Line of Succession

The movement wouldn’t hurt Fairlie but she wanted to get the rest of the coffee into him first. She motioned Alvin to hold his head again and lifted the cup to Fairlie’s pale lips.

4:28 A.M.North African Time Lime edged through the rubble feeling his way with his feet before he put his weight on them. Starlight fell on the pale crumbled walls; he kept to the deep shadows. When he looked back he couldn’t see the four men behind him and that was good.

He heard someone moving through the wreckage beyond the stucco wall that stood more or less intact against the sky. It loomed just ahead of him, one corner broken off raggedly by a forgotten Italian bomb. It was significant that he could hear the man’s approach; it meant the man didn’t really expect anyone to be out here. The rest of them would be at the opposite end of the building looking out through rifle slits, watching the camel train wind past. Sturka had sent one man to the back because of the possibility the camel train was a diversion—which it was.

There was only one way to do this kind of thing: fast and simply. Get up as close as possible and then rush them, overrun them before they could react against Fairlie.

No subtleties, no elaborate schemes. Just attack. He had to assume Sturka had only three or four comrades; he was relying on his hostage, not his military strength. Lime had to assume there weren’t more than half a dozen of them and that he could overwhelm that many instantly.

He stood with his back to the stucco wall and listened to the man approach the doorway beside him. At the back of his neck the short hairs prickled. He had the sound of his heartbeat in his ears. He let his breath trickle out slowly through his mouth; he fought a cough down.

The man had stopped just inside the door. Lime couldn’t wheel into sight to silehce the man without alarming him. It was probably Corby or Renaldo and either of them might be able to sense the presence of alien beings in the silent wreckage. If so it would draw the man outside and that was what Lime needed.…

The pulse throbbed at his throat. Distantly he could hear the caravan trudging past, the flipflop of camel hoofs across the stones down below the hill.

Stupid bravado, he thought. It would have made sense to send a younger man on point. But Chad Hill was an i

His elbows and knees were abraded raw: he had come the last two hundred yards on his belly. He settled the knife in his fist.

Movement: the shift of a leather sole on gritty earth. The man was coming out. Lime could hear his breathing.

He stood poised, motionless, down to his raw quivering nerve ends.

He sensed it before he saw it. He timed the man’s breathing; he waited for the man to exhale a breath and then he wheeled into the doorway. Clapped his hand over the man’s mouth and used the knife. Once in Oran he had stabbed into a man who had just taken a deep breath and the scream had echoed a mile.

The man’s body went taut. Lime released the knife and got a grip on the man to keep him from turning.

Renaldo, he thought.

He lowered the body without sound. Stepped outside and made hand motions.

Stealth now, but there would be discovery and soon they would have to move ever so fast. The four sharpshooters slipped in past him, stepped across Renaldo’s body, went prowling ahead like sharks, rifles out ahead of them. Lime fell in behind Orr, lifting the .38 out of the clamshell. Lime was the only one armed with lethal ammunition. It had to be that way. Total authority, and total responsibility. Nobody got killed unless Lime did the killing.

There had been lights before—probably kerosene lamps—but there were none now. That was to be expected; Sturka would have extinguished all lamps.

Sturka was probably at one of the gunports in the front wall watching the passage of the caravan. He would have Fairlie with him or close to him: Fairlie was his shield against trouble.

Lime had given the shooters the classic order: Shoot anything that moves. Their ammunition was tranquilizer darts; they would be able to sort out friend and foe afterward.

They moved forward in silence through the tumbled corridors of the old outpost. The roofs were half caved in and there was a little light, enough to see by. An old splintered door stood half off its hinges at the end of the corridor, ajar two feet, giving access to the room beyond but blocking view of it. They crowded up close to the door, staying behind it; the others waited for Lime’s signal and Lime waited for his ears to tell him whether the room beyond the door was where Sturka stood with Fairlie. He was trying to reconstruct the architecture in his mind, trying to remember the plan of the place. Fifteen years.…

4:35 A.M.North African Time Alvin was walking Fairlie back and forth. Peggy went across to the deep shadows of the front corner to look out one of the windows. Through the deep slit she saw the slow procession of camels and riders at the foot of the hill, hooded silent figures in the starlight. Sturka was at the window fifteen feet to her right—watching, more tense than she had ever seen him. She saw no danger but Sturka sensed something. He didn’t communicate it to the rest of them except by the taut line of his back, the high set of his head.

A sound.

Somewhere in back. She turned her head, trying to identify it. The scrape of a foot? But Cesar was back there.

It was probably Cesar then, or a rodent in the walls.

But Alvin had heard it too and had stopped in the center of the room with Fairlie draped against him, Fairlie’s arm over his shoulders. Alvin had his left arm around Fairlie’s waist and a revolver in his right hand. Sturka had been explicit, the brief sibilant command on the stairs: If there’s any trouble at all—shoot him and then worry about yourself.

Fairlie wasn’t quite conscious; neither was he comatose. His legs functioned after a fashion but if let go he would fall. Like a drunk.

Sturka turned and stared at the back door. Cesar had shut it when he’d gone to the back. It stood closed, mute—but something had drawn Sturka. Beyond was a half-demolished barrack room; then a door lodged askew, a corridor past the ruins of officer quarters, another door, finally wrecked ruins of rock and stucco too destroyed to indicate its previous use.

Sturka was scowling; he had thrown the Arab hood back off his head. He made a hand motion to Alvin.

But Alvin hadn’t time to move. Peggy saw the door crash open and abruptly the room was filled with men firing rifles.…

It was dim. Probably a very bad light for shooting. Her eyes were used to it but still she wasn’t sure what happened. The eruptive flashes stung her eyes. The racket was earsplitting.

Alvin was in the center of her vision and she saw that part of it most clearly: Alvin firing instinctively into the attackers, his revolver bucking. But Alvin waited to watch his target fall and that gave the rest of them plenty of time. Someone shot Alvin and the force of the blow knocked him into a spin.

She watched in disbelief. Her head turned dreamily and she saw Sturka, his rough pitted face lifted, his eyes unrevealing, bracing the submachine gun to fire. To fire not at the attackers but at Fairlie who was already falling to the floor.…

A big man with a revolver was firing as if he were on a target range somewhere: holding the revolver at arms’ length in both hands and shooting with a horrible rhythmic intensity, shooting and shooting until the gun was empty and the hammer clicked drily.…

She saw Sturka fall and she thought suddenly They haven’t seen me yet it must be too dark here and she felt the weight of the pistol Sturka had pressed into her hand; she saw Fairlie stirring on the floor and she thought They haven’t killed him, it’s up to me to kill him isn’t it? But she didn’t lift the pistol. She only stood in the corner’s deep shadows and watched while one of the attackers discovered her and lifted his rifle.