Sword of Allah

by David Rollins

  Carrie shook her head. ‘Heroin? No way. Never,’ she said emphatically.

  ‘I have,’ said Anna, breezing into the kitchen. ‘It’s amazing.’

  ‘You bitch. You never told me that,’ said Carrie, surprised.

  ‘Look, Carrie, all the negative hype about heroin? It’s just bullshit put out to scare people,’ Simon said, tapping a measure of powder into a stainless-steel eggcup and adding saline to it.

  ‘It is amazing,’ said Anna, repeating herself. ‘And I knew you’d disapprove. That’s why I never told you.’

  ‘This stuff is first class,’ pronounced Simon. ‘You believe only half of what the dealers tell you, of course – there’s always some sales pitch or other. But this vitamin H looks like the real McCoy,’ he said, heating the underside of the eggcup with a lighter flame to cook the solution. ‘You want to go first, Anna?’ said Simon, sucking the fluid into a thin syringe.

  ‘Sure,’ she said, holding out her arm. Simon put the syringe between his teeth while he wrapped the tourniquet around her arm just above the elbow joint, and tightened it. He found a vein in the crook of her arm, tapped it, then wiped it with a swab. The injection was administered an instant later while Anna turned away. ‘Hey, you’re good, honey,’ she said. ‘I didn’t even feel that.’

  ‘Your turn, babydoll,’ said Simon, preparing the next hit with a clean hypodermic.

  Carrie shook her head. ‘No way, Jose,’ she said, not altogether convincingly. ‘You okay, Anna?’ she asked. Her friend had sagged against the kitchen bench.

  ‘Oh, man,’ Anna said, eyes closed, head back, ‘it’s like I’ve been cold and someone has wrapped a warm blanket around me, but all on the inside. Do yourself a favour…’

  Carrie didn’t want to, but at the same time she did. The internal battle being fought was between her conservative upbringing and a little girl’s fear of needles, and her desire to ‘fit in’ with Simon. He had cornered her and attacked her weakest link – her desire to be accepted, loved. That, and Carrie wanted sex with him, badly. ‘Okay,’ she said, turning her head away and holding out an arm. ‘Do it to me, baby, uh-huh, uh-huh.’

  ‘You can bet on that,’ he said.

  Carrie felt the pressure of the tourniquet and the swab, followed by the lightest pinprick. And then the drug followed, flowing through her system, sweeping away her cares and inhibitions like debris on a flood tide. She opened her eyes after what seemed only a minute. Anna and Simon were naked. Anna was now lying back on the kitchen bench, legs up in the air as Simon fucked her. Carrie mentally shrugged and let her dress fall from her shoulders. My turn, sugar… The photos on Simon’s bedroom wall swam into her mind and she realised that the women were all like her and Anna – salt and pepper – and that the women were photographed in pairs. This was Simon’s thing, sex with two women at the same time, the ménage à trois. Ordinarily, a realisation such as this would have propelled her indignantly to the front door. But that part of her brain had been banished to a faraway land. Carrie looked at Anna and Simon and decided they were the two most beautiful people in the world, and that she wanted them both inside her. She moved behind Simon, and hugged him and held his cock as he thrust into her best friend. He turned and kissed her.

  The flood continued to rise within Carrie until it arrived in her throat and began to swell. Her temperature soared, a white-hot burning within, melting her core. A certain sensation told her Simon was now fucking her from behind, but she couldn’t feel anything. Carrie looked down on Anna and saw that she hadn’t moved off the kitchen bench. Anna’s stomach heaved and the vomit, mostly champagne, erupted from her lips. Carrie staggered, unable to keep her legs under her, collapsing to the floor.

  Simon knew something was seriously wrong. The courier had warned him about the stuff’s purity. But they all lied about their gear, didn’t they, to increase the anticipation and the price? Anna’s eyes were open, blank and staring, and the puking had stopped. Oh shit, oh shit. Simon hesitated for a few minutes, trying to think of an alternative to ringing the emergency number on the phone, thinking of the police, his career, about everything, in fact, except about the two naked women dying from an overdose in his designer kitchen.

  Australian Federal Police HQ, Canberra, Australia

  Federal Agent Jenny Tadzic knew something majorly wrong was going on. The reports from the various state police forces up and down the east coast were deeply concerning. There was a large batch of killer heroin on the streets and people were dropping like flies – schoolteachers, solicitors, executives. It was times like this that Tadzic could see just how pervasive heroin was. It had infiltrated all levels of society, from the top down and the bottom up. She rifled through the folders, picked one at random and skimmed it. Two women dead in a photographer’s studio. The women were well off, pretty, everything going for them. Why? Why get hooked into mainlining smack? Doctors, builders, journalists were dying from hotshots alongside the homeless and other long-time users. And Tadzic had absolutely nothing with which to counter the menace. Her department – the whole organisation – was out-gunned and outmanoeuvred. Eventually the supply would dry up and the deaths would stop, but in the meantime the drug was cutting a swath through the community as effectively as a new virus. She closed the reports and sat back in her chair, overwhelmed by a feeling of utter helplessness.

  And then there was the whole Angie thing. The girl had seemingly disappeared off the planet, as had her boyfriend. The DEA still hadn’t found their man either. The world was a shitful place.

  Flores, Indonesia

  The Sword of Allah waited at the end of the runway. Hendra had calculated that the runway itself was too short for the drone, when fully loaded with its payload and fuel, to gain enough ground speed for takeoff unless the breeze was fresh and exactly onshore. That, Hendra had warned, would be a rare occurrence indeed, due to a number of factors he’d learned since becoming a meteorological expert. But Hendra also promised those factors were a minor setback.

  Duat took him at his word. Had the man not developed an electronic brain for the drone that made it fly as if an invisible pilot was at the controls? That in itself was miraculous. Duat cast his eye over the aircraft as Hendra and his young assistant wheeled it from the hangar. The Sword of Allah was considerably larger than any of the aircraft Hendra had been testing to date. And it was certainly in far better shape now than when it had arrived in a box crate from Latakia, Syria. It had been delivered in pieces, the whole roughly cut up with a saw. Looking at it now, that was difficult to believe. What had Hendra said? He’d used carbon fibre and Kevlar obtained from shipwrights in Denpasar to rebuild the wing’s mainspar and fuselage. He said he’d avoided using aircraft technology so as to keep the questions to a minimum.

  Duat ran his fingertips lightly over a wing. He could barely feel the join. ‘Hendra, you are a wizard,’ he said. ‘Babu Islam owes you a great debt.’

  ‘Thank you, Emir.’

  ‘May Allah reward you amply.’

  Hendra smiled. For the moment, appreciation from Duat was reward enough.

  A catapult had been rigged up using a spare outboard motor and it had yet to be tested on the drone itself. A sleigh on skids had been used to determine the loads it was capable of dragging and that had certainly been promising. But a test with the Sword of Allah itself? That had had to be postponed a number of times due to monsoonal activity, but a break in the weather saw the morning dawn with a grey slate sky that turned blue as the orange ball of the sun climbed out of the sea.

  The test Hendra was conducting, he’d explained, would not provide all the answers because the Sword of Allah would not be weighed down with its payload or full fuel tanks. If it took off fully loaded, Hendra calculated that it would not then have enough runway on which to land before ploughing into the rocks at the far end. The test was merely to investigate the effectiveness of the catapult, and the drone’s stability as it accelerated down the runway.

  Duat had listened to all this a
nd his appreciation transformed into impatience. The suicide squads were trained, Abd’al Mohammed al Rahim had prepared the canisters for insertion in the drone and all, except for the drone itself, was ready. How much more time would Hendra need? And there was a worrisome development within the encampment. A sickness was spreading. Duat himself was having trouble keeping food down. Rahim was no longer capable of work, and his assistant had taken to bed. Indeed, Rahim had become a slave to the white powder and it was doubtful that he would live beyond another two weeks, a race underway between the drug and the cancers that had spread throughout his body, each vying to end his life. But most disturbing of all was the growing certainty that it was only a matter of time before the authorities discovered the location of the encampment.

  It had been a couple of weeks since the news media in Australia and the US had announced that the CIA had hunted down the man suspected of being the principal planner behind the US Embassy bombing, Kadar Al-Jahani. Duat thanked Allah that Kadar had been killed rather than taken prisoner and interrogated. But then Duat had seen his own face on news broadcasts linking him with Kadar and the embassy bombing. Duat had laughed at the likeness, making light of his notoriety for the benefit of the men but, privately, he was more than a little concerned. Time was running out. The question was, did they have weeks, days or hours? He’d checked the bank accounts via the Internet. If the infidels were close, they would be frozen. To Duat’s relief, he still had access to them, although there appeared to be considerably less money in them than he’d thought. The money from the heroin sales was being deposited. Perhaps their banker in Sydney was getting greedy. If so, he would have to be killed and a replacement found.

  The sound of the outboard motor screaming at full power and the noisy spooling of the cable onto a drum brought Duat abruptly back to the present. He looked down the runway. The Sword of Allah was accelerating quickly and then, suddenly, it appeared to go almost straight up like a missile. The cable fizzed as it snaked through a metal guide and, when the drone was overhead, Hendra yelled, ‘Now!’ Unang flicked a lever that set the motor’s gearbox to neutral. The sudden release of tension on the cable allowed its hook to release from the drone. The aircraft’s Rotax engine was now on its own. Through a remote control box, Hendra set the aircraft on a slow turn over the water and lined it up on the runway. The test was a success.

  ‘Hendra, we launch in two weeks. Pray for a break in the weather,’ Duat said, turning away. Convulsions gripped his stomach. He stumbled into the scrub and vomited.

  Central Intelligence Agency, Australia bureau, US Embassy, Canberra

  ‘Well, how does the seed grow, my friend?’

  ‘(static)…a sapling that grows daily. Soon it will be a large tree that bears fruit…(static)’

  ‘(static)…heard all this before…(static)…will be edible? There have been attempts in the past to cultivate this area profitably…(static)’

  ‘(static)…and so is the climate today. Also, as you know, caring for the tree as it grows takes money…(static)’

  ‘Allah be praised.’

  ‘As I said, there would be a lot of money to be made…(static)…expert banker in Sydney…’

  Ferallo read through the transcript from Kadar Al-Jahani’s meeting in Rome. It was redolent with double meaning, especially now with the benefit of hindsight. But a trail to the terrorists’ encampment still eluded them. Where were these bastards hiding? The men Kadar had met with at the coffee shop had all died in the battle in which Kadar had been captured. The phone on Ferallo’s desk rang. She picked it up impatiently. ‘I’m sorry but didn’t I ask to have my calls held?…I know, everyone says they’re important…Okay, okay, put her through. Sorry, before you go, what’s her name? Skye Reinhardt? And she’s from the Manila bureau, you say?’

  Jenny Tadzic’s internal alarm bells were ringing loud and clear. Angie was now long overdue. Foreign Affairs confirmed that she had entered Thailand – which Tadzic knew anyway because of the postcards – but could not confirm that she had departed Thailand. Tadzic’s suspicion that Angie had crossed illegally into Myanmar via one of the innumerable drug trails and trekked to General Trip’s fields had hardened into firm belief. If she was right, Angie was dead.

  But that was not her only worry. Reports were still coming in from police forces up and down the east coast that even more of the killer heroin had flooded the market. The death toll from it was frighteningly high, and increasing. Word on the street was that the heroin had been dumped in Australia, which also brought the cost of a hit way down and increased the market penetration. Someone obviously wanted to make a quick buck. Tests revealed that this heroin had unbelievably high levels of purity, up around seventy to eighty percent compared to the usual twenty percent. This made it lethal, addicts unwittingly giving themselves massive, deadly doses. Customs had no idea how the drug was getting in because, as one particularly testy agent had told her, ‘If we knew how it was getting in, we’d bloody stop it, wouldn’t we?’ Tadzic had to admit, she was getting desperate. The phone rang. ‘Hello, Jenny Tadzic, T triple C.’ The voice down the line was unfamiliar.

  ‘Hello, Jenny. We’ve met. Gia Ferallo, CIA,’ said the voice through the phone.

  ‘Yes, Ms Ferallo. I remember. How goes it?’

  ‘Good. Call me Gia. I hate the “Miz” thing – sounds like it’s short for “miserable”. What are you doing tomorrow morning? Care to spend the day up in Sydney?’

  Tadzic listened intently for the next five minutes, without saying a word. When she finally hung up, her palms were sweating and her heart was beating against her ribs. This was the break they’d been praying for.

  Sydney, Australia

  The royal suite at the Shangri-La on Sydney Harbour suited Jeff Kalas’s idea of the idyllic lifestyle: luxury, exclusivity, and service. The bedroom was vast, three times the size of any he had slept in before, and beautifully furnished in the modern, comfortable style. A huge plate-glass window filled with the golden light of the sun’s first rays, and it framed the arch of the Sydney Harbour Bridge rearing up like a rampant steel monster. He lay on the vast bed and stretched out, feeling like a king.

  The suite was deliciously quiet. No screaming at recalcitrant teenagers to get up and get dressed. No mutt to walk. No wife to avoid. Being single was absolute bliss. The blast of a horn from a large cruise ship departing the quay below managed to penetrate the room’s soundproofing.

  Kalas had walked out on his family after eighteen years of marriage, taking nothing. What did he care? He could buy anything he wanted now, anyway. Just to reassure himself that his life had finally changed for the better, Kalas reached under his bed, pulled out the PowerBook, and pressed the on button. He had configured the laptop to automatically connect to the Internet. This new wireless chip set was worth it, he told himself. And then he laughed out loud. Worth it? The vast sums of money he had recently acquired had utterly repositioned his sense of worth. Hardship was a thing of the past.

  The appropriate icon began flashing, indicating connection. He keyed in the site he wanted to visit: First Lucerne. A few more keystrokes and Kalas was reviewing his account balance. He started to quietly hum a children’s song, one he used to sing to his when they were little: The king was in the counting-house counting out his money. The queen was in the parlour, eating bread and honey…He gave a sigh of satisfaction when all those beautiful zeros materialised. He flipped the lid down on the laptop, sending the computer to sleep, and slid it back under the bed.

  His bag was packed. All he had to do was shower, have breakfast and then catch the Philippine Airlines flight to Manila. He closed his eyes and conjured a picture of Skye in a state of suitable undress. He smiled to himself. Life and love were now as one. He was the luckiest man he knew.

  The doorbell rang. It was loud, installed to be responded to rather than ignored. The sound ripped him out of his daydream. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said, annoyed. He swung his legs off the bed and put his arms into the thick terry
towelling robe provided. Somehow, they’d managed to embroider his initials – what did they call that, his ‘monogram’? – onto the pocket. The doorbell rang again, impatiently. ‘Coming, coming,’ he said as he walked past the grand piano and ran his finger down the keys.

  Kalas looked through the peephole. He saw a young, Italian-looking woman in a maid’s outfit. She was standing behind a tray covered with various silver domes.

  ‘Room service,’ she said.

  Kalas hadn’t ordered anything, but he shrugged that off. Perhaps breakfast came with the room and he hadn’t been told. ‘Okay, hang on,’ he said. He tied the robe to cover his nakedness. If the waitress was pretty – and he suspected she was but the lens in the peephole distorted the view – perhaps he’d ask her to have breakfast with him? In the jacuzzi. He smiled at his own bravado. It was amazing what five mill’ and counting could do for a man’s confidence, he told himself.

  He turned the handle slightly, clicking off the lock, and suddenly the door rushed at him like a runaway refrigerator. The impact smashed his nose and catapulted him back into the room, where he landed with a thud on the floor. The air was punched out of his lungs and he clutched at his throat, choking for breath. Kalas opened his eyes and blinked at the collection of black-masked bug-eyes hovering over him. Muzzles and underslung torches of Heckler & Koch MP-5 machine pistols waved small circles above the bleeding mass of his nose. Knees firmly planted on his chest were making it impossible for him to recover his breath. Another three black-clad soldiers jumped over him and quickly checked the suite.