Caliphate полностью

"Five minutes, no more. We must hurry."

Hamilton took his weapon and slung it over one shoulder, and an ammunition carrier over the other. He then gingerly lifted a sack. Hans felt his to make sure that it not only contained one jar of cyanide crystals and another of acid, but also the bomb he intended to set off in the control room.

The two raced on cat feet for the nearest door. Hans pressed a buzzer while Hamilton crouched down very low.

"Guard room," came from a speaker mounted above the buzzer.

"Odabasi ibn Minden," Hans said. "Open up."

"Immediately, sir." It was Hans' ensign's voice.

The door buzzed itself with the sound of a solenoid moving a bolt out of the way. Hans opened the door, said, "Thanks," into the speaker, and entered. Still crouching low, Hamilton followed. Hans shut the door quietly, then pointed. "Two barracks that way. They're marked. Good luck."

Both men then took night vision goggles from their packs and strapped them to their head. With a nod, Hamilton took off in the direction indicated.

He killed the hallway lights, then walked ahead to his target.

These are men I am responsible for, Hans thought, as he came upon the barracks room door for his own third platoon. Men I took an oath to lead. And . . . they're good men, too.

He heard another voice, an old and dying priest's voice. "What does the Koran say about lying to unbelievers? Turnabout is fair play."

But these men never lied to me. If anything, they were lied to.

"Not that. It's that it was permissible for you to lie under oath."

Oh. I suppose so.

Still, Hans hesitated at the door. His heart was pounding, yes, but not from fear. He was sick at the stomach, yes, but not from nerves. It was just that, The only man I ever killed—helped kill, anyway—was that old priest. And now I'm supposed to kill nearly one hundred. It's a hard step.

But will it be any easier, knowing that two hundred children down below will be infected with a deadly disease if you don't save them? Take your pick, Hans. At least the men in that barracks room are adults.

Sighing, Hans laid down the pack and removed from it the two jars and an oxygen mask with a small tank. Then, after placing the mask over his face, he opened both and set them down on the floor by the crack of the door. The door he opened gently until there was just about a foot of opening. He slid the jar of cyanide crystals almost through that opening. With two hands, carefully, Hans began to pour the acid onto the crystals. They immediately began to dissolve with a sound of crackling. He pushed the jar all the way into the barracks room and closed the door.

Inside, sleeping men began the process of dying.

On the other side of the castle, Hamilton felt none of the qualms Hans had. These were not, after all, his men. On the other hand, his heart was pounding just as Hans' was. And that pounding was from fear, if not fear for himself.

If I fail in this, he thought, what becomes of Petra? If I fail, what becomes of the children down below? If I fail, what becomes of the world?

I must not fail . . . I must not fail like I failed Laurie.

Repeating Hans' motions, Hamilton took out and prepared two jars. Likewise, he donned an oxygen mask—be nice if it was impossible to absorb cyanide through your skin and eyes—cracked the door, half pushed in one jar, and then filled it with acid from the other. He then pushed it in the rest of the way, and closed the door . . . just as the door for the other barracks room—the one for the headquarters platoon— opened and a robe clad janissary emerged from it.

"Who turned off the fucking lights?" the janissary cursed. "Get up to take a damned piss and you risk your life around this place . . . "

Will he find the light switch? Probably. If he does, will he see me? Certainly. If that happens . . .

Hamilton aimed his submachine gun at the greenish image of the janissary and pulled the trigger. The gun was suppressed; it hardly made a sound. The janissary, on the other hand, was not killed instantly and managed to get off a scream.

"Ah, fuck!" Hamilton exclaimed.