The Coward's Way of War (60 page)

Doug hesitated.  He’d smoked as a teenager, but he’d given it up for Lindsey and the kids.  It had struck him as absurd to worry about smoking when he served in an occupation that could get him killed, yet the kids deserved a smoke-free home.  Now...now it no longer seemed to matter.  He took one of the cigarettes and allowed Burtis to light it, before the Marine passed the pack around the platoon. 

He shook his head and looked up at the city, and at the American planes high overhead.  If someone in the high command was thinking straight, all they really had to do was sit put and wait until the enemy dropped dead.  It was sound thinking. 

Of course, if there was one thing often lacking in the high command, it was sound thinking.

***

“
The city has been sealed, General,” the aide said.  “We have the better part of three divisions dug in around it now, with the enemy population either cleared out or transferred into camps.  Nothing is going to get in or out of Riyadh.”

General Brent Roeder scowled.  No military man with a fraction of concern for his troops liked the idea of sending them into an urban meat-grinder.  In Riyadh, which intelligence estimated was populated by over four million people, the American advantages would be worn down quite badly.  The relaxed ROE might make up for the shortage of manpower – any building used as an enemy base, no matter how important it was to the locals, would be targeted – but he doubted it.

He’d served in the 3
rd
Infantry Division during the famous Thunder Runs into Baghdad, but it was clear that that tactic wouldn't work in Riyadh.  The enemy had been turning the entire city into a strongpoint, using weapons and experience that Saddam and his henchmen had never even been able to dream about obtaining for their own forces.  The SF teams – including some Israeli commandos – who had been inserted into the city had reported that the Saudis were clearly spoiling for a fight.  It was Brent’s job to ensure that the fight they got wasn't the one they were expecting, but there was little room for tactical manoeuvring in a city.  They would have to crash into it, clear it room by room, and hope for the best. 

Despite the media’s exaggerated claims, there had been only a tiny handful of civilians in Fallujah when the Marines went into the city.  Riyadh, on the other hand, was teeming with civilians...all of whom would have been exposed to Henderson’s Disease.  The remains of Saudi TV and hundreds of independent stringers from various media outlets were still broadcasting from the city, daring the Americans to commit mass slaughter on global television screens.  The irony was that if he held off, as they wanted, the population would die anyway, long before the food ran out.  Their own weapon would destroy them.

“General,” the USAF liaison officer said, “the leaflet bomber is flying over the city now.”

Brent’s scowl deepened.  They had been unable to make contact with anyone in the city, not even the American Embassy, which had apparently been stormed by the mobs.  The President’s orders had been to bombard the city with leaflets, giving the Saudis one final chance to surrender – or die.  Brent understood why she wanted them to surrender, but he rather hoped that they would refuse.  The US forces in Saudi Arabia simply didn't have the capability for coping with so many prisoners, or the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the stricken city.  And besides, leaving them to die at the hands of their own weapon held a certain pleasure for him.

“Good,” he said, tightly.  “Who knows?  Maybe the horse will learn to sing after all.”

He dismissed the thought and picked up the next report.  With the Iraqis pushing hard into Mecca and Medina, there had been an upswing in terrorist and insurgent attacks on American forces and bases in the Middle East.  Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain had seen several attacks each, while a Saudi jumbo jet – he had no idea how they’d concealed it for so long – had mounted a daring suicide attack on the American ships in the Gulf.  It had been shot down before it managed to slam into an aircraft carrier.

“Or maybe they don’t even know they’re beaten,” he added.  On the display, thousands of leaflets were spilling down from the B52, falling down towards the streets below.  In Iraq, the leaflets had had an effect no one had anticipated, with the Iraqi conscripts realising that the Americans had flown all that way to drop trash on their heads.  He doubted it would work so well in Riyadh.  The defenders had nowhere to go.  “Who knows?”

***

“
The leaflet is not hard to understand,” Prince Ibrahim said, with what he felt was remarkable patience.  “The Americans are telling us to surrender or they will crush us.”

“If they come within our city, it is they who will be crushed,” Prince Mukhtar thundered.  He looked as if he had aged overnight, perhaps because of a strange diet fed to him by some of the doctors.  His long dark beard was rough and uncut, growing out in odd patterns.  His eyes were the most disturbing of all; he looked as if he had been infected with madness, the same madness that had led to many hopeless last stands.  “We are ready to meet them and deal out death to the American troops.”

“I do not think that restating your position will actually help,” Prince Ibrahim said, tiredly.  “The Americans do not have to invade our city to win the war.”

He tapped the map in front of him.  It was fairly accurate, despite attempts by some of the clerics to take every report at face value.  There were no longer any symbols marking armoured units, or air force bases, or ships at sea...nothing, but tiny bands of insurgents, trying to bring down the American army by hundreds of stinging attacks.  They kept reporting massive successes, with hundreds of American tanks destroyed and thousands of soldiers killed, but Prince Ibrahim knew better.  If all the reports were added together, the entire American army – with the USN and Marine Corps included – would have been exterminated several times over.

But Prince Mukhtar believed the reports, either because he felt that insurgents, fired up on their faith and a lethal cocktail of drugs, would be able to inflict significant pain on the American military...or perhaps because he just
wanted
to believe it.  His supporters hadn't hesitated to share his belief, rendering his position almost impregnable.  Never mind the American bombs and shells falling within the city, never mind the fact that the Americans had sent a heavy bomber overhead to do nothing more than drop leaflets on their heads...their minds were completely impervious to reason.

And yet, he had to try.  “The Americans have the entire city sealed off,” Prince Ibrahim said.  “We have been unable to break out of the trap, even with our finest armoured forces and what little air support we had to back them up.  That means that once we run out of food and water, we will all die here...if your disease doesn't get us first.”  His voice hardened.  “Do you know how many of us have been infected with Henderson’s Disease?”

“They go to a better place,” Prince Mukhtar hissed.  “The Americans will lose their will to fight and retreat, as they have done so many times before.  All we have to do is hold out until the Americans surrender and leave our country.”

Prince Ibrahim scowled.  Prince Mukhtar was merely giving voice to a very old problem in the Middle East, one that had bedevilled the United States long before Henderson’s Disease had been unleashed upon an unprepared population.  The United States was always a transient power in the Middle East, while Iraq and Iran were permanent powers, unable to withdraw or abandon their positions.  The United States could abandon its allies – indeed, it often had – leaving them to be slaughtered by their vengeful foes.  The perception of American weakness had made it impossible for anyone to support the United States too enthusiastically, fearing that the Americans would pull out and leave them holding the bag.

But they’d miscalculated.  His predecessors had calculated that the Americans would be unable to invade Iraq without Saudi bases, hoping that their refusal to help overtly would prevent the Americans from upsetting the apple cart.  They’d been proven wrong and the long slow collapse to apocalypse had begun.  Prince Mukhtar might have introduced the sleeping American population to the joys of biological warfare, but the American victory in Iraq spelt eventual doom for the Saudi system anyway.  The signs had been clear for anyone who wanted to read them; if the Iraqis could have a democratic government, why not Saudi Arabia?

“Listen,” he snarled.  “There’s a story I was once told, by my predecessor.”

He stared into Prince Mukhtar’s maddened eyes, hoping that he would understand and believe.  “Once upon a time, there was an American Indian – a Native American - a Redneck from Alabama and an Arab who met up while travelling through America,” he said.  “The Native American looked out on the fields and said, sadly, that once all those lands belonged to his people.  The Arab put on a sneer and said that one day they would belong to
his
people.”

His voice hardened.  “The Redneck grinned and said that his people had been playing Cowboys and Indians for a long time, but they’d only just
started
playing Cowboys and Muslims.”

Prince Mukhtar didn't understand.  “And what is the point of that story?”

“The Americans are strong in muscle, but weak in will,” Prince Ibrahim said.  “Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they
were
weak in will.  We looked and laughed at the Americans as they fumbled around with Saddam and his regime, or showed no willingness at all to confront us over how many of us supported terrorists and the people who assisted terrorists.  Even when the Americans went into Iraq, they used kid gloves and tried hard not to upset anyone, a laughable concept, is it not?

“And they still won.

“And now, thanks to you, the Americans are determined to exterminate the threat we pose once and for all,” he concluded.  “They have the firepower to crush everyone in this city like a bug.  Saudi Arabia will vanish from the Earth.  The only hope for any of us is to signal our surrender and ask – beg – the Americans not to kill us.  We cannot win this war.  We have awakened a sleeping giant and his anger is going to be terrible.”

Prince Mukhtar had been learning forwards angrily, but he gathered himself before he spoke.  “I have always wondered about you,” he said, almost calmly.  “You have spent much of your life in America and you have been seduced by the temptations of that infidel land.  You stand here now and speak the words of your true masters, the infidel whore and her servants who rule the United States.  Where do your true loyalties lie?”

He carried on before Prince Ibrahim could speak.  “I think that you have, like so many others, forgotten what we are,” he continued.  “We are the ones committed to reforming Islam, to spreading it across the world, even if we lose a hundred, a thousand, or even a million lives in the jihad.  It has been that way since Ibn Saud made his alliance with the preacher who brought the word of God to him.  Those of us who die with Allah’s name on our lips are promised paradise.  Those who falter and grow weak are like those who broke faith with the Prophet at the Battle of Uhud, where their cowardly behaviour and lack of faith cost us the day.  You are like them, one who has forgotten the truth.”

His hand hit a switch and, a moment later, two religious policemen entered the room.  “Take him to Chop-Chop Square,” Prince Mukhtar ordered.  “He will be sent to Allah for judgement.”

“You’re a fool,” Prince Ibrahim said.  A strange calmness had fallen over him, even though he knew now that his fate was sealed.  “You have cost us everything.”

Prince Mukhtar didn't bother to respond.  “Take him away,” he ordered.  “Take him away and behead him.”

Every Pre
sident since Truman has known that, one day, they might be forced to decide if they should deploy nuclear weapons.  I was just the unlucky one who faced that choice
.

-President Paula Handley

Washington DC, USA/Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Day 57

“I see,” the President said, hoping her voice sounded calmer than she felt.  “They have made no response to our ultimatum?”

“None at all, Madam President,” Spencer confirmed.  “In fact, some of our scouts within the city have confirmed that people who pick up our leaflets have been beaten by the religious police, or even killed outright.  They are determined not to surrender.”

The President placed her fingertips together, feeling the weight of history pressing down on her shoulders.  “And so we have a dilemma,” she said.  “What do we do?”