Carnifex cl-2

by Tom Kratman

  "Subadar Masood?" he said without turning.

  "Sir!" exclaimed the senior Pashtun Scout, springing to attention near his side. A smile briefly crossed the subadar's seamed, craggy face. You, alone of all men, can hear me coming, he thought.

  "The Scouts? All paths east and west?"

  "Sealed tighter than a houri's hole, sir."

  "Very good. I want as many prisoners as possible. Rewards are offered."

  "Yes, sir. So my men have been told."

  * * *

  In the much colder air above the high pass breath gathered to frost a gray-shot beard. Hard they came, those puffs of air, pumped from struggling, bellowing lungs. They burst outward to form little horizontal pines before settling to and disappearing against the ubiquitous ice and snow.

  Hard pumped the heart beneath the lungs, forcing warmth to freezing limbs, forcing blood to a brain straining to make sense of disaster.

  Close to the ground, seeking to make himself invisible—one with the snow and the ice—the fugitive Abdul Aziz huddled. His eyes and ears quested for some route of escape, some way to survive to carry on the fight and avenge his family and his cause. Nothing looked very promising. Nothing sounded so, either.

  In the cold, still air sound carried very well. The fugitive's ears caught easily the irregular sound of shots and screams. The fugitive cursed his enemies, then let fall a single tear which froze on his face before it had descended much more than an inch.

  Ahead, the steady whop-whop-whop of helicopters told of escape routes being systematically cut off. Unseen, far above, the harsh drone of the Shturmoviks and the cursed infidels' gunships swept along, hunting for any who might have escaped the camp. Behind, the baying of dogs, hunting dogs with the sharpest of noses, told of other fugitives being tracked through the snow, ice and rock. From all around, at odd times, came shouts of triumph as some mercenary, apostate Pashtun Scout dragged a cowering man, woman, or child from a hiding place.

  Despair crowded the fugitive's heart and mind; despair at loss, despair at ruin.

  The thought of his own wife and children, now forever lost, was almost more than he could bear. "They'll pay. By the ninety-nine beautiful names of Allah, I swear they will pay for this," muttered the fugitive to himself.

  The pitiless ice made no answer.

  * * *

  Havaldar Mohammad Kamal didn't answer either; though he heard. He pointed to one of his grinning men, then to another, and made a slight finger motion in the direction from which the sound had come.

  The scouts glanced at each other. A wordless plan formed between them. Carrera would pay bounties for live prisoners. They'd take this one alive if they could.

  Silently the two designated scouts began to creep forward and around. The military arts their prey had learned only partially, they had grown up with.

  Interlude

  11/6/409 AC, Botulph, Federated States of Columbia, Terra Nova

  Robert Hennessey, Senior, sat quietly on a bench in the central park of this great metropolitan city on the Federated States West Coast. In the sun Hennessey read his newspaper. More especially, Hennessey read for word of the fighting in the Mar Furioso, the great sea of Terra Nova, where his son, Lieutenant Robert Hennessey, Junior, led a platoon of Federated States Marines in the long, slow, bloody drive across the sea. The sooner the war was over, the sooner young Bob was safe, the better, as far as the old man was concerned.

  After all, I'm not getting any younger and I need the boy to take over the chair of the firm.

  There was grounds for hope now, despite the obscenely long casualty lists posted every day from the fighting across central Taurus and on the islands of the Furioso. Just a few days before the papers had blared out of a second Yamatan city blasted to cinders by some new weapon developed in secret.

  Whatever it takes to get the Yamatans to surrender short of invading the home islands, Robert Senior thought.

  There was hardly a family in the entire country to be found that hadn't lost a son or a husband. Hennessey heard weeping and looked over to where a woman, formerly playing with her children on the grass, had broken down in tears.

  Whatever it takes.

  He heard a familiar horn beep. Folding his paper, Hennessey arose from the park bench to walk to where his chauffeur was exiting the limousine to hold open the door. He gave himself this one break, one hour every morning, to relax in the central park away from his responsibilities. The hour never seemed to last long enough.

  From the corner of one eye Hennessey thought he saw a bright streak across the sky. He glanced up just as the streak became a flash that consumed him, his city, the young, weeping woman, her children, trees and buildings and park benches . . . everything.

  UEPF Spirit of Peace

  "Target One . . . destroyed, High Admiral . . . . Target Two . . . . destroyed."

  Silently, High Admiral Laurence Napier, nodded his head. If ever a man looked spiritually crushed, that man was he, for he had just given the order and overseen the extinction of over one million people.

  What choice had I, though? My orders from the Consensus were clear; they allowed no room for maneuver. "Any detonation of a nuclear weapon for purposes of advancing a war effort on Terra Nova is to be met by an equivalent or greater response from the United Earth Peace Fleet." I picked the two smallest cities in the Federated States for that . . . the two smallest that had a chance of working, in any case, San Fernando and Botulph. What else could I do?

  Suddenly, Napier felt the overwhelming urge to vomit. Without another word he arose from his command chair and raced for his own quarters. Halfway to his quarters he found he could not restrain himself, emptying the contents of his stomach for some nameless prole to clean up. Still heaving, Napier continued on to his quarters.

  There he sat in silent horror at the oceans of blood on his hands. He imagined it all, the young children playing on the grass, the old men reading their morning papers, the flash, the fireball . . .

  In the end, the imagining was too much. Napier removed a pistol from his desk, made sure it was loaded, placed the muzzle to the roof of his mouth, and pulled the trigger.

  This left another mess for the proles to clean up.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Strong winds, strong winds

  Many dead tonight, it could be you

  —Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Homeless

  Jebel Ansar, 18/8/469

  They called Carrera "the Blue Jinn." He took a small and perverse pride in the title. Blue jinni were evil jinni. That his enemies thought him evil was . . . pleasant. Even more pleasant was the sight of his enemies, beaten and bleeding, captive and bound.

  Carrera, the Jinn, looked over those enemies in the late afternoon sun. Sinking in the west, the sun's light was carved by the mountains to cast long, sharp shadows across the ground. Much of that ground was covered with the head-bowed, broken prisoners.

  One of those captives, Abdul Aziz ibn Kalb, held his bleeding head upright. Abdul Aziz glared hate at his captors. These were a mix of Pashtun mercenaries—tall and light eyed; light skinned they would have been, too, had the sun not burned them red-brown—and shorter, darker men. All were heavily armed, bearing wicked looking rifles with shiny steel blades affixed. All sneered back the hate Abdul Aziz felt, mixing with that hate a full measure of disgust and contempt.

  Aziz's hate mixed with and fed on fear. Along with several hundred other male prisoners, and well over a thousand women and children, Aziz waited to hear his fate. The male prisoners' hands and legs were taped together. Not far away, the women and children waited unbound. The two groups were close enough together that Abdul Aziz could see the noncombatants as well as a small group of his enemies ascending a low hill to his front.

  Leading that group, Abdul Aziz saw, was a uniformed man, medium in height, and with his face and head wrapped with a keffiyah. Another looked oriental. Three more were dressed much as any mullahs would be. A sixth wore the white dress of the Emirate of Doha.
The last was another man in uniform, bearing the rank badges of a subadar. Trimly bearded, tall and slender, with bright gray eyes, the subadar looked Pashtun to Abdul Aziz.

  That man in the lead partially unwrapped the keffiyah from around his head. Aziz had never seen him before, but had heard enough descriptions to recognize the "Blue Jinn."

  * * *

  Carrera paused and lit a cigarette. He puffed it contemplatively for a few moments. Then he sat back easily in a chair, almost a throne, which had been prepared for him by his followers out of hastily felled and trimmed trees. Even at this distance Abdul Aziz saw the eyes that gave the Jinn his name. Though it was just a trick of the sun, the eyes seemed to glow from the inside like malevolent coals.

  A dark-clad, bearded mullah walked to the microphone of a portable public address set standing in front of the chair and began to speak.

  "I have consulted," he announced, "with Duque Carrera, the man you probably know as the Blue Jinn, and whom you see to my right, concerning your fate. He, in accordance with the Sharia, has turned the general resolution of your cases over to myself and my fellow mullahs. We have pronounced sentence of death upon you, in accordance with the will of Allah, for complicity in murder."

  It was widely speculated that the mullah only consulted the quarter gold Boerrand Carrera allegedly paid him for each desired "legal" death sentence he passed on. He never admitted this. Neither did he deny it.

  "Your young children shall be taken back to your enemy's country," the mullah continued. "Your women, and the girls over twelve, are awarded to his Pashtun Scouts as prizes. Mr. Yamaguchi," and the mullah's head nodded to indicate the oriental man who had accompanied the party, "and Mr. Al Ajami," another head nod, "represent certain interests in Yamato and Doha that might wish to buy some of these women and girls from the Scouts. Having consulted with the Jinn I have informed him that there is no religious prohibition to this, that you are all apostates and your women may properly be enslaved. For his part, he says he could care less what happens to them so long as it is within the law."

  A wild and heartrending moan emerged from the cluster of women as the grinning, leering Pashtun began to prod them away to the processing area. Aziz felt a sudden relief that his wife had been spared the ignominy of rape followed by sale into prostitution.

  "As for the rest of you, as I said, you shall die. But the Jinn tells me to inform you that he is solicitous of your souls."

  The mullah stopped speaking and backed away from the microphone. Carrera stood and took the mullah's place. He spoke in decent Arabic, Aziz was surprised to discover, though his accent was somewhat heavy.

  "Some years ago the actions of your leader and your movement robbed me of my wife and children," Carrera announced. He turned to the chief mullah. "What does Surah Eighty-one say, O' man of God?" he asked.

  The mullah recited aloud, loud enough for the microphone to pick up so that the prisoners could hear, "When the infant girl, buried alive, is asked for what crime she was slain—"

  "What does it mean?"

  "It means, sayidi, when Allah asks who murdered her, for no infant girl can be guilty of a crime."

  "Does Allah approve of burying infant girls alive, then?"

  "He does not. Surah Eighty-one, the Cessations, is concerned with the end of time, Judgment Day, and the punishment of the wicked. God will punish the murderers of infant girls."

  Carrera's face twitched in the smallest of smiles. "Ah, I see. What does the Holy Koran say about those who bring disorder to the world?

  "It says, O Jinn, in Surah Five, the Table, that those who fight against God or his Apostle, bringing disorder to the world, should be killed, or have the hands and feet cut off on opposite sides, or be exiled, or be crucified."

  "I see," said Carrera. "Do those who kill infant girls fight against God? Have these men brought disorder to the world?"

  "They have. They do," answered the mullah, "for this is expressly forbidden under Islam."

  Carrera turned back to his captives. "I loved my family, even as—one supposes—you love your own. I swore, when they were murdered, to avenge myself on all who had contributed, even passively, to my loss. Thus you shall die. I am, though, as Mullah Hassim told you, very solicitous of your fate in the hereafter. So before you die, you will be thoroughly Christianized."

  Then Carrera smiled, nastily, and turned to his subadar.

  "Crucify them."

  * * *

  Abdul Aziz spoke English quite well. Moreover, Carrera was close enough to the microphone for him to hear the dread words, "Crucify them."

  He had not been the only one. Several others understood English, too. The group of a bit over four hundred captives began to curse and writhe on the ground, trying to free themselves of their sticky bonds. Balboan Cazadors and Pashtun Scouts then walked among them, applying boot and rifle butt until they quieted down.

  Several helicopters came in shortly thereafter bearing bundles of metal stakes slung underneath. The bundles swayed in the downdraft and crossing wind. The helicopters and their load, again, caused a stirring among the mujahadin. Again, the guards dealt with it brutally.

  As soon as the helicopters' loads were unbundled some men went to work with devices—to Abdul they looked like sections of heavy pipe with end caps on one end and handles welded on—to drive the crosses (for that's what the bundles proved to be) into the earth. The steady clang-clang-clang went on for quite some time. When it ended, one section of the valley was saturated with crosses.

  The crosses looked to have been about four meters high, with a one and a quarter meter cross piece welded on, before they were erected. Afterwards, they seem to stand about three quarters of that above the earth.

  Abdul Aziz ibn Kalb was one of the first to be taken to his death. The haughty Pashtun guards carved up the mass of prisoners, forcing lanes between them. Three of them walked up to Abdul and grabbed him by his tape-bound arms and legs. They then carried and dragged him to his cross. His arms, which had been taped behind, were cut loose. He was roughly stripped of his clothing. Then his hands were re-taped in front. Two of the guards lifted him up bodily, while the third hooked his arms over the peak of the upright. They then lowered him, none too gently, letting him fall with his back to the cross until his taped wrists reached the welded juncture of upright and cross piece. They lifted his feet and taped them to the upright, forcing him to relax his knees by the none-too-gentle method of striking him in the gonads. Once he was in that position his hands were taped to the crosspiece so that he could not hope to wear away his bonds by rubbing them against the upright, or to free his arms by lifting them over the top.

  Thus affixed, Abdul Aziz could not get his wrists over the upright even by standing fully erect by his taped feet. Still, the orders had said to do it that way and the Scouts were the sort who followed orders. Besides, what Pashtun worthy of the name would hesitate to follow the orders of a leader who gifted them so lavishly with slave women and money.

  Abdul Aziz was in no pain, as of yet, even though the position was uncomfortable. He wondered how long it might take for discomfort to transform into agony. He had his first clue when, after about fifteen minutes of having his weight on his wrists, he found he could not breathe. Rather, he could not exhale and had to push up with his feet to relieve the pressure to allow him to expel the used air in his lungs to draw in new.

  True, no nails were used, neither were any bones split, nor did a drop of blood flow. But this was not a mercy. The Romans knew. Of the two major forms of crucifixion, nailing and tying, it was nailing that was the more merciful.

  The crosses, twenty rows of twenty, held exactly one hundred Salafis for every one of Carrera's men who had died on a cross. They faced the low hill on which he sat, watching all four hundred men affixed to the mechanism of their execution. A group of what looked to be fifteen mujahadin and two Earthpigs sat miserably at the base of the hill, at Carrera's feet, where they too could watch and feel the suffering of comrade
s and followers.

  * * *

  Masood handed Carrera two small devices. One looked like what it was, a detonator. The other looked somewhat similar to a cell phone. "We took the detonator off the weasel in the United Earth Peace Fleet uniform. The old one with the beard had the communications devices."

  "Bring the UE officers to me, Subadar." Masood left and grabbed the bound Robinson and Arbeit by the hair, dragging them up the hill and tossing them at Carrera's feet. Arbeit squealed like a pig at the effrontery and the pain.

  "You intended to give the Salafis nuclear weapons." It was not a question. Besides the eleven captured at "the Base," a Scout ambush had taken the last nuke not far from this spot as it was being moved to Camp San Lorenzo by camel.