Hei-lian shook her head. The other Committee aces were useless in an armored battle. Toad Man, the Lama, Snowblind, Brave Hawk . . . the Committee sent us its B team, not the powerful aces who broke the Caliphate’s army at Aswan last year. Whether John Fortune had simply misjudged, or had regarded Africa as unimportant, his parsimony was about to lose it all. If only Tom still lived.
“Hei-lian?”
She stopped and spun and glared. Sprout had emerged from the French doors of the palace onto the terrace. She wore jeans and a T-shirt. She clutched a slim picture book to her chest. “I’m sad,” she said. She held out the book. “Will you read to me?”
No! Hei-lian’s mind raged. Get away from me, you unnatural thing! Why do they suffer you to wander the palace still, without your father to protect you?
Her eyes welled. “Yes,” she heard herself say, as from the depths of a pit of sadness. She took the book. Charlie and the Mouse Ace, the cover read. “Let’s sit here in the shade.”
They sat on white-enameled metal chairs beneath an awning. Hei-lian’s fingers trembled as she opened the brightly colored cover.
“ ‘Charlie was a little boy with a big secret,’ ” she read. “ ‘He had a friend who was a mouse. And more than that—’ ”
“So when I was little,” Buford was saying when John Fortune opened his eyes, “Uncle Rayford, he had him these naughty magazines.”
John raised his head from the sand. “Oh, shit,” he said with a groan. His head dropped back. His neck felt like boiled pasta. “Am I naked?”
“I don’t think it matters much now, John,” said Simone. She knelt beside him. “Just try to rest.”
“Did I see like half a dozen tanks pointing their guns at us?”
“Eight tanks, yes,” Snowblind said. “Nigerian ones. Look just like Vijayantas.”
“Anyways,” said Buford, who sat beside them with his legs drawn up, “I never saw no bad pictures nor wanted to. But Uncle Rayford, he showed me the funnies. I liked them.”
“How badly am I hurt, Simone?” John asked.
She flicked a glance along his body. Then she turned her head. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Now, he showed me this one I still remember. It had like this big hero guy with a big old mace, and a couple little scrawny guys with a pitchfork and a club.”
“Why aren’t they killing us?” John asked.
“I think they wait to see if we have any more surprises. Then again, they may just be toying with us.”
“All around them, see, there was thousands and thousands of these knights on horses. And they all had spears pointed at them three fellas.”
John’s sense of detachment from reality was beginning to fade. Which really sucked. Even Isra’s voice was stilled. Exhaustion had overcome her. For the first time since that dramatic evening in his mother’s L.A. home, he was alone. I should be with Kate, he thought, picturing her face, her smile. I never had a chance to say good-bye. “Snowblind,” he croaked. “You couldn’t, like—”
He had his eyes closed but somehow felt her headshake. “What’s the military term for lots and lots of vehicles?”
He sighed. “A shitload.”
“There’s a shitload of Nigerians, John. They are all around us.”
“So anyway,” Buford said, “this fella with the big chest and big old shoulders, he’s saying to his pals, ‘Don’t worry, boys. They can’t stop men who want to be free!’ ”
He laughed and laughed. “Kill me now,” John said.
“Be careful what you ask for,” Simone said. “Their gun barrels are zeroing in on us.”
John wondered if their deaths would make the evening news. Back home, the second season of American Hero was the most watched show in America. The fighting in Nigeria made page six in the Times, maybe. The only news crew on the scene was the one from China. It’s just Africa, he thought bitterly. No one cares. “Help me,” he said. Simone lifted his head and scooted a knee under it to support it. Which he needed; it weighed at least a ton. No question the gunners in the tanks were tuning up their aim. “I guess the douche bags’re just gonna smoke us—”
Down from the sky speared a shaft of white light. It transfixed the middle MBT like a pin through a bug. It was so bright it cast shadows on the dunes.
The tank erupted in blue-white fire.
Another sunbeam stabbed down, another.
Another.
Each left a pyre blazing on the sand.
Big diesel engines growled. The Nigerian armor began to mill. Main guns probed the air, seeking targets.
A man landed on a tank’s front glacis. A white man with shaggy golden hair. A man who laughed. He grabbed the main gun, heaved. The whole multiton turret came right up out of the well. Grunting, he threw it end over end through the air. It smashed down on top of another tank, dented in its turret. Yellow fire enveloped both as their ammo stowage went up.
From twenty meters away another tank fired at him. It couldn’t miss. Yet somehow he still stood, laughing.
“Shell went right through him,” Buford said. “Pretty fine trick, you ask me.”
The man stretched out his hand. Red flame lanced from the palm. It shot down the gun barrel and gushed out of the breech, which the loader had opened to receive a fresh shell.
The shell blew up. So did all the others.
Just like fucking that, one tank remained. It churned away as fast as its treads would carry it, throwing up a great bow wave of sand. The infantry and lesser vehicles had already fled. Simba armored vehicles fired after them, over the heads of the three Committee aces. They didn’t try to pursue.
“You have got to be shitting me,” John Fortune said. “Tell me I’m hallucinating.” Maybe they would live to see another day after all. Kate, he thought.
Somehow his companions heard his feeble croak above all the explosions. “It’s the Radical,” Snowblind said. “Ce n’est pas possible. But it is him.”
Tom Weathers vanished. Reappeared at once, ten feet from John and a yard in the air. He landed a little unsteadily, walked forward a couple steps.
“Whew,” he said. “Takes it right out of you. But I’ll get my second wind in a minute. Then we’ll get it on.”
Somehow John remembered his duty. “Leave it, Weathers,” he said. “It’s good to have you back. But you’re part of a team, now. Just chill with us. We’ll sort things out.”
Smiling, Weathers shook his head. “That’s a big no-can-do, Mr. Establishment Man. It’s time to deal out some revolutionary justice.”
He vanished.
“How does he do that?” John asked the air.
A Simba infantry squad came down the dune. Their tall, turbaned Sikh officer shouted for medics. Dark hands propped John to a sitting position and held a canteen to his torn lips. Simone got up and went to stand next to Buford.
Away across the dunes, white light flashed against the sky like distant lightning. A black smoke stalk sprang up in response. A moment later, a rumble reached John’s ears. Another flare lit the sky. “I got me a bad feelin’ about this,” Buford says. “Never seen a feller look so crazy.”
Snowblind crossed her arms and leaned against him. “What he said,” she said.
Tom burned through energy like a drunk playboy’s bankroll in a Monte Carlo casino. But all he had to do was land and breathe for a few minutes. Then he was good to go again.
It was as if killing these running-dog colonial lackeys recharged him.
He leapt into the sky, seeking more lives to take. A mile ahead he saw a sizable village. As he approached, climbing for a clearer look, he saw fleeing Nigerian armor had locked the narrow streets up tight.