THE pony was so shaggy the Lingxiu figured he didn’t need to grab the saddle horn to hoist himself. Instead he grabbed the mane, and nodded to Jusuf.
When the big muj boosted him powerfully with linked hands, he closed his eyes, nearly crying out as an agonizing spear ripped up his crippled leg. The foot was warping to the side, pulled by some contracting ligament, and the muscles cramped in agony as they twisted tighter and tighter. The empty socket of his vanished eye throbbed too. He lived with pain every hour of the day. The poppy-seed tea Dandan brewed for him helped, though it tasted like bitter mud, but it made you sleepy, languid, and he had to stay focused. Stay on task. Get things organized.
Especially today.
He kicked the pony in the flank and it flinched and started down the ravine. The cave was safer than outdoors under the open sky, but you couldn’t run a rebellion from a cave. Much less a full-on jihad.
Which this was now, since he’d given the Agency its walking papers.
The pony jogged out from the shadow and the cool of the mountain into a ponderous dry heat. Tokarev walked behind him, carrying an AK at port arms. The Uighur co-leader had taken Teddy’s decision with his usual stony expression. Saying only, “I pray that we have taken the right path, Lingxiu. We could lose many men attempting this.”
“If Allah is with us, who can stand against us?” Teddy had asked. Rhetorically, sure, but he believed it too. Anyway, they’d come too far to stop now. To stand down, and let the Han keep ruling the proud, self-reliant people he’d come to think of as his own.
They deserved better. They deserved no less than independence.
Today, maybe, he might be able to win it for them.
NINE hundred miles to the west, Andres Korzenowski’s boots sank deep into soft gray sand as he stepped out of the helicopter. The blades rotating above him blew grit and dust away in dun cyclones, obscuring the view. Which in any case was only of drab yellow sand and even drabber clay hardpan, dotted here and there with dead-looking scrub brush and the occasional rambling tumbleweed.
Turkmenistan. The installation was windswept and sere, surrounded by miles of dry, generally flat desert. Razor wire and a bulldozed berm enclosed everything, with towers at the corners mounting perimeter search radars. A long-range hypersonic battery was dug in on one side. A squat farm of yellow-green conex containers, glinting black solar panels, and barracks tents walled the other.
He could have observed today’s action from a computer screen in Germany. But he’d wanted to be as close as possible. Not actually on the scene, though. The deputy director had turned down his request for a last talk with the asset. A last approach, a final attempt to reason with him.
“Sounds like you’ve said everything you could, trying to wrap this up more gracefully,” Tony Provanzano had said, patting Andres’s shoulder avuncularly. “Some boar hogs we just can’t perfume, no matter how hard we try. You gave SKFROG every chance. And you definitely are not going back in country. You’re burned too on this, so we’re gonna have to find something else for you to do. Maybe Latin America, we can use some fresh ideas there. Okay?”
So he hadn’t gone back in. Just come as close as he could.
Which was here, in this windswept desert, with the occasional tumbleweed bouncing across it on a mindless pilgrimage, pursued by the sigh of the wind, the harsh hiss of sand abrading everything that had form. Eroding it all, like Time itself.
He wished he’d asked the guy more about his vision. Made him explain. Describe it. Oberg had sounded so certain. He probably was mad, like Langley seemed to think. Unsound. But maybe he’d just seen deeper, glimpsed something only saints and mystics usually had access to.
He shook his head. No. Like the old Gary Larson Far Side psychiatrist-office cartoon, the SEAL chief was Just Plain Nuts. That was the simplest explanation. And likeliest to be true.
The conex was so crammed with equipment he had to slide sideways to get in. He shook hands with three unsmiling women in Army desert-pattern battle dress. One white, one black, and one Asian. The OIC introduced herself as Major Zein. She was the Asian-looking one, or maybe Filipina, with deeply lined features, short black hair, and a fierce squint. As if she were frowning into the sandstorm building outside.
The wind gusted, shaking the thin steel walls. A pair of scissors hung from a string, clacking against an equipment rack as the container vibrated. The women didn’t react. Zein led him toward the consoles that lined the back wall. It was a little roomier back here, at least for three. With him added, though, it was tight.
“What are we looking at?” he asked.
Zein planted herself in front of the screen, and he leaned over her shoulder. Below, slowly, unscrolled a tormented land. Deep valleys furrowed it. Pits swallowed shadow. Here and there patches of snow glowed on corrugated mountains. A glacier twisted down, a moraine of rubble at its head showing where it had retreated over the past few years. She said, “This is from the MQ-3E Black Eagle high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aircraft system. More capable than the old Predator. Sharper sensors. Solar powered, for longer range and indefinite linger. Your tasking pulled us off a mission for the Army. We were watching nuclear weapons sites in northern Iran.”
Andres nodded, fighting a twist of nausea. Zein pointed to a copilot’s chair set just behind hers. The two sergeants were in the other seats, to her right and left. “Understand you’re here to identify our target. Any questions?”
“Uh, yeah. We know this group has Swiss-sourced drone detection. How are we going to get past that?”
“It won’t pick us up.” She swept a hand over a bank of readouts, and Andres recognized a spectrum analyzer. “We’re IR masked, quiet electric motors, and we don’t use GPS or radar. Inertial navigation, backed up by lookdown terrain analysis.”
“But it’s transmitting video. They won’t pick that up?”
“No. It’s a scrambled uplink, microburst, direct to nanosatellites overhead. We also use delta frame video. All that gets transmitted is the changes from the previous image, which cuts maybe ninety-five percent of the bandwidth you’d need for raw video. You could monitor from fifty feet below it and you still wouldn’t pick up a thing.”
She reflected for a moment, then added, “There’s a very slight chance they could detect our radio commands, which go down via the same sat channel. But they’d have to have some pretty sophisticated analysts to figure out what that signal was.”
He nodded, and Zein settled headphones over her ears and handed him a pair. “You’ll hear the video going out, and a series of tone clues that keep us informed as to motor cooling, battery status and drawdown rate, and so on. When it’s time to deploy weapons, you’ll hear tones from that too as the missile initializes. Then a separate tracking tone, which tells us it’s live. When that cuts off, the mission’s complete.”
He fitted the headphones, which were still warm from whoever had just taken them off. The scrambled video, or at least he guessed that was what it was, sounded like a high-pitched warble.
“This is a personality strike, correct?” Zein said. “Against a person specifically designated on the kill list? I have to have that on the record.” She held out a clipboard and pen.
“He’s not in the disposition matrix,” Andres said. “This is special handling, as per a finding of imminent threat. No permanent record, and all video to be erased.” He extracted a folded paper from inside his jacket and handed it over.
She glanced over the order, then handed it back. As if she didn’t want to keep her fingers on it any longer than necessary. “Not a problem. We’ll just carry it as a recon, and the weapon as expended for practice. But I’ll still need a signature. If the time comes. That’s just how the Army does things, sir.”
Andres nodded. “Okay. Sure.” He wasn’t going to sign anything, of course. But he could tell her that later, after it was done.
FOUR hours later, after Guldulla had split off to lead the assault force, the Lingxiu slid down off the pony. Sweating in the oppressive, growing heat, aching in every bone, he pulled his drag pack off its rump. He patted the animal and threw the reins to one of the boys who trailed after the rebels, sometimes picking up fallen weapons to fight alongside them. Staying low, in a combat crouch, he limped uphill.
Just before the crest, he dropped to his belly and low-crawled forward, binoculars clutched to his chest, drag-bag strap in his other hand. The way he’d once carried a sniper rifle, in Ashaara, years before. On a mission to kill a man who’d thought he was directed by God … and now, ha ha, you had to grin at the irony … Jusuf crawled close behind, carrying the antidrone gear, a rifle, and a pack with water and food and grenades.
Concealed between two large flattish stones, Oberg looked down from the crest at a magnificent panorama. The valley ran southeast down from the mountains. A river glittered like windblown tinsel where rapids shattered it into bright shining scraps of silver. A road ran alongside it, though no vehicles moved there. No, not with the many IEDs his rebels had sown the length and breadth of this land … Far ahead the terrain flattened, interrupted only by low hills. To this side of them, barely visible from up here, a strangely regular reticulation of gray interlaced a flattening green.
His fists tightened on the binoculars. That green was soyabean paddies. The gray, the insectile hives of the Han. Their interlocking concrete compounds marched across the land like a great wall dividing the Uighur from the interlopers. A thinner line ran from east to west: a highway. And beyond the low hills rose the polluted haze of a city, set down on the land like the nest of an invasive species.
Like creeping bamboo, the Han would spread and spread, unless they were burned out, their roots torn up, the soil seeded with salt. Until it was made plain they were no longer welcome in this land they falsely claimed as theirs.
Jusuf flourished a radio. “Convoy on its way, Lingxiu.”
“Bu yakshi. Give me a heads-up when it passes Kilometer 304.”
They settled in for a stay. Jusuf pulled a flask of mare’s milk and a wad of dates and bread out of the pack. Teddy shared it with the big muj, chewing thoughtfully, staring up at the passing clouds. Remembering other hides, other stalkings. He’d always sought something, without ever knowing what it was. Once he’d thought he’d found it in the Teams. Then, trying to put a film together in LA.
Now, for the first time, he truly knew peace.
Peace was when the outcome was out of your hands. When you didn’t have to make choices, or worry if you made the right choice.
When really no “choosing” existed. Since everything had already been decided. From time immemorial. For the best, and all he had to do was … go with the flow. Let it happen. Trust Allah.
You have always done My will.
He said a brief dua that the old imam had taught him. “Lord, all praise be to You, to Your might and your greatness, amin.”
You didn’t need to do much, to resign yourself. Simply accept. Submit. That was all.
The sun glittered on the rapids far below, and a bird twittered below them somewhere on the hill. The world was filled with stunning beauty. The mountains behind him, incredibly sere and distant in their granite sky-reaching. The plains below, warm and rich and fecund where they drank of the pure melted waters from the high snows.
Uighurs had lived here for a thousand years. Then the Han had come. Not content to live alongside the original inhabitants, they’d clamped down a heavy yoke. Closed mosques, shuttered madrassas, prohibited firearms and beards and knives and traditional dress. And when their subjects still persevered in the old ways, herded them into concentration camps for “reeducation.” Monitored them with facial recognition. Rated their “social scores” online, to reward those who conformed, and punish those who persisted in being what they’d always been. What they and their ancestors had been born to be. Free.
Killing a few hundred people … it was little enough. He had to smile, thinking of the objections the CIA agent had raised.
Jusuf rolled over to place his bearded lips next to Teddy’s ear. He murmured, in Uighur, “Tokarev is with the leader.”
Teddy nodded. “Pass a standby while we wait.”
Settling into the glasses again, he panned left, and saw them. But only the turrets. They were parked hull down behind a rise, but angled so they could charge down a dry streambed paved with the sparkling, rounded pebbles the meltwater had tumbled down from the mountains for age after age, polishing agate and jasper into ruby and emerald.
The gray-green hulls were light mountain tanks. The Chinese had made the mistake of training their Uighur auxiliaries on them. The whole squadron had deserted one night, coming over to ITIM. Not the first native troops to do so, but the first to bring armor with them.
Modern machines that today he would employ for the first time. To strike a blow that would resound all the way to Beijing.
Today they were going to take down the bloody marshal.
Chagatai had been a thorn in their side since he’d arrived in the West, fresh from the massacres in Hong Kong. He’d depopulated whole regions, cramming the Uighurs behind barbed wire, then starving them. The reports from the camps were dire. Famine. Disease. Neglect.
Okay, that was how it went down in war. But you couldn’t fight a guy like that with one hand tied behind your back, the way the Agency seemed to want. Or said that it wanted, though he figured they were really just preserving deniability.
Teddy had tried to kill Chagatai once before. Sucked him in with a fake IED factory, rigging it with hundreds of kilos of C-4, ready to blow a cave roof down on him. Instead his opponent had preempted with a lightning-fast spoiling attack, complete with poison gas, killing scores of rebels and hundreds of innocent townspeople.
But this time they had a source on the inside. Their informant, a junior member of Chagatai’s staff, had passed their target’s route and time mouth to mouth via a cutout in the bazaar.
Teddy checked his watch again. In twenty more minutes, checkpoint at Kilometer 304. The highway below, empty in both directions at the moment. The tanks would attack downhill, so any errant rounds or misses would go over the highway and into the Han compounds beyond. Which didn’t bother him at all. Actually, casualties there would be a plus.
Jusuf muttered, “Kilometer 230.”
Teddy did the multiplication. At forty miles an hour, the convoy would hit the checkpoint in a little over half an hour. He fidgeted, raking the valley again with the binoculars, then cleared his throat and spat. What was he doing way up here? He should be down, by the road. His hands tingled. He felt suddenly too warm, and it wasn’t just the hot wind off the desert, a few miles distant.
He should stay where he was. Manage the battle.
With difficulty, he accepted that truth. But he didn’t like it.
Jusuf touched his arm. “Lingxiu? Kilometer 235.”
THE too-soft seat had molded itself to Andres’s rump. It was almost like a La-Z-Boy. Obviously built for prolonged sessions in front of the screens. Beside him in the trailer, Major Zein seemed lost in another world. She palmed a trackball slowly, as if it were a shiatsu massager. The scene on the screen moved with the ball after about two seconds’ delay.
The camera panned across a terrain familiar to him from trekking across it for months. Deeply folded, shadowed valleys. Glacial moraines. The twisting, sinuous braiding of vanished rivers, lost and sunk in desert, leaving only their outlines. Rock in a million hues of brown and gray shading to black. Serpentine streams, twisting their way down rugged valleys. And now and then, a jewellike deep blue lake, blocked by the ruler-line of a dam of earth or concrete or stone.
Finally Zein murmured, “Coming up on your coordinates. We’ll drop altitude and start a close search.”
The lens zoomed back, showing the rectangular gridwork of a city at one corner. The city canted and drifted left. Hills appeared, and what looked like suburbs. More rounded hills, then a highway. Then a green scablike crust on the earth, like a malignant growth, subdivided by more gridwork.
“Soybean fields,” Zein murmured. She turned her head and flipped pages in a red-bound binder, then went back to observing.
Andres was finding it a little hard to breathe. He got up and let himself out of the trailer. The wind was still blowing. He looked around the compound, and saw nothing he needed. He checked for cameras, then realized: with the blowing dust, no lens would last long out here.
He unzipped and pissed in the lee of the trailer, facing away from the wind. Fighting a looseness in his bowels. The feeling that he really shouldn’t be part of this.
But he was. He had his orders.
When he let himself back in and pulled the dust curtain closed behind him, Zein was discussing a terrain feature with one of the enlisted women. Cross-referencing it with a geo overlay that the computer superimposed over the video feed in a ghostly pentimento, like a shadow beneath reality. As she trackballed back and forth in minute increments the underprinting shifted, following the camera. A readout in the upper corner of the screen scrolled upward, registering the percentage of match.
“Ninety-eight percent.” Zein half turned her head, probably to make sure he was back. “That’s about as high as this system registers. We’re in your target area.”
“Oh. Can you see him?” Andres asked her.
Her right shoulder jerked, a tic or mannerism he hadn’t noted before. She said, “Commencing close search. This could take a little while. Any pointers?”
“He likes a high overwatch position when he can get it.” Andres looked around the interior of the van. There, a case of bottled water. He pointed. “You mind—?”
The major kept her eyes on the screen. “Help yourself.”
No one said anything for a while. All three screens were lit now, with a sergeant at each of the others. Zein, in the center, trackballed from crest to crest, zooming in to examine each elevation while the enlisted flanking her studied theirs, tilting their heads and frowning. A small white square skittered here and there across the screen, nervous, flitting, dwelling only for an instant before skipping elsewhere. Nothing they did on their panels seemed to be driving the white square. Some kind of AI routine, trying to pick up whatever it had been programmed to detect.
Even as he noticed it, it hesitated, as if considering. Then darted to the side and halted, hovering over an otherwise indistinguishable dot on a sharp ridgeline.
One of the sergeants said, “Looks like a leadership element. Elevation to the north, above Road G3013.”
“Let the agent see,” Zein ordered.
The sergeant got up and swiveled the chair so Andres could sit in front of her screen. Its slick faux leather upholstery was warm. He cleared his throat and hitched forward, studying the display.
The view zoomed down, down, until he was looking at several figures prone amid a wilderness of slanted flattish rocks. The rocks were gray. The figures, which seemed to be wearing shaggy gray coats, blended so perfectly he had to look very closely to make them out.
“Could any of those be him?” Zein asked him.
Andres studied the image, noting details. Four—no, five, six figures. Maybe more to the rear. Packs, to the side. Definitely some kind of long thin weapon-shapes. Horses, held farther back, downhill, their backs slightly curved from above, like humped brown slugs. “Can’t tell,” he finally muttered. “Could we zoom in closer?”
“Sure, but we’ll lose resolution.” Zein demonstrated with a slow roll of the trackball. The images grew larger but blurrier, until they were just random pixelations of gray and yellow and black.
He nodded. Said, “Okay, I get it,” and she pulled the camera back out. Until they seemed to hover just about where she’d originally placed them. He gnawed his lip, studying the figures again. “Could be anyone,” he concluded. “How far up are we?”
“Angels five,” Zein said. “Five thousand feet. Any lower and they’ll hear us.”
“Hey, look at this,” said the other sergeant, the blonde. Zein nodded and the view lifted, panned, steadied again.
Four squarish dull green shapes were spaced out in a line at the bottom of the valley.
“Armor,” the sergeant said. “Consistent with ZTQ light tank. 105-millimeter gun with laser-guided antitank missiles, kinetic penetrators, HEAT. Autoloading, IR fire-control system, crew of five.”
“Chinese?” Andres said. Then thought, Damn, that was a stupid question.
“Yes, sir. Chinese,” one of the sergeants said.
“What’re they doing there?”
“Not sure. No movement since I picked them up, but IR shows engine heat.”
Zein pulled her own screen back and panned up and down the highway, which was empty except for one truck far to the west. She panned back.
“Change,” the dark-skinned sergeant to the right said.
Zein toggled to the other feed, apparently from another camera on the same drone. A cloud of exhaust, or maybe dust, was spewing out behind the armor, spreading slowly and silently across the sand. Expanding, like ink from a disturbed octopus on the ocean floor.
“Engine temp rising … they’re on the move,” the sergeant said.
On the screens, the green rectangles began rolling forward. Toward, Andres saw, an exit from the shallow depression they were hidden in. Headed down, toward the river. And the highway.
The sergeant on the left whispered something. “A-ha,” said Zein triumphantly. She toggled back to the highway.
Seven vehicles were making what looked like good speed down the center of the previously empty four-laner. Headed east to west. Coming down the road.
Right toward where the gray-green tanks were rumbling down out of the hills.
THE man who’d once been Master Chief Teddy Oberg sat up awkwardly, shoving a leg out in front of him, tucking the other under one buttock. He held the binoculars with the tips of his fingers, peering up the valley, then down. Beside him Jusuf was intent on the radio, head cocked, listening. Finally the big muj muttered, “From Guldulla, sir. They are in sight.”
“Okay, great. Get that armor moving out. And torch the car.”
“It is moving, Lingxiu. Tokarev gave the order.”
“Avtomobil yonib ketganligiga ishonch hosil qiling. Make sure they’re burning the car,” Teddy said again, but he felt fidgety. His hands and arms tingled. He kept wanting to spit. Wanted some more of that poppy tea. Where the fuck was Dandan? He glanced at the carbine beside him, leaned against one of the flat rocks. Shit, what was he doing up here? Then he reminded himself. Above the battle. Stay in command. Manage, don’t lead.
He blew out and waggled his head. “Shit, shit, shit,” he muttered.
“Are you all right, Lingxiu?” Dandan, sinking to her knees beside him. The stocky Han girl unwrapped a clay pot. “This very hot. You need to drink. Need to eat something.”
He drank off the tea without looking at her, absentmindedly feeling up her butt as she stood beside him. He bolted a hard candy from his pocket, and shifted again where he sat. Finally he held up both arms. Jusuf grabbed one, Dandan the other. They hoisted him to his feet and he hobbled back toward his pony.
Jusuf followed. “Lingxiu, where are you going?”
“We’re not close enough,” he said in what he hoped was passable Uighur. But sometimes he’d use words he was pretty sure were right, and they just stared at him, or worse, tried to hide a smile at something stupid he’d apparently said instead. Which was why he issued orders via Jusuf when he could. “I can’t see shit from up here. We need to shift our overwatch.”
“The closer we get, the harder it will be to avoid the counterstroke. When their QRF arrives.”
“Gotta take chances in war, amigo.” Teddy grabbed the pommel and hauled on it. A sizzling hot flash of pain jolted all the way up his leg and into his spine as they rushed over to boost him, and he gasped. “Fuck. Fuck!”
“You are all right, Lingxiu?”
“God is great. God is great,” he hissed through gritted teeth. “Let’s take the battle to the enemy.”
He hauled awkwardly on the reins and the pony tossed its head, wheeling reluctantly, as if affronted at his lack of riding skills. Teddy didn’t like being this high off the ground, not with all these rocks, and a bum leg, and he’d never been much of a horseman. But the animal was surefooted, and when he kicked it into a downhill trot the pony picked its way without further direction.
As always before an action, he’d memorized the topography, picked routes of retreat, and set fallback points. As he climbed again on the far side, a plume of ocher dust smeared the sky ahead, where the river cut through a mountain ridge. The highway lay on the far side of that ridge. It would probably be visible now if he used the binoculars.
Yeah, he’d set up way too far back. Getting cautious in your old age, Teddy? He grinned fiercely. A mistake that could be remedied. He spurred down the slope, the pony’s hooves slipping and clicking on the loose moraine, then up the next. From behind him came curses and a rattle of loose pebbles as someone went down, then the scream of a frightened or injured horse. Teddy didn’t look back. He rose in the stirrups and slapped his mount’s neck with the reins, urging it forward.
When they descended the last slope their armor was wheeling into position along the highway, spewing plumes of sooty high-sulfur diesel exhaust and yellow dust. Four huge machines, not quite as large as main battle tanks, but thirty tons each of steel and ordnance. Their drivers still seemed tentative, uncertain, gunning and braking to straighten the line.
Out of nowhere he remembered facing a Soviet-era BMP years before. In Afghanistan? Funny, he recalled it clearly, but not where it had taken place. The amphibious tank had suddenly burst out of a walled compound, and he’d had nothing in his hands but an RPG that wouldn’t penetrate its frontal armor. Only the fact the driver had been terrible at his job had saved Teddy’s ass then.
“Training, that’s what wins battles!” he yelled over his shoulder to Jusuf, who was just pulling up next to him, his pony huffing, white foam dripping from its mouth.
“Truly yes, Lingxiu,” he panted out, wiping his face with the colorful tie-dyed scarf most of the rebels wore, pulling them up over their faces shemagh-style when the dust blew.
Teddy half rose in the stirrups again, blinking at the blinding pain in his leg, to focus his binoculars. Then lowered them. They were close enough now he didn’t need them.
Close enough to see his prey.
They were distant specks on the far highway. Descending a hill, so he could count their numbers and see what he was getting his people into. A dull green truckish thing he made as a Dongfeng, a light recon vehicle. The Chinese version of an uparmored Hummer. Maybe a second one behind it. They usually carried either machine guns or an automatic grenade launcher in a turret mount. Mine resistant, with enough armor to withstand bullets.
But not tank shells.
Behind them trailed four black SUVs, followed by another recon vehicle.
He lowered the binoculars, then lifted them again, one eyepiece to his live sight, the other to his patch, clicking to a lower power, searching the sky. For an instant he thought he glimpsed something; a tiny glint high up, very high up, very very small. But even when he switched the glasses to high magnification he couldn’t find the gleam again. It couldn’t be a drone; his sensor operators, spotted two miles in every direction and linked to Jusuf’s radio, would have warned him.
Probably he’d imagined it, or it was merely a speck in his eye. So, no air cover? No helicopters? He grinned again. The marshal didn’t expect to be bushwhacked.
Then he sobered. Either that, or Dewei Chagatai wasn’t in the convoy. Far more cunning than the enemy’s generals, maybe he’d learned about the ambush somehow, like last time, and prepared a devastating counterstrike.
Teddy worried about that for about a second, then shoved the doubt aside. They wouldn’t know until it was too late to pull out anyway. So he’d just better be alert. Until then, he’d proceed as planned.
And anyway, whatever happened was in the hands of Allah. “Tell Guldulla: get his people out there, cut the road behind them,” he told Jusuf.
His assistant murmured into the radio. Teddy hesitated again, uncertain once more as to his own role in the action. Obviously at this point he belonged up here, out of the scrum, where he could better maneuver his limited forces. Maintain situational awareness. See any threat early.
Yeah. That would be the wisest course of action. No question.
Instead, he kicked his horse in the ribs and rode forward again.
THE storm whispered and howled outside. The trailer’s metal walls vibrated to the gusts. The walls thrummed and hissed, abraded by sand.
Andres took a sip from the plastic water bottle and leaned forward. The sergeant kept moving the screen, following the white square to reveal the terrain around it. From time to time she toggled to 3-D, overlaid by topo, so he could see the lay of the land. The armor had moved out of the arroyo and formed up in a rough line facing the highway.
He felt oddly remote from it all. An onlooker. Almost, a voyeur. Even though he knew many of the people who moved busily about far below. A thousand miles away, but he was looking down on them, as if he were an eagle soaring high above.
“Convoy,” Zein said suddenly. “Look at that. Two light armor lead, four passenger vehicles, light armor in trail.”
“HVT convoy,” the sergeant said. “High-value target.”
“Looks like it,” the major agreed. “But who?” She spun on her chair and consulted another computer. “Intel has … nothing. No movement scheduled. At least that we know of.”
“Chinese?”
“ITIM doesn’t run convoys. They’re still pretty much mountain infantry, donkey logistics, a few horses for the leadership elements.”
They watched the convoy proceed steadily along the highway, smoothly as blood corpuscles flowing along an artery.
Until the other sergeant cleared her throat. “Uh, I’m picking up other activity. Two klicks to the east.”
Zein put it up on the central screen. Perhaps two dozen small figures were scrambling down out of the rocky overlook above the highway. Several carried what looked like heavier weapons, though the resolution wasn’t sharp enough to identify them.
“Cutting off the convoy’s retreat,” Andres said.
“Yeah. Nice.”
The sergeant said, “Look at that. They’re laying IEDs out in plain sight.”
“Because the real ones are already dug in,” Andres said. “If they’re doing this right, they planted the live ones last night, or the night before. Those are dummies. Decoys, to channel any survivors into the kill zone.”
They all three looked to him. “We could throw a wrench into the works,” Zein said tentatively. “We don’t have a lot of ordnance on station, but we could give that convoy a warning. Take out some of the hostiles.”
Andres shook his head. “Those ‘hostiles’ fought the war on our side.”
“ITIM? I heard they were, but … the armistice?”
“It’s complicated,” he said, and sighed. Chugged the rest of the bottle of water and set the empty aside.
The major opened her mouth as if to ask something more, then didn’t, turning back to the screen instead. Obviously figuring this was Agency business and not hers.
Which was exactly right … He passed a hand over his hair, feeling sweat prickling his scalp, even though the air-conditioning was on full blast, the hum and whoosh fighting the sibilant sizzle of the storm outside. Yeah, sure, they could warn the convoy. Maybe save whoever was in it.
But that wasn’t his mission today.
THE convoy didn’t seem to be slowing, though they must have seen the smoke. A small party of mujs had set a car on fire by the side of the road. Black smoke billowed from the now fiercely burning sedan, which had been crammed with old tires. The black column braided with the white smoke from a few antitargeting grenades, rising and spreading to blanket the valley and obscure all vision. So that even with IR sights, the oncoming vehicles couldn’t pick up the waiting armor.
Until it was too late.
The tanks were almost in position. Still sitting his pony, Teddy pulled his gaze from the complexly billowing smoke. He hefted the radio, which he’d taken from Jusuf. He had to get this done. But he couldn’t rush it, or they’d lose everything.
If they missed this guy now, after the armistice, Chagatai would roar back with enough fresh divisions to rake these mountains with a deadly comb equipped with tungsten teeth. He’d stamp a bar code on every rock and send a teleoperated battlesnake into every hole big enough to shade a fox.
But if they could put the marshal down now, ITIM might even get a seat at the peace table.
The convoy neared. He hadn’t expected it to slow for the wreck, and it didn’t. Just steered over to the outside lane, and maybe speeded up a little. It came on. Closer. Closer …
He drew a slow deep breath and squinted up, casing the sky once more just to be sure. Still nothing but blue, and puffy white clouds, and the streamers of smoke between him and the high mountains glittering in the sun. Strange. Maybe, now that the big war was over, the Allies had imposed something like a no-fly order.
He spread his arms, overwhelmed suddenly with the beauty of it all. The valley, the mingling smoke. The gleaming ribbon of highway. The lush green fields beyond.
And suddenly he grasped once more, for a moment, what he’d witnessed high on a mountain that freezing night years before. Wrapped in his tatty POW blanket beside a dying fire, afraid, starving, huddled under the stars.
The very rocks had glowed from within, their component atoms milling and scintillating like clouds of fireflies.
And now, the bearded muj beside him, the stocky, faithful Dandan a few yards back—he could see into their minds. Into their souls.
Human beings were just as dazzling as the rocks and sky.
All was created, all one. All was understood, with enormous compassion.
You have always done My will.
It hadn’t been an order, the command of some implacable tyrant.
The words had been said as gently as a lover’s. As a parent’s. As the words of the One who knew all, yet forgave all, with compassion and mercy toward all the creatures He had ordained to be, and suffer, yet be welcomed home at last.
“I do Your will again today,” he said to the unknowable unimaginable he had glimpsed that night and always regretted losing. The Whole he was a tiny fragment of. One tiny colored tile, one chipped and faded cube that was still an irreplaceable part of an immense and incredibly beautiful, perfectly designed, everlasting mosaic.
“Lingxiu,” Jusuf said urgently, tugging at his sleeve.
Teddy forced himself back from the beauty and the wonder to lift his binoculars again. To see that, yes, the lead vehicles were coming into range. Yet still he forced himself to say, as calmly as he could, “Wait.” Counting the seconds off each by each to the hammering of his unruly heart.
Three.
Two.
One.
He lifted his radio. “This is the Lingxiu. Okay, boys, light ’em up.”
Then he waited. And waited …
“Crap,” he grunted. “How the fuck long are they going to—”
The barrel of the lead tank recoiled in a flash of flame and smoke, and it rocked back on its tracks. The penetrator round lashed out arcless, flat, an instantaneous line drawn across grit and sand and scrub, ruler-straight. Dust sprang up along its track until it barreled directly over the lead vehicle, missing it by a good five yards.
Teddy opened his mouth to shout a correction but the second tank fired at that instant and the second round unzipped the desert too, the dust-trail and smoke obscuring what, if anything, had happened when it hit. No, it was a miss too; the impact burst the ground apart far downhill, half a kilometer off the highway on the other side.
“Fuck me,” he groaned. Were the wheels going to come off his whole plan just because his deserters couldn’t shoot straight?
Then the third and fourth tanks fired, nearly simultaneously. Those projectiles arrowed across the gravel and sand too blindingly fast to follow and both slammed directly into the trailing Donfeng, blowing it apart so violently the vehicle lifted off its wheels, spun in the air, and crashed down inverted on the far berm, where it instantly burst into flame. He couldn’t make out what happened after that, the smoke was too thick, but it would be a miracle if anyone crawled out of that inferno.
The right-flank tanks fired again, bucking back as the hypervelocity projectiles tore out, but he couldn’t see. He couldn’t see. “They’ve got to get in closer,” he shouted, handing back the radio. “Jusuf! Tell them. Get in close, finish them off.” He had another IED team up the road, but if the lead recon vehicles and the SUVs got through that way, some might well escape.
And if any got away, you could be A-fucking-sure the marshal would be in the one that made it.
The reprisals would be terrible. Chagatai didn’t just shoot hostages. He gassed whole villages, evacuated and leveled whole towns, imprisoned and starved whole provinces.
Teddy gripped his carbine, wanting to shout orders. To kick everyone into action. No. He wanted to be down there himself, riding those tanks. Pushing them forward, laying the guns, forcing them nose to nose with the enemy, even if they had to run over them and crush them under the tracks.
No, he told himself. This is your post, right here. Where you can see what’s going on, as much as anyone can, anyway, in the growing haze, the blowing smoke. Nobody else was going to herd these cats.
He should. Sure. Should stay right here.
But he wasn’t going to.
The leader had to lead.
He shrugged his threadbare blanket off his shoulders and pulled his carbine out of the scabbard. Seated the mag, and charged the rifle. Full mag in the well. Six more, fully loaded, in his drag bag. Gas mask to hand, check. Makarov, check. Knife, the heavy Uighur blade he’d taken off Hajji Qurban, secured in its sheath at his belt.
“What is going on? Lingxiu?” Jusuf, looking anxious.
Teddy grinned at him, and heel-kicked his pony down the hill. The big muj whirled for his own mount, looking surprised. Behind them, the others began mounting up too. Lifting rifles. Unfurling flags, the black squares with their white calligraphy rippling in the wind.
A sharp slope ahead. His pony’s hooves slipped and skidded on the stones, and it lurched and nearly fell. Teddy grabbed for its mane, tensing for a spill. But it scrambled to recover and then lunged forward, gathering speed, pounding downhill at a breathtaking gallop as the rocks gave way to loose gravel and even here and there a little patch of dusty grass. He heeled it in the ribs again, and it didn’t hurt, even his bad leg didn’t stab him now. He yelled aloud, a formless incomprehensible howl that halfway through he modfied into “Allahu Akbar!” Behind him the other riders picked it up, and shots cracked out, even though he’d told them again and again never to waste ammo firing into the air.
But that was all right, they were his men, eager to follow him into battle. Foam flew back from the pony’s mouth and the mane whipped at his hands. Down into a gully, out of sight of the highway. Then up, up again, over a small rise.
And there was the road, close now. There was the smoke, still rising, and the sweet battle stench of propellant and burning rubber, and the heavy ripping crack of 105 penetrators going out far above supersonic and the higher-pitched bang bang bang of an automatic grenade launcher firing back at them from somewhere in the milling murk. The burp-rattle of small arms. Explosions flashed amid his tanks. But even direct hits only scored the thick frontal armor, and they were growling forward again, gathering confidence, and for once, for fucking once, his guys had it all, surprise and fire advantage and heavier weapons than the enemy.
He plunged ahead into the bitter smoke. It stung his throat, making his eyes tear.
At the last second he veered aside out of the line of fire, and reined the pony in, one hand shading his single eye. The smoke unraveled a little just then, blown thin by a hot wind, letting tallow light bleed through from the glaring sun. Through it he could just make out the lead Dongfeng. It squatted immobile, smoking hard, with fireballs flying out the far side: ammo cooking off. The second leader was still firing at the oncoming armor with the grenade launcher, in the turret.
Then a shell from one of the tanks blew it apart in a huge detonation, white and orange, laced with the crackle of the grenades and whatever other ordnance it carried exploding too. Pieces and bodies pinwheeled through the air to crash and thud and clang off the steel siderails of the highway. When the turbulent boiling of air and fire and smoke rose it revealed a smoking, twisted chassis nearly stripped of armor.
“Hold fire!” Teddy yelled to Jusuf, hand-signaling his heavy units, and nudged the pony forward without waiting for an acknowledgment. Fortunately the tanks obeyed, ceasing their fire as he spurred in, sweeping his narrowed gaze across the black SUVs.
Some were already riddled by the machine-gun fire the tanks had been laying down along with their shells. Trapped, the convoy had herringboned out this way and that on the roadside, the correct tactic for a hasty defense. Black-uniformed Interior troops were spilling out with short-barreled personal defense weapons, propping them on the hoods to put an engine block between them and their attackers.
But Teddy and Jusuf and the other riders were on their flank, and he aimed his carbine and began firing, taking the Chinese in defilade, the little light bullpup jerking back into his shoulder with each shot. Pick up an outline, fire, watch it spin and drop. Shift to the next black uniform, a thicker upper chest area, probably some kind of body armor. A double tap into the legs and he too went down. Teddy grinned harder. Damn, he liked this optic sight.
Return fire hissed and cracked past. The pony shied, but he yanked its head around and pointed it directly at the lead vehicle and thumped its ribs again. The pony whinnied and tossed its head but obeyed, and Teddy fired again and again as they galloped in, laying a burst to finish the mag. He dropped the empty and slapped in a reload without looking, squinting through the roiling oily-tasting black smoke.
And noting, just with a microglimpse, a bulky figure clad in greens roll out of the second car back, tugging a pistol from a leather holster.
No cap, gray hair, stocky, army uniform. A patch of color on the chest. He was wearing his decorations.
Marshal Chagatai.
The troops sheltering behind the vehicles were returning aimed fire now. Gunflashes sparkled. A bullet scored Teddy’s shoulder like a hot poker, breaking his aim so his next burst spanged off a bulletproof windshield. Beside him in a rough line Jusuf and the other mujahideen were firing too, some from horseback, others dismounted. One went down as his horse was hit, spilling him onto the asphalt, where he skated along, flailing and cursing, but gripping his Kalashnikov for dear life, until he could struggle up to a knee and fire again.
The seething vapor trail of a projectile from one of the tanks streaked between the second and third SUVs, deafeningly close. The blast of its passage knocked down two of the black-clad troops running forward from the rear vehicles, but it exploded far downhill, in one of the soy fields. Teddy screamed at Jusuf, “Tanks, God damn it, I said cease fire, cease fire!” He hoped they heard that, because in seconds his ragtag cavalry would be in among the SUVs.
As would he. He steered his mount around the first limo, firing more to keep heads down than to score hits. The pony’s hooves slipped in the loose gravel of the berm and it almost went down again. He urged it forward, leaning to keep his own silhouette low, snap-firing as targets presented themselves. But they were getting scarcer. The hail of bullets from the rebels, plus the tank shells, had left more and more of the Interior troops lying dead or blown apart beside the vehicles, or dragging themselves crawling away, trailing blood, but still trying to escape the slaughter they knew was coming if they were overrun. Among them now Teddy made out a few civilians. Local pols, or Han intel types? He wasn’t going to waste time trying to sort them out. A woman in a dark skirt tried to drag herself under the second SUV, only to be riddled by a burst from Jusuf’s AK.
Howling, shooting, the rebels charged in among the vehicles. Teddy was barely keeping up. His pony seemed to be limping. Shot? Lamed? Maybe it was just tired. But the younger men were ahead of him now, firing and yipping, waving their black flags. Jusuf was in the thick of it, firing here and there, yelling as he rode down the line of cars. Teddy grinned just to see him. The kid wasn’t just a technician. He was a warrior, all right.
Then a gray-haired head rose above an open door. A pistol recoiled, and the young muj spun and toppled from his saddle. Jusuf hit the ground so hard his head rebounded. Then he lay still. His hand relaxed, and one of the shiny green Chinese grenades rolled out.
They weren’t that big, but they were packed with steel balls, and Teddy was too close to avoid catching shrapnel. He ducked below his mount’s back as it went off. A moment’s image. Another war, and another grenade …
A small green spheroid. It struck the wall beside him and glanced off.
It rolled between him and Sumo Kaulukukui, and rocked to a halt midway between them. The drill was to duck or roll, but there was nowhere to go.
The big Hawaiian had said, “War’s a motherfucker, ain’t it?” And stepped over it, putting himself between Teddy and the grenade’s blast.
You’d have enjoyed this fight, Sumo, he thought now. But the battle wasn’t over. In fact, at this point, it might be going the wrong way. For now, as the smoke blew past, it revealed the remaining troops safe behind the no-doubt-armored doors, firing from cover. While his rebels were being blasted off their ponies one after the other. His own began screaming, and staggered beneath him. Glancing down, he saw the thick black blood streaming down its front legs. Steel shards from the grenade, or maybe a Chinese bullet.
He hauled the pony’s head around, and it stumbled toward the second SUV. Where a gray-haired head showed above the door, then locked gazes with him across sixty feet of smoky hell.
Teddy aimed and squeezed the trigger, aware only when it clicked that he’d emptied the carbine. He thrust it back into its scabbard, yanked the Makarov from his shoulder holster, and fired. It recoiled, but he could tell as the sights rose that he’d missed. Snap shots usually did, especially from the back of a wounded horse. Not something they drilled at the Kill House at Dam Neck. He pulled the trigger again.
The pistol clicked, but didn’t fire. Fuck, the piece of shit was jammed! And since he still held the reins, he didn’t have a spare hand to clear it.
He threw it aside, and drew the blade at his belt.
The eight-inch, heavy, curved pchak, the Yengisar with the ram’s-horn hilt he’d taken off Hajji Qurban after killing him in a knife fight, and carried ever since.
He urged the failing animal under him directly at the pistol Chagatai was leveling at him over the armored door of the SUV. Bending low over the saddle horn, he fixed his sight on the muzzle of the handgun. His death would emerge from that dark eye. A chance the guy would miss, but at this range, he probably wouldn’t.
But then the Chinese lifted the firearm and peered down at it, face blank, then surprised. Teddy grinned. “You’re out of ammo too, you old son of a bitch!” he yelled, bearing down on him. He leaned out, arm outstretched, as the dark eyes rose again to meet his own. They widened as Chagatai grasped what was coming at him, and flung his forearm up in a hasty, instinctive block.
Leaning down, Teddy swept the pchak in a wide saber-stroke that when it connected sent a shock all the way up to his shoulder and nearly knocked him out of the saddle. For a second, his arm paralyzed, he thought he’d hit the steel door. But glancing back as his mount sheered away neighing in pain, he saw the marshal sag back, gripping the top of the door with one hand. But his head lolled, nearly severed from the shoulders. Blood waterfalled down his chest, obliterating the rows of colorful ribbons with a scarlet drenching.
Then the marshal collapsed to the pavement, and the pistol spun away clattering over the asphalt.
Teddy’s pony was foundering under him. Reaching down its flank, he felt the hot blood clotting on its rough coat. It sank, going down on its forelegs as its knees buckled. He clung for another second, then grabbed the mane and half slid, half rolled off as the animal collapsed and rolled onto its side.
He landed on the bad leg, and something in it snapped and tore despite the brace. The pain blinded him for a moment and he sank to a knee beside the fallen horse, gasping as his foot buckled sideways. Another weapon … He sheathed the pchak with shaking hands and picked up an AK one of the rebels had dropped. Racked the bolt, feeling the slight but definite resistance as it fed a live round, and propped it on the heaving flank of the dying beast.
He surveyed the aftermath of battle. Vehicles flamed and smoked. Ammunition rattled as it cooked off. From the hillside, diesels growled as his light tanks slowly rolled down the last few yards to survey their work and hose down the still-living wounded with machine guns. Rebels and Interior troops lay intermingled on the asphalt, along the berm, up the hillside. A knot of mujs were dragging terrified civilians out of the last vehicle, forcing them to their knees on the center line, and executing them with single shots to the back of the neck.
Teddy gritted his teeth and pushed himself upright, using the Kalashnikov as a cane. The pain was terrific, breaking in combers like Santa Clara surf. He panted. The mountains reeled around him. He bent, trying to force the foot back into its titanium brace, but something was bad wrong. He took one step on it, biting his lip and grunting. Then, slowly, another.
He limped toward the knot of rebels as more shots rang out.
“WHOEVER they are, they’re executing the survivors,” Major Zein said. Her tone was flat, without judgment. She pointed to the screen. “Is that your HVT?”
Andres bent closer, arms folded. The wind whispered outside, scratching like a million tiny claws trying to get in at them. Was it windy there? Yeah, maybe, considering the way the smoke was dissipating now. Below where the gossamer-winged drone lingered: solar-powered, complexly lensed, an Argus eye unseen and unsuspected by those below.
He’d watched it all. The silent unfolding of the ambush. The explosions, like fiery black blossoms. The silent tumbling of vehicles, and the noiseless sprawl of bodies. The smoke had obscured the action from time to time, but sporadically cleared, at least enough for him to follow the battle, like glimpses between passing clouds.
Far below, shimmering with magnification, a tiny figure was limping away from a fallen horse. The animal tossed its head, obviously suffering. Red stained its side and pooled beneath it. An SUV stood with doors flung open, slanted across the road. Bodies lay scattered around it. He could just make out the colors of their uniforms. Black, green, gray. A few combatants looked to be of smaller stature. Women? Boys? He couldn’t be sure. And the limping figure? Probably a lot of the rebels limped, especially after a battle.
“Can we zoom in closer?” he murmured. “I know, it pixelates, but…”
Zein told one of the sergeants to drop to angels four and go to max magnification. Andres waited. The image on the screen expanded, but the larger it grew the more the details wavered, until it boiled as if viewed through molten glass.
“Shit,” the sergeant whispered. “It’s the hot air off that pavement. A mini-thermal effect. Usually we can do better, but I guess not today.”
The view banked as the drone came around in a long lazy circle. Much like, Andres imagined, a buzzard, viewing the carnage from above. Where were the buzzards anyway? The V-winged scavengers of the high mountains, whose effortless orbits in the sky he’d admired so often? Well, they’d arrive soon enough, with all that fresh meat out on the highway.
“Is that him?” Zein asked again.
Andres was about to say I’m not sure, I can’t tell, when just then the video steadied, just for a microsecond, and at that same moment the lone limping figure so far below turned its face up to the sky. As if aware it was being watched, though Andres was pretty sure that wasn’t possible. The drone was far too small, far too high up.
The face was bearded, a male’s, and it wore an eyepatch. He seemed to be holding some sort of rifle, or other weapon. But not in a combat stance. Was he … yes.
He was using it as a crutch.
With a coldness at his heart, Andres said, “That’s him.”
“That’s your target?” Zein said. Both sergeants straightened. The leftmost one began keyboarding. “You’re absolutely sure?”
“Yeah. It’s him. That’s SKFROG.”
The sergeant on the right reached for her trackball.
“You’ll need to confirm, for our records. Like I said.” Zein handed him a signature pad and stylus, like what you’d use to sign for a purchase at a drugstore. He thought for a moment of asking for a printout, just to gain another few seconds, but finally resigned himself. He signed, but not with his real name, of course.
He handed it back.
“Proceed?” She avoided his eyes.
He nodded.
Zein instructed the black sergeant in a neutral tone, recentering the white box Andres had seen previously onto the individual he’d pointed out. A tap, and a set of orange brackets lit. She edged them over on the screen, then adjusted them a smidgen more, until they lined up with the white one, tracking with it. Smaller, but centered inside it.
Another click from her mouse, and crosshairs winked on. These were centered too, subdividing the orange square into quadrants. The techs discussed this in low voices, keyboarding. The orange box displaced a few yards.
Zein murmured, “What about the others down there, near him? We’ve got a pretty decent radius with these new warheads.”
Andres touched his lips with a knuckle. On the screen, other rebels were crowding around where the second SUV stood. Looking down, apparently, at one of the bodies. The one in the green uniform. Its head lay at an unnatural angle. He couldn’t make out any more detail in the boiling image.
“This heat’s really distorting things,” the blond sergeant complained. “Seems to be getting worse, too.”
Andres cleared his throat. “What kind of radius are we talking about?”
“Kill radius? Ten meters. Wounding, fifteen.”
A diameter of thirty feet would take out everyone thronging around the SUV. And any survivors inside it as well. He touched his lips again, considering. But to judge by the executions he’d just seen, the sprawl of bodies along the white centerline of the road, there probably weren’t many prisoners left alive.
Once again that numbing chill touched his spine. He’d had to kill before. Sure. But never this far away, where he himself ran no risk at all—
“Sir?” The major tugged his sleeve. He flinched away.
“Sorry,” she said. “But once we have a solution, it can go away at a moment’s notice. The last second or two of flight guides on a laser beam. We don’t turn it on until that final homing phase, so the target has no time to react once they see the illumination. But if this heat gets any worse … it could distort the beam. If we shoot, we don’t want to miss.”
“Right.” He nodded. “All right … Take them.”
“We can wait, see if he moves away from that scrum—”
“They’re all hostiles. Take them.” Agency orders: along with Oberg, neutralize as many of the top leadership as possible.
The sergeant murmured, “Will this be a double-tap strike?”
Andres frowned. “What? Explain?”
The major said, “We carry two missiles on these long-range missions. On underwing points. SOP on strategic-effects strikes is to place one Jagger, wait ten minutes, then place the second. To hit any responders, aid personnel, the target’s senior staff, and family members. It also balances the airframe in terms of weight and drag.”
Andres felt even colder. “Maybe. Let’s hold off, see how the first one goes.”
Zein nodded and turned back to her keyboard. She flipped open a binder and rapped several keys, a rapid, cadenced tappa-tap-tap she’d obviously entered many times before. The release code, he assumed. Beside her the sergeants were also busy, one monitoring the track the system was holding on the intended target, the other using a second camera to do an azimuth check, scanning around the drone’s airspace. It all seemed well practiced, as if they did this every day. Which of course they probably did.
“You can put your headphones on now,” she told him.
Andres settled the headset over his ears. A series of tones was sounding. The missile was initializing.
Then a separate tone, a lower, ominous hum, almost an om.
“Warhead confirmed live,” Zein said. “Standing by to fire. On your command.”
The agent looked down again on the scene below, remote and at the same time intimate, and shook his head slowly. Teddy, you stupid fuck, his lips formed, though he didn’t say it aloud. You could have come home a hero. Had a nice retirement. But no, you had to be stubborn.
If only this could have ended differently.
He’d tried to make that happen. That it hadn’t been enough was not his fault.
He nodded. “Do it,” he said. “Do it now.”
TEDDY was limping back toward the second vehicle, where his rebels were gathering around something on the pavement. Chagatai, he assumed. Off to the side his horse was groaning, lying on the hot asphalt, blood still pumping down its side. He flipped the safety off the AK and placed it against the beast’s brow. It rolled tormented eyes to stare up at him. “Sorry, horse,” he said, and fired. The labored breathing stopped.
He was limping toward where his men were stripping the marshal of insignia, weapons, decorations, even the uniform jacket, when he felt something strange. Sensed a sudden brightness, all around.
He caught a flash from the corner of his eye and looked about him, puzzled. A flicker.
Then he looked up.
The light was so bright he could barely squint into it. So hot it drew dazzling rings around itself in shifting colors of the rainbow, inside his eye.
He stared up, entranced, wondering. Until all at once he understood.
It was a laser.
He knew then, and let his breath ease out. His shoulders sagged. He glanced at the closest tank, maybe fifty yards away. He wouldn’t reach it in time. Not if they were already illuminating. That came only in the last second or two before impact.
He started to raise a finger, a final ironical salute; then changed his mind. Instead, he lifted both hands, palms up. In the gesture of submission. Of resignation.
In that moment, a voice spoke to him from the sky once again. One of endless compassion, endless love. And endless understanding, of everything he had been and everything he had done.
There is no chance, it told him again, as it had on a mountain in the freezing dark, under the remorseless stars of the high and empty mountains. There is no choice.
You have always done My will.
He understood, then, that this turn of the page was all in the Plan. Had been, from the foundation of time and the universe.
He still didn’t understand how he could live his life by his own decisions, yet be part of some larger design. But now he accepted that it was not for him to understand, or even to question.
All he had to do was submit.
He spread his arms wider, palms up, welcoming whatever was to be, whatever was fated to come.
The light burned hotter above him, ever more brightly, like a descending sun.
Teddy Oberg, the Lingxiu al-Amriki, watched his fate descend. As his last moment ticked away he stood immobile, offering himself, enjoying the final instants of his life. Until sound and sight and thought itself ended, in an all-obliterating flash of transcendent and transforming light.