Carnifex

11/8/469 AC, Peshtwa International Airport, Kashmir

Subadar Masood spoke Urdu, the primary language of Kashmir, flawlessly and with a proper Peshtwa accent. He waited impatiently for a group of twenty-one of his scouts, all in civilian dress, to debark from the plane. With these, four legionary officers including Jimenez, and those men who had arrived previously, he would have a force of fifty-one men in the capital. This was just large enough to minimally man the vehicles he had purchased for cash over the preceding weeks, and also just few enough to excite no real comment in bustling Peshtwa.

Weapons, too, had been purchased. Masood smiled to think that he was buying from the very same men who made their livelihood selling to his enemies. Since he knew what he was about and the Salafis rarely did, he was confident, at least, of having obtained superior products.

Such purchases, on such a scale, would have excited comment almost anywhere else on Terra Nova; one man buying nearly six hundred rifles and machine guns, plus several tons of explosives and ammunition. In the decentralized ways of the Salafi movement, with no one really in charge (though Mustafa was still working on bringing some of the disparate submovements to heel) and its leaders more inspirational than operational, it was merely routine.

The only interest shown in the transactions by the government or any of its agents were requests for bribes, or baksheesh. Masood paid, of course; this was the price of doing business. He took some small satisfaction in haggling the bribes demanded down from the obscene—which would have excited interest, if paid— to the reasonable.

With weapons, ammunition and explosives excess to immediate needs all safely stowed in the cargo compartments of the buses, Masood directed the drivers and co-drivers to mount up. Without fanfare the column moved south to its rendezvous with the rest of the maniples committed to the attack.