But he hadn’t. And that had been that.

And now it was time to make peace.

The first thing Gideon saw was the smoke. He tottered weakly up the small ridge, and there it was, nestled in the valley below him. A village. And the village was on fire, a huge column of black smoke rising high into the air. Whatever this place was, though, it was different from the earlier villages he’d come through.

There were concrete block buildings with corrugated iron roofs, and something approximating a road ran through the middle of the town. It was like the other villages, though, in that he saw no people. No living people anyway. There were human-shaped figures lying here and there in the streets and alleys, a few more scattered across the field of poppies that climbed up the far side of the mountain.

But other than the smoke, nothing moved. Some of the buildings were not simply burning, they had been flattened.

Gideon's War and Hard Target

Gideon stumbled down the path until he reached the burning...

At the edge of the town he saw something glinting on the ground. A metal sign lay smashed into the dirt. It appeared to have been run over by a vehicle. He walked slowly to the sign, looked down. Written in English were two words.

KAMPUNG NAGA

I’m here, Tillman, he thought. I’m here.

Then his legs gave out and he collapsed onto the ground and closed his eyes.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CAPTAIN AVERY TAYLOR ASSEMBLED his team on the Sultan’s boat dock, their backs to the Pacific Ocean. The Sultan had loaned his personal speedboat to the team. It lay in the water behind them, bobbing up and down on the waves so violently that it threatened to tear the gangway from its mounts.

Because Mohan had briefly been a possession of the British Empire, its military continued to use British weapons. As a result Taylor’s men had been forced to buy .223 ammo for their M4s directly from a gun shop on the outskirts of Mohan. From the Mohanese Defense Forces they’d scared up some grenades, a 1960s-era British rocket launcher, three rockets, some scuba gear commandeered from a dive shop on the beach, and a set of blurry blueprints of the Obelisk faxed from Trojan Energy’s headquarters in Houston. None of the men said so, but they all knew they were under-armed and ill-equipped for an ill-conceived mission that had been planned too quickly with too little intel.

“Everybody knows our mission,” Captain Taylor said. “We’ll complete the briefing on the boat. All oha PaciI have to say is that I’m proud as hell of you guys. You’re the finest soldiers I’ve had the privilege to command. Which is why I know we will succeed.”

“Hoo-ah!” shouted the men.

He turned to Chief Petty Officer Ricardo Green. “Chief? Any words of wisdom?”

“You bastards don’t need no goddamn words of goddamn wisdom because you already know your goddamn jobs better than any sixteen other sons of bitches on planet earth!” Green shouted. The standing joke in the unit was that the last time the Chief had uttered a complete sentence that did not contain a curse word was when he’d said “I do” to Mrs. Chief Petty Officer Green eighteen years earlier. “Now get your goddamn shit and get on the goddamn boat.”

The men began struggling up the gangway with their heavy gear. The boat pitched and rolled in the heavy surf. The fourth man onto the boat slipped on the polished teak gangway and plunged into the punishing surf between the boat and the pier.

By the time they managed to haul him out of the water, blood was pouring from his left arm. A needle sharp length of bone protruded through the fabric of his sleeve.

“Motherfucker,” Green muttered as the injured man was ushered away by one of the Sultan’s smartly dressed boating staff.

Green’s black eyes briefly met those of his commanding officer. The two men didn’t speak. But they didn’t need to. This mission was a cluster fuck from the get-go.

Four minutes later, the Sultan’s boat was battering its way through the heavy surf toward the Obelisk. As they rounded the protective jetty at the tip of the Bay of Mohan, the waves immediately reared up to even greater heights. In nearly ten years in the navy, Captain Taylor had never seen waves like this—great black foam-capped wedges of darkness, coming at them like skyscrapers rolling sideways down a giant hill.

Captain Taylor saw Green’s lips moving, but this time he couldn’t hear him. For a moment Captain Taylor thought he was cursing. But then he realized he was wrong. Oh, my! Taylor thought. The Chief is praying.

That was not good.

When Gideon regained consciousness, he felt someone cradling his head and pouring water onto his face. He choked and sputtered.

For a moment he had no recollection of where he was or how he’d gotten here.

It was a man, a white guy, muttering something Gideon didn’t understand but recognized as Russian. The guy was speaking Russian.

Gideon sucked down the water, then tried to sit up.

“Don’t move yet,” the man said, this time in heavily accented English.

But Gideon sat up anyway. Not that he didn’t appreciate the help. But sitting with his head in a strange man’s lap felt a little awkward. He winced as he sat up. His head was pounding.

“Is clean water,” the Russian said. “Don’t worry. You won’t get sick.”

Gideon took the cup of water and drank until it was gone.

“Slow. You gonna puke, you drink too much.”

Gideon nodded, then handed the empty cup back to the Russian. “My name is—”

“I know who you are,” the Russian said. “The one who got medal at UN. Abu Nasir’s brother.”

Gideon looked around at the burning village. “Is he here?”

“Does it look like he is here?”

“You’re here.”

The Russian shrugged and stood up. For the first time Gideon saw how strangely the man was dressed. His clothes had been military uniforms at one time. Not one uniform, but many of them. They had been cut into strips and squares and triangles, crudely reassembled into a sort of ragged camouflage harlequin costume. He was also painfully thin and sick-looking. He wore a long beard and a small skullcap. His eyes had a lunatic glint.

“Who are you?” Gideon said.

“Chadeev.” He patted the center of his chest with a bony hand.

“You’re Russian?”

“Fock no.” The man spit on the ground. “Kabardian.”

“Kabardian?”

“We live Georgia, Chechnya, Russia, Turkey. Focked on by everybody.”

“Ah,” Gideon said. “First I heard of Kabardians.”

“You and everybody else.”

“So where is Abu Nasir?”

Chadeev shrugged. “Gone. Everybody dead.”

“Who’s responsible for this?”

Chadeev looked around. “You Americans, you always looking for responsibility. This is nature of universe, man. Is one long focking war. Everybody against everybody.”

Gideon stood. His legs felt wobbly. But the water had helped. “Do you have any food?”

Chadeev laughed. “Food.” He looked over and spoke as though to an invisible third person. “He talk about responsibility. God see it and make it so.”

“Where did Abu Nasir go?”

“Abu Nasir don’t talk to Chadeev,” he said. “Chadeev live out there.” He pointed at the endless green forest. “God wills it to burn down this place, Chadeev come.”

“Did the jihadis do this? The government? Who?”

Chadeev pointed at the sky. “Is the eye in the sky.”

Was he talking about Predator drones or satellites? Or was the guy just nuts? Whatever the case, there seemed little likelihood of getting a straight answer from him. He decided to start foraging for food.

There was one concrete block building that seemed to have incurred less damage than the others. Other than the half-collapsed e g±€†roof there was little damage. He decided to check there first.

As he walked toward the building, Chadeev followed. He began speaking—apparently to himself—in Russian. Or maybe it was Kabardian—if there even was such a thing. Gideon had earned his doctoral degree in international relations and he’d never heard of Kabardians.