George Martin - Busted flush

Michael clenched his jaw at the torrent of vitriol from the man. "You don't know," he told him. "You don't know the suffering the Caliphate has caused with its oil policies. You don't know-"

"Suffering?" Dabir interrupted as the translation was given to him. "Look around you, Abomination. Do you see people here with automobiles and televisions? Do you see mansions? Do you see stores full of things to buy? I have seen pictures of your West. I have seen the way you live. Suffering? You know nothing of suffering."

"People have lost jobs from the lack of oil," Michael persisted. "Some are going hungry as a result, or can't pay for care that they need, or have lost their houses. And some have even died." It was what Fortune might have said. The words tasted as dry and dead as sand.

"So you come to steal the job from my son, who has been taken away?" Dabir waved a hand toward the buildings of the wellhead and spat again. "You come to steal the food from our table? You come to kill my grandson?"

"Your grandson tried to kill me. I was only defending myself." It should have sounded angry; it sounded apologetic.

"Raaqim was defending the land that is his from you. You come here saying you want to ease the suffering of all people, but it is only your people you care about, and you bring the suffering and the pain and the death here instead. You want to leave it here when you go." The old man spat again. "You wonder why we hate you, Abomination? Because you do not see us. We will fight you with an army of children if we must. We will fight you with an army of old people, because there is only one way to make any of you see. Only one way."

The translator was still speaking the last few words when Dabir reached under his white thobe. Michael saw the gleam of metal, but before he could react, the others already had. Two of the FAMAS opened up, and the old man danced spasmodically backward to the barrage of sound, an ancient handgun flying from his grasp and splotches of arterial red spraying over the bone-colored clothing. Dabir thumped loudly to the floor of the house as the FAMAS went silent. Someone screamed inside the house and a figure hurled itself from the darkness of the interior toward Michael. He struck at it with all his hands, using his full strength with his adrenaline and fright; the figure slammed hard against the door frame of the house. He could hear the crack of bones and glimpse the deep lines and liver spots on her half-covered face even as he realized the ancient frailty of her body. She was unconscious by the time she slumped, half over the body of Dabir. "Pull them all out!" someone ordered behind him. "Anyone moves or resists, shoot."

"No!" Michael yelled. "No!" He grabbed at one of the soldiers who tried to move past him toward the house and shoved him away. "Damn it, back the fuck off!" He glared at them all, waving all six hands. "We're going back. You hear me? We're done here. We're done."

The old woman moaned on the floor. He could see other people inside the house, watching and too afraid to come forward. "I'm sorry," he told them. "I'm sorry…"

They didn't understand. They only stared at him with hatred diluted by fear. At him.

The Abomination.

Hot, exhausted, sweating rivers inside her Kevlar vest-this, she had decided, was a Kevlar situation-Kate looked out the helicopter window at the desert sliding past below her. In a few minutes, they'd reach the pumping station in Kuwait, twenty miles from the coast of the Persian Gulf.

This was their second stop of the day. At the first, they'd spent six hours keeping a crowd of sullen locals at bay while technicians started the wells pumping.

Not a single person on either side had been happy to be there. This wasn't like Ecuador, where the lives they saved stood right in front of them. Hard to see the lives they were saving here.

Her phone beeped-incoming text message.

One word: FUBAR. From Michael.

"What's wrong?" Lohengrin said. Somehow, even in the heat and sand, with everyone around him boiling, he managed to maintain his cool, almost arrogant demeanor.

She showed him the screen. The German ace raised an eyebrow.

"From DB? He wanted to come here," he said. "He shouldn't complain now."

This wasn't complaining. Complaining was bitching about the heat and the food, pouring sand out of your shoe and yelling at your teammates for nothing at all. This was different.

It wouldn't do any good to argue with Lohengrin. He'd just look down his nose at her with the sort of condescending pity people used on children with skinned knees.

The helicopter landed on a concrete pad outside the station in a whirlwind of grit. Like Simoon. Ana had called from New Orleans to tell her about the weird ace who showed up channeling the girl's ghost. Kate was happy enough to not be there dealing with that particular mess. She shook the thought of the fallen ace away. She and Lohengrin piled outside first. Despite his confidence, he wasn't taking any chances-he already wore his armor.

They were in a dusty valley, a bowl of sand ringed by rocky outcrops. Some grasses clung to the wasteland, tossing in a constant breeze. The station itself was an industrial complex covering acres. Dozens of wells were marked by steel trees thrusting up from the ground, attached to angled collections of pipes and valves. More pipes, a twisting maze of them, connected various stations of hunched machinery of arcane purpose. It was a sci-fi landscape from some depressing post-apocalyptic future. The air smelled thickly of oil, sulfur, and waste. Kate sneezed.

Sun glared off everything. Even with sunglasses, Kate's face felt like it had frozen in a squint.

A control building and a collection of prefab barracks lay off to one side. But nobody was here. No workers had gathered to block the gate in the chain-link fence surrounding the site. No crowd milled around the barracks. She should have been relieved. The whole place was quiet, still.

Throwing a pebble, she blew the padlock and chain securing the gate. Still nothing. Maybe the place had been abandoned. She waved back at the helicopter, and the team of technicians, with their bright blue UN vests and helmets, ran to meet them.

"Keep your eyes open," she said to Lohengrin.

"You think I would let down my guard?" He sounded offended.

You're sleeping with Lilith, aren't you? "Of course not," she said.

They followed the team to the main building. Their attention was out, looking for trouble. The helicopter's motor was still running, just in case. A trio of UN soldiers stood near it, also keeping watch.

"Curveball!" one of the techs called from the door. He was middle-aged, British, and had a weathered look to him. "It's locked. Care to do the honors?"

She kept looking at the barracks, waiting for someone to lob a grenade from there. "Yeah. Sure." She pulled a pebble from the pouch over her shoulder.

"I could cut the lock off," Lohengrin said.

"Yeah, but people like it when things go boom." She smiled. The techs chuckled. "Stand back, guys."

She almost didn't look at the door before making her pitch, but she lowered her arm at the same time Lohengrin said, "Wait a moment."

They both approached, their attention drawn by a thin line of discoloration at the top of the frame. Like a bad paint job, or a place where someone had tried to patch a crack. It looked almost like caulking.

"Bill?" she said to the British tech. "What's this look like to you?"

He joined them at the door and studied where she pointed. It only took a second for his expression to turn slack, his eyes growing wide.

"Bloody hell," he murmured. "I think it's plastique."

"Set to detonate when the door opens? A booby trap?"