Card Sharks

by George R. R. Martin

  "Got 'em," Ray said. If he resented the means I'd used to break up the fight, he didn't show it. I can say this for the kid, he did not seem the grudge-holding type. If you made him mad, he either busted your head right off, or he put it behind him.

  I nodded thanks, walked over to take the mike. "Angel Station, this is Stud Six, over." Stud - as in seven-card - was our unit codename. Six is military-speak for the man in charge.

  "Jack of Hearts, we have a problem, over."

  "Knave of Hearts," I corrected. "What's your problem, over?"

  "Angel Two is down. Repeat, Angel Two down."

  That meant one of the Sikorskies at Angel Station - the chopper hide-site, a few miles north of the vacation spot where we'd spent the day - was sick and not expected to get better. It was no big deal. That's why we brought three; in a pinch, we and the hostages could all cram into one and take off again. Conceivably.

  I rang off. Joann Jefferson was looking at me again. I went and sat down beside her.

  She was flushed and breathing rapidly. She had not shown nerves before; I hoped she wasn't getting near any major fracture points.

  "Knave of Hearts," she said. "I still can't get over that. Not ace or king."

  "Using aces for codenames would be giving a little too much away. Besides - I know what I am."

  She laughed. She had a good laugh - hearty, though she had presence of mind to keep it way down. "And I'm the Queen of Spades."

  I shrugged. "You picked it."

  "I know what I am, too." She nodded to Damsel, who was talking in a low voice to Chung. "So why aren't you chasing after little girl lost, there? I'm pretty sure you're the type who likes girls."

  "K'ung-fu Tzu tells us that gentlemen never compete. She has ample suitors anyway, I think."

  She gave me an arched eyebrow. I grinned. I do that too, when I am, shall we say, extremely skeptical.

  "You don't like blondes?"

  "I have very catholic tastes, which isn't altogether surprising in a High Church boy like myself. But I'm also a professional. I have this iron-bound rule about sex with subordinates: I don't do it. Not, I hasten to add, that I'm often tempted by those under my command. I like girls, and prefer women, but that's the extent of it."

  I tugged the end of my moustache. "Maybe my tastes aren't quite so catholic after all. Still, I find Woman infinitely variable, and infinitely diverting."

  She laughed again - giggled, more. "You are more full of bullshit than any white person I ever met," she said. "I like you. You're funny. And you treat me like a person. You don't expect me to make the coffee, and you don't go - bending over backwards or anything."

  "Ms. Jefferson, I am a male chauvinist pig in good standing. I don't let that interfere with my job, either. What you are to me now is precisely what the others are: an operator, to use the jargon of this milieu. One, I'll add, who's given me considerably less trouble than certain others."

  She bit her lip. "After this is over - I mean, if we survive -" She looked away then. "Never mind. I'm sorry I opened my mouth. I don't have much experience at this."

  "Practice never hurt anybody." I undid the Velcro cover and checked my watch. "We still have a few minutes before H-Hour."

  She shook her head. "It's stupid anyway," she said, and it was her turn to be little girl lost. "I can't touch anybody, you understand? If I do, I kill them. I can't help it. I can have friends, if anybody wants to be friends with a black freak like me. I can't -"

  I reached a fingertip and touched her briefly on the cheek. She jumped. My whole finger went numb.

  "When you have the luxury to think about anything but the mission," I said, "consider the ramifications of my special gift. One can do wonders with prosthetics."

  She frowned, slightly, which made her look almost intolerably cute. I decided I wasn't missing anything in passing Damsel by. "Right now, it's time to go back to playing soldier. Listen up, everybody."

  They clustered round, Darius hanging slightly back. "It's almost time to move, people. So bring it on home: tell me what you're going to do."

  Ackroyd pointed a finger. "The guy in the watchtower goes bye-bye the second we hit the street."

  "We walk up to the walking guards and I greet them as a pious Turkmen comrade," Chung said.

  "I make everything quiet," Harvey whispered.

  "I black one out," Joann said, "both if I can."

  "If not I pop him," Ackroyd said.

  "Or I take him," Ray added with a flash of teeth.

  "Or I just shoot him," I said. "We'll play it by ear. Same drill with the boys at the gate."

  "Right," Chung said. "Then I get light and kite up for a peek over the wall -"

  "While I make the gate open. Slick as a whistle, we're inside."

  "We go straight," Ray said, "for the Chancellery." It was the biggest structure, and the closest to the main gate. Most of the hostages were held inside. Since many of its doors were hardened, it had been expected to be the toughest target for Delta, since they'd have to use explosive entry. For us it was a breeze.

  "Then we proceed clockwise," the Librarian said, "very methodically."

  There were only six buildings, out of a total of fourteen, that were feasible to house hostages, not to mention captors. That simplified things.

  Ackroyd cast a glance over the wall at the thickly-wooded compound. "I can't get over how big it is."

  "That's what twenty-seven acres looks like, city boy," Ray said. "Why the surprise? We been through a full-scale mock-up twenty-five times, back at Smokey.

  Ackroyd shrugged. I understood him. No matter how exact a model is, it can never really prepare you for the reality. If only more of our mission planners could grasp that little fact....

  From overhead came a welcome noise: the faint baritone hum of a Night Shadow's four engines. Our Archangels had arrived to watch over us.

  I raised my eyes to the sky. A few clouds, mostly stars. "'Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night,'" I said.

  "Zero hour, people. Time to move as if we have a purpose."

  ***

  We were so high on adrenaline when we hit the ground floor of the apartment where we'd been lying-up that we were damned near flying. We all had weapons in hand, even though it was questionable whether a week's hurried training made any of our civilians a greater threat to the bad guys than to themselves. But what the hey? With luck we wouldn't need to shoot anybody. We were aces, and even if none of us was exactly Golden Boy or the Great and Powerful Turtle, we were hard core.

  We were on. Felt we were ten feet tall and covered with hair. Felt immortal.

  You know what always happens when you get to feeling that way. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make cocky.

  Damsel stopped at the foot of the echoing cement stairs. She made Chung halt too by grabbing his arm. She went up on tiptoe - she was that tiny, that she had to stretch for Chung - and kissed him on the cheek.

  "You're the one," she breathed. "You're my Hero."

  Darius sneered. Blocked right behind the clinch, Billy Ray said, "Give me a flicking break."

  But something happened to Paul Chung in that moment. I saw it in his eyes. He seemed to, well, expand. What it actually amounted to I couldn't imagine.

  "Let's get a grip here, people," Ackroyd muttered. "'We got guns, they got guns, all God's children got guns.'"

  "He's right," I said, tapping Chung on the shoulder. Was it my adrenaline-fueled imagination, or did I feel a kind of electric tingle? "We're in a war zone now. Move out as I taught you, by pairs, rolling overwatch to the front doors, then out into the street and across."

  Chung and Mears hunkered down inside the stairwell, covering with their AKs. Thirty feet away across the lobby the night was black and empty beyond the glass doors. Taking Darius with me, I dodged quickly out and to the left. We pressed up against the wall to our side of the long-dormant elevator bank.

  I wave
d the next pair forward. Ray and Jefferson ran across a debris-littered floor to take up position on the far wall.

  Ackroyd and the Librarian advanced to the door. They and Mears and Chung were supposed to flank the entrance while Darius and I hit the street. If the Pasdaran guards thought there was anything unusual about a fidayin patrol emerging from a mostly-deserted apartment building - and in Tehran, there really wasn't - they would be too circumspect to say so. They were scared spitless of us too. A reputation for craziness is a wonderful thing.

  But it doesn't make you bulletproof.

  In spite of everything we'd drilled in, little Harvey walked bolt upright, as though he was heading back to roust some boisterous teens from the stacks. As he reached the front of the foyer a guy in a sweater popped right out on the sidewalk in front of him, screamed something with Allah in it, and cut loose with an Uzi from the hip.

  The glass blew in around us like a crystal razor snowstorm. Harvey's right leg snapped out from under him. He pitched onto his face.

  Ackroyd pointed a finger. The gunman vanished.

  I raised my AKM. The doorway filled up with bodies and bearded screaming faces. I held down the trigger and gave them something to scream about. They fell back from the door.

  The echoes of gunfire seemed to keep on rebounding off the foyer wall as the Iranians fell back to regroup. I scuttled to Harvey, bent over him. I rolled him onto his back. His face was pale, his pants leg wet with blood. The blood wasn't just blasting out, though. That meant the femoral hadn't been hit, which meant he was not going to bleed to death in the next thirty seconds or anything. Which meant the best immediate action was -

  "Ackroyd!" I yelled. "Pop him out!"

  The detective pointed. Harvey vanished, gone to the medevac tent back at Desert One.

  "Jesus!" Ackroyd said. "Which way do we go now? Up the stairs?"

  "We don't want to get trapped on the roof," I said. "Out the back - into the alley."

  Darius hit the back door first and stopped dead. Locked. "Out of my way, diaper head," Billy Ray growled. He walked into the door and right on through without slowing.

  The night air was cool and full of the sounds of angry voices. There was a mob out on Roosevelt, between us and the Embassy, howling for infidel blood. It must have assembled in the time it took us to get down the stairs.

  Real coincidental, wasn't it?

  No time to think about that now. The mob had nerved itself to risk the fate of their writhing, moaning brethren blocking the front entrance and swarmed in, trampling them in their lust to catch us. I gave them another whole magazine through the foyer to reveal to them the error of their ways.

  "Come on," I said. "Next building. We need to get some space between us and them."

  Another heavy steel door faced our alley from the next brick building - they take security seriously in these ceiling fan countries. Not seriously enough to keep Billy Ray out when he was this motivated, though. As we crowded into the darkness of a short hallway filled with musty storeroom smells we heard the baying of the pack flood into the alley at our backs.

  There was an interval of running, hearts drumming, as we crashed through doors, dashed up short flights of stairs and down alleys. And then we had space to try to force some stinking alley air back into our lungs while Billy unlimbered the radio.

  Damsel was crying. Chung had his arm around her. He was standing tall, taller than his inches.

  "What happened?" Ackroyd demanded. He grabbed the front of my blouse. "What the fuck happened?"

  "Calm down," I said. "Something went wrong."

  "Something? We're blown. Harvey may be dead. All you can call that is something?"

  "I call it war. He's a casualty. We need to work on not joining him. And he's not going to die - they'll patch him up at Desert One."

  "Right."

  Ray handed me the microphone. "Archangel One, Archangel One, this is Stud Six. Archangel One, we need the Sword of the Lord in one hell of a hurry."

  "Stud Six, this is Archange l One," a voice came crackling back. "You're going to have to wait for it. Maximum sorry, over."

  "Angel One, what the hell are you talking about? Roosevelt Avenue is full of angry mob. We've got one man down. We need the streets swept. Over."

  "Stud Six, I say again: you're gonna have to wait, over."

  "Archangel, we have no time."

  "Orders, Stud Six. They had an accident back at Desert One. Chopper crashed into a C-130. Be advised we can take no action without clearing it through the man upstairs."

  For some reason I was very particularly struck by the fact that our line to the President ran through Battle and Brzezinski. I had little time to ponder the thought, because just then a vehicle cruised past the end of the alley. A light-colored Volkswagen Thing. At the wheel sat a tall man in a Panama hat and tropical suit.

  He turned his big head to stare at me. He still wore his sunglasses, like a traffic cop. He drove on.

  A moment later the pack came swarming around the corner. I dropped the microphone and grabbed for my AKM.

  "You were right!" I yelled to Ackroyd. "We're screwed, blued, and tattooed."

  Not many of the charging Iranians had guns - just a mob, not the Guard yet, thank God. But they had clubs and fists and stones and - yes - swords. And numbers, of course. We can't forget those.

  I had too many of my own people between me and the mob to fire effectively. I switched the selector to single shot and poised, waiting for a shot.

  Chance put Ray and Ackroyd at the front. The detective reacted more coolly than I imagined he could. He just started aiming that finger and picking off the rushing rioters, pop-pop-pop. Every time he pointed, one vanished.

  Unfortunately, he didn't have a full-auto teleport. They swarmed us.

  That was where young Billy came into his own. He caught the first man to reach him by the face. Bones crunched, blood flowed. Billy hurled him back against his buddies.

  The youthful Wolverine became a whirling dervish of fists and feet. He stove in skulls against the brick walls, ripped limbs from sockets, popped out eyes. He rammed his hand into a big bearded man's chest, pulled his heart out, and showed it to him, like something from a bad chop-socky flick. Ackroyd, who'd fallen back, overwhelmed, turned away and puked.

  Someone swung a length of pipe overhand at Billy's head. He threw up an arm to block. His ulna cracked with a sound like a gunshot.

  He grabbed the pipe-wielder by the loose front of his shirt and head-butted him. When he let the Iranian go the man's eyes were rolled up as if to stare at the deep dent in his own head.

  I stepped forward past the indisposed Ackroyd, jammed my Kalashnikov into the gut of the next man up, blew him down. Then I hosed the alley.

  The survivors of Ray's fury turned and fled. As they departed the alley, their better-armed and smarter - or luckier - comrades leaned around the wall and began to rip fire at us.

  Billy Ray said, "Fuck," and stepped back. Blood started from his shoulder where a round had taken him.

  "I can handle this," Chung said.

  "Paul, they're too far away to punch," I called over my shoulder. I was busting caps desperately now, not concerned with hitting anything, just trying to get the bad guys to pull their heads back.

  "I've gone beyond that, now," he said. "She's made me a new man."

  "Paul, what are you talking about?" Lady Black asked.

  "Watch." And he raised a few inches off the ground, and took off down the alley like an F-4 on afterburner.

  Now, keep in mind, he couldn't do this. 1t would be like me suddenly discovering that I could dead lift a tank, or shoot fire from my fingertips. He'd had his ace for years; all he could do was get lighter than air and float, or glide slowly down. He had no powered flight.

  You couldn't tell that to him. He hit the gunmen as if he'd been fired from a cannon and knocked them flying in all directions. Then he began to swoop back and forth, driving back the mob like a flying hammer.

&nb
sp; Damsel held clasped hands before her face. "My Hero," she breathed.

  Billy looked at me. What the fuck? he mouthed.

  I shrugged. The Librarian was the one with all the answers, and he was gone.

  Lady Black was at Ray's side. "You're hurt," she said.

  He had a bullet through one shoulder and a bad break in the other arm, and I noticed he'd taken a good shot to the face with a rock or some such, that had pushed his right cheekbone in pretty well. He shrugged her off. "I'm fine," he said, and the words were only slightly distorted.

  There was no rear door in the next building, and I could hear voices inside the one we'd last vacated. "We need to get moving down the alley," I said. "Paul! Paul, come on!"

  I don't know if he heard me. He was swooping back and forth, enjoying a power he'd never known, having the time of his life.

  I saw him fly back into view at the head of the alley. He paused a moment, hanging in midair, to flash us a V-for-victory.

  From out of sight down the street a heavy machinegun hammered. Paul Chung came apart in midair like a melon dropped from a skyscraper.

  "Paul!" Damsel shrieked. She started to throw herself toward the place where the bloody bits of her Hero were raining from the sky. Ackroyd caught her arm.

  "Come on," he said, "let's get out of here!"

  We ran. Into the alley stormed the mob, heartened by the arrival of heavy support. Shots cracked.

  One caught Amy Mears in the calf. She screamed and went down. Her wrist came out of Ackroyd's grip.

  The crowd flowed over her like surf.

  Ackroyd started popping frantically, dancing, trying to get a line of sight to her. The mob formed a writhing impenetrable wall between them. I caught a glimpse of Damsel as her headrag came free, revealing her unmistakably Western and feminine mass of curls. The crowd howled in outrage mixed with lust. There's nothing like old-time puritanical religion to give a mob the taste for rape.

  "Help me! Oh, God, help me!" Amy screamed, as her clothes were wrenched away. The mob closed in between us, forcing the rest of us back like incoming tide.

  Billy Ray waded back into the crowd. Somebody hit him in the chest with a fire axe. He rocked back, busted the hardwood handle with a hammerfist blow, then plucked the sharp stub from the wielder's hands and jabbed it through his belly.