Busted Flush

“Poor gal’s carrying the world on her shoulders, that’s sure,” Buford said.

“When the lion lies down with the lamb,” said the Lama, “who knows what issue may come forth?”

“Wait,” Simone said. “Back up. What?”

He smiled.

John Fortune never saw what toasted the lead tank.

He rode in the backseat of a fresh Land Rover with six fresh Croats. Buford Calhoun and Simone followed in a second Wolf. In front and behind rolled a PPA mechanized company, Brit-provided Ferret armored cars and beefy, tracked BMP-2s from Russia, hauling infantry. A quartet of Indian-made Vijayanta main battle tanks flanked front, rear, and sides. The Western aces called them Va-jay-jays.

With all that serious steel and firepower surrounding them, and the Lama scouting ahead in invisible astral form, John felt fairly safe, even deep in enemy territory. Until the Va-jay-jay two hundred yards up the road went up.

The Land Rover’s doors flew open. Blue-helmeted Croats blew out of them like shell splinters. Screw that, John thought. This may be an open car, but some cover’s better than none—

A blast bellowed from the stricken Va-jay-jay. It lifted the heavy turret six inches and dropped it skewed to one side. Blue-white flames gushed up from the hull.

It occurred to John that that was what modern weaponry made of a massively armored, forty-four-ton tank. He wasn’t even sure the Wolf’s body was real metal.

He dove into the weeds to his left.

He found most of his crew huddling in a ditch with four inches of stagnant salt water in the bottom. “That fucking Lama!” he shouted, jumping in with them. “Why didn’t he warn us?”

The radio quacked. No more cell reception. Their buddies in the Liberation Army of the Nile Delta had helpfully blown up all the repeating towers. What he had was an overweight Croat kid squashed beneath a humongous radio pack, red-faced and puffing asthmatically, looking ready to puke from heat stroke and terror.

John snatched the microphone. “Fortune here, over.” They always said that in the movies.

“Brave Hawk,” the radio crackled. “Nigerians are in our base, killing our dudes. Dagon’s beast form’s ripping Brazilians to pieces.”

“What about the Lama?”

“Hiked up his skirts and ran off like a rabbit.”

John dropped the mike without even saying “out.” Instead he said, “Oh, fuck me.”

His half-dozen Croat escorts huddled in the ditch like frightened mice. They all stared at him with pathetically open optimism. They—his bodyguards—plainly expected him, the great American ace and son of aces, to rescue them.

On the dune-line to the right across the road, Nigerian armored vehicles appeared. Zippy little Scorpion tanks with 76mm guns and much bigger Warrior personnel carriers whose long 30mm autocannon quested side to side like monster bug antennae. A Scorpion promptly exploded in a billow of red fire and black smoke.

John’s blue helmets might be a bunch of lovable losers, completely out of their depth here. The Simbas were hard-asses who’d carved a chunk bigger than Argentina from Africa’s bleeding heart. And their mostly Sikh officers were as warm and fuzzy as the daggers they all carried.

A line of explosions stitched the road. Their abandoned Wolf blew up in their faces. “Shit!” John yelled. His Croats all jumped up and raced off over the dunes behind them. He followed.

<You must not run!>

“Shut up,” he shouted.

Facedown in a clump of rough grass he struggled to get a grip on what was happening. War’s like that, he was finding out: if you’re in it, you miss about 99 percent of what goes on.

He smelled gasoline burning. And something else. I think I may be over barbecue for a while, he thought. To his right a vehicle went up with a roar. His heart jumped into his throat. It was Simone and Buford’s Land Rover. “Oh, shit, oh, Jesus, no.”

He felt . . . total helplessness. He was the man in charge. He was an ace again. Or the next best thing, at least. His friends had just gotten fried and he couldn’t do a fucking thing.

<Then let me,> Isra urged.

What? Like you can bring them back? You’re not that kind of god.

He heard a colossal plop. As if . . . as if a one-ton toad had jumped over a dune to land on packed white sand beside him. Exactly like that.

The toad stared at him with those huge eyes. Moss green. Like Buford’s, but bulbous and the size of cantaloupes. But still with that unmistakable goofy good nature.

The mouth opened. And opened. And out upon the sand plopped a whole Québécoise ace.