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Chapter Thirty-Two

Whosoever saveth the life of one, it shall be as though he had saved all mankind.

—The Koran, Sura V

Pumbadeta, Sumer, 34/7/462 AC

Fadeel had expected the assault by the crusader mercenaries to begin as soon as the last of the women and children had been evacuated. He'd expected wrong. Instead, the blockade continued, with the pitiful food stocks running lower and lower. His men were already on quarter rations. The civilian men of the city got nothing.

Which is a problem, as Fadeel unhesitatingly admitted to himself. They're getting no food, except for whatever they may have hoarded, but they still have guns. And the second I try to take the guns, I'll have a full scale revolt on my hands. Besides, if the crusaders couldn't get the Sumeris to surrender their weapons, what chance have I?

Hmmm. I wonder if I can't use them to my purposes before they become dangerous to me. Hmmm.

 

35/7/462 AC

It was no real problem for Fadeel's twenty-seven hundred remaining committed fighters to round up several hundred boys between the ages of thirteen and sixteen. They simply tooled through the streets on their SUVs, grabbing whomever they chanced upon that was unarmed. Moreover, given that the insurgents already had perhaps twenty thousand small arms in the city, together with millions of rounds of ammunition, arming the boys, once conscripted, was even easier.

 

 

Dawud ibn Haroun, aged fourteen and scrawny even in good times, searched fruitlessly through a garbage can in an alley. An orphan about whom no one had cared since he was a baby, Dawud was perhaps better placed to survive amidst the siege-induced starvation than most of the city's people. Even so . . . 

Even so, it's a frightful thing, indeed, when even the garbage cans are empty.

His head was stuck in a dumpster, legs and feet trailing to the ground, when Dawud heard, "Hey, boy? You looking for something to eat?"

Overcoming his first instinct, which was to run, Dawud eased himself out of the dumpster and turned to face the voice. He saw an SUV, unevenly painted, as if with a can of spray paint, a sort of dun color, and containing three armed men. One of the men, presumably the one who had spoken, held his hand out, palm down, and jerked his fingers to the hand's heel in the Arab method of beckoning.

"Come with us," said the one who seemed to be the leader. "We'll feed you. Once anyway."

Seeing little option, Dawud climbed into the SUV, which sped off. It stopped twice more, once to summon another street urchin little different from Dawud and once simply to grab and carry off an older boy who refused to enter the auto.

Briefly, Dawud wondered if the number of boys taken corresponded to the number of fighters in the car. It was not impossible. Then again, he'd been through that, too, in his short and unpleasant life. He'd survived it once; he could again.

But no, the men hadn't taken the boys for fun and games. Moreover, true to their word, they had taken them to a large warehouse on the edge of town and fed them. Perhaps the food had been less than ideal, the meat scanty and the rice undercooked, but it had still been more than Dawud had seen in one place in weeks.

Food was followed by a lecture from a mullah, the lecture mostly concerning the iniquity of the besiegers, the duty of all Moslems to fight in the jihad, and the rewards of paradise. Dawud was no dummy and absolutely didn't like the direction in which the sermon was plainly going.

He liked it even less when the fighters had begun passing out arms and ammunition, and explaining, briefly, how to load, aim—more or less—and fire the things. The insurgents had the boys practice dry firing a few times before they led them off, by various routes, with two insurgents to each group of ten boys to ensure there would be no "desertions."

The last thing the fighters had done was explain the boys' mission. "Better for you to keep going in the attack," they'd added. "We'll support you in that. But death at the end of a rope awaits any so cowardly as to turn around from their duty."

 

A sound eerie to Balboan ears poured across the desert floor. It was a muezzin calling over loudspeakers.

Jimenez looked out over the dry and barren desolation that stretched from the circumvallating berm to the edge of the city. There was one almost full moon tonight, Hecate, plus partial luminescence from another, Bellona. Thus, even without using his night vision goggles, he could see easily across the open expanse.

Oh, oh, he thought as the first armed combatants stepped out into the light and began to walk forward.

"Engage now, sir?" asked the platoon centurion lying next to Jimenez on the friendly side of the berm. He had seen them too.

"No . . . no, wait until they hit the leading edge of the minefield. Any we can draw out and kill are that many fewer we'll have to fight when we finally assault the town."

 

The speakers on one of the near minarets crackled to life as the boys emerged from their shelters on the edge of town. A muezzin began reciting from the Koran over the speakers, his recital focused on the path of holy war.

One boy—Dawud thought it was the last one who had been taken in the vehicle that had brought him in—lay down in dirt, apparently taking cover. Dawud paused briefly, his eyes glancing over to look down at the boy. He began moving forward again almost instantly as a burst of automatic fire coming from behind impacted the slacker, causing blood to spurt from the body as it caused little geysers of dust to spurt from the ground.

From the speakers the muezzin decreed that death was to be the lot of slackers and cowards.

 

"This feels dirty as shit, sir," the centurion told Jimenez as the mob flowed closer.

I'm trying to remember the last clean war there was, Jimenez thought to himself. To the centurion he said, "Nothing for it but to get it over with then. But give them a couple more minutes. Until we can be sure none are going to be able to escape."

Jimenez slid down the berm's embankment and gestured for his radio telephone operator to hand over the microphone. With the radio, he called the command post to ask if there were a gunship overhead. Informed that there was not but that one would be overhead within ten minutes, he cursed and began the crawl back up to the berm's edge. His RTO followed.

"Do you have a forward observer attached?" he asked the centurion.

"Yes, sir. Shall I get him?"

"Please. Immediately."

 

Dawud's young heart pounded in his chest as the men following began to shout, "Allahu akbar, CHARRRGE!" while firing their weapons from behind the boys and forward, over their heads. The shouting grew more distant the farther Dawud's legs carried him.

In his brief course of instruction the orphan had been taught to fire the rifle once each time his left leg hit the ground. He began to do so, keeping the rifle generally pointed to the north. Each burst took him a little by surprise. He found the sensation of recoil both unpleasant and frightening. He found the thought of being shot in the back by the men he assumed were still following to be more so.

There was an explosion ahead, somewhere to Dawud's right front. When he looked at the flash it was just in time to see three bodies flying through the air before hitting the ground. At the same time, two sets of bright shining lines were drawn across the front, one coming from the east and one from the west. Not only didn't Dawud know these were tracers, he was far too ignorant of matters military to realize that one tracer also meant another four bullets. He also didn't know enough to identify the explosion as having come from a land mine.

 

XVI.

"This is just fucking murder," the centurion said to Jimenez over the continuous rattle of machine guns assaulting both men's ear and from both sides. He repeated, "Just fucking murder."

Jimenez ignored it, concentrating on the bodies being harvested in long lines at the edge of the minefield and where the machine guns were laid along their final protective lines.

The centurion's right. This is just murder. These poor bastards are clueless. It isn't even worth calling in some artillery or mortars on them. Why waste the shells when they just offer themselves up for butchery?

 

Dawud never saw the bullets that cut his legs out from under him. One minute he was running forward, the next he felt both legs struck out from underneath and found himself spinning, literally head over heels, to fall to the dirt.

It didn't hurt at first, nor even for several minutes. Then the burning began, followed by pain such as the boy had never even imagined. He began to cry and then, as the pain grew greater, infinitely great, to scream.

His screams were no more than a few notes in the hellish symphony.

 

The centurion's eyes glowed even in the darkness. He shrugged, "So court-martial me, sir, but I'll be damned if I'll let that shit go on. Just listen to them, won't you? Those were just fucking kids. Just kids! So I'm going out—we've got clear lanes through the wire and mines—and I'm bringing them back with me, as many as I can and as many as any of my men who'll volunteer to go with me can."

Jimenez sighed. He'd not have the centurion court-martialed, not when he wanted to go out himself. Poor little bastards. They are just kids, too. Maybe one man might sound like that. But not every one of hundreds.

"Wait a few minutes until I can get a smoke screen laid then, centurion. Then you can go."

 

Field Hospital Number Two, Legio Del Cid, 2/8/462 AC

When Dawud came out of surgery he was unconscious and legless. The surgeons had tried but . . . well, the damage had been too great. Keeping the legs would only have condemned the boy to a harder death from gangrene.

 

He remembered nothing of how he had come to be captured and treated, though after the centurion who had ventured out into no- man's-land had come by the field hospital to check on him, Dawud had been told the story by a Sumeri auxiliary nurse.

He'd miss the legs, he knew. Then again, what use were legs to a beggar boy? Perhaps it had been a fair trade. After all, at least he was eating well.

The boy bore no grudges. He didn't even know who to blame, the men who had shot him or the men who had driven him forth to be shot. In his world, bad things happened—usually to him—and it wasn't really anyone's fault. Il hamdu l'illah.

In any case, he had no hard feelings. The Sumeris working the field hospital had even suggested that it might be possible to go to school again on the legion's ticket. "Stranger things have happened," they'd all agreed. So, when the intelligence warrant officer had come to question Dawud, he had held nothing back. Not that he had much to tell. Yet from little bits of color are mighty works of art created. Dawud had a few such little bits to offer.

Given the ready cooperation, it was unsurprising that the boy was identified to the PSYOP maniple as a possible source for a telling interview.

 

Pumbadeta, Sumer, 3/8/462 AC

It was Dawud's voice carried on the dusty air from the loudspeakers of the legion to the ears of the men, and they were virtually all men, remaining inside the city.

 

Listening to it, Ehmed al Hanawi sat in a circle of other Pumbadetites. Like them his face was darkened with fury. Like them, too, his empty stomach rumbled. Like them his teeth ground against each other.

"So much for my boy's having volunteered for martyrdom," he cursed. "Taken without warning and forced into a meat grinder by our 'liberators.' The bastards."

The others nodded. Ehmed was the only one of the group who had lost a son in this way. But they were all fathers, and many of them still had boys trapped inside the town.

One of them men lifted up his Samsonov rifle and shook it. "I say we clean these bastards out. Who the fuck do they think they are, bringing this trouble upon us? Clean 'em out, I say."

Though almost all of the men assembled were at least functionally literate, only one among them could have been called really well educated. Mullah Thaqib had even attended school in far off Yithrab. He, too, had borne arms to the meeting. Those who insisted on calling Islam the "religion of peace" had obviously missed something important.

"It is easy to say 'Clean them out,' my friend,'" Thaqib answered. "But before we revolt," Thaqib said, "we must know if it is to any purpose. Will those who surround us let us live if we kill their enemies here for them?"

"Most of those surrounding us do not speak Arabic," Ehmed pointed out, "nor even English. Are there any here who can speak with them?"

Not even the mullah could speak Spanish.

"Most," he agreed. "Not all. There are some sections of the wall around us manned by Sumeri soldiers."

Ehmed answered dejectedly, "What difference, really? They let no one approach, preferring we all starve here."

"Where are the Sumeris stationed?" the mullah asked.

"One battalion—I think it's a battalion—is on the other side of the river."

"'Whosoever saveth the life of one . . .'" quoted Thaqib. "I will go to them."

 

Battle Position Sargon, 2nd Battalion, Sada's Brigade,
4/8/462 AC

If a Catholic priest had appeared alone in front of one of the portions of the front held by Balboan troops the effect would have been much the same. With a mullah, a bit wet and dripping perhaps but still recognizably a man of the cloth, the Sumeri troops likewise didn't fire.

 

The mullah climbed up the bank of the river and posted himself near the far end of the ruined, green-painted-steel girder bridge and leaned against it to catch his breath. He had a torch with him, and a lighter, but these were both soaked. He had to wait a time for them to dry. Fortunately, even this close to the river the air was dry enough to suck away life, let alone a bit of muddy water from the stream.

Although around four-fifths of the city the distance between buildings and circumvallating walls was nearly half a mile, here at the river the lines were close. Moreover, given a shortage of mines, the far bank was bare of them. Nor was there any wire, Sada having deemed, with Carrera's agreement, that the river itself was obstacle enough.

Thaqib didn't know that, of course. It was an act of desperate faith and belief in his God that caused him to light the torch, stand erect and walk forward.

He did have one thing going for him that he knew about. The insurgent fighters under Fadeel were an undisciplined lot. They rarely stayed awake to guard at night.

At least I don't have to worry about being shot in the back, he thought. That's some small comfort anyway.

 

"Naquib! Naquib! Wake up. There is a holy man who has crossed to our lines and wishes to speak with General Sada."

"Send him back," the captain commanding the company answered, firmly. "You know the rules on line crossers."

The sergeant normally wouldn't have bucked his commander. He liked the boy for one thing. For another, they were cousins. It was precisely that fact that made the sergeant stand up. "Sada will want to talk to this one, cousin. Trust me on this."

 

When Sada arrived and had spoken to the mullah he congratulated the captain on his wisdom and made a mental mark to look the man over closely for possible promotion. Breaking rules and violating orders—let alone disturbing their commanders at frightful hours!— was not something that came easily to Sumeri officers.

Hearing the mullah out took hours. By the time it was done the sun was beginning to rise, its glorious light casting the shadows of buildings across the ground.

"Carrera will want to hear this, Thaqib," Sada advised. "But he may have you shot."

"That will be as it will be."

 

By noontime two things had happened. For one, the desert had returned to its normal state of open oven. For another, Carrera had decided that there might be a way to end this without destroying the town and killing all the men inside.

"Are you willing to go back? To organize a rebellion?" Carrera asked in Arabic. "I would spare the men, but they must earn it." Unsurprisingly, his Arabic had started to become quite good rather than just adequate, though it still lagged well behind Lourdes' under Ruqaya's instruction, or Sada's English for that matter. This was annoying to him, in a distant way, as he had already spoken some Arabic long before Lourdes had ever come to Sumer.

"I am willing," Thaqib answered. "As to whether I am able? The men inside will likely not let me return."

"Do you have some people who are jump qualified?" he asked Sada.

"You're shitting me, right, Patricio?" Seeing that Carrera was serious, Sada thought about it and said, "Myself. Qabaash. Oh, he'll be hot for this. Possibly half a dozen troops. But the mullah is not trained. How do we get him out the airplane and down on the ground?"

Carrera just smiled and turned to Thaqib. Conversationally, he asked, "How's your faith in God?"

 

Fifteen-hundred feet over Pumbadeta, Sumer, 6/8/462 AC

A half a day of ground school and twelve jumps were hardly enough to make Thaqib an expert parachutist. On the other hand, he took it philosophically.

I am sure to hit the ground, no matter what happens, he thought. The ways of Allah are inscrutable but are as certain as His Grace. And best of all, after this one it will be the last time I'll ever have to do anything like this again. For this, Beneficent One, I thank You.

They waited until the moon, Eris, which was nearly full, had set. Sada jump-mastered the operation for one bird. Qabaash had the other. They both thought the idea was insane—a definite point of appeal to Qabaash—but were willing to take the chance to prevent the otherwise inevitable bloodbath in what was, after all, one of their cities and filled with their people.

Sada looked Thaqib straight in the face, searching for signs of hesitation. Seeing none, he laughed aloud. "Mullah, when this is done, if we live, how would you like a job as a chaplain in my brigade?"

Given the warm, thin air right at the surface, the Crickets had had to strain to lift even two men with parachutes. Any idea of using the next smallest airplane available, however, the NA-23, was simply out of the question. Crickets were designed to be quiet, their single engines muffled. NA-23s could be heard from far away.

Lanza—hell, he flew everything and every chance he had, too!— looked back over his right shoulder and told Sada, in English, "Crossing the river now." Sada knew that meant less than two minutes to jump at this speed.

The engine suddenly went dead. This was by design rather than a flaw. The Cricket was perfectly capable of gliding quite some distance without engine power, once it was up among the cooler, thicker air.

Sada helped Thaqib to ease himself to the Cricket's door. As with every prior jump, the cleric stiffened once he was in position, but then forced himself to a more relaxed calm. Reciting some of his favorite hadiths helped. At the proper time, Sada pushed the mullah out the door, then quickly threw himself behind him.

Above, the Cricket sailed on until near the edge of the city, at which point Lanza reengaged the engines.

Sada, Qabaash and the young soldier accompanying them, Sergeant Ali, landed easily enough in the broad park near the center of town. Mullah Thaqib nearly screamed at his landing as he came down with one leg on a concrete pad and the other just off it. This caused the ankle that hit first to twist, dislocating it with an audible sound that was almost as bad as the pain shooting up Thaqib's leg.

"Oh . . . God!" Thaqib gasped when Sada reached him. One look at the odd angle of the foot was enough to tell the general that there was no chance of the man walking on his own power any time soon.

"Qabaash, you and Ali hide the chutes." He hesitated. They had not been sure, even after planning and aerial recon, just where they could hide the parachutes. "Mmm . . . over there. I'll meet you." Sada's finger pointed to an apparently abandoned apartment building.

While that was being done, Sada half-stripped and put on a long flowing robe and keffiyah. His weapon was indistinguishable from those carried by the insurgents so that would be no problem. Slinging the rifle across the left side of his neck, Sada helped the mullah to his good leg and assisted him to hobble, one-legged, to where Qabaash and Ali waited. They'd also donned local, civilian costume and already had their boots off and replaced with sandals.

Qabaash and Ali both looked at the mullah's ankle and the bone pressing out and said, together, "Shit."

"We'll have to splint it before we try to move him any farther. Sergeant Ali, can you find a couple of stout sticks?"

The sergeant nodded and walked farther into the building, muttering something about, "Darker than three feet up a well digger's ass at midnight . . . a moonless midnight."

 

Sada and his two men had no real difficulty moving Mullah Thaqib to his home. The streets were dark, the insurgents mostly less than alert, and their appearance nothing remarkable. Once there, they set Thaqib down on a pallet while his wife fussed over him. Sada used the break to call the legion's command post with a single code word, repeated three times: "Badr . . . Badr . . . Badr."

 

Legionary Command Post, 7/8/462 AC

"They're in and safe," Jimenez announced, when the message was received. A subdued cheer rang throughout the command post.

 

Fahad, standing by for just this word, breathed a sigh of relief.

"You really care about Sada, don't you?" Carrera asked. "Moslem or not you still care about him?"

The Chaldean thought about that for a minute before answering. "He was . . . still is, my commander, sir. We've been through the . . . through the shit together. Bonds like that go past things like religion. Besides . . ."

"Yes?"

"If this country is ever going to amount to anything ever again, it will be because of Sada and the few men like him, men who stand above tribe and religion and sect. Honorable men."

"Isn't that an interesting thought," Carrera said slowly. "Sada and a few like him. I confess; I see Sumer as doing better in his hands than in those of the pack of jackals down in Babel. He is, as you said, an honorable man . . . and a brave one. Yes, that's a very interesting thought, Fahad."

"Sir?" Fahad asked, clearly not understanding.

"Never mind, friend. We will see what we will see."

 

Pumbadeta, Sumer, 7/8/462 AC

A man has to play the hand he's dealt. Sada didn't even try to form a working chain of command based on military experience. Instead, he selected out the couple of dozen experienced senior officers and NCOs from the old Sumeri Army (for while virtually every man in town had some military experience, trained leaders were few and far between) and assigned one or two to each group of tribal and clan leaders. The traditional chiefs would command; the former soldiers only advise.

In analyzing his assets all Sada could think was, There are damned few of them. I've got numbers but I lack everything else. No radios, no heavy weapons, limited ammunition, no special purpose ammunition.

More than anything, it was those last two that decided him to begin the rebellion on the side of the town by the river. If he could clear that, then his troops could throw a temporary bridge over the stream and not only add their own weight to the fight but also bring in whatever the rebellion would need.

He had another consideration though. Even after we seize the near bank, Fadeel's men will just fall back and make us root them out of every little building and shack. Bad for the town, and bad for the townsmen's lives.

Sada knew, from prior planning, that the legion would be making a great show of preparing to assault from every side. The intent was to draw the insurgents out from the center of town, leaving it for the townsfolk to occupy. This would make life very difficult for the insurgents, once they began to fall back.

That's not enough, though. They will still fall back. How do I use that?

He closed his eyes and began to think. Okay . . . let's imagine I first grab the near bank. The insurgents will run to that to try to retake it and stop us. Let them in or keep them out? Hmmm. Let them in, I think, as many as want to go. Then we rise up to seize the center of town. Both of my battalions here cross the river at about the same time and begin the resupply operation for the locals. Then we push the insurgents into the center of town, which we hold . . . and ambush the hell out of them as they flee to new positions to the west. Now . . . where to draw the line?

"Qabaash, do you have the centers of gravity for the clans and tribes, yet?"

In response, Qabaash left the group of elders with whom he'd been talking and from whom he'd taken the information to annotate his acetate-covered map, came over, and laid the map in front of Sada.

Sada rubbed his hand across his sprouting beard wearily. No really good lines to seal off the area. But . . . there is this government complex in the center of town. It's tall and fairly visible from everywhere.

The trick, he knew, would be assigning the tribes missions that directly related to the security of their own homes, that blocked the fighting from those homes. Sada read off a tribal name that Qabaash had scrawled inside a circle drawn on the acetate along with a number indicating likely fighters. "Dulaim tribe?"

"Here, sayidi," answered a bearded old man in a dusty robe.

Sada's finger pointed to the map near the northern edge of town. "I'll want your people to assemble here and keep anyone from fleeing westward. Let as many as want to come east, but nobody goes west. Got it?"

"Yes, sayidi," the old man answered after looking carefully enough at the map to make sure he could find the right spot. "When do we start? I don't own a watch."

"Noon," Sada answered. "We will begin seizing the river bank at first light. Give these stinking, murdering foreigners plenty of time to move to contain us, and have this position blocked by high noon."

"Yes, sayidi. We can do this."

Sada slapped the old man on the shoulder, then turned his attention back to the group. "Muntafic tribe . . . ?"

 

Fadeel no longer used his minaret lookout. It was no fine sense of obligation or newfound respect for convention that kept him out. Rather, the filthy, ass-fucking crusaders made a habit of sniping at anyone found near the city's edge who looked remotely like an observer.

They were damnably good shots, too. Worse, some of the rifles they used were subsonic and silenced. One never knew where the shot might have come from that blew out a man's chest or disintegrated his head amidst a spray of brains, blood and bone.

So, instead of his usual minaret perch Fadeel found himself looking through an irregular loophole knocked in the wall of a used car dealership.

Something's definitely up, he thought, looking out over the crusaders' surrounding berm. The air past the berm was heavy with the dust thrown up by what had to be heavy vehicles, lots of heavy vehicles, moving into position.

A large explosion rocked Fadeel. And they're blowing lanes in their own obstacles. We're in for it, right enough.

Fadeel left the shelter of the used car lot headquarters and began moving toward the center of town. While he did, he stopped at a couple of spots to count the aircraft circling like vultures overhead. He stopped counting when he reached forty and then saw over thirty more helicopters winging in from the south. Shit.

 

Carrera and Jimenez choked on the dust in the air. A nearby light truck deliberately raised those clouds, dragging behind it several rolls of concertina wire stretching out in the dirt. It was one of dozens being used for the purpose. They dragged the concertina up, raising the clouds, then collapsed the wire and drove back away from the city and repeated. From the inside of the town it had to look like a massive assembly of troops and armor.

Soult handed over a radio microphone with the announcement, "Sada, Boss."

"Yeah, Adnan?"

"We're ready to start, Patricio. What's the word from overhead?"

"Not much reaction, yet," Carrera answered. The air folks reported some massing toward the bridges but as near as we can figure that's your people."

The radio keyed and Carrera heard a heavy rattle of rifle and machine gun fire before Sada said, "Well . . . it's time. Wish me luck, friend."

"Rack 'em up, Adnan."

 

Qabaash laughed heartily. Normally quiet, he was one of those odd folks who only came alive when the bullets were flying and he could shoot back. He hadn't had nearly enough chance to do that, of late. Under his direction a group of townsmen assaulted a building overlooking the river. They had no grenades, except for a few dozen they'd captured when they'd taken the insurgents unawares. These had been passed out already and, for the most part, used. Now it was rifle and bayonet in every room.

"Allah forgive me but I love this shit," Qabaash murmured. He raised his own rifle to take a potshot at an insurgent running across an alleyway. Much to his irritation, he missed.

No problem, friend. We'll get you later.

The radio crackled. "Qabaash, Sada. Progress?"

"We've almost cleared the river bank, Liwa. There's one big building held by the enemy that's blocking our way. The engineers on the other side can't get a bridge up until we take that building. Any word on grenades?"

"Waiting on the other side, Qabaash. Will the building burn?"

Qabaash looked at it. It was an older one and likely to have something flammable to it. "Maybe."

"Good. Burn 'em out."

Qabaash looked around the street. Hmmm . . . I wonder how many of those cars have gas in the tank. He ran over to one and flopped to the ground. Crawling underneath, he tapped the gas tank. Maybe half full. Hmmm.

Running back to where a group of townsmen waited, Qabaash ordered, "Bottles and hoses. Drain the tanks of the cars. We'll give them a taste of the hellfire that awaits."

 

Little bits of concrete dust burst into the air as bullets struck the walls and windows of the building. Below, at street level, a steady stream of men and boys ran across the open area to toss a bottle or two into the ground floor. The whole area stank of gasoline.

The other bottles had not been lit. Qabaash, however, had a more conventional Molotov cocktail in his hand. After seeing what had to be fifty or sixty liters of gas dumped in the building, he trotted across the street and took cover against the building wall. Reaching into a pocket he pulled out a cigarette lighter and flicked it to light the Molotov. Build a man a fire and keep him warm for the night. Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life. With a smile he hurled the flaming contraption into the building and began to run back . . . 

And was knocked flat on his face as the gasoline inside suddenly caught in something that was only just less than a full up fuel-air explosion. Only the many open portals of the building kept it from going up in a huge, contained, thermobaric kaboom. By the time he had rolled on his back and sat up, the entire ground floor poured forth flames. Before he had gotten to his feet the second and even some of the third floor windows had tongues of flame licking out.

The screaming inside the buildings went on for a very long, very satisfying, time.

XVII.

 

"Hump it, you bastards, hump it!" Qabaash shouted across the river to the struggling gangs of Sumeri engineers frantically rebuilding something that would do for a floor to the smaller of the two bridges spanning the river. Even while they built, thin squads of uniformed Sumeri soldiers, Sada's men, carefully crossed onto the near bank along creaking a foot path laid along the bridge's skeleton. These assembled as they crossed under their own leaders. A news team was mixed in with one column, having bribed one of the lesser commanders to let them in.

Even Sada's brigade couldn't change human nature.

 

The members of the GNN camera crew were careful to place the still burning building as a backdrop to their reporter. This seemed easy but wasn't. There were confident looking regular Sumeri troops standing below the building. Obviously they had to be left out. Worse, there were armed civilians who were not only not fighting the soldiers, but were actually welcoming them and helping them.

In the end, they'd settled on placing the camera low and the reporter on a small earthen ramp they'd thrown together. This allowed the reporter to speak about the terrible destruction—though, admittedly, other than that one building it didn't seem so terrible— without letting in the unwanted messages of welcoming townsfolk and competent Sumeri troops. Best of all, this angle showed the stinking mercenaries' aircraft overhead. The obvious implication of ruined edifice in the near background and flying combat aircraft farther off was that the legion was smashing the town like a bully child.

"Pumbadeta is dying," the reporter began . . . 

 

Fadeel didn't want to die just yet. Some of the crusaders leveled charges of cowardice against him. None of his own men did. He had work to do and could not let death inconvenience that work. They knew that and accepted it.

How to prevent it though; that was the problem. Taken by surprise by the men of the city he'd already lost one quarter of Pumbadeta. Much worse, as his men fell back onto prepared positions farther in, they'd run into ambush after ambush. The very positions they'd prepared they often found in enemy hands as they reached them.

This town is lost, Fadeel thought. Nothing for it but to lie low, blend in, hope my fighters take some with them, and then escape to rebuild. Next time, I'll know better than to count on the Kosmos to come to my rescue. In the interim, best to hide out, I think, until the fighting passes and I can join the mob.

 

GNN had a mission and a message. The farther the crew moved into the town, the less they found to back up that message. Yes, there were dead bodies damned near everywhere, but they were almost all armed. The town itself, though, had suffered little destruction so far.

"Well, we'll make do," announced the reporter. He directed his camera crew to remove weapons from several dozen bodies to make them look like innocents caught up in the fighting. It wasn't perfect but it was better than nothing.

 

Fadeel's first thought when he saw the camera crew was, My salvation.

He walked directly over and introduced himself in good English as "Ahmad Habib al Fadel. Can I help you?"

Pleased to have someone who spoke English and Arabic with him the reporter hired Fadeel on the spot. He proved, over the next few hours, to have a real knack for setting up the bodies of those killed in the fighting to look incredibly innocent and pitiable.

When the day's shooting was done, the reporter asked Fadeel if he would like a lift somewhere.

"Anywhere away from this madhouse," was Fadeel's answer.

The reporter and his crew, no less Fadeel, were quite surprised and shocked to discover that, while a bribe might have gotten them in, even high powered media types were still not being allowed out of Pumbadeta.

 

Checkpoint X-ray, Wall of Circumvallation, 10/8/462 AC

The excuse was to pay those who had fought and to make sure the town was thoroughly swept of insurgents. Using the same checkpoints as they had previously used to filter out the women and the children, the legion likewise filtered out the townsfolk from the insurgents.

The first step had been for the tribal leaders and those military advisors Sada had selected for them to come out and take charge of their displaced, tent city "neighborhoods." Having done so, and confirmed that the women and children were alive and well, they returned to the town and began to lead their fighters, and those who had taken no part in the fighting but for whom they were still responsible, out through the checkpoints. No one left except for those who were vouched for by their tribal leaders.

The men leaving were separated into those who had fought and those who had not. Both groups were subject to paraffin tests to see if, in fact, they had fired small arms. The purpose was quite different. Among the groups identified as fighters by the tribal leaders and whose clothing showed traces of small arms propellant, one hundred drachma was paid immediately. The fact that the legion's original cadre had been police who were used to gathering evidence helped here.

Any in the other group who showed such traces raised immediate suspicions. Some were identified as "okay" by their own relatives. Others could not be identified. After a very quick trial these were shot by firing squads organized by the religious leadership of the town, a substantial bounty being paid to the tribes who brought in outsiders who could not claim and prove membership in a local tribe. Those so identified who showed traces of a foreign accent were hanged.

Among those shot was a GNN camera crew which tried to bully its way through a checkpoint. They were not shot for the bullying. Rather, they were shot for attempting to help escape one Fadeel al Nizal. They claimed innocence but, given that the man's picture was in worldwide circulation, that their news network had shown nothing but harshness and contempt toward the war and those who fought in it (barring, of course, the insurgents), and that their own video found in the camera demonstrated an attempt at what was really enemy propaganda, neither the mullahs, nor Sada, nor Carrera, were convinced. They went to the wall, in tears, and still pleading.

Fadeel was not hanged on the spot. Neither was he shot. Instead, at an interview with Carrera and Sada, he was told, "Friend, you are going to take a long, long cruise."

Even then, Fadeel was most uncooperative, despite the threat and reality of pain, until his parents, kidnapped in an operation long planned, were brought to him aboard the Hildegard Mises.

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