The Caliphate, André Gallo [best books to read ever .TXT] 📗

bottled water, blankets, medicine and tents had been restacked in the back. Each group had brought food and drink.

     John and Elise were already there, as was Campbell. An old Charles Aznavour song was playing in the background. Tables along one wall were for the mechoui—lamb slow-cooked over a wood fire—and grilled capitaine, the huge freshwater fish from the Niger River. Along another wall was a table laden with fruit, chicken, dates, teas and soft drinks. Soon the room was full of laughter from several dozen people who were celebrating a job well done and wishing bon voyage to good friends. Each new arrival brought more food and drink. Steve heard at least a dozen languages being spoken, with English dominating.

     “Quite the international group,” he said to Kella.

     Frank Sinatra replaced Aznavour until a live Tuareg musical group, called Tivaren, began to play and sing.

     “My driver’s brother Izem met the members of this band when he was in the Libyan Army,” he said. “Many of the Tuareg rebels went to Libya after the rebellion. As a favor to him, they came to help the international workers celebrate.”

     “I like their music,” she replied. “It’s called ishoumar, a mixture of traditional Tuareg music, John Lee Hooker and reggae.”

     They soon served themselves and went to find seats. But almost as soon as they sat down, Kella said, “Oh, I’m going to go say hello to Elise. I’ll be back.”

     Steve tasted the mechoui and looked around for something to drink. He saw a large white plastic cooler underneath a food table near the front wall and got up hoping that he would find a beer. The space was alive with music and conversation. He looked back to spot Kella as he walked toward the cooler. She was half kneeling by the Wests who sat at a center table in the back. He bent down to open the cooler and was reaching for a beer when a staccato sound of gunfire suddenly dominated the room. He dove to the floor and shouted, “Get down. Get down.”

     Steve could see that many had not immediately recognized the sound of gunfire. They seemed almost paralyzed. He looked up to see the legs of two men walking down the center of the warehouse. Looking up a bit more, he saw them firing AK-47s, one from the center to the right and the other to the left. The gunfire had plunged the party into total chaos. Most people were now on the floor. Steve could see that a few in the center had been hit by the steel jacketed bullets. A Malian waiter and a Canadian with Medecins-Sans-Frontieres were down and not moving. Few in the middle of the room were not wounded. He couldn’t see Kella.

     The sound of the guns punctuated the screams of pain and terror. Tables, chairs, and other furniture were knocked over. Dishes, glasses and bottles exploded and crashed to the floor, spraying their contents and shards of glass around the room.

     He crawled closer to the entrance and noticed that he still had his bottle of beer in his hand. The gunmen were past him but still firing mostly to their front and side. He was in back of them and to their right. He again looked for Kella near John and Elise with mounting anxiety. He could easily run out the front door and try to get help. The gunfire continued in shorter bursts and he saw one assailant drop an empty magazine clip and reload. Unconsciously, Steve knew the gunman had sixty more shots and there was no time to look for help.

     From the first bursts of AK-47 fire, even as he plunged to the floor, Steve remembered that his explosives and weapons instructor had given him a concealed self-defense weapon on the last night of training. He turned to one side on the floor in order to get his hand in the pocket where he had placed the device when getting dressed for the party. He took out what appeared to be a Mont Blanc pen that actually was a still-experimental, pulsed-energy-projectile gun.

     He turned the top quickly to the left, felt it click, pointed the top of the pen toward the closest assailant but stopped when he realized his hand was shaking. He quickly got to his knees, steadied his left hand on the back of a chair and pushed the clasp firmly inward. The pulsed energy immediately superheated the air and moisture around the target with a flash of light and a loud bang.

     The effect was not exactly what he had expected. In training, both light and sound had been twice as great. Nevertheless, the whole room instantly froze in time, its population temporarily deafened and paralyzed. The gunman that Steve had fired at appeared unsteady on his feet. He looked as if he was about to drop his weapon, holding it limply. For an instant, the only sound was from the Beatles singing “Help.”

     Steve recovered first. With adrenalin pumping, he sprang to his feet and rushed toward the second gunman who was starting to drop to one knee, his hands going up to his ears as if to protect them from another explosion. He still held his weapon. Steve’s tackle took the gunman down.

     Simultaneously, a shot rang out and the attacker immobilized by Steve’s weapon fell over backward. As the man fell, his carotid artery, pierced by the bullet, began to pump blood from his body in cadenced spurts. Steve quickly got his adversary face down and seized his weapon. He looked up and saw Izem about to fire a second shot.

     “Tie them up!” he yelled, and directed one of the waiters to help him. He then went to look for Kella at the Wests’ table. He first saw Elise bending over John.

     She looked at Steve and said, in