Deadly Wands (53 page)

“Were these your father’s?” he asked
gently.

Shocked, she looked up a little scared. “But
how could you possibly know that?”

“Kublai asked me to give these Millennials to
his daughter, who was a better general than her father. Said she
earned them. It took me this long to figure out who she was. And
you can have them, too. But first, I want to know why the
great-granddaughter of Genghis Khan has fought the Empire for two
centuries.”

Grandma looked around to make sure they were
alone. “When I shot flame from my boot wands at five years old,
Kublai had my mother take me and flee. He had so many illegitimate
daughters nobody ever missed me.”

“Who knows you can use your boot wands for
something other than flight?” Billy asked.

“Still living? Only Jack and the son who
impersonates you.”

“You can have your father’s wands, but you
must show me your true power.”

“What do you mean?” she asked angrily. She
didn’t like being challenged.

“I think you hold back. You project ten meter
long flames, but your blasts are as powerful as the twins.”

They held a staring contest, but he was
right, so he won. Smiling sheepishly, she blew flame thirteen
meters from the new Millennial Wands and he jumped up and down like
a kid.

“Now show me your face,” she demanded.

Billy reluctantly took off his mask, hoping
no one could record it in the darkness.

"I knew it! You're just a damn kid with
deadly wands!”

“No one would follow me if they knew my true
age,” he pointed out. “Hey, can you scream like me?”

The prospect startled her. “Why?” Billy
smiled as an idea developed. “Red, stop smiling. You’re scaring
me.”

“If you can scream like me, then I’ll plan
something special for the Olympics.”

“Are you gonna kill Genghis Khan? And don’t
you dare lie to me.”

Billy chuckled. “Oh, Grandma. We’re gonna
kill them all.”

“You swear?”

“I swear on my life.”

CHAPTER 69

Billy left a few super-quads to track the
Mongol follow-up forces, while the Americans built hard-to-find
mountaintop bunkers. The rest flew to India.

Prince saw them first. A squad on the horizon
suddenly turned and fled. Billy's vanguard, consisting of the very
best quads, raced after them. Billy, the fastest, overtook the
squad first. They banked away in a steep dive, but Billy not only
kept up, but flew ahead to sound off a friendly greeting. Since
neither wore Mongol uniforms, Billy carefully closed the distance
and gestured for them to land.

"Birdy!" Grandma yelled once their leader
took off his flight helmet. Billy saw the relief on the guy's face.
The others looked Indian. "Birdy, this is the Red Baron. Birdy is
one of our trainers."

Birdy looked at Billy, disappointed.

“Why does everyone think I should be taller?”
Billy complained, which broke the ice with the new guys. “How many
Indians from the Bering Strait made it home?”

Birdy smiled. How the Baron convinced Indians
in the Mongol Air Force to turn on their masters had become
legendary.

“I heard sixty thousand made it to Tibet,
where Kublai had set up an ambush. Mongols may hate you, but they
hate traitors more. The Indians got hit several times before that,
but this time the Mongols overwhelmed them. Maybe twenty thousand
crossed the Himalayas, but they kept getting attacked. The High
Command delayed the final assault on Ceylon just to punish the
traitors.

“Anyways, the unit broke up and several
thousand may have made it home. Rich, apparently. Criminal gangs
flew all the way to Tibet just to see if the rumors were true. And
apparently they were. The Mongol Air Force saw desertion soar,
although few of them signed up with the new government in
Ceylon.

“The Mongols made things worse by treating
the families of deserters as traitors to be shot on sight. Local
militias stepped in to protect them. Units sent to destroy those
militias had their own members blast their leaders. Which created
more traitors, more angry militias, and more battles.”

The new elated Billy. “That worked out better
than I had hoped. How are the rebels doing?”

“Oh, they’re still in Ceylon. The politicians
can’t decide on a general, so they won’t go on offense. I almost
cried when I heard they’re using my marathoners to line the
ramparts like untrained two-wanders.”

“They’re using marathoners in a static
defense?” Billy’s jaw dropped to his knees. “We must rescue them!”
Meaning the marathoners, not the rebels. “We were looking for your
team. How many are you?"

"We’ve trained seven marathon battalions.
Almost half deserted to us when the Khan ordered them to the Bering
Strait. I have the best battalion to slow the Mongols down if they
divert to crush the rebellion.”

“We need those battalions to bomb the slower
Mongols on the Silk Road as they pass through the Tian Shan
Mountains.”

“Good luck getting permission to take them.
The Mongol High Command in India is throwing everything they have
against the rebels so that they can later send troops to help
retake China.”

They arrived a few days later. Billy called a
leadership meeting to go over their options. Below them a ring of
torches marked the northernmost fortifications that blocked Ceylon
from the rest of India.

“By morning they’ll know we’re here and we
lose surprise. I say we break into companies and hit their barracks
while they sleep, grab their bombs, and drop them on the next row
of fortifications. Once the situation starts to go against us, we
race to the island. Company commanders, don’t expect orders from
me. Use your best judgment to hurt them while preserving your unit.
Unless anyone has any better ideas?”

Billy looked straight at Prince, who threw up
his hands. “Hey, I ran out of great ideas in Kiev.”

“Well, we ran out of food, so I guess we eat
Mongolian tonight.”

The barracks sat in a line a few hundred
kilometers long, which meant they’d attack across a very long and
very thin front. Few companies would even fight within sight of
each other. Since the enemy did not mass their troops, they did not
have any better option. But at least they could bomb the enemy in
their sleep, since they picked up bombs that Birdy stored on the
Himalayas.

Billy flew with Birdy to get a sense of his
tactical abilities. His company flew low and fast, utilizing
terrain to mask their approach. It bothered Billy that the Mongols
didn’t seem to have any patrols or sentries behind them. They
dropped their bombs, pulverizing the fortifications, then dropped
to one hundred meters to shoot at everything that moved. Almost all
the defenders were two-wanders.

It was over before the smoke cleared.

“That’s it?” Billy asked, worried.

“Something’s wrong,” Birdy answered. They
discovered the problem as soon as the dust settled. “They’re gone!
They must be bombing Ceylon before the monsoons start. We have to
warn them!”

Billy took off at maximum speed. A few hours
later, he flew over several large shadows before finding the
island. Those on the ground could not hear his wands, so he dropped
in a controlled fall and blasted down. From that great height, his
blasts would spread out too far to hurt anyone, but would hit hard
enough to wake people up. Once he saw Ceylon patrols coming at him,
he flashed four wands to identify himself and sounded a friendly
greeting.

"One hundred thousand bombers are coming," he
yelled at them, guessing about the number attacking.

Their squad sounded the alarm and Billy
immediately mimicked it, but with four powerful wands. The patrol
seemed shocked that his alarm was so much louder than all of theirs
combined.

On the surface they heard their warning
repeated and soon hundred, then thousands, flew up. Other patrols
flew in and Billy tapped his ears to hear them report that many
battalions were forming up on all sides of the island. The leaders
huddled in a hover to figure out how to respond to the threat.
Billy suddenly saw what the Mongols were up to. To interrupt the
arguing Indians and to introduce himself to the fliers now joining
them, Billy released his terrifying primal scream and flashed his
four wands. In the stunned silence that followed, Billy yelled his
orders:

"Their two-wanders need to rise in an arc to
drop their bombs in a controlled fall, so form a circle to shoot
them in the back as they rise." No one reacted, but neither did
they argue with him. Damn, doesn't anyone understand Mongolian
anymore? "I’m the Red Baron and I say, form a damn circle!"

This time, with large shadows approaching on
their horizons, they did as he commanded.

Over the next several minutes, tens of
thousands of Ceylons joined them. Eyeing the bombers, Billy flew
around the circle to order them to back up. The flow of Ceylons
that continued to rise from the island joined the circle instead of
becoming targets in the middle.

As the battalions closed, Billy noticed the
ones coming directly from the mainland were much closer than those
who had to circle around to hit them from open ocean. As he well
knew, timing is everything in a surprise attack. If everyone
doesn't strike at the same time, then enough defenders survive to
fight back.

As the closest battalions climbed in their
square-shaped formations, Billy raced over to release his famous
scream. Human nature being what it is, many in that first formation
could not help but turn around to look. Instead of keeping their
spacing, hundreds collided with their comrades, sending surprised
fliers tumbling out of the sky. Squadrons of quads formed the
corner of each formation square. Those closest to him broke off to
attack. Billy responded by popping up in his own arc and shooting
every wand at the same target.

Even as the exhilaration of battle consumed
him, Billy thanked the Khan for pulling one hundred thousand quads
from India. Just ten thousand would have swept the defenders from
the sky.

The circle of quads now sent volleys into the
backs of the rising attackers. The closest battalion was still too
far below them for fatal shots from an average wand, but the better
wands knocked holes in their formation, which must have unnerved
the unit.

Then the battle changed. Billy's four blasts
detonated a backpack and the entire squad disappeared faster than
the eye could track their falling body parts in the night sky. The
defenders cheered, closed the distance, and intensified the
shooting. Many more backpacks exploded and the battle turned into a
massacre. Billy poured fire into the second group of quads until
they, too, blew into tiny pieces.

The Mongols now felt like suicide bombers,
yet they realized they had no good tactical options: instead of
continuing to rise in their bombing arc, they could just fly over
the island to release their bombs, but their backpacks would invite
blasts from the defenders above. Turning around also left them
exposed. Every one of them wanted to simply jettison their
backpacks, but that took more time than they had, although many
dropped out of formation to try.

A crescendo of explosions rose to a deafening
roar as the squares of bombers flew into range of the ring of
defenders. Entire battalion formations disintegrated as terrified
two-wanders fled. Losing the element of surprise defanged the whole
operation anyway.

Billy raced towards the attackers coming from
the ocean. Billy distracted them with his primal scream. The Mongol
quads had their backs to the Baron and could not help but turn to
look. Half of the two-wanders flying straight up impotently watched
Billy fire at them since they needed both wands to fly. Billy's
distraction cost them precious time.

Then the first backpack exploded, soon
followed by others. The bombers wisely broke formation and ran for
their lives, falling to give themselves time to cut the straps off
their backpacks. The elated Ceylons raced to kill them. All around
the island, the massive air force disappeared -- either literally
from explosions, or from members diving to lose themselves above
the wave tops. Thousands of fliers from the island chased them
down.

"Kill the quads!" Billy shouted repeatedly to
groups of joyous Indians as he took his own advice and blasted
quads who had no choice but to show their backs to him. As the
fastest left the slowest behind, Billy focused on the swiftest. By
dawn, the herd had thinned out considerably and made it easier for
the hunters to take down the hunted.

Finally the first Mongol fortresses came into
view and gave new speed to the terrified prey. Billy, exhausted,
tapped his last reserve to blast as many quads as possible before
the fortress could protect them. Hundreds of them landed and the
thought of flying all the way back to the island sucked the life
out of Billy. Until, as more enemies landed, a few of them popped
back up while firing down. Some managed to escape their own
fortress, but others got overwhelmed by guards.

Then Billy's heart sank when squads dropped
from the clouds. But, instead of attacking Billy, they attacked
those Mongols trying to get away. Just as his tired brain tried to
make sense of it, the fortress ejected more of Team Red. They
formed a skirmish line and chased down the Mongols. Billy found
enough energy to flash his wands to identify himself, then land in
the fortress, dangerously dehydrated.

CHAPTER 70

His quads, spread out over a few hundred
kilometers, naturally killed everyone in the fortifications and
took everything valuable. Then they moved on to the next line of
fortifications. And the next. In a beautiful irony, his quads were
perfectly positioned to mow down thousands of exhausted Mongols by
occupying the southernmost line of fortifications built by the very
men they killed. Team Red got to kill several times their number in
the fortifications, then kill several times their number expecting
sanctuary.