Jonathan Maberry - Assassin's code

More quarrels hissed through the air and Brother Julius wheeled as the caravan horses began to scream when the steel-headed missiles tore into their flesh. One reared high and lashed out, striking a nun on the cheek and snapping her neck with a dry-stick crack.

Brother Julius ran then. The other pilgrims were clambering over the ruins of the old fort as arrows struck sparks from the broken stone. The riders-a dozen Saracens in billowing desert cloaks-rode toward them like the horsemen of Saint John. They yipped and yelled and laughed as they fired their last volley of quarrels and then they hooked their crossbows over their saddle horns and drew their swords with a rippling wave of silver.

Brother Julius tried to leap over a fallen pear tree, and the skeletal fingers of a branch snagged the hem of his robe. The cloth caught fast and Julius fell flat on his face with a whooomph! Sand puffed up, filling his nose and mouth. He rolled onto his side, gagging and coughing.

Behind him he heard shrill screams and the sound of pain-filled voices pleading to God even as sword blades cut into them. Brother Julius closed his eyes and tried to mutter a prayer between fits of coughing. Soon the screams stopped but the dull-wet sound of steel on flesh continued for almost a full minute.

Then there was silence.

Brother Julius tried to crawl away, but he heard the crunch of a foot on the sand beside his head and he looked up into the face of one of the killers. The man had dark eyes and black hair that fluttered in the breeze. He had a thin mustache and a spiked beard on the point of his chin. He was not smiling; instead a look of sadness was painted over his features. And his face… there was something terribly wrong about his face.

“Make your peace with God,” said the killer.

The clothes were Saracen, as were the armor and fittings. Even the decorations on the horse that stood nickering behind him were of Saracen make. But the man spoke in French.

“W-why… why are you doing this?” demanded the monk. “I don’t understand. For the love of God- why? ”

The killer raised his sword. “It is for the love of God that we do this. And may God have mercy on all our souls.”

The sword flashed downward and Brother Julius felt himself detaching from the heat and the sand and his own flesh. He felt himself falling into darkness, into mystery.

The swordsman placed a foot on the monk’s chest and pulled, tearing his blade free from where it had wedged deep in the bone. Then he dropped the weapon on the sand by the monk.

He turned and looked at his companions. Two of them were busy with the task of cutting off the heads of the pilgrims. They were laughing as they worked, tossing the heads like children playing with toys.

“Stop it!” growled the swordsman, and the men froze in place, their smiles disintegrating from their faces, their eyes instantly ashamed. He plucked at his robe with disgust. “Do you wear these and then forget who you are?”

Then two men glanced at each other, and then bowed deeply to the swordsman.

“Forgive foolish sinners, brother,” said one.

The other, too ashamed to speak, merely nodded.

The swordsman walked over to them and placed his hands on their shoulders. The other warriors sat on their horses, chins buried on their chests, looking troubled and sad and weary.

“My brothers,” said the swordsman, “battle is like strong wine even to the best of us. We become drunk on it, and we must guard against that. When we are done, I invite you all to join me in prayers to God in which we will ask for forgiveness of our sins and guidance for all things to come.”

The men nodded. The swordsman turned to the men on the horses. They too nodded.

“Then let us be about our task with the reverence to which it is due.”

No one spoke, but they nodded again and set to work.

Without laughter or games they collected the heads of the pilgrims and stacked them into a mound in the middle of the pilgrims’ road. Another caravan of the faithful was due along this path in less than half a day. They set the head of Brother Julius atop the pile. They placed a ring of hands around the mound, and in each hand they placed a holy cross. Then the men formed a circle around the mound and fished for the fittings of their codpieces. Without meeting each other’s eyes, they pulled out their penises and urinated on the mound, on the hands, and even on the crosses.

Last of all, the swordsman used a sharp stick to write a curse against all crusaders in the hard-packed dirt by the ruins. He concluded it with a description of how Pope Innocent III sodomized young boys and sheep. It was a filthy description, but it looked almost elegant when written in the flowing Arabic script.

The swordsman was weeping as he flung the stick away from him as if it was covered in offal. He stripped off his Saracen robes and folded them into a tight bundle before shoving them roughly into a saddle bag. He stood for a moment letting the wind dry the sweat-heavy dark brown hooded cape with a white cross embroidered on the left shoulder. The cross was not the plain outline of long post and short crosspiece, but was instead made to look like a dagger laid across a longsword, with both overlaying a red circle. The other men also shed their disguises to stand revealed. They stood in a circle around the devastation they had caused, and each of them bowed their heads in prayer.

“God forgive us,” murmured the swordsman, leading the prayer. “And God grant that the pilgrims see and understand what they must understand.”

“Amen,” said each of the gathered men, and they said it gravely and with honesty.

With that, Sir Guy LaRoque turned away and walked with a heavy heart toward his horse. The trustworthy men of the Red Order of the Knights Hospitaller followed.

It had begun.

The Warehouse

Baltimore, Maryland

June 15, 3:57 a.m. EST

The big screen above Circe’s MindReader console flashed white and then was filled by the bland face of Mr. Church. Rudy saw Circe’s posture immediately stiffen and the muscles at the corners of her jaw tightened. He wondered if Church noticed it too. And if so, did he care.

“Let’s jump right in,” said Church. “Aunt Sallie tells me that you have problems with the content of the drive. Tell me.”

“First,” interrupted Rudy, “Is Joe okay?”

“He says so,” said Church.

“Yes, but is he?”

“I haven’t had time to personally give him a physical, Dr. Sanchez.”

Rudy held his ground. “I expect a more complete answer as soon as possible.”

“Noted,” Church said with a small twitch of his mouth.

“What do we know about the nukes?” said Circe.

Church smiled faintly. “Based on the photos Rasouli provided, they appear to be Teller-Ulams. We’re running extensive searches through intelligence agencies in thirty countries to see if we can get a line on who might have built them.”

“Can’t a person simply go online and download instructions for making them?” asked Rudy.

“You watch too many movies, Doctor. These are sophisticated and complex machines, and it takes a great deal of skill, the proper equipment, and genuine experts to do it right. From the photos it’s clear that the casings are commercially manufactured, or rather were during the Cold War. These casings are late 1980s, and less than five hundred of this design were made.”

“Five hundred?” echoed Rudy.

“A conservative estimate places the number of active nukes in the world at eight thousand,” said Circe.

“That estimate is very conservative,” said Church. “We know who bought this model openly or through standard military appropriations. We have decades of intelligence and, in some cases, mutual sharing of information. My guess is that we will find that most or all of those devices will be accounted for: still active, mothballed, or dismantled and the parts tracked. The problem is complicated by the fact that fifty-six of these devices were in the Republic of Kazakhstan, and after it became separated from Russia, we have not been able to verify the location or disposition of a third of those devices. This has become a typical, though increasingly frightening, state of affairs since the end of the Cold War.”