Rotten Gods Read Online Free Page A

corridors, helpless and sullen as the mujahedin pass through, pausing to pull compact automatic weapons from sports bags. Marika recognises an Uzi, and a PM63.
    One walks ahead of the others, his cheeks sunken and lean, proud and watchful, with the glare and stride of a predatory animal. Marika realises that Dr Abukar is not the architect of this event. Here is the real commander, and her job is to know such people. Her mind trawls through hundreds of grainy snapshots. The leaders have histories. All of them do.
    The man who walks in front of the others is known to Marika from just two file pictures. The name he goes by is Zhyogal. Hunted on three continents. Key member of the African Salafi terror group, known as al-Muwahhidun, or Almohad. Spearhead of the new wave of terror.
    Please God , not them, she pleads. Please, why did it have to be them?
    The antechamber is almost empty of people now, but those who remain cower back from the nine men as they walk through the entrance, into the amphitheatre, down the tiers and to the front. The gunmen take up their positions around the room.
    Head thrown back, face engorged with blood, veins and tendons standing proud on his neck, the leader raises his right hand, index finger pointing skywards. The others follow his lead, all shouting, ‘Allahu akbar.’
    Zhyogal’s voice is filled with triumph and a religious fervour so visceral and powerful it might be sexual.
    â€˜In the name of God, the most gracious and merciful. Your faithful have taken possession of this room and everyone inside it. Let the overlords of taghut, of tyranny, prepare to die.’
    The main doors hiss closed and Marika stands, still staring, a feeling of dread in the pit of her belly.
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    Faces recoil from the horror of what is coming, remembering stories and recalling images of beheadings and executions, each aware of their own mortality — that no matter how important a man or woman might be in this life, they are still no stronger nor less fallible than a beating heart and a collection of tissue and nerve endings.
    The President of the United States, halfway through his term, imagines the media frenzy back home. Wonders how his media director will shape his image in the wake of this disaster. The Republican grip on power is tenuous at best, and is predicted to become even more shaky after the impending midterm elections.
    How can this happen, he thinks to himself, when his country spends untold billions every year to hold back terrorism? When the sharpened point of the enemy is five hundred or, at most, a thousand, Islamists with the funds, skills and organisational backing to pose any real threat. He wonders how the little people of America will react if he is killed here. Wonders if anyone apart from his wife and three sons will give a damn.
    The prime ministers of Britain and Australia tuck themselves back into their less ostentatious circles of advisors and force a phlegmatic front over the inner panic. And beneath it all is an unfounded, yet ingrained, belief that Western civilisation will always dominate.
    They cannot win, because they are not like us. They cannot win because they do not have our institutions, our facilities, our industrial strength, and our veneer of invincibility.
    Neither man remembers the lessons of history: that it was no industrial power, but the Goths and Vandals who reduced Rome to a smoking ruin.
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    Isabella Thompson, four rows back, feels the hammering of her heart, recites a prayer over and over again, the lone survivor from memories of Sunday school, the vicar’s spinster daughter leading hushed voices from the front of the room, eyes closed and fingers interlocked.
    Our Father, who art in Heaven,
    Hallowed be Thy name …
    If You truly exist, if You love me You will bring my beautiful girls back to me now. You will remove these bastards from the face of the earth and give my girls back to me. I will do anything You want in