Carnifex (92 page)

The pilot sitting in the control station at one end of the conex watched the altimeter and Global Locating System readings on his screen carefully. Sometimes, prevailing winds could help a Condor out, carrying it nearer to its target without having to expend fuel or hunt for updrafts. This was not one of those cases; the winds were crosswise to the planned line of flight. In the long run, this would cost fuel. The pilot nodded to himself, then typed in a code and pressed a button.

By the time the Condor received the signal it was several miles away from and above the pilot. It sent a further signal to the ring and the wire atop itself, which caused both to detach. Simultaneously it initiated a timer in the balloon that would cause the hydrogen to burn some hours later, after it had drifted well away from the release point and line of flight.

Freed of the balloon, the Condor initially dropped. Its wings, however, were wide and its chord nearly perfect for gliding. They immediately bit into the air, obtaining lift as the bird glided forward. Later, the pilot would use the engine to rise again, before he resumed the very fuel efficient gliding that was really the Condor's main means of propulsion.

Back in the hangar, the pilot breathed a sigh of relief. It had happened, during development and testing, that the balloon release mechanism had failed.
Thank God it worked properly this time.

Some distance from the conex wherein the pilot sat, Carrera and Fernandez stood and watched the package being armed and loaded into the second Condor by Fernandez's people. Fernandez noted,
Patricio's face is just a stone mask, like he's shut himself down inside. I cannot even imagine what he's feeling. Freedom, finally, from the burden of avenging his family? Wondering what to do with the rest of his life? Or perhaps he's thinking that he has no more reason to live after this. Suicide?
Fernandez reconsidered that last.
No . . . he has a new family and he loves them. That much at least, I am confident of; he will live for them. Which is important, as
la Patria
will need him soon.

It was almost midnight, with only Hecate—and she in her first quarter—showing. The boat was darkened to normal observation, though Chu knew that he was under satellite observation by the FSN, if anyone happened to be looking. Fosa had
wanted
them to observe the fleet, if only to get early warning of any attack. He could hardly tell them to look the other way now, even though he had stressed to Chu that he wanted this cargo moved as secretly as possible.

Chu was almost unsurprised when a four wheel drive vehicle, escorted by two others bearing military police, showed up at the pier and
Duque
Carrera stepped out, accompanied by several others. One of those other was, apparently, a child.
Oh, yes,
that
would explain the need for secrecy
, he thought.

Marta had the wheel, though the boat was tied up and stationary. Chu had been training her as a backup. The girl seemed to have an affinity for boats, perhaps because life ashore had been so seedy and degrading for her. Since the loss of Jaquelina, the larger woman had taken little interest in anything else.

Leaving her with the con, Chu hurried to the brow to greet his guest.

He saluted, of course, which salute Carrera returned. Yet Carrera didn't salute either the small standard fluttering at the stern not the bridge.
Landlubbers,
Chu thought, with a mental
harrumph.
They know nothing of naval protocol. Then again, since he owns this boat, the fleet, the entire legion, I suppose I'd best just shut up about it.

"Captain," Carrera greeted at he stepped over the gangplank onto the deck.

"
Duque
," Chu answered, with a head nod.
At least he knows the proper form or address.
"A cabin had been prepared below. We're past dinner but I've had the cook put a meal in your cabin."
Which is
my
cabin, actually, but let's not go there.
"If you would like a drink, there's scotch in a drawer in the desk. I can arrange a woman . . . "

"That won't be necessary; the woman, I mean. I appreciate the scotch, too, but I've bought my own. My son will stay with me. Billet the others. And then just take me to the
von Mises
, Captain."

He looks much the worse for wear
, thought Carrera, looking at the emaciated body of Mustafa ibn Mohamed ibn Salah, min Sa'ana.
On him, it's plain on the outside. With me? It's all on the inside.

Mustafa's beard, once long and flowing and rich in dignity, was shaved off. This was only fitting as he was soon to be changed into a woman. His hands were bandaged and bound. Had he not been given a robe, there would have been visible burn marks on his torso. Both of his feet looked deformed now; the guards had had to carry him into the interview room. He had his arms wrapped about his torso, holding broken ribs as if terrified of any movement. This, too, was understandable. Skevington's Daughter, among her other talents, also broke ribs. Even had none of this been so, still Mustafa would not have smiled. He'd been to the dentist once too often for that.

For all that, he's still in better mental shape than Robinson or Arbeit
, Carrera thought.
Those two have totally collapsed.

"You gave up everything you knew you had to give, I think, old friend," Carrera said to him. His voice was gentle, as if he were somehow detached from his surroundings, even as if he were somehow detached from life. "Still, I wonder what more you might give up."

At a nod from Carrera, the two screens, neither of them Kurosawas, sprang to life. The screen on the left showed little but a rapidly passing desert below, with the occasional camel or goat visible only as a greenish pixilation of a slightly different shade from the sand below. The other screen likewise showed a night scene, taken from above. The latter scene, however, was much more brightly lit, the features much more easily distinguished. It showed a walled compound, minaret rising above the wall, and armed guards patrolling it. The images on the screens were being recorded, as was the scene on the
von Mises
of Carrera chatting with Mustafa.

"Recognize it?" Carrera asked.

"Go to Hell, pig," Mustafa responded through drilled and temporarily patched teeth. One of the guards pulled the former prince of the
Ikhwan
to his feet but his hair. Two brutally quick punches to the kidney left the ex-terrorist sobbing on the floor.

It must take tremendous courage, courage passing that of men, to still remain defiant after all he's been through. I could admire him were circumstances otherwise.

"I really do insist that you look at the screen," Carrera said. "I don't want to have to have your eyelids sewn open." A shift of Carrera's chin caused the same guard who had kidney punched Mustafa to haul him back onto his chair, again by his hair. "Now
watch
. This is important . . . to you. Do you recognize the view on the right?"

Mustafa looked, this time; anything to avoid another set of blows to his already abused kidneys.
The surrounding wall . . . the minaret . . . the small mosque below . . . that's my family compound in Hajar!

"Why are you showing me this?" Mustafa asked.

"You
do
recognize it then?"

"Yes . . . yes, of course I do. I grew up there."

"Indeed," Carrera agreed. "Did you know that nearly every child, grandchild, and great grandchild of your father is likewise growing up there? Did you know that all your brothers and cousins, all their husbands and wives, are likewise in that compound? Oh, sure . . . maybe a few distant relatives might be elsewhere. But I am pretty confident"—his tone held the very platonic essence of confidence as he said it—"that at least ninety-eight percent of your blood relatives are there in that compound. We spent . . . 
I
spent much effort at making life impossible for them anywhere else."

Mustafa said nothing to that. He'd known that his family had been hunted like animals all over the planet. It was not much of a surprise that this vicious, filthy, crusading swine had wielded the guiding hand of murder.

Carrera lit a cigarette. He saw Mustafa's eyes widen with barely repressed desire.
Why not? Isn't everyone entitled to a last cigarette?
He handed the lighter and pack to one of the guards and said, "Give him one."

Mustafa took the cigarette in his bandaged and bound hands and held it to his mouth while the guard flicked the lighter for him. One it was lit, he puffed frantically, eyes closing in unaccustomed bliss.

Carrera waited patiently for Mustafa to finish the cigarette. He had time.

"You were going to use nuclear weapons on both of my homelands," Carrera said. It wasn't a question and so Mustafa didn't answer. "Did you know I've had nuclear weapons since 461? Those were small things, though. Nothing like the citybusters I captured at your base. The ones I had had other defects, too, mainly that a clever man might trace them to me and my people."

Mustafa's eyed darted to the screens. Carrera caught the movement.

"Oh, yes. One of those captured, a true citybuster, is headed toward your family compound. That's the screen on the left. It's rated at seven hundred and eighty kilotons. I am informed that we can expect one hundred percent deaths at your family compound, and anything from half a million to a million in the city of Hajar."

His face a study in horror, Mustafa shook his head in denial. "You can't . . . "

"Sure I can," Carrera said. "Moreover, why should I not? I mean, think about it. Here you are, the greatest—known—terrorist in the history of this world. You've been trying to get nukes for decades. Your chief assistant, Nur al-Deen, even insisted you had them. He quoted the price you paid, did he not? And then a nuke goes off at ground zero, right inside your family compound, a place you conceivably might have stored one. That, alone, will make your movement very unappealing to the bulk of even young, idiot, male Salafis."

"But there will be doubts, too. 'Maybe,' people will say, 'just maybe it was a deliberate attack.' Now if that attack were to be from someone identifiable, then there would be a great cry for vengeance. But when the attack seems to come from nowhere? When they can't even identify a target for vengeance? No, old friend,
that
will be truly effective terror.
That
will have no focus for revenge.
That
will have your people shitting themselves at the thought of retaliation and beating their sons the first time the little bastards shout '
Allahu akbar
' a bit too enthusiastically. It's perfect; don't you see? And
you
gave me the means.
That'
s perfect, too.

"Lastly, I think that when the King of Yithrab—whoever ends up as king, the day after tomorrow—has to spend money to rebuild his capital, he'll find he can't afford both a capital city and
madrassas
all over the planet."

Carrera went silent then, leaving Mustafa in torment as the clock displayed on the left hand screen ticked down.

After that long silence, with the clock down to under five minutes and Mustafa's face showing mental agony beyond agony, Carrera said, "I
could
change the target now, I suppose. Tell me, would you rather your family die en masse or would you prefer that I obliterate Makkah al Jedidah and the New Kaaba?"

Mustafa cringed, both inside and out. "Devil!" he spat. "Spawn of
Shaitan
!"

"Which really doesn't answer the question," Carrera observed, still genially. "Would you rather I obliterate your family, your
entire
family, or that one stone building, which includes but a single stone from the original on Old Earth, should go up in smoke? I remind you that the number of civilian dead will be about the same."

Deprivation, stress, physical torture, and now
this
. Mustafa felt his heart begin to crack even as it had not cracked previously.
To lose my entire family . . . to destroy the sacred Kaaba?
He sank; physically, as he slumped and drew in on himself, mentally, as the weight Carrera had laid upon his soul bore him Hellward.

"Destroy . . . Makkah," Mustafa forced out. "Spare . . . my . . . family."

"No."

"But . . . "

"I said I could," Carrera's genial tone changed to one of pure cruelty. "I didn't say I would. Your family dies, as you murdered mine. I would kill them anyway, if only to terrorize any in the future who might contemplate going down the road you traveled. I just wanted both God and yourself to know that your faith, your personal faith, was a fraud. I may join you in Hell, someday, Mustafa. Indeed, after this, I probably will. But at least, if I do, it won't be because I betrayed
my
God as you have just tried to betray
yours.
"

Mustafa's jaw went slack, his eyes wild. As the clock on the screen wound down, he began a wordless moan. When it reached zero, and the image on the screen changed to a single enormous flash, the lesser terrorist in the cabin aboard the
von Mises
began a horrible keening. It was the sound of a man who has lost everything, in this world
and
the next.

Carrera arose to leave. "Cheer up, old man," he said. "You still have one son left. Me." To Mahamda he gave the order. "Turn him into what he despises, a woman. Then crucify him . . . her . . . 
it
."

"And the Earthpigs?"

"Let's save them for a while and see what use we might make of them."

Life is looking up
, Wallenstein thought, as she lounged in her command chair.
Robinson is gone. I am in command here, now, so it seems very likely that I shall be raised to Class One. All in all . . . 

A crewwoman at a sensing panel started back as if the panel were passing electricity through her body. "Captain, I've got a nuclear detonation on the planet's surface!"

Wallenstein's eyes grew wide in horror. Policy, long established, was that the fleet would retaliate for any nuclear weapons use . . . but that would mean nuclear war with the FSC.
Oh, Annan, I don't want to die, not
now
, not when I'm so close to my dreams.