Unless, of course, Satan was already countering the insertion of Alexander into the Dissidents' camp with some players of his own.
In the ravine, the helicopter lay askew, one skid bent sideways, leaning on its rotors against the upward slope. Smoke still came from it, and the slight, red-headed figure of Achilles could be seen darting hither and yon with his fire extinguisher.
"Hold him!" Welch said again to Nichols, who had his gun pointed steadily at Enkidu's hairy chest. That chest was heaving, as if Enkidu had run a long, long way. Which was what the captive wanted to do, would have done, if not far the watchful eye of Nichols' gun.
The crash had been terrifying, a dizzying descent, an onslaught of spinning and jolting, men yelling and being thrown against the great bird's insides.
Now, safe on solid land, Enkidu crouched tow, has hairy knuckles nearly brushing the ground, and awaited his chance. Sometime, Nichols must blink.
Beyond him was clean country, trees and bog and hills. A place to hide. A place to run.
The woman called Tanya brushed blond hair matted with blood out other eyes and went to Welch, pressing her cheek against his arm. "Are you all-is the chopper all right?" she said, changing her mind in mid-sentence.
"You mean, can we fly it out of here?" Welch looked around, past Nichols, guarding Enkidu, to the people peeking over the ravine's crest and a few, braver souls straggling down it. "Ask Achilles, it's his mess."
Enkidu fully expected the woman to stride up to the red-haired man who fussed over his grounded bird and do just that, but she did not. She said to Welch, "Achilles said it was wind shear from a singularity... What does that mean? Were we shot down?"
"He doesn't know what he's talking about," Nichols spat without taking his eyes from Enkidu's chest. "The only thing 'singular' about the crash was that damn tool's piss-poor performance."
Enkidu wanted very much to run. His entire person was rejecting everything around him-everything he'd seen and heard, the whole concept of having flown in the bird's belly. None of ft had happened. None of it was real. Somehow, he'd had a bad dream that transported him here. A dream, that was all. A dream that had separated him from Gilgamesh and transported him here.
Yes, it was easier to believe to tile power of a dream than in a bud that had flown him hither in its belly. He looked beyond Nichols, whose black-dad, threatening person was all that kept Enkidu from the beckoning forests, and his eyes alighted upon the woman, Tanya.
The woman was a sorceress, a priestess of hostile gods, a wielder of powerful dreams. He must remember to warn Gilgamesh about such women. When he saw him again.
Right now, it was perfectly obvious to Enkidu's wilderness-trained ears and nose that people were sneaking up on them: he could smell their excited sweat on the downwind; he could hear their secret whispers on the breeze.
But this man with the fire-spitting weapon before him did not hear the voices approaching, nor the tread of furtive feet or the crack of broken branches as they came. The square-jawed man with the short hair like a beard upon his head looked only at Enkidu, thought only of Enkidu, and waited with a taunt in his eyes that dared Enkidu to break and run.
Enkidu did not. He hunkered down where he was and watched. The red-haired owner of the bird tended it with occasional gesticulations and curses that re-consecrated him and it to Hell.
The sorceress with the beautiful blond hair hung upon the arm of Welch, the heavy-set leader, and they spoke in tones they thought Enkidu could not hear.
"What about the ape-man?" Welch whispered to her. "You think you can control him long enough to get him back in the chopper? If Achilles is right and we can get it flying again?"
"Have we a choice?" she answered with her own question. "We're supposed to bring him back to Reassignments. What's the penalty if we go back without him?"
Welch's shoulders Tippled up, and then down. "Maybe none. 'Enkidu and Gilgamesh separated'-depends on how you want to interpret the orders. We can always shoot him, that'll get him back to Slab A quick enough." Welch bared the most perfect white teeth Enkidu had ever seen on a man. Then the pleasant features of his pale face hardened as he looked straight at Enkidu. "If I didn't know better," he said to Tanya, "I'd think he could hear us."
"-Use all that muscle of Enkidu's to help us right the chopper," Achilles called out, his short legs scissoring blurrily as he hurried toward Welch and Tanya. "Well be out of here in short order. Nothing's irreparably - shit!
Y'all see that welcoming committee?"
Now the entire group, even Nichols, looked past Enkidu and he saw his chance.
Without hesitation, he lunged to his left, where the ravine was met by trees and boulders, not even taking time to come erect, but scuttling away on all fours, his callused knuckles helping to push him along the ground.
"Nichols!" he heard Welch yell from behind him, but he didn't took back.
He didn't hear Nichols' laconic, "Yeah, boss; gotcha," either, because the sound of the gun going off behind him followed almost simultaneously, and in its wake came a mighty hand that thrust Enkidu from his feet, face down into oblivion.
"Back the fuck off," warned Achilles in a voice that had trumpeted over the battle of Ilion. His M14 quested among the ranks of the armed men who had halted twenty feet away. Before the helicopter, the little Achaean stood, spread-legged, as if, single-handedly, he could defend it alclass="underline" the chopper, the woman whom he'd grabbed and thrust inside it and who now peeked out the open door, and Welch and Nichols, who'd taken cover behind its fuselage.
The fifty-odd men and women who had come down over the ravine were all armed to the teeth, but they hesitated when Achilles brandished his assault rifle.
None of 'em wanted to go back to Reassignments, Achilles realized. So once again, Welch was right: We can hold them off if nobody panics, the sortie leader had assured them, and given Achilles an indefensible position he was too proud not to take.
But it was working. Or at least, ft worked for a minute. Then' the ranks parted like a drill team and a slight, bearded man with soulful eyes and waxy skin came forth, a grenade in one hand, the pin in the other.
"Hello, fighter," said the man in accented English. "Comienzen fuego?" A taunt, incomprehensible. "No? Then surrender. Or we return you to your base of operations, the hard way." He raised his fist, brandishing the grenade. On that signal, other men pulled grenades (pineapples) from their belts and pulled their own pins, so that if Achilles fired, tire ensuing explosion would wreck the chopper, and his body.
"Shit," said Achilles under his breath. Men weren't usually this careless of their own lives, even in Hell. "Well, Welch, got any more bright ideas?"
"It's Guevara," said Welch calmly, from only a few inches behind him.
Achilles, startled, flinched and a ripple of laughter ran through the opposing ranks. "Bastard, don't Sneak up on me. So what, it's Guevara? I'm Achilles."
"We know," said Welch with what might have been a sardonic tinge in his tone.
"But even Achilles wouldn't want to waste the Trojan Horse. Go back with Tamara. I think," and his voice lowered to a whisper, "we're going to surrender. For the nonce."
"Nonce, shit," said Achilles through tight-locked jaws. It was like giving in to the Atreides. He couldn't abide surrender. He wouldn't. He'd jack himself up into the chopper and hold out there. Even without operational cannon, he could give these sons of whores a-
"And don't try anything cute. One casualty on this is all I'm willing to take the blame for." Welch came up beside him and nodded toward the pile of smoldering flesh that had once been Enkidu, and now was just another self-combusting husk on its way to the Undertaker's. "If J. Edgar's still got connections in the Mortuary, you or me or anybody involved in that interdiction sure wouldn't want to come under an unfriendly knife there."