Kingdom Come

by David Rollins

  Ultra power magnification photos in the visible light spectrum captured high angle portraits of all the survivors with phenomenal resolution: Cooper, whom Schelly identified immediately, and the other three she recognized from their service records – US Army Special Forces Sergeants Baker, McVeigh and Leaphart. But who are these others? From their dress and features, three of the unidentified persons were more than likely Syrian, and they weren’t restrained or under guard so unlikely to be Daesh or other unfriendlies. So who were they? Also, there was a man cuff-locked and seated on the ground. It stood to reason he could be a captured Daesh fighter. Was there only one survivor from the attack? And who are these other two? One female – you have to be the river nymph. And one male, probably the person lying under the tree now walking around. And then it hit Major Schelly. Oh Jesus - this guy, the one walking around. He’s wearing a fucking Spetsnaz uniform.

  Quickstep 3 had made contact with Russians. But which Russians? Was it feasible that they had located the president’s traveling companions? No, surely not. More likely was that these persons were part of the Russian response. She re-examined the photos and the more likely scenario didn’t seem to fit. Why just two Russians? And why were neither of them carrying rifles or machine guns? Clearly, though, whatever was going on down there, Cooper and his men were in control of it. Schelly made a snap decision. It’s gonna take some coordination with Creech, but didn't someone say, “Whatever you need to get it done”? She checked her notes – Lieutenant Colonel Josh Simmons – and dialed Al Udeid.

  Twenty-seven

  Ronald V. Small @realSmall

  To all those people who think they are fighting for God, let me say this. When you meet him, you’ll be very very disappointed. He’s not your guy – he’s ours.

  The small fire flickered in the darkness, its feeble yellow light fighting a losing battle against the cave’s shadows feinting back and forth against the dry rock ceiling above. Here and there flashlight beams swept the area as men cleaned weapons or played sheesh-beesh on pocket boards with dice the size of milk teeth. The men were comfortable here, relaxed, though the Scorpion was anything but.

  “Ortsa,” he called to the Chechen, and the man rose and came to him.

  “Yes, Amir.”

  “I do not trust the media, any of it. Find two reliable men. Send them to Turkey for news. I want to know if our army is growing. How many of the faithful have answered their pledge to the caliphate? How fast does the army grow? Are they bringing weapons? We cannot stay here long. It would be ideal to join our fighters and beckon the Crusaders to do battle. If we have momentum, we need to use it.”

  “I will do it now. Which vehicle should they take?”

  “Not the BMW and not the ZPU.”

  “Yes, Amir.”

  The Chechen turned into the smoke from the fire and it rolled in behind him as he left.

  ***

  President Petrovich watched the Scorpion and the younger man in discussion and wondered what they talked about before the younger man was sent away on an errand. Petrovich sat with his feet facing the flames, the soles of his slowly roasting shoes giving up wisps of smoke, his back clammy with cold sweat, his hands numb below the cords that bit hard into the raw and bloodied skin of his wrists. Comfort was something he had ceased trying to find, his unsupported back aching, the bones in his bottom feeling like they were trying to push through the very muscle and skin. The backs of his legs were about to cramp so he thrust his feet forward, to one side of the flames. His empty gut ached from lack of food. He was filthy and, yes, scared. But the President of Russia does not show fear, he told himself, and so he worked hard to transmute the anxiety into bitter defiance, at least outwardly. But how long could he keep it up? He still had hope that somehow they would be rescued. The army, the air force, Spetsnaz – somehow they would know how to find him. The whole world would be looking for him, and the Cheget. It had to be. All he needed to do was hang on and believe. But how would he cope when hope was dimmed? Would he beg and snivel for freedom, to be allowed to live? Fellow countrymen who this monster killed had gone to their graves without a whimper. Could he too call on hidden reserves of strength? Or would his bowels and bladder loosen when a butcher’s knife was pressed against his jugular and the red light on the video camera blinked?

  How long had they been captive? When had their Hind crashed? It was difficult to know for sure. Was it two days ago? Three? More? With no sunlight, his wristwatch stolen (and his wrists tied behind his back anyway), there was no way to judge the passage of time. And the Scorpion and his men slept and ate erratically – when they felt like it. Petrovich felt utterly abandoned. The same questions ran through his mind anew. How had the world reacted to the terrorist’s demands? Would the ransom be paid? How had the West responded? And Russia? What about the Muslim world? Things he felt certain about one moment deserted him the next. He fought against feelings of helplessness, weakness, defeat. Short of rescue, survival was hopeless. And so the cycle of hope and despair went around again.

  Cramp contracted his leg muscles without warning and he stretched out, kicking the fire, its embers scattering. Several fighters shouted at him, annoyed.

  The Scorpion rose out of one of the deeper shadows and spoke to several of his men who came at once to attend the president. While the fire was reorganized and the stones around it replaced, Petrovich was offered goat’s milk from an old plastic water bottle and some unidentified meat was stuffed in his mouth, along with a variety of undercooked grain that was too dry to chew properly. But it was food, and Petrovich was hungry and thirsty and he could do nothing other than accept it. The food helped to fight off the cramps, and Petrovich found himself looking at the Scorpion, now seated on the far side of the fire.

  The ISIS commander tossed a small stick with dried leaves into the flames. It cracked, the fire brightened and the air was filled with an unknown fragrance. “Your general is strong for an old man,” the Scorpion said. “The fever has broken, along with the infection. He will live.”

  “So that you can murder him for the video cameras,” said Petrovich, his voice somehow even, unflinching.

  “I admire your courage, Mr President. His life will serve Allah’s purpose, as will yours.”

  “You have no intention of freeing us.”

  “As it is written, so it will be.”

  “Your riddles betray your ignorance. You are nothing but a filthy murderer. Do not pretend otherwise.”

  The Scorpion gave the president his warmest smile. “What use have I for pretense? I am Allah’s servant. I do his bidding. That is why I am here. And that is why you are also here.”

  “You are a religious whacko.”

  “A whacko who has the Russian president, his top-ranking general and the Cheget in his possession. And with them I will reshape the world for God’s greater glory.”

  “As I said: whacko.” Petrovich stared at the Scorpion. “And what will this new world of yours look like?”

  “I do not know. Neither the Qur’an nor the hadiths say. Only Allah can know the future. As he wills, so it shall be.”

  Despite aching in every part of his body, Petrovich found himself drawn into the mad discussion. “Fools and charlatans have been predicting the end of the world since the beginning of the world. And, like all who have come before, you too will be disappointed. The day will come and go and the sun will still rise in the east and set in the west.”

  The Scorpion shook his head, showing his adversary a deep well of pity. “Let me help you to understand.”

  “What choice do I have?”

  “You can choose to accept God. The Qur’an is the perfect word of God. The laws written within it are God given. Its prophecies have come directly from God’s all-knowing wisdom. Allah has seen all, sees all and knows all. He has seen what has come, what is now and what will be. And what will be, he tells us in His book, is that the armies of Rome will ultimately be defeated. Not at first, but at the end. Your deliverance to me
, tells me that I am chosen by God to be instrumental in the end of the world. You and I will lead this earth to apocalypse and return it to perfection.”

  “Whacko.”

  “You are godless, Mr President of All Russia, and because of that you believe everyone is godless. Such is your arrogance and your blindness. We have God and you do not and that is why you must die. Denying God his existence is the height of apostasy and the punishment for the crime of apostasy, according to the word of God conveyed to man in the Qur’an, is death. That is what I know to be true.”

  “You can’t win, you must know that. The caliphate is dead, your fighters are being killed off one by one. Your dream of prophecy is no more than that – a dream.”

  “Before victory, the armies of Islam will near obliteration, so says the prophecy. Being pressed from all sides, having our numbers so reduced makes us happy. The Qur’an and the hadiths also promise that we shall receive succor from Allah. And what are you and your general and your Cheget if not the means of that succor?”

  Petrovich realized that argument was pointless. A reasoned discourse would not change this deluded mind. And he was aware that the Scorpion viewed him in identical fashion, each both impossibly beyond reach of the other’s argument. “Untie my hands. Let me stand. Where can I go? This is a prison and you have many jailers.”

  The Scorpion hesitated before coming to a decision on this. He called to some fighters who came over to him. He spoke to them, after which they hauled Petrovich to his feet. The ISIS commander also stood. “The Qur’an says that the armies of Allah will defeat the armies of Rome,” he told Petrovich. “The caliphate will spread and rule over Constantinople for a time. But then the anti-Messiah will come and another great battle will see the destruction of our fighters until only 5000 remain, cornered in Jerusalem. Just as the anti-Messiah prepares for the final annihilation, Jesus will rise with the dead to defeat him. And until that time, and at every opportunity, we shall kill your men, rape your women and sell your children into slavery, for that is merciful.”

  “How is that merciful?” Petrovich grimaced. The cord that bound his hands cut deeper into his flesh.

  “To frighten into submission those who would oppose the will of God. To do otherwise would be to prolong war, which is forbidden.”

  Petrovich glared at the man, unable to find the words that spoke his mind, except for one. Whacko.

  “I know what you are thinking. You kill our women and children with your bombs. You tell yourself that it is to shorten the war.”

  Petrovich had no answer other than to grind his teeth. “My hands …”

  The Scorpion appeared to have come to another decision. “You say they are numb. If that is true, you will thank me for it.”

  Thank me for it? What does that mean?

  “Take him,” the Scorpion told his fighters.

  Twenty-eight

  Ronald V. Small @realSmall

  Hang in there, Mr President. America hasn't forgotten you!

  Abigail Diamond-Travis, Director of DIMOC, the Defense Imagery Management Operations Center, thumbed a button on a remote. “These frames were lifted from the second video.”

  Schelly had never met this woman, or heard anything about her, but she was clearly an important cog in the Washington intelligence machine. You look somewhere in your forties but could easily pass for thirty-something. Snappy dresser. Fitted dark navy twin-set with an emerald green shirt and push-up bra. White-blonde hair cut fashionably short to accentuate a slender neck. I’m thinking American Vogue. I’d like to know what happened that put you in a wheelchair.

  Diamond-Travis aimed the remote at the screen and circled what appeared to be a white scratch on a blue background. “It’s small, almost impossible to see with the naked eye. And if you do notice it, you could mistake it for a scratch on the tape, except this is digital so there’s nothing to scratch,” she said with some measure of triumph. “The weather patterns weren’t conducive to the phenomenon at that time and place, and that’s why it’s only visible for a few seconds.” The frames advanced and the scratch became a smudge that disappeared.

  The room was silent, intrigued.

  The blue became the sky behind Al-Aleaqarab’s head. Director Diamond-Travis continued, “From around the middle of 2016, commercial flights were diverted around the airspace of what is known as the ‘Chaos Triangle’, the skies over southern Turkey, Syria and Iraq. But military flights are another matter and all of them are logged by the Air Force for deconfliction purposes.” The picture rewound several seconds, stopped, and she circled the now tiny white fleck above and behind the terrorist’s head once more. “So the appearance of this contrail is a real break. It could only be one of three possibilities – one of ours, a C-17 out of Aviano bound for Perth, Australia; a Royal Air Force tanker heading for a rendezvous with NATO fighters over Somalia; or a Luftwaffe Jaguar on a training flight. Working with these three possible options gives us three possible locations for the terrorists on the ground at the approximate time this video was made.”

  She pressed a remote and the image on screen became a high altitude shot of northern Syria and northern Iraq, the borders highlighted. The Euphrates writhed like a green snake on a hot plate as it curled across the almost featureless light brown desert plain. “Here, here and here,” Diamond-Travis said as three small solid yellow triangles appeared on the image. The altitude decreased slowly and the triangles became areas on the desert floor, roughly evenly spaced in an arc between the Turkish border and the Euphrates. “Each line of these triangles is roughly five miles long. Unfortunately, we can’t be more precise than this because, while we know the speed and direction of each of these aircraft, the precise time that this video was shot is a guestimate.”

  “Can we get any real-time surveillance on those areas?” Bunion asked.

  “That’s a question for the Air Force, sir. I would say possibly, but the Russian Air Force is making things difficult for us.”

  “How far are those triangles from the estimated position of Quickstep 3’s first sighting of the Scorpion near Latakia?” Epstein wanted to know.

  “Roughly 280 miles to the area designated Position Charley in the south, Madam Secretary, close to where the Euphrates crosses the border into Iraq; Position Alpha, 220 miles to the triangle in the north; and around 250 miles to Position Bravo roughly equidistant between them.”

  “This information forms the backbone of the briefing prepared for the Quickstep unit incountry,” Schelly reassured the room.

  “Is it possible the Scorpion could have covered the distance required in the time available?” SECSTATE Bassingthwaite asked.

  “Forget Position Charley,” Rentz replied.

  “Yes, sir. Agreed,” said Schelly.

  “So that reduces the possible locations by thirty-three percent,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” Schelly agreed.

  “How many people in this unit?”

  “Four, sir.”

  “Right,” the admiral replied, dubious.

  Following several seconds of silence, Epstein asked, “Any other questions?”

  None came forward. “Thank you, Abbey,” Epstein said, adding, “Good job,” to reassure her.

  The director gathered various items into a briefcase, which she placed on her lap. “We have to get this son of a bitch,” she said, reversing from the desk, wheeling about and then motoring to the door, her wheelchair motor generating a slight hum.

  Admiral Rentz opened the door for her.

  “Thank you, Admiral,” she said

  Schelly watched the director glide around the corner before the door closed behind her.

  The insights from the DIMOC were something of a breakthrough, albeit a minor one. They reduced the search area substantially but, Schelly knew, the task of finding the Scorpion, his hostages and the Cheget was still near impossible.

  Doctor Debbie Ng, NSA’s Director of Media Analysis, spoke. “As we know, this situation has spooked Wall Stre
et, the ‘footsie’ jumping all over the place. We understand the downward pressure, but the upswings were what intrigued us. It seems the Scorpion’s actions have turbocharged the dark web and all kinds of schemes are being offered, financial and otherwise. There are even crazies offering to develop algorithms that will allow the Scorpion to use the Cheget codes he has to launch nukes. We don’t believe that is possible, by the way.”

  “Why would the threat of blowing up the world cause the stock market to go up?” asked SECSTATE Bassingthwaite. “That makes no sense to me.”

  “It wouldn’t, sir, not specifically anyway. But markets love uncertainty. With chaos comes opportunity. The wild swings up and down take on a life of their own. It’s interesting that ordinary people, not just hackers and Internet criminals, are flocking to the dark web to buy into some of the money-making schemes on offer.” She gave an amused snort. “But this is sooo unnecessary. Some of the craziest barely legal schemes are no further away than a call to a Wall Street broker.”

  “What about those algorithms you mention?” asked Rentz.

  “We are working with the NSA and the FBI,” CIA Director Hamilton replied. “Keeping tabs on potential buyers.”

  Schelly’s attention returned to the screens on the wall, glowing with activity. A billion or more smart phones around the world, in the hands of diligent amateur reporters, were feeding news services with almost real-time reporting and had supplanted the CIA, NSA, MI6 and others in the role of primary real-time intelligence gathering. These news services and selected Twitter feeds were already reporting on more than a dozen apparently ISIS-inspired “lone wolf” stabbings and hit and run attacks on civilians in London, Paris, Madrid, Berlin and New York. In Sydney, Australia, two terrorists had hijacked a harbor ferry during the morning commute and rammed it into a passenger ship. The ferry had sunk and many passengers drowned. Many more were injured. There were revenge attacks going on, too. Ten Muslims in Brussels had been struck by a delivery van in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood. The media consensus: this was just the beginning.