The Wahhabi strode toward his target, oblivious to the shooting around him. Allah sawf tuaffir, he thought. Allah will provide. The letting go of fear and worry—the confidence it provided—it wasn’t easy, but it was what had brought him this far. There was no need to question the universe now. The small man followed him, filming him with his iPad and ducking at every explosion.
Coward, the Wahhabi thought, as he glided through the firefight. He saw the red-haired female before him, and he relished the opportunity to show her his power. She was half turned when he cut into her AK-47—The steel Allah has blessed is strong!—and kicked her to the ground. It was unnecessary and fulfilling not to look at her again. She was a woman. She was nothing.
“No man can stop me!” the Wahhabi shouted, eyeing his prey, a man and a woman and—yes, a baby. It was obvious what had happened here, and why they needed to be cleansed.
“Prince Farhan Abdulaziz,” he intoned loudly so that it would rise above the battle sounds.
He drew his scimitar with care, like someone taking the last step on a long journey. “You are judged a kafir, unbeliever, unclean and apostate in the eyes of Allah. You are sentenced to die!”
He locked eyes with the young man and raised the scimitar above his head, but Farhan attacked with the zeal of an ISIS Emni, knocking the Wahhabi into the wall. The man ducked as Farhan went for the death blow, leaving a small crater in the CHU’s wall. The Wahhabi swung the sword at the prince, but the prince was too fast. Crouching, Farhan made fast jabs at the Wahhabi’s inner thighs, seeking the femoral artery. The Wahhabi hopped backward and counterattacked, but the narrow space hindered the long scimitar. He reversed the grip, so the scimitar was facing downward, and thrust.
The prince screamed, but something next to him was screaming louder. It was the pregnant girl, the Wahhabi saw too late. She had risen somehow, despite her condition. She had gone animal, attacking him with her claws, trying to gouge his eyes. He staggered to regain his balance and then grabbed her around the throat, lifting her up. She tore at his arm, drawing blood, but he only looked at it and laughed.
“Wasawf yakhudhuk swa’ alan,” he said, wrapping his hands around her throat. She gasped. He felt his power, and he reveled in it. “I will take you both now,” he said again in Arabic, marveling at the ecstasy of strangling a life. It was even better than the sword. “No man can kill me!” he said. “I am the sword of Allah. I am the prophet. No man can—”
He felt the pain shoot up his back and turned, dropping the lives in his hand. He saw the woman standing there, the one with the red hair, and he swung his sword in a wide arc. He felt it bite into her chest, felt its power, and saw the knife drop from her hand. He raised his sword again, to administer justice. He said, “No man can kill me—”
But he never finished. He fell to the ground, a metal pole thrust through his back, its sharp point pinning him to the CHU.
“I am no man, fucker,” Marhaz said.
I stabbed the man’s side, to make sure he was dead. He fell on me like a weight, and I pushed him off, his body slippery from blood. I was covered in it, we both were, and I wasn’t sure how much was mine.
A technical rounded the corner, then accelerated to run me down. I tried to stand, but I fell, slipping on guts. The world was fuzzy, and my balance poor. I crawled backward, away from the charging pickup truck. The ground shook, then the Martyr Maker burst through a CHU and rammed the charging technical, scattering man and machine into a million parts.
The gunner in the back of the next technical turned. He had twin antiaircraft guns, ZPU-2s, if I wasn’t mistaken. It might be enough, I thought, but the men on top of the Martyr Maker unloaded on the technical, blowing off the head of the gunner’s assistant beside him and allowing the Hemmet time to knock the vehicle aside and crush a technical coming up quickly to assist.
The Martyr Maker paused, its huge front wheels spinning. It backed up to free itself from the crushed truck, paused again, then turned toward me and began to advance. I knew it wasn’t coming for me. I was too small. It was headed for the center of Bear’s remaining mercenaries, to change the flow of the battle, but I was directly in its path.
I thought of trying to roll out of the way, but I had no strength. I thought of tossing a satchel charge over its walls as it passed, but I had no satchel. I thought of the way people put skulls inside wheels in movies, and then the wheels grind to a halt, until the skulls explode from the pressure. I thought of Mozart’s Fifth Violin Concerto, the first major piece of music I ever learned to play like a master.
The missiles struck. I couldn’t tell the type. They zoomed over my head, from behind me and moving fast, and then they exploded into the Martyr Maker.
The concussion blew me sideways. I lay there, ears ringing and my face in the bloody dirt, and summoned the strength to look up. The Martyr Maker was dead. I could tell the battle had broken and that the surviving ISIS militants, seeing their behemoth felled, were fleeing back to their barracks complex.
I thought of the stranger with the sword, and I looked toward Marhaz. I saw them: Kylah, Farhan, Marhaz, the madman. They were all on the ground, not moving.
I had to get to them. I started to stand, but slipped. I was halfway to my knees again when I felt the barrel in the back of my head and the click of the hammerlock.
“Don’t fucking think about it, traitor,” someone said. “Don’t even move.”