Now, as Nick waited for the Kurds to finish their prayers, he tested his bonds. Even his tremendous strength could not break them, not even gain an inch of slack. They had soaked the leather thongs in water before they bound him — now the thongs were drying and shrinking! Nick could feel them cutting into his flesh like sharp wire.
The camel was unhappy. It did not like goats. It did not like Nick, and repeatedly reached back with long yellow teeth to snap at the rider's legs.
They approached the ford of the Kardu. It was still dark, but a faint line of pearl was slowly appearing over the mountains to the east. Half a mile back the Basque was following with the rest of the caravan, waiting to see what would happen at the ford.
N3 figured his chances. If the camel stepped on a mine he would be blown to hell. If the Turks, or the Syrians, were waiting in ambush they would probably shoot him dead before he could identify himself. // he could identify himself.
Nick found himself hoping that the Syrians and Turks would be very much absent! Then, if there were no mines and he got over safely, the Basque would send him back to Istanbul. To the tender mercies of Dr. Six, with his exclusive sanitarium on the Bosphorus, where the good doctor ran such a fine clinic for the poor! There would be as Nick had once thought while in the Hole, the little sharp knives and the truth serums!
But there would also be time! At least a little time to plan, to watch and wait, perhaps to act. Time!
The camel smelled water and began to run, forcing its way through the herd of goats, snapping and biting, trying to break into a long legged, splaying run. Nick lurched and bounced, tossed about brutally, held on the ungainly beast only by the torturing leather thongs. The Kurdish guards swung in closer, urging the goats on with shrill curses. Each of the half dozen Kurds, Nick had noted, was armed with a Russian made submachine gun. No old fashioned jebel rifles here! Probably the gift of the Chinese.
The camel stepped on a mine!
Had it been a high explosive mine it would have blown N3 to instant hell. It was not high explosive. It was an anti-personnel mine. A daisy cutter! A ball bouncer! So designed that when the mine was tripped a canister of shrapnel leaped into a man's crotch and tore out his balls and guts in a savage explosion.
The camel's racing stride carried it exactly over the canister as it exploded. The blasting shrapnel ripped the beast's belly apart, tearing out the entrails and lacerating Nick's ankles at the same time it severed the thongs binding them. Nick went flying into the terrified herd of goats as the camel stumbled and fell with a last bloody dying bellow.
Nick came down into the smother of tightly packed and frightened goats. As he fell he heard another mine explode, saw bits of goat flying about him. He landed on the head of a big ram and his wrists, bound behind him with the leather thong, slipped over the ram's horns. He found himself literally suspended from the goat's head by his thonged wrists. The goat was plunging and lunging in a frenzy of terror, shaking its head and tearing at the unknown weight that was bowing it down.
It was a large and powerful goat and its long curving horns did what Nick had been unable to do. It broke the thong binding his wrists. Nick felt his wrists come free. He fell away from the plunging goat. He rolled under the hooves of a dozen or so of the beasts as they charged over him, protecting his face and head as best he could.
He heard the rattle of a machine gun and knew the Kurdish guards were firing into the mass of goats. Nick fought to his feet, surprised and gratified to find that he could move freely — that meant no bones broken, a miracle — and bending low he ran with the herd of goats. He risked a glance and saw one of the Kurds spurring his horse into the mass of stampeding animals.
Another Kurd loosed a burst into the herd, spray-firing in the hope of hitting Nick. He ducked again and hooked his arm around the neck of a large goat, swung in under it with his legs wrapped around its belly. The goat charged along with the mob of its frightened fellows. The Kurds fired another burst, and the goats changed direction and charged at the Kurd riding into their midst.
Nick saw the stirrup and the Kurd's felt boot and knew it was the only chance he would have. He grabbed for the foot and pulled the surprised and yelling Kurd from the saddle. As he fell toward N3 the AXE man plucked the man's curved dagger from its scabbard. So swift was the motion that the Kurd fell on his own dagger, impaling himself just below the breast-bone. Blood gushed over his beard and he fell into the goat herd, the machine gun skittering from dead hands.
Nick reached for the tommy gun and the horse's bridle in the same lightning motion. His heart was full of battle and he felt like whooping aloud his joy and hate and rage. He was free! If he went down now it would be fighting — taking a lot of the others with him!
Possibly the remaining Kurds expected him to run for it, to make for the Kardu and across to the Syrian side. All of them must have been for a moment bemused by the swiftness with which N3 acted. He put his heels into the horse and charged them, the tommy gun spitting red flame and lead in a hail of retribution.
Two of the Kurds went down immediately. Two more turned and fled, back toward where the Basque waited with the main caravan. The remaining Kurd, screaming prayers to Allah, charged. Nick went at him in an all out gallop. They were like two knights of old in a life or death tournament.
They came together with a great crash. Nick's mount went down. He fell free. The Kurd shrieked in triumph, pointed the tommy gun at Nick and squeezed the trigger. The gun jammed. Nick shot the Kurd off the horse with a tearing burst that nearly cut the man in two.
Nick staggered to his feet amid dust, blood, gunsmoke and the reeking smell of cordite. Dawn was nearly upon him now. The two Kurds would be reporting to the Basque.
There was not much time — for any of them. If there was a Turkish or Syrian patrol within twenty miles it would be on the way by now. The Basque would have to act fast. So would the man from AXE.
He examined his ankles, bleeding badly. He unwound the dirty cloths from his wrists, thinking that this was one Kurdish custom that made sense, and quickly bandaged each ankle. That done he swiftly set about collecting the tommy guns and ammunition of the dead Kurds.
Nick's horse had risen, apparently unhurt, and was now quietly cropping at the short grass nearby. The goats had vanished over the Kardu.
Burdened with the weight of four tommy guns and their ammunition, N3 finally managed to mount the horse. He chucked softly to the animal and patted its neck. "Bear up fella. I know it's heavy but it won't be for long. Just about a mile."
A mile to the west, where there was another ford and the Basque would be trying to cross. Nick honed. Maybe a patrol would show up and maybe it wouldn't, but the Basque was going to have a hot reception. As hot as the man from AXE could make it.
Chapter 12
A Head for a Head
The sun was a golden ball impaled on a towering white spike of mountain when Nick reached the ford a mile to the west. Here the Kardu ran broad and wide and shallow, the crystalline water rippling around huge smooth boulders. Squarely in the midst of the ford was a tiny island. A natural fortress with a solitary rock formation fringed by willows and tamarisk. Nick urged the tired horse into the stream and made for the island. The rocks and foliage would provide good cover. With any luck he should be able to hold of the caravan until a patrol arrived or, at the very least, make the Basque turn back.