Deadly Wands (48 page)

Now, in a controlled fall, Billy pointed his
hands and feet at the battalion leader and fired every wand. The
fireballs not only struck the front line, but continued to burn a
dozen rows deep. Billy sent his next volley at the nearest company
commander, then turned the other way to fire at the second
closest.

Now he fell below a thousand angry quads --
not a safe place to be. He popped sideways to avoid dozens of balls
certainly coming at him, then fell to earth, back first, so he
could fire even his boot wands at the bastards descending to get
him.

Normally, this is exactly what a lone quad
should not do, but Billy needed to give his division time, and
costing the enemy altitude did that. Sure enough, dozens of squad
leaders broke off to pursue the famous Red Baron and a thousand
gold tons.

They flew down faster than he fell, so he hit
more of them as they closed the distance. Billy adjusted his
position to evade the inevitable fireballs for as long as he could,
before finally popping down to avoid getting swarmed.

He made them chase him through the terrain --
around hills, between trees, and into gullies. They didn’t tire
much until the third hour. Some had to land, while the strongest
continued the chase. Billy led the best quads away, only to race
them back.

In his Mongol uniform, they had no idea he
was the Baron when he landed. He knelt as if exhausted. After
drinking water, he cut down everyone within twenty meters, then
popped up to shoot at all the easy targets. A few dozen quads tried
to swarm him, but he just popped sideways and took them out a few
at a time. The exhausted tried to flee, but he caught them easily,
then searched for those who hid.

Billy knew that the quads he fought today
were nothing compared to the Mongols he battled several years ago.
The quality of the enemy fell every time Genghis had to
recruit.

Billy hid when he spotted a shadow on the
horizon. He waited for their best quads to rest, then shot them on
the ground. A few hundred chased him away, but he just circled
around to strike those too tired to fly.

Now their best quads had to stay in the air
to warn the rest. Once rested, Billy hugged the terrain, blew past
their sentries, and fireballed everyone who had not launched. He
avoided the strong to attack the weak.

This worked well all day, and even better
after nightfall. They couldn’t see him coming until giant orbs of
flame engulfed those napping. To Billy, it was the best game ever
invented. Nothing made him feel more alive than taking everything a
man had, and everything he would ever have.

They dispersed in the dark, so Billy left to
catch up to his division. He found them looking relieved to see
him.

Billy explained how he wanted to beat the
Mongol force between them and Grandma. He gave memory sticks
containing his latest exploits to several who knew Grandma, along
with instructions for the next battle, and sent them to find
her.

It took his division three more days of easy
flying before they found the new enemy force. The division rested
all day while Billy located the enemy camp and found a large enough
hiding spot. It took five hours of flying in the dark to get there,
but at least it was only an hour from the enemy. The Mongols put
their long range patrols north, south, and west, not behind
them.

After sleeping well, the Americans took off
two hours before dawn. Without the Baron, they never would have
dreamed of attacking one hundred thousand quads, but Billy gave
them confidence. Even though they didn’t know if Grandma’s force
would participate.

They hugged the ground in the dark to not
stand out in the sky, which helped them get much closer unseen.
Sentries sounded warnings, which other patrols repeated, but the
commanders assumed the enemy came from the west, not east.

His line slowed to minimum speed and dropped
their bombs into the mass of sleepy men scrambling into formation.
If warned just a few minutes before, the Mongols could have
murdered the weighted down Americans flying low and slow.

Instead, the marathoners dropped their
shrapnel explosives and got off several volleys into grounded
targets with nowhere to run. The Mongols were within lethal range
of the Americans, but the Americans were not within lethal range of
the Mongols. They crossed the camp and rose steeply since they
enjoyed momentum, while the Mongols did not.

Billy, however, rose in an arc back over the
camp. As thousands of Mongols rose to chase the Americans, Billy
screamed, blazed his wands, and shot volleys. He waited for them to
get close, then led several thousand of them east, away from his
escaping division.

As planned, the Americans waited until the
fastest enemies nearly caught up, several kilometers from camp,
then formed a ten square kilometer vertical wall in the sky to
launch volleys down at the thousands of angry quads chasing them.
Stretched out in a long pipeline, the Mongols threw themselves away
against the American broadside. Even when an entire division
charged as one, volleys from ten thousand with stronger wands fired
from greater altitude destroyed them. Once the Mongols stopped the
blind charge, the Americans closed the distance before the Mongols
circled around them.

After mauling these Mongols, enemy
reinforcements arrived. Twenty battalions raced to encircle the
Americans, who instead fled west towards Grandma.

Except Grandma was no longer west of them. On
Billy’s instructions, she hid as close as possible south. When her
spies reported twenty battalions chasing the American division,
Grandma ordered her slowest twenty battalions towards the enemy
camp, while she led her fastest to hit them from the other three
sides. In the dark, the Mongols assumed the dark shadows were their
battalions returning.

The Americans caused about fifty thousand
casualties, but most were minor cuts and burns. But those wounded
needed immediate attention.

Team Red shot up the camp from every
direction. Only a rapid reaction battalion stayed in formation, and
Grandma’s super-quads made it a priority. The rest amounted to
shooting a lot of disorganized individuals, or torching felt huts
with wounded inside.

When Billy returned, a few hours after dawn,
the five super-quads ambushed the Mongols chasing the Baron. Now
came the fun part: preparing the camp before the remaining twenty
thousand enemies returned.

The American division arrived first, having
lost their exhausted pursuers. They gave the code and were given a
hero’s welcome. Then Billy set up patrols and sentries just like
the camp originally had. While Grandma’s force hid, the Americans
pretended to be Mongols.

The returning battalions looked relieved to
be almost home again. Billy stole the uniform of a battalion
commander so that his battalion could escort them to base. Billy
led them to an open parade ground where they buried the munitions
they found.

Naturally, they hit the Mongols as they
landed. Grandma’s force dropped bombs on their heads, which
exploded the buried munitions. Everyone else rushed to blast them
from all sides and above. The good guys had every advantage over
the twenty thousand bad guys and suffered no casualties.

Billy’s friends swooped down on him as soon
as the blasting died away and Bear gave him one of his famous hugs.
So many people surrounded him that quads had to extend steel just
to pat him on the back.

“Why’s everyone so happy?” Billy asked. “At
this rate I’m gonna run out of Mongols.”

And he wasn’t joking.

Grandma pushed her way through, not afraid to
elbow her own grandchildren. Or, perhaps, delighted for an excuse
to knock them about.

“We’ve been reduced to melting down statues
and chiseling loose precious gems. Work work work! You know how
bitchy the boys get when they go too long without killing. It was
like living in a camp full of old cranky ladies.

“Then your messenger arrives to tell us you
plan to attack one hundred thousand Mongols -- with or without us.
First you abandon us, then you command us to save you from the big
bad Mongols? We’d have blasted your messenger if he didn’t start
talking nonsense -- how you beheaded Hulagu, tried to kill Genghis
Khan in his own palace, kidnapped the Empress, took on the capital
alone, made fools of an entire enemy division, then sacked cities
deep in Mongolia. Hell, I’d have blasted him myself if he didn’t
produce the videos. That turned my boys into puppies eager to
follow you into hell. Me? I’m only here to smack the fool who
walked into the Khan’s tent city alone to assassinate the Great
Immortal.”

With that she smacked him across the head
like his dad used to, then kissed his forehead. Billy tracked their
hero-worship like a fireball. A woman collapsed at Billy’s feet,
crying out of control. Billy felt caged by their admiration.

“Geneva is happy you killed the person that
Genghis loved most,” Bear helpfully explained. “You paid him back
for all the loved ones that he took from us.”

Billy understood, but didn’t want to endure
fifty thousand hugs. “Just don’t call me a hero because I know
exactly what I am.”

Grandma suddenly looked sad. “Genghis has
left governing to his granddaughters to run his massive flying
school. He should have half a million quads soon. We should bomb
them before he learns of our victory.”

“Yep. I hoped you moved enough bombs near
him.”

“We have a million not far from him, another
million hidden along his most likely route west, and a few million
more in Kiev.”

“The sooner you strike, the safer it’ll be,”
Billy said, looking up. “You have great weather for flying.”

“Crap,” Bear said with a tired sigh. “He
wants us to leave today.”

“If you leave after breakfast, you can bomb
him tomorrow night. I’ll infiltrate his camp to find out where his
super-quads, high altitude troops, and marathoners sleep, then I’ll
find a path through his patrols.”

Grandma sighed in resignation and the other
super-quads knew Billy won again. It’s hard to argue with someone
willing to do so much more.

The next day, Billy met them at the
rendezvous point. He projected a huge overhead image of the camp
and pointed out the barracks of the specialty quads.

“Genghis spread them out around the camp to
make targeting them harder. The paranoid bastard has too many
patrols up to his west, so the only way in is from the east. And,
even then, we’ll have to slice up a few patrols and fly in so high
that sentries on the ground don’t see us. So the bad news is that
we have another day of flying into enemy territory. The good news
is that cloud cover should cloak our approach.

“Instead of bombing the whole camp, I want to
divide our force into four groups, three targeting his specialty
quads and the fourth to destroy his supplies. Let’s dive straight
down, bomb when we get close, hover and blast at two hundred
meters, then let them come up to us. Each group will need to break
a battalion into squads, flying an overhead perimeter to intercept
the enemy. Each group leader should stay above their troops and
signal retreat as soon as circumstances turn unfavorable. The
facility is huge, so each unit leader must act independently. I’ll
do my scream to distract them. Afterwards, I’m gonna start my next
mission, so I don’t know when you’ll see me next.”

“The preposterous one you can’t tell us
about?” Bear asked.

Billy put a hand on Grandma’s shoulder to
emphasize his next point. “Keep him away from home and don’t let
any messengers through. Okay?”

“Just what do you plan to do, Red?” Grandma
asked, alarmed.

Billy, quoting his mother, smiled. “I’m gonna
kill as many as I can, as fast as I can, for as long as I can.”

CHAPTER 63

Genghis Khan stewed as another messenger
reported in, this time to tell him the Baron -- alone -- gutted an
entire battalion. Only the cowards who hid survived.

“But we know where his division was a week
ago,” the messenger pointed out.

The problem with hunting down marathoners is
that, by the time he reached their last known location, they could
be on the other side of the world. No, he wouldn’t be seeing them
for a long time.

One by one he considered and dismissed his
options. What he wanted to do was take his marathoners after the
Baron’s marathoners. But he didn’t have nearly enough, and they
could not fly as far, as fast, or as high. As the Baron proved over
and over again, the trick to killing quads was surprising them on
the ground. His troops kept losing because they had no idea the
Baron was nearby until too late.

At that very moment, he thought he heard a
distant alarm. He shook his head, blaming his legendary paranoia,
but then he heard it again, but coming from a different direction.
He stormed out of his stone bunker and flew onto the roof to hear
better. His eyes faced west, searching the skies, when several
firefights broke out high above the vast facility.

Genghis saw his troops stumble out of
bunkers, frantically putting on armor. At first it pleased him how
fast his men assembled into formation, but then he saw it through
the eyes of the enemy, who wanted the Mongols massed together for
their shrapnel bombs. Genghis knew he should withdraw to the
protection of his underground bunker, but his thirst for vengeance
ran too deep. All he wanted was someone to strike.

Thousand of enemies dropped out of the dark
clouds to throw bombs at the marathoners forming into their units.
Every detonation made him wince because it represented more wasted
talent. With so many bunkers made of mortared stone, they’d have
been safer inside. A huge explosion to the west turned him around
-- ah, the bastards got his super-quads! Then a closer explosion
created a pressure wave that knocked him clear off the roof.