the wall looked as jagged as broken bone. Black figures dashed forward, silhouetted by flames. Other shapes dropped over the wall where long stretches of wire had been tom away. The lead figures opened fire with automatic weapons as they ran.
Fresh flares arced. Inside the compound, a crossfire of machine guns opened up. A few of the remaining guard towers laid down a base of fire on the far side of the wall, but other sentry perches remained silent and dark.
Screaming. Falling.
Surely, Noburu thought, these dark men were shouting about their god. No other words would have the power to propel men into this.
The garrison's machine guns swept the invaders off their feet. As Noburu crouched forward to see, a shower of spent shell casings nipped against his cheek and chest, their temperature scalding in the night air.
'Crazy buggers,' one of the South African NCOs said to his mate. The man swapped out magazines and leaned back over the low wall that ringed the roof.
Noburu peered into the darkness, trying to follow the red streaks from his companions' weapons, seeking a closer glimpse of this new enemy.
Down on the parade ground, the flares revealed tens of dozens of bodies. Some lay clustered, others sprawled apart. Here a man moved over the cobblestones like an agonized worm, while another twitched, then stilled. Snipers went to ground, then suddenly blasted at the headquarters building, drawing concentrated fire in response.
Noburu had believed that the assault was over, when a fresh wave poured screaming through the gate. Outlined by the inferno across the road, one figure carried a banner aloft. His head had the grossly swollen look of a turbaned man at night. All around him, his followers shrilled.
Noburu thought he heard the word distinctly: 'Allah.'
'Allah' and then a pair of ruptured syllables, repeated again and again. He knew that his hearing was not much better than his eyesight, and that he might only be imposing the word on their voices. But it felt right. He watched as rivets of machine gun fire fixed the flag bearer to a wall, then let him drop.
Another shadow scooped up the banner.
Kloete cursed and called for another tin of ammunition.
Noburu briefly considered drawing his pistol. But he knew it would only be an empty gesture at this distance, like spitting at the enemy. And he was tired of empty gestures. This was a younger man's fight.
During his career, he had been acutely aware of being a part of history, and he had possessed the gift of casting the moment into the perspective of books yet to be written. But this. This was like being part of someone else's history. When madmen with flags and a god's name on their lips swarmed into the sharp teeth of civilization. This was the stuff of bygone centuries.
The machine guns methodically built up a barrier of corpses where once the steel gates had served. But the Azeris simply climbed over the corpses of their brethren at a run, continuing on to martyrdom.
A dark form raised a hand to hurl something, then toppled too soon. The grenade's explosion rearranged the pile of corpses into which the man had fallen.
'Terrebork,' Kloete shouted without taking his cheek off the side of his weapon, 'bring up more ammunition.'
One of the NCOs mumbled a response and scuttled off toward the elevator.
'Crazy,' Kloete said loudly, his voice half-wonder, half-accusation. 'They're crazy.'
But the automatic weapons made in Honshu or on the
Cape of Good Hope did good work. The assault again dwindled into a sniping between a few riflemen amid the landscape of dead and wounded and the defenders of the compound's interior.
Kloete unlocked the housing of his machine gun to let the weapon cool. He rolled over against the wall. 'Shit,' he said. Then he noticed Noburu. The South African snorted loudly. 'Long way to travel just to shoot your colored,' he said. He grinned, teeth white against his powder-grimed face. 'Funny, I don't remember this part in any of the briefings.' He looked at Noburu with the impolite stare of someone who knew exactly how far things had gone awry, as well as who was to blame.
Noburu said nothing. He simply looked at the hard angles of the man's face. Kloete's skin was burnished by the ambient light of the fires, and he resembled a hardcase private as much as he did a colonel.
'They're all gone, you know,' Kloete continued. He tapped along his tunic pockets, then drew out a crushed pack of cigarettes. In the background, desultory gunfire continued. 'Your local nationals,' he said, settling a bent cigarette between his lips. 'All of our little security force allies. Save for a pair of shit-scared officers, who're bloody worthless anyway. Gone over to
A new sound rose in the background. Singing. An Asian scale as foreign to Noburu's ears as it would have been to Kloete's. At first there were only a few voices. Then more took up the chant. Soon the volume overpowered the last gunfire, echoing off walls and rolling through the streets until the returning sound skewed the rhythm, as if several distinct groups were singing at the same time.
'Bleeding concert,' the remaining NCO commented. His voice sounded distinctly on edge.
Kloete nodded to himself. 'Lot of them out there,' he said. He smoked and talked without once removing the cigarette from his lips. 'Something to be said for numbers, from a military point of view.'
'You are under no obligation to stay,' Noburu said in his best staff college English. 'This is now Japan's fight. You may summon one of your transports to remove your men.' Noburu looked at the oversize colonel sprawled just beyond his knees. 'And yourself.'
Kloete laughed. It was a big laugh and it rang out clearly against the background of chanting.
'That's very generous of you, General Noburu. Extremely generous. But we'll be hanging about for now.' Nearby, the other South African chuckled wearily. But Noburu did not get the joke.
'As you wish,' he said. 'You are welcome to stay and fight. But I am releasing you from the provisions of your contract, given the changed cir—'
'Oh, just stuff it,' Kloete said. 'I'd be out of here like a gazelle, if I could. But your little wog friends took over the military airstrip while you were getting your beauty sleep. Baku's a closed city.' Kloete looked up with the wet porcelain eyes of an animal. 'Pity the lads at the airstrip, I do. Crowd doesn't seem in the most humanitarian of moods.'
Two figures emerged from the sheltered passageway that led to the elevator and stairwell. One was large and loose-limbed even under the weight of boxes and canisters, while the other was small and exact, cradling an autorifle. Sergeant Terrebork, Kloete's ammunition hauler. And Akiro.
The South African dropped the ammo boxes one after the other.
'Bleeding last of it, sir,' he told Kloete. Then he turned his nose to the wind, toward the chanting. In profile, he had the look of a dog who had scented game of unwelcome dimensions. 'Gives you the willies, don't it?' he said.
A burst of fire made him duck to the level where the rest of them knelt or sat.
Noburu almost laughed out loud. It seemed to him that
Akiro had acquired a marvelous new talent for understatement.
'Yes,' Noburu said, forcing himself to maintain a serious demeanor. 'Go on, Akiro.'
'We do not have sufficient small-arms ammunition. No one imagined… there seemed to be no reason to provide for such a contingency.'
'No,' Noburu agreed. 'No reason at all. Go on.'
'Should they continue to assault the headquarters… Colonel Takahara is not certain how much longer we will be able to return an adequate volume of fire. Another assault. Perhaps two at the most.' Akiro rolled his head like a horse shaking off rainwater. 'I still cannot believe,' he said, 'that the Americans could be so clever, that they could
