Cliff said, “Maybe Lon was right about that cognac. I wish the hell I had a nip of it right now.”
“Come on,” Homer said. “Let’s make a run for that next depression. We’re getting within range now. And by this time they’ve spotted the fact that we three, and probably Kenny’s crew, are carrying something bigger than a rifle. They’ll be laying for us.”
They sprinted for the hole he had indicated and barely made it. Slugs whistled above them.
“They’re experienced all right,” Homer muttered. “And damned good marksmen with that gun.”
To their right, a Tuareg jumped to his feet and made a dash and flopped down on his belly. The enemy gun had chattered again.
“They’re not being careful with their ammo,” Cliff said. “They must have plenty. Aren’t we near enough to take a pot at them with your flac rifle?”
“No,” Homer said, gauging the distance.
Cliff wriggled a bit higher and peered through his telescope. He adjusted it carefully, threw a cartridge into the breech, took his time aiming and squeezed off a round.
Homer looked over at him.
Cliff grinned and said, “They’re damn well dug in, but I just thought I’d remind them to keep their heads down.”
They could hear Bey’s voice booming over the reg again. Far to the left, they saw Kenny, his Tuareg ammunition carrier and Lon Charles, make a dash. They flopped down in a small cloud of dust.
“Jesus,” Cliff said in alarm. “Did one of them take a hit?”
Homer brought up his binoculars. “No. But they’re getting closer faster than we are. Let’s get to that next clump of rocks.”
“Wait a minute,” a voice from behind them said, short of breath. It was the photographer, who had been squirming along behind, ignored. His sports clothes were a rumpled and torn mess.
Homer and Cliff stared at him.
He said, bringing up his camera, “How about letting me get a few feet of El Hassan and his Vizier of the Treasury in action?”
Cliff closed his eyes and shook his head. He said. “What a way to make a living. Should I say cheese?”
Aftermath
Homer Crawford, his face in exhaustion, stood on the ridge of the rectangle and stared out over it. His flac rifle had fallen to the ground beside him. Cliff sat on the sand and gravel, panting, and wiping sweat from his face and neck with a dirty handkerchief.
Before them was devastation. The burnt-out helio-jet was still smoldering at one end of the entrenchments, so near one of the machine gun nests that it had almost crashed atop it. In the enclosure, one of the lorries was also burning and the jeep was a shot-up wreck.
About a dozen of the mercenaries were gathered together, those still standing, with their hands behind their necks. The others, wounded, sat or were stretched out on the sand. The remaining of Guémama’s camelmen, jubilant, were about them, jeering and sometimes mockingly threatening them with their rifles or arm daggers.
Jeeps and trucks from the fort were beginning to arrive, their occupants in high excitement.
Isobel came hurrying up the hill to them. She stopped before Homer, checked quickly with her eyes to see that he was all right and then Cliff. Relief swept over her face.
“What happened?” she gasped.
“They caved in after Kenny hit the rescuing aircraft with a couple of bursts,” Homer said. “But it was all over anyway.”
Isobel said, in a gush, “Homer, it’s the happy ending. The radio says that Casablanca, Rabat, Algiers and even Tunis have all declared for El Hassan.”
Homer shook his head wordlessly.
Kenny trekked up the hill from below and stood for a moment, catching his breath. One of his arms was in an improvised sling. Doctor Smythe and Meg McDaid hadn’t arrived as yet.
Homer said to him, “How many casualties?”
Kenny Ballalou took a deep breath and got out, “Three of the Tuaghi dead, seven more took hits, most of them not too bad. And… Guémama took his final one when he rushed that machine gun with his grenades. But I guess you saw that in your binoculars.”
Homer nodded wanly, “How about the others?”
“The French captain was shot by his own men when he tried to keep them from surrendering. Why he tried, we’ll never know. They’d already had it, once that helio-jet was shot down. Major Ryan evidently shot himself. Either somebody else helped, or he managed to get through two and a half of those bottles of brandy Lon left him.”
“The other one? Meg’s man.”
“All shot up, but he ought to live.” Jimmy Peters, alone in a jeep, came driving up the hill alone. He jumped from the vehicle and came hurrying through the sand and gravel. He said urgently, “Homer. On the radio…” Homer Crawford looked at him. “Yes?”
“The Arab Union has declared war. They’re coming south through Libya.”
El Hassan closed his eyes in still mounting weariness and looked emptily at the woman he loved. He said, “Isobel, in history there is no happy ending. There is no ending at all. You go from one crisis to the next but there is no ending.”