crossers.'
The sergeant normally wouldn't have bucked his commander. He liked the boy for one thing. For another, they were cousins. It was precisely that fact that made the sergeant stand up. 'Sada will want to talk to this one, cousin. Trust me on this.'
When Sada arrived and had spoken to the mullah he congratulated the captain on his wisdom and made a mental mark to look the man over closely for possible promotion. Breaking rules and violating orders-let alone disturbing their commanders at frightful hours!- was not something that came easily to Sumeri officers.
Hearing the mullah out took hours. By the time it was done the sun was beginning to rise, its glorious light casting the shadows of buildings across the ground.
'Carrera will want to hear this, Thaqib,' Sada advised. 'But he may have you shot.'
'That will be as it will be.'
By noontime two things had happened. For one, the desert had returned to its normal state of open oven. For another, Carrera had decided that there might be a way to end this without destroying the town and killing all the men inside.
'Are you willing to go back? To organize a rebellion?' Carrera asked in Arabic. 'I would spare the men, but they must earn it.' Unsurprisingly, his Arabic had started to become quite good rather than just adequate, though it still lagged well behind Lourdes' under Ruqaya's instruction, or Sada's English for that matter. This was annoying to him, in a distant way, as he had already spoken some Arabic long before Lourdes had ever come to Sumer.
'I am willing,' Thaqib answered. 'As to whether I am able? The men inside will likely not let me return.'
'Do you have some people who are jump qualified?' he asked Sada.
'You're shitting me, right, Patricio?' Seeing that Carrera was serious, Sada thought about it and said, 'Myself. Qabaash. Oh, he'll be hot for this. Possibly half a dozen troops. But the mullah is not trained. How do we get him out the airplane and down on the ground?'
Carrera just smiled and turned to Thaqib. Conversationally, he asked, 'How's your faith in God?'
Fifteen-hundred feet over Pumbadeta, Sumer, 6/8/462 AC
A half a day of ground school and twelve jumps were hardly enough to make Thaqib an expert parachutist. On the other hand, he took it philosophically.
I am sure to hit the ground, no matter what happens, he thought. The ways of Allah are inscrutable but are as certain as His Grace. And best of all, after this one it will be the last time I'll ever have to do anything like this again. For this, Beneficent One, I thank You.
They waited until the moon, Eris, which was nearly full, had set. Sada jump-mastered the operation for one bird. Qabaash had the other. They both thought the idea was insane-a definite point of appeal to Qabaash-but were willing to take the chance to prevent the otherwise inevitable bloodbath in what was, after all, one of their cities and filled with their people.
Sada looked Thaqib straight in the face, searching for signs of hesitation. Seeing none, he laughed aloud. 'Mullah, when this is done, if we live, how would you like a job as a chaplain in my brigade?'
Given the warm, thin air right at the surface, the Crickets had had to strain to lift even two men with parachutes. Any idea of using the next smallest airplane available, however, the NA-23, was simply out of the question. Crickets were designed to be quiet, their single engines muffled. NA-23s could be heard from far away.
Lanza-hell, he flew everything and every chance he had, too!looked back over his right shoulder and told Sada, in English, 'Crossing the river now.' Sada knew that meant less than two minutes to jump at this speed.
The engine suddenly went dead. This was by design rather than a flaw. The Cricket was perfectly capable of gliding quite some distance without engine power, once it was up among the cooler, thicker air.
Sada helped Thaqib to ease himself to the Cricket's door. As with every prior jump, the cleric stiffened once he was in position, but then forced himself to a more relaxed calm. Reciting some of his favorite hadiths helped. At the proper time, Sada pushed the mullah out the door, then quickly threw himself behind him.
Above, the Cricket sailed on until near the edge of the city, at which point Lanza reengaged the engines.
Sada, Qabaash and the young soldier accompanying them, Sergeant Ali, landed easily enough in the broad park near the center of town. Mullah Thaqib nearly screamed at his landing as he came down with one leg on a concrete pad and the other just off it. This caused the ankle that hit first to twist, dislocating it with an audible sound that was almost as bad as the pain shooting up Thaqib's leg.
'Oh… God!' Thaqib gasped when Sada reached him. One look at the odd angle of the foot was enough to tell the general that there was no chance of the man walking on his own power any time soon.
'Qabaash, you and Ali hide the chutes.' He hesitated. They had not been sure, even after planning and aerial recon, just where they could hide the parachutes. 'Mmm… over there. I'll meet you.' Sada's finger pointed to an apparently abandoned apartment building.
While that was being done, Sada half-stripped and put on a long flowing robe and keffiyah. His weapon was indistinguishable from those carried by the insurgents so that would be no problem. Slinging the rifle across the left side of his neck, Sada helped the mullah to his good leg and assisted him to hobble, one-legged, to where Qabaash and Ali waited. They'd also donned local, civilian costume and already had their boots off and replaced with sandals.
Qabaash and Ali both looked at the mullah's ankle and the bone pressing out and said, together, 'Shit.'
'We'll have to splint it before we try to move him any farther. Sergeant Ali, can you find a couple of stout sticks?'
The sergeant nodded and walked farther into the building, muttering something about, 'Darker than three feet up a well digger's ass at midnight… a moonless midnight.'
Sada and his two men had no real difficulty moving Mullah Thaqib to his home. The streets were dark, the insurgents mostly less than alert, and their appearance nothing remarkable. Once there, they set Thaqib down on a pallet while his wife fussed over him. Sada used the break to call the legion's command post with a single code word, repeated three times: 'Badr… Badr… Badr.'
Legionary Command Post, 7/8/462 AC
'They're in and safe,' Jimenez announced, when the message was received. A subdued cheer rang throughout the command post.
Fahad, standing by for just this word, breathed a sigh of relief.
'You really care about Sada, don't you?' Carrera asked. 'Moslem or not you still care about him?'
The Chaldean thought about that for a minute before answering. 'He was… still is, my commander, sir. We've been through the… through the shit together. Bonds like that go past things like religion. Besides…'
'Yes?'
'If this country is ever going to amount to anything ever again, it will be because of Sada and the few men like him, men who stand above tribe and religion and sect. Honorable men.'
'Isn't that an interesting thought,' Carrera said slowly. 'Sada and a few like him. I confess; I see Sumer as doing better in his hands than in those of the pack of jackals down in Babel. He is, as you said, an honorable man… and a brave one. Yes, that's a very interesting thought, Fahad.'
'Sir?' Fahad asked, clearly not understanding.
'Never mind, friend. We will see what we will see.'
Pumbadeta, Sumer, 7/8/462 AC
A man has to play the hand he's dealt. Sada didn't even try to form a working chain of command based on military experience. Instead, he selected out the couple of dozen experienced senior officers and NCOs from the old Sumeri Army (for while virtually every man in town had some military experience, trained leaders were few and far between) and assigned one or two to each group of tribal and clan leaders. The traditional chiefs would command; the former soldiers only advise.
In analyzing his assets all Sada could think was, There are damned few of them. I've got numbers but I lack everything else. No radios, no heavy weapons, limited ammunition, no special purpose ammunition.
More than anything, it was those last two that decided him to begin the rebellion on the side of the town by the river. If he could clear that, then his troops could throw a temporary bridge over the stream and not only add their own weight to the fight but also bring in whatever the rebellion would need.
He had another consideration though. Even after we seize the near bank, Fadeel's men will just fall back and
