"Well, that"s what"s making it so hard to really get in solid contact with them, and right this minute they have three Coordinators in there in hopes of doing that. Oh, what"s a Brigante? Well, it seems like at the time of the disaster- this is all according to this abandoned old man, of course- not confirmed- some big international bank wanted to overthrow one of those African countries that had gotten its freedom from some people called colonialists, and then it borrowed a lot of money and had a military coup and wouldn"t pay the bank back or something like that.
"What"s a Brigante? Well, I"m telling you. So this international bank collected up a lot of what they called mercenaries, soldiers for hire, and put together a thousand-man unit, and they were going to use nerve gas and wipe out this government and all these mercenaries were equipped with gas masks like our air masks only they filter outside air.
"Yes, I"m getting to it. These were also called "soldiers of fortune" in ancient times. So they were just about to make their attack on the government of this new country and were lying out in some mines in the desert- old salt mines- and the Psychlos. .h.i.t the planet. Well, they had these gas masks-"
"Salt," said Jonnie, "neutralizes Psychlo gas."
"Oh, well, fine. So anyway there they were in Africa, fully armed and ready to go, and their target was wiped out for them! A mixed-up lot: Belgians, French, Senegalese, English, American, all nationalities, anybody the bank could hire. But a full, skilled military unit. They didn"t have any other name so sometime, then or later, they started calling themselves Brigantes."
"Well, thank you at last," said Robert the Fox.
"Wait, that isn"t all of it. The natives in that area were mostly dead from the kill-gas, so this unit drifted south. The tall trees and jungles seem to have kept them masked from observation from recons and so on. They picked up women from missions and villages, white and black, and kept going.
"And that isn"t all. This is why they"re so hard to contact: after a couple of hundred years, they got into a working arrangement with the Psychlos. First you"ve heard of that? Well, us too. And it makes them edgy.
"Apparently what they used to do was capture people and deliver them to the Psychlos to shoot or torture or something. They never really went too close to the Psychlos but the Psychlos couldn"t operate in those swamps: bodies too heavy to walk, ground too soggy for tanks, trees too tall to fly into. So these Brigantes somehow got into a working arrangement: they"d tie up some people and leave them near a compound and the Psychlos would come out and take the people for whatever-"
"Torture," said Jonnie. "They enjoy it."
"-and the Psychlos would leave some knickknacks like cloth or something on a log. A kind of trading arrangement. Well, all that was centuries ago and they ran out of people. But the Psychlos never hunted them down-swampy ground, tall trees and so on, like I told you."
"Sounds like pretty crazy people for unarmed Coordinators to be fooling around with," said Robert the Fox.
"Well, not really. We"re pretty good on diplomacy and so on. But we got this order from the Council just a few days ago to be sure and contact them and bring them in, and we are just doing our job.
"To tell the truth, the Brigantes are a bit strange. They keep their numbers down to a thousand men, leave their old ones to die, don"t marry but just use women. They seem to have a high mortality rate among children. Also probably from hunting elephants with grenades...
"Oh, well yes, the grenades. They know how to make crude black powder- you know, charcoal and saltpeter from dung heaps and sulphur from a mine. And they put it into a baked clay receptacle that is studded with stones and stick a fuse in it and light it with a cigar. They have to get right up to an elephant to use one and I suppose that"s part of the reason for the mortality rate.
"Rescue? Oh, yes. Well, it seems their ancestors once had a firm promise from the international bank to "pull them out," and they haven"t a clue to what"s going on in the outside world. Well, yes, of course; the Coordinators in there can use that. We"ll get them out."
"And that"s near this minesite?" asked Robert the Fox.
"To the south, to the south," said David Fawkes. "Just thought you had better know. From what I gather here your target is a branch mine compound with just ordinary Psychlos in it."
"Ordinary Psychlos," snorted Thor. "You got a handgun? No? You"ll need it. Here"s a spare. And don"t try to find the tribal history of a Psychlo before you shoot. Got it?"
David Fawkes took the gun like it would bite.
They flew onward to Africa.
Chapter 5.
Jonnie lay behind a tree trunk, saturated with rain, perspiring from the heat, looking at the compound through infrared gla.s.ses that did not do much good.
For three soaking wet days they had been following a power line, the only sign of civilization. They had landed at the power dam well enough. It was automatic and self-maintaining, and Psychlo machinery had been superimposed upon the ancient man-works. They had no actual clue as to the position of the minesite beyond its existence, but Jonnie knew this power line, huge cables on metal pylons- themselves ancient- would take them to it eventually. And "eventually" seemed to be the right word.
Usually power lines had trees and brush cleared out, but not this one.
There for countless years, the power line provided no more open sky than any other part of this vast forest.
The old man-maps said this had been a country called "Haut-Zaire" and that this portion of the extinct nation was the "Ituri Forest."
Here the equatorial sun never reached the ground. It was umbrellaed first by cloud cover and then by the crowns of mighty trees that locked together in a canopy a hundred feet above the ground. Great vines a foot or more in diameter wrapped like gorged serpents around the trunks. Underfoot the thick humus squished at every step.
And the rain came down! It dripped, it rivuleted down the trunks and vines, it poured through slight openings until one felt he was trying to progress through a constant warm waterfall of varying thickness.
It was all twilight.
The game blended in deceptively with the gloom, a dangerous fact. They had seen elephants and forest buffalo and gorillas. A giraffe-like animal, an antelope, and two kinds of cat were routinely started up by them. The snarl of leopards, the roar of crocodiles, the chatter of monkeys and the screech of peac.o.c.ks- sounds muted by the rain- made Jonnie feel the area was hostile and densely inhabited.
The old man-maps said there were around twenty thousand square miles of this forest, and that even at the height of man-civilization it had never been completely explored. No wonder a minesite could go overlooked here!
The Ituri Forest was no place for buckskin and moccasins and a limp.
Trying to progress through it was made difficult by the uselessness of trying to overfly it and the need for some secrecy. They dared not use radios. Dropped lines from planes could foul power cables if they reached them at all. Streams infested with crocodiles made the crossings dangerous.
Well, a small party of them were here. Only twenty of their force, scattered out among the trees and ready to call in reserves or the planes if needed.
The compound looked deserted, but then Psychlos never wandered around in the open. It had been built so long ago that it too was overshadowed by the streaming canopy of trees. What had an employee had to do to be a.s.signed to this dismal, gloomy, saturated outpost, Jonnie wondered.
He was looking to the left of the compound for signs of truck pa.s.sageways. There would be no road of tires, but ore truck floating drives would have crushed and killed vegetation. Yes, there was a road over there, headed east through the gloom. Ah, yes, more lights beyond an opening through the trees for the landing of freighters. Did the road go to that? No. Another road. One exit road through the forest and the other to the field.
"Never was there a more unplanned raid," Robert the Fox was muttering. But a well-planned raid took intelligence scouting first. He never could have imagined any terrain like this existed on the planet!
Now, Jonnie was thinking, what did they really want here? Not dead Psychlos, really. He wanted live Psychlos. That the Psychlos would fight he had no doubt, and that some would be killed was almost certain, but he was far more interested in live ones than in dead ones.
He was reaching to his belt to unfasten the miniature mine radio-to be used first in the hope that they had one on in that compound- when his infrareds strayed over to the right of the compound. There was a defined path and at its end what appeared to be the wreck of a flatbed truck, ages old and mostly overgrown. Hard to see in this twilight at noonday. The rain made it so hard to pick out details even with infrared.
Jonnie gave the gla.s.ses to Robert the Fox. "What do you see on that old truck bed?"
Robert the Fox squirmed over into a new position, his cloak as wet as a soaking sock. "Something under a tarpaulin. A new tarpaulin...a barrel? Two barrels?...a package?"
Suddenly Jonnie remembered the rambling story of David Fawkes. The Coordinator was back of them, hunkered down, dripping. Jonnie crawled back a short distance. "What was that about putting things on a log for barter with the Psychlos?"
"Oh, yes. Yes. They put people there for the Psychlos to see and then withdrew, and the Psychlos would come out and leave some trinkets. You mean the Brigantes, don"t you?"
"I think I"m looking at an incomplete trade," said Jonnie. He hissed to a Scot, "Pa.s.s the word for Colonel Ivan!"
Ivan"s English was improving remarkably fast under the interested tutelage of Bittie MacLeod, who "thought it a shame for the grand man not to be able to talk a human language." This was giving Colonel Ivan a thick accent but nevertheless he needed the Russian language Coordinator less and less. Jonnie found they had brought that Coordinator, too, leading Sir Robert to wonder whether they might not find an old woman or a couple of Psychlos on the plane as well.
"Scout way over to the right," whispered Jonnie, amplifying it with a descriptive circle of his left hand. "Watch it."
"What"s this new maneuver on this unplanned raid?" said the very wet Robert the Fox.
"I don"t like losing men," said Jonnie. "As the English say, "It"s bad form." Precaution is all."
"Are we going to just charge that place?" asked Robert the Fox. "You can"t get plane cover through these trees. I think I see an air-cooled housing for a breathe-gas circulator over there. I could hit it from here, I think."
"Well, have we got any plain bullets?" said Jonnie.
"Aye, but it surely is a no-plan operation!"
They waited in the dismal drip and cascade of the rain. Somewhere off to the left a leopard snarled and it set off a wave of bird sounds and monkey chitters.
There was an abrupt thud about twenty feet behind them. They snaked back. Ivan was standing back of a tree. On the ground at his feet lay a strange human. He was out cold.
He might have been any nationality, or any color for that matter. He was dressed in monkey skins cut in such a way that they looked oddly like a uniform. A strapped bag had fallen open under him and a clay-pot grenade had rolled out.
Ivan was pointing to an arrow in his canteen. He pulled it out and gave it to Jonnie. Over Jonnie"s shoulder the Coordinator whispered, "Poisoned arrow. See where the glob was on its tip."
Jonnie took off Ivan"s canteen and threw it away, making signs it was not to be drunk now.
Ivan detached the man"s bow from his belt and offered it. But Jonnie was kneeling beside the man and picking up the grenade. It had a fuse sticking out of it. He knew the type of fuse. Psychlo!
As soon as he had Jonnie"s attention again, Ivan handed him a Psychlo mine radio and pointed at the man.
"He watch us," said Ivan. "He talk." He pointed at the radio.
Abruptly alert, Jonnie saw that they might have an enemy in front of them and another one in the forest behind them!
He pa.s.sed orders swiftly through Robert the Fox, who whipped off to get their small force faced both ways.
Brigantes! The man at his feet had wide, hide crossbelts and spare arrows were arranged, points into flaps along the leather. He had an odd pair of crudely made, strapped boots reminding Jonnie of the remains of "paratrooper" boots he had seen in base storerooms. The man"s hair was cut short and stood up. The face was scarred and brutal.
The fellow was stirring, recovering from the unexpected clout of a rifle b.u.t.t. Colonel Ivan promptly put a foot on his neck to prevent his rising.
Robert the Fox was back with a nod that dispositions had been made. "They may have been scouting us for days. That"s a Psychlo radio!"
"Yes, and bomb fuse. I think there"s more here-"
A bomb exploded in an orange blast about fifty feet away.
An a.s.sault rifle hammered out.
There followed a period marked only by the startled rush of birds and monkeys through the drip of rain.
Jonnie got back to the log. Nothing was happening in the compound. Robert put two riflemen in position to cover it. "We"re boxed," he said. "Nicely planned raid."
"Take the rear first," said Jonnie. "Clean them out back there!"
"Charge!" bawled Colonel Ivan. Then something in Russian.
There was an instant hammering of a.s.sault rifles.
Bursting grenades racketed and smoke poured through the rain.
Running feet of men covering each other as they went forward in alternate waves.
Screams!
Russian and Scot battle cries!
Then a lull. Then another furious hammer of a.s.sault rifles.
Another lull.
A voice, hoa.r.s.e, rising way above the birds and rain, "We surrender!" English? Not French? The Coordinator looked confused.
Some distant running feet as Robert the Fox threw some of his men back of the voice to prevent a trap.
Jonnie grabbed a blast rifle from a Scot and threw himself down. "Pinpoint." "No Flame." He cut loose with a savage burst at the breathe-gas cooler housing. The ancient outside metal peeled away under the repeating impacts like hide.
There was a clank and a hiss over there. Jonnie gave it another burst.
They waited. No Psychlos came rushing out. The place must be flooded with air over there. But there was no reaction.
The rain came down and the birds and monkeys quieted. Drifting smoke, black powder smoke from the grenades, was harsh to the nose.
Chapter 6.
Jonnie looked toward the ore plane landing field beyond the short road. Deserted.
The Scot carrying radio equipment answered his beckoning. The covering sc.r.a.p of a tarpaulin was cascading rain. Jonnie checked the set. Working. He flipped to planetary pilot band and picked up the mike.
"Flight to Nairobi, standing by," said Jonnie. It would sound like routine pilot traffic but a code had been prearranged with the two ships they had left near the power plant. "Nairobi" meant "Fly in to our beacon" and "Standing by" meant "Don"t come in shooting, but be alert."
Dunneldeen"s voice crackled back, "All pa.s.sengers aboard." They were on their way.
Jonnie took the mine radio off his belt and turned it to "Constant Bleep," which was used by miners when trapped or caught in a cave-in. It would act as a radio beacon for the planes. He stabbed a finger at three of his force. As the men pa.s.sed, he handed one of them the mine radio to put in a tree at the field.
a.s.sault rifles held low, running wide of the compound, pausing to give one another cover, they raced toward the landing field. Shortly, one of them, seen as a blur through the dull curtains of rain but brighter out there on the field edge, raised a hand in an "all clear." They would give the planes landing cover as they came in.