Declare

Germany and Italy. Their only failures had reportedly been operations that had been planned by other agencies—and Hale hoped that this Ararat expedition, planned by the SOE, would not be another.
    “Have you got the blood?” asked Hale—gruffly, for he was embarrassed to be speaking of the filthy uses of magic with these hard-bitten professional soldiers. “Medical supply bags?”
    Shannon’s voice was stoic as he said, “We have, sir—it’s in the water bottle pouch of a set of ’37 webbing, which you’ll wear.” He coughed and spat. “We can drive,” he went on more easily, “and be up there pretty quick and noisy, or ride bicycles. A bit of hiking involved either way, where it eventually gets too steep for wheels. Nothing taxing.”
    Drive, Hale thought fretfully, or ride bicycles? “I hope you didn’t score through all the bubble holes on the stone,” he said, almost absently, as he pondered the choice. He wished he had time to brief these men properly, as Theodora had said he would have.
    “The incised lines are zigzag, sir. We were told not to saw into any of the bubbles.”
    Hale was aware of the weight of the cut-down .45 revolver in the shoulder holster under his vest, but its two-inch barrel would be of little use for accurate shooting over any distance. “I believe you were instructed to bring a spare gun, for me,” he said.
    One of the men by the nearest jeep reached into the bed of it and hiked up another Sten gun, its skeletal stock making it look to Hale for a moment like some kind of modern orthopedic crutch.
    “Right.” Hale took a deep breath and let it out. “I think the sound of a jeep’s motor would—”
    He paused, for over the wind he could now hear the buzz of a distant motor, and from the sound and the cadence of gear-shifts he believed that in fact it was a jeep, somewhere out on the marshy plain to the south.
    Exactly, he thought; you can hear the bloody thing for miles.
    And then he heard a rumbling from the mountain—and even in the moonlight he could see the valley floor to the west rippling , in waves of shadow that were rushing across the grasslands toward him.
    “Earthquake!” he said, crouching, even as the ground under his feet began to heave up and down like the bed of a speeding truck; and in spite of his stance, Hale sat down heavily on the jumping ground. The helicopter creaked on its wheels and the springs on the jeeps were squeaking as the vehicles rocked. The helicopter’s six-foot rotors had stopped spinning, but were bobbing up and down now.
    When the ground had steadied and the rumble had rolled away to the cloudy east, Hale rocked forward onto his hands and knees and looked back up at the mountain. The sharp outlines of the gorge were blurred by clouds like smoke, and he knew they were dust or snow, shaken up from the crags.
    And he remembered the earthquake that had jolted the rubbled lot in Berlin, in the instant when the weather balloon over the Arabian boat had been engulfed by the living whirlwind.
    “They’ve started,” he said breathlessly, getting to his feet and stepping toward the nearest jeep, which had a spare set of suspension springs roped across the grille like an incongruously smiling mouth. “The djinn are awake now, they’ve opened their gates.” He took a deep breath. “They’re—goddammit, they’re genies, right?— up there. Monsters, like earth elementals—no joke. Use the anchors, the iron crosses, as a shield, to force them back—the way they do with crucifixes to Dracula in the movies. Your lives depend on this.” He was panting and sweating; the faces he could see were skeptical and noncommittal. “We’ve got to drive—and fast. To hell with the noise, there’s already a jeep banging around out here tonight.”
    “McNally,” snapped Shannon, “you drive Captain Hale, behind the rest of us.”
    Shannon and three of his men sprinted to the other jeep as Hale vaulted over the rear fender of the nearer one and crouched in the gritty ridged-steel bed, snatching up the Sten gun. “Did you understand me,” Hale nearly wailed, “about the anchors?”
    Over the brief screeches of the jeep engines starting up, he could hear the men in the other jeep reply in the affirmative.
    “Understood, sir,” loudly echoed the man in the driver’s seat of Hale’s jeep, whose name apparently was McNally.
    The headlamps were not switched on, but abrupt acceleration threw Hale back against the tailgate. “And you