Big Three-Thriller Bundle Box Collection (60 page)

SMALL THINGS

CAPTAIN R. D. CHARDOFF was as impatient as he was intolerant at times. Intolerant of weaklings, small things that had no purpose and got in the way.

The small brown lizard attempted to escape from his path in the archway of Ma’hami’s patio, but Chardoff’s enormous foot hurried to stomp it. He twisted his toe to make sure the job was complete.

The cafe patio was empty. The clatter of dishes being washed and someone singing
If I Were A Rich Man
came from inside.

The shore patrol had said North and Sperling had been here. Said something about them not going directly to the ship. He had to catch them before they reported in. It would be much easier to dispose of them here in Bizerte than on the ship. They were about to cause trouble, to mess up his plans.

The Marine Corps hadn’t given him many opportunities. It sure as hell wasn’t going to make him a
rich man
. He’d have to do that on his own. He had been busted down from major. He’d never see a promotion again. They said he was too brash, too hard on his men. And there were the three reprimands marring his record for “accidents” in which some of his men had gotten hurt during different training exercises. He’d told his superiors the truth. They had been “punished” for not being able to pull their own weight. They called it “beating up,” but officially recorded each incident as “training accidents during which time Captain R. D. Chardoff had been the officer in charge and therefore responsible.”

The Corps had become weak. America had become weak. He wanted to be on the winning team— the one that paid the best.

Chardoff stepped to the door of the cafe and drew out his huge K-bar knife. It had five marks etched into the blade near the handle. In a few seconds there would be another.

The man inside the restaurant might know where North and Sperling went. If he knew and told Chardoff, he’d kill the man for being weak. If the man didn’t know where they were, he’d kill him for being ignorant.

DESERT STREETS

NORTH AND SPURS took the Moped back to the bicycle peddler North had rented it from. The shop was only four blocks from the pier and the only shop open so late. The proprietor was probably waiting for the cycle’s return before closing.

The call of nature, encouraged by the four Scotch and waters, insisted Spurs ask for the restroom. North waited out front.

Spurs wasn’t pleased when she stepped behind the curtain and found a straddle trench.

After finishing her business, she hastily combed her hair with the assistance of her vague reflection on a stainless steel pan hanging on the wall. She hadn’t been inside more than four minutes, maybe five at most, and when she came outside, North was gone. The street was empty. The shop owner was not in sight, either. She stepped out further and scanned the empty street.

The lights in the shop behind her went out and she turned to see someone standing in the darkness, a shadowy figure behind him. She recognized the clothes of the bicycle peddler, but his face was in the shadow as well as that of what looked like a female figure behind him, probably the shopkeeper’s wife.

“The man left,” he said.

“Where? Where did he go?” she asked bewildered.

He paused. The figure behind him grabbed his arm. “Some men from the ship came and got him. Said he had to go right away. Stay in the middle of the street. You will be okay.”

“I didn’t hear any men come. I would have heard a jeep.”

The man and his wife went back into the shop, and closed the door.

Spurs looked back at the lonely, narrow street that she would have to walk alone to the pier. This wasn’t right. It was all wrong. Now she felt as though at least a dozen eyes watched her, but could see no one.

A SHARP SABER

REMEMBERING THAT THE pier was two blocks down and then two more to the right, she set out down the middle of the street as instructed. Not like she would walk next to the shadowy sides anyway.

After the first block the dark sidewalks ahead seemed alive. There was movement, a lot of movement. Two, maybe three men working their way toward her on the left, the same on the right. She stopped in front of an even narrower alley in the center of the block and saw men coming up from behind her on both sides of the street.

“Oh shit!” she whispered, “North, if I live through this, I’m going to stick one of those hot peppers up your ass!”

They closed in. Her eyes darted around them to the alleys. The narrower passages seemed deserted, but which should she take? The right one would lead closer to the ship.

She kicked off her high heel shoes and sprinted all out. They chased her.

The alley smelled of rotten vegetables, urine and feces. Broken crates, boxes and barrels lined the sides. Litter cluttered the asphalt.

Three more men suddenly appeared in her path, silhouetted by the lights from the pier at the end of the alley. The pier was so close, but yet so very, very far.

She stopped, fifty feet from them and noticed the large silhouette in the middle. He stuck out like a giant among dwarfs. She wondered if it might be Chardoff.

From the direction she had come, seven or eight men, dressed like locals raced toward her. No way out.

A door opened on one of the buildings to her left.

“American woman!” a young boy’s voice called, “American woman, come with me quickly!”

Spurs took no time to consider. She leaped to the entrance. The thin young Arab boy pulled her in and slammed and locked the door behind her.

“Come, they will soon break through,” he said, and as he spoke came the first of many body slams against the other side of the door.

He led her up some stairs and across a large vacant space. It looked to be some kind abandoned warehouse. Up two more flights of stairs, past two additional large rooms, and they heard the door below give way.

The boy of about thirteen went to a twenty foot ladder hung loosely from the ceiling and climbed it.

“Come on, come on!” he said.

Spurs extracted her sharpened file from her purse, slipped it carefully into her bra, then tossed the small handbag
to the side and grabbed the ladder.

“Where are you taking me?”

“To safety, American woman,” he said.

“What’s your name?”

“Saber Abdul Ali. Please, no more questions, now.”

At the top, he beat against the roof access and finally lifted it.

Their enemies came running up the steps from across the large, dark room.

Spurs followed Saber out onto the tar roof and he pulled the long wooden ladder up just as the men reached where it had hung. They jumped for it but the boy was too quick and Spurs helped him pull it out and heave it onto the roof.

She looked around them.

“What now, Saber?”

The boy shoved the large access cover shut, closed the hasp and found a long bolt and slipped it through the hasp ring.

“We jump the roofs.”

Spurs looked over the alley. Even though it was narrow for an alley, it was still a good twelve feet.

AMERICAN WOMAN

“HURRY AMERICAN WOMAN,” Saber insisted.

“The name’s Spurs,” she said, watching the boy hustle to one side of the roof.

“Jump like I do,” he said lowering his head and shoulders, then racing like he was going to knock down a linebacker.

He leaped from the edge, legs kicking, arms thrashing.

Spurs held her breath.

His feet hit just shy of the adjacent roof, toes striking the side of the building, but came down on his knees on the roof’s parapet and rolled
safely. Chunks of the old clay-sided building crumbled and fell clicking as it landed four stories below. He scampered up and glanced back at Spurs, his chest heaving. He eyed the ground below, then smiled at her.

“See,” he said, “it is easy.” He stood holding his hands on his hips.

“Forget it,” she said, waving him off.

Footfalls came from the other side of the building eighty feet away. Spurs turned to see one of her Arab pursuers climb up onto the roof from an outside ladder. Another one followed and there was no reason to assume there would not be more.

She stepped back and ran, still barefooted, to the edge, without even considering which foot to push off with, how to jump, how to land. She left the roof thrashing her arms as Saber did. She peddled her legs through the air.

Her flight was two feet short.

Her hands caught the short parapet of the roof and she straddled a drainpipe. Her grip was only good enough to break all of her fingernails. She dug her fingers and toes in like a cat on a tree but slipped and grabbed onto the drainpipe. It pulled loose at the top.

Meanwhile, a half dozen of their adversaries assembled on the roof from which they had jumped.

Spurs watched them hopelessly as the pipe slowly parted the wall. They returned eager smiles. She wrapped her arms and legs around the pipe. Now six feet out, nothing would stop her. She would strike the opposite wall and then fall to the ground in a bone-breaking crash.

As
the pipe she hugged gained speed away from the wall, Spurs felt something whip around her. Her descent slowed and stopped. Then she realized it was some sort of small rope like a clothesline that had snagged her. Saber had roped her. He was pulling her back.

The cockiness her father had worked for years to suppress surfaced and she released one hand from the pipe just long enough to give them a quick middle finger.

When Saber had pulled her back to the wall he reached over to help her up and she climbed over awkwardly.

“Thank you, Saber,” she said, smiling at the boy as they held each other. “I owe you my life.”

The boy appeared distracted by the men on the other side. He released her and she turned quickly. One of them was going to leap over.

The man cleared his side with too much height. He came down where Spurs had just landed but his upper body leaned over the parapet in a little better position than she had.

Saber was quick to kick him in the face, but with little results. The other men jeered at them. The man reached for Saber’s leg but Saber kicked again, striking the man just under the nose. He kicked several more times in sharp, quick snaps. Finally the man slipped down, his face even with the funnel-like top to the loose drainpipe, but still he held to the parapet’s edge.

Spurs grabbed the top of the unfastened pipe and slammed it into the man’s face one, two, three times before he fell.

Saber turned and ran, Spurs following. Again they dashed toward the edge of the roof.

“No,” Spurs said, “No Saber, I can’t do it again. There’s got to be another way.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, “just follow me.”

He leaped over the edge, this time dropping straight down as she ran up from behind.

“Oh, God!” She trotted over, not even thinking of attempting what Saber had just done. Carefully peeking down, she was surprised to see him smiling up at her from a small roof only eight feet below.

“You little jerk,” she said, “you scared the crap out of me.”

“Hurry Am . . . Spoors,” he said waving to her.

She eased herself onto the edge then vaulted over, landing on her hands and feet.

Saber ducked into a window and she followed him in, then down some stairs. On the ground level, they paused at another alley doorway and then crossed to the next building and went to the back. It was some sort of old factory with rusty steel pipes and tanks filling the space. He ushered her to the last large boiler tank, about eight feet in diameter and opened the steel access door in the center that was slightly larger than a porthole.

The boy pulled out a flashlight hidden in a nearby pipe, turned it on and tossed it in. There was no sound when it landed like there should have been with a metal flashlight thrown into a steel tank.

“After you, Spoors,” the boy said, motioning her on.

Spurs didn’t think she should argue. The boy had done all right by her thus far. She reached up with both hands onto the inside of the tank opening, about five feet from the floor. Saber laced his fingers together and held his hands out for her to use as a foot hold. She stepped up, put her head through the dark hole and he boosted her in.

NIGHT IN THE TANK

THE FLASHLIGHT MADE a yellow glow inside the boiler tank.

“Why are you helping me?” Spurs asked Saber in a whisper.

“Because you needed help,” he answered.

“But you don’t even know me.”

“You would have helped me, wouldn’t you, even if you didn’t know me?”

Spurs had to honestly think.

“Yes, I guess so.”

“Shouldn’t any person help another if they can?”

“Sure they should.”

Saber smiled. His eyes were large and black and he had a thick shock of charcoal hair to match. His lips were plump, but his face was thin as was his body. Too thin. He was obviously malnourished. A boy of the street.

Spurs shined the flashlight around the inside of the tank.

It was damp and smelled of urine, probably from the feather mattress they sat on lining the bottom. She guessed that it had been found in the trash or stolen, along with the few other items in the boy’s steel home. A kitten stood at the other end, its back arched, a wooden splint tied to its leg. A homemade wire birdcage hung from the top with a sparrow inside, its wing taped.

“Nice place,” she said, smiling at the boy.

“Thank you,” he said gleaming back. “I like it more better than the alley.”

She nodded. “Are these your pets?”

“If you mean, do I own them, no, I do not. They are their own free people, like everyone should be. I only help them and care for them until they are well enough to be on their own—like me. We are friends.”

“How’d you learn such good English?”

“Americans come to this port very often. It pays a beggar to know the language of the rich.” He paused and looked at his feet as he squatted. “I think that my father was American.”

“Don’t you know?”

He looked up. “Not for sure. My mother was a whore, like me.”

Spurs sat back, staring unbelievingly at the boy. He didn’t seem sad about what he had said. It was a part of his life that he lived with and had adjusted to.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?” he asked. “I am alive. And when I die, I will see my mother once again. And someday, my rich father, in heaven.”

“How long has your mother been dead?”

“Since I was five.”

Spurs grimaced. “What do you do? How do you live?”

Now the boy looked sad, looking back at his feet.

“As I said, I am a whore like my mother.”

Spurs tried to analyze, to understand what he was saying.

He looked up to her questioning face and explained.

“I sell myself to the sailors that come here.” A smile came to his lips as he pulled some paper from his pocket then put it in front of the light. It was a single
dinar
, worth less than an American dollar. “See,” he said, moistening his lips, “tomorrow I will have bread.” His eyes became even brighter. “We can share.”

“No,” Spurs said smiling. “I just need to get back to my ship. There’ll be plenty of bread there.”

She had tucked ten dollars into her bra for safe keeping before going on liberty so she reached in next to the fingernail file and pulled it out. Kind of crowded in there anyway.

“Here, this is for you,” she said, placing it in his hands. “Don’t let anyone fool you, that’s worth about fifteen
dinars
.”

“But what do I do for this,” he asked, his face looking perplexed. “I have never had sex with a woman. Although I think it may be nice.”

“No, sweetheart. Let’s just say it’s for saving my life.”

“But
that
I did not do for payment. Those men are bad. They were going to hurt you.”

“Yes, they were, and my little hero saved the day,” she said and leaned to him and kissed his dirty forehead.

Saber looked stunned, but then a smile split his face, and he began rocking back and forth, holding his knees. A giggle erupted in small bursts, then turned into continuous laughter. Spurs laughed along. Remembering they were being hunted, both quieted, smiling at one another and putting their fingers to their lips.

“It is best that we be quiet and sleep now,” Saber said. “In an hour or so, we might be able to get you back to your ship.”

He leaned back, but seemed uncomfortable, grimacing briefly, then rolled to his side with his back turned to Spurs.

“Good idea,” she said, even though she knew that an hour might be all the time she had. Being on alert, the ship could shove off at any time. But the streets were too dangerous, now.

She lay down behind Saber and noticed a dark spot midway down his back. Before, it had blended with the rest of the dirt on the poor boy’s red shirt. But now, looking close with the flashlight, she could see that it was moist in the middle. She touched the spot curiously, hoping it wasn’t what it seemed.

Saber flinched.

“Saber, what happened?”

“It’s nothing Spoors, but there is more I should tell you.” He kept his back to her.

“It’s not nothing. You’re bleeding.”

“I was on the roof when I saw you in the street by the bicycle shop. I was hiding from a very bad man. I think he was after you, also. When I saw you were an American woman, I thought I could tell you the terrible thing I had heard. I did not know who else I could trust, but I knew I must tell someone.”

“Why were you hiding from him? Did he do this to you?”

“He bought me
for the night. I heard him talking with some other men in the room next to mine in the whorehouse. I don’t think they knew anyone listened or at least knew English. At first they spoke of the kind of whore they preferred. The big man said he liked young boys so I knew that I would be told to please him. But then they spoke about something else—something that scared me very much.”

He rolled over grimacing from the pain coming from the wound on his back.

“What was it?”

His eyes widened and he began to shake.

“Saber, it’s okay. Take your time and tell me.”

Tremors took over his body and he began to cry. His breath caught and he gasped for air. Spurs wrapped her arms around him gently. She couldn’t imagine what could be so terrible to a strong-willed boy like him. He had just been through hell and yet was unfazed. He lived like dirt, but could still smile and laugh about it. What was so frightening that it could break his strong spirit to tears?

“Shh-shh. Calm down, now. Tell me very slowly. First, how did you get this wound?”

He gasped several times more, but calmed enough to speak. Spurs still held him, their cheeks together, lips next to the other’s ear.

“The big American man that bought me did it,” he said in a loud whisper. “He made me play a game. He made me go
baa
-
baa
like a sheep, and pushed a big knife into my back. He said that he cut me to make sure I paid attention and that if he stuck the knife in all the way, I would not make a sound when I died and no one would know. He said I’d better be good to him or his knife would kill me and it would get a new notch.”

“The bastard!” Spurs cried, breaking into tears, also. “You poor boy.”

She stroked his thick black hair and clutched him tight.

“Do not cry for that, Spoors,” he said. “It is the way I live. And probably will be the way I die. I will see my mother when I die, and my father someday, too.”

That was all the boy had to look forward to in life—death. Spurs choked, she had cried enough tonight, but couldn’t shut it off now.

“Please, don’t cry, Spoors. I did not mean to make you cry. What I must tell you is much worse than what happened to me.”

Spurs shook her head. She could not imagine anything worse.

Saber pushed back and looked Spurs face to face from only inches away. His lips began trembling again.

“This man and his friends said that they were going to do something very bad. They said they were going to sink a ship and many people would die. And they laughed. I do not like these men. I have never killed anyone unless they were going to hurt someone. These men I would kill if I could, but they are too strong. Do you have friends that can stop them? Maybe it is your ship they are going to sink!”

He began crying again and Spurs hugged him tightly. She wondered if what he had heard was true—if perhaps he’d heard it wrong.

“Don’t worry, Saber,” she said running her fingers through his thick hair, “I have many friends that will stop them. They won’t sink my ship or any other.” She hoped what she told him was true.

She turned off the flashlight and rocked him to sleep in her arms.

* * *

Somewhere between conscious memory and dreams, Spurs made a familiar trip into the red hills of Oklahoma. She was twelve, again, crying, riding through the red dirt on Rocket. Crying because she’d killed the rabbit. That poor little bunny. It haunted her, but why? Was it because it was the first time, and she prayed it would be the last time, she’d ever kill a warm-blooded animal. But was that really the reason she cried?

She tried to remember back before she’d mounted Rocket, to the time right after the bunny lay still at her feet and the seven or eight school children crowded around laughing. She’d laughed, too, but only for a moment, until she’d realized that maybe her friends had thought she’d intended to kill it— that it was funny to kill, that she was so tough that her heart was indifferent to life and cold as that Oklahoma red clay.

She’d taken a life, and no matter how small, it was still a life, just like her own. She’d thrown the lariat to the ground and run away with an uncomfortable chuckle in her throat that grew and mutated into a groan. She had to go to her mother. She would comfort her—know the right things to say. She would make the pain go away. She would understand that she hadn’t intended to harm even a flea on the bunny’s back. Spurs had run, her arms flailing, to Uncle Paul and Aunt Katherine’s ranch house where they’d been staying. She’d leapt onto the porch and shoved through the back door. . . .