Free Deadly Wands by Brent Reilly Page B

horses as pack
animals and the Siberians drove the herds north, where they’d be
turned into enough jerked meat to feed an air force.
    The irony itched enough to scratch: the
Americans only found so much to take because the Mongols created
the richest kingdom known to man. What the Mongols spent over three
hundred years taking, the Americans stole in just a month. A clever
singer penned a ballad called A Tribute to the Tribute that soon
become popular worldwide.
    While everyone said the world was at war, the
only real battles were at the Empire’s perimeter. Each conquest
added to the world’s largest market. The Khan governed two-thirds
of the world’s population, and three-quarters of its wealth.
Genghis argued that the only way to have lasting peace was if one
government ruled everyone. While critics equated the Empire with
institutionalized slaughter, the Mongols said every conquest
brought them closer to world peace.
    And most of them actually believed it.
    While Peking was rightfully called the
capital of the world, because it housed the Mongol government,
Karakorum could accurately be called the richest place on Earth
because three centuries of tribute literally piled up there. It was
less of a city and more a vast storage facility. Not bad for an old
yurt town in Mongolia’s oldest farmland. It’d take one hundred
thousand quads, each hauling one hundred kilos at a time, weeks to
move all that wealth. Plus everything on the wagon train.
    Genghis stored his riches in Karakorum
because the world’s best air force protected it. Far from the
nearest city, it’d be hard to loot even if no Mongols protected it.
There was no where to take it to. The formidable Gobi Desert made
the trip to China hard, Siberia’s frozen wasteland lay to the
north, the vast Stans to the west, and the empty Manchurian forests
to the east. Plus, it only had four gates and was nearly surrounded
by two rivers.
    What never occurred to anybody -- before
William -- is that the Pacific Ocean is only a thousand kilometers
away. Landlocked, the Mongols never thought to fear the sea.
    The Great Khan soon led a vast air force
north, only for one hundred thousand Americans to bomb them with
incendiaries the first night they camped in Manchuria’s vast
forests. Several square kilometers of trees ignited like a huge
bonfire, roasting the Mongols. The well-rested long-distance
Americans engaged the tired Mongols day and night for an exhausting
week. The mostly short-range Mongols had to fight sleepy, hungry,
and dehydrated as the Americans burned their supplies, tents, and
food. Genghis assumed the Americans would run, then assumed he
could overwhelm them, when what he should have done is sent his
marathoners around the American blocking force to intercept the
wagon train full of gold plodding towards the coast.
    But, because the long-distance Mongols left
the slower ones behind, Genghis lost his best quads in that initial
ambush. Having half the endurance of the Americans meant they
needed twice the quads just to match parity, but the weaker Mongols
streamed in over several days, so the Americans always enjoyed air
superiority.
    The Mongols would have withstood the assault
better if they had traveled slower, but together, instead of flying
all out for a week. In contrast, the Americans slept the afternoon
before the attack, and enjoyed dinner first. William had them pack
a million food kits and water sacks so they could eat and drink in
the air.
    It’s so much easier to kill quads on the
ground than in the air, so the trick is exhausting them so they
cannot fly, and then give them nowhere to hide. Burning the forest
forced the survivors into the air, where they had to fight
individually in the dark against formation fliers. Then they had no
cover when they needed to rest.
    Genghis Khan led two hundred fifty thousand
quads, but only had one hundred thousand of the best when he got
ambushed. The Americans finished them off in time to sleep before
the