Deadly Wands (46 page)

After a few confused seconds, the enemy chose
to fight the guys on their backs, so Billy flew up to take his
turn, hitting them from behind. Everyone drew steel, which suited
Billy just fine since he had twice the length. The Americans had
backed away as soon as the few Mongol survivors turned on them, and
Billy expertly swatted them from the skies.

One American dropped like a sack of rice, and
another flailed like a duck. Billy dived to scoop her up before she
fell among the injured Mongols. Her arm bled badly and she lost her
grip on her wand. Billy dressed her wound as soon as they landed,
while the others blasted the enemy and transferred their
super-wands before the burnt assassins stopped screaming.

“You guys!” she yelled. “The Red Baron saved
my life. Record him putting on my bandages. My dad is gonna piss
himself.”

Once recording, Billy gave his own version of
the “battle” that emphasized how she and her squad saved his life.
Then he dropped the bad news:

“You won’t heal soon enough to go raiding
with us, so you’ll need to make your own way to one of the coastal
rendezvous points as best as you can.”

The problem with fighting several thousand
clicks in enemy territory is any illness or injury could prove
fatal. Landing too hard could sprain an ankle; a fever that keeps a
quad on the ground; even diarrhea, which happens all too often from
drinking dirty water.

Billy turned to the rest of the squad. “Your
fallen comrade will be covered by the Death Benefits Fund I gave
the University, but you guys can’t keep up with me when weighted
down with a few hundred kilos.” He turned to the wounded
marathoner: “How much gold can you carry once you get better?”

She couldn’t stop laughing long enough to
answer. By the look in her eyes, he could tell he’d be sleeping
with her that night. He may have the body of a roasted rabbit, but
everyone wanted powerful children.

What bothered him is how much she looked like
Princess. Not as beautiful, of course, but they had the same dark
eyes, skin, and hair. It didn’t make him want to have sex with her
any more or any less, but it made him miss his wife so much it
almost brought him to tears. They had so little time together
before he had to leave to kill the guy who murdered his babies.

Their tactical situation was so unsurprising
that it surprised Billy that he had not anticipated it. Of course,
he had other things on his mind this past year.

Eleven American battalions snuck in a year
ago. They waited for a storm to conceal their crossing, rather than
contest the Bering Strait. All eager for another summer of
profitable raiding, they instead never even reached Mongolia.

Genghis hid sentries on every mountaintop,
and a division every thousand kilometers. Dividing Siberia into
areas of responsibility made those generals study their territory
in detail. They hid squads, companies, and battalions according to
the size of whatever concealed them, and instructed those units to
inform others and/or attack on their own. The Khan came up with so
many divisions by filling half of them with two-wanders, who could
spy, scout, and patrol just as well as quads. Instead of gathering
a huge armada, each unit -- from squad to division -- acted
independently to inflict as much pain as possible.

That sneaky bastard stole from dad, Billy
realized with horror.

“No matter how far, how fast, or how high we
flew, they kept surprising us at night,” the squad leader
confessed. “The bigger the unit, the easier it was to find us, so
we split into eleven battalions. Then into companies. To make it
easier to hide and forage, our company broke into squads. Once
spring starts, we were all suppose to unite at Fish Lake,” she
said, referring to their northern-most base camp. They long ago
built concealed bunkers there. “Just before we left, the closest
enemy division suddenly abandoned its territory and formed a long
skirmish line facing south. We thought that so odd that we searched
for the next nearest division, which was also sweeping south in a
long line.” The squad leader smiled at the Baron. “Well, we all
agreed that only you could make Mongols act so crazy, so we
followed them down and hoped we ran into you.

“Mr. Baron, what do we do now? A huge force
still blocks the Strait, so we can’t go home, yet we’re not
accomplishing anything staying here.”

Naturally, Billy knew exactly what to do.
“Let’s go to Fish Lake, then do some fishing! But first, let’s
divide the gold.”

CHAPTER 61

The appearance of the infamous Red Baron at
Fish Lake changed the mood of the American marathoners from
depression to euphoria. Few knew him, but they all trusted him with
their lives. They had a miserable year, an even worse winter, and
no wealth to show for it. Illness caused more casualties than the
Mongols. If a battalion of replacements had not arrived in
mid-winter with food and medicine, many of them would have
died.

Like his father, Billy had flair. He dropped
screaming from high altitude and fell doing his fire dance. From
optimum altitude, he blasted an island in the middle of the lake to
create an impossibly large crater. He disappeared into the hole
before the dust settled.

Ten thousand Americans flew to the crater rim
to see what became of him. He turned in place, arms welcoming, a
big smile the only part of his face they could see.

Then it started raining gold. One by one, his
squad dropped coins on him. Billy started laughing and everyone
joined him. When the roaring subsided, Billy popped up to give them
their first orders:

“I want you all to celebrate tonight, because
we’re gonna spend the next few months killing Mongols and taking
their wealth so you can go home rich!”

Lifted from their misery, the crowd fell in
love. They got drunk without alcohol and danced without music. The
Red Baron led them in their favorite songs, which he learned for
just this purpose.

As always, almost half of the Americans were
female because -- weighing less -- they could fly farther. But
William never intended for them to work year-round, so the several
hundred mothers nursing their newborns in the main bunker worried
Billy. He needed to get them home, but they couldn’t safely fly far
until the babies were older. Yet they couldn’t stay here because
this location was compromised. Even if they beat the Mongols
surrounding them, other units would bomb these bunkers into the
permafrost. So he sent them with the sick and wounded to his supply
depots on Kamchatka Peninsula.

Still, they were thrilled to meet the Red
Baron. Billy asked the names of their babies, careful to record
them clearly as the fathers wondered if he meant to replace
them.

“You know what all these babies have in
common?” he asked after recording them all. “They’ll all be one
gold ton richer when you set up an account in their names at Global
Bank! We’ll call them the Tonner Babies.”

So show he wasn’t kidding, he recorded
himself ordering the bank to transfer a ton each, then passed the
video memory to everyone. He had most of the fathers and all of the
mothers crying more than any of the babies. Although they thought
him incredibly generous, it seemed small compensation for them
risking their lives in a freezing wilderness for a year with no
plundered booty. It also made them more likely to campaign with him
next time. The publicity value alone made this worth doing.

The battalion commanders took the Baron aside
to let him know that five divisions were closing in all around
them.

“I know. We saw two of them on the way. We’ll
start wiping them out tomorrow. Those idiots are still five hundred
clicks away because no division wants to get closer than the rest.
What they should have done is rushed our camp from five directions
at the same time. We’ll make them pay for the mistake with their
lives.”

Word soon spread and everyone noticed that
the commanders lost their stressed out looks.

After dinner, Billy regaled them with the
recent victories, rotating in place so everyone could see the
videos. They couldn’t believe that Europe -- widely believed a lost
cause just a few years ago -- was now free. Billy distributed the
mutual defense agreements. He showed them the fifty marathon
battalions cleansing the Stans, pointing out the uniforms of
Russia, Scandinavia, Prussia, Turkey, Arabia, and Persia. He walked
them through the battles on the Alps and Kiev and shocked them with
how much he deposited into their retirement accounts. The video of
he and Bear ridiculing the Great Khan for handing a thousand gold
tons to his newest rebels had them rolling on the ground in
laughter. More importantly, it motivated them to do their share for
the war effort. For a year, they felt like losers.

Billy finally told them how the Khan’s
personal guards killed his babies and their mothers, and showed
them what he did to avenge those deaths. He helped them laugh at
the heads in Hulagu’s garden, and saddened them when he spoke of
the empress with such respect. Then he got them chuckling again by
taking on the capital of Mongolia alone for three days.

The next day Billy re-organized the
marathoners into ten full battalions, with the sick, wounded, and
pregnant moving to a temporary location. He put those with the
highest ceiling into Battalion #1 and sent them after the enemy
farthest away from help. Billy knew he couldn’t surprise the
Mongols, who had too many two-wanders as scouts and sentries, so he
tired out their quads. #1 broke into squads to make it harder for
the enemy to estimate their numbers. They hit the division just
before dinner and kept them awake all night long, blasting everyone
on the ground while trying to avoid the Mongols in the air.

Billy’s other battalions slept for several
hours, then hit the division at dawn, when #1 left to get some
sleep nearby. Nine thousand marathoners quickly owned the sky and,
by noon, hunted down survivors.

Each enemy unit only had half a division of
mostly short-range, low-altitude quads and half a division of
two-wanders who were basically useless in battle. The trick was
attacking the divisions before they combined their strength.

So Battalion #2 ate lunch and rested. When
scouts reported the neighboring enemy division just an hour away,
#2 harassed them until sunset. Then #3, who ate and rested next,
went on duty, attacking until dawn. Battalions 4-10 engaged them
after breakfast and by nightfall stripped their corpses of
valuables.

#1, meanwhile, slept all day and attacked the
next closest enemy before they supped. At dawn, after a good nights
sleep, #2 took over. #3 took their place at sunset, but by then,
another division arrived to delay the inevitable. #1 joined them
after midnight and was able to exhaust them until noon.

Battalion #4 and #5 rotated attacks on
another division fast approaching, to give the rest time to destroy
the two divisions that joined up.

#1 flew to rotate shifts with #4 and #5 until
the rest of the marathoners finished off their target. By the time
the other Americans arrived, the Mongols were too few, too tired,
and too cold to do more than die with wands in their hands.

Because they could fly higher, longer, and
faster, the Americans beat five times their number with few
casualties by taking them (mostly) one at a time. Each American
picked up five money sacks while Billy scored over fifty thousand
wand sets, which he sent to Korea.

They ate an early dinner and Billy gave them
a speech while they waited for nightfall.

“The day before my eighth birthday, I asked
my dad how we could win this war. Not end the war, as many pray for
daily, but how to win it. Except for you optimists who volunteered
to fight a lost cause, everyone else in the world seemed to think
nothing could ever stop this war except total conquest by the
Mongols. My dad took so long in answering that I assumed he either
didn’t hear me or didn’t know. But what he said that day changed my
life. And, since you’re about to sack cities in the heart of
Mongolia, yours.

“Dad explained that simply killing Genghis
Khan wouldn’t help unless it provoked a civil war, and that
wouldn’t happen because every time he changes the succession,
Genghis makes every Mongol quad send in a video recording an oath
of allegiance. Even killing the top ten probably wouldn’t start a
civil war because his line of succession is so deep.

“And destroying every Mongol air force
wouldn’t win the war either because they famously have so many
veterans. Every active duty quad can be automatically re-enlisted
within ten years of leaving. If we kill those quads, which
apparently we have, the Khan can call up several million more who
either never enlisted or who retired more than a decade ago.
American Jack told me these are the troops we face in Siberia, and
those we destroyed in Kiev.

“The problem is that Mongols and their allies
breed half a million quads every year just due to population
growth. So all they have to do is simply wait until more kids reach
puberty. Which means we have to kill them faster than they can be
replaced. Which means our real target is the civilian
population.

“As everyone knows, when Genghis Khan united
the Mongols, he only had a million people, and only one hundred
thousand quads. But, since then, those Mongols have produce one
hundred million descendents. Their allies double that. Only about
half of those descendents identify themselves as Mongolian or as an
ally, but that’s still one hundred million people. And since they
reproduce strategically, Mongols have about twice the quads per
capita as the rest of the world.

“In contrast, American University estimates
that there would be one hundred million more Americans if the
Mongols didn’t sack their cities, burn their crops. and destroy
their herds. So you Americans have lost more brothers and sisters
than the total population of Mongols in the world. Just imagine how
much easier it’d be to win this war if we had another one hundred
million Americans helping us.