Assignment Black Gold Read Free Page A

floor. At the same moment, bullets slashed through the
window, breaking furniture, shattering a vase, splintering across a table,
thudding into the opposite wall.
    Betty shuddered under him. “Oh, my God, they’re going to
kill us all!”
    “Take it easy. Stay down.”
    “Why don‘t you go out there?” she whimpered. “Then maybe
they‘ll leave us alone. Go out there now! Before they burn us all!”
    There was random firing all around the house now. From
the kitchen came the thud of Henrique’s heavy rifle. Hobe’s gun sounded
from the study. It was impossible to hold them off. There were too many exposed
windows, too many blind points to the bungalow, to cover them all.
    “Durell!”
    The shout came again from the jungle. Durell thought he
would remember that voice, arrogant, amused, a bit impatient.
    “We have no quarrel
with the Tallmans, Durell! Do you want them to die because you are a coward?”
    Durell turned to the woman.
    “Do you know who is out there?”
    “It’s Lopes Fuentes Madragata.”
    “The leader of the Apgaks himself?”
    She said, “You must be pretty important.”
    “I’m only a lawyer looking for Brady Cotton.”
    “Oh, sure. All the way from the States.”
    “It’s a lot of money that he’s inherited.”
    Her eyes changed. “Really? Good for Brady.”
    “Do you know where he is?"
    “Nobody‘s seen him for a week. Are you going out there? Are
you going to let Madragata call you a coward?” She laughed uncertainly. “A
lawyer, huh? But pretty good with a gun. I bet you didn’t expect this when you
came here with your briefcase full of legal documents.”
    “Durell!"
    Durell flattened his back against the wall near the
window and called, “I’m coming. Give me five minutes!”
     
    Chapter 3.
     
    Hobe said, “You mustn‘t mind Betty.”
    “I don’t."
    “You don’t have to go out there. They’ll kill you. I don’t
understand why they've chosen you—and you’re obviously not going to explain-but
I’m asking you to stay in here with us. Maybe we can hold them off somehow.”
    “Not a chance.”
    “Maybe help will come—”
    Durell interrupted. “Have you anything heavier here than
your rifles?"
    ”I’m afraid not.”
    He took a knife from the kitchen, aware of Henrique’s eyes
rolling white in his brown face. The garden beyond the glass-paned door was
quiet and empty and shadowed. He palmed the knob, opened the panel a few
inches, waited. Nothing happened. Hobe breathed heavily behind him, but said
nothing more to discourage him. Durell held his gun up, opened the door a few
inches wider and slipped outside.
    The warm, humid air of the tropical night hit him in the
face like the soft slap of a hot, steamy towel. He watched the hedgerow of tall
bamboo at the far end of the garden, then ducked low and ran for its shelter.
Something moved to his left, but he wasn't sure what it was. He went over the
wall at the end of the rose garden with a long. sliding motion, and rolled into
the mucky ground among the thick bamboo canes.
    Nothing happened. A night bird called. A tiny lizard
scrabbled away near his hand. He waited. The smell of the burned-out car clung
to the quiet air. Overhead, through the spiky bamboo leaves, the stars seemed
to reel in the velvet African sky. For a moment, he smelled the sea. A coconut
frond clattered in a transitory breeze. After thirty seconds, he crawled to the
right, out of the bamboo, near the ropy base of a wild rubber tree. It was over
three miles down the road to the nearest scattered houses of Lubinda. He heard
the trickle of water from a stream, oozing through the mud toward the wide
sweep of the Lubinda River’s estuary, Then a man said something, in Apgak, so
close at hand that he might have been at his elbow. It was a trick of the night
air. The voice came from across the road, twenty yards from the rubber trees.
There was a brief, annoyed reply. Then silence again. A moment later he heard
the snick of a cartridge being shot