Stephen Molstad - [ID4- Independence Day 03]

by War in the Desert (epub)

  INDEPENDENCE DAY: War in the Desert

  Created by Dean Devlin & Roland Emmerich Novel by Stephen Molstad

  HarperEntertainment

  A Divison of HarperCoUmsPublishers

  1

  The Attack Begins

  The original city on a hill, Jerusalem, was a symbol of all that was best and worst about human beings. It had stood for millennia above the Judean plane, protected by sturdy stone walls that had glinted gold in the sun since the time of Christ and, seven centuries later, the time of Mohammed. Those walls had held back large armies and entire nations of crusaders clamoring at its gates, desperate to enter, certain that being inside would bring them closer to the paradise of heaven. It had been conquered eighteen different times.

  Over the years, the city’s walls had borne witness to some of humanity’s deepest and most uplifting meditations on the question of what it meant to be alive. But they’d also seen their share of needlessly spilled blood. There had been countless acts of pettiness, backstabbing and sadism—all committed in the name of a merciful God. A tenth century poet described Jerusalem as “a golden basin filled with scorpions.” It was sacred ground to all three of the West’s major religions: the place where King David’s temple had housed the ark of the covenant, where Christ was crucified and resurrected, and where the prophet Mohammed stretched open his arms and ascended to heaven. It was said that you could choke to death in Jerusalem, the air was so thick with prayer.

  Reg Cummins had first encountered the city as a grungy

  twenty-year-old backpacker. He’d enlisted with the Royal Air Force but had three months until he was scheduled to report. In the meantime, he was determined to see some of the continent. From his home in Kew Gardens outside London, he traveled down through Italy and hopped a boat to Greece. After a month on the beach, he decided he was looking for something more, something further from his experience, something more exotic and challenging. So he went to Jerusalem. He slept where he could and spent his days exploring the covered markets, tunnels, and religious shrines. He drank tea and bargained in the souks, got himself invited to shabbat dinners then sang and danced with his hosts. He wandered the cobblestone streets, argued over the price of onions and the nature of sin, and spent a couple of nights camped out in a courtyard of African mud huts with the Ethiopian Coptic priests in their compound. Jerusalem had always made him feel vital and completely alive. That seemed like a very long time ago.

  Now, several years later and hundreds of miles away, as he watched images of the city on television, Major Reginald M. Cummins, an instructor with the Queen’s Flight and Training Group, Mideast section, felt dead inside. It was noon on July 3rd, and outside the sun burned hot white in the sky. He was in the Foreign Officers’ lounge at the Khamis Moushalt Airfield in Saudi Arabia, along with every active-duty RAF soldier stationed in that country except the Commandant— all six of them—staring in grim disbelief at the CNN report unfolding on the screen.

  An alien aircraft of staggering size had arrived the night before and parked itself directly over the ancient city. The hovering gray disk stretched out for miles in every direction, leaving only a ring of blue sky low on the horizon. When it arrived, the ground shook with its massive rumbling. It had moved at a constant speed and elevation, closing over the top of the city like the thick stone lid of a sarcophagus. The moment the ship stopped moving, everything had fallen deathly quiet.

  The vessel looked like the very embodiment of evil. It was dark, hard and strictly utilitarian in design. It was gruesomely industrial and, at the same time, somehow alive. The whole dark mass looked biological, like an exoskeleton of some sort.

  The sight of the gigantic airship triggered a wild, violent exodus. People gathered up whatever they could carry with them and ran. Over a million refugees were scrambling toward the hope of safety, some of them on the roads leading to Tel Aviv or Amman, others hurrying on foot through the hills. In most people’s minds, it was the end of the world. For others, it was the armies of the Lord announcing the moment of redemption. By noon, the Jerusalem was empty except for military personnel, New Age types who had come to welcome the ETs, and stem religious zealots wielding bats and bricks, determined to protect their sacred buildings.

  Variations of this scene were occurring all over the planet.

  Less than twenty-four hours before, thirty-six of these enormous ships—soon to be known as city destroyers—had disengaged themselves from an even larger spacecraft, the “mother ship,” which was one fourth the size of Earth’s moon. Very quickly, they began their simultaneous, free-fall entry into Earth’s atmosphere. They descended in huge billowing clouds of flame and smoke as the friction they generated combusted the oxygen around them. Upon reaching their target elevations, they came to a sudden and inexplicable halt. Completely unscathed, they drove out of the smoke clouds and moved into position over thirty-six of Earth’s most populous and strategically important cities. None of them had made any discernible attempt to communicate.

  Reg Cummins drew in a deep breath and turned away from the hypnotic images on the television set. Wanting to clear his mind, he walked to the bar at the far side of the room and poured himself the stiffest drink in the house: a glass of lukewarm soda water. The initial shock of the invasion was beginning to wear off and, in its place, a grim sense of helplessness was spreading around the globe. It was evident in the comments made by the CNN reporters, in the communiques issued by the world’s governments, and, as Reg could see with his own eyes, in the attitudes of his fellow pilots. Normally, they were an obnoxiously loud and boisterous group, always laughing, roughhousing and complaining bitterly about the hardships of life in this remote desert locale. Now they looked like a group of defeated men. They slumped in their chairs, as still as statues, and their heads hung in worry.

  If the aliens decided to pick a fight, they wouldn’t get much resistance from a group like this. Reg knew he had to do something to change the atmosphere. When his eyes fell on the billiards table in the center of the room, he knew what he had to do.

  “All this alien nonsense is starting to bore me silly,” he called across the room. “And you blokes are going to ruin your eyes watching that rot all day. Anyone interested in a game of pool?” Immediately, everyone’s attention was sucked away from the news program. The men looked positively alarmed.

  “Anyone interested?” Reg asked, nonchalantly selecting a stick from the rack on the wall.

  “Impossible!” said one of the pilots.

  “You? Play a game of pool?” said another in disbelief. “You’re finally going to do something more than talk?”

  ‘That is correct,” Reg said, chalking the tip of his cue. “This time I’m really going to play. Anyone here think they’re good enough to take me?”

  The six pilots, wearing their flight suits in case they were ordered into the air on short notice, came toward the table. All of them had heard Reg talk about his days as a championship level player, but this was the first time any of them had seen him actually holding a cue.

  “Who’s the best player?” Reg asked, as if he didn’t already know.

  A tall, beefy man named Sinclair stepped up to the table chewing on the stub of a cigar. “That would be me, Teacher,” he said. “You’re serious, then? You want a game?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m serious, quite serious.”

  Major Cummins (aka the Teacher, an affectionate nickname given to him by the Saudi pilots who were his students) was famous for three things: for being widely considered the best pilot in the Middle East; for having suffered a very painful and career-threatening lapse of judgment during the Gu
lf War; and for bragging about his days as a pool player before joining Her Majesty’s Air Force.

  “This is turning out to be a day full of surprises,” said a man named Townsend. “First, a bunch of aliens arrive from outer space and now something truly shocking. 1 hope I’m dreaming.” "What’s this all about?” Sinclair asked, snapping open the leather case that held his personal cue. “You trying to distract us from our troubles?” When Reg shrugged without answering, Sinclair invited him to lag for break.

  Reg looked confused. He didn’t appear to understand the question. “Why don’t you go ahead and show me how it’s done?” “Gladly,” Sinclair said with a smirk. He leaned over the table and stroked the cue ball to the far side of the table. It bounced off and rolled back to within an inch of the near rail. It was a nice shot, the onlookers agreed, one that would be nearly impossible to beat. Sinclair marked the position with a chalk cube, satisfied that he’d already won. “Your turn, Teacher.”

  Reg studied the table. “Now what’s the idea here? I have to get the ball closer than yours without touching the wall, is that it?” “That’s it exactly.” Sinclair grinned wickedly. “Best of luck to you.”

  Reg cleared his throat. “Well, here goes then,” he said, lining up his shot. The awkward way he held the cue in his hands made it clear he didn’t know what he was doing. He was on the verge of shooting when he suddenly backed away. “Wait, I just thought of something.”

  The men all moaned loudly, believing Reg was going to back out of it, but he surprised them again.

  “We haven’t made a bet. Shouldn’t we make a wager of some kind?”

  “What can you afford to lose?” someone laughed.

  Reg looked at the man curiously. “Lose? What makes you think I’m going to lose?”

  “Fifty quid then?” Sinclair asked, doubting Reg would want to risk that much.

  “Make it hundred.”

  The men roared with laughter at his misguided bravado. Despite his obvious lack of skill, he actually seemed to believe he stood a chance against the mighty Sinclair. He leaned over the table again and quickly stroked his shot. The white ball sailed across the green felt.

  “Too hard,” Sinclair announced as soon as the ball rebounded off the far wall.

  “I don’t think so,” said his challenger. “I’d say that’s just about perfect.” A moment later, the ball stopped rolling a mere fingernail short of the near rail. Reg looked Sinclair in the eyes. “Does this mean I get to break?”

  The big man squinted back at him and nodded, beginning to realize that he’d been had.

  Reg’s break shot was a thing of beauty. The cue ball fired across the table with surprising power and scattered the colorful spheres in every direction. There were three soft thunks as two solids and a stripe fell into three separate pockets.

  “Listen to the Teacher, friends,” Reg said, circling the table like a jungle cat. “Today’s lesson is about making assumptions and how much trouble that can get you into.” He paused long enough to hammer the twelve ball into a side pocket and the nine into a corner. “I’m certain you’ve all seen that diagram about the word assume. You know, the one that says: when you assume, you make and ASS out of U and ME.” He tapped the orange five ball in the comer. “Well, there’s been too damn much assuming going on around here this morning and I’ll give you an example. You all assumed that just because you’d never seen me play, that I couldn’t find my way around a table.” He glanced up at Sinclair and smiled. “Combination bank shot. Three ball in the far corner.” A moment later, it fell in.

  “The same thing is happening with these spaceships. Everybody’s making assumptions.” He sunk the two ball then broke into the exaggerated accent of a terrified Scotsman. “Oh, fer crackin’ ice! These huge fookin saucers are parked all over the fookin warld. It can mean one thing and one thing only: total fookin annihilation fer the yewmin race.” The men chuckled at his imitation, but they also got the message. In quick succession, Reg sank every ball left on the table then tossed his cue on the table. “The truth of the matter is, you just can’t tell what sort of a player a bloke is until he makes a few shots. So let’s wait to see what kind of players these aliens are before we quit and hang up our cues, okay?”

  “And if they turn out to be sharks like you?” Sinclair asked with a laugh.

  “In that case, we’ll show them what kind of shooting good English lads can do, right?”

  “Right!” the men answered in one voice. With the fire back in their eyes, the men began a raucous discussion of the punishment they would mete out if the aliens started any trouble. They were laughing and arguing when a blast of heat and bright light swept into the room.

  The door of the darkened lounge had pulled open and Colonel Whitley, a man with the long neck and stooped posture of a vulture, stepped inside. He was the highest ranking RAF officer at Khamis Moushalt but had been in the Middle East only a few weeks. He carried a map of the region that he’d ripped from the wall of his office. He was sweating from his short walk across the base. It was already ninety-six degrees Fahrenheit outside and it was only going to get hotter.

  “I’m going to need a volunteer,” Whitley announced, knocking glasses and ashtrays off the bar so he could flatten out the map. “Here’s the situation. Forty of our birds, Tornadoes, are trapped over the Mediterranean. They’ve been in a holding pattern for the last half-hour near Haifa. Somebody’s got to go get them.”

  “Why?” asked one of the men. “What’s the matter?”

  Whitley grimaced in disgust. “Every nation in the region is closing down its airspace. Israel was the first. About an hour ago, they started chasing out all foreign planes, allies included. Five minutes later, Egypt and Syria started doing the same damn thing, so our boys can’t just detour around. Besides, they’re not fully trained pilots. They’re just a bunch of warm bodies acting as chauffeurs. It’s a hideous mess out there, hideous.”

  “What the hell is Israel’s problem?” Sinclair asked. “Last night they agreed to allow foreign planes.”

  Reg took an educated guess. “There must have been a skirmish. If I know the Israelis, they’ve been shadowing every group of Arab planes that comes in for a look at that alien craft. Somebody started playing chicken—probably some Iraqis—and before they knew it, they were in a dogfight.”

  W'hitley’s dark eyes opened wide in suiprise. He didn’t know Reg well and, after reading his personnel file, regarded him with caution. “The major is correct,” he told the men. “Two Iraqi planes were shot down. In retaliation, missiles were fired onto the road leading to Tel Aviv resulting in civilian casualties. Then, of course, all hell broke loose.”

  “Oh, that’s bloody lovely,” said one of the pilots in disgust, “that’s just beautiful. The aliens must be laughing their little green arses off right now. They won’t have to waste any ammunition in this part of the world. We’ll kill ourselves off before the bastards have the chance to do it themselves.”

  “Enough talk,” Whitley snapped. “Who’s going?”

  Six pilots loudly volunteered, but Reg quieted them with a look. “Sorry lads, winner breaks!” Then he turned to the Colonel. “I’m your man, sir. Where do those planes have to go?”

  A bead of sweat rolled off the tip of Whitley’s beak-like nose. “They’re headed to Kuwait. But, look, Cummins,” he said tensely, “maybe someone else would be better for this mission. It’s not that I doubt your skills, but there are hundreds of warplanes out there from a dozen different nations. And as I say, these boys flying the Tornadoes don’t know what they’re doing. This is a live-fire situation and it’s going to be, well, confusing.” The men fell into an awkward silence. They knew that the colonel’s reluctance to give Reg the mission was based on something that had happened many years before, something none of them ever mentioned in front of the Teacher. Whitley, a newcomer to the base, didn’t understand that his fears were ground-

  less and that Reg was, by far, the best man for the job. H
e was the only one who had never flown alongside the Teacher and seen the impossible things he could do in a jet. Besides, Reg knew the region well enough to fly without navigation systems, and he understood the tactics of the Middle East’s diverse air forces better than anyone.

  Whitley’s lack of confidence stung Reg like a hard punch to the heart, but he didn’t let it show. “I’m your man, colonel,” he repeated firmly. “I’ll find those planes. I’ll bring them to their destination safely.”

  Whitley shook his head. “I’ve read your file, Cummins. We can’t afford any ... lapses. Now, who else volunteers?”

  The other pilots looked at the ceiling, at the television, anywhere but at the Colonel. It only took a second of being ignored for Whitley to realize that the decision had been made for him.

  “So that’s how it’s going to be. Very well then, Major, the mission is yours. Good luck. Your take off has already been cleared with the tower.”

  “I’ll see you gentlemen this afternoon,” Reg said over his shoulder as he pushed open the door and headed away across the blistering hot tarmac. The others moved to the windows and watched him go.

  Whitley crossed his long arms over his chest. “There goes a man looking for trouble.”

  “Not at all,” said Sinclair. “There goes a man looking for redemption.”

  As his British Aerospace Hawk 200 thundered over the razor-wire perimeter fence of the Khamis Moushalt facility, Reg looked down at the base that had been his home for the last few years, a nine-square-mile patch of pavement in the middle of a desert. It was a horrible place to live and was considered the worst assignment an RAF man could draw. No one except Reg had ever volunteered to be there. Saudi Arabia could be a strange, hostile, and cruel place, ruled by restrictive Islamic social codes. But Reg had found the Saudis to be an honorable people and had made many genuine friends among them. He had trained many of the Royal Saudi Air Force’s best pilots during his years in the country since Desert Storm.