Carnifex

27/7/469 AC, Kashmir-Pashtian border

No one controlled the border. No one could even really define it.

It was a long trek and a rough one, running over foothills that would have been mountains anywhere else on the globe. The air was thin and, more than once, Bashir found himself short of breath. Nonetheless, he pushed on. Who knew? The foreign infidel maniac might go right ahead and hang his family from the multiple gallows Bashir had seen, just inside the walled compound in which he'd been questioned, if he was so much as a day late with his report.

Progress was slow up the mountain. Contraintuitively it was worse coming down. Not only was the way longer, but there was always the chance of falling and incapacitating himself. Somehow Bashir didn't think that evil bastard, Fernandez, would even wait for an excuse before fitting nooses and kicking boxes.

It was with a certain measure of relief, once he neared the base of the mountains somewhere along the ill-defined Pashtia-Kashmir border, that Bashir felt the rifle muzzle's cold touch behind his ear.

* * *

Bashir felt naked without his own rifle, as he was prodded and pushed along the well-worn, ancient caravan trail toward what his captors referred to as "the Base." They'd left him his pack, mostly out of laziness, he thought. No matter, the rifle would not save his family. What was in the pack might.

They'd searched the pack, of course; they weren't exactly incompetent and, what with the turns of fortune in the war to date, they had every reason to be paranoid. Bashir had a few rough moments when one of them shook his little yellow transistor radio a few times, hard, before laying it down with his other belongings. Fernandez had personally gone over his pack and with considerably more thoroughness. There was nothing inherently suspicious in it. As a matter of fact, there was a bullet hole in it of the right caliber, if anyone cared to take a micrometer to check, to indicate he'd been nearly killed by the infidels. Fernandez had seen to that, personally, too.

The caravan trail met a rough road. There the party waited until a four wheel drive vehicle, bearing three armed men, came along. One of the men in the vehicle, not the driver, had one eye badly afflicted with cataracts. Bashir was turned over to these, along with his rifle and his pack. He told the mounted group exactly what he'd told the previous captors. Bashir learned that the man with the cataracts was the leader and that his name was Moshref.

He told Moshref, when asked, "I was working for Mohammad Shah, leading groups into Pashtia to fight the infidels. We got ambushed." That was all true. The lies began shortly thereafter. "I was on point, with my brother," here Bashir shed a tear he didn't have to feign but had had to practice. "He was the older. He held off the infidels while I made my escape. I think he must be dead." Sniff. "You know how the infidels are able to see at night."

"The light of Allah guides our bullets, though," the driver said. "What are the crusaders' toys compared to that?"

The vehicle bounced along for what seemed many miles before crossing a narrow, rickety bridge and entering a broad, steep-sided valley. Bashir thought he saw bunkers, well hidden and in places connected by trenches, along the crests of the surrounding ridgelines. In the center of the valley, dominating it, stood a great massif. Streams churned and frothed to both sides of the massif before joining and flowing out from the valley. There were many women by the streams, washing clothes by pounding them on rocks. Children, hundreds of them, played near their mothers. It would have all looked very normal but for the large number of armed men training a bit further out, and the air defense guns on the high ground, pointing skyward.

"You understand, Brother, that we can't just take you at your word," Moshref said. "The infidels are clever, vicious and ruthless. Nor are all the faithful, faithful in truth. We've caught infiltrators before."

Moshref's finger pointed to the right, indicating a spot where a dozen large wooden crosses stood, a man hanging on each, nailed through wrists and ankles. All the men were dead, and even the freshest corpse showed much flesh missing.

Children played around the feet of the crosses.

"We deal with them as Sura Five commands," the cyclops said casually.

Since Bashir had very good reason to believe he was the very first infiltrator to make it to the fortress, he wondered if perhaps the dozen corpses were those of truly innocent men. If so, it said nothing good about the notions of justice held by Mustafa's followers in the valley, nor about Mustafa, himself.

"I just came here to continue the fight," Bashir said. "For the sake of my brother." The best lies contain truth, Fernandez had advised him.

"Mustafa will probably want to talk to you himself."

It was several days before Mustafa made an appearance. Bashir didn't know if the leader had been there all that time or had just arrived.

* * *

"Tell me about it," Mustafa commanded Bashir. His assistant, and second in command, Nur al-Deen, sat quietly to Mustafa's side, looking intently into Bashir's face.

The three sat on cushions on the floor of a room leading off from a deep, sloping tunnel carved into the rock. Bashir had the impression—he wasn't sure quite why—that the tunnel went much further into the ground.

Bashir almost missed the question, looking about the room. The walls were bare and at least reasonably dry. The cushions rested on a rug, predominantly red, with blue, green, brown and black geometric decoration. The style was called "Baluch." The rug covered most of the floor, though a foot or two of bare rock were visible near where floor met wall. Other furniture was at a minimum, two crude and rough wooden chests, a small table, and a bookcase. There were more cushions piled in one corner but these would only be brought out if Mustafa had more guests. The guards, naturally, did not sit but stood with rifles in their hands.

"Tell me about it," Mustafa repeated.

"Ah. Excuse me, Sheik. I was just—"

"Never mind that. Tell me about it."

Bashir told his story.

"That entire party never arrived," Mustafa said, when Bashir had finished. "When another patrol went to investigate, it, too, disappeared. This was the work of the Blue Jinn."

Blue Jinn was a name the movement had given of late to Carrera. They had their reasons. Besides the eyes which were said to resemble those supernatural creatures, he seemed to them the embodiment of vicious malevolence, much as the Blue Jinn of legend.

"It was the grace of Allah and the courage of my brother that allowed me to bring word," Bashir supplied.

"Indeed. We will remember your gallant brother in our prayers. For the word and the warning you have brought us, you have our thanks. How may we repay you?"

Bashir shrugged. "To allow me to continue in service to the cause is repayment enough, Sheik. To allow me to repay the infidels for my brother . . . "

"So be it then," Mustafa agreed. "You will stay here and join our fighters for now. In time you may be sent back to continue the holy campaign to drive out the crusaders, and to gain your just revenge. For now . . . eat, rest, grow healthy, and train to serve the cause."

Mustafa turned his attention to the guards. "Assign him to the company of . . . Noorzad."

The guards led Bashir away. After he was gone Nur al-Deen announced, in his Misrani accent, "He's lying."

"Why do you say so?" Mustafa queried.

"That's the problem; I don't know why. But he is lying. I sense the touch of the Blue Jinn or one of his evil minions upon him. He should be killed."

"And lose a likely gallant fighter for the cause? I think not. Besides, my friend, you forget." Mustafa's finger pointed towards the ceiling. "We have the greatest of plotters on our side. If this man is lying, or a spy, Allah will point him out to us before he can do more harm than He is willing to permit."

A religious argument was the most difficult to refute. Nur al-Deen bowed his head slightly, in acquiescence.

Changing the subject, Mustafa asked, "How progress the arrangements for greeting our guest?"

"The new cave in which we will shelter his craft from observation"—now it was Nur's turn to point a finger skyward—"is almost complete. We're having to do it by hand as an explosion that size would be bound to attract unwanted attention from the infidel. Fortunately, we do not need to build an airfield."

"As I said, Nur. We have the greatest of plotters on our side."

* * *

Noorzad's company proved to be made up entirely of other Pashtun, Bashir discovered. Whether that was a cause for relief or not, let alone rejoicing, remained to be seen.

The commander, himself, was little cause for joy. Short, stout, ugly and taciturn, Noorzad had little to say to the newcomer. He looked Bashir up one side and down the other with a single cold, suspicious, blue eye. He asked a couple of questions, then announced, as if daring contradiction, "Marwat tribe."

The commander was frightening. Bashir bobbed his head in agreement. "Yes, sir, from around Daman. Speen-Gund. Begu Khel." Daman was a small settlement in north-central Pashtia. The later two terms were subdivisions of the Marwat tribe, Speen-Gund harking back to an acrimonious (and bloody) split within the Marwat on Old Earth. Seven centuries and a few thousand light years were no reason not to keep up a good feud.

Turning to one of his lieutenants, Noorzad commanded, "Get the names of his people. Send word to our people in Daman for anything that is known of this man. In the interim, he can dig. Take his rifle and give him a pick."

For the first time Bashir was glad that Fernandez had taken in his family. It was the custom of the Legion to punish the families of their opposition. They also had a considerable ability to identify the proper family from what they called "DNA." Bashir didn't really understand that, though he believed it. It was said by his people that, even with a suicide bombing, if the infidels found so much as a scorched bit of bone or hair, or a drop of blood, they would visit vengeance on the family responsible.

Since his brother's body had been reported as found and immolated at the site of the ambush where they were captured, there would be nothing inherently suspicious about the disappearance of his parents and siblings. That was the infidel way. That it was also close to the time honored tradition of his tribe and his larger people only gained respect for the infidels.

* * *

Bashir did not have to labor alone. With picks and shovels, litters and wheelbarrows, it seemed that Noorzad's entire company—of about ninety fighters, Bashir thought, though he could not count that high—was involved in the labor. "Labor" was an understatement.

The rock overhang underneath which they excavated pushed out perhaps four meters, or maybe even five, from the vertical. The men had chipped their way in about twice that, so that there was a cave of sorts fifteen meters deep and twenty five or thirty in breadth. Not that Bashir counted in meters.

"What is this for?" Bashir asked a squad mate, as he heaved the heavy pick up for another strike at the rock face.

"Not sure," the other answered, between pick-swinging grunts. "Some say there's a meeting scheduled between Mustafa and some of our key supporters around the world."

Bashir swung the pick, knocking away a not very satisfactory chunk of the gray rock. He lowered the pick, pausing briefly to rest on it. "Lot of work for a mere meeting."

The other just shrugged. "Speak of the devil," he announced, pointing his chin towards a nondescript, off-road vehicle leaving the fortress in a cloud of dust, "there goes Mustafa now."

"Tall bastard, isn't he?" Bashir commented. "Where's he going?"

"Who knows," said the other, wiping sweat from his brow with a filthy shirtsleeve. "He almost never spends two nights in the same place. The locals here are all supportive, all armed to the teeth, and each little family has its own fortress. The collaborators of the Kashmir government don't even try to come into this area anymore. Last few times they did, they got run off with a bloody nose."

Shit, Bashir thought. I am supposed to pin a man down to being here on a precise day, at a particular time, and that same man makes it impossible to do so.

And my family's life depends on my doing so. Shit.

* * *

Bouncing along over what passed for a road in this part of the world, Mustafa thought, Shit. Nothing seems to work out the way it should. When I launched the attack on the Federated States I knew they would come here and I expected to be able to bleed them white and drive them out in shame and disgrace, the same way we did the Volgans.

Didn't happen.

Then I saw the hand of Allah in their invasion of Sumer. Surely, I had thought, that with the best army and the most militarized people in all the Ummah the crusaders would meet their doom.

Didn't happen.

Oh, it attracted the mujahadin in vast numbers, to be sure. And the crusader coalition killed them in vast numbers, too. It seemed so close. But with their allies and mercenaries they always had enough troops to meet any success we had while they built up a new government—whores that owe their souls to the infidels, the lot of them—capable of standing on its own. Meanwhile, we were barely able to hang on here.

I thought then that Allah had truly turned his face from us. Two campaigns; two victories for the enemy. That only shows how foolish I was, for God is the greatest plotter of them all. With the cost of their victory in Sumer, the FSC has lost almost all stomach for the fight. Even now, the bulk of their forces in Pashtia are the Tauros—more albatross than ally—and these mercenaries. These we can defeat. And so Allah shows his omnipotence and his wisdom while mocking our lack of faith. We lost here, to lose there, so we could win here and recreate a base for establishing His law in the world in a more perfect and secure fashion.

Curse me to Hell if I ever doubt the wisdom of God again.

* * *

Damn all shavetails.

Sergeant Sevilla, 3^rd Cohort, 6^th Cazador Tercio, hated having his signifer along on a mission. The kid—he was only nineteen—was just so damned ignorant. Oh, sure; he'd come up through the ranks just like all the others, proved himself in combat, gotten through Cazador School and SCS. And Sevilla had to admit, it was the right thing to do for him to have come with his most forward deployed squad, on his platoon's most dangerous mission. It showed the right kind of heart.

Unfortunately, this wasn't a heart mission; it was a head one. And the next new signifer Sevilla met who had his head in the right place would be the first. Oh, sure; if they lived they learned. And tribunes and legates, who really were important to the Legion, had to come from somewhere. But the price in lives among the enlisted men, non-coms, and centurions was pretty damned high to produce those absolutely necessary higher officers.

Why, why, WHY did it have to be my platoon that got stuck with the new shavetail when we could have had a nice, wise, older centurion in charge? No heroics then; just do the mission and come home safe. The sergeant suppressed a sigh.

He didn't really have to suppress it. The squad, all eight including the signifer, was well below ground with a good camouflage job covering them above from prying eyes. Only one little opening had been left in the camouflage, natural vegetation supplemented with a burlap strip net, that covered the hide, and that was closeable.

Corporal Somoza lay at that opening, watching with a pair of non-reflecting binoculars toward the fortress to the south. Somoza's Hush Fifty-one sniper rifle, a .51 caliber subsonic with a silencer, rested against the earthen wall of the hide beside him. A Pashtun scout attached to the squad lay resting near the rifle.

Most of the problem was that from the hide you couldn't see much of the fortress, only some—not nearly all—of the bunkers and a few stretches of trench here and there. Somoza's perch was actually oriented on the most likely avenue of approach for a Salafi patrol, rather than the fortress.

The signifer wasn't happy with that. He wanted to be able to see and report more. Never mind that that wasn't the squad's mission, that they were only there to serve as a relay and retransmission station for someone below among the enemy. Sevilla didn't have a single clue as to how to identify the spy, except by a code word over the radio. He supposed that if someone were to show himself at the hide and managed to get the code word out before being killed then he'd likely be accepted as the spy for whose word the team waited. Then again, Sevilla was reasonably certain the spy would not know where to look for them; Fernandez was careful that way.

In the interim, all the Cazador squad could do was wait for the signal and hope they weren't spotted. That is, that's all they could do unless the signifer had a bright idea.

* * *

Bashir was bone weary, every muscle in his torso aching, by the time he and his company were released to rest for the evening. Though he didn't have his rifle, they'd left him his pack. He unrolled the bedding, adjusting it to the firm ground, then took out the yellow radio before placing the now half-empty pack at one end of the bed roll for a pillow.

Lying down after placing the radio's earpiece in one ear, Bashir fiddled with the dial until he found an Islamic station broadcasting from the capital of Lahore, many hundreds of miles to the north.

The radio Fernandez had given him was much more sophisticated than it looked. Most of the short time he'd had available before he'd had to leave on the Cricket, Bashir had spent learning to use its features. One of these was an integral, and passive due to the nature of the system, Global Locating System positioner. By putting the dial at a given point, one where no station in range broadcast, Bashir was able to upload his current location to a small computer chip. By placing the dial at another, he was able to tap out his simple codes and phrases which were also stored on the chip. A third notional frequency set the thing to "transmit." Flicking the on-off button halfway transmitted the contents of the chip in a burst and continued to do so every thirteen minutes for five bursts.

That duty done, and no one apparently the wiser, Bashir closed his eyes and went to sleep.

* * *

Sevilla shook the signifer awake. "Sir, we just got word from our infiltrator. I've got his location and he sends that the main target isn't there. He doesn't know when the target will return. There is a meeting scheduled for sometime in the near future. Corporal Somoza is already retransmitting the message."