patting him on the
head. 'Now take your drink over the other side of the
bar.'

The imp looked around him at the
crowd which was already breaking up and moving away and at Kodrob
who was ignoring him. Holzman had turned his back. His moment had
come and gone. Lafarge handed him a huge tankard off the bar. 'Go
on now. Don't spill it.' After a moment the imp walked off
disconsolately, holding the huge tankard close to his chest in case
anyone should prise it from him.

Kodrob pulled
Holzman over by his collar. 'You had a near death
experience with Bezejel the other day. Now another one with the imp
you fingered. You're riding your luck.'

'Yes guv.' Holzman accepted the warning
and stepped away.

'You really did all that, made
them say those words?' asked Lafarge looking at
Holzman in wonder. 'Man I respect you. I thought you were
just a dull cabbage-eater.' He slapped Holzman on the
arm.

'You didn't hear the last of it,'
replied the German, cockily. 'After we chopped off their hands and
arms I let the legionaries cry for a bit. Then when I
released the tourniquets I placed bets with the
other rebels on which soldier would last longest.' He looked at
Lafarge with a grin, 'well, we had to do something for
entertainment.'

Zhivkin butted in. He'd seen the mood
swing against Holzman and then back in his favour but he wasn't
done yet.

'
So we
have all seen and heard of your idea of leadership,' he said sourly
with his Russian nasal drawl. 'But I know a real leader when I see
one. Captain Kodrob is one I admire.' He looked up at Kodrob with
fawning approval. 'Kodrob can even work with Bezejel. That's an
achievement you could never manage, Holzman.'

Lafarge chimed in. 'Be careful who you
criticise, Zhivkin, Holzman's my buddy.'

Zhivkin had to row back. 'I can
get on with anyone. No problem. But you should know that I wasn't
lucky with that jet fuel grab. I saw the storm coming and knew it
was a strong one. I led the horse onto the runway and delayed the
plane taking off so that it would fly into the thickest cloud at
just the right time. That's how it got struck by lightning. It was
pure skill and planning. Luck had nothing to do with it. You could
say I engineered it. You know, you guys could do well with my
talents. I could make you rich. You'd have more diesel and squaws
than you could imagine.'

Now he knew he'd got them
interested. All of them could imagine a lot of diesel and a lot of
squaws. They never seemed to get enough of either, not even with
Lafarge's Gallic charm. Zhivkin had brought them top grade jet fuel
too. But Zhivkin also knew how to negotiate and he decided to
pretend to take his offer away. 'But maybe I take my talents
somewhere else. There are other marauder squads who are interested
in me.' He got up from his seat and made as if to leave.

Kodrob had been watching and listening
to the debate with amusement. Zhivkin had handled himself well. And
with the new challenges that Bezejel was handing him almost daily,
he might need a new team member who could think on his feet.

'Sit down, Zhivkin, you're not
going anywhere.' Kodrob grabbed the former Russian Cossack by his
collar and dumped him back in his chair. 'All right we'll take you
on trial for one project and see how you get on. If you perform,
you're in for good. If not and you turn out to be nothing but a
clever talker, we'll husk you. Capisce?'

Zhivkin looked around at the grim faces
of the other squad members that bore down on him. Kodrob's threat
was a nasty one, to be sure. But it was only to be expected. There
had to be discipline after all and Zhivkin ran more risk of being
husked as an independent buccaneer if he was caught with valuable
swag in the outlands by other marauding bands without buddies to
protect him.

'Sure, no problem,' he drawled. 'I don't
disappoint. You'll see.' He stood up and called to Naxela's owner
who was running the bar.

'Red.'

Red Naxela came over and glared
malevolently at Zhivkin.

'This is my good buddy Red,
everyone.' Zhivkin indicated the squawhouse owner who showed no
sign of being anyone's good buddy. 'Red, give these boys some of my
hundred octane jet fuel recently liberated from Crimea. Let them
experience the true spirit of Mother Russia.' He laughed
magnanimously and even managed a grimace at Holzman. While the team
roared their approval and downed their glasses ready for the
refill, Kodrob surveyed his new charge and a sudden shiver ran down
his spine. He now had two team members with a grievance against
each other. Both were aggressive as well as huge. They could cause
a lot of trouble if their enmity turned into open warfare. Had he
made a mistake in hiring Zhivkin?

The Nancy project would soon be
moving into a new phase and the pressures on his team would
increase. Pressure could be good or bad. It could force guys to
work together or it could split a team wide apart.

If Kodrob had made the wrong decision,
Bezejel would show no mercy.

Gambia, road to
Southern Senegal, West Africa

Nancy put her foot down on the
clutch and slipped the gear lever on the monster truck into fourth.
She checked her wing mirror.

'It's good to leave those potholes
behind. I thought they'd never end.' She looked at Lafi in the
passenger seat who didn't respond.

Her headlight beams now showed a
long, straight stretch of level road
ahead with a mixture of forest and fields on either side.
Strong moonlight periodically flooded in from the front,
illuminating the cab when the forest canopy overhead
receded.
Lafi stared straight ahead,
intense and brooding.

The lorry engine was strong and
pulled the heavy iron frame powerfully. Nancy had been overawed at
first when she had climbed into the driver's seat and switched on
the ignition. How was she going to drive a juggernaut like this,
she who had never driven anything bigger than a Morris 1100? But
surprisingly soon, she'd grown to like the touch of the huge
steering wheel and the sense of power she derived from sitting up
so high above the ground. Beast that it was, it responded instantly
to her touch and did everything she told it to do. You just had to
give it a wider arc going around corners, that was all.

'I'm getting to like the feel of
this.' She had to keep trying to communicate.
Pretend that things were normal. 'It's easier to drive than
it looks. Just as well it's empty though. It'll be hard work when
it's fully loaded.'

The silence settled back
in.
Another burst of moonlight and Nancy
turned her head to survey Lafi's features quickly. He looked
nervous. His anxiety was making Nancy nervous too. If he was
frightened, she certainly ought to be frightened. How dangerous was
this mission going to get? And even if it all worked out
successfully, would they really put her back on the plane to Israel
at the end of it? Or had Lafi been told to quietly do away with her
and bury the body?

'You know anything about aid
organisations?' he asked suddenly in an aggressive tone.

'Er..no. Not really.'

Lafi didn't follow
up
. He continued staring straight ahead
into the gloom.

A m
oment
later their road left the jungle and Nancy found she was driving on
a wide sandy beach. The Gambian government had little money to
invest in roads and so made use of natural thoroughfares such as
firm beaches wherever possible. The setting was spectacular. To
Nancy's right the ocean was dark and endless with white breakers
near the shore. On her left the tall trees of the jungle were
equally forbidding. But ahead of them the wide moon-lit beach with
its virgin yellow sand, firm under the wheels of the lorry, would
have been heart-stoppingly romantic at any other time.

They continued on for ten more
minutes, eventually leaving the beach again as the road led them
back through the jungle. It was a long time since they'd seen any
other lights.

Lafi was now showing signs of real
fear. Sweat was apparent on his forehead. Nancy checked the mirrors
again. She took her foot off the accelerator and dropped back to
third gear, then second.