In Akron, Ohio, rubber capital of the world, customized blimps were rushed through the manufacturing stage and shipped flat, ostensibly for use in the next Rose Bowl parade. Their actual destination was the Star in the Center of the Flower of the Desert Military Base in Hamidi Arabia, where they were inflated in the security of desert-camouflage bunkers.
The entire operation was mounted under the strictest security since the bombing of Tripoli. There were no leaks. This pleased the sector of official Washington that was privy to the plan.
Which did not include the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. They didn't have a clue. For the first time in the history of the United States, America was going to war and its high command was out of the loop.
But not completely out of the picture.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs barged into the Tank, a green trash bag clutched in one fist.
"I got one!" he crowed. The Joint Chiefs gathered around a table as he emptied the contents into a table. They picked through it eagerly.
"It's pink!" mumbled the commandant of the Marines. "I can't have my men wearing one of these! The Navy will never let me live it down."
"What're these triangles hanging down?" asked the Army Chief of Staff, fingering one.
The Air Force Chief of Staff snapped his fingers. "Gotta be a gas-detection patch. Probably turns green at the first sign of chlorine."
"And this flexible squiggle in back must be some newfangled gas sensor," put in the chief of naval operations.
Everyone agreed that this had to be so.
But the pink coloration continued to baffle them. Outside of a guerrilla war in Miami Beach, no one knew of a combat environment in which flamingo pink was dominant.
But even more troublesome was the fact that the White House was keeping them in the dark about the operation to come.
At the White House, the President of the United States was out to callers-especially those emanating from the Pentagon.
He was on the cherry-red line to Folcroft Sanitarium and Harold Smith.
"So far, so good," he was saying. "General Hornworks says his troops will only need another day's training before they move north."
"Has there been any word of the Master of Sinanju since he went into Irait?" Smith asked.
"None. But I share your concern. It was a brave thing that he did, darn brave."
"Normally I would not be concerned, Mr. President. But after his lengthy ordeal, he is not up to par. When this is over, I fear he will be of little use to us in the field."
The President sighed. "Let's get through this crisis before we start fretting about the future. My biggest worry after this is over and done with is having our armed forces restored to normal. You should see the new table of organization. Reading it takes me back-to Mrs. Populious' ancient-history class."
"Of course, sir."
"Has there been any activity from bait?"
"Nothing. A few broadcasts. They're continuing the pretense that Reverend Jackman and that anchor, Cooder, are now full-fledged members of the Revolting Command Council, but that's obviously a ploy to duck the hostage issue. But no military activity has been reported since the attempted border incursion. Let us hope it remains that way until Dynamic Eviction has been successfully concluded," Smith concluded tightly.
"You know, Smith, as crazy as this thing is, I can't help but feel absolute confidence in it," the President confided.
"The Master of Sinanju has never failed us yet."
The call was terminated. The world went back to counting the days and wondering what would happen next.
But apparently nothing happened. Not on the ground or in the air.
Only in space was a hint of future events picked up. Five hundred miles above the earth, an orbiting Lacrosse spy satellite detected an unusual plume of methane gas emanating from the interior of Afghanistan. It was tracking westward, but CIA analysts could not identify it. It seemed to be a natural phenomenon, but on a scale they had never before seen.
Because it was moving against the prevailing winds, a volcanic or lake-bed eruption was discounted. The only other possibility might have been droppings of a mighty herd of water buffalo. But a water-buffalo stampede of this magnitude had never been noticed before. There was no animal on earth large enough to panic that many cattle.
Throughout occupied Kuran and Irait, Kurdish warriors stole into aircraft revetments and Scud bunkers, writing their names invisibly and leaving the scenes of their depredations undetected by man or satellite.
And in Abominadad, Irait, a wooden crate arrived, addressed to President Maddas Hinsein.
Chapter 35
President Maddas Hinsein was no fool.
When the wooden crate postmarked Pyongyang, North Korea, was delivered to the Palace of Sorrows, he had his most valuable council members open it while he descended to the German-made bunker under the palace, nicknamed the Mother of All Bunkers. He always selected his best men for this duty, because he knew it would deter them from shipping him bombs themselves.
Today his favorites happened to be the foreign minister and Vice-President Juniper Jackman.
Jackman was only too happy to take a crowbar to the crate. The line of AK-47's pointed in his direction constituted tremendous motivation.
"Bet Dan Quayle doesn't pull this kind of duty," he complained, confident he would not be shot because no one in the room understood English.
The planks split with a crack and revealed a magnificent sword as long as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and encrusted with precious stones.
Maddas Hinsein was called up only after the sword had been safely removed, examined for venomous barbs, and dipped in a solution that would change color if a contact poison had been applied to the blade.
"It is a gift, Precious Leader," the foreign minister reported. "Truly. See?"
"The North Koreans obviously stand in solidarity with us," said the president of Irait with quiet satisfaction.
"Yet they claim otherwise. I have spoken with their ambassador and he knows nothing of this magnificent gift."
Maddas Hinsein frowned. "I will accept it anyway. Hang it over my desk in a place of honor."
"At once, Precious Leader."
When the sword was firmly in place, President Maddas Hinsein locked the door behind him and stood looking at the sword. He grinned. It was a worthy blade, and it gave him solace after the destruction of the crossed scimitars that had lifted so triumphantly over Arab Renaissance Square.
The sadness of that setback reminded the Scimitar of the Arabs of the treason of the four-armed Kimberly Baynes, and made him wistful for the corrective discipline of her quick, firm hands. With her gone, there was no one to spank him anymore.
Impulsively he went to a phone.
"The spider-armed girl," he demanded of his chief torturer, the minister of culture, "is her body still in the dungeon?"
"With the American assassin, as you commanded, Precious Leader."
"Do they . . . smell?"
"Strangely, no."
A quick smile broke over the president's dark face. "No? Hmmm. Perhaps I will torture them, then."
"Can one torture the dead?" wondered the culture minister, a hint of interest in his voice.
"If one has the stomach for it." Maddas Hinsein laughed, hanging up.
Down in the coolest part of the dungeon, the bodies lay on cold slabs of black basalt. Their skins were a remarkable flat black, as if powdered with coal dust.
The woman was completely nude. Maddas Hinsein dismissed the thought of mounting her. He had raped a cold corpse once, when he was a carefree young man. Never again, he vowed. He had caught a terrible cold.
The man lay composed in death, eyes closed, an austere look on his face. His colorful harem silks were in tatters, but Maddas Hinsein had no eyes for those. He noticed the large egglike bump in the center of his forehead. Obviously a bruise.
It was quite unusual, and the President of Irait could not resist poking it with his finger.
To his horror, it slid apart like a ruptured plum.
"Allah!" gasped the Scimitar of the Arabs, recoiling. For the bump had opened like a dead eyelid, revealing a sightless black orb. There had been no such organ on the man's brow in life, he recalled clearly.
As Maddas Hinsein backed away, black arms stirred like an upended lobster on the slab behind him. A naked chest shuddered, impelled by an indrawn breath.
The figure on the slab levered itself to a sitting position in silence, and blood-red eyes fell upon his unsuspecting back with a fiery regard.
"You live . . . " a dead voice whispered too low to be heard.
And a loud, frantic voice came from the corridor, crying, "O Scimitar of the Arabs! The impregnable Maddas Line is under attack!"
President Maddas Hinsein bolted from the torture room a mere flick ahead of grasping black nails.
Chapter 36
If there was someone he could complain to without being shot for questioning authority, Colonel Hahmad Barsoomian of the Renaissance Guard would have complained loudly and vociferously.
But he figured he was in enough trouble as it was. His orders to report to the Maddas Line and take command of the ragtag Popular People's Popular Auxiliary could only mean he was regarded with suspicion by the high command. Why else would they exile him to work among undisciplined shopkeepers and teachers in ill-fitting uniforms?
It was night, and Colonel Barsoomian stood atop an earthen-mound breastworks scanning the neutral zone with his Zeiss military field glasses.
There was a crescent moon hanging low in the sky. It augured well, he thought. What little light it shed was like a shimmering silver rain collecting in the desert wadis below.
There was no sign of the anti-bait UN forces. They would never attack. They feared to, Barsoomian was certain.
A low shape appeared in the sky. A glimmer of moonlight revealed it.
Colonel Barsoomian adjusted his glasses. It was silent and oblate as a strayed moon. And it was coming this way.
"Searchlight crew!" he called down. "Direct your beam that way, you donkeys!"
A powerful tungsten light sprang to life. The beam wheeled southward, sweeping the sky.
"Left. Now right! There! Hold it there!" Barsoomian ordered.
And when the hot beam transfixed the floating silent thing, Colonel Barsoomian trained his binoculars upon it.
His jaw fell slowly at the terrible sight. His eyes grew round as coins. He could feel his heart pumping high in his throat.
"Shoot that blasphemous thing!" he commanded in a high, hoarse voice. "Bring it down!"
Orange-red tracers streaked through the night. And missed.
"Correct your aim, offspring of donkeys!"
The PPPA antiaircraft battery did. This time they fired wide in another direction, missing spectacularly.
Soon the thing was passing directly overhead and Barsoomian, seeing the four pink hooves looming directly over him, countermanded his order.
"Do not shoot! We do not want the unclean thing falling upon us!"
The order was unnecessary. The gunners were good Moslems. And they heard the continuous amplified squealing that the floating pink monster seemed to be making. It chilled the blood of every man along the long Maddas Line-for at strategic spots over the fortification, other silent pink monsters hovered like the most evil of omens.
Moslem faces turned skyward. Moslem mouths gaped in awe and fear. All eyes were on the silent monsters above.
And as if connected to a timer, the monsters all went pop! at once.
Shards of slick pink fleshlike matter began to fall. Soldiers scrambled for their holes, their bunkers. A few retreated from the line. Some ran screaming. No one stopped them. No one cared.
And when the commotion began to abate, the remaining defenders heard another sound.
It welled up from the south, out in the frontier. It was a kind of whistling, but great in its fullness and magnificence.
Colonel Barsoomian, thankfully untouched by the unclean pink rain, crawled up to the breastworks mound and employed his field glasses once more.
This time his mouth went round. For he saw the advancing host.
They were coming in a long skirmish line, thirty deep. It was a line that stretched in both directions, a wall of pink.
Pink legs marched in unison. Pink hands held M-16 assault rifles across pink chests. The rifles were not pink, but the faces above them were-pink, inflexible, and terrible. Eyes goggled glassily over pink snouts that were punctured by two pink-rimmed nostrils. Pink triangular ears flapped and beat against chubby pink cheeks as the pink soldiers advanced in an unbroken pink line.
And ahead of them, here and there, rumbled round pink monsters with identical beastlike snouted faces. They left trails in the sand like those of tracked vehicles. And they squealed and grunted and gave vent to "oink-oink" sounds that made Colonel Barsoomian's devout Moslem skin crawl as if from inquisitive ants.
But most terrible of all was the sound that advanced before that unclean beast-army like a wall of sound.
It was a great whistling. The tune was hauntingly familiar to the shocked ears of Colonel Hahmad Barsoomian.
He couldn't place it. But he knew he had heard it before. Somewhere.
Colonel Barsoomian had no idea he was listening to a thousand pink lips giving voice to the theme from the classic motion picture Bridge over the River Kwai.
He no longer cared. He dropped his AK-47 and dashed for an APC. The starter ground as he cursed the balky Soviet-made vehicle. Then he sent the APC careening north, driving with one hand over an ear to keep out that damnable whistling.
He had to warn his fellow Renaissance Guards that an army of the unclean was on the march.
He did not care what happened to the undisciplined PPPA. Let the infidel khazir army have them. It did not matter. It would take real soldiers to defend Irait from this most wicked aggression.
If that were possible.
Chapter 37
The news was so dire, no one wanted to deliver it to Maddas Hinsein.
The Revolting Command Council sat around the table. Their president was due at any moment. The foreign minister suggested that the vice-president deliver the bad news. But since the vice-president did not speak Arabic, this was difficult to implement.
"But the infidel have rolled across the Maddas Line," said the education minister in a voice so tight a hand might have been at his throat.
"Without firing a shot," added the minister of culture. "The PPPA simply deserted their posts. The Precious Leader will be furious. Someone will be shot."
"Let us suggest that he himself shoot the PPPA," the foreign minister said suddenly. "Each one. Personally. He will like that. And it will keep him occupied."
The defense minister added his two cents. "It is a brilliant idea, but too late, alas."
"What do you mean?"
"They have been decimated by the Renaissance Guard, who cut them down as they overran guard divisions."
"Are there not any left?" asked the foreign minister.
"Only Renaissance Guard elements, and they are our last hope to hold Kuran," he was told.
Eyes met around the conference table. At one end, Don Cooder and Vice-President Jackman exchanged uneasy glances.
"Looks like they got bad news or something," whispered Jackman.
"Looks like," Cooder said, fingering his new mustache. It was really coming in now. He hoped the Precious Leader would approve. Maybe it would impress him enough that he would not be shot, as seemed to happen a lot. He was just starting to get the hang of the job, which seemed to consist of groveling. Don Cooder had garnered extensive groveling experience during his previous career interviewing various heads of state.
"Well, we're safe," Jackman ventured.
"How you figure that?"
"I'm second from the top and you're my right-hand man."
"That didn't help the last information minister," Don Cooder pointed out.<
br />
Reverend Juniper Jackman grew very quiet.
President Maddas Hinsein stormed in a moment later.
"What news?" he demanded, taking his seat.
No one answered. Maddas pounded the table with his fist. "Report! What transpires at the front?"
"It . . . it has been overrun," said the defense minister. "Completely."
Maddas Hinsein blinked. "The Maddas Line? My pride and joy? The bulwark of Islam?"
"I am sorry, but it is true." The defense minister squeezed tears from his eyes. Frowning, Maddas Hinsein extracted his pistol from its holster and casually shot his defense minister in the face. Everyone was impressed by the results. Not to mention splattered.
The muzzle shifted to the culture minister. "You! The Maddas Line-does it hold?"
"Yes, Precious Leader. It stands as unbreached as before," the man said quickly.
"You are lying," said Maddas Hinsein, performing a radical tracheotomy with a lead slug.
The culture minister fell off his chair gurgling. The muzzle next went to the foreign minister.
"The truth! Speak it!"
"Pigs!" bleated the foreign minister. "The Americans have been breeding with swine! Genetic mutant pig soldiers have overrun our first line of defense. Mechanized sows! Flying pigs! What Moslem can stand before such an unclean army?"
Maddas Hinsein's sad brown eyes fluttered at this report.
"Preposterous! I will spare you if you speak the truth in the next few seconds."
"But . . . Precious Leader. This is the truth. Before Allah, I-"
The foreign minister's mustache was driven into his teeth, and his teeth through his spine by another bullet.
Vice-President Juniper Jackman would have been next, but a messenger entered at that point, crying, "Precious Leader, the Renaissance Guard! They are being destroyed!"
"By what army?"
"By our own army. Iraiti regulars have overun them in their panic to flee the advancing pig dancers."
"Dancers?"
"They appear to be dancing as they advance. And whistling."
Maddas Hinsein lifted a field telephone from under the table. It connected directly with the general in charge of Renaissance Guard forces in occupied Kuran, now Maddas Province.
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