Roughly an hour later, the car pulled off the shoulder of another road overlooking the sea. Within a few minutes, three cars passed, then two pickups with men in the rear. Finally, a battered black taxi pulled next to them. The imam sat in the back seat; the Saudi visitor sat next to him. Sahurah was told to sit next to the driver, and did so without comment. They drove for a while, taking a dirt road that tucked through the jungle and then doubled back to a promontory over the water. The driver stopped and got out of the car.
“Report now,” said the imam.
Sahurah told him everything that had occurred.
The Saudi murmured something Sahurah could not hear. The imam answered, and then both men were silent.
“You have done very well,” said the imam finally.
He leaned forward. Sahurah felt something press him in the side. He turned and looked down, and saw that there was a small pistol in the imam’s hand.
“Take it,” said the imam.
Sahurah reached across his body with his right hand and took the pistol. It was a small, lightweight gun, a semi-automatic that fit easily in the palm of his hand. It occurred to Sahurah that he might take the gun and hold it to his head.
“Kill yourself,” said the imam.
Surely he had willed his leader to say that.
“Sahurah? Did you hear me?”
“To shoot myself?” he asked. “Will I be denied Paradise?”
“To die as a soldier of jihad is to be made a martyr, if you are under orders,” said the imam. “No matter the circumstances.”
Sahurah knew that suicide was a sin, but he also knew that there were conditions when death was not considered suicide. He had done nothing to prepare himself, however — his body was not clean or properly prepared, and he worried that perhaps he would not find Paradise if he complied.
But he must obey. More importantly, he wanted to. He wanted to be finished with this tiresome, trying world, where he could not cleanse himself of evil thoughts and failures. He wanted to be beyond weakness and lust.
“Are you afraid, Sahurah?” asked the imam.
Sahurah put the gun to his mouth and pulled the trigger. When nothing happened, he realized he had pushed too lightly, and pressed again.
And again.
He felt the imam’s hand on his shoulder. “You are our bravest soldier, Sahurah,” said the imam gently. “Give me back the gun. From this moment on, you are to be honored with the title of Commander. How does that make you feel?”
Sahurah stared at the weapon in his hands. He felt cheated, but he could not say that. A finger of pain began clawing up the back of his neck.
“Your future is the future of us all,” added the Saudi in Arabic. “You will bring great glory to the soldiers of God.”
Chapter 19
Zen was working now. Sweat poured down his back, drenching his undershirt beneath the flight suit. A crowd of onlookers — including three congressmen and their staffs, along with some Pentagon and army VIPs — were watching from only a few feet away as he worked his Flighthawks through an exercise designed to demonstrate the future direction of aerial warfare. It was an all robot engagement — Lieutenant Kirk “Starship” Andrews and Lieutenant James “Kick” Colby were at the sticks of their own U/MF-3 Flighthawks, trying to keep Zen’s Hawk One and Hawk Two from getting past them on the test range to the northwest. They were doing a reasonably good job of it, too; Kick’s Hawk Three was closing in on Hawk Two, with Star-ship’s Hawk Four right behind. A large flat screen directly behind Zen showed the positions of all of the Flighthawks, and even provided a score as calculated by the computer.
“The Super Bowl of the sky,” joked one congressman. He and the others were eating it up.
Starship and Kick were aboard the Megafortress Raven which was flying overhead. Zen sat down on the tarmac beneath a specially rigged tarp, the center of attention. There was just enough wind and crowd noise around to interfere with the boom mike, prompting the computer to ask him to repeat every third or fourth voice command.
Zen squeezed the throttle slide on the back of the joystick controller, pushing Hawk One to accelerate past the two Flighthawks trying to close in on him. He got past Kick, but Starship was very much on his game today — he anticipated what Zen would do and managed to get right on his tail.
It took Starship another ten seconds or so to finally lock Hawk Two in his gun sights and take him down. It was a little longer than Zen had hoped — hey, these guys were his star pupils — but all in all, it was a respectable show.
Unfortunately for his pupils, Zen had suckered them into that encounter so he could sneak Hawk One to the target. He let the computer take over Hawk Two and concentrated on bringing Hawk One up the deck and nailing the target aircraft. He now had a clear path; the other planes were too far to interfere.
Except that he couldn’t find his target, which should be dead ahead at two thousand feet.
The computer beeped at him. He was being tracked by a ground radar near the target aircraft. If he didn’t confuse the radar within five seconds, the defensive system would fire a pair of improved Patriot missiles and nail him.
“Jam it,” he told the computer.
While the computer filled the air with electronic static, Zen threw the Flighthawk into a hard turn, firing off chaff and flares, as well. He actually only needed the chaff, which was composed of shards of metal that confused the radars, but the flares made for a good show. He heard a few oohs and ahs behind him.
Zen’s speed had dropped below three hundred knots, and he was now vulnerable to a fresh hazard — a pair of Razor antiaircraft lasers, which were using a new optical sighting system that could not be foxed by standard ECMs, chaff, or flares. Zen leaned forward, waiting until the lasers began to revolve in his direction before starting a series of sharp evasive maneuvers, literally zigzagging back and forth across the sky. The laser system was a half-step too slow to hit the Flighthawk at very close range, but Zen knew he couldn’t do this all day; he really needed to find his target, and now.
The computer beeped at him, but it wasn’t marking an X on the target board — it was warning him that he was about to be pounded from above. Zen slapped his stick and dove away as Starship flailed down in a desperate attack, followed not more than two seconds later by Kick.
In anything other than an exercise, the laser would have destroyed their Flighthawks, but it had been programmed to look only for Zen’s aircraft, and they flew through the air untouched. Zen shook them with a flick of his wrist, but he’d not only lost time but his orientation on the battlefield. He started to turn right, then caught a glint of something on his left.
Bingo. The target.
“Computer, target,” he said, designating it with his hand. The screen changed instantly, putting up a blinking yellow triangle that boxed the spec he had pointed at.
Yellow meant not yet.
The computer warned that he was being tracked by the Patriot radar. He fired everything he had — flares, chaff, prayers.
Red.
“Gotcha,” he said, pressing the trigger.
The screen blinked, then went blank.
The computer had taken over. He’d been shot down by the Razor laser.
Zen, exhausted, threw himself back in the chair. There was a gasp from the crowd, then a loud round of applause.
Dog slapped him on the back. “Take a bow, Major.”
Zen looked up and gave the colonel a sardonic smile.
“I think the computer scored it as a tie,” said Dog.
The others were now gathering around his station. Zen reached over for his coffee, which was propped on a small table near his wheelchair.