troops.
This was no accident, he knew. A deliberate attack, no question, but who was manning the craft, plunging it to the base, perhaps using it as a flying bomb? Or was it one of those unmanned drones, maybe packed with high explosives? Again, who, why? The Kurds had no access to either surface-to-surface missiles or aircraft, much less high-tech unmanned aerial vehicles. Of course, Iran, Iraq and Syria bordered the nation, often providing weapons and fighters to the Kurds, hoping the primitive rabble could create its own independent nation, thus invite them in when the Ankara government collapsed.
Gobruz glanced at the antiaircraft guns, soldiers working with a fury to bring the cannons around and on-line. He was lifting the field glasses, but discovered there was no need.
The object was coming to them, hard, fast and low.
The searchlights framed the craft’s bulk, not more than a hundred feet up and out, he saw, as it nose-dived for the cyclone fencing. It appeared a midsize cargo plane, lights out, but no transport bird he knew of carried what appeared to be missiles on its wings.
“Fire!” he shouted across the compound. “What are you waiting for?”
He heard the bark of small-arms fire—why weren’t the big guns pounding?—glimpsed the fixed-wing plane clear the fenceline.
Then the world erupted in a flash of roaring fire. Blinded by a white sea of flames, eyeballs and face scorched by superheated wind, Gobruz caught the shrieks, his men torched by incendiary explosions he was sure. He was wheeling, about to launch himself through the doorway when he felt the flames sweep over him, his own screams added to the chorus of wailing demons as he was consumed by the wave of fire.
“LIVE OR DIE, your choice!”
Muhdal watched the faceless gunman, unsure of what was even real, senses warped, swollen by the din. Peering into the bright sheen, Muhdal saw the wraith flash white teeth, dark eyes burning with either laughter or anger. He strained to listen, his savior telling him he had ten seconds to strip the Turk and dress, or the door would slam shut.
Some choice, he thought. Outside, the price for freedom sounded more to him as if the gates of hell had opened to disgorge a legion of devils, there to devour every prisoner.
Men bellowed in agony, wailing from some distance. Muhdal nearly gagged as he sniffed the sickly sweet odor of roasting flesh. Were his men being burned alive, trapped in their cells, thrashing, craving for death to extinguish their misery? Were his rescuers Turks or Kurds? What was this madness?
His confusion deepened as the wraith snapped an order over his shoulder, switching to the Russian language. Another hooded shadow swept through the doorway and hurled what he assumed was water from a bucket. Muhdal took the liquid in the face and chest, then howled when he realized what doused him. The urine burned like acid, biting into countless open wounds.
“Bastards! You throw piss in my face?”
“Five seconds, or I shoot you dead!”
Was that laughter in his eyes? Muhdal wondered, the piss-thrower stepping back, kicking away the Turk’s assault rifle, then melting into the corridor where the hellish noise reached a deafening crescendo. Cursing, with a bayoneted muzzle inches from his face, Muhdal nearly shredded the blouse and pants off the body, dressed, finally squeezing into boots a size too small. No weapon in his hands, but he felt the gun in his heart, cocked and ready with murderous wrath, the pain a scalding blaze, now that urine was smothered by clothing, soaking into fabric. He was tempted to lunge for the RPK-74 light machine gun, but the hardman grabbed him by the shoulder, snarled something in Russian, shoved him through the doorway.
“Move it!” Muhdal found more black hoods swarming the halls. Some were armed with the longer, heavier version of the AK-74, banana clips holding forty-five rounds, Muhdal noting holstered side arms, commando vests, webbing studded with grenades and spare clips, com links snugged over hoods. Two big machine guns, Squad Automatic Weapons with 200 round box magazines in the hands of giants. He figured eight invaders at first count, but with shooting converging from all directions it was impossible to say. The deeper he headed down the corridor, the more he feared his immediate future. Several of the invaders were emptying weapons into the cages, mowing down prisoners behind the iron bars, rats in a barrel. They were tossing something on the bodies. As he passed strewed bodies, he found playing cards, the ace of spades with a grinning death’s-head resting on lifeless grimaces.
Muhdal wondered if they were murdering his own men, when, rounding the corner, thrust down the bisecting corridor that led to the north exit, he spotted Zeki and Balik being hustled outside by another squad of invaders manhandling the rest of his fighters for the open door, barking at them in a mix of Kurd and Russian the whole way. Whoever these hooded killers, they were professionals, he decided, wondering how they had taken down the prison so swiftly, no Turk resistance he could find anywhere. As long as they weren’t Americans—who aided and abetted the Ankara regime—he figured he could live with the indignity of a piss shower for the moment, if salvation from Dyrik was guaranteed. Still, he wouldn’t forget his shame.
Muhdal kept moving, saw several of the invaders spear bayonets through chests of downed Turks, gutting one or two like pigs, innards gushing to the floor. The vile stench was so strong now, bile wormed up his chest, hot slime rolling into his throat. And he spotted the smoke and flames leaping up through the grate in the floor of another wing, two fuel drums dumped on their sides. He picked up his pace, eager to put distance to the screams of men burning alive.
Muhdal hit the courtyard, grateful for fresh air, found the invaders ushering his men into the bellies of three Black Hawk gunships. The guard quarters had been reduced to flaming rubble, he saw, likewise the motor pool of Humvees and troop carriers, nothing but burning scrap. Forging into rotor wash, he gave the grounds and walls a quick search, spotted parachute canopies billowed out by heated wind. A look at the guard towers, he saw bodies draped over railings, the claws of four grappling hooks dug into the top edges of the wall.
Professionals, all right, he thought, aware the attack on the prison had been split down the middle between the invaders. Snipers, creeping in from the steppe, took out the guards, scaled the walls, the other half dropping square into the belly to blast and burn.
Nearing the Black Hawk, the Barking Hood on his heels urging speed, Muhdal looked to the distant northern sky. There, the sky strobed, blackness peppered to near daylight with brilliant white flashes. He knew there was a large Turk military base in that direction, thought he heard the rumbling of explosions, but the sound was muted by rotor wash.
He boarded the gunship, glanced at Balik before he was shoved to sit. He seethed, staring at the Barking Hood, another invader looking up from the green glow of a laptop monitor. White teeth flashed, a thumbs-up from the other invader, and the Barking Hood laughed.
Suddenly Muhdal felt as if he were quagmired in a nightmare, skin on fire, heart pumping with fury. Who were they? What did they want? They might have known who he was, but they didn’t know that, make no mistake, he would return the favor for dousing him in his cell.
The Barking Hood turned, stripped off the com link as the gunship lifted off. As the man tugged off the hood, Muhdal stared up at a face, purpled and cratered around the eyes and jaws from past battle souvenirs, the whole grisly picture as sharp as the edge of a razor, it could have been the skull on the ace of spades.
The big commando chuckled. “Cheer up, Moody. We’re here to help make you all rich men.”
Muhdal felt his heart lurch, jaw drop. “Americans?”
The Skull laughed. “Yeah, well, they say even the Devil can speak in all tongues.”
Speechless, anchored by fear, Muhdal wondered what horror lay in Kurd futures, staring into the Skull’s laughing eyes.
“You do believe in the Devil, don’t you, Moody? You damn well better—you’re looking at him.”
HE WAS CALLED Acheron, named for his resurrection after both the river of Greek mythology in Hades, and the demon who guarded the gates of Hell.
It was the sweetest