Ted Bell - Warlord

"Look at him, eyeballing me like that," Stoke said to Patoo, who was holding the reins of a huge black Arabian, snorting, bucking, and pawing the sand. "Horse doesn't like me and I ain't too crazy about him, either. You think I could kick this horse's ass in a fair fight, Patoo?"

"No."

"Well, let's just hope it doesn't come to that," Stoke said, sticking his boot in the stirrup. "I pity this poor sonofabitch if he pisses me off."

"You see those hazy mountains in the distance beyond the desert, Mr. Jones?" Patoo said. "Many thousands of meters high. Freezing wind and icy ledges sometimes only one meter wide. You wish to walk up there, brother?"

Stokely got on the damn horse.

An hour later, as the air cooled dramatically and the setting sun shot red arrows of light streaking through the haze, Stokely and Harry Brock were racing each other across the sands, up and down the windblown dunes, shouting curses and laughing at each other, galloping hell-bent for leather around and around the army compound. Hawke looked up from the weapon he was cleaning and caught a glimpse of them through an opened window. He smiled. The team was coming together. And when a team makes a commitment to act as one, the sky's the limit.

Tonight the thirty grizzled Pak militia fighters who would accompany them were preparing a great feast around the bonfire in the center of the compound. Hawke was much reassured by the look of these battle-tested men. They'd been fighting the Taliban through the long, tough years, the house-to-house combat for control of strategic towns and villages.

Patoo and his militia were veterans of those cruel battles. He had told Hawke over dinner the first night, "Sir, every street battle in those days was like getting into a fistfight in a phone booth."

At dawn the little army led by Alex Hawke would mount up, ride out through the massive wooden doors of the army outpost, and begin their journey across the trackless desert toward the mountains waiting on the horizon.

"Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we ride," Hawke said softly to himself, smiling at the quaint old English homily before going back to work on his weapon, scrubbing the works of his M4 assault rifle with a toothbrush.

AT THAT PRECISE MOMENT, ANOTHER Englishman, fifty miles or so to the north of Hawke's position, was completing his ride. He and his camel herder had journeyed down from the mountains, his own horse slipping and sliding on the icy ledges where a single misstep might mean a death plunge of thousands of feet.

This particular mountain had, long before the existence of the written word, been known as Wazizabad.

Smith had made the journey down from the mountain many times, however, in far worse conditions, and so he was not overly concerned with death; or rather, not concerned with his own death, to be precise. The imminent death of others was a red fever in his brain; it was the only thing he lived for. He rode on.

Smith, ever the sensualist, enjoyed the occasional feel of level earth beneath him, the warmer temperatures of the lower altitudes, and the brilliant rays of the dying sun striking his cheeks. He rode toward the desert, through passes often so narrow he could barely scrape through. During the First Anglo-Afghan War in 1838, the British had marched an army of twenty-one thousand men through this same pass to retrieve "British honor" in Afghanistan.

He felt countless prying eyes pressing down upon him from the creases and crevasses, the deep folds in the earth and mountains, eyes judging his potential, weighing his possible net worth.

He drew comfort from the fact that certainly no one would mistake him for a wealthy Englishman. No, if anything he resembled a modern-day Lawrence of Arabia, riding tall in the saddle, swaddled head to toe in flowing white robes and blankets. Atop his head he wore a red-and-white-checkered scarf, wound round in a kind of turban.

His visit to the summit had been a brief one. A type of summit, really, with al-Rashad and one of his senior officers. He had traveled to the highest reaches of the Hindu Kush to see for himself that all was in readiness for what would be his ultimate strike. The time had come for him to drive a final, fatal stake into the very heart of the British Monarchy. And he had to see with his own eyes the men, the materiel, the final plans, and meet the man upon whose shoulders would rest the responsibility of ensuring that this time failure was not an option.

Six months earlier he had paid his old comrade the Lion of Punjab the princely sum of five million dollars. Money taken "off the books" from a secret slush fund he had access to at the Bank of England. Gold bullion had been placed in the vault of a small family bank in Basel, Switzerland. For that he had acquired the services of a certain Colonel Zazi, the second-most-powerful warlord in al-Rashad's universe, and his dedicated team of thirty young commandos whom he had been training here in the mountains for six long months. Zazi and his men were to be the backbone of his next operation. He had seen enough to satisfy himself that it was a backbone made of steel.

He looked back at the camel carrying his supplies in saddlebags cinched round his girth and smiled. Though he was a man of a certain age, his still youthful face was alight with a fire that might terrify the unsuspecting. The fire inside burned brightly and its fuel was pure evil. He was a man nearing the resolution of a destiny predetermined long ago. He knew his time was short; the fuse that was his life of vengeance was burning rapidly, and he spurred his steed onward.

High above the desert sands, white stars burned holes in the black sky. He rode on, urging his camel driver to keep up.

He had an appointment in Samarra and he was running a tad late.

In the distance, barely visible on an unmarked paved strip of desert, he could now make out a black, otherworldly silhouette. It was sleek and ominous in the starlight, a machine from another planet. Two orange ovals were aglow at the rear of the beast, heat from the two Rolls-Royce BR710 engines. As he drew closer, the shape-shifter resolved itself into the now quite unmistakable outline of a Gulfstream V.

Jet black paint, gleaming under starlight. No markings. Blacked-out windows. Air Incognito, he liked to call his airplane. If you listened very closely you could hear the low shhhh of its two powerful engines, even at this distance.

He was feeling very close to the end of his life's journey now, and the hour of true vengeance drew nigh.

The door lowered out of the fuselage as he steered his horse down the black macadam strip to the waiting aircraft. Two men in black jumpsuits, armed against possible attack, descended the steps and took up protective positions on either side of the staircase, swiveling their weapons through ninety degrees in either direction. The G-V was a juicy target, and now was the time for extreme vigilance.

Smith dismounted and turned the stallion's reins over to his camel driver. Then he turned toward the opened door of the aircraft where two more men waited, hovering just inside. Smith beckoned them.

"See to my luggage, please, gentlemen."

This done, Smith pulled a leather pouch from inside his blankets and produced a thick wad of Pakistani rupees. His camel driver accepted this generous consideration, mounted his animal, and was gone into the desert vastness in a blink.

The Englishman quickly climbed aboard, the two armed men right behind him. Smith settled into his accustomed leather recliner on the starboard side of the aircraft and nodded to the pretty attendant who strapped him in.

"May I bring you something?"

"A pillow and a blanket perhaps. I am tired," he said. "I will sleep now."

"Ready for takeoff, sir?"

"Oh. You have no idea how ready I am, darling."