The Swords of Babylon

CHAPTER FIFTY NINE

The old man walked in line, keeping step, chains jangling between the manacles clamped around his ankles. The orange jumpsuit didn’t flatter him. It was baggy and torn, and like nothing he’d ever worn before. The eyes of the prison guards latched onto him, running deep with pure hatred. He noted how each man’s fingers went deathly white around the chunky stock of his gun as he passed them, and how confident they seemed when hiding in their own little cages.

Standing safe, for now.

Down in the mess hall, he sat apart. They were all seated separately, with only fifteen allowed to eat at the same time. Nevertheless, he was a man of limitless means and unimaginable power, and when he wanted a message passed on… someone died horribly if it didn’t happen. Not in here. Out there. He had maintained contact with the outside world.

Today, his bought guard turned a blind eye when he momentarily paused between two tables. The guards, to the government’s credit, had all proven fruitless sources of corruption for many weeks. But then something had happened. The old man was only too aware that something always happened. Something unforeseen. And that’s when his men had pounced.

And the promise of a personal little island near Zanzibar never hurt when winning the heart of a peasant.

The Blood King dropped his plastic fork and bowed his head, speaking to both lieutenants at once.

“Are we ready?”

Mordant, his chief, inclined his own head. The man’s appearance never failed to unsettle the Blood King, despite all he had seen in his life. Mordant was an albino. His huge, egg-shaped, perfectly white head was completely hairless. Now a pink tongue flicked over pale lips.

“On your word.”

The other lieutenant, Gabriel, a wiry African, concurred. The Blood King actually counted himself lucky that he had come across these two whilst taking a few months convalescence in this so-called ‘secret’ penitentiary. They were blood brothers — known as The Twins — despite their obvious differences. But more than that — they were far beyond the worst of the worst, sadistic nightmares that the real world couldn’t cope with or contain, beyond skillful, highly intelligent, pure psychotic gold.

Either man made Kovalenko’s old lieutenant, Boudreau, look like a newborn kitten by comparison.

Indeed, they were so violent and ferocious, the Blood King always remembered to show them respect, a fact in itself that complimented them. It was something he had never afforded any man before.

“Thank you,” he said and, standing upright, made his way to his table. The food on his plate was piping hot, the coffee smelled good. But he wasn’t really in the mood. He was already looking forward to a much more satisfying meal.

And much more than that. His question hadn’t merely been aimed at the state of their preparedness in this prison. It had also been querying the readiness of their forces out there, on the outside. The very same enquiry he had been making for weeks. The proposal he had originally outlined for The Twins had brought simultaneous grins, the monsters inside them shining forth. Later, it had been passed on to his concealed forces on the outside and had taken months to put in place, involving the deaths of many innocents, the greasing of countless palms, the purchase of much hardware and White House secrets, and of course the constant surveillance of a chosen few.

His plan was monumental. In one stroke, he would devastate the Americans, leave the country crippled and bleeding, and show the world how he, the Blood King, extracted his terrible blood vengeance.