Ibn-Azziz tried breathing through his nose, his grip already weakening.

"How about now?" whispered Rakkim. "Afraid yet?"

Fear bloomed in ibn-Azziz's eyes, took root as he struggled. He released his grip on Rakkim's throat, frantic now.

Fracturing the hyoid bone caused the tissues to swell, pinching off the air passage-the more ibn-Azziz struggled, the more constricted his throat became. Ibn-Azziz had toughed out nearly being drowned in the toilet, had actually seemed to grow stronger, but this situation was infinitely worse. The very ferocity that had allowed him to laugh in Rakkim's face worked against him now, his rage narrowing down his airway with every beat of his heart. No pain, no glory, just the gathering darkness.

Rakkim watched ibn-Azziz flopping on the floor, watched as the panic overtook him, ibn-Azziz feeling his dreams dying, his memories dying…and at the end, he watched as ibn-Azziz's soul flared like a horsefly in a furnace, leaving only ashes.

Rakkim walked out of the cell. Soon as he got clear, he would check Sarah's message. See what was so important.

CHAPTER 32

Rakkim heard Moseby before he saw him, heard him throwing up and spotted him bent over beside the landing gear of a F-37 Marauder, a tall, well-muscled black man, his short hair sprinkled with gray. Moseby was wiping his mouth as Rakkim approached out of the shadows, making plenty of noise so somebody didn't get hurt. The silhouettes of dozens of other jets loomed around them in the moonlight, fighters mostly, but a few gigantic stealth B-7s too, their jagged fuselages giving them the appearance of gigantic bats. Three days after killing ibn-Azziz, Rakkim was on the other side of the country and he still hadn't slept.

Moseby threw up again.

"You get some bad oysters?" said Rakkim.

"No oysters in this part of Virginia," said Moseby, a little wobbly.

"Radioactive oysters. What's the matter, you weren't monitoring yourself?"

"Got a couple hundred Rs, no big deal."

"Sarah's pissed off. You weren't supposed to go into the city without me. She asked you just to talk with-"

"The zombie's wife didn't want to talk to me, and I wasn't about to wait around until you showed up," said Moseby. "I had an idea where to look based on the download."

Rakkim embraced him, felt Moseby tremble. "You look like shit, John."

"I overstayed my welcome, that's all. D.C.'s nasty."

"Your suit didn't protect you?"

"The truck I got from the Colonel was useless…and I didn't have enough air filters," said Moseby. "You have to switch them out three times more often than the regs say."

"I've got plenty of filters coming in anytime now." Rakkim glanced up at the night sky, saw just stars and the ridges surrounding the abandoned airbase. "You want to be medevaced out? At least get a transfusion?"

Moseby took a swallow from his canteen, rinsed his mouth out and spit. "I'm fine."

"Let's walk," said Rakkim, keeping a clear view of the western approaches to the airfield. "Spider and Leo managed to narrow down the search area for the safe room. We're still looking for a needle in a haystack, but it's a smaller haystack."

The planes stretched for miles, lined up haphazardly on the landing strips, spilling over onto the weed-choked fields. The former LeMay Air Force Base was just another aircraft graveyard now. Most of the Belt's air force had been destroyed on the ground, their avionics fried by a directed satellite surge from the Islamic Republic. At least it was supposed to be directed. In reality the surge had blown microchips and computer components from sea to shining sea, leaving dead planes from both sides on runways, and sending a rain of commercial and military aircraft spiraling to earth. The lucky pilots managed to land at bases like LeMay, where the control towers still marginally functioned. The rest crashed into farmland and cities, fireballed across the night, their last radio transmissions fuck-fuck-fuck. Many of the commercial planes had been retrofitted, but the military jets' sophisticated hardware had been irreplaceable, and they had been mothballed where they landed, allowed to rust and rot.

Rakkim looked around as they strolled down one of the runways, crickets screeching in the damp air. Weeds grew through cracks in the concrete. "Never seen so many planes in one spot."

"Maxwell, outside of Montgomery, is even more crowded," said Moseby. "Must be a couple hundred planes there, half of them nose-down in the dirt where the pilots blew the landing 'cause their instruments were cooked."

"Why haven't the planes been looted? They seem relatively untouched. No graffiti-"

"It's the Belt," said Moseby. "People love the military. Folks think it's just a matter of time before somebody comes along, fixes the planes and off they go, into the wild blue yonder."

"Must be nice to believe in fairy tales," said Rakkim.

"Nice to have faith," said Moseby.

Rakkim didn't want to argue. "How was D.C.? Bad as they say?"

"Bad enough." Moseby stopped for a moment, put his hands on his knees until the dizziness passed. "Not as many bones as I expected. Must have something to do with the radiation…or the chemical clouds. Plenty of skeletons, don't get me wrong, but I've seen worse in New Orleans." He straightened. "It was the buildings in D.C. that got to me. All those landmarks, looking just like they did before the blast, all that clean white marble…" He shook his head.

The two of them walked past clumps of sleek fighters, their canopies cracked from the sun, tires rotted off. A gigantic C-57 cargo plane lay crumpled in the grass, one wing torn off, the fuselage still blackened from the crash landing forty years ago. One of the control towers had collapsed into a pile of concrete blocks. Another had been obliterated by a light bomber that overshot the runway.

"The Colonel's worried about you," said Rakkim.

"You saw him?"

"Woke him up in the middle of the night-"

"You love doing that, don't you? Shaking people out of a sweet dream."

"You know me, John, I'm a man of simple pleasures." Rakkim could see Moseby remembering his own wakeup seventeen years ago, Rakkim's blade against his throat. Sent to kill him for going rogue, Rakkim had seen Moseby's pregnant wife beside him and backed off, disappeared into the night.

"How's Sarah and the boy?" said Moseby.

"They're fine. I can hardly keep up with either of them. How is your family?"

"Annabelle's concerned. Leanne?" Moseby sighed. "All she thinks about is that boy."

"Leo's a good kid."

"Then let your daughter marry him."

"I don't have a daughter."

"Exactly," said Moseby.

Rakkim smiled. "He hasn't got sense to come in out of the rain, but Leo's smart. So smart even Spider doesn't understand half of what the kid's talking about."

"Just what I need, a son-in-law who's smarter than God and useless as tits on a bull."

Rakkim stopped under the protection of the twisted tail section of a crashed jet. "These people of yours bringing the vehicle…you trust them?"

"Corbett's a percentage player." Moseby patted the flechette auto-pistol on his hip. A high-body-count weapon. "I trust this to keep him honest."

Rakkim pulled the starlight scope out of his denim jacket, handed it over. "Give him this then. Wouldn't want him to think he has a hidden advantage."

Moseby hefted the German-made scope. "Where did you get it?"

"Guy in a crashed F-77 interceptor had it attached to a sniper rifle. Must have been out squirrel hunting. I had to explain to him that you can't hunt varmints with a night scope. Not sporting."

Moseby tucked away the starlight scope. "You kill him?"

"Just revoked his hunting license. He's sleeping off the shame of it. Heck of a nice rifle."