The Templar Legion

sheep for genocide instead?”

“Tiene razon, mi amigo,” murmured Eddie. “Better to die fighting than praying.”

“Is that a quote?”

“Si. Fidel, I’m afraid.”

“Well, I guess this time I agree with him.” Holliday turned back to Limbani. “We’ll fight with you, Doctor, but I want Peggy and Rafi kept safe from harm.”

“I think I can manage that.”

“When is the new moon exactly?”

“Tonight.”

30

Time is a fickle concept during battle. Ask most survivors of D-day and they will tell you that it seemed to take forever for the combined American, British and Canadian forces to establish a beachhead, when in fact it took slightly less than three hours, from six twenty-nine a.m., the official start time, to nine seventeen a.m., roughly the time it takes the average office worker to rise and shine and get to work. In that same period of time on D-day there were approximately twenty thousand casualties incurred by both German and Allied personnel, which was almost two every second. So battle time is relative-it seems to take forever to survive and only a split second to die.

Peggy’s photograph of Havdragoon, the Sea Dragon, bursting through the curtain of water at Kazaba Falls, big square sail set and stitched with its indisputably Templar cross, all sixty of her long oars out and her bloodred dragon figurehead glaring ahead, eventually appeared on the front page of every newspaper in the world and on the cover of every magazine. It made Peggy a wealthy woman in her own right, got her unbelievable assignments and introduced a whole new civilization to the world. But all that was in the future.

Both Holliday and Eddie were on the steering platform as the brand-new ship with its thousand-year-old design hurtled through the cave mouth and dropped down into the foaming, churning maelstrom below. As well as Holliday and Eddie, two of the Pale Strangers, Baltazar and Kaleb, manned the heavy steering oar with them, hanging on for dear life as the Sea Dragon hurtled down into the water, then rose again like its namesake, the great red dragon figurehead streaming water, its golden teeth seething with froth and a sudden wind from behind them bellying the sails as the sixty oars dug into the deep black river water and drove them forward.

“My God!” Holliday breathed, soaked to the skin but feeling an exhilaration deep in his soul he thought was long forgotten.

“?Increible, mi hermano!” Eddie roared ecstatically.

“Krigsanggen!” screeched Baltazar and Kaleb beside them, and in that moment they knew they all spoke the same language, whether they understood one another or not. Something had risen from the deep past and propelled them forward and there was no way back.

Sea Dragon steered easily out of the whirlpools at the foot of the falls and slid effortlessly toward the near bank of the river, the land-side oars rising at a single command from the ship’s undisputed captain, Loki, a dark-skinned, dark-eyed, bearded fury who stood in the bow of the ship, his strong right arm hooked around the red dragon’s neck like a lover. He carried not one but two blowpipes across his back and, according to Limbani, could use them both at once and so quickly that the motions were only a blur.

A gangplank was thrown aboard and Limbani crossed into the ship with Peggy and Rafi on his heels. Ahead of them on the river the sun was setting quickly.

“It will be dark soon,” said Limbani. “We need to load the rest of the warriors and their supplies on board. Even with this wind Loki says it will take almost until dawn to get us downriver to Fourandao.”

“That should be just about right.” Holliday nodded. He paused and gave Peggy a short look. “Did you bring our weapons?”

She nodded. “Stripped from Jerimiah Salamango’s imps.”

Three men came across the gangplank carrying a sagging litter loaded down with AK-47s, ammunition belts, two RPGs with a half dozen rounds each and a pair of brutal-looking Saiga automatic shotguns with nine or ten eight-round magazines each.

“Bueno,” said Eddie, “my favorite, un acelerador de cabeza.” He grinned, looping the sling crosswise over his shoulder and pushing a half dozen magazines into his belt. “In the army we called them Fidelitos-small but with a big mouth.”

Holliday turned and looked directly at Peggy. “Now, look-” he began.

“Don’t even start, Doc. I’m a big girl; I’ve taken photographs in a dozen war zones. I’m not your responsibility. We’re coming, and that, cousin o’ mine, is that.”

“You don’t have anything to say about this?” Holliday said, turning to Rafi.

“I’ve spent the last hour arguing with her. I lost. We’re coming, because if she goes then I’m damn well going with her.”

“You’re both crazy,” said Holliday.

“No, mis amigos,” said Eddie with a grin, “we’re all crazy.”

Konrad Lanz had been sitting in the navigator’s jump seat of the old Vickers Vanguard for three and a half hours and his legs were beginning to cramp. Looking between the pilot and copilot’s seats there was nothing to see but the velvet black of the night and the green and yellow glow of the instruments. For the past hour or so they had been flying at under five thousand feet, and so far they hadn’t heard a single query on the radio.

“How much longer?” he asked the pilot, another one of the old guard named Janni Doke, a South African in his late fifties who could fly anything from a Piper Cub to a jumbo jet.

“Twenty minutes, maybe twenty-five.”

“I’d better get the boys ready, then,” said Lanz.

“You do what you want, baas; just make sure you leave me a couple of roughies to top up the tanks. We’re on fumes as it is,” responded the gruff old Afrikaner.

“Will do,” said Lanz.

“You’re sure about the landing lights?”

“Positive. The approach lights are on all night. They get some late cargo going in and out.” He paused. “There’s only one runway, eight thousand feet, just like I told you in the briefing. The runway lines up with the tower. You can’t miss.”

“The helicopters? Even on the ground they could blow us all to Hades.”

“Three RPGs. One each for the Kamovs, one for the tower. There’s an old armored personnel carrier but there’s no one manning it at night. The wheels are flat. It’s just for show.”

“All right.” The Afrikaner half turned and looked at Lanz in the darkness. “Radio checks every ten minutes, okay, baas. No radio check and I’m gone with the wind. No screaming savages putting this old cheeky prawn in the pot for his dinner, understand?”

“Every ten minutes.” Lanz turned and went back through to the aircraft cabin. The original twenty-eight-row, triple-double seat configuration had been removed and replaced with twenty-five double rows of quad buckets from a few old C-47s they’d raided in Europe and North Africa.

Since the Vanguard’s folding air stairs fore and aft would be far too slow for egress, they’d been removed, and Janni Doke and a few others at Mopti had cobbled together emergency slides from several old parachutes that would let everyone off quickly, gear and all.

Most of the boys were sleeping or pretending to as Lanz made his way down the narrow aisle between the two cramped rows, shaking shoulders and giving out the five-minute warning. With that done he stood by the rear