Twilight's Last Gleaming

by John Michael Greer

  7 August 2029: Tsavo, Kenya

  Seversky looked up from the computer screen, surveyed the grim faces turned toward his. “That's bad,” he said, unnecessarily. Everyone there in the command tent was all too aware of how bad it was.

  “Any word from Mahoney?” he asked then.

  “Same thing as before, sir,” one of his aides said. “He says they've lost too many planes and can't spare anything from holding off the Chinese.”

  “Dammit,” said Seversky, “we're bleeding to death here.”

  “General Seversky.” It was the colonel Mahoney had sent him, the one who'd been sorting out the logistics mess; he spent a moment trying to remember her name, gave up. “If the Chinese get past our fighters you're going to have to deal with air strikes on your units, and the only things you've got to counter that are Stinger IIIs.”

  He considered that for a moment. “I know. Nobody told us we were going up against another major power.”

  The map on the computer screen showed the forces spread across southeastern Kenya: the three brigades of the 101st east of Voi, the Marines and the Kenyan forces with their backs to the Galana River, Coalition forces driving west from Mombasa and north toward Malindi—and now, another Coalition thrust across the border east of Moshi, threatening the routes that connected the 101st to its supply bases and to the possibility of retreat. Three days of hard fighting had failed to break the Coalition's grip on the Mombasa region, and the American and Kenyan losses had been heavy.

  He scowled, knowing he had only one choice.

  “We're going to have to withdraw,” he said. “Benny, you'll be the rearguard; I want First Corps to hold Voi and cover for the rest of us. Ish, you'll take Third Corps west and get a new defensive line in place as fast as possible—” He slid the map across the computer screen with a fingertip. “—right around Konza. It has to be this side of Nairobi; we can't let the Coalition take that without a fight.” He turned to the Air Force colonel and, thankfully, remembered her name. “Bridgeport, I want you to head back to Camp Pumbaa and strip it to the bare walls. We need everything we can get to stall the Coalition until Washington can get us reinforcements. Anything you can free up for surface-to-surface use—Tomahawks, you name it, we need it.”

  “That's doable,” she said. “I'll get you everything we've got.”

  “Good.” He glanced from face to face. “Anything else? No? Okay, let's get on it.”

  TWELVE

  8 August 2029: Expediency Council offices, Tehran

  “Excellent,” said Ayatollah Jahrami. “Note the delicacy of the request: should anything happen to divert the attention of the Americans from East Africa during the coming weeks, there will be concrete expressions of gratitude to those responsible. Nothing more than that. The Chinese may be infidels—”

  “And persecutors of the Faith,” one of the other ayatollahs reminded him pointedly.

  “Granted, and for that there will be a reckoning in due time, if Allah wills. Still, for now, it is useful to deal with them.”

  The Expediency Council had been meeting every day or two since the East African crisis erupted. Each news bulletin from the fighting made it clearer that a balance of power fixed in place since the Second World War might be coming apart, and Iran's place in whatever new order might come out of the struggle was very much on the minds of the Council members.

  “A little trouble could be arranged,” said General Zardawi.

  “I am inclined to think,” said Jahrami, “that it would be worthwhile to cause more than a little trouble. I propose that we activate the al-Quds Force in Saudi Arabia, and make, shall we say, threatening movements on our side of the Gulf.”

  That got raised eyebrows around the room; the al-Quds Force was the huge covert wing of the Revolutionary Guards.

  “Yes,” said Zardawi. “Yes, of course. Convince the Americans that we might be ready to take advantage of their weakness—”

  “Cross the Gulf, liberate the Shi'a along the Gulf coast, and seize the Holy Cities. Exactly. Not that we will.” Jahrami leaned forward. “Not yet, and not in that manner. We will do all of that in our own way, and in our own time, but the Americans do not know that—and if we can force them to keep planes and ships and missiles in the Gulf, I suspect China's expressions of gratitude will be very concrete indeed.”

  9 August 2029: Camp Pumbaa, Kenya

  By the time she reached Narok, on the way back to the airfield, Melanie Bridgeport knew that something had gone very wrong.

  Getting out of Tsavo had been hard enough, with refugees streaming out of town ahead of the expected Coalition advance, and every available American and Kenyan soldier heading toward the front lines. Her driver managed the thing somehow, veering through narrow streets and dirt roads, lurching up an embankment to get back on the highway maybe twenty miles further west. Kenyan military police kept the highway clear from there on, and waved Bridgeport past; from there on it was pedal to the metal all the way to Narok.

  Bridgeport noticed the cloud by the time her car went through Konza, low and dark on the southwestern horizon. The weather forecasts hadn't mentioned a chance of rain, but she had too much else to think about, too many logistics issues to try to solve, to give it much thought. It was only when the car neared Narok, and it became all too clear that the cloud was right over Camp Pumbaa, that she realized what it might mean.

  Mile by mile, as the car drove south from Narok, the sky darkened and the scale of what had happened became clearer. By the time the guards at the main gate waved Bridgeport over, she could see great plumes of black smoke rising from three places along the horizon.

  “Chinese got through?” she asked.

  “Yes sir,” one of the guards told her. “About six this morning.”

  Bridgeport could think of nothing to say, signaled her driver to go on.

  Further in, the scale of the destruction was all too clear. The fuel depot was still on fire, the air defense batteries were scrap metal, and a couple of other buildings had been turned into blackened wreckage. Firefighting crews swarmed around the burning fuel tanks, medics hurried here and there, teams of enlisted men dug through the rubble: everything that should have been happening was happening, but the chance that the 33rd's two squadrons could make a difference in the fighting had just dropped to zero.

  The car pulled up at the parking lot for headquarters and the Air Operations Center, and Bridgeport got out. For an instant she wondered if the driver had gotten lost, and then all at once she recognized what the heap of debris close by had been. “Jesus,” she said out loud.

  There were men standing amid the rubble. One of them heard her, turned, and came over. “Mel? Helluva time to decide to come back here.” It was Watanabe, though it took Bridgeport a moment to recognize him through the soot on his face.

  “Didn't have much choice,” Bridgeport said. “Seversky's evacuating Tsavo.”

  Watanabe gave her a long blank look, then: “Shit. I hope they aren't coming here.”

  “What happened?”

  “The Chinese just kept hammering,” said Watanabe. “We tried to get another couple of squadrons in, from the Gulf, from West Africa, from anywhere and the Chinese swarmed them, went after tankers and AWACS planes—same thing they did to us. This morning they punched through what was left of our combat patrol and got some J-20s close enough to launch cruise missiles. Our antiaircraft gear took out some of them but not enough.” With a weary shrug: “Our best guess is the Chinese'll be back come nightfall.”

  “Mahoney?” Bridgeport asked.

  The operations chief looked down, answered with a little shake of the head.

  9 August 2029: Qatif, Saudi Arabia

  They arrived one or two at a time at the bicycle shop, greeted the proprietor with a nod and a murmured password, slipped down the stairs in back to the basement. By the time the shop closed everyone had arrived, and the proprietor locked the doors, turned out the lights, and went down the same stairs. The basement was half
full of cardboard boxes and wooden crates, and the light from a single bulb shone on tense eager faces as the proprietor entered.

  “Is it time?” he asked the commander.

  “Yes. The orders came this morning, Allah be praised.”

  The men who filled the room were operatives of the al-Quds Force, the covert wing of the Revolutionary Guards. Most of them belonged to Saudi Arabia's Shi'a minority, and thus counted as second-class citizens or worse in the eyes of the Wahhabi Sunnis who ran the country; a few came from other corners of the Shi'a Muslim world. All had been trained in Iranian camps, and knew every detail of the work that was ahead of them.

  The commander passed out handwritten slips of paper, one to each man. “These are your instructions,” he said. “Do not discuss them with anyone but your team leader.”

  “And the weapons and explosives?” This from one of the men.

  “Are here,” said the bicycle shop proprietor. He went to the far side of the room, pulled the lid off one of the wooden crates. Metal gleamed gray inside.

  “Allahu akbar,” said the man who had spoken, in an appreciative tone. “We will set this city ablaze.”

  “Enough,” said the commander. “Take your gear, and remember that the eyes of the Twelfth Imam are upon you.”

  Guns and bombs passed from hand to hand, and the first team slipped back up the stairs and out into the night by way of the back door into the alley. The others followed, one team at a time. When all had left, the commander turned to the shopkeeper. “Will you need any help getting things ready for the police?”

  “No, not at all. I have already placed the charges. A few minutes, maybe, and I will be ready to give suitable hospitality to my guests. How soon do you think they will arrive?”

  The commander glanced at his watch. “Half an hour, maybe; the phone calls will already have been made. It depends on how quickly they respond to the first martyrdom operations.”

  “Then, my friend, you may wish to hurry elsewhere.”

  “Of course. The blessings of Allah be with you.”

  “And with you.”

  As the commander hurried up the stairs, the shopkeeper went to another of the crates, pulled out a reel of wire and the necessary tools, and began the final preparations for his own martyrdom. He was an old man, and had lived for many years with the contempt and more than occasional brutality of the local police; it pleased him to think that some of them, at least, would shortly accompany him to Allah's throne of judgment.

  10 August 2029: Tsavo, Kenya

  The trucks rolled out of the parking lot one at a time and roared westwards toward Nairobi with as many American and Kenyan troops as could be crammed into them. Humvees and technicals joined them, with soldiers in the back shouldering Stinger IIIs and scanning the skies for Chinese planes. Each truck traveled by a different route, scattering across the countryside to minimize the risk of air strikes. So far, the Chinese fighters had kept their distance; maybe they were hard put to it to keep US planes from breaking through into East African airspace. Seversky didn't know. He stood in front of the temporary HQ, watching his army retreat, thinking: there are too many things I don't know.

  “Sir.” A lieutenant saluted. “Message from Konza.”

  “Isherwood?”

  “Yes, sir. He says ‘John Wayne.’”

  “Good. Thank you, soldier.”

  “Thank you, sir.” The lieutenant went back into the comm tent.

  That was good news, at least. “John Wayne” meant that Third Brigade was in place at Konza, east of Nairobi, setting up a defensive line against the Coalition advance. The code words might not be necessary, but Seversky and his staff had decided to take no chances: if the Chinese could paralyze the US satellite system and blow a carrier battle group out of the water, they might be able to crack the Army's data encryption.

  The last of the trucks rolled by: the 101st's Second Brigade and the 3rd and 7th Kenya Rifles Battalions, on their way to join the line at Konza. Seversky watched them go, then turned and ducked into the tent.

  Inside, the sounds of the trucks were muffled but the diesel generator just outside more than made up the difference. Laptop screens showed incoming data: live image feeds from reconnaissance satellites and drones, weather data, reports from US and Kenyan units. He circled the room, checked each screen, stopped at one. “Anything from Martinez?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the lieutenant sitting there. “Messenger just came in. They're in Voi, with the Tanzies right on their asses.”

  No surprises there. “Time to move,” Seversky said, pitching his voice to be heard over the generator. “Bill, let Ish know we're on our way. The code's ‘Red Ryder.’”

  “Got it,” said a major on the other side of the tent, and started typing. The others began shutting down their computers and packing gear. Seversky turned back to the lieutenant. “What about Kesembani?”

  “Nothing, sir.” The lieutenant looked up at him. “Word is he's gone from Nairobi—him and the whole cabinet.”

  “Any idea where?”

  “Kisumu, sir.”

  Seversky allowed a laugh; Kisumu was in Kenya's far west, on the shore of Lake Victoria. “Nice to know somebody has confidence in us,” he said. “Well, he'll just have to wait there while we win this thing.”

  12 August 2029: The Kremlin, Moscow

  “The Americans are trying to open a supply route by land.” The speaker, a colonel from Army Intelligence, turned on his laser pointer, put a red spot on Africa's Mediterranean coast and drew it down the image on the screen. “There's no secret about the route: Libya to Chad, to the Central African Republic and northern Zaire, and then east across Uganda to their forces. Not an easy route or a safe one, and there are hard limits on how much they can bring that way.”

  “With Chinese planes in South Sudan?” This from Colonel-General Myshinski, the Army chief of staff. “They will get pounded.”

  “That's one problem, sir,” said the colonel. “The very poor roads are another. There have been ground attacks on the first few American units heading through—no one's admitting responsibility for those. It might be the Coalition, or local militias—”

  “Or anyone who wants the contents of a truck or two,” Myshinski said. “Understood.”

  The colonel went on, sketching out the American withdrawal toward Nairobi, the Coalition advance, the air battles over Kenya and South Sudan, the changing fortunes of a war that everyone in the room knew could shatter a decades-old balance of power.

  In his usual seat, fingers folded together, Gennady Kuznetsov watched and listened. General Bunin sat nearby, his face impassive as a stump. What thoughts might be moving behind Bunin's half-closed eyes, Kuznetsov did not try to guess, but it was plain enough which way the winds over East Africa were blowing.

  When the colonel had finished speaking, Kuznetsov cleared his throat. “What you're telling us,” he said, “is that the Americans are losing.”

  A moment of silence, and then, unexpectedly, Bunin's voice: “No.”

  Kuznetsov turned toward him. “No?”

  “No.” The general regarded him. “They've lost. They simply don't know it yet.”

  PART THREE

  TO THE BRINK

  THIRTEEN

  5 September 2029: The White House, Washington DC

  “Did they get everybody out of Nairobi?” Weed asked.

  “Yes,” Greg Barnett said. “I've talked to Miller—he was our station chief there. He's in Kisumu now, and we've got a secure diplomatic line open from there.”

  “Well, that's one bit of good news, at least.” The president ran a hand back through his hair. “We could use more.”

  None of the members of the National Security Council had anything to say to that. Weed glanced around the room, and his gaze caught on the portrait of Teddy Roosevelt on horseback. Damn the man, he thought. He made it look so easy. “What about the broader picture?”

  “The business in Saudi Arabia is picking up,” said B
arnett. “The Saudis say it's just a few protests and they've got it under control. Our people on the ground say there have been dozens of suicide attacks on police stations and government buildings, and what looks like urban guerrilla forces active in Qatif and Dammam.”

  “The Iranians have got to be behind it,” Ellen Harbin said.

  “Probably. We've got satellite photos showing three divisions of Revolutionary Guards moving up to the southern part of the border with Iraq, down near Basra. Maybe it's a bluff, maybe it's more than that. We don't know yet.”

  “Fair enough,” Weed said. “Bill, what's the latest on the fighting in Kenya?”

  Stedman didn't trust himself to answer. He nodded to Admiral Waite, who took the remote and clicked it. A map of Kenya appeared on the screen. “The new defensive line is just west of Nakuru,” the admiral said. “The terrain's favorable—it's right along the edge of the Rift Valley—and Seversky thinks he can stop the Coalition forces there if we can improve the logistics situation. We've got every available resource working on that, but I'd be lying if I said we had it fixed. Between Coalition irregulars and Chinese airstrikes, getting anything through is a crapshoot.”

  “What about the air situation more generally?”

  “Not good. They've brought in more fighters, and gotten more air-defense systems operational. We lost two B-1s to SAM fire in last night's run.”

  Weed gave him a horrified look. “And the crews?”

  “No word yet,” said the admiral.

  “We tried to get Predator drones in to hit their air defense radars, but they were spotted and taken out,” Barnett said then. “Chinese technology is, well, as good as ours these days.”

  Weed stared at him, then allowed a short sharp laugh, like a dog barking. “No,” he said. “No, it's better than ours, and you know why. Everybody in this room has signed off on systems that nobody should have approved, and you've all done it as quid pro quo.” He looked up and down the table. “So have I. For all these years, we thought we could afford that. Some things are going to have to change—once we finish dealing with the Chinese.”