Had they heard him coming, or could they see him against the dim light from the roadway? One of them was suddenly standing in front of him, looking very severe, absolutely secure in his power and authority, barking something in Swahili that was probably along the lines of mind-your-own-business.
Hardly slackening stride, Lew lifted his gun hand in a fascist salute. The man stared, following the pistol upward, and Lew kicked him in the crotch, then gun-butted him on the back of the head as he doubled over. One down.
They had stopped up ahead, on one of the greens. Lew trotted forward; the girl screamed; there came the sound of repeated slapping. “Let her go!” he yelled, and fired a shot in the air.
Astonishment. Silence. Even the girl was silent, but when he came closer he could see her alone on the green near the flag, on her knees; struggling groggily to rise, she only fell over.
Lew reached her, went down on one knee, and said, “Miss? Do you speak English?”
“I don’t speak anything anymore,” she answered, gasping, face down on the cropped grass, voice bitter.
“I’ve got wheels over there. Can you—”
A shot rang out. Lew dropped flat beside her. “They don’t give up easy,” he said.
“Get away from here,” she told him. Her face, when she turned toward him, was beautiful, but ravaged by strain. “Don’t buy trouble, don’t—”
“Hush,” he told her. “Let me listen.”
“They’ll kill you. They’ll kill you right here.”
“Hush!”
She hushed. He lifted his head to listen, looking left and right. Just beside them, the flag lazily moving in a slight breeze read 16. Looking at it, he laughed out loud.
A pair of shots were fired, apparently at the sound of his laughter. The girl stared at him as though he were crazy. “That’s what I’ve been needing,” he explained, gesturing at the flag.
She shook her head. Apparently she didn’t know whether she was more afraid of the Research Bureau men or of her rescuer. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“The flag. All through this deal something’s been missing, and that’s it. Now I know what I’m fighting for. Green sixteen.”
She worked hard at being cool, but her voice trembled. “Mister,” she said, “terrible things have happened to me tonight. Don’t make fun.”
Out there in the darkness, voices shouted to one another. “I’m sorry,” Lew said. “I’ve been under a certain amount of pressure myself. Now, those boys may attack. Or they may just try to stay between us and the road. On the other hand, I want to get behind them so I can finish them off, because their vehicle is a lot better than mine. Do you know why I’m telling you this?”
“No.”
“Because I’m going to need your help. I can see you’re bright and quick-witted, so even though you’ve been through a lot, it would help if you could avoid hysteria.”
She was considerably calmer already. “I thought you were the hysteric,” she said.
“That’s just my outgoing personality. Now, what you do, you lie here and talk to me. Can you do deep voices?”
Sounding like a girl foghorn, she said, “Like this?”
“Use it sparingly. See, I’m going out there and deal with those fellows, and in the meantime you stay here and hold a conversation.”
“So they’ll think you’re still here. I get it.”
“Right. See you soon.”
He started away, but she said, “Wait a minute! What if they come here?”
“Holler.”
“Oh. Sure.”
Lew crawled down over the edge of the green onto the shaggier grass of the fairway. Another shot sounded from out there, followed by an angry yell from another direction. Lew wriggled rapidly along the ground on elbows and belly and knees, while behind him the girl said, “If you don’t mind a question, how long ago did you escape from the mental home?” Foghorn voice: “Just today.” Own voice: “And is it true you’ve been running President Amin’s foreign policy all these years?” Foghorn voice: “No, he does that himself.”
The men up ahead were arguing. Without knowing the language, Lew could still guess that one faction wanted to rush the sixteenth green right now, while the other faction wanted to wait until dawn, or possibly send for reinforcements, or whatever.
They were undisciplined and poorly trained. They kept jumping up and moving around, shouting to one another, silhouetting themselves against the running lights of their own car in the background. Lew crawled around their right flank, came up behind his first choice, took his knife out of its sheath in his boot, waited till the man finished yelling a sentence about something or other, and then put him away. A search revealed two handguns but no car keys.
On his way to number two, Lew came across the fellow he’d hit at the beginning, who was just sitting up, rubbing his head, and thinking about taking part. Lew dispatched him and crawled on.
The next man was even more active than the first, probably more nervous. In the distant blackness the girl continued her inane conversation. Lew approached his man, knife in right hand and pistol in left. The fellow turned, saw him, and at once attacked, shrieking and swinging his pistol barrel at Lew’s head.
Lew stepped inside the swing, drove the knife up and across, and stepped out of the way to let the man fall. Then he went on to the last one, who was calling questions, getting no answers, and becoming too nervous.
Far too nervous. Before Lew could reach him, he made a dash for the car. Discarding the knife, Lew dropped to prone position on the fairway, arms stretched out in front of himself, left hand palm up on the stubby grass, pistol butt cradled in that palm, right hand holding the grip, finger squeezing back gently on the trigger as he sighted on those Toyota lights. Sooner or later, his man would cross them.
He did. Lew fired twice, and the man dropped.
He was tough to find in the dark, but it was worth the search, since he was the one with the keys. Pocketing them, putting the pistol away in his hip pocket and the wiped-clean knife back into his boot, Lew permitted the girl’s voice to lead him back to the sixteenth green. As he neared her, he said, “It’s okay, we’re alone now.”
She gasped, clutching her throat, then made out who it was and said, “They’re gone? They ran away?”
“They’re dead.”
“Thank you,” she said. She was suddenly fierce. “Thank you thank you thank you. I hope you made them hurt a lot.”
Worried, he knelt beside her, touching her shoulder, feeling her vibrate like an overstrained machine. “Take it easy,” he said. “They’re gone now. It’s over.”
“They killed the man I was going to marry.”
“I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.”
She folded herself against him, becoming less tense. Was she going to cry? No. “I can’t tell you,” she said, breath warm through his shirt against his chest. “I’m back from the dead, from the worse-than-dead. They were taking me to Jinja Barracks.”
“Through green sixteen?”
“They wanted me for themselves first. They wanted me while I was still fresh.”
“Oh. Yes, I suppose so.”
She lifted her head, and when her cheek brushed his jaw he was surprised to feel dampness. So there had been a tear—two at the most. This was no Amarda. “You saved me,” she whispered.
“Triple A is here to help.”
“Don’t joke,” she murmured, her lips moving lightly against his.
Not again. “Miss—”