"Why?"
"Because if they're here to stand us before a firing squad, I'd kinda like a little advance notice."
"I can't tell," Cooder admitted.
"Why not?"
"I'm afraid to open my eyes," said Don Cooder.
Reverend Jackman pushed Don Cooder aside.
"Looks kinda like an execution squad to me," he said dully.
That opened Don Cooder's eyes. They went sick.
"I guess this is where we separate the men from the boys," he intoned. "I guess this is the end of the line. The final roundup. The last sign-off. The-"
"I'm gonna slap you if you go all hysterical on me," Reverend Jackman warned.
Then the footsteps were right outside the door and both men shrank back from the sound of a brass key grating in a rusty lock.
The ponderous door creaked open, filling the dungeon room with a wavering light from ranked wall torches.
Maddas Hinsein was the first to enter. He entered smiling. Somehow that smile made the blood run in their veins like Freon.
"He's showing his teeth," whispered Don Cooder.
"You think it's a smile?" asked Reverend Jackman.
"Well, he doesn't look all that hungry."
"Okay, he's smiling. Is that good news or bad?"
"Well, I did tip him double, even though we wanted the airport."
Reverend Jackman frowned. "Somehow I don't think that's why he's smiling."
The information minister slipped into the room. He was not smiling. In fact, he looked like a man who had just dodged a locomotive and was trying to regain his nerve.
"I bid you greetings from his excellency President Maddas Hinsein of Irait," the man said in a voice he tried to make portentous, but which came out tinny.
"Ask his most gracious excellency if he will agree to an interview," Don Cooder said quickly. "I can promise him global news coverage."
"Our Precious Leader requests that we both join him in a press conference."
"Press conference? I'm not good at those. A two-shot would be better. You savvy two-shot? One on one?"
"Our Precious Leader wishes that you both inform the world of his miraculous escape from a foolish assassination attempt."
"Glad to," said Reverend Jackman, stepping forward. "Just point the way. I'm ready."
"Who invited you?" snarled Don Cooder, stepping between the reverend and the president.
Reverend Jackman pointed toward Maddas Hinsein, who although he did not understand English, seemed to be enjoying the sight of their bickering with immense relish.
"He did," said Reverend Jackman. "You got a complaint, take it up with my main man there."
Don Cooder did, although indirectly. "Could you ask his most royal highness why he's holding his press conference?" he inquired of the information minister.
"Our Precious Leader begs to inform you that you will assist him in announcing his ultimatum to the infidel occupation forces in Hamidi Arabia," the information minister explained.
"Why do you need us?" blurted Reverend Jackman.
The question was conveyed to Maddas Hinsein in Arabic.
Upon receiving the answer, the information minister turned as pale as a burnoose. He was so flustered he made his protest in English, which his president did not understand.
"But, Precious Leader," he said, "how can you offer him the post of information minister? I am your loyal information minister."
"No way I'm settling for information minister," Reverend Jackman said indignantly. "It's the vice-presidency or nothing."
"What's the salary?" asked Don Cooder.
Before another word could be spoken, President Maddas Hinsein drew his pearl-handled revolver and shot his information minister dead in mid-protest.
His corpse fell across the shoes of Don Cooder and Reverend Juniper Jackman. Neither man moved.
Another council member stepped forward.
"Our Precious Leader has decreed that due to unforeseen losses among the Revolting Command Council," he said stiffly, "you, Cooder, and you, Jackman, have been offered the positions of information minister and vice-president respectively. Do you accept?"
Reverend Juniper Jackman and Don Cooder blinked. Slowly their heads turned toward one another. Their eyes met. Their mouths opened. They looked down at the twitchy corpse of the late Iraiti information minister, who looked back at them with eyes that did not see.
Their gaze jerked up to meet that of Maddas Hinsein, Scimitar of the Arabs.
"We-" Reverend Jackman started to say.
"-gladly accept," Don Cooder finished.
"Amen."
"Make that a salaam," Don Cooder said hastily. "No offense, effendi. Wallah!" He smiled weakly and threw in a loyal salute.
Chapter 21
Harold W. Smith happened to be home when the surprise telecast was satellited out of Abominadad. He was watching a National Geographic special on peep-toad migration in Rhode Island. It was so dull that his wife, Maude, had gone to bed ten minutes into the program. After the beaming features of Maddas Hinsein resolved on the screen, Smith was grateful for that minor blessing.
A mordant voice-over said, "This is Television Abominadad, broadcasting the glorious news that our Precious Leader Maddas Hinsein the First has reclaimed primacy over the ancient capital, soon to be the capital of Greater Arabia."
"My God," gasped Smith. "Chiun was correct."
The camera pulled back, showing Maddas Hinsein, one arm raised in a characteristic messianic gesture, standing on a balcony of the Palace of Sorrows. Below, a clapping crowd surged.
Maddas wore a white burnoose and flowing ghurta. He looked like a fat glowworm with a caramel-coated face.
"These pictures were taken early today, showing our precious leader bestowing his blessings on the people of Abominadad, who had just survived a cruel gas attack by criminal U.S. forces," the mordant voice went on in English as thick as blood pudding.
Smith started. "Gas attack? Impossible!"
"in a twist of kismet, the gas killed few Arabs but completely extinguished the lives of two foreign agents allied with the American imperialists," ran the mordant voice-over.
Another voice-Smith recognized it as belonging to BCN network anchorwoman Cheeta Ching-broke in to explain, "This transmission is coming to you live from Abominadad, Irait. Due to the importance of the Gulf crisis, BCN has elected to break programming at this time. A full wrap-up will follow, along with a late update on my heroic struggle to become impregnated."
The picture switched, showing two bodies in the rubble. One was of a young blond woman lying facedown. The fact that she had an extra set of arms was not obvious, but neither was it entirely hidden to viewers. Her skin was as black as coal tar-a certain symptom of nerve-gas poisoning. The camera panned over to another body, and Harold Smith saw a familiar face, one that had been beamed out of Irait once before.
The face of America's secret weapon, Remo Williams.
Remo lay on his back, attired in a torn profusion of purple and scarlet silks. His eyes were open, his mouth twisted. He neither moved nor seemed to see.
The panic that seized Smith's vitals at this latest exposure of CURE's enforcement arm subsided when he realized that Remo was clearly dead. His head lay at a crazy angle, indicating a broken neck. His throat was a livid purplish blue, like a great bruise. His skin, too, was the color of slate.
The picture went dark. Then the screen framed a podium on which the Revolting Command Council sat, attired in frog-green military uniforms. Smith frowned. They wore their military attire only when they were about to threaten some one.
Baroque martial music blared.
Abruptly the council members jumped to their feet and burst into applause. The light illuminated their mustaches. They looked odd and flat, as if painted on.
The camera swung around, catching Maddas Hinsein, a towering figure in a gold-and-white uniform and black beret, as he swaggered into the room.
On either side of him, lo
oking for all the world like the condemned, walked Reverend Juniper Jackman and Don Cooder.
"My God!" Smith croaked.
Smith always kept his worn briefcase beside him. He reached for this now. Throwing the disarming latches, he lifted the lid to reveal a mini-computer and a portable telephone hookup. Smith stabbed a button that tied it into the dedicated line to the White House.
It took several rings, but the President of the United States finally answered, out of breath.
"Smith. Do you see what I see?"
"I am afraid so," Smith replied tightly. Like twin camera lenses, his gray eyes were focused at the flickering TV images.
The camera tracked the unlikely trio as they took their seats at the table, Jackman and Cooder settling on either side of the president of Irait. They looked like food tasters at the inaugural banquet of an extremely unpopular king.
"And now," the heavily accented announcer said, "his glorious excellency the Scimitar of the Arabs, President Maddas Hinsein."
Maddas Hinsein began reading from a sheet of paper. He read slowly, in a low, sonorous voice. Every word was in Arabic.
Smith held the phone to his chest, waiting for the usual English translation, but none was forthcoming. He assumed there was a problem with the audio.
The insistent buzz of the President's voice coming from the buried receiver forced Harold Smith to lift the earpiece to his own ear.
"What the heck is he saying?" the President wanted to know.
"I cannot say, Mr. President," Smith replied. "But Maddas Hinsein is extremely calculating. This is designed to play to an Arabic-speaking audience, and I suspect the presence of Jackman and Cooder is meant to warn us against interference."
"You think he's trying to break up the UN coalition?"
"It is possible," Smith admitted.
"And what was that stuff about a U.S. gas attack? We know his own people gassed Abominadad."
"This may be a propaganda position, possibly a pretext for whatever he plans next."
"But what the heck is he planning?"
"I do not know," said Harold W. Smith, who strained with his free ear to catch everything being said by Maddas Hinsein, despite his almost complete inability to comprehend the Arabic language.
Chapter 22
Yussef Zarzour would have given his right eye to have listened to the very important speech being given by President Maddas Hinsein over the Iraiti airwaves.
But as a colonel in the Renaissance Guard, he had his patriotic duty to perform.
The orders had come by radio from the Precious Leader himself.
"Take your Scud launcher to the Maddas Line," President Hinsein had instructed.
The Maddas Line was a Maginot Line of earthen-berm fortifications and barbed-wire coils just above the Kuran-Hamidi Arabian border. When the UN forces attacked, as surely they would, they would have to breach that horrendous fortified barrier.
"Park it at Launch Station Ibn Khaldoon," Maddas added.
"At once, Precious Leader," Colonel Zarzour said, saluting snappily, even though he was communicating by field radio. Who knew but that there might be a spy for the president lurking nearby? So it was better to salute and keep one's head than not to and risk losing it.
"When you are there, set your missile for coordinate 334."
"Three-three-four. Yes, yes, I have it."
"Then contact me. Personally."
Leaping into the driver's booth of the eight-wheeled mobile erector-launcher, Colonel Zarzour drove it out of its sand-colored protective revetment.
He had driven madly. The launcher barreled south through the featureless talcum-powder-like sands, resembling a giant camel-colored lipstick container on wheels.
When he ran out of petrol-petrol being a precious commodity during the crisis, thanks to the anti-Irait embargo-some forty kilometers south of Station Khaldoon, Zarzour faced a choice. Commit suicide or lie boldly.
He decided to lie, not boldly, but brazenly. If he shirked his duty, the Scimitar of the Arabs would have his body interred with dead pigs as punishment for his dereliction. There were worse fates than suicide, and Maddas Hinsein had compiled a list of them, which he sometimes read aloud on Iraiti television as a kind of poem to loyalty. He was not sometimes called the Scourge of the Arabs because he was unafraid to scourge the Arabs as well as the infidel unbelievers.
"Precious Leader," Colonel Zarzour reported by radio, "I am at the appointed place."
"Good. Launch."
It was not the order Zarzour had expected. He had not been sure what to expect.
But because he did not want to spend eternity with the corrupt flesh of unclean animals, he went to the control panel and initiated the launch sequence.
The missile canister reared up with the whine of toiling machinery, until it was completely vertical. Colonel Zarzour punched in the targeting coordinates.
Then, tears in his eyes because he knew these coordinates were in Hamidi Arabia, a land of fellow Moslems, Zarzour initiated the firing sequence. Then he ran for his life.
Dense black smoke began generating at the base of the missile. The stern vomited an orange tail of flame and thundered straight up. The desert air quaked and vibrated.
When the Soviet Union first sold Irait their top-of-the-line Scud missile system back in the days when the two nations were allies, they did so with complete confidence that even if Maddas Hinsein should acquire a nuclear and chemical warfare capability and undertake some grandiose misadventure, the Scuds would avail him little because they were notoriously unreliable.
The Scud missile that lifted off from Launch Station Ibn Khaldoon, turning south, should have been no different. But through a quirk of Soviet technology, and the fact that it had been fired from the wrong position, its gyroscopic inertial guidance system, shifting and compensating in confusion, did something no Scud had ever before done in the history of modern warfare.
It struck its assigned target. Dead center.
Chapter 23
Praetor Winfield Scott Hornworks got the call in the privacy of his air-conditioned office.
He blanched at the sound of the anxious voice buzzing in his ear. "Oh, no. Oh, no," he moaned. His voice trailed off into a kind of sick mew.
Woodenly he replaced the tactical field telephone receiver when the voice was through reporting. A man learning that he had terminal cancer might wear such an expression.
Taking up his non-issue ostrich-plume helmet, he trudged out of the office and down to the basement war room, where Imperator Chiun and Prince Imperator Bazzaz were examining flash messages.
"It's over," Hornworks said leadenly.
Sheik Fareem looked up. "What is, Praetor Hornworks?"
"The war," the American general said in a crestfallen tone. "It's done with. We lost."
"How can this be?" demanded Chiun, Master of Sinanju.
"The Iraitis hit us where we really live. Our army's sunk. We've suffered complete tactical paralysis. We're talking about the worst military defeat since the Little Big Horn."
"Speak English."
"They got the 324th Data Processing Cohort," Praetor Hornworks explained, dejection muting his voice. "It was a Scud, damn their eyes. Warhead filled with nerve gas. The poor bastards-I mean bastards and bitches, since we're coed now-never had a chance. Every one of 'em's down."
"How many dead?" asked Chiun, his eyes pained.
"None. They got into their chemical suits just in time. They're sick as dogs, but they'll pull through, once we're done medevacking them to Germany."
"Can these worthy ones be replaced?" asked Imperator Chiun.
"You kidding me?" Praetor Hornworks said indignantly. "You know how long it takes to train a soldier in VMS? Besides, that ain't our biggest worry. They got the computers, the faxes, the telex lines, everything. It was all tied in through the 324th. That's all she wrote. Our tooth-to-tail logistics are shot."
Around the room, the faces of Chiun, Sheik Fareem, and Prince Imperator Bazz
az looked as blank as three slices of Wonder Bread.
"We have no inventory control!" Hornworks snapped.
If anything, their blankness increased.
"We don't know where anything is!" Hornworks shouted in exasperation. "Or was. That means munitions, rations, armor, rolling stock, the whole shebang. Including our compaign plans. They were all on hard disk. I'm sick, I tell you. My pension just went south. We're reduced to war-gaming with an abacus, if we had one."
"Ah," said Chiun, the sheik, and the imperator general in unison. The Master of Sinanju turned to the sheik.
"Have you an abacus to lend this unfortunate white?" he asked.
The sheik nodded. "For a price."
The Master of Sinanju told Praetor Hornworks, "You shall have your abacus, praetor. Take heart. Your problem is solved."
"Wonderful," growled Hornworks. "That ain't all the bad news. Maddas Hinsein just appeared on the TV. He's alive and kicking. We're back to square one."
"No," said Chiun, lifting a wise finger, "for I have a brilliant plan!"
"And the dang lraitis have a zillion Scuds all ready to go. They may be neolithic by our standards, but they'll kill us just as dead as neutron bombs."
"You have neutron booms?" asked Chiun, wispy beard atremble.
"Sure, can I use them? Assuming I can find them now."
"No!" said Chiun firmly. "Consign them all into the Gulf!"
"Then let me unleash our air assets," Hornworks pleaded. "Please. We gotta knock out those Scuds fast! We can do it inside of a day, maybe three. We have Wild Weasels, Ravens, Skyhawks, Blackhawks, Tomcats, Eagles, Flying Falcons, Cobras and Jaguars, all set to go.
"I will not risk the lives of innocent animals in a war not of their making," Chiun said flatly.
"But we can own the skies!"
"Let the enemy have the sky," proclaimed the Master of Sinanju in a triumphant voice. "We will take the ground."
"Yes," said Sheik Fareem sagely. "We want nothing of the sky." The old sheik turned to his adopted son. "Are you in agreement, my son?"
"Absolutely. There is no oil in the sky."
Praetor Hornworks blinked. His eyes narrowed craftily.
"How about Apaches?" he asked. "And maybe a few Tomahawks? At least let me use the tip of the spear."
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