Tarzan Trilogy by Thomas Zachek, page 10
part #3 of The Wild Adventures of Edgar Rice Burroughs Series
Two of the soldiers worked their way to one of the canopied utility trucks and climbed in. One started the engine and drove the truck out of its parking stall, around several other trucks, and out into the main compound area. The other clambered into the rear cargo area and flopped back the canvas canopy—revealing a mounted machine gun. The driver whirled the truck around and stopped it to face Tarzan some fifty feet away. The second man leveled the machine gun, fed a supply of ammunition into the magazine, and opened fire on the vehicle which they were now certain Tarzan hid behind. A spray of bullets churned up dust around the truck and spattered the body with holes and dents. One tire popped and hissed flat, shaking the vehicle.
Unable to escape or to stand up for a clear shot with his bow, Tarzan crouched low behind the vehicle as the metal body panels afforded him increasingly frail protection against the hail of lead.
The gunner paused to adjust his sights and consider whether to tell the driver to move in closer to Tarzan. He stood for a moment, silhouetted against the brilliant light of the blazing compound, when suddenly a spear shot through him. He had but a moment to look down in shock at the bloody spear point protruding out from his chest, and clutch at the handle of the machine gun, before a second spear tore through his body. He crumbled to the ground.
The driver, astonished, looked to where the spears had come from. Other mercenaries in the compound began to stop in their tracks and look.
From off in the distance they heard a low, rhythmic chant rippling through the dawn sky. One by one the mercenaries looked over to the west, and one by one their eyes stared agape and their jaws dropped. Standing at the edge of the forest, shoulder to shoulder in a line that stretched like a great wall fronted with shields, was an assembly of fifty Waziri warriors in full battle regalia, their spears leveled and their bows drawn.
Chapter Thirteen
T H E C H A R G E
The low, ominous, Waziri war song broke off, and for a moment silence reigned as the ragged band of mercenaries stared at the magnificent foe.
Then with one note there came a piercing war cry, and a volley of spears and arrows was unleashed upon the compound, picking out with uncanny accuracy a half dozen of the soldiers and sending the remaining ones scattering to seek cover and regroup.
The Waziri charged.
The speed and ferocity with which the Waziri mount a full charge is a matter of jungle legend. The fifty tall, muscled, ebony warriors ran toward the central compound, leaping over rock and log and bush. They drove forward in one line over the fence and into the compound like a wave of locusts, letting nothing deter their progress.
With ferocious yells they clashed with every resisting soldier they met. A few of DeKelm’s men fired and dropped warriors, but one after another they were set upon and beaten or impaled before they could fire again.
The driver of the truck that had pinned Tarzan down got out and climbed up to the machine gun mount. He whirled the weapon around to face the oncoming Waziri and fired a burst which picked off two of them. He did not fire a second burst, because Tarzan’s arrow silenced him. He collapsed on top of the machine gun.
The charge advanced through the compound. Jack, having taken cover behind one of the vehicles near the fence, had been about to raise his rifle to assist Tarzan, but he promptly saw that he did not need to.
Clusters of four or five warriors at a time converged on every spot of concealment or refuge one of DeKelm’s men took—behind barrels and crates, along the fences, around corners of buildings. The cracks of rifle and pistol shots mingled in the air with the chants of the natives and the shouts and cries of the soldiers. Even with firearms, the soldiers were no match for the Waziri because the soldiers could hardly shoot fast enough before being overwhelmed by the warriors’ charge. The loss of an occasional man did not deter Waziri for one moment. They would have time to mourn their dead later. They pursued their mission single-mindedly. Their attack was ruthless, and their victory was swift.
Tarzan watched in amazement, as the Waziri routed the last of the mercenaries who resisted. How fitting, he thought. A dawn raid for a dawn raid.
The smoke continued to cloud the emerging morning light.The main dormitory had been reduced nearly to a charred and glowing shell, but the fire still burned, advancing to engulf other buildings.
Scattered across the central compound, the bodies of black-skinned warriors and khaki-clad mercenaries lay dead or writhing in pain, their figures outlined by the inferno behind them. Moans of the burned or the wounded mingled with the crackling of the blazing walls and collapsing roof beams. The horrific stench of burning wood and diesel and flesh permeated the air.
Some Waziri began gathering their spears and arrows and tending to their dead and wounded, while others rounded up the few mercenaries who had surrendered. Tarzan approached the chief, and the two clasped arms in greeting. “You got my message,” said the ape man. “Thank you for coming to help.”
Jack and Winslow ambled to the central area where Tarzan and M’Bala stood with several other Waziri. As they approached, they were taken aback by the spectacle of destruction. Winslow allowed, “Yes, Jack, I think that we might be able to leave now without them objecting too much.”
“Professor Winslow?” inquired Tarzan, looking at the rumpled and rather distraught old scientist.
Jack said, “This is John—uh, Tarzan. He is a friend of my father’s.”
“Your father has…interesting friends, Jack,” Winslow replied.
Tarzan explained to M’Bala who these two were. M’Bala grinned and expressed how gratified he was that Tarzan had found that for which he searched. Then his ebullience faded as he wondered to Tarzan, “Where is their leader?”
“I have not seen him,” Tarzan said in the Waziri tongue, then asked Jack, “Have you seen DeKelm?”
“No,” Jack replied. “Vanden Avond is dead, but I don’t know where DeKelm went.”
Tarzan turned and said, “Look over there.” They all looked toward the remains of the office building and lab, the last portion to have caught fire, and saw DeKelm walking toward them, hands clasped over his head, clothing and face smudged. He was being urged from behind by a man with a rifle. The man was none other than Reg.
“’Ere!” Reg cried out. “Oi’ve got ’im! Take ’im!”
They stopped before the group. DeKelm looked at the Waziri, and at Tarzan, and then at Jack and Winslow, and cried defiantly, “You fools!” His blackened face twisted into a foul sneer. “You don’t know what you’re doing! You’ll pay for this!”
“Shaddup,” Reg said to him, and then said to Tarzan, “You want to take ’im?”
“You disloyal turncoat!” DeKelm shouted, red-faced and infuriated. “I paid you! Your allegiance is to me! What kind of a man are you?”
Reg sneered sardonically. “Oi’ve seen what a man is. An’it’s not you, you scum. You’re gonna answer for all the things you made us do!”
“You yellow bastard!” DeKelm shouted, and in a sudden move he spun around and shoved Reg roughly away. DeKelm made a break for a discarded rifle that he had spotted on the ground a few feet away. In one motion, he reached down to grab the rifle, whirled around, and fired at Reg.
Reg dropped his weapon and clutched at his chest. His face grimaced, then sunk as his eyes widened in shock. He began to slump. But before he fell, and before DeKelm could fire again, a half dozen Waziri spears from as many angles instantly sliced into DeKelm’s chest, neck, and abdomen, ripping flesh and cracking bone. A brief flash of consternation, then horror passed across DeKelm’s countenance as he looked toward Tarzan and the Waziri, but then his eyes glazed over and he sank to the ground. He landed roughly, breaking off some of the Waziri spears while others protruded from him like so many giant pins in a cushion.
M’Bala looked down at DeKelm writhing in agony in the dirt, then falling still. “I wish he had not made that move,” said the chief. “I would like to have taken him back to the village and roasted him over my ceremonial fire.”
Tarzan translated the comment for Jack, who emitted a low whistle. Then Jack asked, through the ape man, how the warriors had been able to find this place.
M’Bala chuckled and replied, “The beacon you sent up was rather easy to follow, my friend.”
Chapter Fourteen
A T T H E S T A T I O N
The ceiling fan whirled lazily in Captain Reynolds’ office as the attending corporal in the starched navy blue poured tea into Tarzan’s cup. Steaming English Breakfast Tea was hardly the most appropriate beverage for this time and place, but Tarzan accepted Reynolds’ traditional hospitality with gratitude. He held up the cup appreciatively to sample the aroma, then placed it down on the table to cool a bit and leaned back in his chair. This was the first time he felt he could relax since the night in the Waziri camp. The corporal moved ceremoniously around the table to Jack, to Winslow, then to Reynolds, and served them. A plate of English biscuits and local fruit was passed around.
“So,” Reynolds spoke up to Jack, “your first trip to Africa was a bit more than you expected, eh?”
“I rather enjoyed it,” Jack replied. “Well, the exploration part, I mean. Apart from the gunfire and explosions and nearly getting killed.”
“Yes, well, it does tend to get a bit dodgy when our friend here comes around,” Reynolds added, nodding to Tarzan.
Tarzan took the jape with an amused half smile. “I do not look for trouble. It finds me.”
“Indeed it does. We almost had the makings of an international incident here.”
Reynolds took a sip of his tea and declared, “The remaining mercenaries have been rounded up and taken into custody. The governments of France, Belgium, England, and the United States have all lodged official protests about the conduct of Consolidated Pharmaceutical, which, according to George Fredrickson, are being acted upon at the highest levels. It’ll be a relief to have their kind out of the jungle.”
Professor Winslow, who had been quiet and pensive since his rescue, stared vacantly at his teacup and said, “It was an incredibly stupid, blundering choice to make.” He looked up at Jack and added, almost defensively, “I didn’t know what I was getting into.”
“But how could you, professor?” Jack hastened to reply. “You couldn’t have known what the company really wanted. You couldn’t have known what DeKelm and his men were going to do.”
“Still, I should have used better judgment. I was naïve. And I shouldn’t have gotten you mixed up in it, either. I thought I was doing some good.”
“You were. And you will again,” Jack said.
“It just seems that we can hardly do any sort of research these days for the betterment of humanity without some company or other trying to get their hands on our work to exploit it,” said Winslow.
“The jungle and its people have always been used by men for their profit,” Tarzan commented.
“It’s enough to make me want to abandon field work and stay home and write my memoirs,” Winslow added.
Reynolds said, “What’s amazing is how far they’d gotten along in their schemes. The audacity of this company. If our friend Tarzan here had not acted so quickly, we might have had a full scale jungle war on our hands in a matter of weeks.”
“Even so, I grieve for the loss of my Waziri friends,” said Tarzan. Turning to Jack to change the topic, he asked, “Well, then, what will you do now? Continue plant study in the jungle?”
“No, I think not.”
“What?” Winslow reacted. “Abandon botany after all this?”
“Too much excitement,” Jack smiled. “I think I might switch over to physics. I hear there is some fascinating new work being done with nuclear fission. That sounds much quieter.”
1937
Tarzan and the Cross of Vengeance
Chapter 1
I D E N T I T Y
The rain tumbled down in sheets, a cold hard rain that chilled to the bone, the kind of rain that even seasoned Londoners cursed.
A taxi, sleek from water sheeting off it, pulled up to the curb, throwing runoff from the gutter onto the sidewalk. The taxi door swung open and a man in a fedora and raincoat stepped out and dashed across the sidewalk from the cab to the doorway of the brick-fronted building facing the street.
He stepped briskly from the street into the foyer, closed the door behind him, and stomped his wet oxfords on the worn, dirty wooden floor to shake off some of the rain. He looked up at the long flight of wooden stairs and then grasped the mahogany railing, worn smooth and yellowed over the years, and started up, the steps creaking as he ascended.
At the top of the stairs, he turned to the right and walked down the narrow corridor to the second door. He paused to look at the pebbled opaque glass panel in the upper half of the molded wooden door, where the stenciling read:
205
Raymond Wilson Confidential
Private Investigations
He turned the knob and entered the reception area of a weathered office whose rug and furniture had seen better days. To one side sat the old wooden desk. On its surface lay a black Remington typewriter, an office-model black dial phone, and stacks of papers loosely scattered about. Behind the desk stood an empty wooden swivel desk chair. Apparently Wilson had respected his request to meet alone. Good.
The visitor removed his topcoat and began to shake more of the rain from it onto the floor. He was five-feet-ten, with a stocky build and a ruddy complexion, punctuated by piercing brown eyes and thinning brown hair and mustache.
A man in a rumpled brown suit stepped into the arched doorway from the next room.
“Maximilian. You’re late.”
“It was impossible to get a cab in the rain. This better be good, Wilson. What have you got for me?”
Wilson smiled. “You’ll find this interesting.” He led the rain-drenched visitor into the next room. Atop a desk in the center of the room sat a dusty Bell & Howell sixteen-millimeter film projector aimed at a small wrinkled screen which stood on a rickety tripod stand at the opposite end of the room. A reel of film about six inches in diameter was threaded onto the projector.
“What is this—show time? I didn’t bring my popcorn.”
“Watch,” said Wilson. He pushed the button on the wall to turn off the ceiling light, then turned a switch on the projector, which started up with a clatter. As the film began to wind through the sprockets and onto the take-up reel, he spoke over the racket: “This was taken by a Pathé news crew three years ago, filming some documentary on Africa. They were shooting footage of African tribal rituals, like dances and so on. This was culled from hours of outtakes that they never used, but lay gathering dust in their vault. I managed through great effort and considerable expense—”
“I’m sure,” Maximilian said.
“—to get and convert these shots.”
Projected on the small screen were grainy black-and-white images of what appeared to be African natives jumping or dancing around a fire, waving their arms and brandishing spears. The film image jiggled and jostled as if the camera man did not know how to hold it still, or did not care. No sound. Very repetitive. The images continued with little variety for several minutes.
“And why am I looking at this?”
“You’ll see. There. See in the corner of the frame? Left side?” Maximilian had to look carefully, but there it was—the face of a white man sitting along the sidelines.
“I’ve spliced these together from hours of shots like this, from various tribes, to highlight what I think you’re looking for. This is the…let me see…the Waziri tribe, I believe (he mispronounced it WAH-zi-ree).”
Wilson continued, “The next series of shots was apparently filmed by a cameraman whose camera was running, apparently unintentionally, while he held it. You’ll see here that it’s very wiggly and the angle is down low. It shows a lot of ground, and part of the fire, and a lot of feet running around, but then off in the distance… you’ll see it…there! Right at that moment.”
From upstage of the bonfire smoke and between blurry images of dancers cavorting, there appeared a figure leaping up into a tree. It was the white man.
Maximilian stood up, suddenly aware that he had been leaning forward to stare at the screen, and said, “Well, then, that’s my man. Except all I have is this film. Three years old. How does that help me?”
“There’s more,” said Wilson, with the confidence of a man who knows that what he is about to say will please. With a bit of a flair, he switched off the projector, switched on the lights, and continued, “Because, y’see, I took a print of one frame of that shot around the campfire, the one where we got a pretty good look at his face, and I had it blown up.” He reached over to a pile of papers on the corner of the table and retrieved one. “Here it is.”
He handed Maximilian a photograph. It was fuzzy, having been enlarged from the film image that was none too sharp to begin with, but it showed a white man with black hair, straight nose, and a strong chiseled jaw line, staring at the revelry.
“Now look at this.” Wilson handed him last week’s The Observer.
“The Observer?” the visitor scoffed. “That rag?”
“Don’t judge it before you’ve seen whether it serves your purpose. Look here, on page six.” He flipped through the pages until he found what he was looking for and spread out the paper on the table. “An article about a debate in the House of Lords. And an accompanying photograph. It shows a photo of members of the House of Lords, sitting in chambers listening to a speaker.” The visitor stared at the photo. “Have a closer look,” said Wilson, picking up a magnifying glass and handing it over. He allowed the visitor a moment to study the face, then placed the grainy photo of the white face witnessing the African tribal dances down on the desk next to the newspaper photo. The visitor leaned over to look back and forth from one to the other and noted the distinctive features: the straight nose, the firm jaw line, the dark hair.
