Carnifex

8/3/463 AC, Ninewa, Sumer

An ambulance siren wailed in the distance, racing to the scene of the latest bombing in the provincial capital. They weren't as common here as they were some other places in the country; yet they were far too common still.

Carrera, Sada, and their respective military formations did what they could to aid the local police and even to search vehicles themselves. It helped . . . somewhat . . . sometimes . . . in some places.

* * *

They'd tried both high-tech and low-tech solutions, from explosive sniffing machines to explosive sniffing dogs. Both methods had faltered under the simple terrorist expedient of sending forth small boys with spray bottles to spray underchassis and wheel wells, signposts and curbs with a solution containing various explosive compounds in low dilution. To the machines and the dogs, explosive was explosive. They were soon alerting on nearly everything. When everything smells like explosive nothing does. The machines were retired and the dogs sent to other duties.

There had been some successes of course. Early on in the campaign aircraft equipped to spit out every imaginable cell phone number and every possible radio frequency had overflown likely areas for bomb construction. This had blasted a goodly number of bomb manufacturers into the next world over a short period of time.

Those who lived had reverted to using infrared garage door openers to detonate their bombs. The Legion had not yet figured out a way to prematurely detonate those until they were already emplaced, which was all too often all too late.

* * *

The bomb which had just gone off in a market had been detonated in just that way. Fortunately, something had warned the civilians nearby who had, for the most part, gone scurrying. Casualties were remarkably low and for those there were there was a catch all phrase, il hamdu l'illah, to God be the praise.

Now, to either side of that attack site and the few bodies it held, other groups waited for some special targets to show up to detonate their own little gateways to Hell.

* * *

It had been a hell of an argument really. After the assassination of their three local leaders by men purporting to be from the news media, the first assumption had been that it was the foreign mercenaries' doing. As one of the remaining terrorist chiefs, Faisal ibn Bahir, pointed out, though, "Really not their style. They never even searched the place for files. And they only took personal arms when they left and not all of those. No, I think it was a personal hit, maybe even because of that pressie that was blown up."

"But the infidel press has shown it's been on our side from the beginning," objected another of the leading terrorists, this one a representative of the Salafi Ikhwan.

"That's very true," agreed Bahir, with a serious nod. "And yet, does it not strike you as suspicious, my brother, that this same infidel press supports and advances the very things we loathe and fight against? Freedom for women, for queers, for atheists? Are they not the very essence of perfidy? Are they not the mothers of lies? Why then should we accept anything they say or do at face value? The only thing we can be sure of is that they take care of each other. And that, brother, is completely consistent with them assassinating, more likely paying someone to assassinate, our fallen comrades."

"But . . . if the infidel press is against us, what chance have we?"

"This is why we must strike them," insisted Bahir, "to let them know who their masters are. After all, the 'courageous' infidel press is brave only when not pressed."

"Should we assassinate then, or take hostages for ransom?"

This, Bahir contemplated. After a bit of deep concentration, he answered, "Nobody expects us to honor ransoms anymore, not since that Masera houri was fed feet-first into a wood chipper."

Giulia Masera, a progressive journalist from the Tauran Union, had volunteered to be a hostage for ransom early in the war. Her mistake had been in surrendering herself to Sada's boys, rather than the actual insurgents. These had taken the ransom, then murdered her for the cameras in just the way Bahir had said. This had had the salutary effect of stopping such voluntary hostage takings pretty much entirely.

"No," Bahir continued. "Let's pay them back in the same coin; kill a team or two and leave our calling cards on the bodies."

* * *

"Don't press too soon," cautioned the leader of the five man bomber team. "Wait for the vultures to show up on their way to gorge on the meat from the bodies that lie dismembered in the market."

The bomber with the infrared switch in his hand smiled at the metaphor. Good one, Anwar. What are the pressies, after all, but carrion feeders?

They didn't have long to wait. Ambulances passed. Military vehicles passed. And then came the word from an observer a further half mile down the road, "Tauran News Network, yellow van, eye painted on the side."

Placing a hand, fraternally, on the shoulder of the bomber with the detonating switch, Anwar said, "On my signal, Brother . . . . and . . . FIRE!"

Infrared, despite sending a signal at the speed of light, activated a mechanism that was much slower. Anwar knew the time it would take between sending that signal and his bomb exploding. He had mentally calculated the time, and done so rather well. The yellow painted van with the TNN eye on the side was only a meter or so past the bomb when it went off.

The explosion came in the form of a fiery dark cloud and the whizzing of hot chunks of steel. The bomb, itself, was of the concave directional type. It was mid-sized, and just perfect for sending a very heavy concentration of metal chunks in a fairly precise direction.

The rear tires of the van were blown off as the rear three fourths of one side disintegrated under the steel hail. The van's tail was forced about ninety degrees from its direction of travel. Forward momentum, however, had not been lost. The van had no option, given the laws of physics, but to begin to spin along its long axis as it tumbled down the street. It crashed, finally, at a store front. Between the bomb and the wildly careening van, some numbers of innocent people were hurt or killed.

No matter; the bomber team was well sheltered and they emerged moments after the bomb went off, ignoring the dead and wounded and racing afoot for the van. Their faces were covered by their keffiyah. Once at the van, rifles went into action, pouring lead into the stunned and bleeding men—oh, and there's one woman, too. Infidel slut!—inside the wrecked vehicle. One or more bullets must have found the gas tank, for the air quickly filled with the stench of gasoline. One terrorist carried a grenade. This he donated into a broken window. The van was soon blazing merrily and, based on the screaming, finishing off whichever of the infidel vultures had survived bomb and bullet.

Nodding satisfaction, Anwar gave the order, "Leave the rifles; plenty more where they came from. Now go and disperse. We'll meet at my house this evening."

As the men ran off they heard another bomb, and more rifle fire, coming from what sounded like about a mile in the other direction.

* * *

All three moons were up, Hecate, Eris and Bellona, when Khalid, representing Adnan Sada, met with Bahir in a walled in courtyard in a suburb of Ninewa. "That was well done," Khalid congratulated. "My liwa is pleased."

"He is pleased even over the twenty-three innocents we killed?" Bahir retorted.

"No . . . no, of course not," Khalid shook his head. "But there is always what the Balboan mercenaries call 'collateral damage.' If you had not killed the innocents then it would not have seemed as if it were an attack by the resistance. The question is whether the damage is less than there would be if we did not take the action. He thinks it was worth it, however regrettable it may have been."

And how am I different, then, from the people who blew up my family? Khalid wondered. In this only: they blew up my family; I only blow up others' families. That is as much moral difference as can be.

From inside his dishdasha Khalid drew several packages of Tauran money which he placed on a low table between himself and Bahir. "This is for your expenses. There is a bonus in there, as well, for a job—well, two jobs, really—well done."

"It was three jobs, including getting you the introductions and passes to bring your 'news team' to murder the chiefs."

"You were already paid for the first," Khalid insisted.

"I know. That isn't the point. But after three such jobs, is that not enough to earn the release of my father's son?"

Khalid sighed. "I have told you this before, Bahir. Your brother will be pardoned and released when the war is over, really and finally over. He hasn't been subject to the question since he gave us your name. But until the war is over, you dance to our tune if you do not want your brother to dance to a very different tune."

Under the shadowless light of the three moons, Bahir scowled even as he raked in the money.