Hellblazer 1 - War Lord Read Online Free PDF

who had sent him were using her and her brother as camouflage, to get them near the trucks. The car was a bomb.
    “You are martyrs, we are martyrs, Allah Ahkbar!”
    “No, Sabbah, my brother is so little—no!”
    “This is all I have, this I will have!” Sabbah shouted, stepping hard on the gas pedal.
    Zainab reached over and grabbed the steering wheel and jerked it hard to the right so the car swerved, turning broadside to the soldiers just twenty-five feet from the cones.
    Sabbah slapped her so hard that her eyes were filled with blue sparks and she lost her grip on the steering wheel. He shouted a prayer and opened the glove compartment and as her vision cleared she saw wires attached to the sort of switch used to turn on a light, the whole fixture sitting crookedly on a sheaf of dusty papers.
    Ali was screaming and trying to open his door. Sabbah was pawing at the switch, trying to set off the bomb. The car spun to a stop . . .
    ~
    Gatewood was sitting on the ground, holding the side of his head, hearing gunfire just above. It came to him that he’d been trying to stop Vintara from shooting up the car, and Vintara had hit him with the butt of his gun. Now the gun was firing; brass was clinking on the asphalt.
    “Oh fuck, Vintara, don’t shoot that car, not this time . . .”
    He felt strong hands lifting him up by the armpits. Binsdale. “That’s a bomb car, you know that, man.”
    Vintara stopped shooting, and, a bit unsteady, Gatewood ran to the car, looking for the kids—the driver was shot to pieces but he was alive, still fumbling with something on the dashboard. “This is a sucker move,” Gatewood told himself, as he helped the little boy drag the girl free. He dragged them both skiddingly away from the car—then the blast came, spinning him around like he was on a turntable. He felt the scorching heat of it; he heard shrapnel singing past his head. He heard Binsdale shouting with pain—but everything he heard was through a blanket of ringing. He fell, lay there stunned a few seconds.
    Shaky, he got to his feet and looked down at himself—no blood, no torn clothing. Binsdale was clutching his side, but it looked superficial from here. A piece of metal from the wrecked car; the stink of gasoline and blood from the twisting pillar of smoky flame. He could make out oozing pieces of the driver, smoking to one side of the wreck.
    There were two small, slender figures lying near the overturned orange cones nearby. The smaller one, a boy, stirred—and suddenly sat up, holding his head and wailing. The other, his sister maybe, lay still, blood pooling around her neck, her shoulders.
    “Vintara,” Gatewood said loudly, not even looking toward him, “did you fucking light up those kids?”
    Vintara was sitting against the bumper of the truck, staring at the bomb wreck. He nodded. Then he shook his head. “I was shooting at the driver . . . I think I hit one maybe; I don’t fucking know . . .”
    Gatewood wobbled over to them, his head aching in distinct throbs that went with each step, and saw that the girl’s eyes were fluttering.
    Gatewood sat down next to her and took her pulse. It seemed more or less regular. The wound was just under her collarbone. He found a compress in his belt pack and pressed it to the wound; she twitched at the touch. The little boy, close beside him, had stopped crying. He was staring with his mouth open at Gatewood.
    Hearing ambulance sirens approaching, Gatewood felt the girl’s pulse. He smiled at the boy. “She’ll live, kid.”
    He glanced up, and saw two men standing together nearby. An Arabic man with a white beard and the young soldier. He knew they were there and not there, at the same time. He could feel it. The others never glanced at them.
    Both men nodded to him. Gatewood heard the young soldier’s voice in his head. “You must survive, so that you can find a way.” Then the old man and the soldier vanished into the smoke from the burning car.
    ~
    They