Deadly Wands (62 page)

“I’d rather call him Ralph,” Bear said with a
straight face.

“No, please, no!” Billy felt like he was
begging for his first blowjob. “Ralph is a terrible name. You know
that better than most.” Bear did not look convinced, although his
eyes twinkled more than usual. “Hey, one day everyone will know my
real name, and the world will have an armada of Billy’s. Yours can
be first.” Bear was proving a tough sell. Billy was not sure who
was doing who the favor. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll make a video
praising everything you’ve done. Your son will know that the Red
Baron thinks you’re a hero. That must be worth something.”

Bear couldn’t hold it any longer. He burst
out laughing and hugged his skinny friend.

“I’ve never felt towards any man what I feel
for you, Billy.”

“I’m drawing the line at hugs. Don’t you dare
kiss me, Ralph!”

But Bear saved the best for last. “I’ve been
thinking how best to thank you for giving me enough hope to start
another family. I’m a husband and father again because of you. I’d
have been miserable until death without you. I forgot what
happiness felt like.”

Billy looked behind him because he sure as
hell felt an ambush coming.

“Did you know the world population peaked the
year Genghis Khan invaded China? Earth would have half a billion
more people today if the Mongols didn’t start this world war.

“Or that this year will set a new world
record for babies born? Europe and the Americas are popping kids
out at twice their historical rate. Not only was the war indirectly
killing a million civilians a year, but millions more were not
being born because people like me felt too insecure. American
University put out a report estimating the world will set a new
population record within several years, meaning every dead Mongol
will be replaced with a live non-Mongol. All those new governments
are taking a census, for tax purposes, so I’ve hired a team of
university professors to document the change in population
projections. Every year they’ll publish the latest numbers -- oh, I
used to teach math.

“Right now people associate you with war, but
every year I’m gonna remind them that you’ve helped create far more
life than death.” Bear suddenly radiated intensity. “I want an
entire generation to grow up knowing that most of them have you to
thank for their existence.”

Overwhelmed, Billy almost fell on his ass
again. “I feel so virile.”

“You’re welcome.”

Bear walked off like he owned the planet,
while Billy applied a wand to his butt. It really hurt.

Team Red landed at night at a new secret base
north of the Bering Strait. They slept all day and took off at
dusk. Patrols soon shrieked alarms, which gave them the opportunity
to bomb quads forming in the dark. They fought long enough for the
enemy to get a good estimate of their numbers. Then Billy led them
straight south because -- even in the summer -- northern Siberia is
really cold. They slept all day, waiting for the enemy to catch
up.

And Billy got his first surprise when
sentries reported that the enemy did not pursue him. Which really
pissed him off. Now was a terrible time for the enemy to become
unpredictable.

“I didn’t want them in my rear,” Billy
complained. “What if we have to cross the Strait in a hurry? Or we
arrive too tired to outrun them?”

“They know they can’t catch us, so they
didn’t even try,” Bear reasoned. “Or they stayed to block our other
quads.”

Billy shook his head. “No, after what I did
to his Indian marathoners, Genghis simply told them to contest
every crossing. Crap. This ruins my plans for the Olympics.” He
called a leadership meeting. “Grandma, get as close as safely
possible to their west. Sleep all day, then attack them all night
long to exhaust them. I doubt they’ll sleep much tonight, so you’ll
have an energy advantage.

“Meanwhile, I’ll return to Alaska and give
the near-marathoners the day shift since they need light to target
their bombs. We’ll take days and you have nights until we eliminate
them.”

The battle played out as Billy expected, but
it surprised him to learn that half of the Mongols were
two-wanders, and all of them volunteers. Two-wanders can fight
within tunnels just as well as marathoners. Since cleaning out
bunkers was dangerous, Billy assigned it to his half-marathoners
and sent his near-marathoners down the Manchurian coast to clear it
of people while he drew Mongols forces elsewhere.

It shocked Billy that Genghis abandoned
Siberia. They saw literally no one except the Siberians who he had
asked to fish and hunt for them. It bothered him that Genghis did
not chase him. Billy wanted to beat Mongol armadas like he always
had: exhaust and ambush. The change in tactics worried him so much
that he left his force at several lakes while he sent scouts to fan
out far ahead. Billy himself went to the nearest city.

Instead of hidden armadas, Billy saw sentries
on mountains and hilltops near huge piles of wood to ignite when
they saw the Americans. No doubt they had several great hiding
places nearby. It wasn’t until he saw Ulaanbaatar that he spotted
battalions hiding in forests and ravines. A lot of them. He circled
around and found even more south of the city.

Dressed as a Mongol civilian, he entered the
city and found a fortress. Everyone who didn’t want to fight
apparently left because they all seemed eager for battle. They
already disassembled the most flammable structures and built
hundreds of underground bunkers and stone buildings for the
two-wanders to fight from. Everything around the banks looked like
kill zones. Food seemed widely distributed, he saw water barrels
everywhere, and safely assumed that they kept little wealth
here.

Genghis took all the fun out of sacking
cities.

Billy put himself in the Khan’s boots and
everything suddenly made sense. The Mongols couldn’t catch
marathoners, except sleeping near their targets, so that’s where
they deployed their troops. He didn’t see any crops, so the Mongols
only planted what they could harvest before the raiders got here.
He saw few horses, mules, or oxen, so they probably drove them
south as well.

Genghis planned on using hunger to force them
to leave. If it worked, then the Americans would never return.
Billy respected the move. What he didn’t know was how to counter
it. He couldn’t even besiege them because they had more food. Since
he didn’t even have bombs, it could take weeks to finish off each
city. They had already run out of the supplies they brought from
Alaska. Instead of returning north to his troops, Billy flew south
until he found what he was looking for: food.

Instead of storing food within the cities,
they hid it a few hours south, in the middle of nowhere, so the
Americans couldn’t find it.

Nobody ever said Mongols were dumb. Genghis
weighed the pros and cons of each force and developed tactics
accordingly. The Mongols won as long as they didn’t lose. It was
Billy who needed victories to justify taking so many so far for so
long. It wasn’t until he thought of his father that the answer came
to him. And the answer had him laughing all the way to his
troops.

Billy led Team Red south, but carefully
avoided the cities like the plague. Instead they went to the border
separating Mongolia and China and found the support camps keeping
the troops in Mongolia fed. There they found the civilians, herds,
and harvested crops. With the vast Gobi Desert to the south and
Korea to the east, those in eastern Mongolia literally had nowhere
else to go.

Genghis assumed the Baron wanted to sack
Mongol cities, which is what he would have done. But, instead,
Billy’s goal was to kill Mongols. And that’s so much easier when
they have sent their quads elsewhere.

Team Red fell upon the defenseless civilians
just as Mongols for centuries wiped out American civilians. Billy
fouled watering holes within the desert and destroyed everything of
value. They found little gold, so they carried food. Instead of
flying fast and far, they spread out as wide as possible along the
border. The towns in northern China seemed to have more Mongols
than Chinese, so they let the Chinese leave before burning those
towns and everyone in them. They created a path of destruction
about one thousand kilometers wide. Once west of the Gobi, they
raided even wider. The cities they sacked acted as supply bases
rather than forts.

Genghis finally showed up with a
quarter-million quads. Billy rotated his highest-flying battalions
to blast them during the day, while the rest rotated lightning
strikes at night. Genghis suffered several times as many casualties
simply because Billy had better fliers. Genghis retaliated by
sending battalions on suicide attacks on Billy’s camp to catch
those resting. Team Red continued west, destroying everything
within range, and occasionally doubling back to hit the Khan’s camp
at night.

What he didn’t do was attack the cities that
spent a year preparing for him. Instead, they destroyed the people,
roads, and supplies that kept those cities alive to make them
wither on the vine.

While Team Red lured Genghis west, Billy flew
to Korea where his one hundred fifty thousand near-marathoners
waited for him. Guides led them to their fleet, anchored
equidistant between Korea and Shanghai, the port city that divided
China from the Empire. They crossed the sea one division at a time,
resting on an uninhabited island where their ships provided them
with tents, blankets, stoves, food, and potable water.

The Mongols did not accept the Yangtze River
as their new border, or even China as an independent nation, so
both sides struck each other constantly. Which made President Zhu
very receptive to a message from the Red Baron to meet him in
Shanghai. It not only surprised Zhu when the Baron actually showed
up, but shocked him to learn that one hundred fifty American
battalions wanted to attack Mongol units. Zhu did his part by
ordering a brief attack all along the border. When the Mongols
retaliated in force, the Americans fell upon them from behind,
after first destroying their bases.

The near-marathoners then sacked and pillaged
everything within three hundred clicks of the coast, targeting
everyone who looked Mongolian, but letting the rest live. They
stole every ship that looked seaworthy to transport their
valuables. They started in the south so that they could raid north,
closer to home. By the time Genghis heard the Baron led troops
within northern China, Billy had already looted the area around
Peking and soon disappeared into Manchuria. The Baron left a video
explaining he didn’t burn Peking because he wanted everyone to see
him duel the Immortal.

When Team Red got the news, they had already
accumulated as much wealth as they could carry, and so went home.
The Europeans continued west, the Asians southeast, and the
Americans hugged Siberia until they crossed into Alaska.

Billy spent the next several months traveling
Asia to reproduce with the mothers of his children, give speeches,
and advise governments. Kings still threatened war, rebels still
threatened revolution, and everyone had a grievance. Billy wisely
intervened as little as possible, other than to advise non-violent
means to effect change.

On Hainan Island, Billy met with Kung-ti,
whose grandson Zhu the Chinese elected as the first president of
the Republic of China. The fat man hugged Billy like a son. It felt
like being thrown into a large vat of leftover soup.

“You scared us, you know?” he told Billy.
“The Khan stabbed deep into our territory like a hot knife. A
nation of butter would have resisted him more. Then you destroyed
his follow-on force. Even better were the videos. Before that, they
had great morale while we were depressed. Your videos reversed
that. Your victory gave us the confidence to bomb the Mongols to
hell, wounding Genghis Khan himself. You wanted democracy instead
of another dictatorship, so I held elections to capitalize on Zhu’s
new popularity.”

“Would you like to retake the rest of China?”
Billy asked lightly, watching the greedy bastard squirm. “If I kill
Genghis and destroy his largest air units, would the Republic of
China send everything they have north? I’ll have a quarter-million
marathoners and half a million Americans. I’m willing to bribe
Korea, Japan, Taiwan, India, Persia, and Europe into helping
you.”

The old man’s eyes twinkled. “We Chinese will
never feel safe as long as the Empire threatens our border. Most of
the Chinese quads who fled with stolen loot have since resettled in
our territory, while few Chinese still serve in the Mongol Air
Force. We now have over a million quads in our air force and
militias.”

Billy took that as a yes. “I’m distributing
videos urging Asians -- not just Chinese -- to kill Mongols after
I’ve killed The Immortal. You could help by handing out the wands I
brought, and maybe giving away spears, swords, and arrows. Genghis
will have to devote more quads to basic security, leaving him fewer
to chase me.”

The governor was too excited -- or heavy --
to continue standing. He fell into a chair to think through the
consequences. “But how will we know the Khan is dead?”

“Post sentries around the Peking Stadium.
When they see him die, ring monastery bells. Have your men stand by
every bell in every city to spread the word.”

“That’s it?” Kung-ti asked.

Billy paused dramatically. “Well, there is
one more thing you can do in return for getting northern China. Out
of all the people in the world, I trust you the most to do
this.”

Billy leaned closer and whispered into his
ear so that not even their bodyguards could overhear.

Kung-ti looked like the Buddha after a
satisfying fart. "You are such a clever bastard. You have come to
the right person. I shall personally see to it."