Kingdom Come Read online

  “Jimmy, cover the road,” I told him.

  He melted into the bush and I turned my attention to our unexpected visitor. She wore a flight suit slicked in blood and, if I wasn’t mistaken, bits of flesh. She was also shaking. Her build – slight; height – medium; skin - green; eye color - green. What? Wait… I flipped up the NVGs. Amend hair color to covered in oil; skin, also oily. Eye color - too dark to see.

  And then, before I could do much else, a substantial weight crashed noisily through a succession of branches before hitting the ground with a heavy thud less than ten feet away.

  “What the hell was that?” said Alvin.

  Well, it wasn’t a coconut. Approaching the lump on the ground with some caution, I peered down at it and caught a whiff of something. Alcohol?

  The lump groaned and then belched.

  I glanced at Alvin. “I think it’s Russian.”

  Nine

  Ronald V. Small @realSmall

  RUSSIAN PRESIDENT CAPTURED. ISIS has bitten off more than they can chew. You don't scare us!

  The briefcase on his lap, Al-Aleaqarab sat in the back seat beside President Valeriy Petrovich. The president’s hands were bound behind his back with duct tape, the shoes removed from his feet. His ankles were also tightly bound with tape and there was tape across his mouth. The General Yegorov, who was by the far door, was tied more leniently, his hands taped at the wrists, and his feet left unbound. He was clearly in considerable pain from the gunshot wound in his foot. The Scorpion had seen many battles and much torn flesh and foot wounds were among the worst. Feet. And hands…

  The general’s eyes were closed, his head tilted back. His face, sweating profusely, was locked in a grimace. The lines in his forehead were deep and knotted together as he tried to deal with the pain. He made no sound, but when the car hit a bump or a pothole, or Ortsa braked hard or swerved to avoid a collision, he cried out involuntarily, the sound coming from deep within him, uncontrolled. The wound had only been received within the hour. The pain would intensify once the man’s body had taken stock of the damage and tried to deal with it.

  In the front passenger seat, Dawar sat turned towards the back seat with a Yarygin pistol in hand, hammer cocked and a round in the chamber. Ortsa drove, his eyes continuously roving to the rearview mirror with the excitement of a child who cannot tear his eyes from a stack of gifts wrapped for Eid.

  The Scorpion noted the young man’s distraction with a degree of amusement. I feel it too, Chechen. My heart races and my scalp prickles as if charged with electricity. We have been given weapons of immense power. And we will use them to Allah’s best advantage.

  Directly in front, shrouded in a veil of boiling road dust, the ZPU led the column. And in the utility immediately following the Beemer a contingent of jihadists guarded the Spetsnaz bodyguard.

  The convoy raced along the trail, shedding vehicles from the main column until just the ZPU, the Beemer and two king cab pickups remained. The Scorpion leaned closer to Petrovich and ripped away the tape covering his mouth. “Mr President, you are thinking that your Spetsnaz will arrive soon to pluck you from this unfortunate situation.”

  President Petrovich did not respond, choosing instead to focus on a point in front of him.

  “But do your people know where you are? No, they do not. For if they did surely these hills would right now be swarming with rescue teams. We will melt into the earth, protected by the grace of Allah’s will.”

  Still no response from Petrovich.

  The Scorpion continued, “Would you like to tell me why you are here in Syria? How is it that your helicopter exploded?”

  Nothing.

  “I wish to thank you for this great gift.” He patted the briefcase.

  The Beemer came to a dusty stop behind the ZPU. They had reached the intersection with the main road. Through the window, Al-Aleaqarab could see hundreds of refugees, the slow-moving river of humanity heading east, away from the dangers of Latakia. “Do you see the effect of your air force, Mr President? But you do not feel for them, do you? And neither do I. Why should we? They are no better than cattle and like cattle we feed off them - Russia, the caliphate, Assad, all of us. Even the Americans, if they were honest with themselves. These Syrians pay tax and have a value as bargaining chips with all parties, and they are worthy human shields for the glorious warriors of Ad-Dawlah al-Islamiyah. But that is their sum total of worth. Look at them. Right now they have the will for nothing other than movement.”

  The Scorpion knew that it was impossible to hide a large cohort of vehicles from eyes on the ground and in the sky. But reduced as they were now to a column of four, they would draw far less attention.

  “Which way, Amir?” asked Ortsa. “Do we return to Latakia?”

  Al-Aleaqarab considered the question and looked right and left. “No. Turn left, Ortsa,” he said, “toward the end of days.”

  ***

  The column moved slowly. Not even passing truckloads of fighters raised the refugees from their lethargy. Everywhere women and children cried, some of the men too, lamenting a lost child or family member. Mazool, Taymullah and Farib trudged along with the human stream.

  “If you were truly concerned about my mother, Mazool, we would turn around now and head back to the city.”

  “It’s true, I am scared of your mother, Farib. Even Assad would give her plenty of room, but we must find the helicopter,” Mazool said.

  “Walking along on foot?” asked Taymullah.

  “We will find a vehicle and steal it. Allah favors the bold.”

  Farib continued, “You’ve told me about the Russians and the necessity for revenge, but I don’t understand why we need to find this helicopter.”

  “What have you gained from this war, Farib?”

  The young man shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “Taymullah?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Me also, nothing. And, despite all the sacrifices, where is Assad? He still rules over Syria’s carcass from his palace. We have lost our families, our futures, our wealth, our jobs. All Syria is in mourning. And why do we keep fighting? Because we can't stop. We have no other choice. Assad will not stop bombing us. And we will not stop fighting because how can someone who thinks nothing of killing his own people and destroying everything just to stay in power rule us? If we stop now, all our losses will hold no meaning. What would have been the point of the sacrifice? But somewhere close by is a helicopter full of Russians. If we can get to them, and if they are still alive, we can take them prisoner. And what might we gain from that?”

  “What might we lose?” Farib replied. “As you yourself have said, everything to do with war is loss.”

  “We can take them hostage and that will give us power,” Mazool assured him.

  “Power to do what?”

  “Who knows? Power to stop the barrel bombs for a few days. Perhaps delivering the Russians to others will bring opportunities. At the very least we will be noticed.”

  “Noticed enough to be killed.”

  “Mazool is right, Farib,” Taymullah said. “We live from day to day, firing the ammunition we can borrow or steal, and then we run away like frightened dogs. These Russians are like treasure. Who knows what having them in our possession will buy us? Who knows what we could trade them for?”

  “Let us leave it in the hands of Allah,” Farib suggested.

  “Allah helps those who help themselves,” replied Mazool

  “Well, we will not find them along this road,” Taymullah pointed out. “I am sure they came down further to the north, closer to Tishreen Lake. And the only transport available is owned by armed gangs with more guns than us. In fact, we have no guns.” He suddenly pulled Farib and Mazool to one side, out of the march to nowhere. “Look,” he whispered, motioning secretively at the darkness beyond the side of the road. “Our ambulance.”

  “What about it? Daesh took it,” said Mazool.

  “No, look there,” said Taymullah. He pointed into
the darkness beyond the side of the road. “Daesh is too impatient, and they don't understand engines.” Across the road abandoned, shrouded in darkness, was the distinctive hoodless ambulance. Taymullah found a pathway through the darker night shadows and ran to it, Mazool and Farib following close behind him.

  “It smells of burnt rubber and grease,” said Mazool, looking into the engine bay.

  “Leaking bottom hose, remember? They would have driven it till it overheated.” The engine was still hot, ticking as it cooled.

  “Smells ready for the junk yard.”

  “Perhaps, and perhaps not.”

  ‘You think you can get it going?” Mazool asked.

  Taymullah turned on his phone’s flashlight and checked some of the more critical gaskets. He wiped a finger along the seal. No oil. “Maybe,” he replied. “These newer vehicles protect themselves from damage with all kinds of cutoff switches. If the engine gets too hot, the switch cuts the ignition and spares the engine. Once it cools a little, it might start again.”

  “You would have made a good mechanic,” Mazool told him.

  Taymullah opened the cap of the coolant reservoir and saw that it was empty. Next, he checked the bottom hose. The bandage he’d applied earlier had come loose. He moved quickly to the back of the ambulance. The bags of used bandages were still there. He pulled out the niqab, the T-shirt and the pants and threw them on the floor, then took one of the used, bloodstained rags and dived under the vehicle’s front end. A short while later, he climbed up onto the fender and unzipped his fly.

  “What are you doing?” Mazool said.

  “There’s no coolant. This will have to do until we can find some.” Taymullah urinated into the reservoir, some of it splashing and sizzling on hot metal.

  Farib screwed up his nose. “What have you been eating? Your piss stinks.”

  “Your turn next.” Taymullah shook off the drops, zipped up his fly and jumped down.

  Mazool shrugged, climbed up and unzipped, followed by Farib.

  “They left the key,” Taymullah called from inside the ambulance, finding it in the floorboards. He turned over the ignition and on the third attempt, the engine fired.

  Mazool jumped in through the passenger door, Farib climbing in through the double doors at the back.

  “We need water,” Taymullah told them.

  In the back, Farib picked up an empty water bottle and squeezed it, the plastic crackling like distant gunfire on a cold morning. “Go to the lake,” Farib suggested. “It’s close.”

  Exactly what Mazool was thinking. It’s in the right direction. With luck we’ll find some Russians there too.

  Ten

  Ronald V. Small @realSmall

  BMI is a failed measurement. It is fake science.

  “Geneva Convention. Name, rank, serial number. I give you nothing more. Serzhánt Nadezhda Novikova, number K14878049.”

  First impression, winter in Siberia, but I held out my hand anyway in the usual welcoming fashion. “Numbers aren’t my strong suit, Sarge. Major Vin Cooper, United States Air Force.” She didn't take it. “Natasha, is it?” No comment, so I guessed that was close enough. She was shifting her weight from foot to foot, her eyes flicking between me, Bo and Alvin. I stated the obvious: “You’re Russian.”

  She nodded. The woman seemed nervous and pretty shaken, but I knew from experience that falling out of a moving aircraft would do that. “As for the Geneva Convention, relax.” I hit my Stars and Stripes shoulder patch with some red flashlight beam. “You and us – we’re allies.” At least we were three days ago before I’d HALOed into this shithole.

  “Then I go.” The fact that we weren’t about to shoot her gave her an instant shot of confidence.

  I checked the safety on the Yarygin, a catch on both sides of the weapon, ejected the chambered round and handed back her pistol and the round. “Sure. Where are you going to exactly?”

  “I must find helicopter. Do you know where is?”

  “No.” It had to be somewhere in this vicinity though. Russian nationals dropping from the heavens told me that if nothing else.

  A groan came from the bulk lying on the ground. Was that because of the fall or because he needed another shot? Maybe both.

  “Anyone got smoke?” Natasha asked, wiping her filthy hands on her soiled coveralls.

  Alvin shrugged. “Only the grenade variety, ma’am.” He tapped a canister on his webbing with his ka-bar.

  “So, your helicopter,” I asked. “What happened? We saw an explosion.”

  “It was missile.”

  It wasn’t a missile, but I let it go.

  “There was much blood. Helicopter, it began to …” She made a spiraling motion with her hand. “I wake up in tree.”

  The reality of her evening seemed to strike the serzhánt anew and she swayed as her legs collapsed from under her and she sat heavily on the ground.

  “You sure you’re okay?” I asked her. “There’s a lot of blood on you.”

  She looked down, dazed, at her gore-studded flight suit. “This not mine. Not wounded.”

  I offered her my Camelbak tube. “Water?”

  She accepted and slurped several mouthfuls.

  “Your English is good,” I said, being the super affirmative type that I am, and helped her to her feet.

  “My father was teacher.”

  “What did he teach?”

  “English.”

  Okay, so here’s my question. Why the hell don’t Russian teachers of English ever include articles of speech in the curriculum? What’s so hard, right? Y’know, a teacher, the helicopter, a smoke. “What do you do in the army?” I asked her instead, keeping it business-like. “What’s your unit?”

  “Now, or before?”

  Odd answer. “Now. But you can give me the before too, if it’s relevant.”

  “I make poster for recruitment.”

  At the moment, covered in the remains of someone else, she was hardly poster-girl material, though I did detect the waft of French perfume. “You were on a promo tour, visiting the troops?”

  “Something like this.” That’s what she said, but it sounded more like “Somesing like zis.”

  “And, before?”

  “I drive T-90.”

  “A tank?”

  “Da.”

  Chanel No. 5, armor plating and a big gun. Had to be a male fantasy in there somewhere.

  “What about your friend?” I asked. A groan morphed into snoring as the man rolled onto his back. Waving the red flashlight beam over him, I picked up a well-known insignia on his battle jacket. “Spetsnaz,” I said to myself, more than a little surprised. If you don't know, Spetsnaz are Russia’s finest – Special Forces, though there wasn’t a lot that was special about this particular specimen at the moment. But with my own fine regard for Glenkeith, I could hardly throw stones.

  “Drunk Spetsnaz is useless Spetsnaz,” she sneered like she’d happily run over him in her tank.

  “Do you remember how you came to be here?”

  “Is this interrogation?”

  “Nope, just trying to work out how come it’s raining Russians.”

  “No more question. You have radio. Make call. My people come.”

  Was I supposed to snap to attention? I thought I was the officer here. Maybe it works differently in the Russian military.

  “Love to, ma’am, but our radio’s Tango Uniform,” Bo told her, saving me the trouble. It seemed to me that he enjoyed telling her.

  Natasha looked at him, comprehension eluding her.

  “Tango Uniform. Tits up,” he grinned. “It’s broke.”

  When a bird hits the dirt, standard operating procedure is combat search and rescue races to the scene, recovers survivors, attends the wounded and secures or destroys the downed aircraft. Like I said, that’s SOP. The only reason Russian CSAR wasn’t here already had to be that they didn't know where “here” was. That onboard explosion we saw must have wiped out the Mi-24’s comms, transponder – every
thing – in an instant. “What happened to your helicopter?” I asked again.

  “I must find wreckage.”

  “Well, it’s gotta be somewhere close by, right?” I glanced around. Maybe it was perched on a nearby tree like Boris had been. For her part, the serzhánt seemed to be looking for an escape avenue. Was it shock?

  “There was an internal explosion,” I repeated. “We know because we saw it. Blew a big hole in the Hind. Y’know, from the inside …”

  “I must go,” she insisted.

  “As I said, no one’s stopping you. What about your friend?” I motioned at GI Joseph at my feet. “You gonna carry him?”

  “You do not understand.”

  Nope. I didn’t. Something was going on here. I would have thought that stumbling into friendly forces after a helicopter crash in country crawling with folks who made a habit of decapitation, would have come as a relief.

  “President Petrovich …” She was moving around like she needed to pee badly, shifting from foot to foot. “He was in helicopter.”

  “What?” Okay, she had my attention. “Valeriy Petrovich?”

  “I must find helicopter.”

  “The President of Russia, your president, Valeriy Petrovich – he was in the helicopter with you?”

  The serzhánt nodded. Her eyes were big and wide and scared.

  My mouth was probably open. Bo gave a silent whistle and Alvin shook his head. “Shit,” I said, because I felt I needed to say something and that was the only word that stepped forward to volunteer.

  A moment or two for the shock to subside and Bo said, “Boss, all those Daesh vehicles we saw …”

  I knew immediately what he was getting at. While we couldn’t be certain, in all likelihood ISIS had already found the crash site and looted it. That would explain the vehicle convoy out here in the middle of nowhere vacating the area in a hurry. Maybe it also explained why those same vehicles had dispersed. A smaller number of them traveling together would attract less attention, a point to be mindful of when you’re spiriting away high value hostages and there are things like Predators and Reapers flying around that can see from 10,000 feet whether you’ve washed behind your ears. Those jihadists at the warehouse had witnessed the same thing we had – a bird partially ripped apart by an internal explosion, which flew off on an erratic course to the east-northeast. The Scorpion’s crew had then blasted the accompanying aircraft out of the sky, jumped in their vehicles and raced to these hills. Had we known we were all heading in the same direction, maybe we could’ve hitched a ride.