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 _Goetterdammerung_ 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.

[Illustration]

To the side, Abe Bakr behind his thorn bush and rock vantage point