Barry Sadler: Desert mercenary

Tunis still bore the scars of World War II. In the harbor the hulks of dead ships were serving as breakwaters. From the docks the last survivors of Rommel's Afrika Korps had tried to escape under the guns of the Allied forces. Few made it back to Germany. Most of the shell holes pockmarking the streets had been filled, but many buildings still stood as gutted ruins inhabited only by rats, scorpions, and some occasional human vermin.

Gustof Beidemann sat, contentedly enough on the surface, stuffing his mouth with dates and sweet rice, using his fingers as a spoon. His companion was more silent. The last months had been exceedingly boring. Their last job had been merely that of shotgun riders on convoys taking supplies out to where some American and British companies had been putting up drilling rigs. Not much action, only a plenitude of sun, flies, and bad water when you could get it.

Carl Langers rinsed his mouth with sips of wine grown from French cuttings in Algeria. It was good.

"Gus?"

The chewing stopped only long enough for the bear of a man to quickly respond, " Ja? "

"Where do we go from here? Central Africa?''

The bear belched, drawing an appreciative look from the other customers of the harbor-side bistro.

"I don't know. There are the Gulf Emirates. I would prefer them to working in Central Africa. There are too many uncertainties there, and it is not always easy to get your money."

Langers leaned back in the chair of woven reeds. To the north he could see the Mediterranean, the calm blue sea as clear as glass, but the sense of peacefulness that it inspired was only temporary. He had long ago determined that conflict, not peace, was the natural order of man, for peace and calm were always transitory things for Carl Langers aka Casca Rufio Longinus. Since that fateful moment 2,000 years ago when he had sunk his spear into the crucified body of Christ, Casca had been denied the rest of the weary, dying countless times only to wake once again in the world of the living. Eternal death would have been sweet salvation for Casca alias Langers. But he was destined to live the hell of one damned to immortality until the Second Coming would reprieve him.

He and his giant friend would have preferred to be in Algiers, but the memory of that notorious time in the Legion Etrangere there was still too fresh. Too many knew them by sight and old grudges die hard. That had been a bad and bloody time when he and Gus had come back from Indochina after the fall of Dien Bien Phu, a very bad and bloody time. They had taken their discharges as soon as their time was up, not wishing to participate any further in the seemingly random and insane slaughter that had taken place between the French Colonials and the Algerian Nationalists. It was one of those cases where everyone was the bad guy and there was no absolute right or wrong-only the fanatics.

Gus opened his throat to take in a handful of couscous, then farted with satisfaction. Several nearby diners promptly left their tables, meals uneaten.

"Don't be impatient, Carl. Monpelier said he would meet us here and he will. He said only that he would arrive by the fifteenth. It is as of yet only the thirteenth. Two days is not such a long time to wait. Perhaps, as he said, he will have some work for us."

Claude Monpelier had been their boss when they were working the supply lines. He had had the job of contracting and locating specialists for many companies in North Africa. Prior to that, the Belgian-born Monpelier had served as sergent chef with the Troisieme Battalion Parachutiste des Etrangere. It was from there he knew Langers and Beidemann.

"Well, I hope he comes soon. The way you eat up our money, it won't last much longer."

Gus gulped down half a liter of wine to top off his meal. "Carl, I am surprised at you. You never have any faith in our luck. Something will happen. It always does."

Sourly Langers grunted back, "I know, but when you're around it usually means trouble."

Gus finished his wine, blithely ignoring the slander. Suddenly he rose from his seat, beaming with smugness. "See! I told you he would come. Trust me, I know that he brings our fortune with him. Claude is not one to waste talent such as ours."

Looking over his shoulder in the direction Gus was facing, Carl did indeed see Monpelier coming toward them: sunburned, hair and eyebrows bleached by years in the desert sun to an albino white. He still had the look of the Legion to him, straight back, strong, spare body. His face might have once been handsome, but too many fights had rearranged the bone structure. A once-proud Gallic nose now rested between his cheekbones like a mutilated piece of sausage.

Gus swept him into a chair, gurgling happily, "Welcome, mon vieux. What is it you have for us?"

Claude merely gave Gus one of the looks he normally reserved for jackals, vultures, and other vile things that crawled upon the face of the earth. Carl ignored both of them. It was an old and time-honored ritual between them.

"Well first, you great hulking beast, can you not see that I am faint from lack of wine?"

" Good idea!'' Gus roared out loud enough that the snakes living in the ruins of nearby Carthage could hear. "Wine, do you hear? Wine for the troops. We've been raping and ravaging all day and we thirst.'' He collared a terrified waiter with a fez on his curly head and barked, "Bring wine, and while you're at it water my mule.'' The waiter started to ask the effendi, or master, where his mule was, but a playful slap on his shoulder sent him reeling toward the kitchen.

Claude sighed wearily and cast a doleful look at Langers. "Can't you put a leash or at least a muzzle on this foul creature?"

Langers smiled for the first time. "No, but I give you permission to do so if you want to try."

Claude knew he was being outmaneuvered and as any wise, old soldier would do, he ignored the remarks completely and got straight to business once he was certain that the other tables were not listening in.

"If you can lower your voices to a normal level, we will get on with what I wish to speak to you about, my friends," he said.

The timid approach of the waiter bearing a liter of the Algerian wine gave them a moment's pause before Claude continued, leaving Gus to pour for them. Gus had no real interest in the details of the job at this point. If Langers liked it, then they would do it, so why bother himself with superfluous dialogue? He was, after all, a most practical man.

Sipping his wine after first testing the bouquet, Claude began.

"Am I not correct in saying that before I had the dubious honor of serving with you, you and your animal here were stationed for a time out of Fort Lapperrine in the Ahaggar Mountains, and from there went on several raids into the territory of the Azbine Tuaregs, the Berber Moslems who inhabit the land between the Talak Air Plains and the Tenere Desert?"

Carl nodded. "Yes, we spent some time there. Bad country, hard people. Why?"

"Well, my friends," he touched his forefinger to the side of his nose to indicate a matter of great confidence, "I have an acquaintance in need of men who know the area and are not afraid to take a small risk." That worried Carl a bit. When Claude referred to anything as a "small risk,'' he meant the equivalent of trying to mount a bayonet attack across quicksand with sixty-pound packs on your back.

"Just what is this small risk, Sergent Chef?" Carl automatically went back into addressing Monpelier by his old rank.

"You know that since we were 'invited' to leave Algeria, there have been many troubles. One of them has to do with a chieftain of the Azbini. He is trying to form an alliance with the other Tuareg tribes, the Allimideni, Ifora, Azjeri, and Ahaggerni, and even those of the Bedouin. He wishes to form an autonomous state of their own. You and I know this will not happen, but it takes only a few fanatics to cause great trouble. And the trouble is this." He paused to refresh his palate. "One of the Azbine chieftains who calls himself Sunni Ali has captives. The son of a rich man and the son's wife, an American girl. They are being held for ransom."