The guard's body went into a fair simulacrum of the funky chicken, shaking and twitching like a mad thing. Blood gushed; noisily, it seemed to Musin. It sailed upward, then sprinkled down, some of it landing on his keffiyeh. In an instant, Tim's legs and torso, using the late guard's body for balance, were on and over the wall. In the process, he lost his keffiyeh even as part of his false beard, scraping the wall, tore off. Ignoring the loss, still gripping his knife, Tim set his feet on the parapet and began a silent trot for the woman on her knees further down.
"Kill him, Krav."
Kravchenko took a quick but deep breath, let it out, then did both over again. Between his first and second breath he gave the ground another careful look to ensure that there were no obstacles. Then, pistol in both hands for a steady hold, he began to walk backwards. As soon as the guard's head came into view he aimed but . . .
"Shit, Comrade Major, two thirds of the bastard's head is covered by the crenellations. I haven't got a decent shot."
The girl was milky white, with midnight hair long in the back and cut in bangs across the front. She looked perhaps fourteen. Even her breasts, exposed where she'd opened her shirt, were small and budding like a young teen's. Her eyes were not closed, as Musin had expected. Rather, they were not only open, they saw him. And yet the woman did nothing except continue the business on which she'd been engaged. Then she held up one hand, palm out, stopping Musin in his tracks. He pressed his back against the parapet wall.
Removing her mouth from the guard, she began to rise from her knees, snake-like, slithering up the guard's body. Once she reached her full height of perhaps five feet, she took both the guard's hands and slid them under her shirt. Then she reached up to pull the guard's head down for a kiss. While they kissed, and while her left hand stroked the back of his neck, under his keffiyeh, she used her right to lift her skirt. Strapped to her thigh, the sergeant saw, was a long, thin stiletto. He watched, fascinated, as she silently drew it, rotated it, and then plunged it through the guard's chin and into his brain, spinning the thing like a mortar's pestle once it was well inside.
Pulling out the stiletto, she backed up slightly, and began easing her victim's body to the floor. Musin moved in to help. He had a very difficult time keeping his eyes off the breasts that looked so very young and tender.
Seeing that, she began to button her shirt against his gaze. She said, in good if highly annoyed Russian, and in a fully grown woman's voice, "Those are for business, rarely for pleasure. And, speaking of which, it's about time you assholes showed up. I've had to entertain these two every night for the last three weeks to make sure I would be here when you came, as the old man ordered."
"You . . . ummm . . . serve the motherland," Musin said, as if by way of acceptance of the woman's . . . job. Besides, she was altogether too pretty to judge.
She sighed, and at that moment she really did look fourteen. "In my own way," she said. "I'm Lada and, no, I'm not fourteen."
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something.
-Pancho Villa, Last words, 1923
D Day, Nugaal Highway, Ophir
Under its thin coat of dust, the limousine was brightly polished. It bounced and jarred over the potholed highway between the airfield and the town of Nugaal.
"And how many guards?" Welch asked Mr. Dayid, as the two sped up the highway. Terry rescrewed the suppressor onto the muzzle of his submachine gun as they rolled.
Pigfucker drove the limo. It was followed by the largest truck the parking lot in front of the palace had held, a more or less long-bed five ton. That was driven by Ryan, with Graft and Semmerlin in the back. All the men from Terry on down sported freshly touched up "Black-is-Beautiful." It wouldn't fool anybody for more than a second. That said, given the velocity of a bullet, even a subsonic one, a second was awfully long time to be laboring under an error.
The accountant shrugged, answering, "It varies sometimes but never more than a dozen. Of those, not more than two or three are actually on duty at any given time."
"And the rest?" Welch asked.
"At this time of the morning? Asleep. Probably with one of the slave girls each."
Fuck. More slaves. I will not, not, NOT take on responsibility for liberating any more slaves.
"Your slaves?" Terry asked, a note of malice creeping into his voice.
"No," Jama Dayid said. "I follow the teachings of al-Nabhani, UHBP, that times have changed, that slavery is wrong, and that Allah intended that when times changed slavery would be seen as wrong. But . . . I am probably in the minority."
Terry just grunted. How did one answer that? He tolerates? Am I as guilty because I've tolerated? I don't feel a twinge of regret about those Afghan men Stauer and his commandos killed; but what about the women and kids they carted off? I tolerated . . . and I have much to make up for.
"How many slaves in the town."
"Hundreds," Dayid said. "Too many. Mostly individually owned, and . . . maybe, too . . . maybe all not that unhappy."
In a way, the discussion of the plight of the slaves put Terry in the proper mood. Thus, even though he might have been able to force the guards on the gates to Dayid's house to surrender, the thought didn't even cross his mind. The limo rolled up; a guard came over, and Terry shot him down like a dog even as Pigfucker cut down the one on the other side.
Then Terry got out of the limo, shot first one then the other man again, to make sure. He opened the lift gate himself, then waved Hammell through. A few brisk steps brought him to the guardhouse, a small mud brick structure built against the wall. That half-sleeping guard he shot with a short burst, every round of four slamming the man's midsection.
"Go round up your family," He told Dayid. "Pigfucker, go with him."
As Dayid and Hammell walked off, Terry called out, "Semmerlin, come with me. Hey, Mr. Dayid, where's the guard barracks?"
While Mr. Dayid and Pigfucker, along with several men of Dayid's family, helped children and older people onto the back of the fiveton, Graft standing just behind the cab, with a machine gun, watched Welch and Semmerlin walk back from the barracks. Both Terry's submachine gun and Semmerlin's VSSK smoked from their muzzles. A half dozen veiled women walked behind the two. Some of the women wept, softly, half bent over, bodies shuddering with shock and fear. Still others skipped on dancing feet.
"You always were a soft touch, Terry." Graft shouted. "How the fuck you plan on fitting them all in two helicopters?"
"I don't fucking know. Have them all piss, shit, and puke first, maybe?"
D-Day, Bandar Cisman, Ophir
While bullets still occasionally snapped overhead, the shooting was rather desultory now, on both sides. That was fine, as far as Cazz was concerned. He wasn't expected to take the town on his own, anyway.
And fat chance I'd have doing it, with seven or eight hundred armed men in the buildings, and a hundred and twenty or so of us, and no heavy armor.
Besides, I'm only required to make sure everyone stays put until the Irish bastard gets back with the heavy shit and his captives.
Cazz hadn't yet had call to use either the one helicopter-Fucking green beanies; I was supposed to have two-or the two armed CH-801s to actually strike the town. The Hip was engaged in running ammunition, especially mortar ammunition-seven and a half tons of it-and small arms to his own men, while the two fixed wing jobs, having wrecked all the boats, circled counterclockwise above, keeping well outside of machine gun range, reporting whatever there was to be seen.