instrument, one part of the great plan that would call the Transfiguration down upon the world.
Still, he had to keep them all working together until the end—until the time when God would sort them out.
“That’s enough, Burlington!” he shouted. “Got to leave enough alive to take the story back to their people! Courtney—take us out of here!”
“Saw someone with a home video camera point it up at us!” Simpson said.
“Good!” said Coggins. “Very good! They’ll take us for those American mercenaries hired by President Mofi!”
The Blackhawk turned and headed back to the cargo ship the SOT had waiting for them ten miles offshore. Coggins was eager to get there so he could monitor the news and do what he could to encourage the war in Carthaga along. All he’d done today was strike the spark. The brushfire must be fanned to life. From little brushfires great burnings would come.
And he was confident of it; he could feel the thrum of the War Lord in the air. The great conflagration was coming.
~
Watching the gunship depart, coughing from the smoke of burning trucks and helicopters, smelling cooked human flesh, Major Abbide felt a strange energy rising in him. Another time he might’ve felt raped, disillusioned, despairing over what had happened to his battalion.
But today, he felt something else—and it was as if the feeling were rising from the earth at his feet, soaking itself into him. He trembled with it, felt drugged with it, energized by it, and before his mind’s eye floated visions of carnage: the destruction of his enemies. He would take his men and he would punish the sons of whores who ran this country. He would incite the Arab majority on Carthaga to rise up and massacre the Carthagan blacks—who had power, after all, only because President Mofi’s family connections gave him control of the offshore oil rigs. Mofi, in his mad arrogance, had surely sent these mercenaries in their gunship to betray the agreement, to murder Abbide’s men before they left the island, to show he had no respect for the Sudan.
Abbide heard the other survivors roaring in fury, turned to see them shaking their fists at the now distant gunship, all of them burning with the same martial hatred, a hunger for revenge that was like a fever, a hot singing in their nerves—a fury more powerful than anything they’d ever felt before. It seemed to have a life of its own.
“We will give them war!” Major Abbide shouted. “And with war they will pay the price for what they have done! We will kill them all!”
And his men, as one, cheered with a sound like a hundred missiles shrieking through the air.
The Caspian Sea
“What the bloody hell are you telling them?” Constantine demanded.
“Silence, British cur!” Spoink snarled, slapping Constantine so hard that he staggered and nearly went over the side of the cabin cruiser.
Two of the Morals Police had come along on the peeling white forty-foot cruiser, one of them the coxswain piloting them out into the midst of the Caspian, the other a short man in a robe, sandals, and fez, scraggly of both beard and teeth, which he bared at Constantine as he pointed his submachine gun at his head. He shouted something in Farsi that Constantine—clutching the railing of the cabin cruiser—laboriously translated as You will not speak or you will die!
Awed by the famous face belonging to the body that Spoink inhabited, the captain of the Morals Police had given Spoink his .45 pistol. Spoink now waved the gun with authority, making it glint in the sunlight as, speaking in fluent Farsi, he ordered the robed coxswain to cut the engine. The pilot obeyed and the battered cabin cruiser sputtered to a slow, silent gliding in the low waves.
Constantine looked for the shore and was troubled when he found he could no longer see it. They were in deep water out here. He was in deep water in more ways than one. He figured Spoink to have been taken over by Lucifer or some other diabolic
Still, he had to keep them all working together until the end—until the time when God would sort them out.
“That’s enough, Burlington!” he shouted. “Got to leave enough alive to take the story back to their people! Courtney—take us out of here!”
“Saw someone with a home video camera point it up at us!” Simpson said.
“Good!” said Coggins. “Very good! They’ll take us for those American mercenaries hired by President Mofi!”
The Blackhawk turned and headed back to the cargo ship the SOT had waiting for them ten miles offshore. Coggins was eager to get there so he could monitor the news and do what he could to encourage the war in Carthaga along. All he’d done today was strike the spark. The brushfire must be fanned to life. From little brushfires great burnings would come.
And he was confident of it; he could feel the thrum of the War Lord in the air. The great conflagration was coming.
~
Watching the gunship depart, coughing from the smoke of burning trucks and helicopters, smelling cooked human flesh, Major Abbide felt a strange energy rising in him. Another time he might’ve felt raped, disillusioned, despairing over what had happened to his battalion.
But today, he felt something else—and it was as if the feeling were rising from the earth at his feet, soaking itself into him. He trembled with it, felt drugged with it, energized by it, and before his mind’s eye floated visions of carnage: the destruction of his enemies. He would take his men and he would punish the sons of whores who ran this country. He would incite the Arab majority on Carthaga to rise up and massacre the Carthagan blacks—who had power, after all, only because President Mofi’s family connections gave him control of the offshore oil rigs. Mofi, in his mad arrogance, had surely sent these mercenaries in their gunship to betray the agreement, to murder Abbide’s men before they left the island, to show he had no respect for the Sudan.
Abbide heard the other survivors roaring in fury, turned to see them shaking their fists at the now distant gunship, all of them burning with the same martial hatred, a hunger for revenge that was like a fever, a hot singing in their nerves—a fury more powerful than anything they’d ever felt before. It seemed to have a life of its own.
“We will give them war!” Major Abbide shouted. “And with war they will pay the price for what they have done! We will kill them all!”
And his men, as one, cheered with a sound like a hundred missiles shrieking through the air.
The Caspian Sea
“What the bloody hell are you telling them?” Constantine demanded.
“Silence, British cur!” Spoink snarled, slapping Constantine so hard that he staggered and nearly went over the side of the cabin cruiser.
Two of the Morals Police had come along on the peeling white forty-foot cruiser, one of them the coxswain piloting them out into the midst of the Caspian, the other a short man in a robe, sandals, and fez, scraggly of both beard and teeth, which he bared at Constantine as he pointed his submachine gun at his head. He shouted something in Farsi that Constantine—clutching the railing of the cabin cruiser—laboriously translated as You will not speak or you will die!
Awed by the famous face belonging to the body that Spoink inhabited, the captain of the Morals Police had given Spoink his .45 pistol. Spoink now waved the gun with authority, making it glint in the sunlight as, speaking in fluent Farsi, he ordered the robed coxswain to cut the engine. The pilot obeyed and the battered cabin cruiser sputtered to a slow, silent gliding in the low waves.
Constantine looked for the shore and was troubled when he found he could no longer see it. They were in deep water out here. He was in deep water in more ways than one. He figured Spoink to have been taken over by Lucifer or some other diabolic
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