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However, there was no putting off indefinitely exposure to this danger. Even in such former desert centers as Tessalit and In Salah, the irrigation projects were of such magnitude that there was a great labor shortage. But always, of course, as the smiths had said, if you worked at the projects your children must needs attend the schools. And that way lay disaster!
The five smiths took out overland in the direction of Djanet on the border of what had once been known as Libya and famed for its cliffs which tower over twenty-five hundred feet above the town. Their solar powered, air cushion, hover-lorries, threw up their clouds of dust and sand to right and left, but they made good time over the erg. A good hovercraft driver could do much to even out a rolling landscape, changing his altitude from a few inches here to as much as twenty-five feet there, given, of course, enough power in his solar batteries, although that was little problem in this area where clouds were sometimes not seen for years on end.
This was back of the beyond, the wasteland of earth. Only the interior of the Arabian peninsula and the Gobi could compete and, of course, even the Gobi was beginning to be tamed under the afforestation efforts of the teeming multitudes of China who had suffered its disastrous storms down through the millennia.
* * * * *
Omar checked and checked again with the instrument on his wrist, asking and answering, his voice worried.
Finally they pulled up beside a larger than usual wadi and Omar ben Crawf stared thoughtfully out over it. The one they had named Abrahim el Bakr stood beside him and the others slightly to the rear.
Abrahim el Bakr nodded, for once his face unsmiling. "Those cats'll come down here," he said. "Nothing else would make sense, not even to an Egyptian."
"I think you're right," Omar growled. He said over his shoulder, "Bey, get the trucks out of sight, over that dune. Elmer, you and Kenny set the gun up over there. Solid slugs, and try to avoid their cargo. We don't want to set off a Fourth of July here. Bey, when you're finished with the trucks, take that Tommy-Noiseless of yours and flank them from over behind those rocks. Take a couple of clips extra, for good luck—you won't need them, though."
"How many are there supposed to be?" Abrahim el Bakr asked, his voice empty of humor now.
"Eight half-trucks, two armed jeeps, or land-rovers, one or the other. Probably about forty men, Abe."
"All armed," Abe said flatly.
"Um-m-m. Listen, that's them coming. Right down the wadi. Get going men. Abe, you cover me."
Abe Bakr looked at him. "Wha'd'ya mean, cover you, man? You slipped all the way round the bend? Listen, let me plant a couple quick land mines to stop 'em and we'll get ourselves behind these rocks and blast those cats half way back to Cairo."
"We'll warn them as per orders."
"Crazy man, like you're the boss, Homer," Abe growled. "But why'd I ever leave New Jersey?" He made his way to the right, to the top of the wadi's bank and behind a clump of thorny bush. He made himself comfortable, the light Tommy-Noiseless with its clip of two hundred .10 caliber, ultra-high velocity shells resting before him on a flat rock outcropping. He thoughtfully flicked the selector to the explosive side of the clip. Let Homer Crawford say what he would about not setting off a Fourth of July, but if he needed covering in the moments to come, he'd need it bad.
The chips were down now.
The convoy, the motors growling their protests of the hard going even here at the gravel bottomed wadi river bed, made its way toward them at a pace of approximately twenty kilometers per hour.
The lead jeep—Skoda manufacture, Homer Crawford noted cynically—was some thirty meters in advance. It drew to a halt upon seeing him and a turbaned Arab Union trooper swung a Brenn gun in his direction.
An officer stood up in the jeep and yelled at Crawford in Arabic.
The American took a deep breath and said in the same language, "You're out of your own territory."
The officer's face went poker-expressionless. He looked at the lone figure, dressed in the garb of the Tuareg, even to the turban-veil which covers all but the eyes of these notorious Apaches of the Sahara.
"This is no affair of yours," the lieutenant said. "Who are you?"
Homer Crawford said very clearly, "Sahara Division, African Development Project, Reunited Nations. You're far out of your own territory, lieutenant. I'll have to report you, and also to demand that you turn and go back to your origin."
The lieutenant flicked his hand, and the trooper behind the Brenn gun sighted the weapon and tightened his trigger finger.
Crawford dropped to the ground and rolled desperately for a slight depression that would provide cover. He could have saved himself the resultant bruises and scratches. Before the Brenn gun spoke even once, there was a Götterdammerung of sound and the three occupants of the jeep, driver, lieutenant and gunner were swept from the vehicle in a nauseating obscenity of exploding flesh, uniform cloth, blood and bone.
To the side, Abe Bakr behind his thorn bush and rock vantage point turned the barrel of his Tommy-Noiseless to the first of the half tracks. Already Arab Union troopers were debouching from them, some firing at random and at unseen targets. However, the so-called Enaden smiths were well concealed, their weapons silenced except for the explosion of the tiny shells upon reaching their target.
It wasn't much of a fight. The recoilless automatic rifle manned by Elmer Allen and Kenny Ballalou swept the wadi, swept it of life, at least, but hardly swept it clean. What few individuals were left, in what little shelter was to be found in the dry river's bottom, were picked off easily, if not neatly by the high velocity automatics in the hands of Abe Bakr and Bey-ag-Akhamouk.
Afterwards, the five of them, standing at the side of the wadi, stared down at their work.
Elmer Allen muttered a bitter four-letter obscenity. He had once headed a pacifist group at the University in Kingston, Jamaica. Now his teeth were bared, as they always were when he went into action. He hated it.
Of them all, Bey-ag-Ahkamouk was the least moved by the slaughter. He grumbled, "Guns, explosives, mortar, flame throwers. If there is anything in the world my people don't need in the way of aid, it's weapons."
"Our people," Homer Crawford said absently, his eyes—taking in the scene beneath them—empty, as though unseeing. He hated the need for killing, almost as badly as did Elmer Allen.
Bey looked at him, scowling slightly, but said nothing. There had been mild rebuke in his leader's voice.
"Well," Abe Bakr said with a tone of mock finality in his voice, as though he was personally wiping his hands of the whole affair, "how are you going to explain all this jazz to headquarters, man?"
Homer said flatly, "We were attacked by this unidentified group of, ah, gun runners, from some unknown origin. We defended ourselves, to the best of our ability."
Elmer Allen looked at the once human mess below them. "We certainly did," he muttered, scowling.
"Crazy man," Abe said, nodding his agreement to the alibi.
The
