Hellblazer 1 - War Lord Read Online Free PDF Page A

you stop?” Ali asked, as Sabbah pulled up at the curb, half a block from the overpass. “Have we not enough petrol?”
    “Yes, yes, we have enough, we—it’s just too soon,” Sabbah snapped looking at his watch.
    He looked pale, to Zainab. She remembered her Jaddah speaking of Sabbah with a mixture of pity and contempt. “He has nothing. Look at him, no woman, no job, everything he tries has failed. Always bad luck. Now he is with those fanatics . . .”
    “He is one of them,” said the man in the backseat. Zainab didn’t turn to look, but she knew he was there. “And he has vowed to give his life. You must try to get out of the car. You must survive, so that you can find a way.”
    Zainab squeezed her eyes shut, opened them, and looked—
    “What?” Ali said.
    She shook her head. No one there. Except she thought she felt the man looking at her still.
    Her breath whistling loudly between her teeth, Zainab looked at the American soldiers, who seemed stuck somehow on the overpass, waving their arms and pointing at the engine of their truck. One of them was setting up orange cones a little distance in front of the stalled vehicle. That meant keep back or else, she knew. People who approached a stalled American vehicle without permission were often shot, whether they intended harm or not.
    She looked at Sabbah. She thought about the car that he had never had before and the cellphone he had never had before, and she could feel the fear rolling off him with the sweat. He began to murmur prayers then, traditional prayers. They seemed to be pressed out of him like the fear and sweat.
    “Oh,” she said. The man in the backseat was right.
    Sabbah looked at her.
    Zainab turned to Ali. “Come, we’ll get out and wait in the shade.”
    “No,” Sabbah grated. “You will stay in the car.”
    “I am too hot, Sabbah.” She unlocked her car door, started to press the handle to open it.
    Sabbah grabbed her by the upper left arm and squeezed, and she whimpered in pain. “I said no! You will wait—we’re going—”
    The cellphone chimed from his pocket again. He let go of her arm and clawed at his coat, his motions frantic, till at last he got the insistent cellphone out. “Yes, yes . . . yes we—yes. Now. Yes.”
    She turned to look at her brother and mouthed, Run. Run!
    Ali stared at her, blinking, not comprehending.
    ~
    “Okay, this is what we’re going to do,” Binsdale was saying.
    Vintara was staring at a car driving up toward them, a dusty blue sedan. Three people in it. “That fucking car—coming out of park there—it’s coming up here, and they can see those cones, man. They see we’re fucking blocking the way!”
    He unslung his rifle from his shoulder.
    Gatewood put a hand on Vintara’s shoulder. “Wait, Vintara, Jesus—there’s kids in that car. Two kids—”
    “I don’t fucking care, that scraper is not coming up here.”
    “Vintara, we have orders; you don’t light up a family car with kids in it, unless you see a weapon.”
    “And Lieutenant Mayfield said fuck that, he said if they won’t stop you light them up—they’re Ali Baba, man. And fuck, here they come—!”
    Time seemed to slow then, becoming like a dead leaf drifting slowly down, and Gatewood felt as if someone was calling him.
    He turned from Vintara, and saw the young soldier again—the guy just appeared at his elbow. “Hey bro, huh-ah. Listen, Vintara’s going to hit you—move! And get the kids out of the car . . .”
    Then time sped up to normal, the same time as the car coming at them sped up; Gatewood moved, and the blow hit him only glancingly. But he fell to his knees . . .
    ~
    “Sabbah, don’t!” Zainab shouted.
    “Shut up!” Sabbah shouted, tears rolling down his cheeks.
    She knew what he was doing. The soldiers had sometimes shot at cars approaching a checkpoint too quickly. Families had been killed, and now they’d been ordered not to shoot at cars containing women and children. But Sabbah and those