Heart of the Assassin

by Robert Ferrigno

  "Go ahead, kill me," taunted ibn-Azziz through clenched teeth. Rakkim had broken his nose slamming his face into the toilet--blood streamed down the Grand Mullah's bony face, his eyes flaring with hate. "Kill me, you kaffir scum. I'll be in Paradise--"

  Rakkim backhanded him, sent him sprawling onto the wet stone floor. "No room in Paradise for you, boy wonder. Not while the ovens of hell need shit to fire them."

  Ibn-Azziz struggled to get to his knees, water still running from his nostrils.

  Rakkim's earpiece vibrated--Sarah leaving him an encrypted message. She must have boosted the signal to reach him this far underground, which meant it was important, but right now, he had things to take care of. In the corridor, Rakkim could see two of ibn-Azziz's guards, dead, like the other six he had killed getting down here. A cramped cell deep under the main prison, torn from the raw rock and reserved for the worst of the worst, and ibn-Azziz had made it his home.

  "Come on," said ibn-Azziz, breathing hard. Water dripped from his scraggly beard. "You're not giving up that easy, are you?"

  There was a shift change in less than an hour. Plenty of time to escape. Not nearly enough time to get ibn-Azziz to tell what he knew.

  Ibn-Azziz held up his trembling hands. "Break my fingers...perhaps that will make me talk." He wriggled his fingers. "Do it."

  Nothing on the walls. No mattress. Just the toilet and a tiny cold-water sink. Condensation dotted the ceiling. "You ever think of redecorating?" said Rakkim. "Maybe put in a nice rug...or one of those free-standing fireplaces--"

  "Shall I take you to see Jenkins?" said ibn-Azziz, still on his knees, enjoying the discomfort. "He's got a lovely perch on the Bridge of Skulls."

  "I've already talked with him. He's out of your reach now."

  "He...betrayed you, did he tell you that?" Ibn-Azziz spat out one of his teeth, sent it bouncing across the stone floor. "He gave up your name as though offering me a sweet."

  "He told me."

  Ibn-Azziz tried to hide his surprise.

  "I told him it didn't matter. It just gave me an excuse to kill you. I should have done it sooner, but I didn't have time to study your habits. Jenkins helped me out on that."

  "Do I appear frightened?" Ibn-Azziz wiped his nose, his torso crisscrossed with old scars. "Do you think death scares me?"

  "No...I don't think it does. Not yet."

  "Not yet? Do you intend to school me in fear?" Ibn-Azziz asked. "I bring pain, I do not feel it."

  "You bring a lot of pain too. I've seen your handiwork."

  Ibn-Azziz held his head high. "This world is a sewer, a vast cesspool fouled with sin and depravity. The people are beasts, rutting and sweating, abandoning Allah--"

  "You need to get out more."

  Ibn-Azziz launched himself at Rakkim, but Rakkim tripped him, knocked him back down, his head hitting so hard the sound echoed.

  "You might want to put some ice on that," said Rakkim.

  Ibn-Azziz rolled over.

  "You're going to be a real disappointment to the Old One."

  "Don't even speak his name."

  "Yeah, it is a little pompous. 'The Old One.' Ooooh, I can feel my nut-sack clench." Rakkim squinted. "You got a little bit of toilet paper on your forehead."

  Ibn-Azziz tore at his forehead for the nonexistent speck of tissue.

  "That old bastard probably had high hopes for you," said Rakkim, "and now...well, not to be cruel or anything, but look at yourself."

  "My...my master will understand my failings...."

  Rakkim shook his head. "I've met him. He's not the understanding type." He checked his watch. "The rest of the mullahs consider the Old One an apostate, so when you're killed he won't have the Black Robes to back him up. That's going to upset him."

  "My master has conquered death, he does not require the Black Robes' support." Ibn-Azziz pulled himself up, legs rubbery. "The Mahdi stands astride history."

  "I'm going to kill him too, by the way. Gonna gut him like a feeder pig, as they say in the Belt. You...you're just the appetizer."

  Ibn-Azziz laughed, sprayed a mist of blood. "Are you death?"

  "Just an amazing facsimile." Rakkim lowered his voice. "Here's something to think about as you squat in hell. Before I kill the Old One, I'm going to tell him that you helped me find him. I'm going to tell him--"

  "Liar!"

  "I'm going to tell him you pissed yourself you were so eager to give him up."

  Ibn-Azziz moved quicker than Rakkim would have believed, got his hands around Rakkim's throat, those yellowed nails digging in.

  Rakkim looked into ibn-Azziz's eyes, and he could see the man's soul compressed into an oily black knot, smelled the stink of the Grand Mullah's breath and let him continue.

  Ibn-Azziz clawed at Rakkim.

  Rakkim gently placed his thumbs under ibn-Azziz's chin, pushed his head back. "Are you afraid yet?" he whispered, ibn-Azziz's fingers so tight around his throat he could barely speak.

  Ibn-Azziz hung on.

  Holding ibn-Azziz's head back with one hand, Rakkim drove the fingertips of his other hand into a spot just under the jaw. Not too hard a blow--that would have killed ibn-Azziz outright--but just enough to fracture the hyoid bone. The move yet another souvenir from Darwin, a particularly cruel assassin killing technique. Rakkim had no idea how he had learned the maneuver--perhaps something else that had passed between him and Darwin at the moment of the assassin's death. Rakkim dropped his hands to his sides, no longer worried about being strangled.

  Ibn-Azziz tried breathing through his nose, his grip already weakening.

  "How about now?" whispered Rakkim. "Afraid yet?"

  Fear bloomed in ibn-Azziz's eyes, took root as he struggled. He released his grip on Rakkim's throat, frantic now.

  Fracturing the hyoid bone caused the tissues to swell, pinching off the air passage--the more ibn-Azziz struggled, the more constricted his throat became. Ibn-Azziz had toughed out nearly being drowned in the toilet, had actually seemed to grow stronger, but this situation was infinitely worse. The very ferocity that had allowed him to laugh in Rakkim's face worked against him now, his rage narrowing down his airway with every beat of his heart. No pain, no glory, just the gathering darkness.

  Rakkim watched ibn-Azziz flopping on the floor, watched as the panic overtook him, ibn-Azziz feeling his dreams dying, his memories dying...and at the end, he watched as ibn-Azziz's soul flared like a horsefly in a furnace, leaving only ashes.

  Rakkim walked out of the cell. Soon as he got clear, he would check Sarah's message. See what was so important.

  CHAPTER 32

  Rakkim heard Moseby before he saw him, heard him throwing up and spotted him bent over beside the landing gear of a F-37 Marauder, a tall, well-muscled black man, his short hair sprinkled with gray. Moseby was wiping his mouth as Rakkim approached out of the shadows, making plenty of noise so somebody didn't get hurt. The silhouettes of dozens of other jets loomed around them in the moonlight, fighters mostly, but a few gigantic stealth B-7s too, their jagged fuselages giving them the appearance of gigantic bats. Three days after killing ibn-Azziz, Rakkim was on the other side of the country and he still hadn't slept.

  Moseby threw up again.

  "You get some bad oysters?" said Rakkim.

  "No oysters in this part of Virginia," said Moseby, a little wobbly.

  "Radioactive oysters. What's the matter, you weren't monitoring yourself?"

  "Got a couple hundred Rs, no big deal."

  "Sarah's pissed off. You weren't supposed to go into the city without me. She asked you just to talk with--"

  "The zombie's wife didn't want to talk to me, and I wasn't about to wait around until you showed up," said Moseby. "I had an idea where to look based on the download."

  Rakkim embraced him, felt Moseby tremble. "You look like shit, John."

  "I overstayed my welcome, that's all. D.C.'s nasty."

  "Your suit didn't protect you?"

  "The truck I got from the Colonel
was useless...and I didn't have enough air filters," said Moseby. "You have to switch them out three times more often than the regs say."

  "I've got plenty of filters coming in anytime now." Rakkim glanced up at the night sky, saw just stars and the ridges surrounding the abandoned airbase. "You want to be medevaced out? At least get a transfusion?"

  Moseby took a swallow from his canteen, rinsed his mouth out and spit. "I'm fine."

  "Let's walk," said Rakkim, keeping a clear view of the western approaches to the airfield. "Spider and Leo managed to narrow down the search area for the safe room. We're still looking for a needle in a haystack, but it's a smaller haystack."

  The planes stretched for miles, lined up haphazardly on the landing strips, spilling over onto the weed-choked fields. The former LeMay Air Force Base was just another aircraft graveyard now. Most of the Belt's air force had been destroyed on the ground, their avionics fried by a directed satellite surge from the Islamic Republic. At least it was supposed to be directed. In reality the surge had blown microchips and computer components from sea to shining sea, leaving dead planes from both sides on runways, and sending a rain of commercial and military aircraft spiraling to earth. The lucky pilots managed to land at bases like LeMay, where the control towers still marginally functioned. The rest crashed into farmland and cities, fireballed across the night, their last radio transmissions fuck-fuck-fuck. Many of the commercial planes had been retrofitted, but the military jets' sophisticated hardware had been irreplaceable, and they had been mothballed where they landed, allowed to rust and rot.

  Rakkim looked around as they strolled down one of the runways, crickets screeching in the damp air. Weeds grew through cracks in the concrete. "Never seen so many planes in one spot."

  "Maxwell, outside of Montgomery, is even more crowded," said Moseby. "Must be a couple hundred planes there, half of them nose-down in the dirt where the pilots blew the landing 'cause their instruments were cooked."

  "Why haven't the planes been looted? They seem relatively untouched. No graffiti--"

  "It's the Belt," said Moseby. "People love the military. Folks think it's just a matter of time before somebody comes along, fixes the planes and off they go, into the wild blue yonder."

  "Must be nice to believe in fairy tales," said Rakkim.

  "Nice to have faith," said Moseby.

  Rakkim didn't want to argue. "How was D.C.? Bad as they say?"

  "Bad enough." Moseby stopped for a moment, put his hands on his knees until the dizziness passed. "Not as many bones as I expected. Must have something to do with the radiation...or the chemical clouds. Plenty of skeletons, don't get me wrong, but I've seen worse in New Orleans." He straightened. "It was the buildings in D.C. that got to me. All those landmarks, looking just like they did before the blast, all that clean white marble..." He shook his head.

  The two of them walked past clumps of sleek fighters, their canopies cracked from the sun, tires rotted off. A gigantic C-57 cargo plane lay crumpled in the grass, one wing torn off, the fuselage still blackened from the crash landing forty years ago. One of the control towers had collapsed into a pile of concrete blocks. Another had been obliterated by a light bomber that overshot the runway.

  "The Colonel's worried about you," said Rakkim.

  "You saw him?"

  "Woke him up in the middle of the night--"

  "You love doing that, don't you? Shaking people out of a sweet dream."

  "You know me, John, I'm a man of simple pleasures." Rakkim could see Moseby remembering his own wakeup seventeen years ago, Rakkim's blade against his throat. Sent to kill him for going rogue, Rakkim had seen Moseby's pregnant wife beside him and backed off, disappeared into the night.

  "How's Sarah and the boy?" said Moseby.

  "They're fine. I can hardly keep up with either of them. How is your family?"

  "Annabelle's concerned. Leanne?" Moseby sighed. "All she thinks about is that boy."

  "Leo's a good kid."

  "Then let your daughter marry him."

  "I don't have a daughter."

  "Exactly," said Moseby.

  Rakkim smiled. "He hasn't got sense to come in out of the rain, but Leo's smart. So smart even Spider doesn't understand half of what the kid's talking about."

  "Just what I need, a son-in-law who's smarter than God and useless as tits on a bull."

  Rakkim stopped under the protection of the twisted tail section of a crashed jet. "These people of yours bringing the vehicle...you trust them?"

  "Corbett's a percentage player." Moseby patted the flechette auto-pistol on his hip. A high-body-count weapon. "I trust this to keep him honest."

  Rakkim pulled the starlight scope out of his denim jacket, handed it over. "Give him this then. Wouldn't want him to think he has a hidden advantage."

  Moseby hefted the German-made scope. "Where did you get it?"

  "Guy in a crashed F-77 interceptor had it attached to a sniper rifle. Must have been out squirrel hunting. I had to explain to him that you can't hunt varmints with a night scope. Not sporting."

  Moseby tucked away the starlight scope. "You kill him?"

  "Just revoked his hunting license. He's sleeping off the shame of it. Heck of a nice rifle."

  "I'm slipping." Moseby turned, looked toward the far hill. "They're coming."

  Rakkim had already heard the engines. They had time. He lightly touched the undamaged section of the jet--the USAF insignia looked new. "Must have been quite a sight in the old days seeing these things in formation over the cities. Sky pilots, I think they called them." He ran his fingertips over the insignia. Gave him chills. Just like Sarah said, there was magic in the idea of that nation, the greatest power on earth for a while. Who didn't wonder what it would be like for those days to come again? Reunification...

  "They relied too much on airpower," said Moseby. "All the countries did. Now that nuclear weapons are outlawed, wars are won in the dirt."

  "Now they are."

  After the satellite surge destroyed the air forces of both the Republic and the Belt, other nations redesigned their own systems, spending billions to buffer their avionics from electromagnetic discharges. It had worked until the Chechen Alliance attacked Russia, hacking into the Russian military command center. In ten minutes the Russian air force was destroyed by the Chechen abort virus--those planes in the air fell to earth like dead sparrows, and those on the ground were locked down and useless. The virus spread rapidly from the Russian command center to every nation with which it had reciprocal relations. The Chechens didn't care, they had no air force to speak of, but within an hour, airpower had ceased to be the dominant military strategy.

  It took years for the major nations to rebuild their fleets, yet again. Since modern aircraft were utterly dependent on their computer systems, the choice was made to delink their air wings from command and control centers. While this squadron-based structure was inefficient, it prevented the whole air defense system from being destroyed by an enemy virus. Like Moseby said, wars were won in the dirt. Until a year ago.

  Last year, the Nigerians had developed a supposedly unhackable command and control center, the Kabilla-9, which allowed the tactical coordination of all air units. Frightfully expensive, its purchase considered a provocative act, the Kabilla-9 had so far only been bought by the expansionist regimes of Ukraine, Brazil and the Aztlan Empire.

  "They're getting closer." Moseby took a deep breath. "You have the credit chip?"

  Rakkim handed the chip over. He could see sweat beaded across Moseby's forehead.

  Moseby looked west, saw headlights coming through the trees. "Do you want to...?" Rakkim was gone. Moseby stepped out onto the tarmac, waited for Corbett. He didn't have to wait long.

  The two vehicles burst out from the trees, the one in the lead a large van with traction tires, riding low on its shocks, the other an old Cadillac limo with the roof sawed off. Corbett waved from the passenger seat of the limo.

  Moseby unslung the flechette auto-pisto
l, his finger on the trigger.

  The two vehicles skidded to a stop, sent up a cloud of dust that billowed across Moseby. "Sorry about that." Corbett swatted the driver. "Big Mike likes to make a big entrance."

  "No problem," said Moseby, caught in the glare of the headlights.

  Corbett jumped out, a short, skinny cracker with thinning hair, one cheek puffed out with chaw. He stalked toward Moseby, bib overalls barely reaching the tops of his cowboy boots.

  Big Mike stayed behind the wheel, engine running. He fired up a cigar, peering at Moseby through a blue haze.

  Corbett shook hands with him. "You got the funds?"

  "Let me see the war wagon," said Moseby.

  Corbett led him over to the van, banged on the hood. Both front doors opened, and two men stepped out. They leaned against the front wheel wells, arms crossed. "Four-wheel drive, of course. Armored all over, including the floorboards. Puncture-proof tires. Lead-foil paneling and leaded glass all around, cuts down radiation by ninety percent. You want to have kids someday, you should still wear a rad-suit, which I can supply."

  "I've got my own," said Moseby, peering inside the van.

  Corbett spit tobacco juice. "Good for you." He pointed at the large air compressor on the roof. "My own design, and proud of it too. Close to a sealed system, but even if there's a leak, you're going to have a constant one hundred and ten percent air pressure inside, so nothing out is coming in. You're going to appreciate that when you get to D.C., 'cause there's some nasty shit there you don't want to breathe." He turned up the interior lights. "You sure you want to go into the city by yourself? It's no pleasure cruise, I'll tell you that."

  "I don't like company."

  "Yeah, I had a cousin like that," said Corbett. "Regular hermit, he was, although you ask me, he just didn't trust his fellow man."

  "What else this thing have?"

  "All business, okay, that's fine with me," said Corbett. "Got roentgen counters inside and out, so you know when you're approaching a hot spot. D.C.'s not the same all over. That rad counter starts pinging faster than a twenty-dollar mouth whore, you scoot." He grinned at Moseby. "I want you back as a repeat customer."