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  "Cease fire! Cease fire!" Cruz ordered the weapons squad and then began to trot low from gun to gun, making sure the crews had heard.

  Idly, Cruz wondered if there would be prisoners. Hopefully so; this is enough excitement for the day.

  Then the brace of Turbo-Finch Avengers swooped in like eager hound dogs. "Where you want it?" they panted. Their lives had been a bit short of excitement over the last year, too, and it showed.

  "Save it," Cruz answered, "but thanks for stopping by. This party's about over."

  "Fuck!"

  Over the radio Cruz heard Montoya laugh. "What? You guys think me and my Cazador Compadre are going to leave anything for the likes of you."

  "Tell 'em, Montoya," Cruz added, with a snicker.

  "Hey, Cruz, I got a postcard from Khalid in Taurus a few months back. Nothing too personal but he says he's doing well."

  "Good old Khalid," said Cruz.

  21/9/466 AC, Westminster, Anglia, Tauran Union

  The small brass placard above the mailbox said, "Mahrous ibn Mohamed ibn Salah, min Sa'ana." That name and address matched his briefing packet was no particular surprise to Khalid. This was his fifth hit in two years and, so far, there had never been a mistake in identity. What he would do if he ever was called upon to make a hit that turned out to be a mistake, Khalid didn't know. At this point, he suspected, he'd probably yawn, then go to a café and read the paper. He'd grown a steel shell, had Khalid, these last five years.

  Unlike the previous four, this target was "hardened." This is to say that his house was detached, with broad lawns around it and a wall around them, that his sedan—sedans, rather; Mahrous kept four Phaetons—was armored. He had bodyguards, mostly veterans of the Royal Anglian Army's Special Operations Directorate, or SOD. He was believed to wear body armor of the very highest caliber, religiously. Moreover, Mahrous rarely traveled the same way from his home twice in a week.

  If the swine wasn't so paranoid, thought Khalid, I'd have offed his ass months ago.

  For those months Khalid had considered and discarded one option after another. Shoot him from a distance? No way; nothing elevated hereabouts and no really good firing positions. Besides, I'm a good long range shot, but not a great one. We Arabs rarely are; I don't know why. Shoot him close up? I'd never get through the bodyguards who are, let's admit it, first rate men. Bomb the house? No way to get close enough with enough material. Bomb the office? Similar problem. Bomb the Phaetons? Which one. How do I get to it? No way.

  He'd even considered leaving a small bomb with a chemical agent in it but . . . It wouldn't surprise me a bit if those SOD types carry atropine and nerve agent antidote.

  In the end, Khalid had gone for something simple. There was a sewer that ran the length of the street Mahrous lived on. That sewer had one manhole cover not far from the driveway to Mahrous' residence. Khalid had simply made a radio control detonator from parts obtained at a local hobby store, then manufactured—as he had been trained to do in Volga—about fifteen pounds of PETN, pentaerythritol tetranitrate, in his apartment in the city. "Factor P for plenty," the Volgan instructor had said. Fifteen pounds of PETN was more than plenty. An electric blasting cap he lifted from a poorly-guarded construction site.

  A visit to the local courthouse had given Khalid the map for the sewer system. A couple of visits to three different uniform shops had given him a fair simulacrum of a sewer worker's uniform and accoutrements. A used automobile dealer provided the van and a paint shop changed the van's color to green to match those used by the public works authority. A few telephonic complaints to the PWA had given him, after a bit of figuring, a schedule and therefore a time frame in which there would be no sewer workers down below.

  Making a package of the PETN, descending into the sewers—Blech, that stank!—and finding the right manhole cover had been easy.

  And so, now, Khalid waited and watched the road and the manhole from a café not far from the manhole cover. He'd been waiting for four days. If Mahrous didn't soon use the road that led by the bomb, Khalid would have to think of something else. You just couldn't leave a bomb lying around indefinitely. And if it was found, if Mahrous or his bodyguards got wind of it, their paranoia level would go, oh, way up.

  "Which would be saying something," Khalid muttered, as he sipped his coffee.

  As Khalid put down the cup, he spied a long, black Phaeton easing out of the barred and guarded gate that fronted the driveway from Mahrous' house. He didn't tense; he seen the same thing three times already, since planting his bomb, and three times the Phaeton had gone in a different direction.

  Ah, but Allah smiles upon those who wait, Khalid thought, with a smile of his own. Now let's see if the wretch doesn't turn off before he reaches the manhole. And . . . . .bingo. They might stop outright, but there are no good turns before the bomb.

  Judging the speed of the Phaeton, Khalid carefully timed his reach into the side pocket of the jacket he wore. His hand curled around a small transmitter, his finger caressing the detonator button. At precisely the right moment, he pushed that button and smiled.

  * * *

  The explosion went off directly under Mahrous' ample posterior. Besides cracking the street around the manhole cover, sending chunks of asphalt, concrete and rebar flying, it lifted the cover strait up at an amazing rate of speed. The cover cut right through the Phaeton's transmission and then cover and transmission together mashed Mahrous' anus into his brain, forcing the resulting mix right through and out of the Phaeton's armored roof.

  The blast was also sufficient to kill the ex-SOD driver and guard, both seated in front, as well as Mahrous' eldest son, sitting beside him.

  * * *

  Knocked over by the blast, as was nearly everyone else within two hundred feet, Khalid stood up, forcing an artificial expression of shocked disbelief onto his face. Like other people, he ran forward to try to help the injured. Khalid, however, merely wanted to confirm results.

  He saw that all four tires had been blasted off the torn and twisted wreckage of the Phaeton, and that it was burning merrily. Since there were no screams coming from inside, despite the fire, he was reasonably confident that his hit had been a success. Once a sufficient crowd had gathered to cover his withdrawal, Khalid simply melted through it and was away.

  I love my job, he thought. Where else could I get both revenge and excitement in these quantities and to these qualities.

  29/9/466 AC, War Department, Hamilton, FD, Federated States of Columbia

  Fuck, this sort of "excitement" I can live without, mused Virgil Rivers, waiting impatiently, and even nervously, at the office of the secretary of war for the Federated States. River, a tall, slender, café-au-lait colored general officer could not be said to be handsome. He had, however, a friendly manner and infectious grin that most women found very attractive. He'd married well as a result of it.

  Ron Campos was gone as SecWar, gone with the outgoing Federalist administration. Truth be told, nobody much missed him. That is, nobody missed him yet. Virgil Rivers suspected a lot of people were going to miss him, to miss him badly and soon. The new SecWar, James K. Malcolm, Progressive, was Campos' match in arrogance, in Rivers' opinion, but lacked both the former SecWar's patriotism and his determination. Indeed, it was widely believed that, given a choice between advancing the interests of the Federated States, or looking out for the interests of his childhood summer home, the Gallic Republic, Malcolm would always choose Gaul. Nonetheless, Malcolm was one of a very few Progressives with any military background at all. Thus, he had been a seeming natural for secretary of war in the new administration.

  He's a natural buffoon, Rivers thought, a natural gigolo, a natural panderer and an unnatural citizen. On the other hand, his goddamned tan is just a little too orange to be natural. Well, what can one expect from a natural fake.

  Rivers' collar sported the two stars of a major general now. He'd always known he'd rise at least this high, even as a little boy. Thank you, Daddy, for training me as
well as you did. The only question was would he rise any higher. He considered it no better than even money that he would. Rather, he had considered it no better than even money. With Malcolm as SecWar, he would now have given long odds against.

  Still, I've had a good run, a damned good run for someone who's great-grandpappy retired as a master sergeant in the horse cavalry.

  Rivers ported a laptop under his left arm. It contained the SecWar's daily briefing on the ongoing war. Briefing the secretary was so unpleasant, however, that it had quickly become a rotating duty. Today was River's day and he was not looking forward to it. He'd already been kept standing in front of the secretary's desk, rudely ignored, for almost ten minutes while Malcolm pretended to be busy with a file. It was another five minutes before the secretary closed the file and looked up. He didn't bother to rise or offer to shake hands.

  Just as well; I'm pissed enough right now that if he did I'd probably do or say something that would move my chances of another star from dismal to none.

  "Have a seat, Rivers," Malcolm ordered.

  Rivers sat next to the desk, opened the laptop and faced it toward the secretary. The outside of the computer's top had a smaller screen that showed the same images as the main one. Rivers controlled the images with a small device he retrieved from his shirt pocket. He pressed a button on the device. A color map of the Republic of Sumer, highly annotated, appeared on both screens.

  Malcolm looked the map over briefly. There wasn't much to see; the war in Sumer had been steadily winding down for two years. While the first three and a half years had cost the Federated States an average of just under one hundred men a month, killed, this had dropped down into the low double and occasionally single digits.

  Rivers had been told not to offer commentary; that the secretary, being a lawyer, liked to direct the briefings like cross examinations in court.

  "I see the Balboan sector has almost no incidents, General. To what do you attribute that?"

  "They started off well and were able to enlist a great deal of Sumeri help early on," Rivers answered. He did not add, though he considered adding, and they're so ruthless almost nobody in their sector is willing to cross them.

  "And we're paying for that?"

  "Yes, Mr. Secretary. Under your predecessor we had an arrangement whereby the Balboans fielded, or sponsored the fielding of, combat capable forces, for a price that was originally about fifty-five percent of what the same force would have cost us. In addition, we had to provide medical care equivalent to what we give our own, but in Balboa. The price has slowly crept up as the cost of living rose in Balboa in response to all the money they earned from us. Right now it's about two thirds of our equivalent cost. That's still a bargain, since the blood is theirs, not ours."

  Malcolm frowned. He'd known about the Balboans and had mostly negative feelings. Many of these feelings stemmed from rumors. He'd heard the Balboans used torture with gleeful abandon, though no one had ever provided proof. It was said they were conducting an international campaign of terror and assassination against both the common enemy, the Salafi Ikhwan, and any critics of their Legion; though, here too, they covered their tracks well. In a sense, it didn't even matter if the charges were true; the international and progressivist press believed they were true and acted accordingly. There was very little criticism of the Balboan force in the newspapers or on television.

  He knew they'd put to death a number of international journalists for spying, war crimes and generally aiding the enemy; they made no secret of any of that. Neither did they make any secret of their penchant for enforcing the laws of war in the most forthright and barbaric fashions. Indeed, they made it a point to broadcast those reprisals.

  They did not broadcast reprisals taken against family members though that, too, happened. So it was said and widely believed, in any case.

  "How large a force do they have?" Malcolm asked. "How much does it cost us? How big a force could they field?"

  This information Rivers had at his fingertips. He'd been, in a partial and roundabout way, instrumental in the Federated States' hiring his old friend Patrick Hennessey, now going by the name Carrera, and the force he had raised. He'd kept up on developments. After all, Hennessey had always been entertaining.

  "In theory, Mr. Secretary, they have four divisions. They call them 'legions,' which is a little confusing as the overall organization is called "the Legion." Then again, we call the Army 'the Army' even though we have eight 'armies' under it.

  "Of those four, one is forward deployed in Sumer. That's the only one that, officially, we pay for. The other three are back in Balboa in varying states of training and manning. The forward legion usually numbers around twelve to thirteen thousand men. The total active force is about thirty-three or thirty-four thousand and rising. There is also a reserve force but they are very tight lipped about that. We don't think it's as large as the active force . . . yet. They could probably double or triple their force if they wanted to. So far they have given no indication that they do want to. What they have raised, so far, costs us on the order of seventeen billion drachma a year."

  Malcolm's eyes bugged. "We pay seventeen billion drachma to some pisspot North Colombian city state?"

  "Actually, no, Mr. Secretary. We pay it directly to the Legion. They give a portion, a very small portion, less than a percent, to the government of Balboa. But they're only a non-governmental organization, sponsored by that government. They are not controlled by it. They're not controlled by anybody."

  "Oh, really? We'll just see about that."

  Goodbye, third star.

  "No, Mr. Secretary," Rivers answered forcefully. "Don't see about that. They're quite capable now, financially, of continuing the war on their own for quite a few years, if not quite indefinitely. If you try to control them you'll just find you've let slip any control we have for a control we can't have. I know their commander. Don't try to control him. It just won't work."

  31/9/466 AC, Isla Real, Quarters #2

  I think the thing I like about this, thought Lourdes, on her knees with her head bobbing and her tongue working, is the control it gives me, not just over the sex, but over Patricio. But then, she thought as her husband pulled her head off, stood her up and pressed her back to the wall, but then he doesn't always let me keep control.

  Despite having borne two children, a boy and a girl, Lourdes' body was unmarked, well shaped and still very firm. Tall, almost as tall as her husband, she was quite slender except in those places a woman should be more full. If anything, her breasts had improved from her pregnancies.

  Cupping one of those, Carrera bent his head to tease the nipple of the other with his tongue. Lourdes loved that, he knew.

  She let him continue in that for a long while, moans of sheer desire occasionally escaping her lips. When she couldn't stand it anymore she pulled his head up to kiss more intimately.

  Balancing her back on the wall, Lourdes arched her hips forward and reached down to guide. A small gasp escaped her lips as Carrera thrust up and forward. The gasp became a long moan as he filled her fully.

  And, for a while, she didn't think of much of anything.

  * * *

  "Do you really have to go so soon?" she asked Carrera, later as they lay in bed. "You only come home about five or sometimes six weeks a year. Are you so anxious to leave me."

  Carrera sighed, then answered, "I take more leave than the troops get."

  "Yes," she conceded, "but they only spend one year away for ever three years they spend here."

  "That's only now," he countered. "Most of the leaders have been gone half the time since the war began."

  "And you've been gone eighty percent of it."

  To that Carrera had no really good answer. He went silent, thinking, They don't carry the curse I do, the obligation to destroy those who murdered Linda and the children.

  After a short time he offered, "You were with me there until you came up pregnant with the second child. Besides, the war w
on't last forever."

  "It will last too long; long enough for me to become a dried up old prune."

  "Never happen," he answered, adding, "You're one of those women who will keep her looks into old age. I can tell."

  Lourdes shook her head, doubtfully. "I'll age, the same as anyone. And you'll grow tired of me."

  "Never happen," he repeated, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her head onto his shoulder. "For one thing, you're a lot younger than I am. By the time you're a wrinkled up old lady, I'll be using a walker, too old to get tired of anything except pissing myself."

  She giggled at the image. "Now that," she said, "will never happen."