Among those landing troops, one helicopter was distinguished by virtue of having discharged only a few men. One of these was Carrera. His face was mostly covered against the wind and the sun. A clear area had been left open, however, revealing eyes that glowed when the angle to the rising sun was just right. Sometimes, so swore both enemies and friends, the eyes glowed on their own.
The eyes glowed now. Through them the Carrera watched calmly as the heavy mortar crews struggled to manhandle the guns out of the helicopters and into firing position. He watched for a few moments before, satisfied, he turned his attention elsewhere.
Below the hill on which he stood, some fifteen hundred meters from the camp, one of his infantry cohorts spread out to sweep across. Largely ineffective fire fell among them, bullets half spent shooting little demons of dust into the air. The advance went on regardless.
Carrera lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes. The magnified gaze swept across the camp where some hundreds of the enemy tried to slow down or stop his onslaught. Past them, so he saw, more hundreds of women and children—and some few spiritless men—crawled, walked and ran from the carnage.
His sweeping gaze touched upon a child of indeterminate sex, tugging at the half carbonized corpse of what was probably its mother. My children's mother was burned to death and yours warbled with glee, he thought, without any trace of emotion . . . he could not afford emotion, not now. Still, little one, I am sorry for you.
Further on, near the edge of the artillery-laid minefield, men, women and children who had sought that route for safety lay along an irregular line. It was much too far for Carrera to make out any details. His mind supplied them even so. You are not so broken as my own babies were when they were murdered.
Carrera's thoughts were interrupted by the soft padding of footsteps behind him. He recognized their source. Few walked with such near perfect quiet as his prized chief of his almost equally prized Pashtun scouts.
"Subadar Masood?" he said without turning.
"Sir!" exclaimed the senior Pashtun Scout, springing to attention near his side. A smile briefly crossed the subadar's seamed, craggy face. You, alone of all men, can hear me coming, he thought.
"The Scouts? All paths east and west?"
"Sealed tighter than a houri's hole, sir."
"Very good. I want as many prisoners as possible. Rewards are offered."
"Yes, sir. So my men have been told."
* * *
In the much colder air above the high pass breath gathered to frost a gray-shot beard. Hard they came, those puffs of air, pumped from struggling, bellowing lungs. They burst outward to form little horizontal pines before settling to and disappearing against the ubiquitous ice and snow.
Hard pumped the heart beneath the lungs, forcing warmth to freezing limbs, forcing blood to a brain straining to make sense of disaster.
Close to the ground, seeking to make himself invisible—one with the snow and the ice—the fugitive Abdul Aziz huddled. His eyes and ears quested for some route of escape, some way to survive to carry on the fight and avenge his family and his cause. Nothing looked very promising. Nothing sounded so, either.
In the cold, still air sound carried very well. The fugitive's ears caught easily the irregular sound of shots and screams. The fugitive cursed his enemies, then let fall a single tear which froze on his face before it had descended much more than an inch.
Ahead, the steady whop-whop-whop of helicopters told of escape routes being systematically cut off. Unseen, far above, the harsh drone of the Shturmoviks and the cursed infidels' gunships swept along, hunting for any who might have escaped the camp. Behind, the baying of dogs, hunting dogs with the sharpest of noses, told of other fugitives being tracked through the snow, ice and rock. From all around, at odd times, came shouts of triumph as some mercenary, apostate Pashtun Scout dragged a cowering man, woman, or child from a hiding place.
Despair crowded the fugitive's heart and mind; despair at loss, despair at ruin.
The thought of his own wife and children, now forever lost, was almost more than he could bear. "They'll pay. By the ninety-nine beautiful names of Allah, I swear they will pay for this," muttered the fugitive to himself.
The pitiless ice made no answer.
* * *
Havaldar Mohammad Kamal didn't answer either; though he heard. He pointed to one of his grinning men, then to another, and made a slight finger motion in the direction from which the sound had come.
The scouts glanced at each other. A wordless plan formed between them. Carrera would pay bounties for live prisoners. They'd take this one alive if they could.
Silently the two designated scouts began to creep forward and around. The military arts their prey had learned only partially, they had grown up with.
Interlude
11/6/409 AC, Botulph, Federated States of Columbia, Terra Nova
Robert Hennessey, Senior, sat quietly on a bench in the central park of this great metropolitan city on the Federated States West Coast. In the sun Hennessey read his newspaper. More especially, Hennessey read for word of the fighting in the Mar Furioso, the great sea of Terra Nova, where his son, Lieutenant Robert Hennessey, Junior, led a platoon of Federated States Marines in the long, slow, bloody drive across the sea. The sooner the war was over, the sooner young Bob was safe, the better, as far as the old man was concerned.
After all, I'm not getting any younger and I need the boy to take over the chair of the firm.
There was grounds for hope now, despite the obscenely long casualty lists posted every day from the fighting across central Taurus and on the islands of the Furioso. Just a few days before the papers had blared out of a second Yamatan city blasted to cinders by some new weapon developed in secret.
Whatever it takes to get the Yamatans to surrender short of invading the home islands, Robert Senior thought.
There was hardly a family in the entire country to be found that hadn't lost a son or a husband. Hennessey heard weeping and looked over to where a woman, formerly playing with her children on the grass, had broken down in tears.
Whatever it takes.
He heard a familiar horn beep. Folding his paper, Hennessey arose from the park bench to walk to where his chauffeur was exiting the limousine to hold open the door. He gave himself this one break, one hour every morning, to relax in the central park away from his responsibilities. The hour never seemed to last long enough.
From the corner of one eye Hennessey thought he saw a bright streak across the sky. He glanced up just as the streak became a flash that consumed him, his city, the young, weeping woman, her children, trees and buildings and park benches . . . everything.
UEPF Spirit of Peace
"Target One . . . destroyed, High Admiral . . . . Target Two . . . . destroyed."
Silently, High Admiral Laurence Napier, nodded his head. If ever a man looked spiritually crushed, that man was he, for he had just given the order and overseen the extinction of over one million people.