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.No prisoners.Avatar walked forward and sighted along the barrel of his Taurus.The fallenfigure shrinking into the deck, shoulders hunching as instinct kicked in andthe man s body curled up to protect its vital organs from attack.Instinctbased on millennia of experience.Instinct that hadn t yet adapted to guns.Revolver in hand, Avatar crouched down and saw the figure flinch.The buckleat the side of the man s mask was a simple ceramic affair, tinted black as notto catch the light, the helmet s strap a fat strip of neoprene stitched to thelining.There were electrodes attached directly to the scalp of the personwearing the mask, though their purpose was uncertain.Not that Avatar gave them much thought.He was much too busy staring into thepale blue eyes of a girl little older than he.Her broad face was set intosomething Avatar recognized instantly as acceptance.She still thought hemeant to kill her.As if he d first bother to remove her mask.Except Avatar wasn t sure why he ddone that; unless, because it was the kind of thing Raf might have done?Certainly not because Avatar expected to find some blonde Soviet corn-daughterhidden underneath.And she was Soviet.No other Army in Europe used women in frontline combat.ASovietSpetsnaz ranger on an ex-Soviet liner come face-to-face with some Delta streetbastard. Not even full Delta, muttered Avatar to himself.Maybe half-Abyssinian orDanakil.It was hard to know.If a mug shot did exist of his mother, it wasprobably in the files of the UN or the Red Cross, along with blood type and atissue sample. What a fucking mess. Some flicker of recognition in the blue eyes watching him told Avatar that thewounded girl had logged the meaning, half-recognizing his tone in what passedfor consciousness amid all that endocrine stink of hope and fear.And all the while, unanswered questions, mute but frantic, hissed from withinthe empty mask Avatar now held in his hand.They spilled out in a language hedidn t understand, from a world he understood even less. Give me your rifle. Avatar kept his own words simple.And though shedidn t understand them, she followed his gaze until she saw what he saw andknew what he meant.But her hands remained white at the knuckle where theyheld her weapon tight to her body, one finger curled around the trigger andless than a shudder away from smashing her other knee, because that s wherethe muzzle pointed. Come on. A bullet to her head would have been Colonel Abad s solution, Avatar realizedthat, as he waited impatiently for the girl to process his demand and reachher decision.And in combat terms the Colonel was probably right.Of course,if she did something stupid, then that would be Avatar s solution too.But all the girl did was uncurl slightly and push her gun away from her,leaving it to Avatar to kick the rifle away across the metal floor.Then hesmiled apologetically and stamped on her good ankle, to cripple her other legPage 162 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlas well.Once, just once, Avatar thought he might have seen his mother.Standing at thegates of St.Luke s and staring intently through the ancient wrought-iron barsat neatly uniformed children who kicked a plastic football across meltingtarmac or tried to dunk basketballs through a single hoop screwed to aclassroom wall.She looked old to him, but was probably not.A thin face peering from thefolds of her heavy hijab.Her eyes had scanned the playground s movement, seeking a point of silence.And the gaze she met was his.He was the one she watched, with a hunger soopen it sent one of the sisters across the playground to find out who she wasand what she wanted.Avatar put a bullet through the head of a soldier standing guard outside theold bank vault.A single shot fired through the slightly open door.TheSpetsnaz should have relocked the safe after sending the others through.Except she couldn t, obviously enough, not with all the ship s systems down.In reply, Avatar took a slug through his left arm that ripped up muscle andexited at the back.Only Avatar was so cold he hardly felt the blow and wastoo busy killing the first guard s partner to notice the blood that stainedthe canvas of his makeshift jacket.Two left, maybe one.Up on deck, where Avatar needed to be.His mother was gone by the time Avatar brought his thoughts back to thelong-forgotten and dusty playground.Gone from his memory and from the tallgates before Sister Carlotta even made it across the sticky tarmac.Up ahead were more stairs and sunlight.Flicking out the cylinder of his Taurus, Avatar discarded the dead brass andspeed-loaded another seven rounds.His borrowed rifle already had a full clip.CHAPTER 54___________29th October It s paradise. Hani s excitement filled the upper tier of the library,echoing off the inside of the giant pyramid to get lost among the books thatlined row after row of shelves. Hani! It is, she insisted. Paradise.Jannah
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