Warlord Anin seemed to be coming to the end of his exercise. He stopped, arms trembling, face flushed, eyes closing.
A woman's shriek of pleasure pierced the damp African night air.
It was a perfect head shot. So Winston Smith took it.
The trigger came back smoothly. He heard a click, and the gun said, "Congratulations. You have executed a perfect kill. Mission over. Return to pickup zone, please."
"What the fuck," Smith blurted.
"What the fuck," the BEM gun dutifully repeated.
Smith fired again.
The gun told him, "Twelve-point demotion for unnecessary fire. Return to pickup zone, please."
"Why don't you fire?"
"Antifiring interlock is armed," said the gun.
"Well, tell me how to disarm it!"
"See manual."
"My ass is hanging out a fucking tree! I don't have time for any goat-fuck manual!"
The gun said nothing, so Winston whacked it with his hand.
"Arm one."
"Arm one."
He fired a test shot at the low-hanging moon. Nothing happened.
Dragging the clips out one by one, he thumbed out rounds, holding them up to the moonlight. "Nothing wrong with these rounds. What the fuck!"
His shout was heard by Warlord Mahout Feroze Anin, who came to the window, buck naked except for a Dragunov sniper rifle.
Anin used it to methodically chop the branches surrounding Smith's perch to pieces.
Smith dropped to the ground and ran for his life, swearing softly but often.
The unwieldy gun swore back with amiable vehemence.
Chapter 21
Wayne Tardo had point. He was ready for armed IRS agents, heavily armed drug traffickers-ready for anything.
Except for what he did encounter.
It flew across the landscaped grounds of Folcroft Sanitarium like a vampiric butterfly. Face fierce, shrieking in fury or agony or God knew what, it tore directly at him on billowing black-and-orange wings.
It was not armed, so Wayne Tardo hesitated. The hesitation was brief and fatal.
The DEA agents bringing up the rear saw it all. So did the IRS agents who had flocked to the Folcroft windows, alerted by the roar of the speedboats and the battle cries of the DEA agents.
Everyone saw the same thing, and no one believed their staring eyes.
A monarch butterfly flew screaming at Wayne Tardo. Its shriek of fury froze the DEA agent in midstride. He had his Uzi up. He started to drop it into line. He looked as if he were moving in slow motion. Or perhaps it was only an illusion created by the headlong fury of the butterfly creature with the bald human head.
Its great wings suddenly spread, and from the tips great yellow bird claws seemed to sprout. It left the ground with a flutter of fabric like a boat sail cracking in a high wind.
The butterfly seemed to pass over Wayne Tardo's head. Its shadow fell across the paralyzed DEA agent's body. Its great wings obscured him only a moment, no more.
But when it passed beyond him, Wayne Tardo was gone.
That was what their slow eyes and brains told them when the onlookers saw the spot where Wayne Tardo had stood. The butterfly alighted a short distance beyond the spot and threw up his winged arms in the faces of the other agents of the DEA. One arm swept back, like a stage magician indicating a feat of legerdemain.
On the spot where the butterfly with the human head pointed, Wayne Tardo began to reappear. One limb at a time. A leg fell first. Then his head. It bounced and bounded toward the water.
By far the loudest sound came when Tardo's barrel-chested trunk went splat on the grass, ejecting fountains of blood from all five stumps.
The butterfly let out another shriek, this one articulate. "Behold the fate of those who defile this fortress!"
At first the DEA agents didn't quite know what to make of this. They stood wide-eyed and riveted in their heavy mud-caked boots.
Two of them shook off the shock and, shiny steel pistols elevating, issued a warning.
"DEA! Freeze."
The human butterfly lunged at them. He should have died right there. The DEA agents had plenty of time to riddle him. In fact, two had already begun to squeeze their triggers in unison.
This became very apparent when yellow claws caught them at the elbow and forced their arms around so their weapons faced one another. The shiny muzzles came together with a clank that welded them nose to nose.
The agents stood blinking, obviously slow to comprehend how they had come into this awkward position. They tried to withdraw their weapons, but they refused to separate, like Chinese handcuffs holding two facing fingers together.
The weapons had hair triggers. The exertion of trying to separate the muzzles caused them to fire. Both weapons exploded in their gun hands, sending gun metal flying into soft organs and fragile skulls.
"Who will challenge the Master of Sinanju now?" shrieked the butterfly with the voice of a man.
As it turned out, no one. The remaining DEA agents beat a hasty retreat to their boats and pushed them off.
For their part, the gawking IRS agents decided discretion was the better part of valor. They shut the windows they had been leaning out of, not wanting to attract the fury of the butterfly that they now realized was no figment of Jack Koldstad's lobotomized brain, but a very real creature with the power to wreak incredible damage.
"Big Dick will have to handle this," one sail, voice shaking.
"Yeah, this is a job for Big Dick."