The Coward's Way of War

The Coward’s Way of War

Christopher G. Nuttall

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“
In today's wars, there are no morals. We believe the worst thieves in the world today and the worst terrorists are the Americans. We do not have to differentiate between military or civilian. As far as we are concerned, they are all targets
.”

-Osama bin Laden

Sometime in the near future, a dying woman is discovered in New York City
– infected with Smallpox.  As the disease starts to spread, it is discovered that terrorists have unleashed a biological weapon on the American population – and brought the world to the brink of Armageddon. 

Against this backdrop, an extraordinary cast of men and women fight desperately for survival in a world gone mad.  Doctor Nicolas Awad struggles desperately to contain and control the outbreak; President Paula Handley struggles to rally the shattered country for war and preserve something of the American way of life.  On the streets of New York, Sergeant Al Hattlestad and the NYPD try to keep order and save as many as possible, while survivalist Jim Revells takes his family and tries to hide from the chaos.

But the nightmare has only just begun...

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“
Good afternoon,” Dr Rennet White said.  “I understand that there have been some…concerns about you?”

Nicolas Awad eyed her suspiciously.  Rennet was a thirty-something woman who might have been attractive if she had lost some of the weight and perhaps three-quarters of the make-up.  She dressed as if she was an instantly trustworthy aunt or mother-figure, but he found himself disliking her on sight.  She smiled too much and it never touched her eyes.

“Concerns, Doctor?”

“Please,” Rennet said.  “Call me Rennet.”

“As you wish,” Nicolas said, as if he couldn’t care less.  It was the truth.  What could the shrink say to him that actually mattered?  “Have there been concerns about me?”

Rennet leaned back in her chair.  “From Professors Kus and Conners,” she said, not entirely to his surprise.  “They have suggested that we might benefit from a little chat.”

Nicolas couldn’t resist.  “We, Doctor?”

“Please,” Rennet insisted quietly.  “Rennet.”

She paused and waited for Nicolas to speak.  When it became apparent that he wasn't going to open his mouth, she tried again.  “Professor Kus was very impressed with your paper,” she said.  “He actually believed that you had copied your work from other sources – the work was college or even government-quality – but apparently you were able to show a thorough chain of research leading to your paper.”

Rennet crossed her legs, hesitating slightly.  “But at the same time, Nicolas, he was concerned with your choice of topic,” she continued.  “You chose Biological Warfare Threats to the American Public.  Why did you choose such a…dubious project?”

“Hey,” Nicolas said, stung despite his determination to avoid revealing anything to a woman he was starting to dislike intensely.  “It is a morbidly fascinating subject, and one that most people don't pay any attention to.  We think about Mutual Assured Destruction by nuclear war, but to concentrate on that threat alone is stupid. The point of the paper was to illustrate that city-busting nukes are not the only threat.”

“I could not disagree,” Rennet said.  “You make your point very well.  Still, I do tend to disagree with your assessment that we face a serious threat.  The idea of someone using Anthrax as a weapon is pretty far-fetched...and the idea of using recombinant DNA to modify a disease such as smallpox is both frightening
and
nearly impossible. These techniques are fairly complex and expensive, and would require government resources. No sane government would spend money on such things. Besides, recent treaties make such research illegal.”

Nicolas scowled.  “You appear to have more faith in government sanity, and international treaties, than I do,” he muttered.

“And this other story, from your Creative Writing Course, has us very concerned,” Rennet contained, as if the discussion had never touched upon unpleasant subjects at all.  “There are some…frightening overtones here that I would like to talk to you about.”

“What is there to talk about?”  Nicolas asked, honestly surprised.  “The assignment was to write a horror story set in the modern age, perhaps based on
The X-Files
or
The Twilight Zone
.   Frightening is what she asked for; frightening is what she got.”

“But you talked about Arab terrorists setting off biological weapons in the New York tunnels and the resulting chaos,” she said.  “You seem to have a problem here with Muslims…I mean, the protagonists are Arabs and…”

She broke off.  Nicolas could almost read her thoughts.  He might have had the standard linebacker build of a teenage boy who’d spent more time on the field than off it, but there was no mistaking him for an Aryan, or even another person of European origin.  His face was unquestionably Arabic.  It didn’t quite fit into her worldview.  She’d be happier, he decided, if he had been the perfect WASP.  The embarrassment would probably do her good.

“Ah,” she said, as if she’d finally settled upon an explanation that made sense.  “You’re not…
Jewish
, are you?”

Nicolas laughed, despite himself, and saw her flinch.  “Do I
look
Jewish to you?”  He asked, dryly.  “My family came out of Lebanon years ago, Doctor.”

“Rennet, please,” she interrupted.

“Tell me something,” Nicolas continued.  “How many hijackings have the PLO conducted in the last few years?  And what is the next logical step?  They believe that America is not a neutral power in the Middle East, Doctor. 
We
are their enemies in their eyes, even if they pretend otherwise…”

“But the US has nothing to fear from the PLO,” Rennet protested.  “They don't even conduct their operations in the US. She shook her head.  “You mention the Muslim Fundamentalist movement as a threat in your biological warfare study, and then they are the main villains in the horror story.  This fixation against Muslims bears further examination.”

“It does?”  Nicolas asked, innocently.  “My father is a Muslim, Doctor.  My grandmother is a Muslim.  My cousins are Muslims.  If that question wasn't so stupid, I’d get irate.  Really.”

“It could be a rebound,” Rennet said, scribbling notes.  “Why do you feel that Muslims are a threat to the US?”

“Would that make
me
a threat to the US?”  Nicolas asked.  “I mean…I drink, I smoke, I had a long steamy affair with one of my fellow students…surely, I’m the worst threat to the United States since General Lee.”

Rennet flushed.  “Be that as it may,” she said, “there is still the underlying question of your worldview to consider…”

“What worldview?”  Nicolas asked.  “Look, my family chose to leave our homeland because it was becoming intolerable, a situation caused by radical so-called fundamentalists.  I understand how those people
think
, Doctor.  They regard America as a threat because America provides an example of a working society that functions far better than the best they can create.  They
must
oppose us.  We have already seen signs of a growing trend in Iran and Egypt…”

“Both of those countries are primitive,” Rennet observed.  “How could they threaten us?”

“Producing a biological weapon is not difficult,” Nicolas countered.  “We have the most open society in the world, Doctor.  We would find ourselves in grave circumstances before we even knew that we were under attack.”

Rennet leaned back in her chair, seemingly satisfied.  “You’ve obviously put a lot of thought into the technical details,” she said.  “My theory is that we are dealing with a case of repressed rage, perhaps fuelled by your father’s decision to leave his home, and that is what we are here to talk about.”

Nicolas rolled his eyes.  After several more sessions, he was finally able to convince the shrink that he was simply a harmless student, not a paranoid homicidal manic.  For his part, Nicolas decided that all psychologists were idiots, bent on seeing things that were not there.  It was a belief that would never be seriously challenged in later life.

…
Among the many difficulties faced in countering such weapons is that the deployment system – i.e. an infected person, willingly or otherwise – is extremely difficult to detect.  No reasonable level of security – up to and including strip and cavity searches – can detect an infected enemy agent.  The issue becomes only more complicated when one realises that the infected person may be unaware that he or she is infected and, therefore, will show no sign of guilt or fear when investigated.

-Nicolas Awad

New York, USA

Day 1

“Did you enjoy the flight, sir?”

Ali Mohammad Asiri pasted a smile on his face as he looked up at the flight attendant.  He had visited America several times before, yet he would never get used to American women and how they chose to dress.  Just looking at the attendant – her nametag read CALLY – made him grimace inside, for it was clear that she had no sense of modesty.  If one of Ali’s sisters had dared to wear such an outfit in front of a strange man, he would have beaten her into a pulp.  The Americans were truly a shameless people.

“Yes, I did, thank you,” he said, in fluent English.  As much as he wanted to reprove the harlot for her dress sense and her forwardness, he didn’t quite dare.  The orders had been quite specific and completely beyond question.  He was to pretend to be a playboy, one tasting the seductive western world for the first time, and do nothing to attract attention.  It was odd that leering at a flight attendant was less likely to attract attention than politely turning his eyes away from her, but orders were orders.  Besides, he was skilled at concealing his true thoughts.  Growing up with a father who adored the Americans – and the money they brought into the Kingdom – had left him very aware of the possibility of betrayal.  “It was an excellent flight.”

Cally grinned down at him, apparently unaware of his inner thoughts.  “I’ll be sure to pass your compliments on to the pilot,” she said.  It had been a boring flight really, with no excitement beyond a short landing in France before flying on to New York.  “Is this your first time in New York, honey?”

Ali winced inwardly at her words.  “No,” he admitted.  He would have preferred to claim ignorance, but there was no way of knowing just who Cally truly worked for or even if she would get curious and check his records.  “I visited three times before and enjoyed myself, even though I was a child the first time around.”

Cally shrugged and headed off to bother another passenger, leaving Ali to slump into his chair in relief.  The passengers were disembarked row by row and herded off the plane and into the flight terminal, many of them heading back to the United States after a holiday or business trip abroad.  Even in a time of economic recession, the Americans looked fat and disgustingly healthy compared to some of the fighters he had seen at the training camp, but then the devil was fond of rewarding his servants in this life.  It was the afterlife that they had to beware, or so Ali had been taught, back when he had rediscovered his faith.  Allah saw all and stood in judgement over it all.

He stood up when the flight attendants waved at him, picking up his small carry-on bag as he moved.  There wasn’t much in it – increasingly burdensome flight regulations had made it impossible to carry anything useful onto the plane – but he had been warned not to let it out of his sight.  The Great Sheikh had made it clear that Ali must not lose his documents, even though he hadn’t offered any specific instructions as to the disposal of those documents.  Indeed, Ali had no idea why he’d been ordered to take a short holiday to New York City and spend a few days just relaxing and enjoying himself.  When he thought about the privations being suffered by the fighters in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, he felt nothing, but guilt.  How could he enjoy himself – insofar as it was possible for a believer to enjoy himself in a sinful city – when his brothers were suffering at the hands of the infidel?

But orders were orders.

Ali remembered – as he followed another female flight attendant – how he’d first met the Great Sheikh.  He’d been a young man then, barely aware of the greater world outside his home city, yet bitterly aware of his father’s lack of faith.  His father worked with infidels, did business with infidels, profited from infidels…and ignored his duties to Islam.  The young Ali, more influenced by a strict believing uncle than his father, had wondered if his father had had plans to use the infidel lust for money against them, but as he’d grown older he had come to realise that his father just loved their money.  He had grown to manhood aware of his family’s shame – and of how his world was slipping away from him – and desperate to change it, somehow.  His uncle had introduced him to a more fundamentalist mosque and it had all grown from there.  Ali had thought to go to Pakistan – Iraq wasn't a safe place for believers these days, not with an increasingly effective Iraqi Army wiping out
jihadi
cells almost as soon as they were formed – but the Great Sheikh had had other ideas.  Ali was a young man with an unblemished record, one that would sound no alarms in the American security forces.  He could be far more useful elsewhere.

The Great Sheikh himself was a great man.  He had fought alongside the great Osama bin Laden before the unleashing of righteous wrath on New York City, over seventeen years ago.  Since then, he had fought in Iraq, Pakistan and even Europe before he’d finally been ordered to return to his homeland of Saudi Arabia and start forming new cells for overseas operations.  Ali, like many other young men, had been captivated by his words, for they had nothing in their lives to live for.  Ali had graduated from education with a degree in Islamic Studies that had proven to be worthless in the real world, while there was no hope of marriage or children.  His father had refused to help his believing son any further, after reminding Ali that he had urged him to take a more useful – and sinful – course.  Instead, one of his daughters was – against all Islamic Precepts – slowly assuming control of the family business.  Her husband, a weak man easily dominated by his wife, might have control in name, but in reality it was all hers.  It made Ali’s blood boil.  How could any man be so weak?