by John Murphy
“Sir! I found an intruder in the compound,” the rain-soaked guard said.
Babineaux eyed Killian’s tattered, muddy clothes. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
Killian said nothing.
Fournier kicked him in the side. Killian fell over, his long, wet hair clinging to his face. “Chan mai mee are woot!”
“What is he saying?” Babineaux asked.
“I don’t know,” the sergeant responded. “It sounds like rice-eater talk.”
“Chan hew! Chan tong gahn are harn!” Killian said. “Chan tong gahn are harn!” It was Thai for, “I am hungry. I want food,” which was entirely true.
“I think he’s looking for something to eat, sir,” the sergeant said.
“Ah, a thief!” Babineaux said. He grabbed Killian by the hair and yanked his head back. “You don’t look like a rice-eater. You look European. What are you?”
“Chan tong gahn are harn!” Killian repeated.
Babineaux dug his thumb into Killian’s squinted eye, revealing his blue iris. “What are you? English? American? Russian?”
“No gun, see? No gun, see?” Killian said with a Thai accent.
The lieutenant let him go and stood upright. “This is highly unusual.”
“Maybe he’s expatriate?” the wet guard said, a term loosely used to describe the roaming anarchists. Killian felt insulted.
“Or maybe a deserter,” Fournier suggested with disgust.
“Oui, maybe,” Babineaux agreed.
“Should we shoot him, sir?” the sergeant asked.
“Non. Do you want to take on that responsibility, Sergeant?” Babineaux asked.
“Non.” Fournier shook his head.
Killian knew that Global Alliance conscripts were loath to do anything like work. None of them would volunteer for the grisly task of dispatching a deserter. They had to bring in a special team of executioners to perform such tasks, an event Killian had witnessed many times.
“We don’t have time to deal with deserters, Sergeant. We have to pack up and move out this morning. They’re going to flatten this area by nightfall.”
“Should we send him up to headquarters?” the sergeant asked.
“Non. I cannot spare anyone to take him there.”
“Maybe we could send him over to the refugee camp. They will transport him out of here with all the others tomorrow.”
“I cannot spare anyone to do that, either,” Babineaux said with annoyance.
“Then what should we do, sir?”
The lieutenant looked at Killian as if he were dog shit that had to be cleaned up.
“Merde! He’s already half-dead. We should let him go and die with the other rats in this miserable city.”
A sound like a whip crack came, followed by another and another.
The four Global Alliance soldiers crouched down.
“We’re under attack, sir!”
Killian saw his rebel comrades, who’d surrounded the compound at a distance. Unfortunately, they’d initiated their sniping too early. The shots increased in pace, and the roof started to collapse as air escaped the inflatable structure.
Killian reached inside his ragged pants and pulled his kitchen knife from the makeshift sheath strapped to his inner thigh. While the soldiers scrambled to hide behind anything metal, Killian rolled upright and lunged at the sergeant, stabbing him in the ribs next to his spine and twisting the knife. The sergeant screamed, but the sound was lost in the chaos.
Babineaux barely had time to recognize what was happening when Killian lunged at him, catching him in the neck. It wasn’t a perfect slash, but Killian was certain he’d hit the lieutenant’s jugular. Babineaux rolled onto his back, clasping futilely at the fountain of blood coming from his neck.
Killian turned toward the rain-soaked guard, whose face was frozen in terror. The guard raised his rifle, but Killian grabbed the barrel and shoved it skyward as a shot went off. He slammed the guard in the face with his open palm. The guard fell and Killian yanked the rifle away. He turned it on the guard and shot him. He spotted the other soldier trying to get away through the collapsing corridor. Killian whirled and shot him as well.
Killian stood for a moment, surveying the carnage he’d wrought.
No, Felicia would never understand this.
While he appreciated the suggestion that the soldiers would set him free, they were the enemy, and this was war, a war into which he had been unwillingly immersed. There was no forgiving that.
A bullet grazed his forearm. The laceration burned and bled. He snapped into focus and ducked to avoid being hit by another of his comrades’ shots. Straining to keep lower than the incoming rounds, he crawled out of the inflatable.
Outside, soldiers stumbled out of their tents, trying clumsily to return fire.
Killian lay down in the muck and picked off four more soldiers who had focused their fire outward. He scrambled to his feet and dashed to the compound’s south end.
The premature ambush left him angrily suspicious.
CHAPTER 4
THE PROBING SQUAD OF FOUR gathered around a tiny fire in the office of a demolished warehouse.
Nguyen, a Vietnamese rebel, touched a glowing piece of rebar against Killian’s flesh to cauterize the wound on his arm.
Killian growled and gritted his teeth.
Nguyen glanced up at him. “Sorry.”
The look in Nguyen’s eyes conveyed that the apology was for something besides the hot rebar.
Gahn stormed into the room, followed by six others on the ambush team. Only a few years older than Killian, he was second-in-command. “What did you find out?”
“They are definitely moving out.” Killian wiped away tears of pain that had trickled down his face. “They’re going to level this area by nightfall.”
The rebel fighters gathered around to hear his report. Their faces hung in dread.
“How many did you kill?” Gahn asked. More than anything, Gahn relied upon kill counts to gauge the success of a mission. Killian feared Gahn’s tirades when missions concluded with zero kills, which was often.
“Four inside the tent.”
“What about outside?”
“I think I got another four, maybe five,” Killian said.
“You think? That is unacceptable. If you can’t confirm it, it doesn’t count.”
“Gahn!” Wongsawat pushed his way to the center of the group, limping badly. He was the only one of the forty-five rebels to have actually served in the Thai military—or any military, for that matter. An instructor in close-quarters combat, he created an effective and lethal group out of ragtag refugees.
“Don’t be so harsh on your men when they have been successful,” Wongsawat said. “Killian is a good soldier. Be thankful he has returned to fight for you another day.”
“Yes, Commander.” Gahn bowed his head.
Wongsawat rested his tired and battered frame on an upturned bucket. His hair, like that of the other rebels, had grown long and was pulled back into a ponytail. Unlike the others, however, his coal-black hair was streaked with white.
The rebels wore tattered clothing over their skeletal figures. They brandished rifles retrieved from dead Global Alliance soldiers, except for Killian. Gahn insisted that he be given a rifle only prior to a raid or ambush. Killian had already relinquished the rifle he had procured during the French probe. Killian was proud to belong to his present band of Thai, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Indonesian rebels. However, he was the only “round-eye,” which made him an outsider. Gahn made certain to remind him of this in belligerent ways.
Wongsawat looked at Killian. “How many kills does this make for you?”
“Twenty-eight, Commander.”
“Twenty-four!” Gahn interjected. “I’m not going to allow you to count anything outside the tent
.”
“Fine, fine, fine.” Wongsawat waved his hand dismissively. “Twenty-four. How many do you have, Gahn?”
“I have over one hundred!” He puffed out his chest.
“And how many with a knife?” Wongsawat asked.
Gahn maintained his prideful posture but flinched ever so slightly.
Wongsawat’s glare lingered a moment to keep Gahn’s pride in check. “Killian, you are a skillful fighter. It is a hard thing to taste the blood of your enemy—to breathe in his last breath as he dies at your hand. It transforms you from a soldier into a warrior. I only hope Gahn has your resolve if he ever finds himself without his mighty rifle.”
Gahn bowed his head and then shot an angry glare at Killian. The other rebels also cast quick, worried glances in Killian’s direction.
The admonition, which suggested Killian was a warrior and Gahn only a soldier, was a great insult. Gahn would surely find a way to retaliate, and his retribution would be harsh.
Though he was an outsider, Killian took satisfaction that the rebels commonly spoke English, his language, to one another. It was the only language common to all the fighters. They enjoyed speaking with Killian to work on their pronunciation and to improve their understanding of things said by the enemy. They even made a practice of swearing in English. Gahn spoke in Thai intermittently to diminish Killian’s influence, but it only led to confusion among the other rebels. That irritated Gahn, which is what led him to deny Killian his own rifle.
“Surely, Gahn saved my life this morning, as he has done many times before, Commander,” Killian said, attempting to help Gahn save face—despite the fact they had started firing when Killian was still inside the compound. Killian could have been killed as well. He wondered if the move had been deliberate on Gahn’s part or just arrogant sloppiness.
Gahn reciprocated, if only for the sake of Wongsawat. “You are a fierce and ruthless fighter, Killian. Ruthlessness leads to victory.”
“Yes, Gahn,” Wongsawat said. “Ruthlessness and persistence. We must persist in the face of destruction. We must keep together. You are a good leader, Gahn. Cherish your men. They are your brothers, born of blood.”
Wongsawat let a moment pass before he spoke again. “How many soldiers are left?”
“Not many, commander,” Killian responded. “I saw only one guard on post. Usually there are four.”
“How could you get caught by only one guard?” Gahn asked.
“Gahn!” Wongsawat held up his hand, then waved for Killian to continue.
“Judging by how few people came out when the shooting started, there probably are not many left in the compound,” Killian said.
The command post for the quarantine area normally had close to 200 soldiers who conducted sporadic patrols looking for civilians and rebels.
Wongsawat nodded. “If they’re moving out and bombing this area, they’re going to abandon this zone like the others. They won’t leave a single building standing for us to hide in.”
“We should attack them as they’re packing up, chase them out, kill as many as we can,” Gahn said.
“No.” Wongsawat shook his head. “I don’t want to risk any more of our men if they’re leaving anyway.”
“Sir,” Killian interjected. “The officer said they were transporting refugees out of here tomorrow.”
“They’ve been moving everyone to the camp by the Royal Palace,” Gahn said.
“Yes,” Wongsawat replied. “They’ve cleared out everything from downtown and for twenty miles to the east. This is the last sector.”
“Which is why we must strike now!” Gahn said.
“No! We don’t want to be here when the bombs start dropping. We must come up with something more effective.”
The Global Alliance had set a pattern. Anarchists instigated trouble in a particular area through acts of terrorism. The Global Alliance followed, pushing the local inhabitants out to refugee camps. Then the area was quarantined, and the Global Alliance soldiers dragged out anyone who tried to stay behind. Resistors were shot and dumped onto piles.
When the sector was empty, the Global Alliance conducted air strikes and leveled everything. The refugees were transported out, thousands at a time, in massive Carthenogen air cargo crafts. Where the refugees were taken wasn’t known. Wongsawat often lectured on how the Nazis had purged the Jews in a similar fashion over 130 years prior. The Nazis had used promises of a better life to get the Jews to board trains bound for death camps.
Thousands of civilians tried hiding in their homes during the quarantine, only to be killed in the air strikes. This pattern had started in the far reaches of Bangkok’s urban sprawl and had moved in toward the city center over the past year. Despite their fierce resistance, the rebels had failed to halt the Global Alliance’s progress.
“We’ve got to seek refuge by Wat Arun,” Wongsawat said, referring to the iconic temple on the west side of the Chao Phraya River. “They haven’t been destroying our temples and historic palaces. We need to regroup there before we strike again.”
“But that is their stronghold,” Gahn protested. “The Global Alliance has thousands of soldiers there.”
“Yes,” Wongsawat agreed. “And many sat beesad.”
He was referring to the Carthenogen warriors, called “devil beasts” in Thai, for lack of any official term. The sat beesad were large, ogre-like Carthenogens, weighing easily over 300 pounds. They wore hulking armor and bore massive weapons that discharged red energy bolts. They were frightening and much uglier than the tall, slender, peaceful-looking Carthenogens whom the people of Earth had come to regard as saviors.
“Our rifles are only toys compared to those of the sat beesad,” Gahn said, sounding uncharacteristically worried.
No one had seen the sat beesad until the purging of Bangkok began. While the rebels were adept at fighting Global Alliance soldiers, the devil beasts were a great unknown.
“There are so many soldiers, and we are only a handful,” Nguyen added.
“We can’t let their numbers scare us into doing nothing,” Wongsawat said. “You have all taken part in ambushes in which four fighters have killed a platoon of soldiers, have you not?” Wongsawat eyed the group. “Just this morning, one fighter snuck into an encampment and killed four with a knife! How many others were killed this morning, Gahn?”
“Many. Too many to count,” Gahn said.
The group nodded.
None of which can be verified, Killian thought.
“Ingenuity counts more than numbers. We don’t need to be afraid of their numbers. We just have to take those numbers into account and plan around them.”
Wongsawat looked around the group of soldiers. “Think! How do we attack the hundreds or even thousands of soldiers in their fortified command post?”
“We have to strike the serpent’s head, Commander,” Gahn said.
“Good. How do we do that?”
Samorn, the sole Cambodian among them, spoke up. “We must create a diversion!”
“Good, but then what?” Wongsawat asked.
“We get into the Global Alliance compound where the leaders are,” Samorn said.
“Yes, but how?”
“Commander,” Killian said, “isn’t the refugee camp right next to the Global Alliance command post?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Then I think I have an idea.”
CHAPTER 5
IT TOOK ALL DAY for the band of rebels to traverse the few short miles to the southern end of downtown. There, life struggled on anemically, with merchants selling meager scraps of food to the dwindling number of inhabitants in the crumbling city.
Waves of rain aided the rebels’ progress, as it kept the patrols of slothful soldiers off the streets and huddled in their guard shacks.
The only vehicles they saw belonged to the Global Alliance.
Fuel was scarce and expensive, and private vehicles hadn’t been seen since the purging began.
The elevated light rail had also ceased functioning long ago. Citizens had stripped everything they could from the rail cars. The cars’ skeletons were ominous reminders of condemned innocents.
The rebels moved in groups of two and three along separate paths. They wore tattered ponchos and blankets to hide their rifles. Killian peddled a rustic tuk-tuk. Gahn and Wongsawat rode in the back under a flapping canopy. Since Killian had no rifle, he was willing to do this for them. Besides, the act of pedaling helped disguise his height, which often made him conspicuous.
Along the way, each rebel gathered intelligence on what the Global Alliance was doing. They ran alongside the tuk-tuk intermittently to relay information to Gahn and Wongsawat.
The rebels had no money, but when they gave a peek of their rifles, the merchants gave them whatever they wanted. The locals viewed the rebels as the noble knights of resistance against the marauding Global Alliance.
Reports came in that the Global Alliance had cordoned off the bridges they had hoped to cross to reach Wat Arun, their intended meeting place.
“What shall we do, Commander?” Gahn asked.
“This may be a blessing,” Wongsawat said. “We would have expended a great deal of energy and risked capture trying to cross the river, not once, but twice.”
“Where should we meet our men, then?” Gahn asked.
“We may not need to. All of our men are within a few blocks, and the Royal Palace is only one mile north of us. Everyone knows the plan. This will be better. Dispatch Nguyen to tell the others to find shelter for the night. Have them enter the refugee camp at their nearest gate at first light. And tell them to leave their rifles where they sleep.”
Gahn poked his head out of the tuk-tuk. “Nguyen!”
The Vietnamese rebel dashed up. Killian brought the tuk-tuk to a stop thirty feet from a guard shack.
“Yes, Commander?” Nguyen asked, rain pouring down his face.
Gahn gave him the instructions. As Nguyen ran off to relay the message, a Global Alliance soldier emerged from a nearby guard shack. “You! What are you doing?”