Carnifex

it, the least intelligent of the two brothers. Moreover, the infidel, Fernandez, had made similar offers to both to which both had agreed.

What had decided Fernandez, though he never made this plain, was that Salam had seemed incrementally more likely to seek his own safety and abandon his relatives to their fate than Bashir had. The key to this was that that Bashir, unbeknownst to himself, had broken under beating much later than Salam, and then only after hearing his brother being pounded. 'He's the better kid,' Fernandez had told Carrera. 'He cares more for his family.'

Though he didn't know, Bashir suspected it might be something like that. Salam was a good brother . . . but you did have to watch him.

He'd been left off with very little: some food and water, the pack he'd been captured with, his rifle, a bandoleer of ammunition and a very small radio. The radio was underpowered, due to its size among other things. On the other hand, it would pick up broadcasts as would any other radio that looked like it; which is to say that looked like a cheap, yellow transistor radio made in Zhong Guo.

No matter about the range; a Cazador team was going to be inserted, at night, close enough to pick up any broadcast. That would not happen for another few days, giving Bashir time to get to his destination. He was instructed not to even try to broadcast for ten days, and then only to send one of two words, 'yes' or 'no' and, if 'yes,' a number, for the number of days until the event for which he was waiting was to take place. He was to avoid making other broadcasts entirely except under very narrowly constrained circumstances. Further, if captured and not accepted back into the Ikhwan, he was advised to make a place for his parents, brothers and sisters in Paradise.

22/7/469 AC, Camp San Lorenzo, Pashtia

'Snowbird One reports insertion is complete, Legate,' one of the radiomen reported to Fernandez.

'So far, so good,' he said. He turned his attention to a tall Pashtian girl sitting in the operations center, staring at a map. Anything on your part, Mrs. Cano?'

Alena shook her head and answered, 'No trouble, Legate, or none that I sense.' She shrugged apologetically. 'It's not something I can control,' she explained. 'Maybe something will come tonight.'

Fernandez nodded. He didn't understand it, but he was too good an intelligence man not to note the more-than-coincidence. 'Whatever you can determine,' he said, 'we'll appreciate.'

27/7/469 AC, Kashmir-Pashtian border

No one controlled the border. No one could even really define it.

It was a long trek and a rough one, running over foothills that would have been mountains anywhere else on the globe. The air was thin and, more than once, Bashir found himself short of breath. Nonetheless, he pushed on. Who knew? The foreign infidel maniac might go right ahead and hang his family from the multiple gallows Bashir had seen, just inside the walled compound in which he'd been questioned, if he was so much as a day late with his report.

Progress was slow up the mountain. Contraintuitively it was worse coming down. Not only was the way longer, but there was always the chance of falling and incapacitating himself. Somehow Bashir didn't think that evil bastard, Fernandez, would even wait for an excuse before fitting nooses and kicking boxes.

It was with a certain measure of relief, once he neared the base of the mountains somewhere along the ill-defined Pashtia-Kashmir border, that Bashir felt the rifle muzzle's cold touch behind his ear.

* * *

Bashir felt naked without his own rifle, as he was prodded and pushed along the well-worn, ancient caravan trail toward what his captors referred to as 'the Base.' They'd left him his pack, mostly out of laziness, he thought. No matter, the rifle would not save his family. What was in the pack might.

They'd searched the pack, of course; they weren't exactly incompetent and, what with the turns of fortune in the war to date, they had every reason to be paranoid. Bashir had a few rough moments when one of them shook his little yellow transistor radio a few times, hard, before laying it down with his other belongings. Fernandez had personally gone over his pack and with considerably more thoroughness. There was nothing inherently suspicious in it. As a matter of fact, there was a bullet hole in it of the right caliber, if anyone cared to take a micrometer to check, to indicate he'd been nearly killed by the infidels. Fernandez had seen to that, personally, too.

The caravan trail met a rough road. There the party waited until a four wheel drive vehicle, bearing three armed men, came along. One of the men in the vehicle, not the driver, had one eye badly afflicted with cataracts. Bashir was turned over to these, along with his rifle and his pack. He told the mounted group exactly what he'd told the previous captors. Bashir learned that the man with the cataracts was the leader and that his name was Moshref.

He told Moshref, when asked, 'I was working for Mohammad Shah, leading groups into Pashtia to fight the infidels. We got ambushed.' That was all true. The lies began shortly thereafter. 'I was on point, with my brother,' here Bashir shed a tear he didn't have to feign but had had to practice. 'He was the older. He held off the infidels while I made my escape. I think he must be dead.' Sniff. 'You know how the infidels are able to see at night.'

'The light of Allah guides our bullets, though,' the driver said. 'What are the crusaders' toys compared to that?'

The vehicle bounced along for what seemed many miles before crossing a narrow, rickety bridge and entering a broad, steep-sided valley. Bashir thought he saw bunkers, well hidden and in places connected by trenches, along the crests of the surrounding ridgelines. In the center of the valley, dominating it, stood a great massif. Streams churned and frothed to both sides of the massif before joining and flowing out from the valley. There were many women by the streams, washing clothes by pounding them on rocks. Children, hundreds of them, played near their mothers. It would have all looked very normal but for the large number of armed men training a bit further out, and the air defense guns on the high ground, pointing skyward.

'You understand, Brother, that we can't just take you at your word,' Moshref said. 'The infidels are clever, vicious and ruthless. Nor are all the faithful, faithful in truth. We've caught infiltrators before.'

Moshref's finger pointed to the right, indicating a spot where a dozen large wooden crosses stood, a man hanging on each, nailed through wrists and ankles. All the men were dead, and even the freshest corpse showed much flesh missing.

Children played around the feet of the crosses.

'We deal with them as Sura Five commands,' the cyclops said casually.

Since Bashir had very good reason to believe he was the very first infiltrator to make it to the fortress, he wondered if perhaps the dozen corpses were those of truly innocent men. If so, it said nothing good about the notions of justice held by Mustafa's followers in the valley, nor about Mustafa, himself.

'I just came here to continue the fight,' Bashir said. 'For the sake of my brother.' The best lies contain truth, Fernandez had advised him.

'Mustafa will probably want to talk to you himself.'

It was several days before Mustafa made an appearance. Bashir didn't know if the leader had been there all that time or had just arrived.

* * *

'Tell me about it,' Mustafa commanded Bashir. His assistant, and second in command, Nur al-Deen, sat quietly to Mustafa's side, looking intently into Bashir's face.

The three sat on cushions on the floor of a room leading off from a deep, sloping tunnel carved into the rock. Bashir had the impression—he wasn't sure quite why—that the tunnel went much further into the ground.

Bashir almost missed the question, looking about the room. The walls were bare and at least reasonably dry. The cushions rested on a rug, predominantly red, with blue, green, brown and black geometric decoration. The style was called 'Baluch.' The rug covered most of the floor, though a foot or two of bare rock were visible near where floor met wall. Other furniture was at a minimum, two crude and rough wooden chests, a small table, and a bookcase. There were more cushions piled in one corner but these would only be brought out if Mustafa had more guests. The guards, naturally, did not sit but stood with rifles in their hands.

'Tell me about it,' Mustafa repeated.

'Ah. Excuse me, Sheik. I was just—'

'Never mind that. Tell me about it.'

Bashir told his story.

'That entire party never arrived,' Mustafa said, when Bashir had finished. 'When another patrol went to investigate, it, too, disappeared. This was the work of the Blue Jinn.'

Blue Jinn was a name the movement had given of late to Carrera. They had their reasons. Besides the