Carnifex

After that, it didn't 'know' anything.

* * *

'Look, I am telling you, I know they're on the move . . . '

Noorzad was speaking into his cell phone, talking with Mustafa's functionary, Abdul Aziz, back in Kashmir, when there was a significant explosion several hundred meters overhead.

It was far enough overhead, however, that it struck Noorzad as more on the order of a large mortar shell than the dreaded aerial bombs the FSC dropped with such terrible accuracy. And yet he was, so Noorzad knew, most unlikely to be within range of any of the infidels' mortars.

He decided it was harmless and returned to his conversation.

'As I was saying Abdul . . . Abdul?'

Noorzad pulled the cell away from his ear and looked at it. It didn't seem any different, except that it had gone dark. He shook it a few times, then tapped it with his finger. Nothing.

'Give me your phone, Malakzay,' he ordered.

Malakzay took his own phone out of a pouch on his ammunition belt and pushed the button to turn it on.

'Nothing, Noorzad. It's dead. I checked it just this morning but—'

'Shit.'

Noorzad noticed another explosion, also seemingly small, a kilometer to the east where lay one of his companies. Further away, other flashes briefly lit the night sky before disappearing. The guerilla chieftain had a sudden sense that those lights indicated that other lights, the lights of seeing and knowing, were going out.

A sudden thought occurred. 'Malakzay, your phone was turned off?'

'Yes, Noorzad. You know what a pain in the ass it is to recharge the batteries.'

'That means that whatever weapon the infidel is using can attack our electronics even if they're shut off.' He paused, thinking hard, before exclaiming, 'Quick, get me half a dozen messengers, fast and smart men on fast horses.'

* * *

It was commonly believed that Samsonov's boys had recruited one group of Pashtun for Carrera. At one level, this was true: there was a central department for the Pashtun Scouts (numbers of whom were not actually Pashtun). At another level, though, it was false. There were several more or less independent groups. One of these groups was composed of four hundred and eighty-seven honest-to-Allah horse cavalry, supplemented by a small group of twenty legionaries detached from various cohorts and tercios to direct and maintain communications with Legionary headquarters.

These now splashed on horseback across the Jayhun River which separated the city of Thermopolis from Pashtia proper. The river was low, this late in the season, but still as icy cold as if it were full of the annual snowmelt.

The cavalry carried rifles and machine guns, of course, and even had a section of light mortars. Still, there's nothing like cold steel between real men and every Pashtun on horseback also carried a lance and a sword. Tradition; that was the thing.

A very small detachment had crossed early, three days prior, at a ford nowhere near as good as this one. They'd crossed, ridden deep and then circled around. The mujahadin guards watching the ford had seen nothing amiss in twenty-one riders, looking for all the world like their comrades, coming up from behind. And then, from the distance of twenty yards, the lances waved in greeting had lowered. Spurring their horses, the scouts had charged, spearing the guerillas like so many boar.

Those same forward scouts now stood in their stirrups, wearing genial smiles and waving their comrades forward with the heads of their erstwhile enemies.

From the mass of horsemen winding their way through the flood, two emerged and, forcing their way up the riverbank, rode to join the Scouts as they waved their lances and severed heads. Of these, one—Rachman Salwan —was another Pashtun, though he had some odd, non-Pashtun words in his vocabulary. The other was one of the legionary officers, Tribune II David Cano of the Fourth Tercio, on detached duty to the Scouts for the campaign.

Cano had been hand-selected for the job—along with nineteen others, officers, centurions, and noncoms—by Carrera, Samsonov, and a Pashtun, Subadar Masood, recommended by Samsonov and flown specially to the island. Following selection, the twenty had been given a crash course in Pashtun by some of the Volgans who still had pretty fair fluency in the language and a few Pashtun flown in for the exercise. Still, at best, so Cano thought, he spoke a pidgin.

Despite the lack of real fluency, Cano had taken so well to the Scouts, joining them at their meals, discussing their lives and their problems, playing some of their tribal games, that Rachman Salwan had taken a liking to him and taken him under wing. Being senior in the tribe among the young horsemen who'd signed on with Samsonov's recruiter, Rachman served—unofficially, the cavalry scouts didn't have a very formal chain of command outside of the legionaries placed over them—as the senior noncom for the squadron.

'Praise them, Sahib,' Rachman advised in a whisper, 'but not too much. Tell them, 'Aafaran!''—bravo—'Tell them they were 'dzhangyaalay''—courageous—'But do not promise them any reward yet. The heads and the honor are enough for good Pashtun serving in the field.'

Cano appreciated the advice; Rachman was more a friend or even a brother than a subordinate. He stood by his stirrups, waving a rifle and shouting to his men—yes, my men—of their valor and their skill.

14/9/467 AC, The Base, Kashmir

Nur al-Deen scratched his head with puzzlement while Mustafa tapped his fingers with irritation. Both men watched underlings mark the large map of Pashtia that hung on one rocky wall deep in their underground complex near the Pashtian border. Each mark represented a group of mujahadin with which he had lost contact or with which his headquarters still had communications. There were many more of the former than of the latter. The rest? Were they dead? Hiding? Engaged? He didn't, couldn't, know.

'You know,' he muttered, 'I am really beginning to hate this group of infidels.'

After tugging absentmindedly at his beard for a few minutes, and playing with his worry beads for a few more, Mustafa stood and returned to his quarters. Once there, he closed the door behind him, went to a small casket and removed from it the device given him by High Admiral Robinson for direct communication.

'Robinson here, Mustafa. I see the problem.'

'Seeing does me little good,' Mustafa snarled. 'What is it? What can you do about it?'

'They're using EMP—electro-magnetic pulse—bombs, frying the internal workings of your phones and radios,' the High Admiral answered. 'I can't do anything about it. We have none aboard the fleet and the only things I do have that can generate electro-magnetic pulse are nuclear weapons. As we've discussed, I can't use those. Given time and warning, which I didn't have'—time to have a little chat with Intelligence, I think—'we could have hardened your radios and phones against them. Even now I can send you some simple methods to protect what you have in the north of the country. But the southern part? No, too late. We could manufacture some EMP bombs ourselves and slip them to you, but not in time to do you any good. I can advise you of enemy movements from up here but . . . '

'But I have no way to get the information to my fighters on the ground,' Mustafa finished. 'They'll have to escape on their own.'

'I fear that few of them will, Mustafa. The enemy has blocked all the major passes and most, I think, of the minor ones.'

'Then we are helpless.'

14/9/467 AC, Cruz Apartment, Ciudad Balboa

Cara sighed, helplessly. Ricardo had his eyes on the television screen, a bottle of rum in one hand, a glass of some local cola in the other. Nothing she'd been able to do had pulled his attention from either rum or television since the Legion had commenced operations in Pashtia. Sometimes, she thought she saw him rub at his eyes. Tears? She didn't know and really didn't want to find out.

God, what have I done to him? she wondered. He doesn't eat. He isn't studying. He won't pay any attention to me or the children. I thought he would learn to be happy . . . happier, here with us. Why aren't we enough for him?

Was I just selfish, demanding he get out of the Legion? I don't know. I do know that if he'd stayed in he'd probably be over there now and it would be me watching the