Deadly Wands (50 page)

All good quads carry backups, but really good
quads often have backups for their backups, so Billy netted over
one hundred thousand sets of super wands to give his new Asian
allies. Plus those he took from the Khan’s flight school.

The relieved Indians found more instructions
at the watering hole: return to camp, recruit the other Indians,
kill the Mongols, then act as the vanguard of the invading American
armada.

Using the fleet as a stepping stone to the
coast, Billy had already sent his marathoners to Korea. Being much
faster, Billy would catch up before they got there.

Back at the Strait, the Indians lied their
asses off, telling everyone they destroyed the Americans who
attacked them. Then, that night, they got the cooperation of the
other Indians, killed those pro-Mongolian, then turned on their
Mongol comrades while they slept.

Billy thus killed one hundred thousand
Mongols and fifteen thousand pro-Mongolian Indians without firing a
shot.

The next day, American scouts found over
eighty thousand scared Indians eager to obey. They emptied the vast
Mongol camp of food, filled the bunkers with dead Mongols, then set
out to depopulate Mongolia.

Meanwhile, Billy introduced himself to the
Koreans by pouncing on the main Mongol unit opposing the rebels.
After destroying a force several times his size, Billy then
thrilled the rebels with his video showing a quarter million
Americans about to raid Mongolia.

The grateful Koreans agreed to lend Billy the
marathoners that his father funded years before. In fact, every
quad wanted to join the Red Baron, so he invited everyone to a
Grand Raid the next full moon.

Billy and the marathoners then flew to Japan
and his proposal electrified the nation. Genghis started an
economic blockade two centuries ago after typhoons destroyed his
third attempt to invade them, so they really wanted payback. The
emperor mobilized his entire military and militia.

Billy now had thirty-two marathon battalions
to take down the Chinese coast before island hopping to Taiwan. The
Taiwanese gave him a hero’s welcome for saving China’s cultural
treasures. Everyone loved his proposal and the nation organized for
war. With six Taiwanese marathon battalions, they flew south to
Hainan, a mountainous island a five minute flight from the southern
Chinese mainland.

Billy met with the leader of the Chinese
rebellion, and former governor of the island, Kung-ti, and sold him
on the Grand Raid. On all three islands, the most powerful female
quads took advantage of him as if their nation’s independence
depended upon them siring offspring as powerful as the Red
Baron.

Like in India, the Chinese rebelling against
the Empire had some of Jack’s trainers. But because they could draw
from a much larger population, they had trained up twelve marathon
battalions with the gold and wands that Billy sent them.

While the Chinese prepared, Billy led his
fifty thousand marathoners to Hanoi, where he spent a few weeks
defeating the Mongol units in Indochina: Annam in Vietnam, the
Khmer in Cambodia, Chiangmai and Sukhotai in Thailand, the
Majapahit Empire in Java, and the Burmese Empire. By then, everyone
in Asia knew of his proposal and the new Siam government lent him
their entire air force.

The idea of the legendary Red Baron leading
American, Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese, Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese,
Siamese, and Burmese quads to raid Mongol businesses inspired a
frenzy of greed. Everyone with a wand and a grudge flew to China.
Experts later estimated a million foreign civilian quads crossed
the border before the raid even started.

Billy remembered, years before, trying to
hide his astonishment when his father first outlined his plan for a
multinational Grand Raid. Now Billy didn’t know what was harder to
believe: that a million quads would have the balls to plunder
Mongol wealth, or that he was about to fulfill his father’s
dream.

CHAPTER 65

The Mongol commanders knew of the Baron’s
intent to lead a massive raid because they all saw the widely
distributed videos of a guy in a red suit saying so. Which made it
easier to dismiss because, as far as anyone knew, the Baron didn’t
speak Chinese or Japanese, and another guy wearing a red suit was
marauding in the Stans. And they had multiple videos of that guy
blowing flame out of his boot wands.

In contrast, every Mongol new agency
broadcast stunning videos of a massive American armada sweeping
across Mongolia with a vanguard of traitorous Indians. Now that was
real. It’s hard to fake burning cities and thousands of Mongol eye
witnesses.

So, with the Khan leading an armada west, the
governors needed to identify the greater threat: a quarter million
deadly Americans, or a speech by a guy in a red suit talking about
leading quads from a dozen kingdoms.

So the leadership sent every possible quad in
China north to confront the Americans because the threat of a Grand
Raid seemed ridiculous. Mongol authorities also assumed that any
dead Mongol was murdered by local Chinese, and so retaliated almost
at random. Terrified locals called upon militia, quad relatives,
and criminal organizations to protect them. Which led to more
Mongol reprisals. But, out-numbered 100-to-1, vengeful Chinese
overwhelmed local garrisons, police stations, and government
offices. Cities became battlegrounds and rural areas became
graveyards.

Then came the raid. And it was grand.

Instead of attacking on the next full moon,
as stated in the video, a few hundred battalions from several
kingdoms struck Mongol air bases the night before. Short-range
units hit units just across the border, while the marathoners
struck deeper to maximize surprise.

The crowds massing for the invasion saw
videos of burning air bases before they even left home. Mobs poured
over the border in a killing frenzy that overwhelmed the Mongols
who had not fled.

Several million more Chinese now took the
opportunity to kill Mongols and take their stuff. Those without
wands used swords, arrows, and spears. Chaos and anarchy ruled the
streets. Criminal gangs and ex-military raided on a larger scale in
front of the invasion forces. Triads finally got their revenge on
Imperial Guards. Foreigners serving in Mongol units killed their
comrades and looted their barracks to raid on their own. The richer
the Mongol, the sooner he died.

In China, as the raiders moved inland, more
Mongol units banded together to push them back. But what they
didn’t do was wait until they had sufficient force. Instead, they
made themselves targets for the foreign battalions. The invading
mobs got bombed a lot, but the battalions behind them then wiped
out the Mongol bombers.

Billy and his marathoners targeted western
Mongolia, his near-marathoners struck central Mongolia, and the
Koreans destroyed everything in eastern Mongolia. Dozens of
caravans flowed east to Peking like rivers of riches.

His half-marathoners plundered the corridor
between Peking and the port city of Tianjin, 120 kilometers away.
The Americans captured every seaworthy ship in the harbor to
transport their loot. Barges full of Mongol wealth sailed down
river to the harbor.

As the weeks passed, more and more raiders
returned home with all the valuables that they could carry. As the
rest pressed inland, the greater territory spread them out ever
thinner.

After a month, the tide turned. The invaders
finally faced superior forces, who pushed them back towards the
coast. Billy sent his non-marathoners home since they were too
loaded down to fight. He used the marathoners to bomb the larger
units, but did not stick around to eliminate them. Billy advised
the other commanders to also return home while they could, and
distributed a video urging all Chinese to leave northern China or
face the Khan’s wrath.

Over a million northern Chinese fled to
Korea, the closest refuge. At Billy’s suggestion, the Korean king
used them to build mountaintop fortifications to deter the
Khan.

Formation flyers still killed disorganized
mobs, but this time in reverse. The Mongols progressed slowly,
however, because they killed all non-Mongols on general principal.
Millions of them. Rather than search door to door, the Mongols
found it faster to simply flatten every building in their way. If
they stayed in a killer mood long enough, the Mongols would
depopulate northern China.

Everyone seemed shocked -- shocked! -- that
the Mongols didn’t bother to distinguish pro-Mongolian Chinese from
the rebels. Except for Billy, who needed to physically separate
Mongols from non-Mongols.

When they didn’t have bombs, Billy looked for
enemy divisions to gang up on. Mongols that spent the day targeting
civilians would suddenly face fifty thousand disciplined
marathoners. With plenty of food in the cities, Billy spent the
next month surprising or overwhelming enemy forces, which gave
millions of non-Mongols time to get away.

But what Billy didn’t do was stand his
ground. He couldn’t surprise the same units twice, so once he
attacked one, he moved on to the next. While this slowed the
Mongols, it did not stop them. But Billy never intended to liberate
China. He just wanted to “drain the swamp,” as his father phrased
it. That was the whole point of this entire campaign. And it worked
better than he imagined.

Until the Mongols realized how much wealth
they were losing. That’s when they decided that killing everyone
took too long. Now they leaped ahead unpredictably, trying to stop
their valuables from leaving their lands.

Suddenly, Billy had too many targets. He
struck as many as he could, until they started surprising him. In
war, those who surprise, win, while the surprised die.

So Billy let his marathoners go home rich,
except his best American battalion which guarded the last wagon
train entering Peking.

Now Billy looked forward to a safe vacation
with his wife and kids.

Then a scout saw fifty thousand enemies
approaching the Gobi Desert, probably to intercept his golden
caravan and burn whatever ships had not yet sailed.

Oh hell.

Billy led his last battalion north and
poisoned every water hole within flying distance. The enemy already
arrived at the largest water source on the northern side, so the
Americans had to fly over a thousand kilometers at night to reach
safety. Weaker quads would have been trapped between poison water
and angry enemies.

Billy gave the Mongols a head start before he
left to find them. He attacked them for an hour to wake them up,
then slept far away under a blanket that resembled sand. At dawn,
midday, and sunset he shot whoever stayed on the ground to exhaust
them.

By dawn they apparently discovered that every
water source in front of them was poisoned, forcing them to return
the way they came. Billy naturally harassed them the entire
trip.

Since blasts grow wider the farther they
travel, Billy knocked the weary from the sky. The advantage is he
could smack down several every heartbeat. Those with enough wit
flew away from comrades since Billy targeted those in clumps. Billy
didn't mind -- he had plenty of weary targets to keep him
occupied.

The exhausted, sleepy, dehydrated Mongols
were no match for the Americans waiting for them at the oasis. The
marathoners wiped out ten times their number without suffering a
single casualty.

But angry Mongols now flew between them and
the route back home. They couldn’t stay, yet had nowhere to go.

CHAPTER 66

Because they could not re-cross the Gobi,
Billy sent his troops west, around the desert, while he took a
dozen water sacks and over flew it at night.

Northern China looked almost as deserted as
the desert he just crossed. Only the old, weak, and stupid stayed
behind. Peking looked fake, like a theater full of unemployed
actors. Forced from their homeland by foreign occupiers, the
Chinese burned their crops and slaughtered the farm animals they
could not bring with them. Even the vacant buildings looked like
they wanted to leave.

Billy’s marathoners had worked only in
Mongolia and northern China. Something urged him to see how the
Chinese from Hainan fared against the Mongols pressing into
southern China.

Billy knew when he entered southern China by
the millions of people desperately crossing the mighty Yangtze
River. Many tried swimming, judging by the thousands of corpses
littering the water. He followed the river west until he found the
enemy force slaughtering the civilians. They drove what looked like
a stampede of people. It reminded him of waves crashing upon rocky
beaches.

Billy couldn’t do much to help, but he did
what he could. He killed the enemy commander, did his scream and
fire dance, then let thousands of vengeful Mongols chase him away
from the civilians. It’d only buy them a day, but that could save
thousands of lives.

Billy found the Chinese camp by following the
Mongols. He flashed his four wands to identify himself and landed
to a standing ovation. He watched their fear turn into relief just
at the sight of him. They expect to die soon, he concluded, even
though they numbered in the thousands. Several officers led him to
their commander, the ex-governor’s grandson, Zhu Ching. Zhu, a
powerful quad in his 40's, looked twice his age.

"Where have you been?" he greeted the Baron,
not bothering to hide his desperation.

"I am well, thank you, general," Billy
answered. "Yes, we destroyed the fifty thousand Mongols invading
from the north. How are you?"

"The foreigners left! And a few million
Chinese quads have abandoned us, with all the stolen valuables they
could carry. That money was suppose to stay here."

"I'm sure you took your share." Billy was not
sympathetic. If that wealth stayed here, the Mongols would
obviously take it back. "How many quads do you still command?"