Carnifex

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."