The Great and Terrible

by Chris Stewart

  Tens of thousands of Israelis were killed when the nuclear warhead detonated, but nothing even remotely close to what would have been the death toll if the missile had stayed on track.

  Iran, on the other hand, wasn’t so well defended. All of the Israeli missiles reached their targets. The three largest cities inside Iran were gone.

  Pakistan, bent on protecting its Muslim brother, began to fuel its missiles. Multiple warheads from India and Israel caught them before they could get in the air.

  North Korea was just finishing fueling its missiles when the sky was darkened above the launching pads by sea-launched and air-launched Cruise missiles. All told, more than a hundred conventional missiles impacted the Korean launch sites, half of them South Korean missiles launched from just across the border. The North Koreans never had a chance, their first-generation launch and delivery systems too slow and cumbersome to compete in the twenty-first century of modern

  war. All of the launch facilities were destroyed, leaving a few missiles intact in their underground storage facilities but no way to get them in the air.

  Then the world seemed to pause, a depressing and dark despair settling from one end of the earth to the other. Blackness filled the air. Nuclear rain fell in the deserts. Ten million people sucked up radioactive oxygen. The sunsets were dark red, almost purple, from the ionized smoke and dust that filled the atmosphere. Was it over? Just beginning? How far would it go? Almost a million people had died already. Gaza, D.C., Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz lay in heaps of smoking rubble.

  It wasn’t over.

  The worst was yet to come.

  And there was no way to stop the attack that would come from the blue waters off eastern U.S. shores.

  Chapter Six

  Twenty-Four Kilometers South of Camp Crush

  Southern Iraq

  Short and fierce (all of the firefights they had were fierce now), the attack hit Sergeant Sam Brighton and his team at night, half a kilometer from the mud-and-brick wall that surrounded the small village.

  After sending a false informant to accuse the village of hoarding a cache of weapons, the Syrian and Iranian insurgents had hidden in the desert, burying themselves under a thin layer of sand and breathing through reeds. There they had waited, knowing the American soldiers would eventually come.

  When it came to killing Americans, the insurgents were very patient. A few days buried in the sand was a small price to pay.

  Sam and his patrol had approached the tiny village on foot, avoiding the pathway from the main road, knowing it was likely mined. The attackers waited until they had passed, then shed their protective tarps and opened fire. Fortunately, they had waited too long, allowing enough distance between their hiding place and the American soldiers for Sam’s team to drop and find protection below a small ravine.

  One enemy team was positioned behind the U.S. patrols, one team on the flank. They revealed themselves as one, breaking cover and opening fire at the same time. Their tactics were effective if not particularly heroic: get a couple of thousand rounds toward the Americans, AK-47s and Rocket Propelled Grenades lighting up the night, then turn and run.

  For the American soldiers, the firefight was like a burst of lightning: sudden, frightening, and intense. One moment they were stalking toward the village, three to five meters apart, hidden by the darkness, moving silently across the sand; the next moment they were in the middle of hell, tracers and bullets and explosions all around.

  For Sam, the battle came in a fury of dizzying sound and speed. Explosions. Flashes of light. Heat and compression. Calls from his buddies. A quick roll across the sand. Another punch of compressed air in his ears and chest. Screams from beside him. One of his men going down. The buzz of deadly bullets around him, above him, one between his legs. Falling again, pushing to his knees, rolling toward the ravine, returning fire behind and to the right. Calling in suppression fire from the U.S. A-10 fighters providing cover from overhead. The fighters screaming in. Dozens of frantic shadows all around him. Calibrated and careful fire from his team now. One . . . three . . . five or six of the enemy going down. The screams of a dying man beside him. Sulfur and smoke and

  the smell of vomit in the air. A medic rushing toward the wounded. An AirEvac chopper on the way.

  The enemy fighters started running, their ghostlike images merging into the darkness up ahead.

  One of the enemy soldiers nearest to him turned, shot one of his men at point-blank range in the face, then, laughing, turned and ran!

  The sound of that guttered and bloodthirsty laughing snapped something inside him. In a rage, Sam grabbed his machine gun and went after the fleeing men. As he ran, the image of the battle began to blur again. Darkness formed around him. He ran hard and fast. The sounds of his buddies echoed far behind him. The ground rose suddenly, the desert becoming rocky, black boulders here and there. Sam kept on running, chasing after the enemy soldiers, ignoring the sound of Bono shouting in his earpiece, “SAM, DISENGAGE AND GET BACK HERE! I WANT YOU BACK HERE RIGHT NOW!”

  The laughing soldier struggled to keep up with the others, not realizing that Sam was coming after him. Sam looked farther up the hill and saw two more enemy soldiers, twenty meters ahead of the last man, skulking images in his night-vision goggles.

  He stopped and estimated the distance between them. Two hundred meters. Maybe seven hundred feet. A long shot . . . a very long shot, especially in the dark . . .

  One of the men turned back, saw him in the darkness, and fired. Milliseconds later, Sam felt the buzzing rounds of red-hot metal flying past his head. Another shot and then another as the three men turned and fired.

  Dropping to his belly, he extended the small legs on the barrel of his machine gun to form a tripod, took a breath and held it, and then tightened up his aim. More bullets popping into the ground around him, geysers of spitting sand around his face. An ounce of pressure on the trigger. Another breath. A bead of sweat dropping into his left eye. Another ounce of pressure on the trigger . . .

  Phaat, phaaat, phaaat . . .

  The three enemy attackers fell to the ground.

  Sam pulled his head away from his weapon and stared across the barren landscape, studied the rising desert above him. The three attackers didn’t move. Their limp bodies were sprawled at awkward angles across the loose sand. He watched them. They were dead, he was certain. His 7.61 shells—large enough to drop a buffalo—could make mincemeat of men.

  He rested on his stomach, laying his head against the sand.

  He felt so tired. So consumed. So empty and thin. A long moment passed. He didn’t stand. He didn’t move. The darkness grew around him. Thoughts were swimming in his head. A crushing moment of loneliness fell upon him. He’d never felt this way before. Confusion. Bitter disappointment. And a sadness so deep he thought it would crush his very soul.

  His mind swirled. His heart raced. He rolled onto his back, overcome, his eyes misting, his nose wet. He thought of the man who had become his father, General Brighton. His birth mother, where was she? Snorting drugs in Atlantic City? Out in Las Vegas again? He thought of his adoptive mother and his brothers. Sara Brighton and her family were the best thing that had ever come into his life. Simply the best. Nothing else was even close. Where was she? Was she living? The entire city of D.C., two hundred thousand people, burned and dead. He thought of the citizens of Iraq. Iran. Syria. Afghanistan. None of them would have it. Freedom would never come to them. It was all coming down. It was falling apart. Everything they had fought and died for, everything every U.S. soldier who’d been hurt or killed for, the families who had suffered, the children without fathers, widowed women, mothers without sons, everything they had suffered . . .

  All of it for nothing.

  All of it was gone.

  He took a breath, his shoulders shaking. Then he did something he had not done since he was a child, not since the first night with the Brighton family when he had hidden his head between the pillows and begged God to let him
stay.

  He took a deep breath and started weeping, the emotion spilling out in gulping sobs.

  All of it for nothing.

  All the sacrifices washed away.

  He tried to hold it in, but he couldn’t, it was just too powerful. So he cried, alone in the desert, his shoulders heaving. He struggled and he fought it, but it gushed out all the same. His face was wet with tears and sweat, the sand gritty against his cheeks, the salty teardrops rolling downward to sting the corners of his mouth.

  He gulped the air. He cursed and swore.

  And kept on crying like a child.

  Royal Palace

  Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

  The king paced, his face contorted in rage. “That idiot Iranian should have waited,” he hissed. “We could have done it together. We could have taken the pig-Jews down. But no, he wouldn’t listen! He wanted the glory of killing all the Jews himself. He lost three of his cities! And the Jews, not a one! He should have waited. He should have listened. What a stupid, stupid man!”

  The old man didn’t react. A million people dead. Not a big thing to him.

  The young king watched him, expecting some reaction, paced again, then fell silent, standing in front of the old man. The old man looked at him, his eyes cold and wet and bleary, his nostrils flaring as he breathed. Then he grabbed the king’s attention and pulled him deep into his stare.

  “The United States is getting ready to attack us,” the king muttered bitterly. “They’ve warned us to evacuate our cities. But they’ll never get that far.”

  “No, they won’t, King Abdullah. You have the power to destroy them. I suggest you use it now.”

  The king looked away and blinked. “The United States is still a very powerful nation,” he said, trying to mask his hesitation.

  The old man sensed his timid heart. He hated the vacillation more than he hated anything. His face flushed with rage. “Do you finally understand why we have to do this?” he demanded, his voice low and mean. He resented being the instructor, always taking the lead. Didn’t any of these mortals have the capability to think!

  King Abdullah stood in front of him, his eyes low. It was getting harder and harder to look at his friend. The old man’s skin had become so translucent that one could see the veins in his cheeks, and his eyes had grown so filmy that they almost looked dead.

  The king didn’t know who or what the old man was anymore. He didn’t know where he had come from or why the man had chosen him. All he knew was that he had to follow, regardless of where he was led. He had made his decision to be the man’s servant a long time ago.

  The old man waited, his thin lips pressed together, his eyes boring through the pupil who was so slow to comprehend. “Do you get it?” he prodded angrily. “I want to know you understand.”

  King Abdullah was a tall man, a proud man, handsome by an earthly standard, with his dark skin and black eyes. He could walk into a room of world leaders and in minutes have them all eating out of his hand. But all of that slipped away when he was with the old man. And every time they were together, his groveling seemed to grow more and more pitiful, the old man extending his influence to the depths of his soul, twisting and turning the very breath out of him.

  Abdullah turned away, unable to look the old man in the eyes. “I understand you want me to do this, and that is good enough, my friend.”

  The old man nodded slowly. “Yes, it is good enough. But I want to know if I can trust you. I want to know what you understand.”

  The king took a breath, his voice uncertain. “We must destroy them because they are the Great Satan . . .”

  The old man lurched out of his seat and rushed toward the king with frightening speed. Getting right in Abdullah’s face, he exhaled a foul breath. “Don’t give me that!” he screamed. “You know, King Abdullah, who the Great Satan really is! You know the Master Deceiver; you have felt him in your heart. You know him. You have loved him. He is now your only friend. So get past all the stupidity and tell me if you can! If you can’t, then shut up and listen once again.”

  Abdullah didn’t answer, his heart thumping, a dew of perspiration forming on his brow. The old man glared, snarled like an animal, then returned to his seat.

  “Listen to me, Abdullah.” His voice was softer now. “In a world of lies and deceptions, this is the only truth you have.

  “There are three reasons we must do this—three reasons we must destroy the United States.

  “First, if we want to deny mankind their freedom, we must destroy the U.S. I don’t understand it,” the old man scoffed and spit, “but the Americans will sacrifice their lives, if necessary, defending the freedom of people they don’t even know. It makes no sense—I know that, no one knows it more than I—but they will fight and die for others, even those who can’t repay them or make them rich.

  “That is the first reason we must destroy them. If we do that, we own the world. But as it is, the U.S. continues to be this obnoxious and glaring light on the hill. If we let it shine, the world will continue moving toward it like a moth to a fire. Simply put, we must remove that light before we can control the rest of the world. Once we have destroyed the United States, we can take our time, toppling the other democracies at our pleasure, for without the U.S. there to guard them, they are helpless as spoiled children.”

  Abdullah watched the old man, his dry lips spreading to a smile.

  “The second thing, my dear king.” The old man jabbed a bony hand toward the west. “The center of His people can be found in the U.S. Yes, their tent is wide, but the center stake is over there. They can’t spread the truth if we force them to pull all their missionaries back. They can’t spread the light if they are holed up in the dark.”

  Abdullah shook his head. He didn’t understand.

  The old man watched, then sniffed. “Forget it. That doesn’t matter. Just trust me, it is important in ways you cannot comprehend.

  “Now, the third reason. We must destroy the U.S. before we can take Israel down. If the Americans are around, they will defend it; we’ve seen it time and time again. They are nursing mothers to the Jews, protective fathers to their young. Will another nation step forward to protect them? No. Not a one. Anyone in Europe? Are you kidding! The Europeans now hate the Zionists almost as much as you do. China? Russia? Anyone? I tell you no. There is not a people or nation on the earth that will defend the Jews except the United States. So we must destroy their mothers before we can destroy the vile seed.

  “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 spat 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 fury. “Five thousand years I’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!”

  Abdullah 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 crossroad
s 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. Abdullah 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.”

  Abdullah 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, so long as they do what I command.”

  Chapter Seven

  Twenty-Four Kilometers South of Camp Crush

  Southern Iraq

  am wiped his tears away.