OSAMA THE GUN by Spinrad Norman

Author:Spinrad, Norman [Spinrad, Norman]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Norman Spinrad
Published: 2011-07-01T16:00:00+00:00

Marwan lay supine on the blacktop in a slowly growing pool of blood, his neck a bloody wreck, his head at an impossible angle. One of the robot tanks was back in its regular patrol pattern. The other paced back and forth along the gap in the laser fence. A thick bank of evil-looking and no doubt poisonous yellowish-green fog was spreading out from the inner fence across the entire width of the blacktop.

Salim, Abdullah, and I gaped woodenly at each other, panting.

The sirens stopped but the floodlights remained on and the strobes continued to flash.

The Great Satan had brought its technological version of Hell to the Earth to guard the life's blood of its demonic machineries.

#

We found a stream and cleaned ourselves and our clothing as best we could, after which we held council about what to do next. There was no question of attempting to attack another oil field. They were impregnable fortresses satanically animated by circuits and machinery that gave them implacable wills of their own and clearly could not be defeated. I shuddered to think how many jihadi squads might even now be discovering what we were so naively up against and suffering the same fate or worse.

Abdullah was terrified, as any reasonable man had a right to be, and wanted to make our way back to the Zone and safety, but Salim pointed out that the oil fields had not been the plan's primary targets in the first place.

"As I understand it, the main thing is supposed to be blowing as many gaps in as many pipelines as possible, setting the oil in them on fire as it spills out, and hoping for the best, isn't that right?

I nodded.

"Well the Americans can't protect hundreds of miles of pipelines with those tank things and magic fences and djins whose screams themselves can make you shit in your pants, now can they?"

"It doesn't seem possible..." I admitted.

"So I say we don't turn tail and run like rabbits until we at least try to do that," said Salim. "Seems to me we owe at least that much to poor Marwan...."

And to however many jihadis might have met the same fate or were about to, not to mention the Nigerian soldiers now dying in far greater numbers to make that original plan, my plan, even possible. Not to try to take out the pipelines would be a betrayal of them all, and surely any squad leader who had survived the same kind of fiasco must feel the same way.

"We saw a major pipeline not far from here," I said. "We'll take it out before sundown, Inshallah."

We approached within about fifty yards of the nearby major pipeline running south during the end of the daylight hours, as close as we could get while still remaining within the cover of the woods. The pipeline ran through what once might have been a grainfield but which now lay fallow and well-choked with low weeds which might provide cover if needed.

But it didn't seem to be.

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