The Warriors' Ends- Soldiers of the Apocalypse

by Keith T Jenkins

  “But I don’t have a daughter . . .”

  “Exactly, Mr. President; that’s the point. He is working to get the connection going, but says he has to install the Skype software on the remote system. It should be just moments away.”

  The familiar breeep broooom sound of the Skype call coming in rings out. The President of the United States adjusts his seat and faces the laptop, just as what looks like an Air Force command bunker becomes visible.

  In the mountains, deep in the hilltop bunker, an interface pops up on the primary command screen, saying Skype! “What the hell is that? Who put that there?” asks Culver as the President’s face appears.

  “Holy shit!” says the President.

  “Exactly, Mr. President! Holy shit, what are you doing on my screen?” asks Mike. Turning to Culver, “How does he get in here?”

  “It’s not her fault, ma’am,” says Harrison. “We have things to talk about, you and I, and someone helped find a way to do that. Can we agree we need to talk?”

  “Is talking what you have in mind, Mr. President?” asks Mike.

  “Let’s start there.”

  “In that case, sir, what do we need to talk about?”

  “First off, you know everything about me, but I don’t know you.” He pauses for a reply. “Tell me, who are you. At least give me a name to call you.

  “Call me Mike, Mr. President.”

  “I saw your news feeds. Very powerful stuff. How certain are you that our enemies are a bunch of mullahs and the Ayatollah Rashid?”

  “One hundred percent, sir.” She signals to Tommy to send a packet. “We have documentation and video confirming the facts. In fact, sir, I would feel much better if you were talking to me from a more crowded office or alone.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Just humor an old soldier, sir. Please.”

  The President turns the laptop to face the door, reaches up under his desk and presses a small, yellow, plastic button, and Mike can see a couple of Marines enter the door past the President. He turns the laptop so that it no longer faces the door, but faces him, and behind him, Walid on the phone with his back to the President.

  “Do you have a headset, Mr. President?” asks Culver.

  “Yes,” he says looking in his desk drawer for something. He pulls out an old, plug-in pair of purple buds, hooks them in his ears, making certain the mic is not covered by his tie.

  “Is that better?” he asks.

  “That is much better, sir,” says Culver. “Do you want a headset, Mike?”

  “No, thanks. Everyone in this room has clearance to hear my words.” She turns slightly aside, saying, “Everyone! Stand to!” and she steps again onto the desk. “Mr. President, your office is compromised by followers of the Ayatollah, and your life is in danger.”

  At that moment, Walid turns from his phone call, and begins approaching the President. There is the explosive sound of a gunshot and Walid spins around and falls to the floor, out of sight. Two Marines cross the floor and there is a scuffle before a wounded Walid is raised up to his feet and hustled out the door. The President has the courtesy to turn the laptop so his conversants could follow the action.

  Walid had called his superior in the chain to Rashid and was told that the President could not be allowed to make a deal with the hilltop, that instead, he had to be killed. The Marines who had been brought in had both been labeled as Muslim, so Walid thought that he could make the kill, unimpeded. But some people get themselves labeled Muslim just to not get on a list. Since it is the national religion, it is much like back in the 70’s when millions of soldiers had “C” on their dog-tags, if only ‘cause Mama said so.

  “The attacks from the sub and the aircraft carrier were not on my orders,” he tells them. “I want to know, should I cancel the attack on your compound on the ground?”

  “I know my people would be glad of that,” says Mike. “But to tell you the truth, sir, we are a little busy here, trying to overthrow the world. What can I do for you . . . or you for me?”

  Just then, a fax comes in, handed to the President by a Marine, giving the general history of Mike.

  “God Damn, woman!” he says to the screen, “According to this, you are one of our best soldiers . . . like, ever.”

  “Yeah, well, I am surrounded by better, sir. What’s the point?”

  “Well, why are you fighting against us?”

  “Jeremiah!” she says, “and what he told me.”

  “What did he tell you?” asks Harrison.

  “Well, first he told me my name, and not just my name, but my nickname, without any introduction and no ID tags. Then he told me what had happened in all of the major moments of my life. And then he told me what was going to happen in the next seven years. And then he just vanished. Like an eighty-year-old puff of smoke . . . he vanished.” She looks at the screen and around the room, saying, “I have been working for him and his ever since.” Tommy comes and takes her hand, as she says, “All this time, I have been doing it all out of a sense of obligation to Jeremiah, but a few years ago, after the second disappearance, I started working for his boss.”

  The weather satellite is showing a great influx of cloud cover to Israel from Turkey and farther north. The storm is still building up from the Med, and there’s already a couple of inches on the battlefield, with far more coming.

  “How’d you do that, Boot?” asks Culver over the conversation.

  “Warm ground – drive clouds – then bring cold – get rain.”

  “What the hell is he talking about?” asks Harrison.

  “He’s driving a storm into Israel, Mr. President. What do you want to do?” asks Mike. “I really do have my hands full here.”

  “I want an alliance!” he replies.

  “If you can stop the attacks on our home, that would go a long way toward that.”

  He nods back at her and signals to his left. The Marines look at him as if they have no idea what he wants, because they don’t. He realizes that they can’t hear what is in his headphones. “Stop the attack on hilltop, Angry Parrot!”

  One of the Marines sprints out of the room and three Secret Service personnel come in – two men and a woman. A gunshot is heard from the hallway. The woman agent exits the door, followed by one of the men, and all have their weapons drawn now. As she clears the door, she kneels and targets someone down the hall, unleashing a 9mm round that lands in the face of the man who just shot that Marine carrying orders. “Shut down the attack on Angry Parrot,” she shouts, receiving more return fire from down the hall. Her partner stands behind her, firing almost as much as she does, both loading another mag when they dive across the room behind a desk, only to discover that their targets are all dead-ish, or at least useless. They are ready for more. “Stop Operation Angry Parrot,” she shouts, and at the other end of the room, a man reaches for the phone, kneels, and relays the command.

  “There was some sort of shouting in Arabic, praising Allah, telling me to go fuck something hideous, ma’am.”

  The President hears this exchange, even though he has a Marine and a Secret Service agent huddled around him. He unplugs his headphones, mostly because in the scuffle, the buds were torn loose. He tells Mike that he can’t stop the attack.

  “That’s okay, Mr. President. We will do what we do, sir. You may want to go to the Basement now, sir.”

  “How do you know about the Basement?” Harrison asks.

  “Sir! Half of us were trained to protect you at some time or another. We know things you don’t know, sir,” she says.

  “That man behind you! Isn’t he Sergeant Schwarz? Isn’t he the guy who was trying to kill me a while back?”

  “If I wanted you dead, Mr. President,” Mark replies, “You would have been dead long ago.”

  “Mr. President!” shouts Mike. “Get to your bunker. Take your family and the team that is with you . . . no more!”

  The Secret Service agent reaches for the President’s shoulder, saying, “Mr.
President; She’s right. We should go.”

  “Hey, SS Boy!” shouts Mike, “The First Family, you four, no more – understand?”

  He nods his head with a “Yes ma’am.”

  “And tell that lady agent, Alona, I said ‘Isaiah Fifty-Three is real.’ Would you do that?”

  “How did you know her name?” he asks.

  “How do I know anything?” she replies.

  “We got four inches, Mike!” yells Boot.

  “A couple more will do. What are they doing down there?”

  Carver responds, “Well, they are dying by the hundreds and thousands. The missiles and mortars are still landing like rain, mixing the mud, and the blood, and the fuel, as the feet and tires, tracks and hoofs plunge into the hardpack. Israel is raining down all manner of pain on them, but they can’t keep it up much longer. I estimate their mortars will be out of shells in about five or ten minutes.”

  “It’s time to go, Mr. President,” says the SS Boy, just as the outer window of the Oval Office explodes in flames. The laptop is left connected for a moment as the President leaves and the flames begin filling the room. There is nothing more Mike can do for them, but more she has to do on Hilltop Angry Parrot, er, that is, Zarephath.

  Turning to weather, she asks, what is the depth of rain now?”

  “It is up another inch, ma’am.”

  “Let the mortars expire, keep the rain coming, and then, Boot . . . heat it up.” She looks to Culver, explaining, “I want the whole valley, from that ridge,” pointing to the line between the Israeli forces and the enemy, “to the edge of Turkey, back to the Euphrates, stormed on, muddied up, and baked at over two-hundred degrees.”

  “You like Fahrenheit or Centigrade, ma’am?”

  “I think Fahrenheit would be fine, thanks.”

  “Boot! Can you do that?” asks Culver.

  “Well, must do cycle!” He’s going to create a pattern over the whole area, and the temps would climb slowly over a few hours or so, but, yeah! “That’s okay, Pretty Face?” Boot is confident in what he can accomplish, but not confident that it will be enough.

  Culver tells him, with a little scruffling of his hair, “You are an excellent boy, Boot, and a damn fine soldier, near as I can see.” She puts her camo baseball cap on his head with her captain’s rank. Suddenly, Boot is empowered to take over the world, thanks to the praise that has been laid upon him. His brow furrows a bit and his fingers key a little faster, and the temperatures south of the line of demarcation rise by five, ten, then eventually, to fifteen degrees.

  On the other side of the ridge, the satellite is warming up areas that are several miles in diameter, thirty seconds here, thirty seconds there, but the heat is rising all over. The Chinese army is starting to steam, still struggling to get to the ridge where they know they will find the Israeli Defense Forces, laying in wait, but down to a few mortar rounds, with canons, and tanks blasting away. There are bodies shredding left and right, fore and aft, driving still into the fray, but with little success. The vehicles with electric mini-guns are spraying thousands of rounds of ammo, over the hill, at a thirty degree-ish angle, raining down hell on the enemy for miles, and still they progress.

  The troops and the tanks continue to drive toward the IDF, millions of them, pouring into the grinder, and when the firestorm stops for assessment, they are walking through the puddles that had been their fellow soldiers, now becoming a two feet deep bowl of shattered bones, blood, shredded flesh, and mud. The most devastating part is that the eyes are crying, watching their comrades pass, and their hands are still groping at the air, glomming on to anything they can reach, grasping tires and pant legs, and one another’s faces. It is a scene from a horror movie, lived out in their own eyes. Incoming soldiers are terrified. And the mud is getting hotter. Hundreds of thousands of them are sweating to near death, steamed like lobsters, falling beneath the hooves of the horses, ‘til the horses fall sweltering too, foaming in sweat, exhausted, dying. Then all of them are falling under the tracks of the tanks and armoured personnel carriers, safe from the hail of bullets. Suddenly, the temperatures of the exhausts of trucks or tanks, combined with the blood soaked fuel evaporating, ignite, and the whole field is awash with floating ghosts of flame, dancing from here to there, randomly moving about the Chinese army, torching a few things as it can. Some of the soldiers’ uniforms get caught on fire, but they are already incapacitated, so they smolder on.

  The Israeli Defense Forces purchased three hundred FB37 Wolverines – the Fighter Bomber models – from the Texican Army, but were only able to take delivery of about one hundred eighty of them before the world went FUBAR. Still, all of those craft, plus all the F-15’s and F-22’s they had owned before, hit the sky loaded with a few thousand 105 Sabot rounds, and four missile launchers, along with a couple of Bunker Buster Bombs, modified for additional lateral shrapnel by adhesion of plates such as those on the side of a grenade. When these things hit, they rattle the ground for a dozen miles, and they spread a shower of pain and blood for about three thousand feet per bomb. Under a few of these flying warriors are strapped a couple of MOAB bombs – called MOAB as the Mother Of All Bombs. If one of these is dropped in an NFL stadium, every car in the surrounding lot would be destroyed, and everything within a half mile beyond. There are cities in northern Israel which have already fallen to the horde, where command posts are located, and where supplies will doubtless come, if the battle is allowed to continue. Israel’s goal . . . end the conflagration today. There are no compunctions about being careful what is hit, or who is killed. The unfortunate truth is that hundreds of thousands of Israeli’s have already been killed, and thousands more will die today, but a very real goal is to keep millions alive, and a price will have to be paid.

  As they cross the ridge, the temperatures are up over 120 degrees and rising, so the planes take a jump on the updrafts, climbing to three thousand feet. They begin unloading their Sabot rounds on the tanks and personnel carriers, punching holes in everything, and the phosphorous loads in the rounds ignite inside of everything, leaving everyone in an iron box feeling as though they have a signal flare shoved in their pants. Many do.

  Still bearing north, the planes descend and begin firing off mini-guns at nearly two thousand rounds per minute, 9mm, flying down from only thirty feet above the earth. The temperatures inside the planes is getting over 115 as they get to the north end, so they sweep wide, peeling off east and west, cooling down before another pass, this time on a diagonal. The next pass begins at Gaza and strafes the hardware and software in strips, all the way across Galilee, then the next wave runs from the eastern edge of Ashdod to the other side of Acre, then circling around to tear up everything from Mt. Hermon toward Haifa. There are about thirty planes on a tear at a time, so low and fast that they cannot be adequately targeted. Once their fuel or ammo is expended, they return for reloads at Qalandiya Camp off the south end of Yerushalayim airport.

  Soon the flights have to be flown over the enemy from at least eight thousand feet. The targeting precision falls off as the altitude gets greater, but the mass of enemy is still thousands of acres of churning flesh. Down on the ground the blood and water begin to boil in the ground, mixed with the fuel and oils of the deceased vehicles – oil, gas, blood, diesel, transmission fluids, and more – so that the ground is still soggy, almost like a field of sourdough, waiting for the oven, but the temperature is definitely rising.

  “It’s slower cooking than I thought it would be, ma’am,” says Boot, to Culver.

  “It’s okay, Soldier!” she says, playing on his inflated sense of duty, “Keep it coming.”

  Boot locks in the revolving supply of heat, programming it to continue working without manual input, then, moving to another station, taking command of another satellite, ordering it to change direction for alignment, meaning that it should head for the ground. He has no need of precision, just drop it in northern Israel, preferably the Valley of Megiddo, and it is weaponized. About two hund
red satellites were tasked with communications, TV, or just watching Israel for a very long time. One by one, or two by two, they are falling on the armed swarm from China. Some of the satellites are nuclear powered, so there is an uncertain amount of detonation and devastation with them. Megiddo will not be farm worthy for a long while, but that is not the immediate issue, is it?

  From the ground, it looks as if there is fire and brimstone falling from the sky onto the enemy; and who’s to say this isn’t exactly what God has in mind for their protection, in this moment?

  “Remember who fights for us,” says the Commander to the Lieutenant. “It’s the One who fought for us in Yerushalayim nearly three thousand years ago.” Torrents of rain have been pounding down on them for some time, washing off their hats, down their drenched shoulders. Shouting to one another, the Commander tells the young Lieutenant about this battle being predicted a couple thousand years ago, and the Lieutenant nodding in agreement and appreciation.

  In the rain, to the south side of the ridge, the temperature is 82 degrees, Fahrenheit. There is a solid breeze out of the south, created by the rising temperatures on the other side of the ridge. The heat is causing an updraft from all around. It brings comfort to the Israeli army, and fool-hearted encouragement to the invaders in the north.

  What Da Fatwah?

  False prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive [33]

  E-Day Minus 1 Day

  Looking on at video from drones, Rashid turns from Smotritel’s desk, shouting something in Arabic, and one of his lieutenants leaves the room in a hurry. Continuing, he shouts at the others of his personal guard, two of whom leave shortly, leaving three behind.

  Smotritel asks, “What was that?”