Deadly Wands (47 page)

“We therefore cannot win this war without
destroying every city, town, village and horde in Mongolia,
Siberia, Manchuria, and the Stans. We must burn every crop and
slaughter every herd. Anything that keeps them alive. You, your
home, and your family will never be safe until we exterminate every
Mongol quad.

“As kids, you grew up dreaming of becoming a
hero. You sit here before me as warriors. Now I ask you to become
something less glorious. I want you to become butchers. And
butchers slaughter. That’s their job. And, until we win this war,
that is our job.

“After dad explained all this, I said, okay.
He looked at me for the longest time and asked, okay? Okay, I told
him. A day before my eighth birthday, I had agreed to kill one
hundred million enemies. My father could not have been prouder. And
if you help me keep the oath I swore that day, I could not be
prouder of you.”

They rose in the air and twenty thousand
wands sang the American anthem. It was so beautiful Billy cried.
Which made them cry.

Of course, what he didn’t mention is that his
father told him to fly to Peking the following night and dominate
the dueling arena. His mother would never agree, but it had to be
done because they could never win without first hallowing out their
super-quads.

At eight years old, Billy understood what he
needed to do. And every day since then he thought how best to kill
more Mongols faster. Just like most battles are won before they
start so, too, did Billy figure out how to win the war before he
started.

William bombed the cities in eastern Mongolia
into rubble by pre-deploying munitions brought off ships. That
wouldn’t work for western Mongolia, which is why Billy bought bombs
and sent them to warehouses in the cities he wanted to destroy.
But, unlike his father, Billy only had ten thousand troops.

With so many Mongols in eastern Siberia,
Billy flew them west, then south, around the enemy. It took them a
week, flying nights, to reach their target. Billy scouted the city
and got directions to the warehouse. He presented images of the
paperwork to prove ownership, so the manager helpfully showed him
the munitions depot. They walked past dozens of storerooms before
they reached the depot.

“For safety reasons,” the manager explained,
“we placed it in a large depression, then threw up berms of earth
around it in case of a mass explosion. We divided it into sections.
You occupy all of Section 8.”

He opened the hanger door and led Billy to
his storage unit. Billy couldn’t believe how many bombs it
contained. He could destroy every stone structure in the city with
so many.

Gleeful, Billy paid to put the bombs in their
special packs, then flew to his division, hiding nearby. Before
sunset, he took those who spoke the best Mongolian to the munitions
depot, waited for most of the employees to leave, then killed the
rest.

Now came the tricky part. The city’s air base
operated continuous patrols. Worst still, they located the depot
close to the base. Billy had to get ten thousand fliers to the
depot without alerting the enemy. They didn’t have time to walk,
and they’d be spotted if they flew in.

So Billy found himself in a cloud at very
high altitude soon after sunset. He tracked a patrol, closed the
distance, and dived. He matched speed and angle, then sliced the
squad without giving them time to sound an alarm.

Now he moved out to the medium patrol and
repeated this. He rose to the east and made an “X” with his hand
wands -- two twenty meter flames can be seen from far away. The
Americans waited for the outer perimeter patrol to pass by, then
hugged the terrain.

The first company reached the depot by flying
in small, odd-numbers groups. Since they didn’t get caught, the
second company tried it, too. Then a third.

The problem was that he could not sneak in
ten thousand Americans this way.

Meanwhile, Billy snuck up on the other
patrols, took them out silently, and replaced them with Americans
flying the same pattern. Now, at least, he could bring his troops
in faster. Every fifteen minutes he got another hundred bombers.
What he didn’t know was how much time he had.

On the tallest building with a view of both
the base and the depot, Billy waited for the next patrols to leave.
This bought him three more hours. By then he had fourteen hundred
bombers ready. He signaled those hiding at the depot, then flew to
lead the rest of the division.

A sentry on the ground sounded a warning when
the division was still a kilometer away. His bombers attacked the
barracks as they assembled on the flight deck. The resulting
explosion woke the entire city.

Now the fun would start.

His fourteen hundred blanketed the air base,
then descended enough to shoot at everything that moved on the
ground, burning to death those trapped inside.

As Billy predicted, every quad in the city
flew up to find out what was going on. His eighty-six companies
fanned out over the city and shot everything that flew. Billy led
ten of them to the rescue of his bombers, who’d otherwise be
overwhelmed by a mob of veterans attacking from above. His bombers
returned to the depot for more munitions while Billy’s companies
fought off the militia.

Mongols had an old adage: “Bombs don’t
destroy cities. Fire destroys cities.” Gunpowder bombs knocked
holes in solid buildings so fireballs could ignite everything
within.

As Mongols proved over three centuries,
formation fliers beat unorganized mobs, despite inferior numbers.
Billy proved that again as his companies flew high enough so that
relatively few Mongols could reach them. Their first goal was to
exhaust the enemy by keeping them in the air and fighting fires on
the ground. Then they reduced altitude as fast as they safely
could, diving to send volleys into the mass of enemies below them.
Instead of fighting many times their number at a time, the
Americans actually enjoyed numerical superiority all night
long.

The city burned and Billy let everyone go who
left on foot. At dawn, the Americans hunted down any quads and
two-wanders who escaped. Before nightfall, they wiped out the
remaining residents, then took their maximum weight in bombs.
Except Billy, who may need to intercept enemies.

One lone division destroyed a Mongol city
many times their size.

They flew an hour away, then waited for any
Mongols trailing them. Several thousand showed up, eager to strike
the Americans as they pretended to sleep. Instead, the rested
Americans rose above their ceiling, surrounded them, then waited
for the weaker Mongols to tire out before fully engaging.

They napped as close as they dared to their
next city. At midnight they blew past the patrols and bombed the
hell out of the air base. Everyone who could fly rose to fight and
Billy let them come: his one hundred companies formed a ceiling
against a mob of angry Mongols eager for revenge.

The beauty of pissing enemies off is that
their rage impedes their ability to think tactically. Instead of
attacking from above, most just rushed his Americans frontally in
small groups -- the fastest didn’t even wait for the slowest to
catch up.

Still, Billy had the center of his line
pretend to panic and flee at the huge mob flying up to them. Who
then turned in the classic Buffalo Horn tactic, used countless
times by the Mongol Air Force. This caught the majority of the
militia in a pincer movement whereby the Americans could strike
them from several directions. Once they broke and fled, the raiders
chased them down. While one company secured the munitions depot,
the rest firebombed the city. Again, Billy let the survivors flee
before destroying them like a good Mongol.

The Americans stocked up on more bombs and
found a forest five hours away to hide in. Billy and his best
company surprised the Mongols following them.

They attacked the next city just before dawn.
Patrols actually saw them from far away but did not signal an alarm
because they now wore the uniforms of the Mongol Air Force. Billy
met their first patrol and bought time by demanding an escort to
the air base for his tired troops. The lead patrolman asked for the
images authorizing their deployment, so Billy passed him a huge
number of images and rejoiced in every extra heartbeat this gave
them. When the patrolman didn’t find the authorization he needed,
Billy argued with him, finally demanding to speak with his
superior. The Mongol, in return, demanded they land.

It worked, in that Billy got his force that
much closer to the base. But, from his altitude, Billy could see a
battalion forming in the parade ground. They would not launch until
dawn, but enough of them stood around, setting up their gear, to
alarm Billy. If a patrol shrieked, that battalion would have time
to position themselves favorably against his weighted down
bombers.

“I’m gonna report your insolence to your
commander!” Billy shouted with the perfect tone of arrogance that
descendents of Genghis Khan made famous.

He signaled a greeting and landed looking
pissed. He asked the closest Mongol where he could find the
general. The patrolman landed a minute later and started arguing
with him. Billy looked up to see several patrols now surrounding
his division. Those seventy patrolmen could cripple his force if
they detonated the bombs.

A general came to sort out all the shouting.
Billy threw an imperial tantrum like so many privileged rich kids
did, who didn’t think the rules should apply to them. As the
general started chewing him out, Billy spied the giant shadow
approaching.

Ignoring the general, he sidestepped a bit to
line up the commanders. He pressed his arms against his body to
launch his wands, then impaled several Mongols with each blade.
Dozens of Mongols stood within twenty meters, so he twirled and
sliced them up, not worrying if the cuts were fatal. He popped away
from the base while blasting them. This focused their attention on
him instead of the battalion in their diving run.

Billy sprinted towards the closest patrol as
they attacked the Americans trying to release their bombs. His
company commanders didn’t carry bombs to protect their troops.
Billy did his famous scream to draw the attention of the other six
patrols now firing on his troops. He only paused them for a moment,
but that moment saved lives. Billy sliced up the first patrol and
blasted a second. A third panicked, diving away, and a fourth
positioned themselves defensively, so Billy went after the fifth
squad, shooting them in the backs. His company commanders sliced
and blasted the rest.

A thousand bombs disintegrated the air force
base and the division using it. The battalion swung around and
broke into companies to finish off survivors.

The other nine battalions bombed the city,
careful to not explode the munitions depot, then formed a giant
blanket to shoot the thousands of quads who flew up. All day long
the Americans weeded the angry Mongols out. It always surprised
Billy how few Mongol quads fled to fight another day.

Just before sunset, Billy gave the signal to
finish them off so they could sleep safely. That night, one
battalion stood watch, another hunted Mongols, while the rest
slept. After breakfast, they eliminated survivors and loaded up on
more bombs. At noon, they surprised the several thousand Mongols
who hoped to catch them sleeping.

CHAPTER 62

Billy wisely skipped some cities to make
tracking him harder. They ended up bombing more divisions and fewer
cities as more units showed up. But, as the weeks passed, they
surprised fewer enemies and got surprised more often. Time to
leave.

But he needed bombs, so he had his division
fireball a city after nightfall and let themselves be driven off,
knowing the residents would stay vigilant all night. The Americans
returned to their hiding place to sleep and eat. In the morning,
they attacked the city again, and whittled the enemy down all day
before overwhelming the defenders. Instead of searching for
survivors at night in the wreckage, Billy captured the munitions
depot, dropped gunpowder bombs on the strongest structures,
incendiaries on what had not yet burned, then packed shrapnel bombs
to take with them. The Americans surprised the city by leaving
before finishing them all off.

They flew west, away from the main enemy
forces, but found no good hiding places when they needed to stop
and rest. They didn’t even have time to eat the food they started
cooking when a sentry flashed a warning upon seeing a Mongol scout.
They were too tired and hungry to fight effectively.

“Fly as far as you can towards Grandma,”
Billy told the division commander. “Keep your bombs, but avoid the
enemy. I’ll catch up soon.”

Billy overtook the fleeing scout, but not
before he warned another scout on the horizon, who raced back to
his unit.

Crap. Billy hoped to point them in the wrong
direction, but that second scout surely saw his division rising
north. After killing the first scout, he overtook the second one. A
third scout, however, would reach the unit before him.

It was only a battalion. If Billy knew the
threat was only a thousand Mongols, he’d have his troops leave
their bombs on the ground and fight. But now his tired marathoners
were already in the air. A rested battalion could cripple his
irreplaceable marathoners, so he had to stop them.

He swapped outer coats in a cloud with the
second scout he killed, then raced to the enemy, which rose on an
intercept course. Billy knew his division would turn ninety degrees
west once they lost their pursuers.

Billy had to judge their relative positions
carefully. Confident of their course, he popped up in an arc that
positioned him at the very front of the battalion. He watched the
battalion commander turn his head to see what the hell he was
doing. Billy sensed disapproval, rather than danger, so he
continued until he rose above the battalion, but falling at an
angle towards them.