“Master,” she said.
“Do not call me that!”
“But—”
Darkness enveloped him. He swung his hand up, the knife blade cutting the air with a loud whoosh. Ghadab took a step toward the girl, whose body seemed to shrivel before him.
Rage filled every corner of the room. Ghadab drew his arm back, ready to strike with the knife. The girl closed her eyes. Her lips moved in prayer.
Something pulled his arm back. The blackness turned to gray, and for a moment there was nothing in the universe but Ghadab and the girl given to him as a slave.
He could do whatever he wanted and no one would fault him.
“Tell me about yourself,” he said.
She stopped mumbling her prayer and opened her eyes.
“Go ahead,” he prompted. “Where were you born?”
“Mosul. Iraq.”
“Your tribe?”
“Jubar,” she said. “But we are Sunni, my family.”
Jubar was a large tribe, and a good portion Shia, as she intimated. He considered quizzing her on her beliefs — clearly she expected he would have some doubts, given the way she answered — but her eyes, rimmed with tears, convinced him she was sincere.
“Why were you made a slave?” he asked.
“My father and brother fought against the Caliphate. It is my great shame.”
“Were they brave men?”
She hesitated. “They were.”
“Misguided,” prompted Ghadab.
She didn’t answer. That stubbornness impressed him — she was loyal to her family, a good trait, even in one whose family had sinned.
“I can please you,” she offered.
Ghadab laughed. “I don’t want to be pleased. I’m going to give you back to the African.”
She fell to her knees as if in slow motion. He could guess why — the African would think that she had displeased Ghadab in some way. At best, she would be whipped severely and passed on to another warrior. At worst, death, with unimaginable pain.
Better to slit her throat himself; it would be more merciful.
Ghadab looked at the knife in his hand. “Do you know what this is?”
She didn’t answer. He stepped toward her and put the blade to her chin — gently. With a light touch, he pushed her head up to look at him.
“Do you know what this is?” he asked again.
“A knife.”
“Not just a knife. The curved blade?”
She shuddered.
“My grandfather ten generations ago was a prince,” Ghadab told her. He closed his eyes and saw the prince riding his stallion across the sands. The image, though borrowed from American cinema, was true to history; Ghadab’s ancestor had led his people against the Portuguese in a failed uprising.
He was brave, but premature; he did not understand the prophecies as Ghadab did.
Tears leaked from the girl’s eyes, though she struggled not to sob. Ghadab edged the blade against her neck, pressing very gently, rocking it back and forth.
So easy to snatch her life.
He withdrew the knife.
“I am going to rest,” he told her. “Make sure no one enters.”
36
Besides fresh intelligence on Ghadab and Daesh, Massina had brought along a few more “goodies”—tools he thought would prove useful for Johansen in his operation. Among them were lightweight bulletproof vests constructed of a carbon-boron compound the engineers dubbed “Bubble Wrap.” The nickname was obvious: the inserts, which took the place of traditional ceramic plates in standard armor, looked exactly like the sort of stuff you wrapped delicate china in before giving it to FedEx.
“It’ll take a fifty-caliber round to pop them,” Chevy quipped, showing them off to the two dozen members of the unit Johansen had assembled. Most were ex-military men recruited as paramilitary operatives by the CIA; all were on contract through a third-party company rather than being regular Agency employees.
Plausible deniability if things went to hell.
“The force will knock you down,” continued Chevy, “and it’ll hurt like a sonofabitch, but you’ll live.”
Sweater thin, the vest was a spin-off from a survivable demolitions mech; Massina brought two of those along as well. Except for the material they were made of, they looked very much like standard bomb-disposal bots — six-wheeled critters with three arms, each optimized for a different task. One arm featured a soldering iron tip on the “finger” of one of the arms; field tests by the Army on an earlier model had suggested this would help the mechs modify bomb wiring to destroy the bomb in place using the bomb’s own circuitry.
Far more versatile, though somewhat less durable, was “Peter”—officially RBT PJT 23-A, a bot with autonomous intelligence that Chelsea had led the development on. Unlike purpose-built robots, Peter could be given an assignment—“rescue the little girl from that burning building”—and then decide on his own how to proceed. Though it looked like a walking Erector set — it had four appendages that functioned as legs or arms, depending on the situation — Peter was far closer to humans in his capabilities than any anthropomorphic competitor.
In the Smart Metal lexicon, mechs and bots differed in that the former were designed for a specific task and generally had limited native intelligence; the latter were more versatile and, at least to some degree, autonomous. But the line between them constantly shifted and blurred, and the terms were becoming interchangeable even within the company.
UAVs were the aerial equivalent of the bots and mechs. Besides the ones that had been used in the morning exercise — Destiny, Hum, and Nightbird — Smart Metal had provided an aircraft small enough to be hidden in the palm of a hand. Made of metal, it looked like a boxy, twin-tailed paper airplane, with a micro-sized engine and a small propeller at the rear of the stubby body. Powered by a battery and launched with a heave, it could stay aloft for a little over ten minutes and was designed to provide immediate tactical video, relayed to a personal or central link. They called it “Stubby”—these were engineers, not poets.
The CIA had its own goodies, including the Tasers or “Nerf guns.” Johansen would also “borrow” feeds from military assets already in theater — which basically meant Global Hawks, the large UAVs that functioned as spy planes. The team would use a new com system tweaked by Massina’s engineers to seamlessly interface with transmissions and feeds in a variety of formats. They had also tweaked a portable Arabic translator, making it small enough to fit into an earbud.
Briefing nearly done, Johansen asked Massina to take the floor.
“I just want you all to know how much we appreciate what you’re doing,” he said. “All of Boston is behind you. Godspeed.”
This is a strange place I’ve reached, Massina thought as the audience applauded. Not one I could have imagined a year ago.
“You ready?” Johnny asked Chelsea as she rose.
“I’m just going to go to bed.”
“I meant for tomorrow. For everything.”
“Oh.” She shrugged. “Yeah.”
“I’m pretty excited,” he told her. “I feel like we’re really doing something.”
She looked at him as if he’d just spoken in tongues and couldn’t decipher his meaning.
“I’m going to get some rest,” she said. “You should, too.”
“Come out with us,” he said. “We’re going into town.”
“Thanks. But no.” She squeezed his forearm gently, then walked away.
Massina followed Johansen down a hallway whose rough stone walls wore the marks of the machine that had bored them. The CIA officer stopped in front of a closed door and put his palm on a glass plate near the handle. A numbered keyboard appeared when he removed his hand; he punched a code and the door slid open, revealing a paneled lounge that would not have been out of place in a fancy hotel. An elaborate bar made of maple and exotic inlays stood along one wall. Tables covered with thick white tablecloths stood at intervals around the room.