Read Short Stories for Free Online

were  bitten, if he were stung . . . The dragon's roar of fury made the earth tremble yet again. It swung toward the  gunships that had annoyed it. Helicopters were maneuver-able. But the dragon?  The awakened dragon, like the jinni of whom the Prophet spoke, could have been a  creature of fire, not a creature of matter at all. It moved like thought, now  here, now there. One enormous forepaw lashed out. A helicopter gunship, smashed  and broken, slammed into the side of the mountain and burst into flame. Satar couldn't blame the Soviets in the other two gunships for fleeing then,  fleeing as fast as their machines would carry them. He couldn't blame them, but  it did them no good. The dragon swatted down the second helicopter as easily as  it had the first. Then it went after the last one, the one that had launched  rockets against it. Again, Satar could not have denied the gunship crew's  courage. When they saw the dragon gaining on them, they spun their machine in  the air and fired their Gatling at the great, impossible beast. Again, that courage did them no good at all. Dragons were supposed to breathe  fire. This one did, and the helicopter, burning, burning, crashed to the ground.  The dragon looked around, as if wondering what to do next. Down in Bulola, the Russians serving the Katyusha, launchers had had time to  reload again. Roaring like lions, roaring like the damned, their rockets raced  toward the dragon. They are brave, too, Satar thought. But I thought no one could be stupider than  the men in those gunships, and now I see I was wrong.

    Sergei said, I haven't smoked any hashish lately, and even if I had, it  couldn't make me see that. Bozhemoi! Vladimir sounded like was a man shaken to the core. Not even chars  would make me see that. Sergei wasn't so sure he was right. The local narcotic, a lethal blend of opium  and, some said, horse manure, might make a man see almost anything. But Sergei  had never had the nerve to try the stuff, and he saw the scarlet dragon anyhow.  He was horribly afraid it would see him, too. Sergeant Krikor rattled off something in Armenian. He made the sign of the  cross, something Sergei had never seen him do before. Then he seemed to remember  his Russian: The people in this land have been fighting against us all along.  Now the land itself is rising up. What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Vladimir demanded. Just then, the  dragon flamed the last bumblebee out of the sky, which made a better answer than  any Krikor could have given. The dragon looked around, as if wondering what to do next. That was when the  Katyusha crews launched their next salvos straight at the beast. Sergei had  never known them to reload their launchers so fast. That didn't fill him with delight. Noooo! he screamed, a long wail of despair. You fools! Krikor cried. Vladimir remained foulmouthed to the end: Fucking shitheaded idiots! How the  fuck you going to shoot down something the size of a mountain? Katyushas weren't made for antiaircraft fire. But, against a target that size,  most of them struck home. And they must have hurt, too, for the dragon roared in  pain and fury, where it had all but ignored the helicopter gunships' weapons.  But hurting it and killing it were very different things. With a scream that rounded inside Sergei's mind as much as in his ears; the  dragon flew down toward the Ural trucks. It breathed flame again, once, twice,  three times, and the trucks were twisted, molten metal. A couple of the men  who'd launched the Katyushas had time to scream. Somebody from the trench near Sergei squeezed off a banana clip at the dragon.  If that wasn't idiocy, he didn't know what was. Noooo! he cried again. If  Katyushas couldn't kill it, what would Kalashnikov rounds do? Nothing. Less than  nothing. No. More than nothing. Much more than nothing. The Kalashnikov rounds made the  beast notice the Red Army men in the trench. Its head swung their way.