Mysterious Cairo (32 page)

One of the Nippon gunmen — from the way he moved, apparently the executive who had consigned Bennington and Jasmine to their fates—moved toward the front door. His men kept the hall doorway covered as their boss opened the gate to the street.

The executive was halfway through "There must be some misunderstanding" when the tommy-guns cut him, and the door, to pieces.

The other gunmen whirled around and started firing through the windows, but between the firepower outside and the two foes to their rear, they did not last long. When the shooting was over, the lot of them lay dead.

Bennington and Jasmine stepped cautiously into the lobby. "Throw down your gun," he said to her, and took it from her when she resisted. "Now put your hands up."

She did as she was told, though not without a hard look in his direction. An instant later, the battered door swung open to reveal the burly form of a Cairo policeman.

The cop instinctively raised his gun when he saw two people still on their feet. Before he could shoot, Benning-ton shouted, "We surrender, Tarif! We surrender!"

Sergeant Hali Tarif lowered his gun — slowly — and led them from the blood-soaked room.

* * *

"Bennington? What the blazes were you doing in there? And who were all those weird Orientals?"

The red-faced questioner was Captain Karl Sampson, a Terran expatriate now working with the Cairo police force, and an old acquaintance of Bennington's. "Answer me, damn you!" he continued. "And who's the frail in the black scraps of cloth? What, some kind of a peep show going on in there?"

Bennington stepped in before Jasmine could fire back a reply. Managing, with great effort, to keep a straight face, he said, "No, Captain. It was a white slavery ring."

"What are you talking about?"

Bennington was just getting warmed up. "They wanted to use the Icarus Club as a front for their filthy business. Naturally, I said no, so they kidnapped me and brought me here. This ... er, innocent young thing helped me escape."

He put a paternal hand on Jasmine's shoulder as he said this. She restrained herself from protesting.

Sampson was clearly confused. "This makes no sense. We got a call that Alif 'Mad Dog' Bayan was holed up in here. Then we get here and find you, some dame whose dress is in shreds, and a bunch of dead Orientals."

"Well, maybe Bayan was involved with the ring, Captain," Bennington said. "Maybe he was here, but left before you arrived."

That seemed to please the policeman. "Sure, that must be it. We'll comb the whole area for him! Meanwhile, you two will have to come downtown for questioning."

"Could it wait 'til tomorrow?" Bennington asked. "The lady and I have had a harrowing evening. And by the way, have I told you how much the Icarus Club has suffered by not having a man of the law like yourself as a member?"

* * *

A few phone calls from his apartment allowed Ben-nington to put all the pieces together. When they had lost the tail, "Numbers" and "The Dutchman" had gathered a few of Icarus' best clients together and gone to visit the Golden Dragon. After an hour or two of knocking heads together, they had gotten the address of the Nippon firm's headquarters.

Not knowing how much muscle they'd be facing or how much time they had, "Numbers" decided to play it safe and bring the cops in on it. Telling them "Mad Dog" Bayan was around was like waving a red flag in Sampson's face.

"All of that, I understand," Jasmine said. She was sitting on his couch, sipping a cup of tea. He had loaned her a bathrobe to wear. "But why did you not tell the police the truth about what was in that house?"

"It's like I said, Jasmine: the underworld is a family. We look after our own," he said, sitting down beside her. "If Nippon is trying to get its claws on Cairo's shadier businesses, it's up to the gangs to stop them. And the Icarus Club can organize the resistance. The Golden Dragon was just a start, kid."

She put down her cup and turned to him. "Why did you lie about me? I would have destroyed all you hold dear in the name of profit."

He frowned. "I'm not sure. Maybe because I saw that you'd been sold a bill of goods — I don't like seeing people used. Maybe because I know you could have talked your way out of that death sentence, if you had put your mind to it, and let me take the fall alone."

She blushed slightly. "I considered it. My former employer was . attracted to me."

"And maybe because now we're up against a new kind of enemy in Cairo. One that's colder, quieter, and doesn't play by our rules. To beat them, we need to understand them — and for that, I need your help."

"Are you offering me a job?" she asked.

"If you want it," he said. "The Icarus Club could use you. And after seeing what you did to that sumo, I'd rather have you on my side than against me."

She thought about it for a long moment before speaking. "You are a very strange man, Paul Bennington. But perhaps you are right—perhaps mere profit is worthless if there is not some sense of . belonging to go with it. I will accept your offer."

He smiled and moved to get himself another cup of coffee. She stopped him with a hand on his arm.

"You forget, we are in Cairo," she said, smiling. "We must seal the deal with a handshake."

She took his hand in hers and drew him down toward her kiss.

Outside, a soft rain began to fall .

Shane Lacy Hensley

The rain. It kept her awake. But that was about all. Other than that, it was as cold and miserable as her heart. It had been that way for over a year and a half — ever since the invasion.

Mobius' realm had crashed down on her planet like some great sprawling net on an unsuspecting school of fish. Tanks, troops, and even magic were used against those who resisted the rule of the new Pharaoh. The brave died early. The cowardly and the foolish seemed to live forever. Half of the nation joined his regime and the other half cowered beneath its ugly shadow.

But not her father. Hasim al-Haffah had worked for peace all of his life. He had made himself unpopular many times for wanting to negotiate with the Israelis, but had never wavered from the path of harmony. And then he had spoken out against the Pharaoh. Only a few nights later, he had kissed her good night and gone into his room. The morning paper called it a suicide.

On the outside, Yishara wept, but inside, hatred and vengeance swirled about her like the turbulent storms which bordered the invader's realms. On that day, a part of Yishara had died. But something new was born in her place.

She had made herself a set of metal "talons" and a skin-tight black outfit from the darkest satin. Yishara cropped her long flowing hair short so that it wouldn't interfere with her vision; it was hair that had taken her eighteen years to grow to perfection. She had no special "powers" like many of the heroes which had recently surfaced in her strangely transformed world, but she had been a gymnast in school and she would use her natural agility to combat the dark forces released by the invaders. Between her acrobatic prowess, her talons, a trusty bullwhip, and her hatred of Mobius, Yishara became the heroine known as the Raven.

She realized that it would be a long time before she was ready to take on the Pharaoh himself, so the back alleys and crime filled streets of Cairo became her training ground.

It was over one of these alleys that she was now perched. Hidden in the shadows of a rooftop, she gazed into the rain soaked street which had only recently acquired a grim reputation.

The black haired, slim, and muscular beauty had read in the
Cairo Clarion
that several people had disappeared in or about this section of Old Cairo in the last three days. The locals had already named it the 'Alley of Death,' but either reputation or the drizzling rain had kept the street deserted for the last four hours. Now it was almost four in the morning and ...

She heard a delicate splash in the water behind her. Raven whirled, barely raising her metallic talons in time to catch the very large blade of a scimitar. Wielding the blade was a giant of a man. The cloth from his red turban ran down around his face, leaving visible only his mocking, hate-filled eyes. His shirt and pants were also dark red.

This was all Raven had time to see before she had to parry the heavy blade once again. A quick glance to the left revealed a lower rooftop. She leapt, leaving her astonished attacker behind her ... or so she thought. She landed poorly, wrenching her ankle as she misjudged the depth of the rooftop puddle. Her attacker landed with a dull splash behind her and she felt the sharp steel of his scimitar bury itself deep in her thigh.

Sharp pain screamed up her nerves and slammed into her brain, sending her reeling and staggering over the rooftop. Only the elasticity of the typical Cairo awnings saved her life. In a delirium, she looked up to where she had fallen. The swordsman was doing something strange. It was hard to see him clearly through the rain and mist, but it seemed as if he was . cleaning his blade! Her bewilderment suddenly gave way to panic when she saw the blurry shapes which joined him. He wasn't alone! She had to get away. But
how?

Across the narrow alley was a wooden beam protruding from high upon a stucco wall. She yanked out her bullwhip. She heard the men on the rooftop yelling at each other in a language unfamiliar to her. Her fear gave her energy — now was the time. She lashed the whip, watched it catch tight on the wet wood of the beam, then leapt off the awning and swung across the darkened alley.

Several knives whipped past her lithe form and clanged into the wall in front of her. She slammed into the wall and scrambled up the leather line. At the top, she dragged herself over the lip, retrieved her bullwhip, and dropped onto another water filled rooftop.

Strangely, the water she was now lying in had a red tint to it. She didn't care to think about this further, and promptly passed out.

She wasn't sure how long she had been lying there, but when she looked up, one of the men was just crawling over the lip of the roof. The glaring eyes peaked the lip and seemed surprised that she was awake. She slammed her boot into his face and sent him screaming into the street below. The crunch was particularly satisfying.

Then she saw another hand on the roof's edge. She had to run again. But where?

In her brief career as a crime fighter, Raven had run across several other so called "pulp heroes," including some of the famed Mystery Men. She even knew where two of them lived. But only one was close enough to do her any good. She didn't really want to go to him; something about him scared her. He was the Shroud, a dark avenger who took his name from the mysterious cloak he wore.

Her trick didn't work again. As she tried to kick the second thug in the face, his hand blocked it with dazzling speed and threw her off balance. He followed up by spilling her over. With a shove off his rock hard body, she tumbled, just barely, onto another rooftop, as the surprised goon fell to the ground. When he leapt to his feet, Raven had already cleared the adjoining building.

The wound in her side was aching, and her ankle felt like someone had driven over it with an Aperehen, but she knew that to stop was certain death. The next roof must have been to some sort of apartments due to the number of clothes lines and chimneys she saw there. Raven grabbed one of the clothes lines, slashed it with her talons, and quickly crouched behind a stone chimney. When the thug came racing by, she gave it sharp tug and sent him sprawling over the nearby edge.

She began to run again and heard the splashing footsteps of the others behind her. The man she had just tripped was hanging on by one hand. Four seconds later, there was only a bloody hand print fading quickly in the pouring rain. Raven slung the blood from her talon and smiled grimly. It was only a little further to the Shroud's.

* * *

She had almost made it when they caught up with her. She thought she might outrun them at first, but then the sharp pain in her side betrayed her — she slammed to the ground and smacked her head painfully into the unforgiving roof. Summoning every ounce of her spirit, she crawled towards the last roof edge. Across the street she could see the bedroom window of Gunner Hayes, the Shroud. If only she could make it across the alley.

And then they were all around her. She wasn't as angry about them catching her as she was that she was wheezing and they were not. One of them tore away his mask, revealing a grinning face with two teeth missing. Raven spit at her murderer, but only managed to coat her chest with a thick string of her own blood and saliva. The thug laughed, and raised his scimitar.

In quasi-consciousness, Raven noticed a red, round hole, surrounded by some sort of pulpy material, appear in the swordsman's forehead. The crimson stream which mixed with the rain and meandered down his face looked strange, but not alarming to the delirious heroine. From the back of her mind, a part of her psyche that was trying to slam its way through a mental wall of pain broke through. From the hole came the sound of ... laughter. But it was not the kind of laughter that she had once made with her father. And it was certainly not the laughter of love or happiness. It was the unbridled laugh of dark insanity. She knew it all too well, and the recognition of its source caused her mind to rejoin her physical self. She almost wished it hadn't.

There he was, standing over her. That infamous cloak spread open and his maniacal laughter reverberated not from his throat but from somewhere within that tattered shroud. She could just see two of her wiry pursuers fleeing back over the blood soaked rooftops. A third, the one that had wounded her, was leaning back on his knees, his eyes wide in disbelief and his blood still trailing from the single bullet hole in his forehead to the dirty water of the rooftop pool. But two remained. Their faces were ashen and Raven wondered what they might have seen within that insatiable cape. Nevertheless, they fought on. One was hacking at the Shroud, who seemed to be toying with him by the way he dodged and waved his Luger about. And then the other one did something strange. He looked straight into the eyes of Raven and smiled. Then he reached into the sash of the dead thug, retrieved something from its folds, and turned to run. Raven lashed feebly with her whip but the nimble thief leapt high and disappeared into the night.