Sword of Allah

by David Rollins

  Wilkes thought the technician’s pitch sounded like an advertisement for a cross between a new computer game and a toothbrush.

  ‘And all of it can be presented picture in picture.’ He tapped the appropriate keys and the view provided by one of the monitors split into four smaller frames each with a different image.

  The pulse of the helicopters suddenly grew sharper. Wilkes realised that it had been reasonably quiet for a time while the aircraft were on the ground picking up Lieutenant Glukel’s assault team. Now the helos were inbound on the target building.

  ‘It’s showtime,’ said the technician theatrically, glancing over the top of the monitors at the surrounding darkness, but there was nothing to see. The helos were coming in blacked out.

  The technician’s associates began to work furiously over their keyboards.

  ‘This screen here will monitor the heart rates of the soldiers on the hee-lo and this one, those of the ground force,’ said the technician tapping each screen in turn. ‘This information is picked up by a wristband transmitter worn by each soldier and relayed to us via the Dragon Warriors. Twenty-four heart rates in all for the soldiers going in. The wristband also transmits a signal that the command centre here displays as a small, bright red sphere, replacing our soldiers’ heat signatures. We can thus differentiate between friend or foe on screen.’

  In a quiet aside to Wilkes, Baruch outlined the attack. ‘There are twelve soldiers coming in on the rooftop, and another twelve providing a blocking force on the ground. At the appropriate moment, we cut the power to the building and –’ He finished the sentence by grinding his fist into the palm of his hand.

  We hope, thought Wilkes.

  ‘On this other screen, we have the HUDs of the two accompanying Zefa attack helicopters, showing their fire control systems, plus a light-augmented view of the target building provided by the inbound Blackhawk. And, of course, we are in constant communication with every soldier in the battle through their tac radios. The only aspect of the battle we can’t give you is a view of the op from the ground. Unfortunately, the Humvees are not yet looped into the CFDP.’

  ‘Ideally, we’d have brought a couple of battle tanks in to support the operation,’ Baruch said quietly, ‘but the streets here are too narrow for the MBTs to manoeuvre effectively.’

  Wilkes nodded. He’d never been involved in an action at this level of command. It was like watching a video game.

  ‘And over here, presented in glorious plasma screen colour,’ the technician said, absently tapping keystrokes, ‘we’ve got the target building itself. Watch this.’ The building housing the terrorists switched from being presented in the green glow of light-accentuated mode to that of bright technicolour. ‘Thermal imaging overlaid with x-ray.’ The external brick and plaster of the building was revealed and, beneath it, various joists, beams, electrical wiring and plumbing. There were also red, yellow and green blobs moving about. ‘Those are people,’ said the technician, pointing to the moving blobs. ‘Dragon Warrior is extremely sensitive. See those occasional fireflies of red with yellow outlines? They’re cigarettes moving from ashtray to mouth to ashtray.’ The technician was obviously proud of his baby. ‘Okay, so let’s switch to the tactical radio frequency and see how the troops are doing. Colonel?’ He turned and looked about for Baruch. ‘Here, sir, have some headphones.’ There were a couple of spare sets on the bench. He gave the one set with a boom mic to Baruch. Wilkes helped himself to the other pair.

  Wilkes ignored the continuing sales pitch and looked at the tactical situation presented by the remarkable technology. Inside the four-storey building he counted twenty-four contacts. The enemy and the Israelis were evenly matched in numbers. Three of those enemy were on the roof; thirteen were strategically placed at window and door openings. Sentries. On the second floor, there were eight men seated. This was no lodge meeting. The technology was great, but Wilkes wondered whether the Israelis had enough of a force to overwhelm the enemy. Sure, the Israelis had surprise on their side, but that would be given away with the first shot fired. From the positioning of people in the building, it appeared to him that the enemy was prepared for the worst.

  The Saudi smiled at Kadar and gave him a nod. It was risky for him to have come all the way from Asia for this meeting with Hamas and Hezbollah command, but it was a further demonstration of the man’s commitment and loyalty. The atmosphere in the room was jovial. Things appeared to be swinging their way. At last.

  The Palestinian clapped a Syrian comrade on the back and the room roared with laughter. Comparing Americans to chickens running about the coop as the farmer’s wife chopped their heads off one by one was a wonderful punchline, and a worthy image.

  ‘I have one,’ said Kadar.

  ‘Tell us,’ said the Palestinian, eagerly leaning forward. It had been so long since he’d had anything to laugh about, but Kadar’s bombing of the US Embassy had lightened his heart.

  ‘An American couple comes to the Holy Land to see the sights. They’re having dinner and suddenly the wife gets something stuck in her throat. He slaps her on the back, trying to dislodge it. The waiter is called and he too begins to slap the woman on the back, but alas, she chokes and dies.

  ‘Well, the next day, the husband is with his wife’s body at the embalmer’s, discussing costs. “How much to bury her here?” asks the American.

  ‘ “Only a hundred dollars,” says the embalmer.

  ‘Next, he goes to the US Embassy. He explains the situation and asks how much it will cost to fly his wife’s body home for burial there. “A lot,” says the embassy. “At least ten thousand dollars.”

  ‘ “Okay, that’s fine,” says the husband. “I’ll put her on the first plane out.”

  ‘ “But why don’t you bury her here, in the Holy Land?” says the embassy man, puzzled. “It won’t cost you much at all.”

  ‘ “That’s true, only a hundred bucks,” he says. “But once upon a time a man was buried here and several days later he came back to life!”

  ‘ “Well?” says the embassy man, not getting the point.

  ‘ “So,” continues the widower,“now I’ve finally got rid of her, there’s no way I’m going to risk putting her in the earth here!”’

  The men grouped around the table, and even a couple of the soldiers standing guard, burst into laughter when the penny finally dropped. Tears rolled down the Palestinian’s cheeks. He put his cigarette down, got up and walked around to where Kadar Al-Jahani was sitting. Kadar stood and the two embraced. ‘Thank you, my brother, for bringing us new hope…as well as a few good jokes.’ They all laughed again. Kadar welcomed the affection from the Palestinian – it was certainly a refreshing change from the outright negativity and scepticism that he’d shown in the past. Since the loss of his son, The Cause had become a personal vendetta for the man – the taking of individual lives superseding the desire to establish a homeland. How many deaths would even the scales for the man, balancing the loss of his son? Twenty? One hundred?

  ‘And so, my friend,’ said the Saudi, ‘how did you manage to outwit the Americans in Jakarta? The whole world is talking about it.’

  ‘We had God guiding our hands,’ said Kadar.

  ‘Ah, the man has trade secrets he doesn’t wish to divulge,’ the Yemeni said.

  ‘Tell us about Indonesia,’ said the Syrian. ‘What is the reaction there?’

  ‘You’ve seen the television reports. Demonstrations, effigies and flags burned…other western embassies, consulates and businesses under siege…’ the Palestinian said, lending his support openly to Kadar Al-Jahani for the first time.

  ‘Yes, but…the feeling on the ground?’ the Syrian insisted.

  ‘My friends, Indonesia is ready,’ Kadar said, nodding slowly, seriously.

  The three men smiled at Kadar Al-Jahani. Duat would be pleased, he thought. As he had promised, the bombing had been a risk worth taking.

  Dogs began to bark in the street below and one of the Hamas bodyguards clo
sest to the window leaned out to investigate. At that moment, a corpse dropping from the rooftop sped past him and thudded onto the street below, the dead man’s rifle clattering on the road and cartwheeling away.

  The guard blinked as his brain attempted to catch up to real time. He watched as Humvees rounded the corner a block away and sped towards the building while, overhead, the air filled with the deafening roar of a large helicopter.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Kadar as the bodyguard at the window suddenly spun backwards into the room with no head on top of his shredded neck, spraying the wall with blood.

  And then the lights went out, plunging the room into darkness.

  The Blackhawk roared low over the observation building. The reflected glow from the town below provided enough light for Wilkes to see it bank sharply to the right, inbound for a landing on the target building’s rooftop. Everyone then switched their attention from the night sky back to the computer monitors.

  Suddenly, two of the three coloured blobs, men on the rooftop, were propelled rapidly backwards. The third body scribed a small arc then accelerated down the side of the building until it hit the street. Another blob on the second storey sunk to the floor, taken out. Thus, in a matter of seconds, the main sentries had all been sniped.

  Another monitor presented a second, more distant view of the building in the green of night vision. He watched the Blackhawk flare and counted thirteen soldiers rappelling from the aircraft onto the flat rooftop. He also counted the individual vital signs of the airborne force – there were thirteen – and noted that the individual heart rates had soared. There are twelve soldiers coming in on the rooftop, and another twelve providing a blocking force on the ground. That’s what Baruch had said. The name of a trooper was provided under each heart rate, all except for one. Number thirteen. That had to be Atticus Monroe. Jesus! Wilkes wasn’t superstitious, but that didn’t stop him having an ugly premonition.

  The technician fiddled with a box from which two small sticks projected. He tweaked them left and right, and the angle of the view changed – lowered. ‘Just repositioning one of the Dragon Warriors for a ringside seat,’ he explained. ‘You’ll have to excuse the crude controls. We’re working on an integrated computer control unit featuring touch control pads. But that’s for Generation Two. They’ll probably release that model and drop the price a year into the production run, screwing up the resale value,’ said the technician, snickering.

  ‘Shut the fuck up,’ snapped Baruch. Wilkes couldn’t have agreed more. On the screens, men were dying. Wilkes shook his head, trying to clear it of the unreality.

  The airborne force hit the roof and ran for the stairs. At street level, soldiers jumped from the Humvees. Percussion grenades – two – were thrown in through the front door. They exploded seconds later, the heat flaring bright red, yellow and green on the monitors.

  Wilkes heard a woman’s voice shouting instructions: Glukel. There were other voices. Wilkes assumed they were speaking Hebrew – he didn’t understand the words. The tone was urgent but controlled, cool. No panic.

  The Israeli troop on the ground went through the front door after the grenades. Samuels’ people. Submachine-gun fire and other small arms fire. Shouts. A scream. Baruch said something into his boom mic. No response. He said it again. Nothing. A barrage of yelling. Two of the vital signs on the monitor were flat-lining. Christ. More screams. A clatter of small arms. On the screen, Wilkes watched ten Israelis come back out the front door, retreating. Two soldiers were dragged and another was carried. Others dropped to their knees behind the Humvees, covering the retreat of their comrades, and emptied their magazines into the front door of the building. All three of the mounted light machine guns on the Humvees began pouring fire into the ground floor through the windows, the doors and even the brickwork. There was shouting, yelling through the ’phones. The sounds of chaos, fear.

  Baruch shouted something into the boom mic. No answer. He repeated the question. Again, no answer. He rubbed his face with his hands.

  ‘Go!’ someone said in English through Wilkes’s headphones. That must have been Atticus, thought Wilkes. He checked the monitors. Glukel’s people were faring better. No flat-lines. The view was in infrared/x-ray mode. flash-bangs. The Israelis entered the target room. A brief gun battle. Red spheres swarmed in like angry blood cells. ‘Target secured,’ yelled Monroe with an accompanying whoop.

  Lightning balled in the room. The flashes blinded Kadar Al-Jahani and punched the air from his lungs. He tried to stand, only to be thrown against a wall by a massive force, the power of which momentarily blotted out his consciousness.

  He coughed and choked with the dust filling his lungs. Kadar felt himself lifted up, this time by men, and then thrown face-down on the floor. His arms were wrenched behind his back dislocating a shoulder, and a ball of spinning white heat wrapped in the barbed wire of pure pain exploded inside his head. He screamed, but the sound scarcely reached his deafened ears. Vomit seared his throat and made him gag on the mouthfuls of dry grit skinning his insides like coarse sandpaper. Soldiers, Israeli soldiers, were around him. His hands were secured behind his back. Somewhere in Kadar Al-Jahani’s head the reality of the situation found a chink in his armour of disbelief. He was captured.

  A massive explosion echoed through the narrow streets as a rocket-propelled grenade blew up the lead Humvee. ‘Jesus,’ said Wilkes, ‘where did that come from?’

  Baruch snapped at the technician to reposition the Dragon Warrior. ‘Kakat!’ said Baruch, the veins in his neck pulsing like excited worms. The UAV revealed that the building opposite the target was garrisoned with yet another twenty or so enemy. ‘Fuck!’ Baruch shouted, slipping in and out of English. RPGs ripped through the air leaving smoke trails. The rear Humvee bounced as it exploded in a mushroom of fire, landing upside-down. Wilkes heard the sound of whimpering men coming through his ’phones. Others were yelling. He glanced at the monitor – nine flat-lines amongst the Israeli ground force, Samuels’ people.

  The gunships hovered above the scene. They couldn’t get off a shot at the floors occupied by the enemy across the street from the target building. The streets were too narrow. The action was now out of the Israelis’ control, despite all the technology.

  Glukel’s people began to pull back. The Blackhawk settled on the rooftop. The Israelis had three flights of stairs to relative safety. Three enemy shooters popped up on the rooftop of the building across the street. The orbiting Zefas cut them down with miniguns, their tracers a river of molten metal. RPGs answered, roaring across the narrow street and into the target building this time. BOOM! Strangely, the enemy’s target appeared to be the vacant floor above Glukel’s and Monroe’s men.

  ‘Shit, man, why they doin’ that?’ asked one of the techies, thinking aloud the question also on Wilkes’s mind. ‘How dumb is that? They’re firing at their own people.’

  A barrage in the ’phones from Glukel followed that could only be swearing.

  More enemy RPGs made the characteristic sound of tearing paper as they streamed across the narrow street, exploding against and inside the building. Someone was coughing, gagging. Wilkes realised that the air must be thick with concrete and clay pulverised to dust by the concussion, making it impossible to breathe.

  ‘The staircases!’ Wilkes heard Monroe yell.

  ‘Shit!’ said Wilkes, suddenly grasping the enemy’s move. That’s why the terrorists were firing into the building. Their targets were the staircases. With all of them demolished, Atticus and the others now had no way out. They were trapped. They couldn’t get up to the Blackhawk, nor could they leave out the front door.

  Machine gun fire was now raining down on the Humvees from the heavily defended building across the street. It was a killing zone. Wilkes saw that there were now twelve flat-lines, Major Samuels one of them. The buggers never had a chance. Glukel barked an order. Wilkes watched it carried out on screen – brightly coloured red spheres took up position at the windows. One of the spheres o
nly made it halfway, then turned blue. He glanced at another monitor. One of Glukel’s people had flat-lined. Jesus, this was murder. Small arms fire illuminated by hundreds of tracer rounds was being exchanged across the narrow street.

  Baruch roared into the ’phones. Glukel yelled back. Dragon Warrior picked out half a dozen enemy about to make the dash across the street into the building held by the Israelis. Now Glukel, encumbered by dead and wounded, outnumbered and under pressure, was going to have to defend her position against an enemy on the assault.

  Wilkes had seen enough. He grabbed a helmet and a tac radio off the table, and ran for the stairs. He brushed past an NCO whose mouth was open, enthralled by the monitors. ‘Thanks, mate,’ he said as he lifted the man’s sidearm from its holster. He took the stairs in a series of jumps and burst onto the street. There was a Humvee, motor idling across the street. He sprinted to it, opened the door. An Israeli grunt with his mouth open sat behind the wheel. Wilkes pulled him out by the collar, climbed in and stood on the accelerator. The vehicle jerked forward. He wrenched the wheel and the Humvee oversteered down a narrow side street, the back end flicking out and slamming into a wall. Wilkes floored it, took a left and a right and hoped his sense of direction hadn’t failed him. The vehicle shot out of the narrow lane like a bullet from a gun barrel. He threw the thing sideways then stamped on the brakes. The cloud of brown dust rolled forward obscuring his vision momentarily. And then he saw it not five metres directly in front, lit by the Humvee’s dirt-caked headlights: the Merkava main battle tank.

  Wilkes kicked open the Humvee’s door and ran to the tank. The panic heard over the combat frequency was coming in waves. Baruch was shouting orders – Wilkes had no idea what was going on, but it was obvious that there was no contingency plan in case things went to shit. He also knew that what he was about to do was downright illegal and that he could be imprisoned for it, or even shot. But Atticus was a friend – even if he was occasionally a pain in the butt, and he liked Lieutenant Glukel. What am I going to do? he asked himself wryly. Ask the colonel to pass the popcorn while I watch them die on telly?