George Martin - Busted flush

He had his eyes closed but somehow felt her headshake. "What's the military term for lots and lots of vehicles?"

He sighed. "A shitload."

"There's a shitload of Nigerians, John. They are all around us."

"So anyway," Buford said, "this fella with the big chest and big old shoulders, he's saying to his pals, 'Don't worry, boys. They can't stop men who want to be free!' "

He laughed and laughed. "Kill me now," John said.

"Be careful what you ask for," Simone said. "Their gun barrels are zeroing in on us."

John wondered if their deaths would make the evening news. Back home, the second season of American Hero was the most watched show in America. The fighting in Nigeria made page six in the Times, maybe. The only news crew on the scene was the one from China. It's just Africa, he thought bitterly. No one cares. "Help me," he said. Simone lifted his head and scooted a knee under it to support it. Which he needed; it weighed at least a ton. No question the gunners in the tanks were tuning up their aim. "I guess the douche bags're just gonna smoke us-"

Down from the sky speared a shaft of white light. It transfixed the middle MBT like a pin through a bug. It was so bright it cast shadows on the dunes.

The tank erupted in blue-white fire.

Another sunbeam stabbed down, another.

Another.

Each left a pyre blazing on the sand.

Big diesel engines growled. The Nigerian armor began to mill. Main guns probed the air, seeking targets.

A man landed on a tank's front glacis. A white man with shaggy golden hair. A man who laughed. He grabbed the main gun, heaved. The whole multiton turret came right up out of the well. Grunting, he threw it end over end through the air. It smashed down on top of another tank, dented in its turret. Yellow fire enveloped both as their ammo stowage went up.

From twenty meters away another tank fired at him. It couldn't miss. Yet somehow he still stood, laughing.

"Shell went right through him," Buford said. "Pretty fine trick, you ask me."

The man stretched out his hand. Red flame lanced from the palm. It shot down the gun barrel and gushed out of the breech, which the loader had opened to receive a fresh shell.

The shell blew up. So did all the others.

Just like fucking that, one tank remained. It churned away as fast as its treads would carry it, throwing up a great bow wave of sand. The infantry and lesser vehicles had already fled. Simba armored vehicles fired after them, over the heads of the three Committee aces. They didn't try to pursue.

"You have got to be shitting me," John Fortune said. "Tell me I'm hallucinating." Maybe they would live to see another day after all. Kate, he thought.

Somehow his companions heard his feeble croak above all the explosions. "It's the Radical," Snowblind said. "Ce n'est pas possible. But it is him."

Tom Weathers vanished. Reappeared at once, ten feet from John and a yard in the air. He landed a little unsteadily, walked forward a couple steps.

"Whew," he said. "Takes it right out of you. But I'll get my second wind in a minute. Then we'll get it on."

Somehow John remembered his duty. "Leave it, Weathers," he said. "It's good to have you back. But you're part of a team, now. Just chill with us. We'll sort things out."

Smiling, Weathers shook his head. "That's a big no-can-do, Mr. Establishment Man. It's time to deal out some revolutionary justice."

He vanished.

"How does he do that?" John asked the air.

A Simba infantry squad came down the dune. Their tall, turbaned Sikh officer shouted for medics. Dark hands propped John to a sitting position and held a canteen to his torn lips. Simone got up and went to stand next to Buford.

Away across the dunes, white light flashed against the sky like distant lightning. A black smoke stalk sprang up in response. A moment later, a rumble reached John's ears. Another flare lit the sky. "I got me a bad feelin' about this," Buford says. "Never seen a feller look so crazy."

Snowblind crossed her arms and leaned against him. "What he said," she said.

Tom burned through energy like a drunk playboy's bankroll in a Monte Carlo casino. But all he had to do was land and breathe for a few minutes. Then he was good to go again.

It was as if killing these running-dog colonial lackeys recharged him.

He leapt into the sky, seeking more lives to take. A mile ahead he saw a sizable village. As he approached, climbing for a clearer look, he saw fleeing Nigerian armor had locked the narrow streets up tight.

He smiled like the Angel of Death. And swept downward like a scythe.

Noisily Simone barfed over the side of the Land Rover.

Around them smoldered the ruins of a murdered town. The stench was as thick as the flies. The flies were thick as monsoon rain.

"There must be hundreds dead here," John Fortune said. He wasn't feeling so good himself.

The Lama floated by the car. "One thousand," he said.

A reserve Simba column had routed the Nigerians raiding the base camp where the Lama's body had sat in lotus while his spirit did its astral scout thing. Without Butcher Dagon to back them they didn't put up much fight. Another Wolf and some intact Brazilian peacekeepers had been found. They drove the Lama up with Brave Hawk flying top cover to pick up their comrades.

The team followed Tom Weathers's wake of massacre. To his crowning horror.

Simone had quit puking. Now she sobbed. "How could he do this?"

"His power," John Fortune said. He shook his head. "It's like nothing I've ever seen. Like nothing I could've imagined."

"I didn't mean that," the young woman said. "I meant, how could he do so horrible a thing? It's worse than what happened in that village. A hundred times worse."

John could only shake his head some more. He had no words. In the seat behind him Buford muttered under his breath. John could only make out the words "terrible bad."

"Why the long faces, children?"

They all looked up. The taunting voice came from ahead and above.

Tom Weathers hung thirty feet in the air. He descended slowly to stand before them with hands on jeans-clad hips.

Anger boiled up inside John. "What the hell did you think you were doing here?" he shouted.

"I told you. Dealing out revolutionary justice."

"But these poor villagers," Simone said. "You killed them. You killed civilians."

He shrugged. "They were collaborators anyway. They had it coming."

John almost released Sekhmet again. But he was held together by duct tape as it was. And more than for himself, he feared that if he let the Destroyer out now, she'd prove no more discriminating than Tom Weathers had. "You're a war criminal, Weathers," he said. "That's the only way to say it."

"What? When colonialists bomb or shell neighborhoods full of indigenous people you call it 'collateral damage.' What makes this worse?"

"Just because others do it doesn't make it right," Simone said.

"I cannot believe what a bunch of posers you are!" Weathers yelled. "Bourgeois phonies. You come here saying, 'Long live the Revolution,' all that dorm-room shit. But when it comes down to hitting the barricades, man, when it all gets real, you can't fucking take it."

"This wasn't revolution," Simone told her fallen idol. There was no heat in her voice. No life at all. Verbal flatline. "It was murder."

Weathers sneered. "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."

Buford gripped John's arm. "It's all over here, Mr. Fortune," he said. "This is a bad place. Let's go home."

"Yeah," John said. "It is over. We're not part of this."

"Yeah!" Tom flared at them with wild hateful laughter. "Your work here is done, right? And I did it for you. Now you want to run on home. Run, then.

"You're all fucking fascists. Just like the rest of them."