Mack Reynolds: The Best Ye Breed

“Then it would be best if some of your commando group know Arabic, and, if at all possible, some of the lingua franca of North Africa.”

“Such as Swahili?” Ryan said, his eyes narrowed questioningly.

“No,” the Lebanese told him. “I doubt if you will be operating in mideastern Africa.”

Ryan finished the second whiskey before saying, “And who are these people you want hit?”

“El Hassan and his closest adherents, but particularly El Hassan.”

Sean Ryan ogled him. “El Hassan!”

“You know of him?”

“What little there is to know. I read the newspapers. Where’s he currently located?”

“We’re not sure. The last we know, in Tamanrasset, in the Ahaggar Sahara.”

“Tamanrasset! A commando operation! Man dear, are you daft? I’ve never operated in that area but it must be a thousand miles south of Tunis. And you’re not even sure that he’s there. A commando action involves coming up on a coast in ships, making a quick raid ashore and then beating your way back before the enemy can organize a defense and counterattack.”

“We have it all worked out.”

Ryan laughed at him.

The fat man who called himself Saidi said patiently, “The better part of a million American dollars is eventually involved, Major. Obviously, we have no intention of throwing it away. We have your cover all arranged, all has been thought out in detail.”

“What cover?”

“You go in from Algiers, in Algeria, in a Land Rover hover jeep and two desert lorries. Your story is that you’re looking for El Hassan to volunteer your services.”

“We’d be white men. He’s attempting to take over all North Africa for the blacks and the other wogs.”

The Lebanese was smooth in his oily way. “That would be part of your cover. Obviously, a handful of white mercenaries would be an ideal bodyguard for our El Hassan. You couldn’t possibly put over a coup d’état .”

“He’s not stupid, or he wouldn’t have gotten this far. He’d turn us down.”

“Most likely. But by that time, you’d be in his vicinity and improvise your opportunity to, ah, hit him I believe was the expression you used.”

“Great. And then how would we be getting away? A thousand miles from the nearest city of any size, and the country swarming with El Hassan’s people.”

“You will carry a two-way tight beam radio, complete with scrambler. Upon completion of your mission, you will call and an aircraft will swoop in to your rescue. You will have to hole up only for a couple of hours at most.”

Ryan looked at him skeptically. “Surrounded by a few thousand bloody mad nomads including Tuaghi and the Holy Mother only knows who else?”

“You will be armed with extraordinary weapons.”

“Such as what?”

“Such as long range grenade launchers for your rifles.”

Ryan laughed bitterly, and signalled for another whiskey. He might as well get as many free drinks as he could out of this before turning the other down cold.

Saul Saidi said softly, “The grenades they project carry mini-fission charges.”

This time, Sean Ryan really boggled him. “Mini-fission charges? Do I look daft? Man dear, there is no such thing as a fission charge small enough to be launched in a grenade from a rifle.”

“You are mistaken, Major. This is the age of miniaturization. For decades, the Yankees, in particular, have had nuclear fission shells small enough to be fired from field cannon. These more recent mini-fission charges are a well-kept secret, and I will not even disclose what country developed them. Each, to use the Americanism, packs a wallop approximately that of a blockbuster bomb of the Second World War.”

Ryan whistled almost inaudibly between his teeth. Another suspicion came to him. “What if the rescue plane doesn’t show up after we’ve done El Hassan the dirty? It’d be to your advantage to let us rot there. Then you wouldn’t have to pay up.”

The Lebanese made a gesture with his two hands. “My dear Major, we are not thieves. The pilot and co-pilot of the aircraft will be handpicked by you, yourself. Friends of yours. The plane will be based at In Salah, not too far north, or, if by that time El Hassan’s adherents have overrun that town, to Adrar still further north, but within easy range. It will be to you within an hour or so and take you to a safe refuge where I will meet you and together we’ll go to Hong Kong and complete the transaction. My signature will be necessary before the gold is released to you.”

Ryan finished his third double and thought about it for long moments.

Finally, he said, “What if something happens to you before you can make this signature in Hong Kong?”

The Lebanese said smoothly, “Then that would be unfortunate, would it not, Major Ryan?”

Sean Ryan looked at him coldly and said, “Man dear, I suggest you begin thinking of an alternative to that situation.”

Colonel Tokugawa Hidetada’s train, that running between Canton and Kowloon, stopped at the border town of Lo Wu. His things went through a minimum of inspection, and, followed by two coolies carrying his luggage, he crossed the bridge and entered a compartment of the train which would take him to Hong Kong proper. This area was the so-called New Territories, on lease to the British colony supposedly until 1997, from the People’s Republic of China. Actually, nobody seemed to know how matters stood. If Hong Kong gave up the New Territories, she could not possibly survive, certainly not with her full population of over three million. The colony including the New Territories measured only 381 square miles in area, but the island of Hong Kong alone was but 32 square miles in area. One does not crowd three million people into such limited quarters.

However, the People’s Republic was making no noises, up to this point, on terminating the lease.

And Tokugawa Hidetada thought he knew why. It was more profitable for the communists to have Hong Kong remain an appendage of the West. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of trade annually flooded through the free port. Hong Kong was the People’s Republic’s window to the West. In her own right, she was a most profitable source of hard money from abroad, since the colony was far from self supporting in food and in the raw materials she utilized in her highly modernized industry. These she must needs buy from the mainland. No, it would not be profitable for the People’s Republic to close down the British colony of Hong Kong. Had she wanted to, she could have accomplished it easily enough long decades before. Hong Kong itself had no source of water, save rain. Water had to be piped in from the mainland. Cut off from that water supply, and the People’s Republic had every right to cut it, had she wished, Hong Kong could not have lasted a week.

Colonel Tokugawa Hidetada was a small man, in the Japanese tradition. Had he been walking along the street in the Ginza of Tokyo he might well have been thought of as the most average man in sight. He even wore very thick lensed glasses, and had the slightly bucked teeth beloved of American cartoonists depicting a son of Nippon. He did not look like a colonel. Most certainly, he didn’t look like the ace Japanese espionage-counter-espionage operative, working out of the Japanese department which was the equivalent of the American CIA, the Soviet KGB.

He took the train to the Kowloon station next to the Star Ferry terminus and then, carrying his own bags now, the ferry to Victoria, the city of Hong Kong island. The crossing took five minutes and since he had made the trip more times than he could possibly remember, he ignored the exotic sights and sounds of the teeming harbor, the large number of foreign ships, the wallah-wallah launches, the junks and sampans.