A Desert Called Peace (85 page)

Fernandez, still shaking his head in disgust at Carrera's squeamishness, asked, "Of course we can
afford
it. A hit team from whom?"

"Possibly the Anti-Zionist People's Liberation Front; they're strong in Bekaa and never liked the fact that Arguello, a woman, garnered so many headlines. Or maybe the ZII, the Zion Intelligence Institute, could suggest someone. Maybe they'd be willing to do it themselves. Give me a week to work it out."

"You have contacts with the
ZII
?" Fernandez asked incredulously.

"Just one good one," Sada answered and then refused to say more.

As it turned out, ZII wouldn't touch it. The head of the organization, Mickey Zvi Maor, who knew Sada from school in Anglia, was firm on that. Oh, they wished the woman dead, one thousand times over dead. But they were such an obvious candidate for the hit that Maor begged off. He did suggest contacting one of the religiously affiliated parties in Bekaa, all of whom distrusted women in positions of power.

Sada sent one of his more trusted lieutenants, Major Qabaash, to Bekaa to do the negotiations.

"
Qef halak, ya sheik,
" Qabaash began at the audience he had secured with the leader of the Monotheism Party in a suburb of Akka. The sheik lived simply enough, in a rambling adobe house with a fountained central courtyard. The fountain was not ostentation. In the fierce heat of the Bekaa desert the fountain served to cool the courtyard without the pollution of the infidel's electricity.

Serene and dignified, the sheik—his given name was Ghaleb— returned the greetings and swept his hand down, inviting Qabaash to sit near him on some cushions placed where they would receive the most benefit of the fountain's cooling effect.

Serving women, some the sheik's wives and concubines, others his daughters, brought in trays ostentatiously laden with more food than two men could hope to eat. Besides the usual lamb, there were bowls of red maize paste, flavored with native "holy shit peppers."

Holy shit peppers were at the low end of piquancy compared to some of Terra Nova's natural spices. Above them were Joan of Arc peppers, only for the very daring or masochistic. At the very high end were the plants known as "Satan Triumphant." No one had ever managed to eat these, whole, though they had found a use during the Great Global War when distilled into a potent chemical agent similar in its power and effects to phosgene oxime. Highly diluted, they could have been used for food preservation. Unfortunately, STs were so vile that the slightest underdilution would have preserved the food indefinitely as no human being could have hoped to eat it. Mixed in
minute
proportion in
shoug
, a fiery popular paste, was about as useful as "Satan Triumphant" peppers ever got.

Besides the red maize paste were pitas made from the flour of the chorley. There were half a dozen Terra Novan "olives" on the trays, as well. These had little resemblance to Old Earth olives, being roughly the size of plums and gray in color. They grew in clumps of three on a plant that looked like a stunted, anemic palm, except that unlike the palms of Old Earth this one's trunk was green while its fronds were gray. The taste was said to be similar to normal olives, though slightly more astringent.

One did not get right down to business when dealing with the sheik or, indeed, with nearly any Arab; there were the niceties to observe first. A full two hours of mostly meaningless pleasantries followed. Mostly, however, does not mean
entirely
. By the end of the two hours, from hints and suggestions, Ghaleb had learned that the heretic woman, Layla Arguello, needed to die and Qabaash had learned that the price of her death, her husband's and her sons would be fifty thousand FSD, half payable up front and half on confirmation that she was truly dead. Two of Terra Nova's three moons, Eris and Bellona, had risen by the time the two reached this point.

"It would be better," observed the sheik, getting down to business, "if her sons did not grow up to avenge her."

"I could not agree more, O Wise One," Qabaash answered. "Yet those are our limitations. The people I represent will not countenance the killing of the sons."

Ghaleb's smiled slightly as his fingers pulled at one ear. "Easterners, eh? It never ceases to amaze me how little they understand us and how completely they insist on trying to fit us into their own mold. For the woman and the sons I would charge fifty thousand. For the woman alone, the price is one hundred thousand, for I will have to recompense families when the sons grow up to exact their revenge."

"It is fair, O Sheik, and the amount in within my discretion."

To himself Qabaash mused,
If this were the FSC, they would, at a cost many times greater, drop a large and expensive guided bomb from an aircraft costing more than this country earns every year. The bomb would kill Arguello, and the FSC would congratulate itself for its discretion and humanity. The bomb would also kill fifty genuine innocents and probably miss her sons. For a mere fifty thousand I could get rid of the lot and kill no true innocents if only I were permitted. Life is strange and the Almighty's sense of humor unfathomable.

Ordinarily, the sheik would have merely given a sermon in the mosque on the subject of female iniquity and mentioned Layla's name as an example. Several of his followers would have read between the lines, hunted her down to her home and killed her and her family. Word would have leaked so that the sheikh could reward his diligent followers properly, but only within the close confines of the clan, so that the police could pretend bafflement. Because of the absurd requirement that her family not be hurt, more direct and less subtle methods were required.

A team of Ghaleb's followers was thus handpicked and given its marching orders. They were experienced and bright men; they had no real difficulty finding Layla's residence and office. They did find it suspicious that she changed her routes between the two more than daily. This meant that the killing would have to take place either in or in front of either her office or her home. Given that they were, unaccountably, forbidden from killing her family it would have to be the office.

Purchasing weapons and explosives in the market in Akka was like buying dates and figs. Finding Layla's residence and office was equally easy, reconning them not much more difficult.

Unfortunately, what the hit team did not count on was the woman herself. Layla Arguello was not some untrained, innocent Kosmo journalist or humanitarian aid worker. She was, herself, a trained and
experienced
terrorist. Moreover, her long career should have told the team she was a
smart
trained terrorist. Smart and trained terrorists, in the circumstances of Akka, Bekaa, did not go about unarmed.

What should have been an easy hit turned into a somewhat lengthy firefight. With six men with rifles engaging one woman with a pistol the result would normally been foreordained. Not so with Layla.

Near her office, her car was suddenly cut off by another that swerved in front and forced her driver to crash into a parked car by the curb. The car following Layla's smashed into the rear of her own to further shock the occupants. Her driver and the guard sitting in the front seat were thrown forward—the use of seatbelts indicating a certain lack of piety among their people—and stunned.

Layla, however, was not shocked. She had the door open and was crouching outside, digging in her purse for a pistol and her trademark hand grenade, even before the men in the assaulting cars had their feet to the pavement. Her hand closed on the grenade first. This she donated to the following car. It went off on the asphalt, laying out two just emerging assassins with multiple shrapnel wounds. Red pools began to spread across the pavement.

The remaining four assassins were momentarily shocked. This gave Layla enough time to dig out her pistol, a 9mm job made in Sachsen. With the pistol in hand, she stuck her head over the trunk of her own immobilized automobile and fired at the passengers of the car that had rammed hers from behind. She hit one, she thought.

A long burst of fire from the car that had swerved in front of hers smashed the windows of her own, sending the glass shards tinkling to the asphalt and killing the driver. None of the barely aimed bullets hit her, but spraying glass scored her forehead and face, causing blood to run into her right eye. Desperately Layla used her left hand to try to wipe the blood away and clear her eye for shooting. Even through the haze she managed to jack a couple of rounds in the direction of the first auto.

Achmed, nephew of Ghalib, was shocked by the return fire. The explosion of what he assumed was a hand grenade had been bad enough. But for the woman to have the effrontery to actually shoot back? This was too much.

Unfortunately, the return fire was also too much. Achmed, feeling ashamed, closed his eyes and kept low to the ground to escape the bullets this damned heretic woman seemed to have in great supply.

The rough pavement dug into his face. Achmed forced his eyes open and saw a woman's foot and a knee exposed under the floor of the target vehicle. He pointed his rifle in the general direction of the foot and pulled the trigger.

Layla was reloading her pistol from one of the four spare magazines she kept in her purse when she felt the blow just above her knee. Partly from the physical force of the blow and partly in automatic response to the instant and intense pain, her leg spun out from under her, causing her to drop the loaded magazine she had been struggling to insert. She fell to one side even as her hand groped the asphalt for the magazine.

Unable to stand or kneel any longer Layla forced her back to the rear wheel of her car while her hand continued to feel around, searching for the lost magazine. She found and grabbed it with a joyful cry.

Before she could reload, she stopped. Two angry looking men were standing above her, each with a rifle pointed towards her head and torso. A third sprayed her guard, still sitting in the front seat, knocking his bloodied corpse over onto the lap of the dead driver.

No chance now,
Layla thought, dropping the magazine but retaining the pistol.

Layla's last acts in this life were to smile as if her own death were a triumph and to spit at her assailants.

The rifles opened fire. At this range even very bad marksmanship could not miss. Over forty bullets entered Layla's body. When they were done she lay dead against the rear tire, her head lolling to one side and the pistol still held tightly in her hand.

Layla's bullet-riddled body was barely in the ground in Bekaa when the first replacement units began to arrive in Sumer. This was the Second Cohort of the now renamed 1st Tercio (
príncipio Eugenio
). Whereas the 1st Cohort had never had a strength above four hundred and sixty, the replacement was closer to a real battalion's strength of nearly seven hundred. It was still organized in six subunits though these, in deference to the increase in strength, were called now "maniples" rather than centuries and were subdivided into platoons rather than sections. The platoons were still rather small, as platoons went.

Sporting new sergeant's stripes on his collar, Cruz didn't care about that. In truth, he didn't care much about anything except that this combat tour was over and he was going
home
for a while, home to his Cara and, hopefully, home to marriage and the beginning of a family. He had a good job with the legion, work he liked and work he had proven good at. He intended to stay even though this would mean frequent separation from his loved ones.

Waiting with his gear for the trucks that would take himself and the rest of the cohort to the Ninewa airport, Cruz mused upon the meeting he and his cohort's tribune had had with Carrera and the legion's sergeant major, that crusty old bastard, McNamara.

He'd been shocked, more than a little, when Carrera had announced that he'd been selected for Cazador School and, if he passed that, further selected for the Centurion Candidate Course.

"They'll be harder than combat, Sergeant Cruz," McNamara had informed him. "I know you don't believe that now but, before you accept the appointment, just trust me on this."

He'd sat silent for a while at that, thinking hard. Finally, he'd decided, "I think I can take it, Sergeant Major . . . Legate. After all, I have good reasons to."

The shuttle came down from the
Amistad
carrying a full platoon of thirty UN Marines, all the ship had available. It screeched in to Atlantis base furiously. The Marine commander directed his troops to wait at the small terminal while he went to collect his orders from the Base's deputy, acting in High Admiral Annan's stead.

"The helicopter went off the air several days ago," the deputy advised the major commanding the Marines. "I don't know if they crashed or what."

"Where were they heading?" the major asked.

The deputy's finger played over his computer's keyboard, bringing up a somewhat undetailed map of Balboa colony. "The high admiral said he was going here. "Hunting," he said." Since the deputy had some idea of just what it was that Annan had intended to hunt, and since that was technically illegal, even for a high admiral, he kept his mouth shut as to what Annan's objective had been.

"I've been in contact with our office in
Ciudad
"—the Deputy laughed; to call such a miserable collection of shacks a city was absurd—"Balboa. They say the high admiral stopped there on his way."

The major could have surmised the hunt's objective but long years in UN service had conditioned him not to dig into, not to even think upon, the foibles of his superiors. He had his own life to worry about and another four years would see him retired to his Botswanan village on a very comfortable, Noblemaire-Rule-driven, pension.