The Coward's Way of War (56 page)

He shrugged and tapped his camera.  The scene was already out and spreading across the world.  He nodded to his escorts and they led him away, to another scene.  Perhaps this time he could see an Iraqi force as it advanced into the city.

***

Lieutenant Kareef kept his head down as the Iraqi forces met heavy resistance.  The enemy forces ahead of them had dug in heavily, using the wreckage from the bombs to conceal their positions.  The Iraqi forces were better trained and kept forcing the ene
my to keep their heads down, but it didn't look as if the terrorists were going to retreat any time soon.  He tapped his radio, sending a signal back to one of the armoured units, and watched as an American-designed Abrams tank appeared and advanced towards the enemy.  Their bullets simply bounced off the tank, along with RPGs and other weapons.  The tank punched through the barricade and opened fire.  Dozens of terrorists died in the first few seconds.

He ran forward, leading his men up to provide support to the tank and saw a man pointing something at him.  He shot the man dead instinctively, realising – a second too late – that his target hadn't been pointing a gun at him, but a camera.  Kareef hesitated, and then shook his head.  If the reporter was dumb enough to walk into a war zone and point something that could be mistaken for a gun at someone, he deserved everything he got.

And the Battle for Mecca raged on...

Terrorists are not rational, or rarely so.  They must seek to strike
a balance between causing fear and causing hatred, the kind of hatred that leads people to throw away the rules and just hit back.  Terrorists who fail to keep this balance get exterminated
.

-Captain Darryl Tyler

Washington DC, USA

Day 53

Nicolas knew that he should be focusing on Operation EXODUS, but his thoughts kept returning to the puzzle in front of him, the odd mysteries that surrounded Henderson’s Disease and how the Saudis had reacted to it.  He had thought, or had at least suspected, that the Saudis would have vaccinated their own population against Henderson’s Disease, yet it was becoming increasingly obvious that they hadn't done anything of the sort.  The Iraqis had pulled infected bodies out of Jeddah and the parts of Mecca they had occupied and American forces had done the same to the east.  He wouldn't have bet good money on the prospect of Riyadh itself being uninfected.  If the US had had even a month’s warning that a biological weapons attack was on the cards, the US would have vaccinated everyone in the country against the disease...

Or would it?  The thought was a bitter one, but it had to be faced.  There were always people objecting to such programs, either on the grounds that the threat wasn't real or that it would cost money.  A few years ago, there
had
been a proposal to vaccinate the United States against Smallpox, yet that proposal had never gotten off the ground.  It would have cost millions of dollars when the country was in a very poor state and caused widespread disruption, and panic.  Now, with a third of the country infected or dead, it struck Nicolas that they’d made a very poor bargain.  They just hadn't wanted to admit that the threat was real.

Just for a moment, he recalled Dr Rennet White, the High School psychologist.
She
hadn't wanted to consider that the threat was real, no matter how much evidence he’d placed in front of her over-long nose.  She had preferred to believe that he was suffering from a complex or an attack of racism, just as so many others had done over the years.  Their minds couldn't take the thought that perhaps a certain level of paranoia was justified when it came to certain groups; instead, they took refuge in the thought that such thoughts were racist and chose to ignore them.  A noble ideal, he was sure, yet it wasn't one he could ever understand.  If someone was worried, telling them off for being a racist didn't help, particularly when they knew damn well that they weren't a racist.  He looked down at his lightly-tanned skin and snorted at the thought.  She might as well have had Martin Luther King joining the KKK.

He pulled over a map of America and stared down at it, but his thoughts were elsewhere, running through everything he knew.  The hell of it was that terrorists were
not
irrational, at least not in the way they did things.  They had a goal – no matter how crazy it seemed to someone who could put two and two together – and they were relentless in working towards that goal.  They knew that fear worked and so they spread it, yet they also knew that if they overplayed their hand, fear might be replaced by anger and rage – and a determination to do whatever was necessary to obliterate the terrorist threat, once and for all.  After 9/11, the United States had reached out to invade Afghanistan, followed rapidly by Iraq.  The terrorists had wanted to provoke a reaction from the United States...yet their plans had failed, because the United States had not broken.  The war in Iraq had been won. 

His mind churned rapidly.  In Russia, the biological weapons program had been corrupted, a threat the West had chosen to ignore.  An element within the Saudi Government had purchased Henderson’s Disease from a rogue Russian doctor, who was currently living within a secret American prison somewhere in Nevada.  They’d taken the disease back to Saudi, used it to infect an unknowing victim, and sent him to America.  The victim hadn't known that he’d been infected...or had he?  Nicolas had no problem, unlike the long-gone psychologist, in accepting that someone was prepared to kill himself to kill others, yet there was something odd about the way the boy had behaved.  He’d spent three days in New York and then crawled into his hotel room to die.  If he hadn’t known that he’d been infected, why had he not sought medical attention?

The mystery seemed insolvable and he altered his focus, worrying away at the problem.  The Saudi Government had said nothing to the United States when it had issued its demands, not even a denial.  It hadn't said
anything
, even since the invasion had begun, yet they were clearly trying to organise a defence.  Why not?  Had the overall goal been to lure the United States into invading Saudi Arabia?  It might have made sense for one of the transnational Islamic terrorist organisations – like the remains of Al Qaida – to try to lure the United States into a possible quagmire, yet why do it in such a way?  It guaranteed that the United States would be anything, but gentle.  The world media had been howling about American atrocities – or what they chose to call atrocities – in Saudi Arabia, yet no one cared.  The President’s approval rating had barely been affected by their whining.  The war had not paused...

He shook his head, and then frowned.  Perhaps the whole idea was not to lure the United States into a war – or not
just
to lure the United States into a war – but to have an apocalyptic confrontation between east and west.  The terrorists would be convinced that their side would win such a confrontation, so it made a certain kind of sense to risk the war – and to risk destruction at the hands of a vengeful United States.  Henderson’s Disease hadn’t just crippled the United States; it had crippled Europe, Russia, China...and much of the Middle East.  There were cases being reported in Egypt, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran.  India and Pakistan were on the verge of war over reports about Pakistani nukes being misplaced.  The heat of the Middle East had slowed the rate of infection...

Or had that been the plan all along?  If no one had traced the infection back to its source, perhaps they’d hoped that the United States would be permanently crippled, while they could vaccinate their own people and launch an invasion of the rest of the world.  It was insane, yet somehow Nicolas was sure that he had stumbled on the right answer.  The Great Satan, the Lesser Satan, the Little Satan...and all the other Satan-states would all be crippled.  He shuddered to think about what a fundamentalist movement could accomplish in such a world.

Or had they hoped that the United States and Russia would destroy each other?

He pushed the thought aside.  The plan, if that had been the plan, had gone badly wrong...but they had still crippled the United States.  It no longer mattered.  His responsibility, now, was to Operation EXODUS and to save what they could of the United States.

***

The President sat in her chair, facing the window and staring out towards the lights of Washington DC.  There were fewer lights shining out in the darkened city tha
n she would have preferred, a chilling reminder that many of the people responsible for keeping the city running were either dead or infected with Henderson’s Disease.  Her eyes sought out the column of smoke from the incinerator, where the dead bodies were burned to ashes to destroy the disease lurking within the decaying corpses.  History would record her as the President who had lost a third of the country outright and uprooted most of the remaining population – and she was sure that she could forget about re-election.  She wasn't even sure that she
wanted
to run for re-election, not after making so many hard choices. 

“The Iraqis are still running into heavy resistance,” General Spencer said, “but they are confident of success.  Henderson’s Disease is weakening the enemy and destroying their morale.”

“And much of the city will be destroyed,” the President said, flatly.  She’d heard from an organisation of American Muslims, pleading for Mecca to be spared the fire.  She’d told them that the fate of the city was in the hands of the Iraqi Government, for it was no longer an American concern.  She didn't care what happened to it, as long as it was no longer used as a base for terrorists and insurgents.  “How long will the fighting continue?”

“Impossible to predict, Madam President,” General Spencer said.  “Fighting within a built-up area is always dangerous, even though the Iraqis have experience second only to us in the field.  Perhaps better than us, in some ways; they don’t hesitate to be ruthless.  It helps that they’re determined to liberate Mecca from the Saudis and keep it for themselves.”

The President smiled, although her thoughts were cold.  The United Nations had been pretty much a dead letter since the crisis began, but she’d received a note from the Islamic Congress of the United Nations demanding that she pulled Iraqi and American troops out of the Holy Cities.  She hadn't bothered to reply to them directly, although she had warned the King of Jordan to keep his nose out of the Holy City.  The Iraqis could have it and they’d do a better job with it.  They could hardly do a worse one.

“Overall, we may be looking at another two weeks of heavy fighting within the city,” the General added.  “There’s just no way to make a more accurate prediction.  They may all drop dead of Henderson’s Disease tomorrow and save the Iraqis from destroying the remainder of the city.”

“We should be so lucky,” the President said.  She turned the chair around and placed her hands on her desk, feeling the ancient wood against her fingers.  It had been a gift from the British Queen Victoria, constructed from timbers that had come from HMS
Resolute
, a famous British warship that had played a significant role in maintaining peace.  Many of her predecessors had worked at the desk.  In her darker moments, she had wondered if she would be the last.  “What does it mean for us, operationally?”

“Apart from a handful of SF units, our only contribution to the operation comes in the form of aircraft and logistical support,” Spencer said.  “The Iraqi clergy has declared that that is legal, provided that we don’t actually let our non-Muslim people set foot within the city itself.  I doubt it would hold up in a Saudi courtroom.”  He snorted.  “Apart from that, it doesn't affect us operationally at all; the Marines and the 3
rd
Infantry Division are closing in on Riyadh and sealing off the city.  In two more days, that city will be sealed up tighter than a drum.”

The President nodded slowly.  “And then what?”

Spencer winced.  “That, Madam President, is for you to decide,” he said.  “The defenders of Mecca, whatever else one can say about them, sent most of the city’s population down to Jeddah, where they wouldn’t be caught up in the fighting.  They were put in refugee camps and Henderson’s Disease
swept through rapidly...most of them will not survive the week.   I don’t know if it was intentional or merely a tragic accident.  The fighting has been very costly for the defenders, but we do know that most of those who died were enemy combatants.

“The same cannot be said for Riyadh,” he added.  “The defenders have not been allowing anyone to leave the city.  The city’s population numbers around four million lives – perhaps more, as people have been fleeing into the city – and all of them will be at risk if we have to fight our way deep into Riyadh.  The defenders have all the normal weapons of war for the Middle East, but they also have tanks, long-range guns and the remains of the Saudi IADS.  If we hit the city, it could cost us immensely.”