Wrath & Righteousnes Episodes 01 to 05 (91 page)

“And remember, King Abdullah, history is absolutely on our side, the side of your people and the Arab nations that you rule.
You are the chosen people.
Ishmael was the firstborn. Hagar was the first wife to bear. Isaac was a second son and a liar, and his mother was no more. The birthright was stolen from you.” The old man spit in rage. “
He’s the one who stole it from you
.” He jabbed his finger at some unseen enemy that seemed to linger near. “He stole the ancient birthright from you.
He stole it for His son.
But it is yours! And you must claim it! The time has come to set it right. Destroy the counterfeit covenant people and we destroy their counterfeit god! But you can’t do that, King Abdullah, until you destroy the U.S.!”

The old man stopped to catch his breath, his eyes burning. He was an animal in a cage, consumed with fear and rage. “Five thousand years we’ve been waiting to wipe His people off the earth. We have a chance to do that now, and you must not let me down!”

Al-Rahman nodded, an overpowering sense of history falling on his soul, a massive weight that seemed to crush him to the center of the earth. No, it was more than just a sense of history—this was much larger and more powerful. A phrase slipped into his mind he had never heard before. He did not understand it, but still the words were clear. “
The plans were laid many years before there was even a house of Israel placed on the earth. . . .
”

He faltered, stepping back, almost collapsing from the feel of it in his bones. The plans set in motion were as ancient as the stars. He was at the crossroads of eternal destiny and there was no turning back.

The old man watched him and reached out, placing his hands on the king’s arm. Al-Rahman felt the dark power of his touch and seemed to gain instant strength.

“There is more,” the old man whispered, “a final reason we must act. This is personal, I will admit it, but it’s also the most important reason of all. We’re going to kill them because I hate them. The years have left me full of
fury
and left them full of
light.

“Before they cast me out, I warned them. Now they are in
my
kingdom, and I will turn their lives into hell. I will center all my hatred on destroying their young faith.”

The old man stopped and wiped the spit that stretched between his dry lips. His voice was low and soft now, and the king struggled to hear it when he said, “That is my final reason, though you will never understand.”

Al-Rahman seemed to shrink at the old man’s last words. “But it is so great an undertaking,” he mumbled in a frightened voice.

“You can do it,” the old man said. “There are others who will join you. You don’t have to work alone. Some will join you for our reasons, some for reasons of their own.
Why
they join us doesn’t matter, as long as they do what I command.”

Sam wiped his tears away.

He finally caught himself, embarrassed at his show of emotion. He pushed himself up into a sitting position on the sand. It was dark. He was exhausted. The firefight and chase up the hill after the enemy soldiers had left him hot and breathless.

The three enemy soldiers about seven hundred feet away from him were dead, he was certain of that, and it bothered him that, unlike U.S. soldiers, their bodies would lie there for days before someone came to claim them—if someone ever did. The air around him still smelled like burnt gunpowder, but he knew it was only the barrel of his carbine. Looking down from the small bluff, he studied the desert below where, minutes before, the firefight had taken place.

The night was cool. Fall was coming on; even in the desert there was some relief. The wind blew from the south, humid and biting with tiny bits of sand.

He was dressed in full battle gear: Kevlar™ helmet, goggles, flak jacket and vest, desert cammies, leather gloves and boots. His weapon, a short-barreled Mk. 48 mod. 0 gas-powered, air-cooled, belt-fed machine gun, was strapped loosely around him, and he had pushed it to his back. The barrel was warm, too warm to be accurate any longer (seven hundred rounds a minute could scorch a barrel in short order), and he wished he had another barrel to change it out. But it probably didn’t matter—all the bad guys were gone or dead. The sky overhead was as bright and clear as only the remote desert sky could be. And it was quiet. Very quiet.

He turned and listened to the wind, then pulled out the tube for the flexible pack of water strapped to his back and took a long drink.

* * *

Bono walked toward Sam through the darkness, coming to a stop right in front of him. “Looks like you got ’em,” the lieutenant said, nodding to the three dead men up the hill.

Sam grunted as he brushed the backs of his hands across his cheeks. Had Bono seen him crying, heard his childish sobs? He took a long draw of breath and shuddered in the dark.

Bono turned and sat down beside him. “You OK?’ he asked.

Sam nodded slowly. “It’s all cool, man.”

“It’s OK,” Bono answered, putting his arm around Sam’s back. “It’s OK. You’re OK. No big thing. It comes and goes.”

Sam didn’t answer. He didn’t know what to say.

The two men sat in silence, the great desert all around them.

“Good work,” Bono said, nodding up the hill again. “I’m glad you got them.”

Sam drank again. “I don’t know, hearing the guy laughing as he ran away. Something about it made me snap.”

“Yeah. Makes you sick, some guy getting his kicks shooting another man in the face. Somebody else ponying out after the bad guys. We need discipline on the fire teams.”

Sam nodded and pulled his night-vision goggles down to cover his eyes.

The sound of the AirEvac helicopter filled the darkness as it landed beside the dusty road. “Who got it?” Sam asked, remembering their men who’d been hit.

“Viskosky,” Bono answered.

“Is he going to be OK?”

“Tore his femur. Ripped the artery out. Lost a bathtub full of blood.”

“Anyone else?”

Bono was quiet and Sam braced himself.

“A couple other minor hits. Nothing serious.” He hesitated another moment. “Hastings was the guy who took it in the face,” he finally said.

Sam shook his head and swore.

Bono nodded toward the hilltop. “That last guy, ol’ smiley there, hid himself near the road. Shot Hastings from point-blank range right in the face.”

Sam nodded sadly. “I saw that,” he said. His emotions were under control now, pushed back deep inside him where it was all comfortable. “Will Viskosky be OK?” he asked.

Bono watched the helicopter landing in the distance, its enormous rotors blowing up swirling vortices of sand in the landing lights. “He’s going to make it. But it hurt him. I like him. He’s a good guy. I guess he’s going home.”

Sam grabbed a fistful of sand and let it sift through his fingers, then lifted his eyes and looked up at the sky. “We all are,” he announced. “They’re pulling us back.”

Bono didn’t answer for a moment. “No surprise there,” he finally said.

“Yeah, it’s been kind of strange, the past couple days. I mean, here we are, pretending nothing happened. A nuke goes off in Gaza. A nuke goes off in D.C. Half of Iran gets hit. Yet for the past week, we keep soldiering on as if nothing’s changed. Keep up our patrols, keep shooting at the bad guys, keep talking to the locals, trying to turn them into friends, when everyone knows it’s all heading south. Another fireball is coming, there’s no doubt about that. The U.S. can’t take a nuke on D.C. and not retaliate.”

Sam fell silent. The south wind kept blowing bits of sand against his face. “It’s going to get ugly,” he murmured, talking to himself more than to Bono.

An orange-red moon broke out behind a small band of high clouds. Looking at it, Sam continued his observations. “Everything we do now is POF. Protection of Forces. Protect our own guys. That’s all anyone is even thinking about anymore. The locals are getting restless and so are the troops. No one wants to state the obvious, but we all understand. Things are going to change. None of these people are our friends any longer. They know what’s coming, they just don’t know when or where. We move here, they move there, but none of it matters. Our mission here is over. We’ve got to get out before it all comes crashing down.”

Bono cleared his throat. “So what now?” he asked.

Sam shook his head sadly. “I don’t know where they’ll send us, but for a while we’re heading back to the States.”

Silence for a moment. “We’re going home?”

“Soon as we can get airlift and transportation.”

“What will we do then?”

“Wait and see, I guess.” Sam pulled his flexible tube from his chest strap and took a long drink, then stood up and extended a hand toward Bono. “Let’s get back to our men.”

The enormous palace outside Riyadh was the primary headquarters of the Royal House of Saud. It was a warlike fortress, intimidating, almost evil looking, thick-walled and strong, a structure that provided an impenetrable bastion to the world and guaranteed there wouldn’t be any outside interference in the affairs of the most powerful family on earth. Tall and brown, a little darker than the desert that surrounded it, the castle-palace was situated just a few kilometers from the capital city. One of the few mud-walled fortresses still in existence, the Riyadh palace was a reminder of the caliphs’ greatest days. And it was clearly built for battle. Inverted V-shaped slits were cut above tiny windows in the towers, and the walls were six feet thick. Although it was now surrounded by man-made lakes, green lawns, and a great garden that rivaled the finest in Europe, the palace was still imposing. One look was all it took to know that this was a place for business, a place of power, a place for taking care of the dirty work of the king.

Outside the palace, dozens of the royal children and grandchildren had gathered for a three-day celebration. Between the east wall and the garden, they watched a display of warrior riding and Arab games. Wahab tribesmen from the east pounded drums and chanted in rhythm as veiled dancers swayed to the heart-quickening beat. The soldiers raised their curved swords while the children interlocked their arms and sang:

Allah loves His Prophet

Allah loves His Home

Praise to the King who loves the Prophet

Praise to the land that guards The Stone

Great King, we will defend you

Even as you defend the Prophet’s home

Horsemen spurred their animals viciously through the trees, each of them carrying a flowing silk banner and raising a sword to reenact the charge of the fanatical Ikhwan holy warriors who had swept through Arabia to unite the individual tribes into the Kingdom of Saud. At one time, the Ikhwan were the most fearsome warriors on earth. Zealous, bloodthirsty, fanatical believers in Wahabbi Islam, the Ikhwan were the key to the royal family’s early power.

The children watched the fearsome riders with delight. They danced, ate and laughed among the gardens, oblivious to the fact that the world was shifting right under their feet. For two hundred years the royal family of the House of Saud had ruled Arabia with obscene wealth and unchallenged power. But now that the father-king was dead, and his son King Al-Rahman had stepped into his place, the world was becoming a far more dangerous place.

Especially for these pampered young ones whose fathers had gathered behind the palace walls.

The next generation of royal children would bear the sins of their fathers, and those fathers who wouldn’t sin were just a few hours from death.

* * *

There were hundreds of lesser princes—sons of concubines, cousins, nephews, and such—scattered throughout the kingdom, but the eight most powerful princes had gathered in the palace Great Hall. Among the assembled men were the ministers of defense, intelligence and government affairs—the assembled princes who ran virtually every element of Saudi life. Most of them were middle aged, a few were older, none of them were younger than thirty-five. All wore the traditional
bisht
, a thin black cloak trimmed with gold thread. As they waited for their king, they poured thimbles of bitter cardamom coffee from brass pots. The princes were not used to serving themselves, and a few of them grumbled, not knowing that all the servants had been barred from the entire palace grounds.

Pushing back their white robes and adjusting their checkered head cloths, they talked among themselves in conspiratorial tones. They had assembled, they thought, to map a way forward in the post-nuclear world.

And though they
had
been brought together for a reason, they were about to find out that it was not for what they thought.

* * *

In a small waiting room down the hallway from the great chamber, King Al-Rahman whispered with the old man.

The old man’s hair was white, long and thin, and it fell in a straggle off to the side of his head. His skin was blotched and wrinkled, but his eyes—those fearsome eyes—still burned like coals of red heat. They showed no real warmth or emotion—they didn’t even seem human anymore—but they were hot with rage and the constant burning that emitted from his soul.

“Are you ready?” the old man demanded of the new king.

The younger man nodded grimly. He did not appear excited or in high spirits. Although what he was about to do would consolidate his power beyond that of any single man on earth, he realized it wasn’t that he was elevating his power so much as pulling all rivals down. But he also knew that didn’t matter. The end result would be the same: He would stand atop the pile. Yes, the pile would be made of rubble, but he would stand atop it all the same.

The old man watched and then nodded, reading the passive look on Al-Rahman’s face, knowing the king was beyond feeling now. Ironic, he thought, how the deadening of guilt seemed to kill the whole soul, robbing it of the ability to feel joy as well.