Any Minute Now Read Free Page A

don’t. I’m not gonna give them the chance to bring down our ride home.”
    Without another word, he raced out from behind the boulder. No fire ensued. They couldn’t see him, but he could see one of them, and he prepared to hunt both down.
    The air began to dance, then turn into a whirlwind as the helo descended. Rain was flung into his face like shrapnel. He caught the first jihadist in the side. He’d aimed for the kidney, to cause maximum pain, and his aim was true. The jihadist screamed, as Whitman had wanted him to. The second one, drawn out of hiding, began to fire wildly, spraying bullets every which way. Whitman, flat on his stomach, took aim, squeezed the trigger, and a line of bullets flayed the target to shreds.
    Then he was up and running in a semi-crouch back to the boulder. The helo appeared like an apparition from the underside of the clouds. A rope ladder was unfurled.
    â€œCome on!” Whitman called.
    He hoisted Sandofur onto his shoulder, pulled Flix to his feet with his free hand, then sprinted for the ladder, which rippled and spun in the helo’s draft like a spectacular child’s toy. Around and around its end circled. The gunner was halfway down its length, staring at them. He leaned down, his right arm extended as if in friendship.
    â€œGet a move on!” he shouted. “Bogie vehicle approaching at speed!”
    Whitman handed Sandofur up to him, and he began to climb back up into the helo. Flix winced as he dragged himself onto the ladder. Whitman launched him upward, then followed. A livid glow in the darkness of the night began to grow in both size and clarity. The armored vehicle was almost upon them.
    Whitman pushed Flix, but his wounded shoulder had stalled his ascent. Clambering over him, Whitman reached back, clasped his left hand, and hauled him upward.
    Below them, the armored car appeared out of the gloom, hulking and huge. Its machine guns swiveled around. A burst cut through the bottom of the rope ladder, pieces of it flying everywhere. Then return fire started up from the helo. Whitman at last gained the aircraft. The instant he hauled Flix inside, the helo shot upward like an arrow piercing the blackness of the heavens as it vanished from view.

 
    PART ONE
    FULL ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
    Modern science is an incredibly demonic enterprise.
    â€”Terence McKenna
on alchemy and Renaissance magic

 
    1
    â€œA mess,” King Cutler was saying.
    â€œA mess?” Whitman echoed. “It’s a goddamned clusterfuck, is what it is.”
    Cutler watched Whitman with the eyes of a tiger, green and glittering. His torso, tense and leaning slightly forward, gave him the aspect of someone about to rend anyone who opposed him limb from limb. “Seiran el-Habib was an extremely high-risk target, even for you guys.”
    â€œAnd that’s another thing,” Whitman said, heatedly. “There are no ‘you guys,’ not anymore. Sandy is dead and Flix just got out of surgery. Red Rover is dead, gone, finished, kaput . ”
    â€œFlix will be fine.” Cutler struggled to maintain an even tone in the face of Whitman’s rage and pessimism. “They got the bullet without any difficulty. No bones involved. With our accelerated PT program he’ll be as good as new in a week, ten days at the outside.”
    â€œAnd what about Sandy? Will he be good as new? Are you going to resurrect him?”
    Cutler made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat. They were seated opposite each other in Cutler’s office, which had the look of a room in a gentleman’s club rather than an office. Paneled in gleaming mahogany, its myriad shelves were filled with books on military history and biographies of great generals and admirals going all the way back to Alexander the Great. Only one anomaly appeared in the room, and it was a doozy: an enormous flat-screen TV set into the wall opposite a massive tiger-oak desk, on which played an