Kingdom Come

by David Rollins

  The ambulance followed the sign and we lurched hard in the turn. Knowing you can’t do anything about the shit you see around you can get to you. Even when you recognize that it can get to you, it still gets to you. Maybe saving the world wasn’t so bad after all. I had it good, and didn't know it. Draining, yes, but at least it left me with a smug sense of over achievement.

  Images of the family killed by the Scorpion back at the warehouse took over my thoughts. The Scorpion – head and shoulders above the other assholes. And now this asshole had become a supercharged chocolate starfish, waving the captured president of Russia at the world in the hope of unleashing calamitous death and destruction on an unprecedented scale. And on the Scale of Helpfulness, it would be right up there if a bullet could just find its way between said asshole’s eyeballs. Like Hitler, right? If only, back in the day, they’d managed to –

  “Boss,” said Jimmy interrupting my daydream. “You seeing this?”

  I felt the ambulance slow and pull over. “What up,” I said, snapping out of it. The first thing I noticed – no refugees. For some reason they were giving this place a wide berth. I ducked my head so I could scan ahead and the reason became plain. “Shit,” I muttered. Across the road, blocking the way forward, were several burning cars and other less substantial refuse, along with fires burning in 55-gallon drums.

  “This is not good,” Natasha informed me helpfully. “What does American tough guy do now?” She asked it in that sneering manner you can’t get away with unless you’re at least a solid nine. She was referring to the maybe fifty or so assholes toting AKs, RPGs and numerous “fittys” – .50 caliber machine guns. Others were waving around ISIS flags, a gutsy call with all the Russians around, let’s be honest. This platoon and a half of assholes was maybe 100 yards ahead, shouting and gesturing at us, full of dangerous trigger-happy excitement. I wasn’t sure what they wanted, but I was pretty certain it entailed us vacating the vehicles, which I was not inclined to do.

  This answered my question about where all the assholes had gone. They’d come here, and probably to other checkpoints, in the hope of killing and extorting their way to a little nest egg to set themselves up in the peace to come. Shooting our way out would be dicey – too many of them, too few of us. And running an ISIS jolly roger of our own up the flagpole and driving through while they all saluted it probably wouldn't cut the mustard. Options were narrow. Shadows in the ambulance began to dance around – assholes driving up behind us, narrowing the options to none. At least, none that were good.

  “Boss …” said Alvin.

  “Lock and load,” I said into the comms. There was nowhere to go, certainly nowhere to go quietly.

  Bo and Jimmy replied, “Roger that,” their voices tight in their throats.

  “One thing we got plenty of now is ammo,” said Alvin, checking his webbing.

  “And the other is Spaghetti with Beef & Sauce,” I said, placing a couple of magazines on the gurney for rapid access.

  “I’d prefer to go with the Colt, boss.” Alvin unwound the scarf from his head and replaced it with Kevlar, cocked the M4 and snicked off the safety.

  “No, no – I can talk to them,” Mazool urged from the front. “I can get them to let us pass. Hand me a black flag. I can do it.”

  He was serious about it, but I wasn't about to –

  A sudden massive explosion picked up the ambulance and dropped it, bouncing and rocking, back onto its tires. Noise, heat and blinding dust consumed our vehicle along with a blast wave that threw me against the roof. As I fell, a second explosion behind us kicked the ambulance sideways and all of us with it. I fell to the floorboards and paper, wound dressings, unidentified plastic and metal flew around inside the ambulance, along with a whirlwind of grit. The frosted windows in the rear doors were shattered, adding crystals of safety glass to the shower.

  Beyond the ambulance, flames were everywhere. Tongues of yellow and orange slicing through dust clouds billowing here and there from the percussion of multiple small and larger explosions. Heat radiated through the newly vented rear doors, pulsing hotter with some of the larger explosions. I could feel it as I lay on the floor tangled in rubber tubing, torn sheets, a niqab, used dressings and Alvin’s limbs. I felt like I’d been worked over by a baseball bat. My ears rang as Alvin and I got to our hands and knees, Alvin spitting blood. Blood dripped from my nose onto the debris between my hands. It was running down a cheek. I was wounded, but where and how badly hadn’t registered.

  Though my brains were addled, I could guess what had happened. Hellfire missiles. Two of them. One ahead of us, one behind. The Reapers. Some operator in an air-conditioned booth a thousand miles away had assessed the situation and decided to go kinetic on our behalf. It was a little too close for comfort, but I quietly thanked him or her anyway. Shit would have been trumps otherwise. I happened across my M4 on the floor – after kneeling on it painfully – got up, kicked the rear doors open and fell out onto the road. The dust was clearing and fires burned all around us. Leaning on the ambulance for support, I edged around it, ready to shoot. The pickup came into view. “You okay?” I shouted, my own voice sounding muffled to me, like I had socks stuffed in my ears. For a few seconds – nothing. But then I saw a couple of raised arms and thumbs-up hand signals. Bo and then Igor. The front passenger door opened and Jimmy dropped out as if falling through a trapdoor. Everyone was confused, battered and covered in black oily soot. I approached the Toyota, my ears numb and ringing. Taymullah sat up slowly in the vehicle’s bed, bewildered and dazed like a hit and run survivor, as Farib opened the driver’s door. Everyone had come through, albeit badly shaken up.

  “On me,” I said through the comms. If not for the earpiece I’d have had two burst eardrums. Jimmy, Bo and Alvin made their way to me somewhat drunkenly, their silhouettes outlined by oily fires, the smell of barbecue and diesel in the air. Not a great smell. Nothing moved beyond the barricade, which was now scattered, scorched and burning.

  “Damn Reapers,” said Jimmy. “With friends like that, right?”

  “You okay, boss?” Bo came closer. “Half yo’ ear is hangin’ off. Fuck that shit bleeds, don't it?”

  Jimmy gave him a nod.

  I was relieved. In the scheme of things, a mangled ear was better than a ruptured eardrum.

  “I can stich it,” Bo continued.

  “Trim the other one the same an’ you be Mr Spock, sir.” Alvin was grinning. “Live long an’ prosper.”

  Hilarious.

  The amusement faded into a frown. “Oh, sir…” he reached forward and picked something off my webbing, a piece of bloody gristle. He held it up. A piece of me.

  “Lemme see,” said Bo, coming in for a closer look. “Yeah, we hurry I can stitch it back. Won't take more’n five minutes. Maybe it’ll take. Or I can stitch the two halves of what’s left – join ‘em up. Up to you, boss.”

  Vanity won. “Okay, put all the pieces of me back together,” I told him. We returned to the ambulance, opened the doors and I sat on the back end while Bo readied his OR.

  Jimmy said, “There were foreign fighters on these barricades, sir. Saw ‘em before the Hellfires came in. Could be some of them were the Scorpion’s men.”

  Bo went to work with swabs, saline, antiseptic spray and antibiotics. That was entirely probable. There had been at least fifty fighters in Al-Aleaqarab’s band back at the warehouse, and not all of them had gone off to look for the wounded Russian bird. “Let’s go see if we can find some survivors,” I said without confidence. Given the devastation, finding survivors was a lottery we’d be lucky to win.

  Bo was still working on me with swabs, saline, antiseptic spray and antibiotics.

  Natasha, Igor and the Syrians milled around the back of the ambulance, still dazed, wondering what next. Fires raged here and there, but the flames were dying down in places where there wasn’t additional fuel, like tires or people, to feed off.

  I felt a pulling sensation on the side of my head that stopped
when Bo, wearing surgical gloves, snipped a thread with small scissors. “Done,” he said, peeling the latex gloves off his hands. “Better’n new. It starts to itch, gonna mean it’s healing.”

  Jimmy peered at my head. “Nice work. Watch for gangrene.”

  “What if it gets infected?” said Alvin pointing out a third option.

  “Probably have to take the whole ear off.”

  “At the neck, right?” I said. The odds were one in three. I’d had worse and told Bo thanks. Now, where were we? I grabbed my M4 and stood. On the basis that many hands make light work and we were all on the same journey and other clichés, I said, “Work in pairs. We want survivors.” I addressed Natasha, who was blackened by the sooty oil covering all of us. “And we want them to stay that way. In fact,” I told her, “you come with me.”

  She shrugged and said, “Yes, this would be my choice also,” like she was accepting an invitation for a friendly stroll. A tiptoe through the tulips maybe, except the garden beds here were planted with men, caught in the moment of their death by a firestorm that burned away lips, ears and hair and left them all alike: mouths open in a scream, charred, blackened limbs akimbo. Flames were still licking many of the dead as we picked among them. As for Natasha, perhaps I had done her a disservice. She was as affected by this horror as any sane person would be, stunned and silent as we toured the roadblock’s grim battlements, her mouth and nose covered with a rag picked up in the ambulance. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t mourning for these men who, barely moments ago, were our biggest immediate threat. But it is sobering to see so much life snuffed out in a ghastly instant. There are few more gruesome sights than the aftermath of a firestorm, and this was as bad as any of them.

  As for recovering survivors, the odds were long. The Reapers’ payloads had done the job they were designed to do and a tanker hauling diesel, captured by the jihadists, had added to the conflagration, its contents atomized explosively by the Hellfires, which then cooked off small arms ammunition over a wide area.

  I don't know where they came from, or who told them the road was clear, but the river of refugees began to flow again, moving around the roadblock. None slowed to gawk, probably because they’d had violence and death up to their eyeballs.

  After touring much of the site, Natasha pulled the rag away from her face just long enough to say, “There is no one.”

  She meant there was no one left alive, but I kept up with the inspection anyway, working methodically toward a barricade of vehicles near the perimeter of the roadblock where the fires were less intense. Maneuvering around the barricade, I saw three crispy black corpses lying on the ground, smoking, caricature faces stretched into the typical silent shriek. But one of them was moving, rolling stiffly from side to side. Using the sole of my boot against the body, I turned it over. Beneath it lay a man of around thirty, wearing a typical version of ISIS garb, the one that was a cross between Prince-Ali-Fabulous-He-Ali-of-Bagwa and Obi-Wan Kenobi. He was covered in the sooty oil like everyone else, but his bloodshot eyes were bright green, a kind you don’t see much in this part of the world. He was sobbing like a lost toddler at a fairground. “C’mon, shoot me,” he babbled in an unmistakable accent, which, to be honest, took me aback.

  “You’re from Queens?” I asked him.

  He ignored the question, or didn’t hear it. “Hey!” I snapped, getting his focus. “You’re American.”

  “I am Ad-Dawlah al-Islamiyah,” he babbled.

  In other words, he said he was Daesh – Islamic State, ISIS, the caliphate. “What’s your real name?”

  “Kill me.”

  Funny name, right? His accent reminded me of Queens and Al Bookerman’s. “Hey - say, ‘One Reuben on rye to go!’”

  “Kill me.”

  “Don't wanna play?”

  He glanced up at me, a little confused.

  “Okay, as far as killing you, maybe we can do you a solid and get around to that,” I said. “But first you’re gonna have to earn it.”

  Thirty-five

  Ronald V. Small @realSmall

  This week I lost five pounds and one notch on my belt!

  Slanting rainfall smeared the foyer windows. “Great,” Schelly muttered to herself. Wasn't it supposed to be sunny today? The cold hit her skin when she came through the revolving door, the rain immediately soaking her stockings to the skin. Damnit!

  After taking advantage of as much overhead cover as possible, she ran the last 30 yards to the Air Force Ford allocated to her for the duration. “Ughhh.” Schelly felt cold and half drowned as she pulled the door shut. Where has this rain come from? They can put us on Mars, but they can't get the damn weather right. “What’s with that?” she muttered. Moments later the Ford was exiting the lot, its heater and defog warming the cabin and clearing the mist from the windshield.

  The turnoff that would take her back to Fort Myer rapidly approached on the Interstate, but Schelly decided to keep on going. Some thinking time was needed to process the mission being re-planned on the hop. Is the end of the world really nigh? “Not if I can help it,” she said, continuing the conversation with the empty passenger seat.

  Schelly took another exit, following a sign that would take her into the city. The world can put itself on hold for 30 minutes. DC was a stranger to her, its famous monuments only familiar because of appearances in TV shows and movies.

  While programing a route into her phone, she caught a glimpse of a burgundy Cadillac parked in the breakdown lane and a woman lashed by wind and rain, wrestling a spare wheel out of the trunk.

  The Ford braked hard, turned into the breakdown lane and reversed twenty yards back toward the stricken vehicle. There was a plain black umbrella lying along the rear seat. Shelley grabbed it, opened the door and stepped into the downpour.

  Professor Kiraz Başak appeared from around the end of the trunk holding a jack lever in her hand. “Hey!” Schelly called out. “Need a hand?”

  ***

  Schelly felt self-conscious sitting on the couch in a hotel bathrobe, her wet hair wrapped in a towel, but Professor Kiraz Başak had insisted. The freezing rain had soaked both of them to the skin. Nothing a hot shower couldn’t fix. Schelly’s non-secured phone rang. Al Udeid, according to the screen. She reached forward, plucked it off the low coffee table in front of her, and pressed the green button. “Major Schelly speaking.”

  “Major, Lieutenant Colonel Josh Simmons.”

  “Afternoon, Colonel.” Colonel Simmons, 42nd Attack Squadron – Reapers.

  “Closer to zero dark here, Major.”

  “Yes, sir.” Schelly felt her heart rate surge. You wouldn’t be calling me, especially this late, unless there was a problem.

  “A courtesy call, Major. Your unit was under duress so I authorized a get out of jail free card for them.

  They were in trouble, but everything’s now okay? “Duress, Colonel?”

  “You were out of contact and we both know that I can’t say much of anything over an unsecured line. Everything’s fine on that front for the moment. I just wanted to give you a heads up.”

  “It’s much appreciated, sir.”

  “Not all good news, I’m afraid.”

  What?

  “My assets are winchester, Major. All I can promise is a turnaround that will be as quick as we can make it.”

  Winchester - your Reapers are sucking fumes and their missile stores are empty, so you’re bringing them home. But you’ll get them back on station as soon as possible. “Understand, sir. Anything else for me?”

  “No.”

  Shit.

  “Major?”

  “Sorry, Colonel. Just thinking.”

  “Best I can do is hawk the situation.”

  You can get some eyes in the sky, but nothing with offensive capability. Well, I guess that’s something … “Thank you, sir.”

  “Check sipper. Bunch of intel images there for you. One thing - your unit’s dress code has gone all Hajji, makes ‘em hard to pick out in a crowd.” />
  “I’ll see what can be done about it.”

  “Good night, Major.”

  “Night, sir.”

  Schelly put the phone back on the table. It was easy to lose focus on the reality for the boots on the ground where the situation could go into the toilet in a heartbeat. And now there was nothing riding shotgun for an uncertain period of time. There’s nada you can do, girl. You know the whole operation is held together with duct tape and paperclips.

  “Important?”

  “Huh? Sorry?”

  “The call.”

  “No.” Schelly tried to smile, but knew it looked forced. The professor was standing at her bedroom door in a robe, her hair also wrapped in a towel coiled up on her head, her skin flushed and pink. Wow, you have no right to look so good without makeup. The professor came over and flopped on the couch beside Schelly, trailing an invisible cloud of Arpege. And you smell so warm and … well, you smell good. “Feel better?” Schelly asked her.

  “Yes, thanks to you … Look, there’s nothing either of us can do. Everything we can do has been done.”

  “That doesn't stop me worrying about it.” Schelly massaged the bridge of her nose between her fingers.

  “Worry will get you nothing but an early grave. Hey, I really want to thank you,” said the pProfessor, removing the towel and rubbing her hair. “I thought I was going to get stranded out there on the highway. There was a special nut for the wheel, but I couldn’t find the spannerwrench. I called Triple A, but they were engaged.”

  “No problem. Really.”

  “Your clothes won’t take long to dry. Meanwhile, I have ordered lunch. Do you like pizza? I have it only when I need comfort food.”

  “Thanks, but I should keep moving.” Schelly removed her towel. “Got so many things to check up on.” And I want to get onto sipper and look at those photos.

  “Sitting on top of a computer will not make things go better, nor will it go worse if you are not. Ignore your Protestant work ethic for an hour. I have ordered for us already. Have you eaten? If it eases your conscience, we can talk work.”