Warren Murphy: Arabian Nightmare

As Maddas Hinsein backed away, black arms stirred like an upended lobster on the slab behind him. A naked chest shuddered, impelled by an indrawn breath.

The figure on the slab levered itself to a sitting position in silence, and blood-red eyes fell upon his unsuspecting back with a fiery regard.

"You live . . . " a dead voice whispered too low to be heard.

And a loud, frantic voice came from the corridor, crying, "O Scimitar of the Arabs! The impregnable Maddas Line is under attack!"

President Maddas Hinsein bolted from the torture room a mere flick ahead of grasping black nails.

Chapter 36

If there was someone he could complain to without being shot for questioning authority, Colonel Hahmad Barsoomian of the Renaissance Guard would have complained loudly and vociferously.

But he figured he was in enough trouble as it was. His orders to report to the Maddas Line and take command of the ragtag Popular People's Popular Auxiliary could only mean he was regarded with suspicion by the high command. Why else would they exile him to work among undisciplined shopkeepers and teachers in ill-fitting uniforms?

It was night, and Colonel Barsoomian stood atop an earthen-mound breastworks scanning the neutral zone with his Zeiss military field glasses.

There was a crescent moon hanging low in the sky. It augured well, he thought. What little light it shed was like a shimmering silver rain collecting in the desert wadis below.

There was no sign of the anti-bait UN forces. They would never attack. They feared to, Barsoomian was certain.

A low shape appeared in the sky. A glimmer of moonlight revealed it.

Colonel Barsoomian adjusted his glasses. It was silent and oblate as a strayed moon. And it was coming this way.

"Searchlight crew!" he called down. "Direct your beam that way, you donkeys!"

A powerful tungsten light sprang to life. The beam wheeled southward, sweeping the sky.

"Left. Now right! There! Hold it there!" Barsoomian ordered.

And when the hot beam transfixed the floating silent thing, Colonel Barsoomian trained his binoculars upon it.

His jaw fell slowly at the terrible sight. His eyes grew round as coins. He could feel his heart pumping high in his throat.

"Shoot that blasphemous thing!" he commanded in a high, hoarse voice. "Bring it down!"

Orange-red tracers streaked through the night. And missed.

"Correct your aim, offspring of donkeys!"

The PPPA antiaircraft battery did. This time they fired wide in another direction, missing spectacularly.

Soon the thing was passing directly overhead and Barsoomian, seeing the four pink hooves looming directly over him, countermanded his order.

"Do not shoot! We do not want the unclean thing falling upon us!"

The order was unnecessary. The gunners were good Moslems. And they heard the continuous amplified squealing that the floating pink monster seemed to be making. It chilled the blood of every man along the long Maddas Line-for at strategic spots over the fortification, other silent pink monsters hovered like the most evil of omens.

Moslem faces turned skyward. Moslem mouths gaped in awe and fear. All eyes were on the silent monsters above.

And as if connected to a timer, the monsters all went pop! at once.

Shards of slick pink fleshlike matter began to fall. Soldiers scrambled for their holes, their bunkers. A few retreated from the line. Some ran screaming. No one stopped them. No one cared.

And when the commotion began to abate, the remaining defenders heard another sound.

It welled up from the south, out in the frontier. It was a kind of whistling, but great in its fullness and magnificence.

Colonel Barsoomian, thankfully untouched by the unclean pink rain, crawled up to the breastworks mound and employed his field glasses once more.

This time his mouth went round. For he saw the advancing host.

They were coming in a long skirmish line, thirty deep. It was a line that stretched in both directions, a wall of pink.

Pink legs marched in unison. Pink hands held M-16 assault rifles across pink chests. The rifles were not pink, but the faces above them were-pink, inflexible, and terrible. Eyes goggled glassily over pink snouts that were punctured by two pink-rimmed nostrils. Pink triangular ears flapped and beat against chubby pink cheeks as the pink soldiers advanced in an unbroken pink line.

And ahead of them, here and there, rumbled round pink monsters with identical beastlike snouted faces. They left trails in the sand like those of tracked vehicles. And they squealed and grunted and gave vent to "oink-oink" sounds that made Colonel Barsoomian's devout Moslem skin crawl as if from inquisitive ants.

But most terrible of all was the sound that advanced before that unclean beast-army like a wall of sound.

It was a great whistling. The tune was hauntingly familiar to the shocked ears of Colonel Hahmad Barsoomian.

He couldn't place it. But he knew he had heard it before. Somewhere.

Colonel Barsoomian had no idea he was listening to a thousand pink lips giving voice to the theme from the classic motion picture Bridge over the River Kwai.

He no longer cared. He dropped his AK-47 and dashed for an APC. The starter ground as he cursed the balky Soviet-made vehicle. Then he sent the APC careening north, driving with one hand over an ear to keep out that damnable whistling.

He had to warn his fellow Renaissance Guards that an army of the unclean was on the march.

He did not care what happened to the undisciplined PPPA. Let the infidel khazir army have them. It did not matter. It would take real soldiers to defend Irait from this most wicked aggression.

If that were possible.

Chapter 37

The news was so dire, no one wanted to deliver it to Maddas Hinsein.

The Revolting Command Council sat around the table. Their president was due at any moment. The foreign minister suggested that the vice-president deliver the bad news. But since the vice-president did not speak Arabic, this was difficult to implement.

"But the infidel have rolled across the Maddas Line," said the education minister in a voice so tight a hand might have been at his throat.

"Without firing a shot," added the minister of culture. "The PPPA simply deserted their posts. The Precious Leader will be furious. Someone will be shot."

"Let us suggest that he himself shoot the PPPA," the foreign minister said suddenly. "Each one. Personally. He will like that. And it will keep him occupied."

The defense minister added his two cents. "It is a brilliant idea, but too late, alas."

"What do you mean?"

"They have been decimated by the Renaissance Guard, who cut them down as they overran guard divisions."

"Are there not any left?" asked the foreign minister.

"Only Renaissance Guard elements, and they are our last hope to hold Kuran," he was told.

Eyes met around the conference table. At one end, Don Cooder and Vice-President Jackman exchanged uneasy glances.

"Looks like they got bad news or something," whispered Jackman.

"Looks like," Cooder said, fingering his new mustache. It was really coming in now. He hoped the Precious Leader would approve. Maybe it would impress him enough that he would not be shot, as seemed to happen a lot. He was just starting to get the hang of the job, which seemed to consist of groveling. Don Cooder had garnered extensive groveling experience during his previous career interviewing various heads of state.

"Well, we're safe," Jackman ventured.

"How you figure that?"

"I'm second from the top and you're my right-hand man."

"That didn't help the last information minister," Don Cooder pointed out.

Reverend Juniper Jackman grew very quiet.

President Maddas Hinsein stormed in a moment later.