George Martin - Busted flush

I try to remember all the deaths I've dealt. I can't.

I try to remember if I cared. I didn't.

I try to picture holding Dad when he passes. I can't.

I'm afraid.

The death is so subtle that I miss it. Only Niobe's soft sobs tell me it's happened. She closes Baxter's eyes, quickly kisses each cheek, and hurriedly lays him down on the bed. The small body melts, leaving only a smear on the worn bedspread. She looks up at me. Her eyes are filled with tears, but she seems at peace.

"Thank you."

I squat down in front of her. "How do you bear it? I don't think I can."

She pushes her hair behind her ears. She is frowning, thoughtful. "You'll do it for him. Because you love him, and he wouldn't leave you alone if you were dying."

And that says it all. We sit together in silence. Then she asks, "Who are you?"

"I'm Noel Matthews. I can get you out of here. They're going to kill him." I jerk my thumb toward the absent Drake. "And if you try to stop them they're going to kill you, too. There's nothing you can do."

"I can not leave him. That's what I can do."

"He's a living bomb. They're right, he's too dangerous to be allowed to live." I can feel my frustration rising.

"A lot of people are dangerous, and when they kill they mean to. Drake is a little boy. He doesn't… didn't want to hurt anybody. We have to give him that chance."

"Why do you care so much?" I ask.

The sensitive, overly soft mouth tightens with determination. "Because this is one death I can stop."

The door opens. "I had to get an orange pop. There wasn't any more Coke," Drake announces. His eyes slide across the stained bedspread and slide away. He goes to Niobe and gives her a rough and awkward hug. "I'm sorry," he says gruffly. She hugs him tight.

I can't believe I'm hearing myself saying, "All right, I'll take you both, but I've got to make a little change first…"

A figure appeared in midair beside the open-topped Land Rover Wolf. It floated eight feet off the crappy road and easily paced the vehicle's twenty-two miles an hour. Which was fast enough on this surface to make John Fortune's brain feel Shake 'n Baked. "Jesus!" Simone Duplaix yelped. Their Croat peacekeeper escorts jumped and pointed and yelled. The car swerved.

"Tell them to take it easy," John said over his shoulder to Zvetovar, the shave-headed corporal with ears that stuck out like hairy amphora handles beneath his blue UN beret. "It's just the Lama."

"It creeps me out when you do that," Snowblind said from the backseat beside the corporal. She wore a black T-shirt with the words BITCH GODDESS written on it in gold glitter. John wondered if that was really appropriate for an official UN fact-finding mission.

"I merely manifest myself in astral form," the Lama said. He smiled in a way he probably thought was benign. John thought of it as a shit-eating grin.

‹You should assert your authority over this one,› Isra-who-was-Sekhmet said. ‹Teach him to fear you.›

Oh, great idea, John thought back. How?

The Lama was a devout coward. Right now his physical form squatted in a tent miles away from potential trouble in the middle of an armored column from the Simba Brigades, the PPA's regular army, guarded by Brazilian peacekeepers.

"I have discerned a Nigerian roadblock awaiting you around this curve in the road," the floating figure said.

"Good job," John said grudgingly. "Thanks."

"Let us see that asshole Llama do that," the Lama said. "He lacks the Buddha nature."

Snowblind said, "You're a monk. You can't be supposed to talk like that."

"You are not the boss of me."

She flipped him off. He gave her a sardonic namaste and vanished.

How the hell did I ever let DB talk me into changing teams? John Fortune wondered. I should be in Arabia, with Kate. "Tell your guys to look sharp," he told Zvetovar. "We got Nigerians up ahead past these palm trees."

Zvetovar grinned and bobbed his head. To say he understood English might be stretching things. More accurately, he occasionally responded to what John said, and even more occasionally said something John could make out. He did pass something along to his men. Probably orders.

"I don't like this," Simone said, shaking her head. The streaks were magenta today. The stud in her left nostril looked like a gold Egyptian scarab. It made John Fortune's own nose twitch to look at.

The day was hot and bright. They always were, here in the Oil Rivers region of the Nigerian coast. Unless they were hot and rainy. "We're the UN," John said. "The Committee. We're legit. What could go wrong?"

"Everything," she said. "There's war. I wish the Radical had not been killed. We could use his backup."

"Yeah," John said. "Well." They could have used some of the Committee's heavy hitters, too. Lohengrin, Earth Witch, Bubbles. Not that any of them could have matched Tom Weathers for sheer power.

He hadn't much cared for the guy. But getting backshot into a trench full of piss was a hell of a way to go. And Simone was right. It would be comforting to know the world's most powerful ace had their backs. Instead of what John did have: a redneck who turned into a big toad. A flying Apache with an attitude. An even surlier astral dude. A French-Canadian princess who could make people temporarily blind.

‹You do not need him,› the voice said in his head. ‹We are powerful. You must learn to use your power more.›

Don't start, he thought back. "Nothing's going to happen," he said aloud. He drummed his fingers on the outside of the door, ignoring the way it scorched the tips. We are not here to fight, he reminded himself. This is just a fact-finding mission.

The Wolf rolled around the bend. A Fox armored recon car blocked the road. It's menagerie-of-war day in the Oil Delta, Fortune thought. The armored car was narrow and precariously tall, like a normal sedan with big tires and a turret stacked on top. Its long-barreled cannon pointed straight at John's nose. It was only 30mm but looked as if they could drive right up it.

A pair of utility trucks angled into the ditch to either side. Troopers in Nigerian battle dress slouched around. They didn't point their long FN-FAL rifles at the newcomers. Maybe they thought the autocannon was enough.

A tall man in a maroon beret held up his hand. "Halt," he commanded. That was one good thing about the Nigerians: English was their official language. Their accents got a bit dense sometimes, but John could talk to them.

Snowblind had to translate with their PPA allies. She could be a bit of a diva, but wasn't a bad type. And her ace might actually come in handy if things got crosswise.

"What is your business?" the Nigerian demanded.

‹The fool! Can he not read?›

Isra had a point. UN PEACEKEEPERS was painted on both sides of their car in four-inch white letters. "We're the United Nations fact-finding commission," John said. He kept his voice level despite Sekhmet's influence stirring in his blood like angry bees. "We're legally entitled to go wherever we need to."

The officer looked doubtful. He wore no rank badges: like most modern armies the Nigerians had figured out that officers' insignia served as wizard sniper aim-points in the field. The Browning Hi-Power in a holster on his web gear in lieu of a broomstick-long assault rifle marked him as head guy even to John Fortune, who wasn't exactly Gary Brecher the War Nerd. It struck him as kind of a wash.

The officer turned to shout in some tribal dialect to the guy in the helmet and goggles peering at them from the Fox's cupola. John wasn't sure that was a good sign. Nigeria usually mashed up its innumerable ethnic groups among its military units, he knew from the briefing dossiers Jayewardene had loaded onto them. Tribal strife had wracked the country since in de pen dence.