Fireburst. Don Pendleton

over Australia. “The village elders should have tried harder to teach them restraint.”

      Raising an eyebrow at that, Nasser said nothing. What village elders? There was nobody in the entire city more than thirty years old!

      In a desperate attempt to make money to buy food, the Somalian government had leased the rights for foreign powers to dump garbage offshore. Now, this area of the ocean was so heavily polluted the men didn’t even dare to go swimming out of fear of catching a deadly disease. The Somalians had fouled their own nest. It made the major angry to think that any Arab had acted so foolishly. The government tried to feed the poor, and end up killing more of them than starvation ever could have done. It was pitiful.

      Then again, to be brutally honest, she noted, this huge ship lying anchored so close off the coastline must seem like an irresistible target.

      Registered out of Edinburgh, Scotland, the Red Rose was a typical container ship, deliberately designed to not be noticeable in any way. The ship was a thousand feet long and capable of hauling 20,000 of the standard twenty-foot-wide, ten-foot-high, forty-foot-long shipping containers. To maximize their speed, the Red Rose was only carrying only half that amount, most of it legitimate cargo just in case they were ever stopped for an inspection. It was mostly home appliances, rice and farming equipment. Nobody sane would ever try to check 10,000 containers. That would take weeks!

      However, past that outer layer were reinforced containers stuffed with BM-25 Hail multiple-rocket launchers. Designed to destroy land fortifications, the 122 mm rockets were more than capable of destroying any attacking enemy vessel, whether it was a jet fighter, battleship or submarine.

      Next came a buffer zone of containers filled with ordinary sand, a bulwark able to withstand any bombardment for a short while. Past those, safely located deep inside the main hold, was the prefabricated command module made of six cargo containers welded together, which made it just barely large enough to hold all of the equipment necessary to operate the Scimitar of God, as the new weapon was called. There was a mainframe computer sealed behind a Plexiglas wall, a bank of control boards, a compact emergency generator, pressurized containers of oxygen and a few chairs.

      In an emergency, the command module could be sealed airtight to sink to the bottom of the sea, far away from any battle raging on the surface, giving the people inside plenty of time to assemble a small submersible pod and quietly leave unnoticed.

      Their trip to Somalia from the construction shacks in southern Peru had been harrowing, almost nerve-racking. Zigzagging across two oceans, the major had closely followed every storm possible, endlessly fine-tuning the Scimitar to new and even more deadly accuracy. They had destroyed islands, icebergs and a dozen assorted small craft along the way.

      Just then, a polite knock sounded and a slim man appeared at the open hatchway. Professor Kazim Khandis was dark and handsome, with hair so black that it appeared to have blue highlights, and a small European-style mustache, meaning that he used no oils or wax.

      “Yes, what is it?” Armanjani asked without looking up from his work.

      “We should have Tokyo online in a few minutes,” Khandis announced in cultured tones.

      “Excellent!” Armanjani said, putting aside a ruler. “Was there any trouble with the relay?”

      “None whatsoever,” Khandis said, flashing a wide grin, then disappearing around the bulkhead once more.

      Leaving the command module, Armanjani awkwardly stepped over to the next container. A scarred hand reached out of the shadows, and Hassan pulled the major across.