Ted Bell - Warlord

The deed was done.

The man who had just murdered one of England's greatest heroes remained steadfastly at his post, moving his glasses back and forth from body to body, desperate to see Mountbatten's mutilated corpse pulled from the water. Towns people in small boats instantly sped to the rescue. A huge debris field spread across the water, slick with fuel oil, and here and there the small bodies of children floated in the water.

He didn't care about the incidental dead; they didn't trouble him in the slightest. The amount of blood on this English bastard's hands would never be equaled in ten thousand lifetimes. A small blue fishing vessel came to a stop beside one of the larger of the floating corpses.

He held his breath, focusing on the face of the corpse. Yes. It was him. Two men pulled what was left of Lord Mountbatten into the boat. Despite grievous injuries, he appeared to be alive, if only just. Smith waited atop the tower just long enough to watch Lord Louis Mountbatten expire. It didn't take long.

The man who had betrayed his nation died almost immediately, there on the deck of the small blue boat, both of his legs almost completely severed from his upper body.

God be praised.

The great Mountbatten, partitioned at last.

Now Smith could begin to sound the fathoms of his vengeance against the British Monarchy in earnest. As he made his way down the spiral staircase inside the watchtower, he suddenly realized that he was in no hurry to wreak his terrible havoc. He had a lifetime to plan each exquisite act to perfection and then execute it flawlessly. He would be the very soul of patience. He would strike only when the circumstances were perfect.

Each and every wound he inflicted would be a moment and a memory to savor.

And he believed, he knew, in every fiber of his being, that he would never be caught.

Never.

In the most solemn and uncharted depths of his dark soul, Smith conceived he had been put upon this earth for one reason: he was born a battle mace to crush a corrupt and rusting crown.

HOURS AFTER THE HORROR at Mullaghmore shook England and the civilized world to the core, the following statement was issued by the Provisional Wing of the Irish Republican Army in Belfast:

THE I.R.A. CLAIM RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE EXECUTION OF LORD LOUIS MOUNTBATTEN. THIS OPERATION IS ONE OF THE DISCRIMINATE WAYS WE CAN BRING THE ATTENTION OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE TO THE CONTINUING OCCUPATION OF OUR COUNTRY.

CHANDRA FELT AN ALMOST OVERWHELMING URGE to trigger her automatic stiletto and jam the razor-sharp blade straight up through her boss's jaw. Through his tongue and into the soft tissue of the palate at the roof of his mouth. She knew the sharpened tip would come to rest at the base of his brain, just behind the nasal cavity. This was one of the exact thrusts the weapon was made for. The kidneys, heart, and behind the ear were the other targets she went for with a great deal of regularity and success.

She'd been late. That's why she was being quote-unquote "punished" by this asshole. She'd been sent to Miami International with the van to pick up four new "students" arriving from Islamabad, Pakistan, via Jihad, Dubai, Caracas. Planes out of Venezuela were always late, but he blamed her anyway.

She took the "students" to the safe house they kept for new arrivals, a run-down two-story bungalow off Calle Ocho in Little Havana. Student housing for terrorists, the IED frat house she called it. They were moving a hundred kids a month through that dump. And Bashi got a big cut out of each and every one he delivered safely into the system.

Tomorrow, the students would disperse and begin their own personal crime waves. Crimes sufficiently serious to warrant the attention of the police, the courts, and finally the prison system. Then their real mission began. Preaching the hijacked gospel of the Prophet inside whatever joint they landed in.

Along with the daily religious instruction came bomb building, terror tactics; all this in preparation for the Caliphate, the "Big Day." It couldn't come soon enough for her. She hated her job, Miami, and the loathsome pig who often treated her like a bad dog. But he was a rich bastard, and he was exceedingly generous. The gorgeous new Bentley Arnage in her town-house garage was all the reminder she needed of that.

Tonight, he had kept her waiting for at least a half hour, standing before his desk, not being allowed to speak, while he made endless phone calls to various mullahs and warlords on Afghan mountain-tops using his encrypted sat phone.

The only thing that kept her homicidal desires in check was the fact that he still owed her money, a lot of money. Enough to live like a princess for the rest of her life. If she killed the fat bastard, she'd never see a penny of it. She just had to roll with it for a little longer, that's all.

The burly, unshaven man in his fifties finally put his phone down, shook his head, and said in his guttural Afghan-accented Urdu, "I understand that you accomplished your goal, my darling child. My concern is the considerable amount of media attention you have brought upon yourself. Look at me."

Her eyes drifted from him to the big plasma screen on the wall above the fake fireplace…LIVE AT FIVE BREAKING NEWS… Bashi's latest problem was scrawling across the bottom, MURDER ON THE BEACH!

"Bitch! You see what I am saying?"

"Following orders. Sir."

"Yes. But, still."

"Excuse me. Sir. You wanted these two dead. The last two alive who could tie us to Jackson Memorial. You didn't think a double homicide in broad daylight was going to attract a media story?"

"Two men gunned down in a car is one thing, but a running gun battle with government agents is quite another. How many casualties did you suffer?"

She was silent, looking across the large room full of gilded furniture. A newly redecorated penthouse suite at the recently rejuvenated Fontainebleau Hotel, overlooking the Atlantic. Rented by the month. Twenty grand a month.

The awful blond wig she'd worn on the job was on a sideboard with the liquor, sitting atop one of the artfully arranged Styrofoam heads. Four colors. Another of his many fetishes, she thought. Wigs. Why else keep them so neatly arranged in his living room? And in the top drawer of the sideboard, the rest of his-

She looked him in the eye.

"Two casualties. Abdullah was wounded severely by the black agent who chased us, and I had to put him out of his misery. And the other man, Caucasian, arriving at the end, whoever he was, killed Machmud with a couple of extraordinarily well-placed head shots. On the run."

"And this other shooter, the late arrival, he was also you believe with the CIA? Not local gendarmerie?"

She shook her head, her dark eyes glued on the fat man in front of her. Disgusted with herself that this pig was her lover. The things she had done. Willingly and unwillingly. She knew his background and the extraordinarily perverse evil he was capable of.

Until 1999, when he was quietly removed from the Khan nuclear lab in Islamabad, Bashi was one of the scientists who worked on the gas centrifuge program that Dr. Khan stole from the Netherlands and brought home to Pakistan. Then he'd designed the reactor at Khushab that produced fuel to move to the next level-a plutonium bomb. He was hailed as a genius, the hero of all Pakistan.

Over time, people started wondering if he was playing with a full deck. He was always talking about sunspots. He even wrote an extensive treatise in Urdu about the role sunspots played in triggering the French Revolution, World War II, and uprisings against colonial masters around the world. Sunspots. He still couldn't shut up about them. They finally sent him north to forge alliances with the Taliban.