The Last Crusade (28 page)

“My son, do we have time? I’d like to pray on it and ask the Holy Father for his advice.”

“Father, I have less than twenty-four hours to respond.”

“I understand. I’ll be back with you as quickly as possible.”

The First Lady, who overheard the discussion with the Father Patrick shakes,

“Honey, over five hundred million? There’s no way to save some of them? Women and children? Will they suffer?”

“I hope not. We’re trying to plan an attack which blankets most of the Caliphate with blasts which hopefully will kill them very quickly.”

“Honey, five hundred million? God will never forgive you. You’ll be the largest mass murderer in history.”

“I know. That’s why this is so hard for me. My options are to send thousands of body bags home or bury millions of Muslims. If we don’t stop them now, we’ll be fighting them until we kill them or they kill all of us. They’ll never rest, they believe they’re on a holy mission. Logic, treaties mean nothing to them, they’ll sign anything that buys them time to grow powerful enough to take us down.”

“Isn’t there a way to cripple them, then send in the tanks to capture them. Maybe we can educate their children, turn them around, give them good foster homes in the West.”

“So many of their children are already conditioned, I worry about sending their children into our homes, the day may come when their children turn on their foster parents, killing them in their sleep. We’d be facing a huge religious war on our own main street. They believe their mission is to bring forth the end of days. They’re dealing with their religion and emotion; we’re trying to negotiate using logic. My old man always told me, when emotion enters the room, logic exits. They won’t listen to logic and we don’t understand their religion. We’re stuck staring at each other across the plains of Megiddo where the Bible tells us the final battle will be fought. They want the final battle, we don’t. How do we negotiate with such people?”

“Tell them what the alternative is? Tell them they have to agree to an honest agreement or we’ll destroy them? I have one question; one you may not have thought to ask.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Can you be sure this isn’t all part of God’s plan? Maybe he wants the Crusade to become the final war, one where he can return to save the world.”

“I didn’t consider that, you got me with this question. I need to think it over, do you have any other thoughts?”

“Why can’t you look them in the eyes and lay out what’s coming if they don’t play ball?”

“They won’t believe we have the balls to kill them. They have them to kill us, we’ve proven over many years we want an agreement more than we want peace. We sign treaties, we live by them, they laugh in our faces while using the time to prepare to kill more of us. Their religion teaches them to lie and deceive us, how could anyone trust them?”

“Honey, there has to be another way. There has to be. Have you called Pope Joseph?”

“Not yet.  I was going to give Father Patrick time to speak with him.”

“I suggest you call him yourself.”

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Pope Joseph is listening to Father Patrick when he’s interrupted by his aide informing him President Bentley is on the secure phone.

“Father, I’ll call you back, I have a call I need to take.”

“Your Holiness, of course.”

Pressing the secure button on his phone, he hears a warbling tone on his phone and the President’s phone sync. “Mr. President, I just spoke with Father Patrick, I know why you’re calling. Shall we discuss the issue that’s bothering you?”

“You’re Holiness, my wife raised an interesting question, she asked if this might not be part of God’s plan?”

“My son, everything is God’s plan. Nothing happens that isn’t part of his master plan.”

“Your Holiness, does he want us to attack the Caliphate to bring forth the battle of Armageddon? Am I playing a part in his theater? Was this all ordained?”

“Of course, it was.”

“Then, by killing hundreds of millions, I’m doing God’s work? I won’t be condemned to hell for all time for killing so many?”

“My son, the Bible teaches us there’s a difference between murder and killing to protect life. Isn’t it true by using nuclear weapons, you’ll be saving millions? Isn’t it true by handling the Caliphate now, you’re saving future generations the pain of having to deal with them? You’re not committing murder. God will understand.”

“You’re Holiness, I’m not feeling well about this decision.”

“My son, pray on it, I’m sure our Lord will show you the right path.”

“Thank you. I’ll call you back with my decision.”

“My son, I’ll be here.”

President Bentley sits in the residence staring into a dark corner of the room, he’s interrupted by an aide knocking on the door,

“Mr. President?”

“Yes, come in. What do you need.”

“Sir, I have the inventory report you requested.”

“Ah, our remaining strategic inventory?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good, thank you, where do we stand?”

“Sir, we fired most of our land-based Minuteman missiles, two-thirds of our silos were destroyed. There is some good news. We had removed the Minutemen from five-hundred silos, those silos weren’t touched, they can be brought on line and loaded with either Minuteman or the fifty Peacekeeper missiles we have in storage.”

“Let me see if I understand what you just said, we have five-hundred empty sealed silos which can be brought back on line, plus around one hundred undamaged silos?”

“Sir, undamaged from the war, they were damaged from the rocket engines which burned the insides of the silos.”

“How long will it take to bring them back on line and load the empty silos?”

Pausing, the aide looks down,

“Sir, six to eight months, assuming teams are available to work twenty-four hours a day and we ignore most of the safety regulations.”

“What other resources do we have?”

“We have over three hundred Trident 1 missiles, but no way to launch them, none of the old submarines are usable. We converted four of them into cruise missile submarines which would take over a year per boat to convert back. We have five-hundred Minutemen missiles, fifty Peacekeepers, five hundred nuclear-armed land attack cruise missiles, and two thousand additional warheads.”

“I think we need a review committee which can think outside of the box, people who’ve never seen a box. It should be made up of both military and the contractors who make the strategic systems. We need to get them working on the problem today. If we’re going to attack the Caliphate with nuclear weapons, we need a way to deliver them. We don’t have a year. If we’re going to move forward with the attack, we’re going to need the weapons ready for use ASAP, I want a real schedule, not one of the normal contractor studies where we throw money at them to do another study.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll get right on it.”

“I’m going to call the Russians.”

Picking up the hotline, which automatically connects him to the Russian Defense Minister,

“Minister, I’ve thought long and hard about your proposal, I’ve had my people perform a quick inventory of our available weapons systems, we have many more weapons than we do delivery systems. I just asked my Chief of Staff to form a working group to figure out how we can use the systems we have.”

“Mr. President, could any of our weapon’s experts be of assistance?”

“Minister, I’m not sure yet, can you give us five days to get the working group looking into the problem?”

“Of course, if it will help you, I can put four of our experts on a plane with two hours’ notice.”

“Thank you, I’ll keep that in mind. I’ll call you back in forty-eight hours to give you an update. How many of your strategic systems survived?”

“Mr. President, one of our advantages is we never throw anything away. You’re about to say you helped us destroy many weapons under SALT 1 and 2, that’s true, on the other hand, we had more weapons that you knew. We also designed most of our missiles for different launching systems, most can be launched from mobile launchers which are easily reloaded. Many years ago you looked into similar launch systems and you gave them up. Our silo-launched missiles are also different from yours. Most of ours are cold fired while yours are hot fired. You thought if it ever came to having to fire, everything was lost, the war, the future would be over. We designed our silos to be reloaded. You copied it with your Peacekeepers and quickly dropped the design.”

“I’m learning we gave up on many good ideas.”

Laughing, the Minister smiles,

“Our money and blackmail made it easy to control many of your Congresspeople and Senators.”

“Great to know now. You’re the cause of our limited launch capability.”

“Yes, we are. In the depths of the Cold War, who would have thought we’d be allies again?”

“We’re now united in a common cause. We’re here to help you with anything we can do to help you bring your systems back online. We know almost everything about your systems, the KGB and FSB were very good at learning the details of your systems.”

“It’s hard to hear how easily you’ve been spying on us. We’ll speak again tomorrow.”

President Bentley hangs up smiling to himself thinking,
I bet the SOB knows our systems better than I do. Who knows how many of our secrets they stole over the years. Maybe I should have formed a working committee made up of the Russian experts, they may be able to come up with a solution quicker than our own people. Damn Democrats, the Russians paid them for years to keep us weak. I’ll wait a day or two to see what my experts come up with.

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Saladin presents his report to the Mahdi,

“Your Holiness, we have only eight weapons left, all are less than 25kt. None will destroy an infidel city by themselves. In order to destroy an American city, we’d need to use at least four or five of the weapons.”

“Can we build additional weapons?”

“Your Holiness, most of the Iranian systems were destroyed by the Jews, what systems survived the Jew’s attacks are unusable due to being corrupted by the Jews hacking.”

“Can we buy some on the black market?”

“Not anymore. The Russians have increased their security over their weapons.”

“Eight weapons? How are you planning to get the maximum use of them?”

“We know the infidels are building up their forces for another Crusade, when we determine their attack positions, we should use our weapons to destroy their forces before they’re able to cross our border. By destroying them, we will destroy their ability to attack us for years. Combined with us feeding stories to their press we should be able to convince them to give up the idea of attacking us. We’ll grow strong enough to conquer Europe and then the Great Satan himself.”

“Allah likes your plan. You have my permission to move forward. Make the best use of our available weapons, don’t waste them.”

“Yes, your Holiness.”

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The American war planning group has been locked up for twenty-eight hours. They’ve fought with each other, two members knocked each other out in a fist fight, one required outside first aid. The President decides to make a surprise visit to the committee meeting,