Swords of Exodus

by Larry Correia

  “I’m afraid you are mistaken,” Ibrahim stated flatly.

  “Then why haven’t you killed Jihan yet?”

  Fajkus scowled. The Czech was probably in his mid-thirties, stocky, with bulldog jowls, and short, spiky, black hair. The Exodus XO wore small, round glasses, and it was rather obvious from his expression that he didn’t like this meeting. “The Pale Man will be dead soon enough.”

  “Oh, but think of all those poor slaves, dying by the score every day, living in squalor and suffering, while their saviors wait in relative comfort.” She gestured at the walls of the cabin. The only decorations were antlers off of some animal that I didn’t recognize. “That must be infuriating.”

  “Don’t patronize me, Ms. Katarina,” Ibrahim said. “We both know that you do not care about the welfare of the slaves.”

  “Of course not. I care about profit and competition. But for you, every day you wait, every hour, the odds of Jihan learning about you increase. My spies were able to discover you, so you are vulnerable. Should Jihan learn of you, he’ll hunt you down like dogs, but still mighty Exodus hesitates.” Kat leaned forward and rested her hands on the plank table. “No, you are not ready yet. You lack something.”

  Ibrahim and Fajkus exchanged glances, conveying information like only two professionals who had worked together for a long time could. Ibrahim nodded. Fajkus turned back toward Kat. “We are waiting for a few more swords, our strike teams, to arrive. Jihan’s compound—”

  “Is a fortress. Impenetrable walls, every building a concrete bunker, guarded by a legion of disciplined troops, and even if you carpet-bombed the entire place, your target spends most of his time at the bottom of an armored pit designed to survive a near hit from an atomic weapon. To take it will require a huge force.”

  Ibrahim raised a single bushy Kurd eyebrow in my direction. “Perhaps by stealth then?”

  “They’re thorough, no discernible gaps,” I answered truthfully. “The gates stay closed. Incoming traffic is searched. Walls are too high to scale. Guards everywhere, and there aren’t so many of them that they don’t all know each other. It would be difficult, but not impossible. I could find a way.”

  “Trust me. Your usual methods of disguise won’t work. I’ve sent men in before, impersonating slave soldiers, and they were always spotted. Somehow they just know. You can’t impersonate a Brother, because nobody on the outside has ever heard them speak. How will you respond when questioned?” Kat shook her head. “You will fail. Jihan cloaks his people in mystery, but that secrecy becomes a formidable defense. You can’t get inside the head of something you can’t understand.”

  “Oh, I’ll get in,” I responded. Kat of all people should have known that. Every defense has a weakness.

  “And then what? Assassinate Jihan?” Kat had a cold laugh, more of a cackle. “Many have tried. Yes, that benefits me if you succeed, but if you fail, he’ll suspect the Exchange. And even if you manage to kill Jihan, it would be a suicide mission, which isn’t your style, and that does not free your brother. No, you need a full assault to assure his death and destroy his organization. It is the only way to be sure.”

  “So what’s your plan then?” Fajkus spat. “Are we supposed to rely on your hired thugs?” He gestured angrily at Anders. “Murderers and trash? You expect me to believe that Montalban scum is going to take those monster walls and watch our back? I say horseshit to that!”

  Anders shrugged, seemingly calm, his massive hands resting in his lap. The big man looked bored. He’d been called worse things than hired thug.

  Ibrahim raised a hand to calm his subordinate. Fajkus was done, his distrust for the Montalban Exchange having been noted. I liked the Czech. He was angry. He kind of reminded me of a young Carl. Ibrahim nodded toward Katarina. “Please continue.”

  “Just because your people are suicidal fanatics, do not underestimate what my hired trash is capable of. I offer you more than just men with guns, I offer you resources, and I offer you a way into that compound.”

  Ibrahim kept up his poker face, but I could tell his interest was piqued. “And how exactly do you propose to do that?”

  Katarina glanced absently at her absurdly expensive Swiss watch. She raised her head, and an evil grin split her perfect features. “Like this . . .”

  The cabin door flew open. It was one of the Exodus operatives that I had met earlier, the Russian woman, Svetlana. She had a big bolt action sniper rifle cradled in her arms. “Ibrahim, we have incoming.” Fajkus rose, his hand moving under his sweater to his holstered pistol.

  “Don’t worry,” Katarina said. “They’re with me.”

  A CZ 97B appeared in Fajkus’s hand. “Treacherous—” He was cut off as Anders’ .45 materialized right under his nose. The big man had moved so fast that I hadn’t even seen the draw stroke.

  “Calm down,” Anders ordered. Svetlana jerked her rifle to her shoulder and pointed it square at Anders’ back, then looked to Ibrahim for guidance. The Exodus commander shook his head slightly as he studied Katarina. Fajkus slowly placed his .45 on the table and removed his hand. Ander’s pistol didn’t move, and it was obvious that the Exodus man was only a few pounds of pressure on a trigger between life and death.

  Then there was a noise. Faint at first, but it quickly grew, as the thunder closed on us. The dirty windows began to vibrate, clay pots rattled, and dust fell from the ceiling like fat brown snowflakes. Then it was deafening, as massive engines drove giant rotors, an endless deep scream, like some sort of leviathan descending on us. The room darkened as something blocked the sunlight.

  “That’s certainly a large helicopter,” Ibrahim said.

  “It’s a Mil-26. The Halo. Biggest in the world, I’m told,” Katarina shouted over the noise. “I have two of them.” Kat always had liked to make a big entrance. She was such a drama queen. The noise receded as the huge helicopter tore away, demonstration of speed and mass complete. Anders slowly lowered and reholstered his gun. Svetlana dropped the muzzle of her rifle. Fajkus grudgingly returned to his seat.

  “An impressive fly-by, but we’ve already thought of air insertion,” Ibrahim said. “They’ll see us coming, and shoot us out of the sky.”

  “I run the finest smuggling operation in Asia. My pilots are better than yours. We can run the mountain passes on night vision at a hundred and eighty kilometers an hour. Radar won’t see a thing until we exit the pass. We’ll be on top of the compound before Jihan even knows we’re there. I can drop all of your strike teams right into his lap. At the same time my men will destroy his garrison in The Crossroads and the Brothers. Once they and their master are dead, the slave soldiers at the mines will collapse.”

  Fajkus shook his head. “It’ll still take a minute to make it from the mouth of the canyon to the target, and our intel indicates there’s a Shilka in the compound. That thing will tear your choppers apart.”

  He was right. I had seen that antiaircraft monstrosity when we had reconned the compound. Flying right into four quick and responsive 23mm cannons with active radar and an alert crew? Screw that.

  “How do you propose we deal with that?”

  Kat examined her nails like this was boring her. She took her sweet time responding. “You see, this is why Exodus needs me. I’ve been studying Jihan’s weaknesses for quite some time. I have a way to get someone into the compound undetected. I’ve been laying the groundwork for months. We’ll need someone capable of infiltrating when the choppers are in place, then at a predetermined time, that individual will disable the AA. It will be extremely dangerous and require someone skilled.”

  Every set of eyes in the room turned toward me.

  I snorted. “Yeah . . . figures.”

  LORENZO

  Crossroads City

  March 24th

  The last few days had been spent in preparation. I had gone over my part of the plan repeatedly, and had worked closely with both Exodus and Kat’s forces. The choppers were prepped and stashed in Mongolia. Exodus would be riding i
n style. Kat’s choppers could carry a small army, so they wouldn’t even be close to full, but if one was disabled, they’d still have a way out. The Montalban foot soldiers were going to assault the garrison in town. The final group consisted of me, Anders, and a handpicked group of Exodus members.

  On the other side, Jihan had several hundred fanatical soldiers in his fort. We needed to work fast though, because he and another hundred guarding the dam and around a thousand or so possible reinforcements at the slave mines only a few miles away. We were leaving the dam and mines alone, because it was better to cut off the head and let the body die.

  In twenty-four hours the great raid would begin.

  Exodus was spread thin. I had not realized at first just how much this operation meant to their organization, but I had pieced together a few facts. Exodus wasn’t a huge operation by any means, and the force gathered here was one of the largest they’d ever assembled. Swords had gathered from every corner of the world for this. Ibrahim was their most experienced commander. Exodus literally had all of their eggs in one basket.

  The Montalban Exchange was risking just as much. As soon as Kat struck against Jihan, she would either win total control of The Crossroads, or they were done, and they would be lucky to escape with their lives.

  I had spent the last four days bouncing back and forth between the Montalban Exchange, the Golden Cloud, and various Exodus meeting places. Today I was once again on the top floor of the Exchange, near a crackling fireplace, sitting around a table with Ibrahim and Fajkus of Exodus, and Katarina, Anders, and a man named Diego from the Exchange. I’d been told Katsumoto was the other hotshot Exodus boss in town, and I was a little suspicious as to why I’d not seen him at any of the meetings with the Montalbans, but Exodus was probably just hedging their bets in case this was an elaborate plot for Kat to sell out their leader.

  Reaper and I were at the end of the table. Jill was at the Golden Cloud. I was not comfortable having her near Kat, as I was still waiting for my ex to fly into one of her rages and kill somebody. Though she actually seemed a lot more grounded and sane than when I had last been around her. This mafia-don thing seemed really good for her.

  In the middle of the table was a scale model of the compound. It was actually rather impressive, with carved foam blocks mimicking each building, the wall, and the surrounding terrain, with a red number painted on each structure to help us keep track. The compound was at the border between the windswept valley and the edge of the mountain. Three sides of the compound were exposed to open ground. The fourth hung over the side of the mountain, and had a near-vertical drop to the rock below. A red arrow was painted on the table, pointing to the northeast, the direction of the canyon mouth, where the helicopters would be coming from.

  Katarina reached across the table and moved the toy tank that represented the dreaded ZSU antiaircraft cannon slightly. She turned the turret so it was pointing at me, and grinned. “So, you’ve had a chance to think it through. Can you do it?”

  I stood, so I could have a better bird’s eye view of the fort. We had been through this a dozen times, but it never hurt to look again, to try and find that one hidden problem that was just waiting to bite you in the ass. There was approximately two hundred meters from the cliff edge to where the ZSU had last been parked, and most of it would be navigable in the dark without being seen.

  “Assuming phase one goes according to plan. Yeah. I can do it. Phase one gets hinky, and I’m probably dead.”

  “Then we’ll abort. Turn around and fly back to Mongolia, and be home in time for cocoa,” Kat replied. “If not?”

  “Phase one complete. I’ll initiate phase two, bring up my team, and when we’re ten minutes off the ZSU I’ll give the signal,” I replied mechanically. I would only be on my own for the initial engagement. After that, in theory at least, I would have some help. I had received some good news from Exodus before the meeting. Shen had arrived, and would meet me at the staging point. I had worked with the man before, and had faith in his abilities.

  “At Go, phase three will begin,” Ibrahim stood, and moved two plastic helicopters across the board, and into the red path of the red arrow. “We’ll move off station, and proceed through the canyon at maximum speed. My chopper will be in the lead position. One minute behind will be the second.” Ibrahim had insisted that the chopper he was riding on be in front, that way if I failed and the ZSU blasted something out of the sky, it would be his Halo. That way half of his men could still escape. “That is the point of no return.” He slowly sat back down. Once the choppers exited the canyon and were seen, we had to win, or Jihan’s forces would expunge our existence from the earth.

  Reaper looked up from his laptop. “As soon as I see the radar go down, that’s when I’ll bring in our eyes. By the way, weather still looks good. Chances of snow the next morning, but we should be clear during the raid.” I had been adamant that he and Jill would not be placed in harm’s way. Later today they would be leaving town, just in case this all went horribly wrong. Reaper still had a job to do, but it could be done remotely just as easy as it could be done in town. Having my people out from under the gun was going to be one less thing on my mind.

  “When you leave the canyon, my men will attack The Crossroads barracks and kill any Brothers present.” Diego spoke for the first time. He was relatively young, and had cultivated that Big Eddie Euro-trash vibe, down to the puffy hair and a suspicious amount of eye shadow. Ibrahim’s spies had confirmed that when Diego wasn’t working for Kat, he was cross dressing at one of the local clubs. Typical Montalban employee, but apparently Kat thought he was pretty sharp. He would be leading the Exchange’s forces in town as they surrounded and burned Jihan’s barracks to the ground. We still didn’t know how many Brothers there actually were, but as of this morning, intel indicated that there were at least two in town.

  Fajkus spoke directly to Katarina. “How is your men’s morale?” His voice implied what he thought of the mercenaries.

  Diego cut in. “The Montalban troops are as good as yours.”

  I snorted, perhaps a little too impolitely.

  Diego’s plucked eyebrows narrowed into a dangerous V. He lifted his shirt and exposed a well-worn knife handle. Ibrahim’s spies had also confirmed that Diego had participated in a few knife fights in the arena, when he wasn’t busy portraying a very convincing Celine Dion. He also had a bit of an attitude around me since I still had the reputation of having been Big Eddie’s favorite killer. “You have something to say, Lorenzo?”

  I leaned back further in my comfortable chair. “I never met a transvestite I couldn’t take in a knife fight.”

  Diego began to rise, but Kat glared at him. He slowly lowered himself back down, fixing me with a glare that let me know we had unfinished business, or maybe he was going to start singing the theme song from Titanic. Hell if I knew.

  “My men don’t know they’re doing this. When we initiate, I will tell them that Jihan has already been killed,” she stated simply. “That’ll fire them up. What they don’t know can’t hurt them, and if we fail in the compound . . .” She trailed off. We all knew it wouldn’t matter for long. And she meant it when she said we, since Kat was going to be on the second chopper. That fact alone helped to demonstrate to Exodus that she was just as committed as they were. “How’s your troops’ morale?” she asked snidely, already knowing the answer.

  “Excellent,” Ibrahim said with an honest assurance. He wasn’t exaggerating either. I had worked closely with his subordinates in planning this. They were fired up. There were still several other Exodus teams scattered around the world that were supposed to be converging here, but Ibrahim was done waiting. The Kurd had picked a course of action and was committed to seeing it through.

  The next phase was the separation of the various teams to take over and control different points of the compound. My group got the brig. Ibrahim was going to personally take the missile silo that Jihan called home. I didn’t like that part at all. A commander s
hould be someplace he can have a view of everything, and that’s not at the bottom of a giant hole, but Exodus leadership seemed to be very lead from the front oriented. We went over secondary plans, who would take over what areas of responsibility should some other team be incapacitated, and finally every contingency plan that we could think of.

  It had been a long time since I had worked with this large a group. I grudgingly respected Exodus. Their motives were pure, their training top notch, and their fury justified. They were nuts, but they were devoted nuts. The Exchange was the wild card, but Katarina had been nothing but professional so far. Anders was a brute, but he was also cunning, and by all accounts, very good at what he did. Diego was a weirdo, but in typical Montalban fashion could be counted on to be ruthless and efficient.

  We went over a few last bits of business. Ibrahim nodded at me toward the conclusion, his bushy eyebrows scrunching together. I had already agreed to meet with him secretly, to discuss a few other contingency plans that we were going to put into place in case the Montalbans fell through. There was not a lot of trust in this business.

  Finally, we were done. We had planned about as much as possible in the time allotted. If we didn’t go tomorrow, it would be at least another week before we could do this again. That meant a greater chance that my brother would be dead, Exodus would lose more slaves, and Kat lost more money. None of us wanted to postpone. We were a go.

  Ibrahim addressed Katarina, very formally, very solemnly. “On behalf of Exodus, I want to thank you. I know that your reasons for helping us are to your own benefit, but know that the lives and freedom of thousands are in your hands. With almighty God’s blessing upon us, tomorrow liberty will shine on the ancient Crossroads again.”

  Katarina smiled politely. She had a glass of wine in front of her. She picked it up as if she were about to give a toast. “Thank you. I—” There was a knock at the door, and she turned briefly. Anders pulled a cloth over the table, covering the model. “Please excuse me, for a moment.” Ibrahim nodded for her to proceed.