Greg Bear - Mariposa

Her ears sang sweetly. She felt a nervous jangle throughout her torso and legs, but that could have been nerves, excitement, anything.

All that she was, she was not afraid.

She felt strong.

To hell with spreading new wings. She could arrange for all that later, at her leisure. Life had not cut her any slack before now.

Maybe it was time to get her work done and force the issue in a better direction-

After all, she had always wanted to make the world a better place, and now she was being given a unique opportunity to do just that.

"Land this plane," she said. "Commander, gather up your weapons and alert the team."

The Smoky

Fouad maneuvered carefully between stumbling, disoriented guests, through the door taken by Price and his guards as they evacuated the ballroom-down a curving external hallway to the outdoors.

They all seemed to be living through an Edgar Allan Poe horror story-the Masque of the Red Death. He had read Poe with guilty pleasure in grade school, in poor Arabic, better than nothing-but the vivid pictures remained, and now the mummers, the dancers, the guests, were in complete confusion, the world turned on its head, those who should be dead walking amongst them through darkness and smoke and pain…

Fouad picked up his pace after he left the ballroom and angled to the left, under drifting smoke, around the kitchens and dining areas. He avoided a few knots of wandering Haitian troops, who seemed to have lost all sense of cohesion and discipline.

They might have been well-trained, but the strike of a deadly invisible god reaching down and burning their flesh… Stopping their assault rifles and pistols from working (none carried guns now, and the ground was littered with expensive weapons-Fouad did not bother to pick them up)-

That had evoked an old, deep fear.

Three Torq-Vees squatted abandoned around the corner of the employee kitchen complex. Nearby, on the gravel employee lot, several small cars stood empty with doors open.

One old hybrid still had a driver, a young woman in cleaning staff whites who was stubbornly trying to switch on the electric motor, which did nothing-not even whir.

The volume of smoke increased. The air filled with whirls of ash. A foul wind began to rise, bitter with the corrosive stink of burning brush.

Fouad suspected there were no working aircraft or modern vehicles within many miles. The one place that might contain vehicles that could survive an electromagnetic pulse-that was what had happened, he was sure of it-would be old cars and trucks, cars without alarms or security systems or black boxes or complex electronics-cars with simple carburetors, where electricity only flowed if ignitions were switched on.

Cars that could recover well, if not completely, from a hot flash of radiated energy.

Classic cars.

Price kept a warehouse full of very expensive classic cars about a hundred yards from the ballroom, near the far end of the Smoky, where he sometimes took them out on a fenced oval track.

Price would no doubt gather up his family as quickly as possible and drive as far away as he could. Loyal staff would stay with them-they would use knives or whatever came to hand. Price could conceivably equip them with classic firearms.

Fouad needed to find Price before he had a full complement of guards effectively armed and in some sort of order-and before he reached his family.

He broke into a loose run, ignoring the shadowed vision in one eye, the spiking pain in one leg, and his ripped lips where Schmitz had thrust a forefinger to bring his head around-before Fouad had nearly bitten that finger off.

The crunch of the man's knuckle under his teeth remained fresh in his mind, an awfulness that would require much prayer to expunge.

He saw the garage, a long barn-like structure, the humped roof set on high concrete walls and studded with air conditioners and rotating steel vents.

Nearby, striding in that direction, a tight group of six men, two walking at a pace of protected if hurried dignity-in confident expectation of that nearby safety and security accorded only to the wealthy-and to royalty-

And four in black, two carrying long knives, two more carrying what might have been spears.

One of the four was Price.

Another was the Saudi prince who had slapped Fouad-him! Slapped a man worth a hundred million Euros.

Fouad hung back for a moment-then looked into the open rear doors of an abandoned Torq-Vee. In the rear cabin, behind the parallel seats, four poleaxes were racked on metal loops-three on one side, one on the other. Each six foot fiberglass shaft sported a razor-sharp ax and spear point on the business end and a steel point on the butt.

This was what two of the men accompanying Price had chosen for armament-sensibly enough. Fouad had no idea how they were ordinarily used-perhaps for cutting brush or as a particularly vicious form of crowd control. But he certainly knew how to use one. He had taught his Janissaries with similarly effective and simple weapons back at Incirlik airbase.

He yanked one down, hefted it, balanced it on a finger-found its center of gravity-then grabbed it in midair in both hands and followed the six toward the garage.

JPB

The swanjet landed with a series of bumps in the wind-blown haze, then braked and veered sharp left. Rebecca had moved forward to be with the HRT. They helped her don body armor, then prepared their weapons, reconnecting the team electronics and Lynx.

The last of her fashion accoutrements was the command-grade helmet, big and black and covered with cameras and visors and other stuff she had no idea how to use.

"Don't worry about it," Forester, said. "It's all pretty automatic. Just pull down whatever looks right and slip it over your eyes."

"Make sure it still works," his second in command warned, and they ran quick tests before the plane lurched nose-down to an abrupt stop.

"We're clear-no hostiles in range," the pilot said through the open cockpit door.

"Currahee!" Forester cried. "Me and my brothers and sister, we stand alone!"

Before she knew it, the plane's door had dropped and Rebecca was on the runway, following the five HRT agents at an ankle-jarring clip toward an abandoned Torq-Vee.

Pain did not matter.

Smoke covered much of the airport and the runway.

Forester pulled open the Torq-Vee's passenger door and hauled the black box inside, then sprung it open and pulled out a gray and black unit the size and shape of a toaster.

The youngest team member popped open the hood and rummaged in the engine compartment with yet another replacement component.

In three minutes, they had the Torq-Vee convinced it was operational. The engine roared to life. They all climbed in.

Forester showed her how to pull down and snick her combat gogs. Maps of the airport, the Talos campus, and the ranch popped up, downloaded from a satellite.

"What would we ever do without this shit?" the second in command marveled.

"Cavemen!" the team grunted as one and thrust their gloved fists in the air.

"Braves, you mean," Forester corrected. "Where to, ma'am?"

Rebecca pointed her gloved fist northeast. Fouad was last seen at the ranch. Who knew where William Griffin might be, if he was still alive?

"Jeez," one of the agents commented as they rolled. "They got poleaxes back here-wonder if they know how to use 'em?"

"I do," Forester said. "Back in medieval times, they taught peasants how to kill knights with those things."

The six men first noticed Fouad as the wind momentarily blew aside the smoke. The two with knives-not Haitians, Fouad saw, but beefy Middle Easterners, part of the prince's innermost protection team-broke left and right to flank him, while the others hung back.