Mack Reynolds - Blackman' Burden

Isobel, who was frowning thoughtfully, evidently over the things that had been said, said, “Let’s go this way. I’d like to see the old Great Mosque, in the Dyingerey Ber section of town. It’s always fascinated me.”

Crawford said, looking at her and appreciating her attractiveness, all over again, “You know Timbuktu quite well, don’t you?”

“I’ve just finished a job down in Kabara, and it’s only a few miles away.”

“Just what sort of thing do you do?”

She shrugged and made a moue. “Our little team concentrates on breaking down the traditional position of women in these cultures. To get them to drop the veil, go to school. That sort of thing. It’s a long story and …”

Homer Crawford suddenly and violently pushed her to the side and to the ground and at the same time dropped himself and rolled frantically to the shelter of an adobe wall which had once been part of a house but now was little more than waist high.

“Down!” he yelled at her.

She bug-eyed him as though he had gone suddenly mad.

There was a heavy, snub-nosed gun suddenly in his hand. He squirmed forward on elbows and belly until he reached the corner.

“What’s the matter?” she blurted.

He said grimly, “See those three holes in the wall above you?”

She looked up, startled.

“They weren’t there a moment ago.”

What he was saying, dawned upon her. “But… but I heard no shots .”

He cautiously peered around the wall, and was rewarded with a puff of sand inches from his face. He pulled his head back and his lips thinned over his teeth. He said to her, “Efficiently silenced guns have been around for quite a spell. Whoever that is is up there in the mosque. Listen, beat your way around by the back streets and see if you can find the members of my team, especially Abe Baker or Bey-ag-Akhamouk. Tell them what happened and that I think I’ve got the guy pinned down. That mosque is too much out in the open for him to get away without my seeing him.”

“But… but who in the world would want to shoot you, Homer?”

“Search me,” he growled. “My team has never operated in this immediate area.”

“But then, it must be someone who was at the meeting.”

“That it was,” Homer said grimly. “Now, go see if you can find my lads, will you? This joker is going to fall right into our laps. It’s going to be interesting to find out who hates the idea of African development so much that they’re willing to commit assassination.”

But it didn’t work out that way.

Isobel found the other teammates one by one, and they came hurrying up from different directions to the support of their chief. They had been a team for years and operating as they did and where they did, each man survived only by selfless cooperation with all the others. In action, they operated like a single unit, their ability to cooperate almost as though they had telepathic communication.

From where he lay, Homer Crawford could see Bey-ag-Akhamouk, Tommy-Noiseless in hands, snake in from the left, running low and reaching a vantage point from which he could cover one flank of the ancient adobe mosque. Homer waved to him and Bey made motions to indicate that one of the others was coming in from the other side.

Homer waited for a few more minutes, then waved to Bey to cover him. The streets were empty at this time of midday when the Sahara sun drove the town’s occupants into the coolness of dark two-foot-thick walled houses. It was as though they were operating in a ghost town. Homer came to his feet and hand gun in fist made a dash for the front entrance.

Bey’s light automatic flic flic flicked its excitement, and dust and dirt enveloped the wall facing Crawford. Homer reached the doorway and stood there for a full two minutes while he caught his breath. From the side of his eye he could see Elmer Allen, his excellent teeth bared as always when the Jamaican went into action, come running up to the right in that half-crouch men automatically go into in combat, instinctively presenting as small a target as possible. He was evidently heading for a side door or window.

The object now was to refrain from killing the sniper. The important thing was to be able to question him. Perhaps here was the answer to the massacre of the Cubans. Homer took another deep breath, smashed the door open with a heavy shoulder and dashed inward and immediately to one side. At the same moment, Abe Baker, Tommy-Noiseless in hand, came in from the rear door, his eyes darting around trying to pierce the gloom of the unlighted building.

Elmer Allen erupted through a window, rolled over on the floor and came to rest, his gun trained.

“Where is he?” Abe snapped.

Homer motioned with his head. “Must be up in the remains of the minaret.”

Abe got to the creaking, age-old stairway first. In cleaning out a hostile building, the idea is to move fast and keep on the move. Stop, and you present a target.

But there was no one in the minaret.

“Got away,” Homer growled. His face was puzzled. “I felt sure we’d have him.”

Bey-ag-Akhamouk entered. He grunted his disappointment. “What happened, anyway? That girl Isobel said a sniper took some shots at you and you figure it must’ve been somebody at the meeting.”

“Somebody at the meeting?” Abe said blankly. “What kind of jazz is that? You flipping, man?”

Homer looked at him strangely.

“Who else could it be, Abe? We’ve never operated this far south. None of the inhabitants in this area even know us, and it certainly couldn’t have been an attempt at robbery.”

“There were some cats at that meeting didn’t appreciate our ideas, man, but I can’t see that old preacher or Doc Smythe trying to put the slug on you.”

Kenny Ballalou came in on the double, gun in hand, his face anxious.

Abe said sarcastically, “Man, we’d all be dead if we had to wait on you.”

“That girl Isobel. She said somebody took a shot at the chief.”

Homer explained it, sourly. A sniper had taken a few shots at him, then managed to get away.

Isobel entered, breathless, followed by Jake Armstrong.

Abe grunted, “Let’s hold another convention. This is like old home town week.”

Her eyes went from one of them to the other. “You’re not hurt?”

“Nobody hurt, but the cat did all the shooting got away,” Abe said unhappily.

Jake said, and his voice was worried, “Isobel told me what happened. It sounds insane.”

They discussed it for a while and got exactly nowhere. Their conversation was interrupted by a clicking at Homer Crawford’s wrist. He looked down at the tiny portable radio.

“Excuse me for a moment,” he said to the others and went off a dozen steps or so to the side.

They looked after him.

Elmer Allen said sourly, “Another assignment. What we need is a union.”

Abe adopted the idea. “Man! Time and a half for overtime.”

“With a special cost of living clause,” Kenny Ballalou added.

“And housing and dependents allotment!” Abe crowed.

They all looked at him.

Bey tried to imitate the other’s beatnik patter. “Like, you got any dependents, man?”

Abe made a mark in the sand on the mosque’s floor with the toe of his shoe, like a schoolboy up before the principal for an infraction of rules, and registered embarrassment. “Well, there’s that cute little Tuareg girl up north.”

“Ha!” Isobel said. “And all these years you’ve been leading me on.”

Homer Crawford returned and his face was serious. “That does it,” he muttered disgustedly. “The fat’s in the fire.”

“Like, what’s up, man?”

Crawford looked at his right-hand man. “There are demonstrations in Mopti. Riots.”