Carnifex Read Online Free PDF

that this same infidel press supports and advances the very things we loathe and fight against? Freedom for women, for queers, for atheists? Are they not the very essence of perfidy? Are they not the mothers of lies? Why then should we accept anything they say or do at face value? The only thing we can be sure of is that they take care of each other. And that , brother, is completely consistent with them assassinating, more likely paying someone to assassinate, our fallen comrades."

    "But . . . if the infidel press is against us, what chance have we?"

    "This is why we must strike them," insisted Bahir, "to let them know who their masters are. After all, the 'courageous' infidel press is brave only when not pressed."

    "Should we assassinate then, or take hostages for ransom?"

    This, Bahir contemplated. After a bit of deep concentration, he answered, "Nobody expects us to honor ransoms anymore, not since that Masera houri was fed feet-first into a wood chipper."

    Giulia Masera, a progressive journalist from the Tauran Union, had volunteered to be a hostage for ransom early in the war. Her mistake had been in surrendering herself to Sada's boys, rather than the actual insurgents. These had taken the ransom, then murdered her for the cameras in just the way Bahir had said. This had had the salutary effect of stopping such voluntary hostage takings pretty much entirely.

    "No," Bahir continued. "Let's pay them back in the same coin; kill a team or two and leave our calling cards on the bodies."

    * * *

    "Don't press too soon," cautioned the leader of the five man bomber team. "Wait for the vultures to show up on their way to gorge on the meat from the bodies that lie dismembered in the market."

    The bomber with the infrared switch in his hand smiled at the metaphor. Good one, Anwar. What are the pressies, after all, but carrion feeders?

    They didn't have long to wait. Ambulances passed. Military vehicles passed. And then came the word from an observer a further half mile down the road, "Tauran News Network, yellow van, eye painted on the side."

    Placing a hand, fraternally, on the shoulder of the bomber with the detonating switch, Anwar said, "On my signal, Brother . . . . and . . . FIRE!"

    Infrared, despite sending a signal at the speed of light, activated a mechanism that was much slower. Anwar knew the time it would take between sending that signal and his bomb exploding. He had mentally calculated the time, and done so rather well. The yellow painted van with the TNN eye on the side was only a meter or so past the bomb when it went off.

    The explosion came in the form of a fiery dark cloud and the whizzing of hot chunks of steel. The bomb, itself, was of the concave directional type. It was mid-sized, and just perfect for sending a very heavy concentration of metal chunks in a fairly precise direction.

    The rear tires of the van were blown off as the rear three fourths of one side disintegrated under the steel hail. The van's tail was forced about ninety degrees from its direction of travel. Forward momentum, however, had not been lost. The van had no option, given the laws of physics, but to begin to spin along its long axis as it tumbled down the street. It crashed, finally, at a store front. Between the bomb and the wildly careening van, some numbers of innocent people were hurt or killed.

    No matter; the bomber team was well sheltered and they emerged moments after the bomb went off, ignoring the dead and wounded and racing afoot for the van. Their faces were covered by their keffiyah . Once at the van, rifles went into action, pouring lead into the stunned and bleeding men— oh, and there's one woman, too. Infidel slut! —inside the wrecked vehicle. One or more bullets must have found the gas tank, for the air quickly filled with the stench of gasoline. One terrorist carried a grenade. This he donated into a broken window. The van was soon blazing merrily and, based on the screaming, finishing