Busted Flush

Don’t start, he thought back. “Nothing’s going to happen,” he said aloud. He drummed his fingers on the outside of the door, ignoring the way it scorched the tips. We are not here to fight, he reminded himself. This is just a fact-finding mission.

The Wolf rolled around the bend. A Fox armored recon car blocked the road. It’s menagerie-of-war day in the Oil Delta, Fortune thought. The armored car was narrow and precariously tall, like a normal sedan with big tires and a turret stacked on top. Its long-barreled cannon pointed straight at John’s nose. It was only 30mm but looked as if they could drive right up it.

A pair of utility trucks angled into the ditch to either side. Troopers in Nigerian battle dress slouched around. They didn’t point their long FN-FAL rifles at the newcomers. Maybe they thought the autocannon was enough.

A tall man in a maroon beret held up his hand. “Halt,” he commanded. That was one good thing about the Nigerians: English was their official language. Their accents got a bit dense sometimes, but John could talk to them.

Snowblind had to translate with their PPA allies. She could be a bit of a diva, but wasn’t a bad type. And her ace might actually come in handy if things got crosswise.

“What is your business?” the Nigerian demanded.

<The fool! Can he not read?>

Isra had a point. UN PEACEKEEPERS was painted on both sides of their car in four-inch white letters. “We’re the United Nations fact-finding commission,” John said. He kept his voice level despite Sekhmet’s influence stirring in his blood like angry bees. “We’re legally entitled to go wherever we need to.”

The officer looked doubtful. He wore no rank badges: like most modern armies the Nigerians had figured out that officers’ insignia served as wizard sniper aim-points in the field. The Browning Hi-Power in a holster on his web gear in lieu of a broomstick-long assault rifle marked him as head guy even to John Fortune, who wasn’t exactly Gary Brecher the War Nerd. It struck him as kind of a wash.

The officer turned to shout in some tribal dialect to the guy in the helmet and goggles peering at them from the Fox’s cupola. John wasn’t sure that was a good sign. Nigeria usually mashed up its innumerable ethnic groups among its military units, he knew from the briefing dossiers Jayewardene had loaded onto them. Tribal strife had wracked the country since in de pen dence.

The Nigerians fought hard and mean to suppress Oil Delta ethnic groups, primarily Ijaw and Ogoni. The UN recognized their right to do so. The issue that had John Fortune and his fellow Committee members driving around through the swamps enjoying bugs and heat and having guns pointed at them was whether the horrorfest the Chinese had shot—currently the world’s hottest viral video, even though YouTube yanked uploads as quickly as they could for graphic violence—was aberration or policy.

The guy in the space helmet spoke into a chin mike. “What’re they doing?” Simone asked.

“Probably bumping us upstairs,” John said. “Must have a radio in the armored car.”

Simone sighed. She flipped open her phone and began texting somebody.

To either side of the road rose dunes of white sand, overgrown with brush and tall grass, all wispy and pale green. It didn’t look healthy. Maybe petroleum seeping from the ubiquitous oil pipelines poisoned it.

John was just feeling grateful they weren’t near a bayou right now, so that the meanest bugs had farther to fly and consequently had less energy to torment them, when a plump figure pushed through the grass on the hillock to his left.

<It is the get of a dog!> Isra said. <Slay him!>

Butcher Dagon grinned at them and gave them the reverse V-sign that was the Brit equivalent of the bird.

<It is a trap!>

Fear blasted through John’s veins. His grip, always tenuous, snapped. He just kept presence of mind to yank open the door and spill himself onto the broken-shell road. Then the beast broke free. Sekhmet seized the ascendant.

The Nigerians opened panic fire at the sight of a giant golden lioness appearing in the road. Sekhmet the Destroyer saw the Croatian corporal stare at her in gap-mouthed shock before a bullet pierced his head and he slumped. The copper-haired girl yelped and dropped from sight.

The Fox’s turret gun erupted in thunder and fire. Like the troopers on the road the gunner fired high. The muzzle blast still blew the Wolf’s windscreen in. The safety glass obediently sugared. The force of the blast shotgunned the particles into the face of the driver, who hadn’t been quick enough to hit the floorboards.

The Destroyer’s ears rang from the horrific noise. It stoked her primal fury.