Deadly Wands

by Brent Reilly

CHAPTER 69

  Billy left a few super-quads to track the Mongol follow-up forces, while the Americans built hard-to-find mountaintop bunkers. The rest flew to India.

  Prince saw them first. A squad on the horizon suddenly turned and fled. Billy's vanguard, consisting of the very best quads, raced after them. Billy, the fastest, overtook the squad first. They banked away in a steep dive, but Billy not only kept up, but flew ahead to sound off a friendly greeting. Since neither wore Mongol uniforms, Billy carefully closed the distance and gestured for them to land.

  "Birdy!" Grandma yelled once their leader took off his flight helmet. Billy saw the relief on the guy's face. The others looked Indian. "Birdy, this is the Red Baron. Birdy is one of our trainers."

  Birdy looked at Billy, disappointed.

  “Why does everyone think I should be taller?” Billy complained, which broke the ice with the new guys. “How many Indians from the Bering Strait made it home?”

  Birdy smiled. How the Baron convinced Indians in the Mongol Air Force to turn on their masters had become legendary.

  “I heard sixty thousand made it to Tibet, where Kublai had set up an ambush. Mongols may hate you, but they hate traitors more. The Indians got hit several times before that, but this time the Mongols overwhelmed them. Maybe twenty thousand crossed the Himalayas, but they kept getting attacked. The High Command delayed the final assault on Ceylon just to punish the traitors.

  “Anyways, the unit broke up and several thousand may have made it home. Rich, apparently. Criminal gangs flew all the way to Tibet just to see if the rumors were true. And apparently they were. The Mongol Air Force saw desertion soar, although few of them signed up with the new government in Ceylon.

  “The Mongols made things worse by treating the families of deserters as traitors to be shot on sight. Local militias stepped in to protect them. Units sent to destroy those militias had their own members blast their leaders. Which created more traitors, more angry militias, and more battles.”

  The new elated Billy. “That worked out better than I had hoped. How are the rebels doing?”

  “Oh, they’re still in Ceylon. The politicians can’t decide on a general, so they won’t go on offense. I almost cried when I heard they’re using my marathoners to line the ramparts like untrained two-wanders.”

  “They’re using marathoners in a static defense?” Billy’s jaw dropped to his knees. “We must rescue them!” Meaning the marathoners, not the rebels. “We were looking for your team. How many are you?"

  "We’ve trained seven marathon battalions. Almost half deserted to us when the Khan ordered them to the Bering Strait. I have the best battalion to slow the Mongols down if they divert to crush the rebellion.”

  “We need those battalions to bomb the slower Mongols on the Silk Road as they pass through the Tian Shan Mountains.”

  “Good luck getting permission to take them. The Mongol High Command in India is throwing everything they have against the rebels so that they can later send troops to help retake China.”

  They arrived a few days later. Billy called a leadership meeting to go over their options. Below them a ring of torches marked the northernmost fortifications that blocked Ceylon from the rest of India.

  “By morning they’ll know we’re here and we lose surprise. I say we break into companies and hit their barracks while they sleep, grab their bombs, and drop them on the next row of fortifications. Once the situation starts to go against us, we race to the island. Company commanders, don’t expect orders from me. Use your best judgment to hurt them while preserving your unit. Unless anyone has any better ideas?”

  Billy looked straight at Prince, who threw up his hands. “Hey, I ran out of great ideas in Kiev.”

  “Well, we ran out of food, so I guess we eat Mongolian tonight.”

  The barracks sat in a line a few hundred kilometers long, which meant they’d attack across a very long and very thin front. Few companies would even fight within sight of each other. Since the enemy did not mass their troops, they did not have any better option. But at least they could bomb the enemy in their sleep, since they picked up bombs that Birdy stored on the Himalayas.

  Billy flew with Birdy to get a sense of his tactical abilities. His company flew low and fast, utilizing terrain to mask their approach. It bothered Billy that the Mongols didn’t seem to have any patrols or sentries behind them. They dropped their bombs, pulverizing the fortifications, then dropped to one hundred meters to shoot at everything that moved. Almost all the defenders were two-wanders.

  It was over before the smoke cleared.

  “That’s it?” Billy asked, worried.

  “Something’s wrong,” Birdy answered. They discovered the problem as soon as the dust settled. “They’re gone! They must be bombing Ceylon before the monsoons start. We have to warn them!”

  Billy took off at maximum speed. A few hours later, he flew over several large shadows before finding the island. Those on the ground could not hear his wands, so he dropped in a controlled fall and blasted down. From that great height, his blasts would spread out too far to hurt anyone, but would hit hard enough to wake people up. Once he saw Ceylon patrols coming at him, he flashed four wands to identify himself and sounded a friendly greeting.

  "One hundred thousand bombers are coming," he yelled at them, guessing about the number attacking.

  Their squad sounded the alarm and Billy immediately mimicked it, but with four powerful wands. The patrol seemed shocked that his alarm was so much louder than all of theirs combined.

  On the surface they heard their warning repeated and soon hundred, then thousands, flew up. Other patrols flew in and Billy tapped his ears to hear them report that many battalions were forming up on all sides of the island. The leaders huddled in a hover to figure out how to respond to the threat. Billy suddenly saw what the Mongols were up to. To interrupt the arguing Indians and to introduce himself to the fliers now joining them, Billy released his terrifying primal scream and flashed his four wands. In the stunned silence that followed, Billy yelled his orders:

  "Their two-wanders need to rise in an arc to drop their bombs in a controlled fall, so form a circle to shoot them in the back as they rise." No one reacted, but neither did they argue with him. Damn, doesn't anyone understand Mongolian anymore? "I’m the Red Baron and I say, form a damn circle!"

  This time, with large shadows approaching on their horizons, they did as he commanded.

  Over the next several minutes, tens of thousands of Ceylons joined them. Eyeing the bombers, Billy flew around the circle to order them to back up. The flow of Ceylons that continued to rise from the island joined the circle instead of becoming targets in the middle.

  As the battalions closed, Billy noticed the ones coming directly from the mainland were much closer than those who had to circle around to hit them from open ocean. As he well knew, timing is everything in a surprise attack. If everyone doesn't strike at the same time, then enough defenders survive to fight back.

  As the closest battalions climbed in their square-shaped formations, Billy raced over to release his famous scream. Human nature being what it is, many in that first formation could not help but turn around to look. Instead of keeping their spacing, hundreds collided with their comrades, sending surprised fliers tumbling out of the sky. Squadrons of quads formed the corner of each formation square. Those closest to him broke off to attack. Billy responded by popping up in his own arc and shooting every wand at the same target.

  Even as the exhilaration of battle consumed him, Billy thanked the Khan for pulling one hundred thousand quads from India. Just ten thousand would have swept the defenders from the sky.

  The circle of quads now sent volleys into the backs of the rising attackers. The closest battalion was still too far below them for fatal shots from an average wand, but the better wands knocked holes in their formation, which must have unnerved the unit.

&
nbsp; Then the battle changed. Billy's four blasts detonated a backpack and the entire squad disappeared faster than the eye could track their falling body parts in the night sky. The defenders cheered, closed the distance, and intensified the shooting. Many more backpacks exploded and the battle turned into a massacre. Billy poured fire into the second group of quads until they, too, blew into tiny pieces.

  The Mongols now felt like suicide bombers, yet they realized they had no good tactical options: instead of continuing to rise in their bombing arc, they could just fly over the island to release their bombs, but their backpacks would invite blasts from the defenders above. Turning around also left them exposed. Every one of them wanted to simply jettison their backpacks, but that took more time than they had, although many dropped out of formation to try.

  A crescendo of explosions rose to a deafening roar as the squares of bombers flew into range of the ring of defenders. Entire battalion formations disintegrated as terrified two-wanders fled. Losing the element of surprise defanged the whole operation anyway.

  Billy raced towards the attackers coming from the ocean. Billy distracted them with his primal scream. The Mongol quads had their backs to the Baron and could not help but turn to look. Half of the two-wanders flying straight up impotently watched Billy fire at them since they needed both wands to fly. Billy's distraction cost them precious time.

  Then the first backpack exploded, soon followed by others. The bombers wisely broke formation and ran for their lives, falling to give themselves time to cut the straps off their backpacks. The elated Ceylons raced to kill them. All around the island, the massive air force disappeared -- either literally from explosions, or from members diving to lose themselves above the wave tops. Thousands of fliers from the island chased them down.

  "Kill the quads!" Billy shouted repeatedly to groups of joyous Indians as he took his own advice and blasted quads who had no choice but to show their backs to him. As the fastest left the slowest behind, Billy focused on the swiftest. By dawn, the herd had thinned out considerably and made it easier for the hunters to take down the hunted.

  Finally the first Mongol fortresses came into view and gave new speed to the terrified prey. Billy, exhausted, tapped his last reserve to blast as many quads as possible before the fortress could protect them. Hundreds of them landed and the thought of flying all the way back to the island sucked the life out of Billy. Until, as more enemies landed, a few of them popped back up while firing down. Some managed to escape their own fortress, but others got overwhelmed by guards.

  Then Billy's heart sank when squads dropped from the clouds. But, instead of attacking Billy, they attacked those Mongols trying to get away. Just as his tired brain tried to make sense of it, the fortress ejected more of Team Red. They formed a skirmish line and chased down the Mongols. Billy found enough energy to flash his wands to identify himself, then land in the fortress, dangerously dehydrated.