Caliphate (45 page)

Then again, there were those who claimed that Muslims would be radicalized by any social order that didn't place them on top and everyone else beneath them, as the Holy Koran called for.

Gabi didn't, couldn't, believe that.
Fascist, racist nonsense
, she thought.
People are just people and will act well unless the iniquities and inequalities of society are too much to bear.

Muslim society in Germany was also highly urbanized. In the largest cities, some of them, they even made up a majority of the population. Even where they didn't, they often had the numbers where young and belligerent males were concerned. Street fights had become common. Nor were Germans generally coming out on top, except in the case of those who sided with the Muslim street brawlers, such as Anti-Fascist Action, a German derivative of a Swedish movement with origins in the British Isles. As in Sweden and parts of France twenty years prior, there were places in Germany now where the police simply would not go.

In an effort to placate the Muslims and stem the violence, Germany had established Sharia courts under Islamic scholars for Muslim communities. Moreover, acting under orders from the Supreme Court, itself under the European Court of Justice (itself having taken in and taken over the personnel and duties of the European Court of Human Rights), local German courts had taken to using Sharia in cases involving only Muslims within Germany.

If this did anything to stem the outrage of Muslim residents, though, it was tolerably hard to see.

In Nuremberg, however, things were not so bad. Of the city's population of about half a million, fewer than twenty-five thousand were Islamic. There were neighborhoods Gabi and Amal dared not go, of course, as there were in virtually every European city. But they were few, small, and generally avoidable.

Too, Gabi avoided thinking about the implications of there being places within her own country that she and her child dared not go.

The
Christkindlmarkt
hadn't opened in several years. The last time it had, even Nuremberg's comparatively few Muslims had been able to shut it down . . . violently. This had, as in many parts of Europe, led to an expansion of Muslim representation in the
Polizei
. The practical effect of that, however, had merely been to give the imams and mullahs their own, state-funded, enforcement arms. If it produced greater peace within and around the Muslim community it was only because, having no place else to turn, moderate Muslims knuckled under to the rule of the mullahs.

Before Europe betrayed itself, it first made sure to betray those outsiders who truly wanted to become European.

The practice of French Muslims, to the extent that that wasn't a contradiction in terms, of engaging in gang rape of both European girls and Muslim girls who failed to dress the part—
tournante
, or taking one's turn, in French—had spread, too. But with the courts and police only interested in keeping the peace—as well as they were able, at least, within the German community—girls had little recourse. Germany's thirteen percent Muslims accounted for about eighty-eight percent of all rapes in Germany. This was perhaps not such a bad record. In Sweden, twenty years prior, they'd been credited with as much as eighty-five percent of all rapes, and that from a much smaller percentage of the population. Some argued that this showed that Germany was doing a better job of assimilation. It may even have been true.

Gabi refused to listen to those figures, too.

And even more honor is due to them
when they foresee (as many do foresee)
that Ephialtis will turn up in the end,
that the Medes will break through after all.

—C.P. Cavafy, "Thermopylae"

The gate guard from Castle Honsvang, breathless from his long uphill run, pounded on the great gates outside the castle until his hands began to bleed.

"All right, all RIGHT! I'm coming," shouted Latif from a window overlooking the near side of the gate. He muttered, too, "Where did the damned gate guard go? I'll have the skin off that lazy bastard's back for this."

In fact, the brothel's gate guard beat Latif to the gate by some seconds. All full of apologies, he insisted he'd only left to relieve himself. Latif said he'd take that under consideration, "Just before I have you beaten half to death and sold to a eunuch factory."

That sent the gate guard to his knees, begging for mercy and forgiveness, until Latif, realizing he couldn't open the gate on his own, said, "Never mind. Just stop blubbering and help me with this Allah- be-damned bar."

Together the two men lifted it, the gate guard doing most of the work, and admitted the breathless corporal.

"The men . . . from the security . . . company . . . you've got to rouse them . . . we are . . .
attacked
."

"Shit!"

"Shit," exclaimed Lee/Ling. The eyes opened wide with shock and fear. "They've made us. Shanghai tells me there are two fighters lifting from ar-Ramstei even as we speak."

"Fuck," agreed Matheson, "what can we do?"

"Can't outrun them," Lee answered. "Can't fight them at all. Can't surrender."

"Set her down?" suggested Retief, a member of the team since Matheson had been able to get agreement—"from the highest authorities"—that his family would be traded for from the Boer Republic. "How good's their radar?"

Lee shook Ling's head. "Second rate. What they make for themselves is poor. What we and the tsar sell them isn't great either. Good enough to see us in the air, yes. But good enough to catch us on the ground? Maybe not. The problem is that if I set down, some one of the locals
will
see us. And, given that, they might report it to the authorities. And there's no place around here that doesn't have some little town or other within view."

"Report us to the authorities?" Matheson mused. "Let me see the map."

Looking it over, Matheson saw one town a bit more isolated than the others in the area. "Set us down right next to that," he said. "I have an idea." He turned to one of the ex-cargo slaves and ordered, "Get me a couple of sheets . . . no . . . ah . . . three of them . . . and three checked tablecloths from the galley . . . and . . . ummm . . . a piece of rope or heavy string . . . say . . . ten feet worth. And bring me a sharp knife."

"Does this thing have a public address set?"

Matheson watched the ex-slave scurry off.
And that's what I'm counting on; that slaves don't usually ask—lack the self confidence to ask, really—too many questions of those who seem to be in authority.

The sergeant of the guard was neither a coward nor a fool. He'd been at the front of the battering ram, on the theory that fire, if any, would most likely come from inside once the door was down. When his men grasping the rear were cut down, he'd waited to see if any more fire came their way. When it didn't, he said a small prayer and walked out into the open, onto the blood-stained stones that marked where the enemy could fire, if he was still there.

Apparently, he's not. Still, if I pull more men off the perimeter and some kind of aircraft shows up, as I expect it will, the enemy might be able to get away.

Fuck.

The lights shone through the trees. Even before seeing the lights, though, Petra had heard the sound of the engines. With each meter closer, with each increase in the noise, with each glimpse of the headlights through the trees, the pounding in her chest grew.

For a moment she wanted to run into the little place inside herself where she'd hid during her rape, the same place that sheltered her during all the other abuses that had followed. And yet . . .

John needs me not to hide . . . and so does Hans . . . and Ling . . . and those poor children down in the other castle waiting to be murdered. And perhaps even, too, my grandmother, long dead but with a bitterness and hatred in her heart for the masters who ruined her life . . . perhaps she, too, needs me not to hide but to
fight.

And Besma? She'll never be able to strike on her own, now. I owe it to her to . . .

Petra picked up a detonator in her left hand, wrapping her delicate fingers around it. With her right she flicked off the thick wire safety that would keep the squeeze lever from closing. Her right then took control of the other detonator. With her right thumb she flicked off the safety on that one.

"Wait . . . wait . . . wait," she whispered to herself as the column of trucks grew closer to the point she was supposed to set off the mines.

"Wait . . . wait . . . wait . . ." Petra scrunched down into her hole with just the top of her head and her eyes showing.

She misjudged it, just slightly. Or perhaps Hans had misjudged the proper spot to mark where she should squeeze the levers of the blasting machines. Whichever was the case, the mines detonated splendidly, all twelve of them, sending roughly eleven thousand half- ounce steel cylinders skipping gleefully along and across the road.

Men who had been sitting or standing up in the backs of trucks were scythed down with a collective moan, their organs and blood spilling across the truck beds and the road. Drivers and co-drivers, sitting up front, fared no better. As for the trucks, tires were blasted out, gas tanks were ruptured, lights and windscreens smashed. One truck, its front tires blasted off, went nose down to the roadbed, twisted to the right, and began a body-spilling roll that ended only went it struck a tree, broadside. Still another exploded in a fireball as the steel fragments not only spilled its liquid fuel but struck a spark off of the frame. Another of the five trucks struck went slightly off road until running head on into a tree. One, too close to a mine, was blown on its side. The last truck, with no living driver at the wheel, plowed into the truck before it.

Though there were men left alive in the kill zone, and even men left unhurt, there was no one left unshocked. It was a massacre.

Except, unfortunately for the lead truck. It had gotten
just
out of Hans' preplanned kill zone a quarter of a second before Petra finished squeezing the handle on the blasting machine.

The
corbasi
cursed himself even as he cursed at the driver to "Move, move, move, you fool!"

Of
course
the filthy infidels had someone out to block the roads. I was an idiot. Idiot, idiot, IDIOT! And I've lost more than eighty percent of the men I brought with me. Shit. Should I go back and try to save any survivors? No . . . no. The important thing is still up ahead. And that ambush was thorough. There'll be a team of men there.

"Faster, dolt!"

It was the worst sound she'd ever heard. Men screamed, wept, and begged for aid. And most of them, she suspected, were as blond- haired and blue-eyed as she was.

Petra covered her ears with her hands against the sound. In the process, a small device, no bigger than a hearing aid, was knocked to the dirt below.

She'd expected to take some satisfaction in striking a blow against the Caliphate. All she felt was a desire to vomit.
Their only fault was that someone took them young, just the way that someone took me. Poor boys. And yet, there's nothing I can do to help. Worse, if I don't get out of here John and Hans will finally come to the sedan I'm supposed to hide in, find that I'm not there, and come looking for me.

I'm sorry, boys,
she thought at the stricken men out on and around the smoky roadway
. I'm so sorry. But I can't help you.

With that, Petra crawled out of the hole onto her belly, her submachine gun clutched tightly in one hand. She kept crawling, skinning hands, elbows and knees, and getting a little mud in the submachine gun, until the light from the burning truck was dim. Then she got up to a crouch, glanced all around like a hunted animal, turned to her right and ran.

She never noticed that she'd left her radio, ground by her own feet into the mud and dirt of the hole, behind.

Perhaps a hundred people lived in the village below, crowded in behind a rickety and crude wooden fence. As the airship settled down just outside that fence, Matheson's voice came over the public address system.