Busted Flush by George R. R. Martin
Michael clenched his jaw at the torrent of vitriol from the man. “You don’t know,” he told him. “You don’t know the suffering the Caliphate has caused with its oil policies. You don’t know—”
“Suffering?” Dabir interrupted as the translation was given to him. “Look around you, Abomination. Do you see people here with automobiles and televisions? Do you see mansions? Do you see stores full of things to buy? I have seen pictures of your West. I have seen the way you live. Suffering? You know nothing of suffering.”
“People have lost jobs from the lack of oil,” Michael persisted. “Some are going hungry as a result, or can’t pay for care that they need, or have lost their houses. And some have even died.” It was what Fortune might have said. The words tasted as dry and dead as sand.
“So you come to steal the job from my son, who has been taken away?” Dabir waved a hand toward the buildings of the wellhead and spat again. “You come to steal the food from our table? You come to kill my grandson?”
“Your grandson tried to kill me. I was only defending myself.” It should have sounded angry; it sounded apologetic.
“Raaqim was defending the land that is his from you. You come here saying you want to ease the suffering of all people, but it is only your people you care about, and you bring the suffering and the pain and the death here instead. You want to leave it here when you go.” The old man spat again. “You wonder why we hate you, Abomination? Because you do not see us. We will fight you with an army of children if we must. We will fight you with an army of old people, because there is only one way to make any of you see. Only one way.”
The translator was still speaking the last few words when Dabir reached under his white thobe. Michael saw the gleam of metal, but before he could react, the others already had. Two of the FAMAS opened up, and the old man danced spasmodically backward to the barrage of sound, an ancient handgun flying from his grasp and splotches of arterial red spraying over the bone-colored clothing. Dabir thumped loudly to the floor of the house as the FAMAS went silent. Someone screamed inside the house and a figure hurled itself from the darkness of the interior toward Michael. He struck at it with all his hands, using his full strength with his adrenaline and fright; the figure slammed hard against the door frame of the house. He could hear the crack of bones and glimpse the deep lines and liver spots on her half-covered face even as he realized the ancient frailty of her body. She was unconscious by the time she slumped, half over the body of Dabir. “Pull them all out!” someone ordered behind him. “Anyone moves or resists, shoot.”
“No!” Michael yelled. “No!” He grabbed at one of the soldiers who tried to move past him toward the house and shoved him away. “Damn it, back the fuck off!” He glared at them all, waving all six hands. “We’re going back. You hear me? We’re done here. We’re done.”
The old woman moaned on the floor. He could see other people inside the house, watching and too afraid to come forward. “I’m sorry,” he told them. “I’m sorry . . .”
They didn’t understand. They only stared at him with hatred diluted by fear. At him.
The Abomination.
Just Cause: Part III
Carrie Vaughn
ARABIA
HOT, EXHAUSTED, SWEATING RIVERS inside her Kevlar vest—this, she had decided, was a Kevlar situation—Kate looked out the helicopter window at the desert sliding past below her. In a few minutes, they’d reach the pumping station in Kuwait, twenty miles from the coast of the Persian Gulf.
This was their second stop of the day. At the first, they’d spent six hours keeping a crowd of sullen locals at bay while technicians started the wells pumping.
Not a single person on either side had been happy to be there. This wasn’t like Ecuador, where the lives they saved stood right in front of them. Hard to see the lives they were saving here.
Her phone beeped—incoming text message.
One word: FUBAR. From Michael.
“What’s wrong?” Lohengrin said. Somehow, even in the heat and sand, with everyone around him boiling, he managed to maintain his cool, almost arrogant demeanor.
She showed him the screen. The German ace raised an eyebrow.
“From DB? He wanted to come here,” he said. “He shouldn’t complain now.”
This wasn’t complaining. Complaining was bitching about the heat and the food, pouring sand out of your shoe and yelling at your teammates for nothing at all. This was different.
It wouldn’t do any good to argue with Lohengrin. He’d just look down his nose at her with the sort of condescending pity people used on children with skinned knees.
The helicopter landed on a concrete pad outside the station in a whirlwind of grit. Like Simoon. Ana had called from New Orleans to tell her about the weird ace who showed up channeling the girl’s ghost. Kate was happy enough to not be there dealing with that particular mess. She shook the thought of the fallen ace away. She and Lohengrin piled outside first. Despite his confidence, he wasn’t taking any chances—he already wore his armor.
They were in a dusty valley, a bowl of sand ringed by rocky outcrops. Some grasses clung to the wasteland, tossing in a constant breeze. The station itself was an industrial complex covering acres. Dozens of wells were marked by steel trees thrusting up from the ground, attached to angled collections of pipes and valves. More pipes, a twisting maze of them, connected various stations of hunched machinery of arcane purpose. It was a sci-fi landscape from some depressing post-apocalyptic future. The air smelled thickly of oil, sulfur, and waste. Kate sneezed.
Sun glared off everything. Even with sunglasses, Kate’s face felt like it had frozen in a squint.
A control building and a collection of prefab barracks lay off to one side. But nobody was here. No workers had gathered to block the gate in the chain-link fence surrounding the site. No crowd milled around the barracks. She should have been relieved. The whole place was quiet, still.
Throwing a pebble, she blew the padlock and chain securing the gate. Still nothing. Maybe the place had been abandoned. She waved back at the helicopter, and the team of technicians, with their bright blue UN vests and helmets, ran to meet them.
“Keep your eyes open,” she said to Lohengrin.
“You think I would let down my guard?” He sounded offended.
You’re sleeping with Lilith, aren’t you? “Of course not,” she said.
They followed the team to the main building. Their attention was out, looking for trouble. The helicopter’s motor was still running, just in case. A trio of UN soldiers stood near it, also keeping watch.
“Curveball!” one of the techs called from the door. He was middle-aged, British, and had a weathered look to him. “It’s locked. Care to do the honors?”
She kept looking at the barracks, waiting for someone to lob a grenade from there. “Yeah. Sure.” She pulled a pebble from the pouch over her shoulder.
“I could cut the lock off,” Lohengrin said.
“Yeah, but people like it when things go boom.” She smiled. The techs chuckled. “Stand back, guys.”
She almost didn’t look at the door before making her pitch, but she lowered her arm at the same time Lohengrin said, “Wait a moment.”
They both approached, their attention drawn by a thin line of discoloration at the top of the frame. Like a bad paint job, or a place where someone had tried to patch a crack. It looked almost like caulking.
“Bill?” she said to the British tech. “What’s this look like to you?”
He joined them at the door and studied where she pointed. It only took a second for his expression to turn slack, his eyes growing wide.
“Bloody hell,” he murmured. “I think it’s plastique.”
“Set to detonate when the door opens? A booby trap?”
“Probably.”
They all backed away.
“What do we do?” Lohengrin said.
“We call it in,” Curveball said. “Go back to HQ. This isn’t worth blowing ou
The technicians trotted back toward the helicopter without argument. She and Lohengrin brought up the rear as they’d initially led the way—watchfully, looking over their shoulders.
They heard the machine-gun fire before they saw the gunman.
Instinctively, Kate dropped as squibs of sand burst around her. Then a weight fell on her. Lohengrin, in full armor, including bucket helmet with decorative wings, playing human shield. She couldn’t move to reach her pouch.
“Get up!” she hissed, elbowing him. He did, just enough for her to slip out, take shelter, and take stock.
The firing continued. Bullets pinged off Lohengrin’s ghost steel.
There was only one of them. A basic-model automatic rifle. It was coming from the corner of the control building. She was actually getting experienced enough with this to discern that much from a noisy burst of gunfire.
Golf ball in hand this time, she cocked back and threw over Lohengrin’s shoulder. Didn’t have to aim, because she steered the projectile, sent it rocketing around the corner. She hoped that would silence the weapon.
It impacted with all the power of her surprise at the turn of events. People shooting at her brought this out. This anger. It translated well, and that side of the prefab building went up in a crack of thunder, a burst of dust and debris.
But he’d already run. Lohengrin pointed, and she caught a glimpse of someone peering out around the corner of the other side of the building.
Still just one of them. No army bearing down.
A second explosion blew out the front of the building. Fire ringed the door—the booby trap. Her detonation rattled the door and set the bomb off. Shit.
Billowing flames swallowed the building. She ducked, Lohengrin hunched over her, and debris pummeled them. Pieces of siding, of corrugated roofing, furniture even. Sheltered by Lohengrin’s body, she felt the impacts against him.
She didn’t see what struck his head, hard enough to whip it back, too fast, too hard. He slumped, boneless—and his armor vanished. She found herself holding a two-hundred-plus-pound unconscious German in her lap. The ghost steel couldn’t protect against everything—like getting knocked out inside the helmet.
In a panic, Kate felt for a pulse, looked for injuries. She didn’t see blood, no obvious marks. She shook his shoulders. “Lohengrin? Lohengrin! Klaus!”
They were in the open, totally exposed, and that guy was still out there with a gun. But the rain of fire didn’t come. She threw another stone.
And at that moment the gunman emerged and revealed what he was doing. He’d set down his gun and was pulling the pin from a grenade. But he wasn’t facing toward them. He’d turned to the tangle of pipelines, the wells, the pumps that held back the pressure of oil and natural gas.
He threw. The grenade sailed up.
She turned her missile toward the grenade. Didn’t know if this would work. Was she good enough, fast enough, clever enough? Had to believe she was. Good enough to get this far, couldn’t hesitate now.
She wondered what would happen the time she wasn’t good enough. It would only take once.
Her missile, glowing red-hot, sailed in a straight line toward the grenade, which was falling toward the pipes.
Squinting, she could barely see her target. But she could see it in her mind, follow the arc. She reached toward her missile, her arm taut and trembling, guiding it faster, still faster. She let out a cry of rage.
It sped up, then slammed into the grenade from the side, carried it forward some twenty yards, and exploded. Both projectiles vaporized. Nothing else happened. Nothing broke, nothing ignited. These oil fields wouldn’t burn.
The gunman—young, wearing plain trousers and a T-shirt—screamed in his own fit of rage and ran toward her, waving a handgun, a weapon of last resort. He fired at her again and again in an obvious suicide run. She picked up something—stone, a piece of plastic from the destroyed control room. Didn’t matter, because it was solid in her hand, and her arm burned. She pitched.
The missile went through him, all the way, just like a bullet, complete with the spray of blood, a splatter raining from the front, a gory mess spilling from his back. He exploded from the inside and fell like a stone.
She stared, almost smiling with satisfaction.
Lohengrin tried sitting up, shaking his head, blinking until he managed to focus on her. “My lady! I am in your debt.”
She pursed her lips.
Blue helmets ran toward them. The UN team, with machine guns. They were shouting.
“Curveball!” one of them called. French accent. She couldn’t remember his name.
“Help me get him to the chopper!” she shouted, trying to lever Klaus to his feet. He tried to pull away.
Everything moved quickly. Two soldiers were suddenly there, taking Lohengrin’s arms, pulling the big ace away from her. She scrambled after him. “He’s hurt, we have to—”
“Curveball!” the French peacekeeper said again. He pulled her to the helicopter. In moments, they were airborne and getting the hell out. But the soldier wouldn’t let go, and she started to get angry, especially when another soldier started tugging at her left arm. What the hell were they doing? Between the two of them, they pinned her to the seat.
“What—”
Lohengrin was the one who said, “Kate, your arm!”
She stared at him, blank-faced, confused. Then she looked at herself.
Her left arm was covered with blood. Her own blood. The soldier was swabbing at her with an alcohol wipe, searching for the wound. She hadn’t even felt it. Why couldn’t she feel it?
“Just grazed. You’ll be fine,” the medic said, poking at her biceps.
He did something—and every nerve lit with pain. She clenched her teeth and pressed her head back while he wrapped a bandage around the arm.
She thought, despairing—what if it had been her right arm?
A few long, terrifying moments of shock passed. After sunset, they arrived back at the tent city that served as their local base of operations. Kate ended up in the infirmary, on a lot of painkillers, sitting on a chair and looking away as a medic stitched the wound in her arm. Eight stitches. She’d have a scar to show for this.
Lilith, still managing to look suave and stylish in black fatigues, regarded her.
“Don’t tell John about this,” Kate said. She didn’t want him to worry. But God, she wanted to see him. Wanted to fall into bed with him and sob about the close call. But he’d try to send her back to New York. “I’ll call him later. I don’t want him to get distracted because of me.”
“You’re loopy on drugs,” she said. “You’re not thinking clearly.”
Kate gritted her teeth. “Lilith, I know we don’t get along. But please don’t tell him just to spite me.”
Lilith stepped close and glared down at her. “After everything we’ve been through together, you don’t think I’d go out of my way to spite you, do you?”
Of course she would. Spite was her bread and butter. “Bitch,” Kate muttered.
She tsked. “Dear, don’t aggravate yourself. And you really shouldn’t call me names when you want me to do you a favor.”
Kate closed her eyes and tried to settle herself. She didn’t have anything on hand to throw.
“What are you going to tell John?” she said softly.
Lilith shrugged. “What I have to.” She swirled her cape and vanished with a hiss of air.
“Funny. The guys all seem to get along with her just fine.” DB pushed through the tent flap.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to see him just now. At the same time, she was relieved to see a friendly face. He pulled a chair over with one hand, tapped a patter with another. After sitting, he just looked at her for a long moment. His face was a picture, a conflict of emotions. Shadows darkened his eyes. A multicolored bruise melded with the ink of tattoos on his rib cage. He hadn’t slept since his own disaster. Hadn’t smiled, either. Together, the two of them must h
“Christ, Kate, when I heard you’d been hurt—”
“I’m fine—”
“Would you listen to me? After everything that’s happened, all the shit that’s come down, I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you.”
“Michael. I’m not sure I can handle that sort of thing from two sides.”
“Is it so fucking wrong that I care?”
“No. Of course not. But—”
“But you’ve got John. I know.”
Incredibly, she felt her lips turn in a smile. He stared at her. “What? What’d I do?”
“You didn’t call him Captain Cruller. Or Beetle Boy.”
For a moment it looked like he might spout obscenities. Then he ducked his gaze and chuckled. She reached for his nearest hand and squeezed. Friends in a tight spot. She didn’t want to lose that. He wrapped three of his hands around hers. All she had to do was say the word, and he’d wrap his whole, immense body around her like that, smothering her with warmth and affection. She didn’t say the word.
Sighing, he said, “This mission is completely fucked up.”
She pressed her lips in a line. “I know.”
That evening, Kate found a TV that picked up CNN and watched John’s mission go to hell even worse than this one was. The footage of Sekhmet the Lion shrugging off gunfire and tearing the treads off tanks left her nauseous. That was John in there, she kept telling herself. The Committee hadn’t stopped a genocide. They’d ignited a war. Reports of injured Committee members were sketchy—all anyone knew was that there were injuries. Calls to John weren’t getting through.
When Ana called, Kate left the crowd gathered around the TV to get some privacy.
“How are you?” Ana asked, her voice scratching over the cell connection.
I’ve been shot. “I’m okay,” Kate said instead.
“You’re lying,” Ana said, a little too flatly for it to be a joke.