Line of Succession (49 page)

It still didn't work. He was limp and it was going to take two of them to walk him. She left him propped against the wall and waited for the others.

Alvin returned with half a cup of coffee. “I put some more on. This is cold.”

“That's all right. Let's try and get it down him. You hold his head.”

She didn't have to open his mouth; his jaw hung slack. She tipped his head back. “Hold him that way.” Poured a little coffee in to see if he would swallow it.

Sturka's voice made her jump. “What's the matter with him?”

“Bad reaction to the drugs,” she said. She looked over her shoulder, filled with anger. “Too much drugs.”

“Well never mind that right now. I think we have visitors.”

Cesar appeared in the doorway behind Sturka. Alvin said, “What kind of visitors?”

Peggy was trying to get coffee down Fairlie. “Hold his head still damn it.”

Cesar said, “Some kind of camel caravan.”

Alvin was suspicious. “Traveling at night?”

“Sometimes they do,” Sturka said. “But I don't trust it. Let's go.” He pointed to Cesar. “You out to the back. You know your post.”

Cesar went. Peggy watched Fairlie's Adam's apple move up and down when he swallowed. It was a good sign she thought. Then she heard Sturka say, “Bring him upstairs.”

Alvin said dubiously, “We'll have to carry him.”

“Then carry him.” Sturka had an ugly AK submachine gun slung across his back; he flicked it into his hand and went nimbly into the corridor. Peggy heard him go up the stairs—softly and quickly, two steps at a time.

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 innocent and he didn't know any of the others, they were strangers and if mistakes were made it was better to make them himself.…

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.

She saw the orange flame-tip when he fired.

4:39
A.M.
North African Time
Lime had a stitch in his ribs. He stood soaked in his own juices.

Sturka had six wounds, caliber .38 inches and any one of them might have killed him. Lime had fired with deliberation, knowing there was time to get the others out, knowing Sturka was the one he had to kill.

Sturka died at Lime's feet. Lime saw his face crumple in death but there was no recognition in Sturka's eyes and no sign he realized anything: Sturka died in sulky silence without last words. He lay seeping blood into the stone floor and when the blood stopped flowing Lime went across the floor to where Clifford Fairlie lay.

Fatigue was gritty in his eyes. He could smell already the sickening pungency of death in the room. Sturka was dead and Corby had killed one of the Early Birds. The Astin girl lay in a crumpled heap, stunned by the force of the dart that had struck her in the chest; the tranquilizer would keep her unconscious for a bit.

And Fairlie. Orr had a flashlight, he was shaking it to strengthen its beam. Perhaps it was the quality of that light, but Fairlie had the pallor of death. Lime dropped to his knees beside the President-elect. He heard Orr say, “Get the doctor, Wilkes,” and one of the sharpshooters ran out front to signal the caravan.

When the doctor arrived Fairlie had stopped breathing.

“We'll need an autopsy to be sure.”

Lime was too drained to reply. He only stared at the doctor out of a dulled agony.

“Probably they had him doped up to keep him docile,” the doctor said.

“And that killed him?”

“No. Your tranquilizer bullet killed him. On top of what was already in his system it became an overdose. Look, you had no way to anticipate this. I'll testify to that.”

Lime had no interest in trying to shift the blame. It was beside the point. There was only one point. He had made a mistake and it had cost Fairlie's life.

“You did everything right,” Orr was saying inaccurately. “None of them touched Fairlie with so much as a finger. We took them all out before they had a chance at him. Look it wasn't your fault.…”

But Lime was walking away. One of the men was on the walkie-talkie summoning the convoy and Lime went outside to meet it and waited in the night repressing all feelings and all thought.

“I'm sorry. I'm so Goddamned sorry sir.”

Lime accepted Chad Hill's sorrow with a vague nod of his head. “I'll have to talk to somebody on that scrambler. See if you can raise Washington for me.”

“The President?”

“Whoever you can get.”

“You want me to do it sir?”

He felt remote gratitude and he touched Chad Hill's arm. “Thank you. I guess it's up to me.”

“I mean I could——”

“Go on Chad.”

“Yes sir.”

He watched the youth lope down the hillside to the Land Rover. He followed more slowly, moving like a somnambulist, tripping over things.

Eighteen or twenty riflemen stood around watching him with aggrieved compassion. He walked through their little knot and they made way for him. He reached the Land Rover and wasn't sure he could stay on his feet; he pulled the tailgate down and sat on it. Chad Hill handed him the telephone-style handset. “It's Mr. Satterthwaite in the war room.”

There was a lot of racket. Static, or the scrambler operating imperfectly, or perhaps just the busy noise of the war room.

“Lime here.”

“David? Where are you?”

“I'm in the desert.”

“Well?”

“… He's dead.”

“What? Who's dead?”

“Clifford Fairlie.”

Silence against the background noise.

Finally: “Dear sweet God.” A voice so weak Lime hardly caught it.

“We got them all if it matters. Sturka and Renaldo bought the farm.” My God. Bought the farm. An expression he hadn't heard or used in fifteen years.

Satterthwaite was saying something. Lime didn't catch it. “What?”

“I said that puts President Brewster back in office for four more years. The Senate voted cloture on Hollander's filibuster a couple of hours ago. They've amended the Act. It's on the President's desk for signature.”

“I don't know what you're talking about. I'm not sure I care.”