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  "Aywa, effendi." They almost fell over themselves to respond en masse. "Aywa, aywa..." Yes. A million yeses.

  "Pick out some others," Biackwell ordered Major Ochogilo, "to make up for the ones I disciplined. Get them into number-three truck. Put your toughest guards on them. They might get riled when we start messing with the women.''

  "Yes, General," Ochogilo replied, an ugly leer forming on his face. He barked rapid-fire commands to a select, hard-core cadre. Prodding the recruits with their rifles, they drove them toward the trucks like cattle. The guards vented their resentment upon the Kababish tribesmen because they were certain they would miss out on the fun once the Blood Doctor declared open season on the women.

  Biackwell strode arrogantly toward the seventy-odd women, children and old men. The Black Cobra guards parted respectfully, giving him access to the core of the jabbering throng. The females recoiled as he approached, frantic to escape the contaminating touch of this Satan personified. Revulsion, hatred, fear distorted their features.

  "You," Biackwell growled, singling out a tall, angular female of about thirty, who was dressed in a dirty white taub, "come over here."

  The woman moaned, cringed, tried to ease back into the crowd. "Please, please, effendi," she babbled. "Spare me. I have done nothing wrong."

  "Come here," he repeated. "Do you remember what happens to people who refuse to do my bidding? Come here, I said."

  Finally the scar-faced female forced herself forward, torn between conflicting fears. When she faltered, her fearful sisters, hoping that she would be suitable sacrifice, that they would be spared, nudged her forward. She stood before her new master in slumped dejection.

  "My boots, hag," he said. "Don't you see they are covered with blood? Don't just stand there. Clean.

  The woman looked about confusedly. Clean this demon's boots? But how? With what?

  "Your robe, bitch," Biackwell snapped. "It will do nicely. Move."

  Bui as the woman sank to her knees and made a clumsy move to scrub away the gore on his shoes with the hem of her taub, Blackwell dug his fingers into the kline of the loosely draped garment. "Not like that," he spat, giving the robe a vicious pull. "Like this."

  The woman clutched the taub, fought to keep her body covered, but her backward motion only helped drag the flimsy cotton away, and she sank in half-sitting position, her naked body totally exposed. A piteous sob escaping her lips, she fought to cover herself.

  But now Blackwell's automatic was once more in full view, held menacingly to her head. "Take it off, shit," he rasped. "Are you too proud to clean my boots?"

  His eyes bored into hers. Would she dare to refuse the humiliating demand? The woman's eyes were crazy. Then, with a muffled wail, she dropped the robe. Crawling closer, she began wiping the blood away with bunched folds of the gown.

  There was swift intake of breath in the town square — by the women and children, by the Black Cobra troops themselves.

  The mercenaries crowded even closer, each eager to have first chance at the available females. The ratio of women to men stood at one to six.

  Blackwell's eyes slowly assessed the women of Abu Darash where they stood in paralyzed shock, all recognizing the hopelessness of their situation. "My men have been in the field a long time," he mocked. "They have been without women. They are much in need, as you can well imagine. Which of you will be the first to volunteer to satisfy this need?"

  While at his feet, the dazed blubbering woman, moving like a robot, continued to polish his boots long after the last of the blood was gone.

  "Ah, here we go," he said, his sick enjoyment of raw power absolute now. "This one will do very nicely. She will be noble example to you all." With that he leaned down, dragged the protesting female to her feet. Quickly he pushed her toward the nearest soldier. "Here, my friend," he chuckled, "enjoy yourself."

  The soldier grinned broadly, clamped his fingers in her hair, began dragging her through the cordon of soldiers, some of whom peeled off and followed, eager to be second and third in line.

  It was the signal they had been awaiting, and with a guttural roar, the rest of Blackwell's troops closed in and began dragging the screaming, sobbing women away from their enclave. The din was suddenly deafening, a cacophony of shrill outcry, of curses and threats, as soldiers fought to subdue their women or as they fought between themselves for a particular victim.

  It seemed the cries and laughter and cursing went on for hours, when, in reality, it was a matter of thirty to forty minutes before the men had their fill, and the women lay in comatose collapse, many dead. In brotherly benevolence the troops even went to spell their comrades who guarded the truckload of recruits, pointed them toward the most presentable females.

  Catalyst for the bloody conclusion of the day's action was provided by a crusty old man, who had managed to dig out an antique rifle from a secret cache. Thinking to protect some women, he received a dozen 7.62mm rounds in the gut for his heroic pains. The degenerate sport went on unhindered.

  From there it was only one step to wholesale slaughter. A villager had actually dared to fire on one of their mates. The angered troops then ranged from hut to hut, firing madly, murdering any women, children or oldsters still alive. Out in the square the men deemed unfit for service with Blackwell's army had long since been dispatched; their bodies lay in bloody tangle in the sun, wounds alive with voracious flies.

  General Jeremiah Blackwell, standing apart, watched with cold impassivity.

  Had there been a moment's thought about possible retaliation for the atrocities from the Sudan authorities? Hardly. The government, the army were totally inept, corruption riddled. What happened in the hinterlands hardly mattered. Besides, Blackwell thought, he was the law. He was a power unto himself. He was destined to become even more powerful in Africa in the days ahead.

  So, let the troops play. Let them indulge their most sadistic fantasies.

  After the gunfire died down, he sent Captain Oyoo and his crew forth with their cans of black paint. They would leave defiant signs for all the world to see. When they were finished, the mark of the Black Cobra — a stylized hooded snake, tail coiled in readiness to strike — was emblazoned on the wall of each of Abu Darash's thirty-eight huts.

  Should someone manage to survive this raid, they would long remember the work of this day. They would remember the Black Cobras. They would remember General Jeremiah Blackwell.

  Almost as an afterthought the psycho despot decreed a final grisly memorial to his visit. The bodies of two women and a twelve-year-old girl were dragged from a hut. Timbers from a community house — smooth pickets about eight feet long — were sharpened to extreme point.

  As the twenty-vehicle convoy pulled out at 1130 hours, Blackwell smiled back approvingly at the way his men had buried the poles in the ground, at the primitive way the three females had been impaled, each on her own picket.

  Waving back to Major Ochogilo, catching sight of the dusky beauty who had been reserved for his private purposes, he had cause to grin more broadly. Perhaps he would enjoy her tonight. Tomorrow night? He could be a patient man at times.

  Now, as the three totems gradually became smaller, faded into the everlasting sameness of the desert, he heaved a long, contented sigh.

  A good day's work, he concluded.

  2

  The men of Phoenix Force arrived at what remained of Abu Darash about forty-eight hours after the massacre. Thrown off course by a ten-hour sandstorm, they had lost precious time trying to get a new fix on Blackwell's line of march. By the time they had come upon the site of the firefight between Blackwell's army and the intransigent troops of the Front for Chadian Liberation and had assessed the Black Cobra losses of men and equipment, another day had been wasted.

  Now they were at least two days behind his batallions.

  Blackwell's tracks had been lost again and again in the drifting, parching sands of the Libyan desert. In the end, relying on instinct, on compass readings, knowing from Hal Br
ognola's stateside briefings that their quarry was headed in a general east northeast direction, they blindly consigned themselves to the tender mercies of Lady Luck.

  And this scorching April morning at 1100 hours...

  "Dear God in heaven," Gary Manning said as they came within sight of the desolate village, and the smell of rotting flesh swept out to meet them. "What the hell has gone on here?"

  It was then, as Manning topped a minor rise, and they had an overview of the burned-out cluster of huts, that the three impaled bodies — bloated, glistening in the sun — came into clear view. Also in sickening view were bloated and festering bodies scattered everywhere in the village streets.

  "Oh, bloody hell," McCarter groaned. Behind them, in the fast attack vehicle — FAV, which was in tow, Keio Ohara leaned over the side, verging on upchuck.

  Each member of the team cringed and was seemingly diminished somehow by the blatant display of man's basic inhumanity to man.

  "It's that slime Blackwell," McCarter said. "He's been here, sure as hell."

  Even in the hundred-five-degree heat each man was scourged by a fleeting splash of goose bumps. The man responsible for this atrocity, they reasoned, was the same man they had been sent to Africa to wipe out. What kind of a fiend, what kind of an adversary did they face?

  "Hey." Encizo broke the silence when his stomach had finally stopped going round and round. "I don't need this. Let's give it a pass."

  "No," their grim-faced Israeli headman replied. "There might be survivors. We have to check. It's the least we can do." He touched Manning's shoulder. "Let's go down."

  They parked within a hundred feet of the three stakes and wordlessly studied the ghoulish abomination. Though they were sickened by the sight of the bodies, they were helpless to drag their eyes away.

  All three were naked, the stakes driven deep into their bellies. The relentless heat, the collection of gases had ballooned them to twice their normal size. Decomposition already in progress, it was a feast of feasts for the flies, the hornets and other insects that swarmed nonstop about them. There was evidence — as they took in the other bodies scattered around the square — that desert foxes had found the picnic grounds as well.

  Normally in these arid desert climes, properly cared for corpses could be wrapped in winding sheets, buried deep, the dryness of the air serving to preserve flesh and skin. Archaeologists constantly excavated such specimens, finding them parchmentized, their features still recognizable after twenty, thirty years in the ground.

  But nobody had bothered to bury these pitiful villagers.

  Manning killed the Land Rover engine. They all disembarked, commenced gingerly inspection of the village. As they came upon the first pitiful, fire-gutted hut, they recognized Blackwell's calling card. "Here we go," McCarter grunted angrily. "The son of a bitch wants full credit, don't he? Talk about flaming cheek..."

  Inside each hut, down each meander of what passed for corridor between the blackened structures, they found charred, disintegrating deathly evidence of the madman's handiwork. The reek of death hung everywhere.

  When they returned to the square, regarded the impaled figures one last time, Encizo said, "Christ, someone should cut them down."

  "No, nobody touches them," Katzenelenbogen snapped. "The disease hazard here is high as it is." He sighed. "No, leave them. The buzzards should get whiff of them soon now." He glanced off to the highlands located some twenty miles to the west. "Why they aren't here by now, I don't know."

  Keio Ohara, still green around the gills, turned away eagerly. "Let's get out of here, Yakov."

  "I suppose. These poor people are beyond help."

  The five men dressed in desert camos, wearing shorts, tan socks in their Raichle desert boots, matching camo slouch hats pulled down about their faces to ward off the worst of the sun, were in the process of returning to the Land Rover, when suddenly Encizo stopped dead.

  "Freeze," he rasped, his eyes fixed on a huge sand dune flanking the eastern perimeter of the village. "I just saw something move. Someone's out there."

  They broke pell-mell for the scout car, seized their assault rifles. Fanning out in precise, practiced maneuver, they advanced on the sector like flitting shadows. Had Blackwell been foolish enough to leave rearguard out there? There would be hell to pay.

  Keio, his long, thin legs flashing, was the first to slog to the crest of the shifting sand pile. Flopping down just beneath the tip of the forty-foot-high dune, he flicked his head over the top. In the distance he saw two men desperately scrambling to crest another dune to the south.

  "Relax," he called back to his comrades, "it's just a couple of natives we spooked. I'll go after them."

  "Careful, Keio," Yakov called, frowning after the impetuous Japanese, the youngest and least experienced member of the Phoenix team. "They might be armed."

  There was a crisp rattle of gunfire, and Katzenelenbogen hotfooted it up the dune, arriving in time to see Ohara loping up behind the pair, turning them back with wide gestures of his M-16.

  Five minutes later the first villager appeared, a dark brown man, perhaps sixty-five years of age, followed by a younger man in apparent distress.

  "Look at that guy's hand," Encizo said. Nausea swarmed over him as he saw the swollen, blood-crusted, pus-dripping stump. "Or what used to be a hand."

  "Quick," Yakov Katzenelenbogen snapped, "get that medical kit, McCarter." Yakov could appreciate the gravity of the maiming wound, since he, too, had lost a hand, his right, on a Middle Eastern battlefield. "We've got to help the poor devil."

  He glanced at the terrified, bearded patriarch, concern in his gaze. "What happened to him?"

  The thin, dry voice instantly replied in halting fractured English. "The men of Black Cobra. They chop his hand off. Blood Doctor. He cut it off when man refuse to join army."

  Yakov's eyebrows rose. "You speak English?"

  "Yes, I learn from my daughter. She went to mission school. If you are... patient I tell all."

  The amputee hung back, recoiling in fear when McCarter returned with the medical kit. They tried to draw him closer. Feverish, eyes glazed, he was too weak for determined resistance. He began a pathetic pleading babble.

  "Tell him we are trying to help him," Yakov said.

  "He say do not want live. He shamed; he want to die."

  "Die? But why?"

  The old man explained the humiliating significance of a missing hand to a Muslim.

  "What do we do?" Encizo asked Katz.

  "We have to help him, if we can." He sighed and began to bathe the stump with alcohol.

  He turned to Keio Ohara. "Fix me about a half grain of that morphine. I'm going to have to open that mess up again, cut the gangrene away. I've done corpsman duty in my time. Let's see if I can remember my basics."

  Katz went on to explain the clean-away, the further paring of bone in order to gain enough healthy skin to form a flap over the stump, fasten it down with such crude stitches as the area would permit. "Even so," he added, "unless our friend has hospital care afterward he won't make it. And the nearest city that has one is El Fasher. Maybe someone can get him there. God knows, we can't."

  The amputee went two shades whiter when he saw the syringe and realized it was meant for him. He made a feeble move to break free, but Encizo and McCarter caught him, held him fast.

  "Tell him the morphine will deaden the pain," Katz told the older man, who could not believe that these white men were going to so much trouble on their behalf. "We must cut the rotten tissue away. Otherwise he will lose the whole arm, and he will more than likely die."

  A long dialogue between the two Arabs followed, with the twenty-five-year-old protesting bitterly. But when the older man gave him what could only be interpreted as a tongue-lashing, the man became docile and agreed to the impromptu surgery.

  The needle went into his arm. And while they waited for the morphine to cut in, they moved him toward the command car. There, in what shade they could manufacture, t
he man's stump braced on a 40mm cartridge magazine covered with a white T-shirt — maximum surgical sterility under the circumstances — the makeshift operation began.

  Even in the shade the heat was intense, and Yakov was soon sweating bullets. The same with Rafael and McCarter, who held the patient steady, and Keio and Manning, who handed their Israeli ex-Mossad boss scissors, scalpel and nippers when he called for them, mopping his face at intervals. At close quarters the stench clouding up from the filthy wound was overpowering, and time and time again one or another of them gagged, verged on heaving.

  The patient — though he could feel only barest twinges of pain — whimpered and cried out constantly until the old man held his hand over his eyes. Then the complaints ended.

  The old man, who had by then introduced himself as Salibogo Mugunga, explained how he had found the maimed boy upon returning from a three-day fast and meditation session at a desert holy place. And with the discovery, knowledge came from the wounded man that his entire family had been wiped out. Wife, two sons, a daughter...

  Salibogo had tried to help the handless neighbor. He had washed and wrapped the stump, applied such folk remedies as were known to him. But nothing had helped, and the infection had only gotten worse. "Two days since Blood Doctor here."

  Hearing the approaching Land Rover, thinking the Black Cobras were returning, he had fled into the dunes with his ward. Now, his voice grave, thick with emotion, he said, "Allah yesallimek — May Allah bless you — for I see you are a good man. You are decent men. We die you no come. We thank... We thank..."

  "You are most welcome," Yakov replied with matching respect, moved by Salibogo's fervor. "It is the least we can do. After all that has happened to your village, to your people..."

  The man's eyes glazed for a moment, then went clear again, a hard, vengeful determination growing behind them. He told them that one son, according to the wounded man, had been conscripted by the man they called Blood Doctor. The other son had been killed. His wife had been raped repeatedly; he had found her violated remains and had already buried her. But his daughter, Nemtala, he had not found.