His father had had the car stop and beckoned Alena and someone Ham thought was probably her brother over.
He'd spoken to them very briefly. "Upon our return, and until you are or he is dead, you are all hired to be bodyguards to my son. Is this acceptable?"
The tears of gratitude and religious devotion had been answer enough.
The problem was, I don't feel like a god. I don't believe I am a god. I don't want to be a god. I'm just a little boy.
* * *
"Remember; easy now, boys," said the warrant officer in charge of the detachment. "Take her out gently."
The conex had room, more than enough room, for the Condor frame, motor, propeller, control station, a load of fuel, three sets of wings, lifting-launch system, or LLS, all the other parts required, and a tool kit for assembly. Unpacking and assembly presented no problem to the crews; they were the same ones that had disassembled and packed them back on the Isla Real.
The conex doors were unlocked and opened. Inside was the body, mounted on a wheeled framework. These, the crews pulled out onto the concrete floor of a stifling hangar, then proceeded to remove the fastening straps that had held the body and wings securely during shipment. There were also a dozen cots inside, secured around the control station at the far end. .
While one part of each crew went to work checking the engine, another lifted and then rotated the wings into position. These were secured in place with carbon fiber pins. A third team for each moved the lifting-launch system from the conex and trudged it out of the hangar where they checked tank pressure and began laying out the two balloons that would provide initial lift. Likewise, they unfurled the lifting and restraining lines that would, in the first case, attach to a jettisonable ring atop the Condor and, in the second case, hold the balloons to the heavy steel frameworks on which the birds rested. Still a fourth pair of teams moved out the cots and prepared the control stations inside the conexes.
The sun was up, and the air above the tarmac of the airstrip shimmering, by the time the Condors were ready to be wheeled out and hooked to the LLS. They were left under cover for the nonce, however.
The warrant officer in charge inspected both Condors from nose to tail, along with the ancillary gear. Eventually satisfied with his inspection, he sent the men to sleep in one corner of the hangar, then stood guard himself. There would be several nights of rehearsals before the night of launch.
29/9/469 AC, Hajar, Yithrab
In a cloth-hung room, cloth-hung the better to simulate the tents of the Bedouin ancestors, a tray of kibsa, lamb over rice with a yogurt based sauce, sat barely touched on the floor between the three brothers. Each man wore traditional robes, their heads covered with keffiyahs held in place by beaded cords. The keffiyahs were traditional white. The robes, however, varied, Bakr in white, Abdullah in blue, and Yeslam in red.
"This is like being in prison," said Yeslam ibn Mohamed ibn Salah, min Sa'ana, "like prison with a sentence of death on our heads!"
Bakr sighed. They'd all heard about the sentences of death, and the manner of death, of Mustafa and his followers. While the mercenaries had not advertised it, word had leaked out from the Pashtian Scouts that had actually carried out the crucifixions and bore the blame, or took the credit, for them. Khadijah, inconsolable, had taken to her rooms, shrieking and weeping at the indignity presumably inflicted on her beloved stepson Mustafa. The truth was much worse than she suspected.
"I am thinking," Bakr said, "that we'd all have been better off if someone had strangled Mustafa in the cradle. Yes, I believed we should support him, early on, but who could have suspected the kind of terror he would bring upon us."
"I suspected it," answered Abdullah. "You have not lived among those people. I have. There is a touch of vindictive madness about them. They keep it hidden, most of the time. But it was always there."
Yeslam shook his head. "Cursed be the day we sent Mustafa off on his grand adventure. Cursed be the money we gave him to start his project."
"I gave him no money," Abdullah insisted. "That was all the doing of you and Bakr. I counseled against it."
Both Bakr and Yeslam shrugged, eloquently. Spilled milk.
"Then counsel us now, brother mine. What do we do now?" Bakr asked. "How do we keep our clan's life blood from spilling now?"
"I would suggest a bribe," Abdullah answered, "except that we do not have enough money—no, not if we turned over everything we own—to buy our way out of this. Our enemy is implacable, inconsolable, and inhuman. He will keep us locked up here—nor would we be safe anywhere else in the world—until the judgment day."
"You mean, he's just like us," Yeslam said. He closed his eyes, hung his head, and said in despair, "Allah help us."
31/9/469 AC, Xamar Airport
The recon bird would go first. This was both to test Yithrabi air defense and warning radars, as well as to ensure that the secret was still secret, that nothing had tipped off the target and caused a mass evacuation. The other Condor, the drone, would follow in the trail cleared by the first.
For speed's sake, both crews got together to wheel out the first Condor. Just past the edge of the hangar they stopped and hooked up all five straps plus two electric wires. Four of the five straps that came from the balloon were attached to the steel frame. The fifth went to the jettisonable lifting ring atop the bird. The wires were hooked, one into a heavy duty control that would cause the balloon to cut itself away from the four restraining straps, on command, the other to the top of the Condor next to the ring.
These tasks completed, the crew began to fill the balloon with hydrogen. This was much cheaper than helium and, because the balloon was a throwaway that had only one mission, was not noticeably unsafe nor tactically unsound.
Gradually, the balloon filled until it had just positive buoyancy. At that point the crew stopped the filling and let it gently float to just above the Condor. They then resumed filling, until the restraining straps were taut.
The warrant officer in charge, holding the control box, looked over at Carrera and Fernandez. The latter nodded and the warrant pushed a green button. Instantly, all four restraining straps, plus the cable, were cut loose, falling to the ground around the Condor. At the same time, the balloon lurched upward, dragging the Condor with it, forcing its wings to bend slightly under the force of the acceleration and the resistance of the air.
* * *
The pilot sitting in the control station at one end of the conex watched the altimeter and Global Locating System readings on his screen carefully. Sometimes, prevailing winds could help a Condor out, carrying it nearer to its target without having to expend fuel or hunt for updrafts. This was not one of those cases; the winds were crosswise to the planned line of flight. In the long run, this would cost fuel. The pilot nodded to himself, then typed in a code and pressed a button.