Deadly Wands (15 page)

The leader had his eyes closed to read the
list. “There are too many. It seems endless. What you ask is
impossible.”

“Then get help or American Jack will tell the
news agencies that the Triads are responsible for their heritage
rotting in a Siberian cave. Your own crews will turn on you. All of
China will treat you as pariahs.”

They didn’t even bother to disagree. William
could tell they’d do it. They could not afford not to. Not that
they were happy with the size of the task. One by one, they nodded
their heads.

“Remember,” William said sternly, “not this
full moon, but the first night of the next.”

CHAPTER 16

The marathoners and near-marathoners crossed
on a moonless night above the clouds, using ships to leapfrog
around hidden sentries. They sped south along the coast, now
uninhabited because William had killed everyone there the last few
years. Siberians guided them around patrols. He left the
half-marathoners behind to destroy the Mongols guarding the Bering
Strait, then go south to haul plunder home.

The night before the full moon, William hid
in the trees with a marathon battalion, using his wand to enhance
his vision as they all stared at a lake. Somewhere, far above them,
a scout dressed in camouflage hid in the clouds. His five best
marathon battalions had gone ahead to exhaust the five closest
enemy marathon divisions.

Something plopped in the middle of the lake.
Even in the dark, everyone saw the tiny waves ripple towards shore.
The mood changed instantly. The scout had dropped a rock to signal
that the high-altitude patrol just passed. Within minutes, one
hundred and five battalions flew at a steep sixty degree angle to
rise to their ceiling to avoid being seen by sentries on the
ground.

The Great Khan loved open space as much as he
detested crowded cities, so he usually roamed within a few hours
flight of his capital. Ten thousand Imperial Guards now protected
his person, and fifty thousand marathoners formed a rapid reaction
force to confront American incursions. Genghis needed to be seen
personally leading the fight. He couldn’t afford any more Summer
Slaughters.

The Khan had three pairs of patrols circling
his portable palace: low altitude, mid-altitude, and high altitude.
The higher they patrolled, the larger the circle. Which is why
William waited for one high-altitude squad to pass overhead, then
raced into the gap before the second squad appeared.

Once near the Khan’s camp, they dived, with
the best quads sprinting towards the other patrols from behind.
William sliced one squad up without giving them time to sound an
alarm. A minute later, however, a low-altitude patrol must have
noticed the huge shadow descending because a shrieking noise warned
the rapid-reaction unit.

Fortunately for the Americans, William
targeted this division twice over. First, his troops dropped bombs
on them from high altitude, so they had only a dozen heartbeats
before the explosions decimated their formation. Then more
Americans, flying straight down at maximum speed, bombed them again
before overwhelming survivors with fireballs.

Rocked out of a sound sleep, the rest of the
Mongols could not possibly respond fast enough. Sure, several
thousand got off the ground, but they could not stop over one
hundred thousand ambushers. The raiders firebombed the felt huts,
then dropped shrapnel bombs on the densest groups of survivors. A
million fireballs a minute torched everything moving, including the
dry winter grass.

The sudden detonations sounded like a
thunderstorm at ground level, so Genghis didn’t recognize it as a
bombing. Pressure waves blew away his burning tents and intense
heat sucked the breath from his lungs. It felt like the air itself
was on fire.

Dayan, the commander of the Imperial Guards,
waved at him to hurry. The expression on his face told Genghis that
this was no drill. He clearly had no idea what was going on and
that scared the hell out of Genghis, who roughly grabbed Empress
Borte. One hundred Imperial Guards rushed the Khan into his room of
last resort -- a steel box large enough to accommodate one hundred.
Although barely portable when empty, it was far too heavy to lift
with people inside. Although great protection from bombs dropped
from high altitude, it became a death trap without defenders
outside.

Genghis rushed to open one of the wand slits
while his guards starting firing out other narrow openings in the
steel. What he saw stunned him. A vast enemy force overwhelmed his
military. Easily, it seemed, as they stumbled about, blind, deaf,
and probably mute. He knew his marathoners would not abandon him --
he’d kill their children if they did -- so they died in place,
unarmored and half asleep.

The Great Khan then identified the guy who
must be in charge, for he directed the slaughter of his harem. The
Baron wore the same armor suit as at the Summer Slaughter.
Americans rounded up his few hundred women and several hundred
children. No longer able to have sex, Genghis needed his family
around him. The Baron moved them within view before personally
beheading them. The cruel bastard even waved towards the box,
although the grim chore exhausted him. Still, he must be really
pissed because he refused to let anyone help. The Khan had no idea
that William apologized to his beloved wife for not protecting her
every time he swung his sword. Still, killing the Khan’s women and
children felt cathartic. Not many men can behead hundreds of
people, but doing so helped relieve his soul-sucking grief.

Genghis had not felt such helpless rage since
his tribe abandoned him when he was ten. His descendents tried to
pull him from the tiny window, but he would not be moved. He could
not look away as he lost his women and children.

At least, those he had not already sent
away.

Although his palace moved frequently to give
the animals fresh grazing, the permanent nature of his camp made it
practical for the families of his troops to stay with them, forming
a small city. The capital was near, so they could get whatever they
needed, whenever they needed it. Since the Khan encouraged
procreation with female quads, these sixty thousand troops had a
few hundred thousand women and several hundred thousand children.
Including support staff, maids, traders, whores, venders, and those
seeking favors, a million people lived with the Khan. But they did
not expect to fight, nor were they organized for war.

The enormity of the loss burned the Khan up
inside. His Imperial Guards could not be replaced. They were,
literally, family.

The resistance didn’t last long enough to
justify calling it a battle. The incendiaries turned thousands of
felt huts into funeral pyres. As the massacre wound down, the
Americans searched for valuables, before burning everything they
could not take. They must be hungry because some of them set up
thousands of his goats on spits for cooking. Others expertly fired
up his bakeries. The Americans had laughed, a few years ago, when
William ordered them to learn cooking and baking. It slowly dawned
on Genghis that the Americans planned to stay long enough to make
jerked meat and bread. That would solve their food problem, freeing
them to raid without having to forage. What infuriated the Khan was
that it meant they were not afraid. Or in a hurry.

His personal guard, the only survivors,
continued shooting at the closest enemies, so the Americans dumped
beheaded bodies on his box to block the wand slits.

Genghis watched the enemy commander pick up a
bomb pack and fly over him. “Everyone down!” he warned. A loud
detonation blew a hole in the steel roof, followed by
anti-personnel munitions which shredded dozens of his guards.
Americans then lined the rim of the hole to blast blindly inside
while others dumped the heads of his harem into the giant coffin.
Genghis could tell when the Baron blasted because his fireballs
filled up the narrow box. Even the best quads are just sitting
ducks when they have nowhere to move. The closest Mongols soon
became ambulatory torches that lit up the dark coffin. Their
comrades didn’t even have water to put out their burning
friends.

“Genghis?” shouted the Baron in perfect
Mongolian. Only the empress called him Genghis.

“You’re a dead man!” the Khan shouted back,
giving away his position.

William fireballed the other half of the box.
“You’ve been trying to kill me all my life. I just wanted to make
sure you survived so you could see me exterminate your
descendents.”

“I’ll kill everyone you love!”

“You already have. Why do you think I’m doing
this? Oh, those bombs you’ve been dragging around will be dropped
on your capital today, and your backup Millennial Wands are now my
backup Millennial Wands. My primary wands I took from the Third
Millennial. You may be in this death trap for a while. If you get
hungry, eat shit, but don’t die. You can’t suffer if you’re
dead.”

William was surprised at his own vehemence.
Americans dropped corpses to block the hole. This trapped in the
smoke. It took them all day to pile a million bodies, but the
propaganda value was so worth it. Then they added the heads. It
looked like a million-headed monster the size of a hill. Finally,
they hovered above to piss and shit to tell the world what
Americans thought of Genghis Khan. Pundits would call it a shitty
declaration of war.

Inside, Genghis pushed away his traumatized
wife to help the wounded. Few injuries were fatal, unless they
became infected, which looked likely since they lacked medicine to
disinfect the wounds. The uninjured tried to put out the burning
people or they’d all die of smoke inhalation. Genghis could not
help but look at the faces of his beheaded women and children as he
tried to be useful. It never crossed his mind that he made millions
feel the same hopeless rage that now burned in him.

The smoke irritated his eyes and gave him a
hacking cough that would never leave him. The delicious smell of
roasted meat reminded them that they didn’t have any food. The next
week, as their hunger increased, the cooking outside would grow
unbearable. But the stench of urine and feces would replace their
appetites with nausea. Some of them would never eat meat again. For
a proud Mongol, that was like embracing sodomy.

After breakfast, William flew with his best
Mongol speakers to the capital, where they bought fresh fruit,
vegetables, bread, milk, spices, and medicine.

At noon, one marathon division appeared,
flying low and slow. The military and the local militia chased the
Americans away. When forced to rest, the other Americans dropped
out of cloud cover to annihilate them.

Meanwhile, William and his crew started
hundreds of fires and ambushed police. The residents spent all day
and night trying to put the fires out while his armada napped an
hour away.

What worked on the Khan’s palace worked even
better on his capital at midnight. Thousands of tired, sleepy quads
rose up, only for the Americans to blast them with superior height,
numbers, and power. They burned the city and everyone in it, except
the warehouses that housed the tribute. Genghis rebuilt the city
because Mongolia losing their capital would be too embarrassing to
live down. In the morning the Americans ate breakfast at William’s
ranch, and slept in comfort in their new clothes.

The next day, his best divisions each lured a
Mongol division to them. William liked surprising exhausted enemy
marathoners with ten times their number.

Like before, they loaded every wagon and pack
animal, then drove the caravan east to their waiting ships. A few
dozen other wagons spread out northward with food, medicine, and
tents for their return home. Siberians drove herds of animals to
their hidden ranches to feed future raiders.

Now, with the region virtually defenseless,
two hundred thousand half-marathoners arrived to help William sack
the nearest cities, towns, and hordes. Each city provided another
wagon train of food, treasure, and supplies. William enjoyed so
much success for so long that the Mongols had to largely abandon
eastern Mongolia, just as Mongols historically displaced one
hundred million foreigners over the last three centuries.

After several days in the box, Genghis
climbed through a million decapitated bodies to freedom. The
Americans wisely fled before disease infected them. Genghis would
never get over the stench of feces. For years, just a whiff of shit
would make him convulse. He levitated bodies to clear a path for
everyone else and personally carried his wounded bodyguards
out.

A month passed before a Mongol force found
him and his few surviving bodyguards. That’s when he learned that
the Triads ambushed his Imperial Guards, which explained the delay.
Local troops were too busy fighting gangs to fly north to oppose an
armada of raiders.

When William left for Peking, he sent the
half-marathoners home with all they could carry. The marathoners
and near-marathoners decided to continue raiding. And they soon
learned that William made victory look easy. Although they knew
what to do, their leaders lacked the sixth sense that William
seemed to possess. They still won more than they lost, but suffered
several times as many casualties. After one too many surprises, the
near-marathoners returned home.

The ten thousand marathoners, with so much
food and mountaintop bunkers, decided to press their luck and stay
the winter. Their presence would infuriate Mongols and force the
Khan to expend vast resources on catching them.

CHAPTER 17

For several weeks, Billy would arrive in a
big city, get a good night’s sleep, dominate the arena, deposit his
winnings, then fly a thousand clicks to another city to avoid
getting ambushed in his sleep.